Merchanter's Luck

“Might. Might, Reilly.”

“If we go at it your way.”

“This isn’t Dublin. You don’t get your way. You signed onto my ship and my way is the way she runs. Majority vote wasn’t in the papers. Cooperative wasn’t. My way’s it. That’s the way it works. You sit down and figure out who’s on the wrong side of the law.”

He walked off and left them then, went back to his own quarters—entertained for a little while the forlorn hope that they might in fact think about that, and come to terms. But he had not hoped much, and when no one came, he curled up and courted sleep.

A suited figure rumbled through his vision, and that was himself and that was Mitri. He opened his eyes again, to drive that one away; but it rode his mind, that image that came back to him every time he thought of solitude. He shivered, recalling a boy’s gut-deep fear, and cowardice.

(“Ross,” he had called, sick and shaking. “Ross, he’s dead, he’s dead; get back in here. I can’t handle the ship, Ross—I can’t take her alone. Please come back—Ross…”)

The feeling was back in his gut, as vivid as it had been; the sweating cowardice; the terror—He swore miserably to himself, knowing this particular dream, that when it latched onto his mind for the night he would go on dreaming it until Lucy’s skin seemed too thin to insulate him from the ghosts.

He propped himself on his elbows in the dark, supported his head on his hands… Finally got up in the dark and turned up the light, hunting pen and paper.

He wrote it down, the central key to comp, and put it in the drawer under the mirror, afraid of having it there—but after that he could turn out the lights and go back to bed.

Mitri gave him peace then.

He slept the night through; and waked, and fended his way past Deirdre and Neill at breakfast. In all, there was a quiet over all the ship, less of threat than of anger. And a great deal of the day he came and sat on the bridge, simply took a post and sat it— because it was safer that way, for the ship, for them. He took his blanket and his pillow that night and slept there, so that there was that much less distance between himself and controls if something went wrong.

“Give it up,” Allison asked of him, on her watch.

He shook his head. Did not even argue the point.

And Neill came to him, when they were minus eight hours from mark: “It was a mistake, what we did. We know that. Look,Curran never meant to get into that; he made a mistake and he won’t admit it, but he knows it, and he wishes it hadn’t gone the way it did. He just didn’t expect you’d go for him; and we—we just tried to stop someone from getting hurt.”

“To stop Curran from getting hurt.” He had not lost his sense of humor entirely; the approach touched it. He went serious again and flicked a gesture at the Dubliner’s sleeve. “You still wear the Dublin patch.”

That set Neill off balance. “I don’t see any reason to take it off.”

And that was a decent answer too.

“I’m here.” Sandor said, “within call. Same way I’ve run this ship all along. You’re safe. I’m taking care of your hides.”

They left him alone after that, excepting now and again a remark. And he lay down and went to sleep a time, until they reached minus two from mark and he had jump to set.

His crew had showed up, quiet, businesslike. “So we go for civilization,” he said. And with a glance at Allison, at Curran: “A little liberty ought to do good for all of us. Sort it out on the docks.”

He imagined relief in their faces, on what account he was not sure. Only they all needed the time.

And he was glad enough to quit this place, dark and isolated as the well-traveled nullpoints of Unionside had never been isolated.

He took his place at the number one board, began working through comp on silent… They might have stood over him, put it to a contest; they declined that.

Perhaps after the station liberty, he told himself, perhaps then he could get his bearings, mend what was broken, find a way to make his peace with them. A ship run amiss could become a small place indeed. They wanted different air and the noise of other living humans but themselves.

They were that close to safety; and if they could get into it, head home with a success to their account—then they were proved, and the record was clear; and everything might be clean again.

Then there was hope for them.

Chapter XV

… Venture system: a star with a gas giant companion and a clutter of debris belting it and the star. And a small, currently invisible station that had been the last waystop for Sol going outward. FTL had shut it down; Pell’s World, Downbelow… had undercut Sol prices for biostuffs, closer, faster. A rush for new worlds had run past it, the Company Wars had cut it off for half a century—But there was a pulse now, a thin, thready pulse of activity,

No buoy to assign them routing: they had been warned of that. Sandor dumped down to a sedate velocity closer to system plane than a loaded ship should—but there was no traffic.

“Lonely as a nullpoint,” Allison muttered, beside him. “If we didn’t have station signal—”

“Never expected much here,” Sandor said. “It’s old, after all. Real old.”

“Com’s silent,” Neill said. “Just noise.”

“Makes me nervous,” Curran muttered. “No traffic, no buoy, no lanes—can’t run a station without lanes. They’re going to get somebody colliding out here, ru

“I’m going after a sandwich,” Sandor said. “I’m coming back to controls with it.”

“You stay put,” Allison said. “Neill, see to it for all of us. Anything. Make it fast.”

Neill slid out. Functions shunted: com and cargo to Deirdre, scan one and two to Curran; Allison kept to her sorting of images that got to number one screens, his filter on data that could come too fast and from confusing directions. Nothing was coming now… only the distant voice of station.

‘We’re coming up on their reply window,” Curran said.

“Ready on that,” Deirdre said.

Neill came back, bearing an armful of sandwiches and sealed drink containers. Sandor opened his, wolfed down half of it, swallowed down the fruit juice and capped it. The silence from station went on. No one said anything about it. No one said anything.

“Picking up something,” Curran said suddenly. “Lord, it’s military. It’s moving like it.”

The image was at Sander’s screen instantly. “Mallory,” he surmised.

“Negative on that,” Neill said. “I don’t get any Norway ID. I don’t get any ID at all.”

“Wonderful,” Allison muttered.

“Size. Get size on it.” Sandor started lining up jump, reckoned their nearness to system center. “Stand by: we’re turning over.”

“You’ll get us killed. Whatever it is, we can’t outrace it.”

“Get me a calculation on that.” He sent them into an axis roll, cut in the engines as drink containers went sailing, with a collection of plastic wrap, half a sandwich and an unidentified tape cassette. “Cargo stable,” Deirdre reported, and he reached up through the drag that tended to pull his arm aside, kept on with the calculations.

“We can’t do it,” Allison said. “We won’t clear it, reckoning they’ll fire. I’ve got the calculations for you—”

No word of contact: nothing. He flicked glances at the scan image and Curran’s current position estimate… saw number three screen pick up Allison’s figures on plot. The intersection point flashed, before the jump range.

“You hear me?” Allison asked sharply. “Stevens, we can’t make it. They’re going to overtake.”

“They still don’t have an ID pulse,” Neill said. “I don’t get anything.”

“They’re going to overtake.”

“What do you expect us to do?” Sandor stopped the jump calculation while they hurtled on their way. His body was pressed back into the cushion, his pulse hammering in his ears, drowning other sounds.