Goth waved her hand at him. "We don't know that," she reminded him. "We don't really know anything much about vatches. And anyway, they don't have any guilt over making our lives miserable, so I don't see why you should feel guilty about what you're doing. Maybe it'll teach some of them not to mess us up."
"Besides," the Leewit said firmly. "Silver-eyes is one of the kind that you can't control. The sooner you get it out of our universe and into some place else, the better!"
Well, he could agree with that, but it just didn't make him feel any better.
CHAPTER 15
Sedmon the Sixth, Daal of feared and blood-soaked Uldune, looked at the exquisite little jewel box inset with chalcosites and pieces of peacock-blue Lepida Pua nacre. It was a pretty little trinket—not to mention a very expensive one. But would the intended recipient like it? With that person, it was hard to know.
And, more to the immediate point, where was she? Where were the rest of them, for that matter? He knew the Venture had had little air, a leaking airlock, and very little fuel when it had evaded destruction at the hands of the Imperial Navy off Pidoon.
Despite these rather unpromising circumstances, he was fairly certain they'd have gotten away. In the hexaperson's youth, Sedmon had once made the mistake of taking Karres lightly. Threbus and Toll had given the Daal—and a goodly portion of his space fleet—a polite but firm lesson. Two witches . . . and he almost hadn't had much of a fleet left. Ever since, Uldune had bent over backwards not to irritate the witches. And, ever since, Sedmon had been careful not to underestimate them and to wear his telepathy disturbing skullcap when they were around.
It had been made abundantly plain to him that if worse came to worst, the witches could do without spaceships or even spacesuits.
Hulik do Eldel couldn't. Neither could his former spy, Vezzarn, though that did not trouble him much.
And, he privately suspected—although he had no proof—neither could Captain Pausert. But Pausert might be one of the Karres witches. You never could be absolutely sure. Sedmon hoped not—because he was very sure that the little Wisdom with Pausert would not abandon him, which would probably mean keeping Hulik alive too.
But there was no trace of the blasted ship! If they'd only used the drives inside an atmospheric envelope, the detectors wouldn't have picked that up. Unless they were dead, or had used some form of Karres witchery.
* * *
Light-years away on Uldune, the other Sedmons concurred. They used the House of Thunders' elaborate astrography equipment to look for possible destinations for ships low on air and fuel.
Vaudevillia came up on top of the probability list. Since they had no better leads, the Thunderbird left for the planet—on the same day, as it happened, when the Pidoon vidcasts were trumpeting the demise of the infamous Nairdoo Sheyan, pirate murderer of Coolum's World, along with two of her criminal associates.
* * *
The trail might have run cold on Vaudevillia—except that a lucrative offer got a freighter captain to remember that someone had been trying to scrounge fuel and air. The captain also recalled some radio-squalling about a vagabond hitching a ride on a very unwilling lattice ship.
For the first time in many days, the Sedmons smiled. They were aware of the habit of lattice ships of using old hulks for airtight holds. Such a maneuver would confound most of the people pursuing the Venture, sure enough. For a time, at least.
Sedmon nodded to Sedmon. "Pausert. He's a cunning one. We'll need a trace on as many lattice ships as possible."
Uldune and her operations had many agents. And subradio meant the news could be sent, fast.
* * *
Two days later, the Sedmons were in pursuit of the Petey B.
CHAPTER 16
By the time that Cravan had all four of the new plays in production, most of the free money on Hanson's Reach had found its way into the coffers of Petey, Byrum, and Keep. The silver-eyed vatch had lured two more victims within the reach of Pausert's klatha hooks and had gotten fed twice more, despite Pausert's feelings of lingering guilt. Then the Petey B took to space again, and Pausert felt that he was finally going to be able to relax for a while.
Well . . . from having to look for spies and agents around every corner, at any rate. He suspected that with more free time on her hands, Dame Ethulassia was going to become a bit of a problem.
As, indeed, she did. But Pausert was able to evade that danger in a generally satisfactory manner. Although, on one occasion, he apparently didn't extract himself from her company quite quickly and smoothly enough. At least, the captain assumed that it had been Goth who teleported a still alive and wriggling jellysnail into his soup.
* * *
They set down again on another agro-world, this time not quite as primitive as the last—which was not, in Pausert's opinion, an advantage. Tornam was not backwards and isolated. It had a real spaceport that saw more than the occasional slow-freighter and desperate trader. There were five other spaceships already on the field when the Petey B set down on it.
Tornam also had an ISS office.
Hulik tried to reassure him that it was just a little backwater of a place; and that, even if the agents in charge had even heard of the Venture and its crew, they would hardly look for them snugged into a showboat. They would expect such desperate criminals to be trying to hide, not starring in a play.
It didn't help. In truth, the only reason Pausert wasn't starting at every sound and looking over his shoulder constantly was that, irrational as it was, he had begun to trust the little Silver-eyes. Or, perhaps, he just trusted that the vatch had come to realize that there was great deal more amusement to be had from helping Pausert and his crew than from trying to trip them up at every turn. But he still had the nervous certainty that disaster of some sort was just around the corner, a feeling of a metaphorical storm just below the horizon.
* * *
Yet, when disaster came, it had nothing to do with Pausert and the others. It didn't even happen in or around the showboat itself.
It happened when the second lead of Cravan's company, Ken Kanchen, was in Bevenford, the largest town on the planet. Kanchen took the part of Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, of Horatio in Hamlet—pretty much any male part that required a handsome face, athletic ability, solid if not inspired acting, and the ability to memorize a part in two days,
He wasn't even there to do anything that could have conceivably gotten him into trouble. He was running a simple errand, visiting a local bookshop. Unfortunately, he stepped back into the street just at the wrong time. Traffic laws on Tornam were haphazard. Kanchen ended up under a floater, and then in a hospital, with more broken bones than anyone wanted to think about. He was just lucky that he was still alive—and that his handsome face was still untouched.
Not even Sir Richard could manage to act the part of Tybalt in a full body cast.
Himbo Petey had Kanchen brought back aboard the Petey B as soon as possible, of course. A ship the size of a showboat usually had a sick bay as good or better than anything a provincial planet could provide, and the Petey B was no exception to that. Besides, the showboats had a long tradition of taking care of their own—even people not as well-liked as Kanchen was by virtually everyone in the company and crew. The poor man was guaranteed better round-the-clock nursing as well as superior medical care; his problem would not be a lack of care and company, but a surfeit of it.