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I shook my head. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Scholar," I said, "but this run is already spoken for. If you want to charter a special trip at Parex, I'm sure you'll be able to find a transport willing to take you."
She favored me with a smile that didn't have a single calorie of warmth anywhere in it. "Meaning you wouldn't take me?"
"Meaning if you wish to discuss it after we've offloaded at Parex I'll be willing to listen," I said, standing up. I had it now: her scholarhood was in psychology, and this was all part of some stupid study on bribery and ethics.
"But thank you for the offer—"
"I'll pay you three hundred thousand neumarks," she said, the smile gone now.
"Cash."
I stared at her. The power lifters and gourmet food we were carrying were worth maybe two hundred thousand, max, with everything else adding no more than another thirty. Which left the little bonus she'd mentioned at somewhere around seventy thousand neumarks.
Seventy thousand neumarks...
"You don't think I'm serious," she went on into my sudden silence, reaching into her jacket and pulling out what looked like a pre-paid money card. "Go on," she invited, holding it out toward me. "Check it."
Carefully, suspiciously, I reached out and took the card. Pulling out my reader, I slid it in.
As the owner of a transport plying some of the admittedly less-than-plum lanes, I had long ago decided that buying cut-rate document software would ultimately cost me more than it would save. Consequently, I'd made sure that the Sergei Rock's legal and financial authenticators were the best that money could buy.
Scholar Kulasawa's money card was completely legitimate. And it did indeed have three hundred thousand neumarks on it.
"You must be crazy to carry this around," I told her, pulling the card out of my reader as if it was made of thousand-year-old crystal. "Where in the worlds did you get this kind of money, anyway?"
"From my university, of course. No—keep it," she added, waving the card back as I held it out to her. "I prefer payment in advance."
With a sigh, I stood up and set the card down on the seat next to her. Seventy thousand neumarks... "I already told you this trip's been contracted for," I said. "Talk to me when we reach Parex." I turned to go—
"Wait."
I turned back. For a moment she studied my face, with something that might have been grudging admiration in her expression. "I misjudged you," she said. "My apologies. Allow me to try a different approach."
I shook my head. "I already said—"
"Would you accept my offer," she cut me off, "if it would also mean helping people desperately in need of our assistance?"
I shook my head. "The Patrol's got an office on Parex," I said. "You want help, talk to them."
"I can't." Her carefully jeweled lip twisted, just slightly. "For one thing, they have no one equipped to deal with the situation. For another, if I called them in they'd take it over and shut me out completely."
"Shut you out of what?"
"The credit, of course," she said, her lip twisting again. "That's what drives the academic world, Captain: the politely savage competition for credit and glory and peer recognition." She eyed me again. "It would be so much easier if would trust me. Safer, too, from my point of view. If this should get out..."
She took a deep breath, still watching me, and let it out in a rush. "But if it's the only way to get your cooperation, then I suppose that's what I have to do. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Freedom's Peace?"
"Sounds vaguely familiar," I said, searching my memory. "Is it a star transport?"
She snorted gently. "You might say it was the ultimate star transport," she said dryly. "The Freedom's Peace was one of the five Giant Leap ark ships that headed out from the Jovian colonies 130 years ago."
"Oh—right," I said, feeling my face warming. Nothing like forgetting one of the biggest and most spectacular failures in the history of human exploration.
The United Jovian Habitats, full of the arrogance of wealth and autonomy, had hollowed out five fair-sized asteroids, stocked them with colonists, pre-assembled ecosystems, and heavy-duty ion-capture fusion drives, and sent them blazing out of the solar system as humanity's gift to the stars.
The planetoids had stayed in contact with the home system for a while, their transmissions growing steadily weaker as the distances increased and there was more and more interstellar dust for their transmission lasers to have to punch through. Eventually, they faded out, with the last of the five going silent barely six years after their departure. The telescopes had been able to follow them for another five years or so, but eventually their drives had faded into the general starscape background.
And then had come the War of Reclamation, ruthlessly bringing the Habitats back under Earth dominion and in the process wiping out virtually all records of the Giant Leap project. By the time humanity started riding flapblacks and were finally able to go out looking for them, they had completely vanished. "Okay—the Freedom's Peace. What about it?"
"I've found it," she said simply.
I stared at her. "Where?"
"Out in space, of course," she said tartly. "You don't expect me to give you its exact location until you've agreed to take me there, do you?"
"But it's somewhere near Parex?" I prompted.
She eyed me closely. "It's accessible from Parex," she said. "That's all I'll say."
I pursed my lips, trying to think, listening with half an ear to the Brahms playing in the background. At least now I understood why there was so much money involved. Never mind the academic community; a historical find like this would rock the whole Expansion, from the Outer March colonies straight up to Earth and the Ten Families. Not to mention putting the discoverers permanently into the history books themselves.
Which did, however, bring up an entirely new question. "So why me?" I asked.
"Your university could hire a much better transport than the Sergei Rock with the money you're willing to spend."
Her thin lips compressed momentarily. "There are—competitors, shall we say—who want to reach the Freedom's Peace first. I know of at least one group that has been watching me."
"You're sure they don't know the location themselves?"
"I'm sure this group doesn't," she retorted. "But there are others, and some of them may be getting close." She waved a hand at the cabin around her. "I had to grab the first transport that was heading anywhere near it."
"But you are authorized to use that money card?" I asked.
She smiled coldly. "Trust me, Captain: if I succeed here, the university will gladly authorize ten times what's on that card. The historical significance of the furnishings alone will send shock waves through the Expansion. Let alone all the rest of it."
"All the rest of what?" I asked, frowning. I'd have thought the historical artifacts they would find aboard would be all there was.
"I thought I mentioned that," she said with a sort of malicious i
"When I asked about people needing assistance, remember? The Freedom's Peace isn't just drifting dead in space—it's still underway.
"Obviously, someone is still aboard." The same rule book that said the musicmaster had to take a thirty-minute break every four hours also said that the crew was never to all be away from their posts at the same time, while in flight, except under extraordinary circumstances. I decided this qualified; and the minute Jimmy went on break, hauled the three of them into the dayroom.
"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."