Crashlander

But he'd seen me on the balcony for the very first time. He'd sprinted up the slidestairs to intercept me without pausing a moment to call for backup. I'd stake our freedom on that — their freedom. The UN had no claim on me, but they might well extradite Carlos, or Sharrol, or the children.

So I was shaping a bribe to offer Ander, and telling myself that he wasn't too big to be killed if things broke right, and hoping that none of that showed at all while I played for time.

I asked, «What's your concern with puppeteers? They're harmless. They're cowards.»

«Are cowards harmless?»

«And they're gone.»

Ander smiled at me. «And you were the one who sent them. Beowulf, why would they deal with you a second time? You blackmailed them.»

«They don't mind blackmail; they use it themselves. And what I thought I knew might not be true.» I caught that smirk again and snapped, «All right, what?»

«Tides,» Ander said. «We've been watching their, ah, retreat. The Pierson's puppeteers understand tides very well, Beowulf, whether or not they ever had a moon.»

«All right.» I believed him and wasn't surprised.

«By the way, that information is absolutely proprietary —»

«Man with a secret, hah? Even so, I think they were taking a shot at me when they hired me the second time.»

AT THE CORE

I couldn't decide whether to call it a painting, a relief mural, a sculpture, or a hash, but it was the prize exhibit in the art section of the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. The Kdatlyno must have strange eyes, I thought. My own were watering. The longer I looked at FTLSPACE, the more blurred it got.

I'd tentatively decided that it was supposed to look blurred when a set of toothy jaws clamped gently on my arm. I jumped a foot in the air. A soft, thrilling contralto voice said, «Beowulf Shaeffer, you are a spendthrift.»

That voice would have made a singer's fortune. And I thought I recognized it — but it couldn't be; that one was on We Made It, light-years distant. I turned.

The puppeteer had released my arm. It went on: «And what do you think of Hrodenu?»

«He's ruining my eyes.»

«Naturally. The Kdatlyno are blind to all but radar. FTLSPACE is not meant to be seen but to be touched. Run your tongue over it.»

«My tongue? No, thanks.» I tried ru

The puppeteer cocked its head dubiously. «I'm sure your tongue is more sensitive. No guards are nearby.»

«Forget it. You know, you sound just like the regional president of General Products on We Made It.»

«It was he who sent me your dossier, Beowulf Shaeffer. No doubt we had the same English teacher. I am the regional president on Jinx, as you no doubt recognized from my mane.»

Well, not quite. The auburn mop over the brain case between the two necks is supposed to show caste once you learn to discount variations of mere style. To do that, you have to be a puppeteer. Instead of admitting my ignorance, I asked, «Did that dossier say I was a spendthrift?»

«You have spent more than a million stars in the past four years.,

«And loved it.»

«Yes. You will shortly be in debt again. Have you thought of doing more writing? I admired your article on the neutron star BVS-1. 'The pointy bottom of a gravity well … 'Blue starlight fell on me like intangible sleet. Lovely.»

«Thanks. It paid well, too. But I'm mainly a spaceship pilot.»

«It is fortunate, our meeting here. I had thought of having you found. Do you wish a job?»

That was a loaded question. The last and only time I took a job from a puppeteer, the puppeteer blackmailed me into it, knowing it would probably kill me. It almost did. I didn't hold that against the regional president of We Made It, but to let them have another crack at me — «I'll give you a conditional maybe. Do you have the idea I'm a professional suicide pilot?»

«Not at all. If I show details, do you agree that the information shall be confidential?»

«I do,» I said formally, knowing it would commit me. A verbal contract is as binding as the tape it's recorded on.

«Good. Come.» He pranced toward a transfer booth.

The transfer booth let us out somewhere in Jinx's vacuum regions. It was night. High in the sky, Sirius B was a painfully bright pinpoint casting vivid blue moonlight on a ragged lunar landscape. I looked up and didn't see Binary, Jinx's bloated orange companion planet, so we must have been in the Farside End.

But there was something hanging over us.

A No. 4 General Products hull is a transparent sphere a thousand-odd feet in diameter. No bigger ship has been built anywhere in the known galaxy. It takes a government to buy one, and they are used for colonization projects only. But this one could never have been so used; it was all machinery. Our transfer booth stood between two of the landing legs, so that the swelling flank of the ship looked down on us as an owl looks down at a mouse. An access tube ran through vacuum from the booth to the air lock.

I said, «Does General Products build complete spacecraft nowadays?»

«We are thinking of branching out. But there are problems.»

From the viewpoint of the puppeteer-owned company, it must have seemed high time. General Products makes the hulls for ninety-five percent of all ships in space, mainly because nobody else knows how to build an indestructible hull. But they'd made a bad start with this ship. The only room I could see for crew, cargo, or passengers was a few cubic yards of empty space right at the bottom, just above the air lock and just big enough for a pilot.

«You'd have a hard time selling that,» I said.

«True. Do you notice anything else?»

«Well …» The hardware that filled the transparent hull was very tightly packed. The effect was as if a race of ten-mile-tall giants had striven to achieve miniaturization. I saw no sign of access tubes; hence, there could be no in-space repairs. Four reaction motors poked their appropriately huge nostrils through the hull, angled outward from the bottom. No small attitude jets; hence, oversized gyros inside. Otherwise … «Most of it looks like hyperdrive motors. But that's silly. Unless you've thought of a good reason for moving moons around.»

«At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How long was the run from Jinx to We Made It?»

«Twelve days if nothing broke down.» Just long enough to get to know the prettiest passenger aboard, while the autopilot did everything for me but wear my uniform.

«Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would make the trip in five minutes.»

«You've lost your mind.»

«No.»

But that was almost a light-year per minute! I couldn't visualize it. Then suddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for what I saw was the galaxy opening before me. We know so little beyond our own small neighborhood of the galaxy. But with a ship like that —!

«That's goddamn fast.»

«As you say. But the equipment is bulky, as you note. It cost seven billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it will move only one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside?»

The lifesystem was two circular rooms, one above the other, with a small air lock to one side. The lower room was the control room, with banks of switches and dials and blinking lights dominated by a huge spherical mass pointer. The upper room was bare walls, transparent, through which I could see air— and food-producing equipment.