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“Great, great—but why a battleship?”
I was talking to myself, normally a bad sign, but right now I didn’t care. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going along fine. Until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square in the eye.
Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a ship that two people could just barely manage? With a tenth of the effort Pepe could have had a cruiser that would have suited his purposes just as well.
Just as good for space piracy, that is—but not for his purposes. He had wanted a battleship, and he had gotten himself a battleship.Which meant he had more in mind than simple piracy.What? It was obvious that Pepe was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shorted computer. Some day the mystery of how he had slipped through the screen of official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn’t my concern now. He still had to be caught.
A plan was begi
Fuel had been taken care offirst,the gutted hull of Ogget’s Dream was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could be used as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peaceful times, although I could think of a few answers to that one, too. Raid the mental hospitals and jails. Do that often enough and you would have a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was, of course, too mean an ambition to ascribe to this boy. Did he want to rule a whole planet—or maybe an entire system?Or more?I shuddered a bit as the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan like this once it got rolling? During the Kingly Wars any number of types with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepe had set up just this kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end, since their success depended on one-man rule. But the price that had to be paid first!
This was the plan and I felt in my bones that I was right. I might be wrong on some of the minor details, they weren’t important. I knew the general outline of the idea, just as when I bumped into a mark I knew how much he could be taken for, and just how to do it. There are natural laws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I knew this was it.
“Get the Communications Officer in here at once,” I shouted at the intercom.“Also a couple of clerks with transcribers.And fast—this is a matter of life or death!” This last had a hollow ring, and I realized my enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar, straightened my ribbons and squared my shoulders. By the time they knocked on the door I was all admiral again.
Acting on my orders the ship dropped out of warpdrive so our psiman could get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as we floated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days, while half his crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insane instructions. My plan was beyond his understanding.Which is, of course, why he is a captain and I’m an admiral, even a temporary one.
Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere of speculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all the star systems a day’s flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolen battleship. There weren’t too many of these at first and the psiman could handle them all, calling each in turn and sending news releases to the Naval Public Relations officers there. As the sphere kept growing he started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had a general release prepared, along with directions for use and follow-up, which he sent to Central 14. The battery of psimen there contacted the individual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list of planets.
The release and follow-ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it, waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. I wrote as many variations as I could, so it could be slipped into as many different formats as possible. In one form or another I wanted the basic information in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside that expanding sphere.
“What in the devil does this nonsense mean”“ CaptainSteng asked peevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futile one, and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the effect of it on his service record. Boredom or curiosity had driven him out, and he was reading one of my releases with horror.
“Billionaire to found own world… space yacht filled with luxuries to last a hundred years,” the captain’s face grew red as he flipped through the stack of notes—“What co
When we were alone he was anything but courteous to me, having assuredhimselfby not-too-subtle questioning that I was a spurious admiral. There was no doubt I was still in charge, but our relationship was anything but formal.
“This tripe and nonsense,” I told him, “is the bait that will snag our fish.A trap for Pepe and his partner in crime.”
“Who is this mysterious billionaire?”
“Me,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to be rich.”
“But this ship, the space yacht, where is it?”
“Being built now in the naval shipyard at Udrydde.We’re almost ready to go there now, soon as this batch of instructions goes out.” Captain Steng dropped the releases onto the table,thencarefully wiped his hands off to remove any possible infection. He was trying to be fair and considerate of my views, and not succeeding in the slightest.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he growled. “How can you be sure this killer will ever read one of thesethings.And if he does—why should he be interested? It looks to me as if you are wasting time while he slips through your fingers. The alarm should be out and every ship notified. The Navy alerted and patrols set on all lanes—”
“Which he could easily avoid by going around, or better yet not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That’s not the answer,” I told him. “This Pepe is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That’s his strength—and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them.Which is what I’m going to do.”
“Modest, aren’t you,” Steng said.
“I try not to be,” I told him. “False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent. I’m going to catch this thug and I’ll tell you how I’ll do it. He’s going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of a periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is after, he is going to take all of the magazines and papers he can find. Partly to satisfy his own ego, but mostly to keep track of the things he is interested in.Such as ship sailings.”
“You’re just guessing—you don’t know all this.”
His automatic assumption of my incompetence was begi
“Yes, I’m guessing—an informed guess—but I do know some facts as well. Ogget’s Dream was cleaned out of all readingmatter, thatwas one of the first things I checked. We can’t stop the battleship from attacking again, but we can see to it that the time after that she sails into a trap.”
“I don’t know,” the captain said, “it sounds to me like…”
I never heard what it sounded like, which is all right since he was getting under my skin and I might have been tempted to pull my pseudo-rank. The alarm sirens cut his sentence off and we footraced to the communications room.
Captain Steng won by a nose, it was his ship and he knew all the shortcuts. The psiman was holding out a transcription, but he summed it up in one sentence. He looked at me while he talked and his face was hard and cold.