"I don't know," Bilko mused when I'd outlined Scholar Kulasawa's proposition.
"The whole thing smells a little fishy."
"Which parts?" I asked.
"All parts," he said. "For one thing, I find it hard to believe this race is so tight she had to settle for a transport like the Sergei Rock."
"What's wrong with the Sergei Rock?" I demanded, trying not to take it personally and not entirely succeeding. "We may not be fancy, but we've got a good clean record."
"And don't forget those boxes of hers," Jimmy put in. I didn't have to ask how he was leaning—he was practically bouncing in his seat with excitement over the whole thing. "She needed a transport that could carry them."
"Yes—let's not forget those boxes," Bilko countered. "Did our esteemed scholar happen to tell you what was in them?"
"She said it was her research equipment," I told him.
"That's one hell of a lot of research equipment."
"Historians and archaeologists don't make do with a magnifying glass and tweezers anymore," I said stiffly.
"Why are we all arguing here?" Jimmy put in earnestly. "I mean, if there are people out there who are lost, we need to help them."
"I don't think Scholar Kulasawa cares two sparkles about whoever's aboard,"
Bilko growled. "It's Columbus Syndrome—she just wants the credit for discovering the New World."
"Shouldn't it be the Old World?" Jimmy suggested.
Bilko threw him a glare. "Fine. Whatever."
I looked at Rhonda. "You've been pretty quiet," I said. "What do you think?"
"I don't think it matters what I think," she said quietly. "You're the owner and captain, and you've already made up your mind. Haven't you?"
"I suppose I have, really," I conceded. "But I don't want to steamroll the rest of you, either. If anyone has a solid reason why we should turn her down, I want to hear it."
"I'm with you," Jimmy piped up.
"Thank you," I said patiently. "But I was asking for dissenting opinions.
Bilko?"
"Just the smell of it," he said sourly. "I might have something solid if you'd let me look into those crates of hers."
I grimaced. "Compromise," I said. "You can do a materials scan and sonic deep-probe if you want. Just bear in mind that Angorki customs would have done all that and more, and apparently passed everything through without a whisper.
Other thoughts?"
I looked at Rhonda, then at Bilko, then back at Rhonda. Neither looked particularly happy, but neither said anything either. Probably had decided that arguing further would be a waste of breath. "All right, then," I said after a minute. "I'll go tell Scholar Kulasawa that we're in and get the coordinates from her. Bilko and I will figure out our vector and then you, Jimmy, will work out a program. Got it? Good. Everyone back to your posts."
Kulasawa accepted the news with the air of someone who would have found it astonishing if we hadn't fallen properly into line behind her. The location she gave me would have been a ten-hour trip from Parex, but as it happened was only about six hours from our current position. I couldn't tell whether she was genuinely pleased by that or simply considered it another example of the Universe's moral obligation to reconfigure itself in accordance to her plans and whims.
Regardless, the distance was reasonable and the course trivial to calculate.
By the time Bilko and I had the vector worked out, Jimmy was ready with several alternative programs. I got him started on a four-hour program—he argued briefly for doing the entire six hours in one gulp, but I'd already stretched the rules enough for one trip—and had him get us underway.
And then, when everything was quiet again, I headed back to the engine room to see Rhonda.
Most of the engineer's job involved the lift and landing procedures, leaving little if anything for her to do while we were in deep space. Despite that, we almost never saw Rhonda in the dayroom. She preferred to stay at her post, watching her engines, listening to Jimmy's concert in solitude, and creating the little beadwork jewelry that was her hobby.
She was working on the latter as I came in. "Thought I'd check and see how you were doing back here," I greeted her as I stepped in through the hatchway.
"Everything's fine," she assured me, looking up from her beads.
"Good," I said, stepping behind her and peering over her shoulder. The piece was only half finished, but already it looked nice. "Interesting pattern," I told her. "Good color scheme, too. What's it going to be?"
"A decorated comb," she said. "It holds your hair in place in back." She twisted her head to look thoughtfully up at me. "For those of us who have enough hair to need holding, of course."
"Funny." I came around to the front of the board and pulled down a jumpseat.
"I wanted to talk to you about this little side trip we're making. You really don't like it, do you?"
"No, I don't," she said. "I have no quarrel with locating the Freedom's Peace or even going there, though reneging on a contract is going to damage that clean record you mentioned in the dayroom."
"I know, but we'll make it right," I promised. "Kulasawa's given us more than enough money to cover that."
"I know," Rhonda said sourly. "And that's what's really bothering me: your motivation for all of this. Altruistic noises aside, are you sure it's not just the money?"
"If you'll recall, I turned down the money when she first offered it," I reminded her.
"But was it the money or the fact you didn't know anything about the job?" she countered.
"Some of both," I had to concede. "But now that we know what we're doing—"
"Do we?" she cut me off. "Do we really? Has Scholar Kulasawa thought through—I mean really thought through—what she intends to do once we get there? Is she going to volunteer the Sergei Rock passenger cabin to take them all back to Earth? Make grandiose promises of land on Brunswick or Camaraderie or somewhere that she has no authority to make?"
She waved a hand in the general direction of the passenger cabin. "Or maybe she doesn't intend to bring them home at all. She could be planning to leave them out there like some lost rain-forest culture for her academic friends to study.
Or maybe she'll organize weekly tour-groups for the public and sell tickets."
"Now you're being silly," I grumbled.
"Am I?" she countered. "Just because she's a scholar and has money doesn't mean she's got any brains, you know." She cocked her head slightly to the side.
"Just how much above our expenses is she offering you?"
I shrugged as casually as I could. "Seventy thousand neumarks."
Her eyes widened. "Seventy thousand? And you still don't see anything wrong with this?"
"There's prestige involved here, Rhonda," I reminded her. "Prestige and academic glory. That's worth a lot more to any scholar than mere money. Remember, we know next to nothing about the Great Leap colonies—all that stuff went up in dust when the Ganymede domes were hit late in the war. We don't know what kind of astrogation system they had, how you create a stable ecosystem that compact, or even how you set about hollowing out eighteen kilometers' worth of asteroid in the first place. Scholars go nuts over that sort of thing."
"Yes, but three hundred thousand neumarks worth?"
I shrugged again. "It's the bottom line of being the ones who go down in history," I reminded her. "And remember, the Tower's own records showed that we were the only transport headed for Parex for over a week. If her competitors have their own ship, then we're her only chance to get there first."
Rhonda shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I find that utterly incomprehensible."
"Frankly, so do I," I readily admitted. "That's probably why we're not scholars."