The first voice said distinctly, “Shall we just leave it on?”
A second voice, considerably more muffled, replied, “Yes, let’s! You never know when you need it—”
The third voice, tucked somewhere in between them, said simply, “Whew!”
Peering about in bewilderment, the captain realized suddenly that the voices had come from the speaker of the ship’s intercom connecting the control room with what had once been the Venture’s captain’s cabin.
He listened; but only a dim murmuring was audible now, and then nothing at all. He started towards the passage, returned and softly switched off the intercom. He went quietly down the passage until he came to the captain’s cabin. Its door was closed.
He listened a moment, and opened it suddenly.
There was a trio of squeals:
“Oh, don’t! You spoiled it!”
The captain stood motionless. Just one glimpse had been given him of what seemed to be a bundle of twisted black wires arranged loosely like the frame of a truncated cone on — or was it just above? — a table in the center of the cabin. Above the wires, where the tip of the cone should have been, burned a round, swirling orange fire. About it, their faces reflecting its glow, stood the three witches.
Then the fire vanished; the wires collapsed. There was only ordinary light in the room. They were looking up at him variously — Maleen with smiling regret, the Leewit in frank annoyance, Goth with no expression at all.
“What out of Great Patham’s Seventh Hell was that?” inquired the captain, his hair bristling slowly.
The Leewit looked at Goth; Goth looked at Maleen. Maleen said doubtfully, “We can just tell you its name…”
“That was the Sheewash Drive,” said Goth.
“The what drive?” asked the captain.
“Sheewash,” repeated Maleen.
“The one you have to do it with yourself,” the Leewit added helpfully.
“Shut up,” said Maleen.
There was a long pause. The captain looked down at the handful of thin, black, twelve-inch wires scattered about the table top. He touched one of them. It was dead cold.
“I see,” he said. “I guess we’re all going to have a long talk.” Another pause. “Where are we now?”
“About two light-weeks down the way you were going,” said Goth. “We only worked it thirty seconds.”
“Twenty-eight,” corrected Maleen, with the authority of her years. “The Leewit was getting tired.”
“I see,” said Captain Pausert carefully. “Well, let’s go have some breakfast.”
They ate with a silent voraciousness, dainty Maleen, the exquisite Leewit, supple Goth, all alike. The captain, long finished, watched them with amazement and — now at last — with something like awe.
“It’s the Sheewash Drive,” explained Maleen finally, catching his expression.
“Takes it out of you!” said Goth.
The Leewit grunted affirmatively and stuffed on.
“Can’t do too much of it,” said Maleen. “Or too often. It kills you sure!”
“What,” said the captain, “is the Sheewash Drive?”
They became reticent. Karres people did it, said Maleen, when they had to go somewhere fast. Everybody knew how there. “But of course,” she added, “we’re pretty young to do it right.”
“We did it pretty clumping good!” the Leewit contradicted positively. She seemed to be finished at last.
“But how?” said the captain.
Reticence thickened almost visibly. If you couldn’t do it, said Maleen, you couldn’t understand it either.
He gave it up, for the time being.
“We’ll have to figure out how to take you home next,” he said; and they agreed.
Karres, it developed, was in the Iverdahl System. He couldn’t find any planet of that designation listed in his maps of the area, but that meant nothing. The maps weren’t always accurate, and local names changed a lot.
Barring the use of weird and deadly miracle-drives, that detour was going to cost him almost a month in time — and a good chunk of his profits in power used up. The jewels Goth had illegally teleported must, of course, be returned to their owner, he explained. He’d intended to look severely at the culprit at that point; but she’d meant well, after all. They were extremely unusual children, but still children — they couldn’t really understand.
He would stop off en route to Karres at an Empire planet with interstellar banking facilities to take care of that matter, the captain added. A planet far enough off so the police wouldn’t be likely to take any particular interest in the Venture.
A dead silence greeted this schedule. He gathered that the representatives of Karres did not think much of his logic.
“Well,” Maleen sighed at last, “we’ll see you get your money back some other way then!”
The junior witches nodded coldly.
“How did you three happen to get into this fix?” the captain inquired, with the intention of changing the subject.
They’d left Karres together on a jaunt of their own, they explained. No, they hadn’t run away — he got the impression that such trips were standard procedure for juveniles in that place. They were on another world, a civilized one but beyond the borders and law of Empire, when the town they were in was raided by a small fleet of slavers. They were taken along with most of the local youngsters.
“It’s a wonder,” the captain said reflectively, “you didn’t take over the ship.”
“Oh, brother!” exclaimed the Leewit.
“Not that ship!” said Goth.
“That was an Imperial Slaver!” Maleen informed him. “You behave yourself every second on those crates.”
Just the same, the captain thought, as he settled himself to rest on a couch he had set up in the control room, it was no longer surprising that the Empire wanted no young slaves from Karres to be transported to the interior! Oddest sort of children… But he ought to be able to get his expenses paid by their relatives. Something very profitable might even be made of this deal…
Have to watch the record entries though! Nikkeldepain’s laws were explicit about the penalties invoked by anything resembling the purchase and sale of slaves.
He’d thoughtfully left the intercom adjusted so he could listen in on their conversation in the captain’s cabin. However, there had been nothing for some time beyond frequent bursts of childish giggling. Then came a succession of piercing shrieks from the Leewit. It appeared she was being forcibly washed behind the ears by Maleen and obliged to brush her teeth, in preparation for bedtime.
It had been agreed that he was not to enter the cabin, because — for reasons not given — they couldn’t keep the Sheewash Drive on in his presence; and they wanted to have it ready, in case of an emergency. Piracy was rife beyond the Imperial borders, and the Venture would keep beyond the border for most of the trip, to avoid the more pressing danger of police pursuit instigated by Porlumma. The captain had explained the potentialities of the nova guns the Venture boasted, or tried to. Possibly they hadn’t understood. At any rate, they seemed unimpressed.
The Sheewash Drive! Boy, he thought in sudden excitement, if he could just get the principles of that. Maybe he would!
He raised his head suddenly. The Leewit’s voice had lifted clearly over the communicator.
“…not such a bad old dope!” the childish treble remarked. The captain blinked indignantly.
“He’s not so old,” Maleen’s soft voice returned. “And he’s certainly no dope!”
He smiled. Good kid, Maleen.
“Yeah, yeah!” squeaked the Leewit offensively. “Maleen’s sweet onthu — ulp!”
A vague commotion continued for a while, indicating, he hoped, that someone he could mention was being smothered under a pillow.