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He watched as she slowly fingered a pair of dials, eyes intent on the screen. There was a loud burst of croaking and whistling noises from one of the communicators. Then, for a second or two, the screen held a picture.
The captain’s hair didn’t exactly stand on end, but it tried to. There was a sullen green light in the screen, lanky gray shapes moving through it; then a face was suddenly looking out at them. Its red eyes widened. An instant later the screen went blank, and the communicator racket ended.
“Saw us — cut us off!” Goth said, mouth wrinkling briefly in distaste.
The captain cleared his throat. “You know what those are?”
She nodded. “Think so! Saw a picture of a dead one once.”
“They’re, uh, unfriendly?”
“They catch us, they’ll eat us,” Goth told him. “That’s Megair Ca
The name seemed as unpleasant as the appearance of their pursuers. The captain, heart hammering, reflected a moment, eyes on the grotesque ship in the rear screens. It was considerably closer, seemed to have put on speed.
“Let’s see if we can scare them off first,” he said suddenly. “If that doesn’t work, you better hit the Drive!”
Goth’s expression indicated approval. The captain turned, settled himself in the control chair, tripped the override switch, fed the Venture power, and set her into a tight vertical turn as the engine hum rose to a roar. His hand shifted to the nova gun mechanisms. The image of the pursuing ship flicked through the overhead screens, settled into the forward ones, spun right side up and was dead ahead, coming towards them. The gun turrets completed their lift through the Venture’s hull and clicked into position. The small sighting screen lit up; its cross-hairs slid around and locked on the scuttling bug shape.
He snapped in the manual fire control relays. They still had a good deal of space to cover before they came within reasonable range of each other; and if he could help it they wouldn’t get within reasonable range. He’d done well enough in gu
The nova guns let go together. Reaching for the ship rushing towards them and falling far short of it, their charge shattered space into shuddering blue sheets of fire.
It was an impressive display, but the Megair ship kept coming. Something hot and primitive, surprisingly pleasurable, began to roil in the captain as he counted off thirty seconds, pressed the firing stud again. Blue sheet lightning shivered and crashed. The scuttling thing beyond held its course. Answering fire suddenly speckled space with a cluster of red and black explosions.
“Aa-aa-ah!” breathed the captain, head thrust forwards, eyes riveted on the sighting screen. Something about those explosions…
Why, he thought joyfully, we’ve got the range on them!
He slapped the nova guns on automatic, locked on target, rode the Venture’s thunder in a dead straight line ahead in the wake of the guns’ trail of blue lightning. Red and black fire appeared suddenly on this side of the lightning, rolling towards them -
Then it vanished.
There was something like the high-pitched yowl of a small jungle cat in the captain’s ears. A firm young fist pounded his shoulder delightedly. “They’re ru
He cut the guns. The sighting screen was empty. His eyes followed Goth’s pointing finger to another screen. Far under their present course, turning away on a steep escape curve, went the Megair Ca
As they drew closer to Uldune, other ships appeared with increasing frequency in the Venture’s detection range. But these evidently were going about their own business and inclined to keep out of the path of strange spacecraft. None came close enough to be picked up in the viewscreens.
While still half a day away from the one-time pirate planet, the Venture’s communicators signaled a pick-up. They switched on the instruments and found themselves listening to a general broadcast from Uldune, addressed to all ships entering this area of space.
If they were headed for Uldune on business, they were invited to shift to a frequency which would put them in contact with a landing station off-planet. Uldune was anxious to see to it that their visit was made as pleasant and profitable as possible and would facilitate matters to that end in every way. Detailed information would be made available by direct-beam contact from the landing station.
It was the most cordial reception ever extended to the captain on a planetary approach. They switched in the station, were welcomed warmly to Uldune. Business arrangements then began immediately. Before another hour was up Uldune knew in general what they wanted and what they had to offer, had provided a list of qualified shipbuilders, scheduled immediate appointments with identity specialists, official assessors who would place a minimum value on their cargo, and a representative of the Daal’s Bank, who would assist them in deciding what other steps to take to achieve their goals to best effect on Uldune.
Helpful as the pirate planet was to its clients, it was also clear that it took no u
Chapter FOUR
Captain Aron, of the extremely remote world of Mulm, and his young niece Dani took up residence late that evening in a rented house in an old quarter of Uldune’s port city of Zergandol. It had been a strenuous though satisfactory day for both of them. Much business had begun to roll.
Goth, visibly struggling for the past half hour to keep her eyelids open wide enough to be able to look out, muttered good-night to the captain as soon as they’d located two bedrooms on the third floor of the house, and closed the door to one of them behind her. The captain felt bone-weary himself but his brain still buzzed with the events of the day and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while. He brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchen and took it up to a dark, narrow fourth-story balcony which encircled the house, where he sipped it from a mug, looking around at the sprawling, inadequately lit city.
Zergandol, from what he had seen of it, was a rather dilapidated town, though it had one neatly modem district. One might have called it quaint, but most of the streets and buildings were worn, cracked, and rather grimy; and the architecture seemed a centuries-old mixture of conflicting styles. The house they were in looked like a weathered layer cake, four round sections containing two rooms each placed on top of one another, co