Merchanter's Luck

Military cargo. The cans they had taken on were sealed. Chemicals, most likely. Life-support goods. Electronics. Things stations in the process of putting themselves back in operation might desperately need.

But Mallory being involved—this military interest in Lucy—she felt far less secure in this setting-out than she had expected to be.

And what if Mallory was the enemy he had acquired, she wondered, her mind begi

She slept with fists clenched. It was that kind of night.

Chapter XI

Moving out.

Sandor sat at the familiar post, doing the familiar things—held himself back moment by moment from taking a call on com, from doing one of the myriad things he was accustomed to doing simultaneously. No tape on the controls this run: competent Dubliner voices, with that common accent any ship developed, isolate families generations aboard their ships—talked in his left ear, while station com came into his right. Relax, he told himself again and again: it was like ru

There she goes,” Allison said, putting Dublin on vid. “That’s good-bye for a while.”

Another voice was talking into his right ear, relayed through station: it was the voice of Dublin wishing them well.

“Reply,” Allison said to Neill at com; and a message went out in return. But there was no interruption: no move faltered; the data kept coming, and now they did slow turnover, a drifting maneuver,

“Cargo secure,” the word came to him from Deirdre. “No difficulties.”

“Got that Stand by rotation.”

“Got it”

He pushed the button: the rotation lock synched in, and there began a slow complication of the cabin stresses, a settling of backsides and bodies into cushions and arms to sides and minds into a sense of up and down. They were getting acceleration stress and enough rotational force to make the whole ship theirs again. “All right,” he said, when their status was relayed to station, when station sent them back a run-clear for system exit. “We get those systems installed. Transfer all scan to number two and we’ll get it done.”

“Lord help us,” Curran muttered—did as he was asked and carefully climbed out of his seat while Sandor got out of his. “You always make your repairs like this?”

“Better than paying dock charge,” Sandor said. “Hope they gave us a unit that works.”

A shake of Curran’s head.

They had time, plenty of time, leisurely moving outbound from Pell. The noise of station com surrounded them, chatter from the incoming merchanter Pixy II, a Name known all over the Beyond; and the music of other Names, like Mary Gold and the canhauler Kelly Lee. And all of a sudden a new name: “Norway’s outbound,” Neil said.

For a moment Sander’s heart sped; he sat still, braced as he was against the scan station cushion—but that was only habit, that panic. “On her own business, I’ll reckon,” he said, and set himself quietly back to the matter of the replacement module.

The warship passed them: as if they were a stationary object, the carrier went by. Deirdre put it on vid and there was nothing to see but an approaching disturbance that whipped by faster than vid could track it.

“See if you can find out their heading,” Allison asked Deirdre.

Station refused the answer. “Got it blanked,” Deirdre said. “She’s not tracked on any schematic and longscan isn’t handling her.”

“Bet they’re not,” Sandor muttered. “Reckon she’s on a hunt where we’re going.”

No one said anything to that. He looked from time to time in Allison’s direction—suspecting that the hands on Lucy’s controls at the moment had never guided a ship through any procedure: competent, knowing all things to do, making no mistakes, few as there were to make in this kind of operation that auto could cany as well. He did not ask the question: Allison and the others had their pride, that was certain—but he had that notion, from the look in Allison Reilly’s eyes when control passed to her, a flicker of panic and desire at once, a tenseness that was not like the competency she had shown before that

So she had worked sims, at least; or handled the controls of an auxiliary bridge on a ship the size of Dublin, matching move for move with Dublin helm. She was all right.

But he got up when he saw her reach to comp and try to key through to navigation, held to the back of her cushion. “You don’t have the comp keys posted,” she said. “I don’t get the nav function under general op.”

“Better let me do the jump setup,” he said. This time. I know her.”

She looked at him, a shift of her eyes mirrored in the screen in front of her. “Right,” she said. “You want to walk me through it?”

He held where he was, thinking about that, about the deeper things in comp.

(Ross… Ross, now what?)

“You mind?” she asked, on the train of what she had already asked.

So it came. “Let me work it out this time,” he said. “You’re supposed to be on alterday. Suppose you take your time off and go get some sleep. You’re going to have to take her after jump.”

“Look, I’d like to go through the setup.”

“Did I tell you who’s setting up the schedules on this ship? Go on. Get some rest.”

She said nothing for the moment, sitting with her back to him. He stayed where he was, adamant. And finally she turned on the auto and levered herself out of the cushion. Offended pride. It was in every movement.

“Cabins are up the curve there,” he said, trying to pretend he had noticed none of the signals, trying to smooth it over with courtesy. It hurt enough, to offer that, to open up the cabins more than the one he had given to his sometime one-man crews. (“I sleep on the bridge,” he had always said; and done that, bunked in the indock sleeping area, catnapped through the nights, because going into a cabin, sealing himself off from what happened on Lucy’s bridge—there was too much mischief could be done.— “Crazy,” they had muttered back at him. And that thought almost ways frightened him.) “Take any one you like. I’m not particular. —Curran,” he said, turning from Allison’s cold face—and found all the others looking at him the same way.

(“Crazy,” others had said of him, when he occupied the bridge that way.)

“Look,” he said, “I’m ru

“I had no notion to take her through,” Allison said. “But I won’t argue the point.”

She walked off, feeling her way along the counter, toward the corridor. He turned, keyed in and took off the security locks all over the ship, turned again to look at Curran, at the others, clustered about the console where they were installing the new systems. He had offended their number one’s dignity: he understood that. But given time he could straighten comp out, pull the jump function out of Ross’s settings. And the other things… it was a trade, the silence Ross had filled, for live voices.

Putting those programs into silence—sorting Ross’s voice out of the myriad functions that reminded him, talked to him—(Good morning, Sandy. Time to get up…)

Or the sealed cabins, where Krejas had lived, cabins with still some remnant of personal items… things the Mazia

“Curran,” he said, daring the worst, but trying to cover what he had already done, “you’re on Allison’s shift too. Any cabin you like.”