“Ahhhh.” Captain Goodheart lifted his head. “Then we are alike, you and we.”
Georgie frowned and asked, “How can that be?”
Goodheart began to explain.
“But, Captain! How can a human choose a Khalian name?”
“In the same fashion that you and I have, Throb. And for much the same reason—he renounces his kind. He says that we are his kind, now.”
It made sense, from Georgie’s viewpoint. He was dead to the human race, and by their own doing. Sure, only a few spiteful young men had actually thrown him out—but the Navy itself hadn’t shown much concern, surely not enough to come looking for him. As to the rest of the race, why, they scarcely knew he existed, even though most of them were already benefiting from the improved hyperspace communications link he had invented.
And the Khalians didn’t care what he looked like.
In fact, they seemed very friendly, treating him like one of their own. Which he was; he would willingly have done anything Captain Goodheart asked now, up to and including suicide. After all, he owed his life to the captain; surely it was his to call in, whenever he chose. Besides, there seemed to be neither Khalian nor human here—only pirates, together. True, he heard one or two now and then joking about “the captain’s pet human,” but Throb and the other officers were quick to punish the offender.
Georgie had never had a friend stick up for him before. The total lack of interest in athletics, though, they could not abide. They were, after all, medieval warriors, no matter what their technological skills. But Goodheart tutored Georgie himself, slowly and with immense patience and good cheer, gradually teaching him how to defend himself, then turning him over to Throb, who coached him with equal patience into learning to attack—until, after a year’s time, Georgie actually knew how to fight and was amazed to find he was physically fit. He had even learned to endure pain without flinching.
And if, between sessions, Throb stormed and ranted to the captain about what a worthless being Georgie was—why, Georgie had no need to know it. And the captain didn’t mind. He knew Georgie’s true worth—at least, to himself and his raiders. And if, in his most secret heart of hearts, he thought of Georgie as a traitor, he was quick to counter it with the charitable thought that this genius of a human was really only a poor, gullible fool.
Sales had almost had him. That slimy pirate had almost been in his grasp! He felt it as failure, of course—but he had saved the merchantman, damaged the raider, and at least proved he knew how to find Goodheart. So the admiral gave Sales a dozen ships, and Sales stationed them at the points Goodheart was most likely to raid.
Of course, the pirate never showed up—near any of Sales’s ships. He appeared in plenty of other places, gutted merchantmen and passenger liners by the score—but never where Sales expected him to be. He detected the cruisers in ambush, somehow, or maybe he had agents in the Fleet—now that they had Khalian allies, it was impossible to tell. Not that barring Weasels from the Fleet would have done any good—there had been traitors enough during the war, and Syndicate humans still didn’t look any different from Fleet humans.
Would a Syndicate agent work for Captain Goodheart?
Of course—since he was fouling up Terran-Khalian traffic. Any little bit that weakened the Fleet was in the Syndicate’s interest.
Sales considered the possibility that Goodheart might be a Syndicate agent, and decided against it. The Weasel simply had too much hatred for humans.
Then ships dropping out of hyperspace began to be boarded, light-years away from Khalia. There was either a research genius among the pirates, or the Syndicate saw a great deal of potential in Goodheart’s activities. They would have had to have spirited the gadget in to Goodheart by a secret agent, of course—but that wasn’t impossible.
Nor was the possibility of accident, Sales reminded himself. If the pirate had captured a ship with such a weapon aboard, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it—or duplicate it. His value system might have been medieval, but his technicians were modem.
Sales increased the scale on his holotank exponentially; the three-AU sphere shrank to the size of a baseball. He began plotting Goodheart’s new strikes in red dots, then connecting them with very thin lines.
Gradually, a lacy red sphere grew around Khalia, about twelve light-years out.
He had to have a base, Sales knew—and it had to be inside that lacy sphere. It couldn’t be outside, or he’d have had double transit time to the ambush sites on the far side of Khalia from wherever he’d set up housekeeping—and the reports of attacks came too frequently for that.
He had to have a base—but where?
“There! It is perfect!”
Throb frowned at the image on the viewscreen. “It is bleak and pitted, Captain. What can be perfect about a huge asteroid?”
“What! Can you not see?” Goodheart spun about to Georgie. “Perhaps you, adopted one! Is not my asteroid perfect?”
“Perfect, yes, as an asteroid,” Georgie whistled. His Khalian was horribly accented, but comprehensible. It gave his shipmates much material for broad jokes—but at least he could understand the punch lines. “For a pirates base, it is large enough to house the warriors of the cruiser, and a dozen ships more.”
Throb and the other Khalians lifted their heads.
“Some of those pits may be tunnel mouths,” Georgie went on, “and the rest could become so. Caverns could become ammunition dumps and hydroponic gardens. Then it is a small matter to close those mouths with walls or locks, and you have your base.”
“You see?” Goodheart shrilled to his crew. “You see? Even the outlander sees what you could not!”
Georgie blushed, feeling the resentment rise around him. “By your leave, Captain . . .”
“Anything! To one who can see so clearly—anything. What would you say, Hemoglobin?”
The crew relaxed a little, smiling, and Georgie was glad he had chosen a foolish scientist’s name—it let the Khalians feel comfortably superior, in the ways they believed really mattered. So like humans . . . “Good Captain, would it not be better to have a planet? A base that cannot run out of oxygen or water?”
The ship became very quiet. Georgie twitched under the weight of their stares, but held his gaze even with the captain’s.
“Why, it would be so,” Goodheart said evenly, “but how would you defend it?”
“With the ships that form your current lair, the old merchant hulks, each mounted with many cannon and set in orbit.”
“Well thought,” Goodheart purred, “but where would we find these cannon?”
“On the small ships of the Fleet that we have never bothered with.”
An appreciative whistle passed through the crew.
Goodheart grinned. “Well thought, Globin! But to take off or land from such a world requires great stores of fuel! Where shall we find it?”
Georgie hid his irritation at the blindness of people. “Our engines are fueled by hydrogen, great Captain, and water is hydrogen bonded to oxygen. We can loose it easily with small amounts of electricity. Choose a water world—with seas, to provide your hydrogen, and rivers, to turn the turbines that will make your electricity.”
The surrounding whistle increased in shrillness, and even Goodheart seemed a little shaken as he laughed and said, “He does not dream small dreams, our Globin! But where are we to find such a world?”
“In Virgo,” Globin answered, “not far from Spica.”