Merchanter's Luck

Taken somewhere, she thought, struggling to her feet as Deirdre and Neill followed her. She staggered across the deck and stopped, hanging on the arm of the number one cushion, the gun trained downward at a corpse in blue coveralls. She swallowed her nausea and fired again for good measure, greatly relieved that the body prone on the floor failed to react. Then she shoved off from the command pit and circled the area through the other consoles, staggering from the weight and sucking too-warm air through a sore throat. She fumbled the oxygen on, felt for the corridor wall, her vision limited by the helmet, got the door open to Sander’s cabin and used the still-burning suit light to find her way in the dark of it. She cast about for the drawer he had named, pulled open the toiletries drawer under the mirror and rummaged among the dried-up remnants of some previous tenant—a man, that one —shoved jars and tubes aside, found it, a slip of paper that her gloved hands could not unfold. She ripped a glove off, found a number.

Good luck, he had written along with it. If you’ve got this, one of two things has happened. In either case, take care of her.

She blinked, caught by an impulse of guilt… remembered what she was about, then, and what was at stake, and headed out of the cabin—past Neill in the doorway. She went for the bridge, staggering and leaning back in the downward pitch of the deck. Neill followed her, as reckless and reeling.

Deirdre had gotten her helmet off, and set it on the console and dragged the body out of the way. Allison jerked the other glove off, fought with the helmet catches and lifted it off. The backpack weighed on her—she started to shed that, and abandoned the thought in her anxiety to get at comp.

She bent over the keyboard and keyed the number in.

“Hello, Sandy,” a voice said, nearly stopping her heart. A menu of functions and code numbers leapt to the screen in front of her. “How are you?”

She picked the security function, keyed it through. A list of accesses came to the screen with x’s and o’s.

“Sandy, is there some problem? I can instruct in security procedures if you ask me. In any case, secure the bridge; this is always your last retreat. Stay calm. Always keep food and water on the bridge in case. Keep a gun by you and power down the rest of the sectors if it comes to that.”

“Lord,” Neill muttered. “What’s it doing?”

“It’s right,” she decided suddenly, looking about her. “We put the locks on. He’s gone; and Curran is; and they’ve got them out there somewhere. We’ve got to be sure there’s no one left in the holds.” The computer went on in its monologue, unstoppable. She keyed the doors closed, one and the other, and took comp back to its listing.

“What can I do for you?” it asked.

And waited. She stared at the boards, panting under the weight she carried. A wild idea occurred to her, that they might all go out onto the docks and try whether some resistance might be left on Venture Station: if they could join up with stationers trying to fight off this intrusion—

No, she thought, it was too remote a chance. Too likely to end in a shooting: there were probably Mazia

And the Mazia

She kept ru

“Sandy” the voice said gently, “if you’re into this one, the worst has happened, I guess; and of course I don’t know where or who—but I love you. Sandy—I’ll say that first. And there are several things you can do. I’ll lay them out for you—”

She stopped it with a push of the key, collapsed into the cushion under the weight of the pack, under the weight of shock. Sandy. Sandor. It was indisputable title—to Lucy and what it held.

That was somebody,” Deirdre said. “Lord, Allie—what kind of rig is this?”

She started shedding her pack, struggling out of her suit. “I don’t know. But it’s his. Sandor’s. And whoever it was thought things through.”

“They’ve got him and Curran,” Neill said, “If we knew where—”

“Wrong odds,” she said. She freed her upper body, stood up and shed the rest of it. Panting, she settled back again and looked up at them. At both of them. “I’ll tell you how it is. We hold onto the ship; and if they try to take it we get ourselves some of them. That’s it.”

They nodded, helmetless both. She loved them, she thought suddenly. Everything had come apart. She had just killed someone… had gotten herself and her crewmates into a situation without exit, a dead end in all senses. Sandor and Curran gone—taken off the ship—lost… Everything had gone foul, everything from the moment she had pla

Her throat swelled, making it painful to swallow. Her mind started working. “I’m betting they’re still alive,” she said, “Curran and Sandor—or the Mazia

She reached and punched in on com, sca

“Got ourselves a target if we wanted to take it,” Neill said. “Even a creature that size—has a sensitive spot about the docking probe.”

“Might,” she agreed. “Wonder what the guns are worth,” She went for the comp listing, called it up. The voice began, talking in simple terms, advising against starting anything.

“Shut up,” she told it softly.

It kept on, relentless, and got then to what the guns were worth, which was not much.

But there was that chance, she reckoned; and then she got to reckoning what the bristles were on the frame of the monster next to them… and what that broadside would leave of them and a good section of Venture Station.

“Don’t try to fight” the young-man’s-voice of the computer pleaded with them. “Use your head. Don’t get into situations without choices”

It was late advice.

Chapter XVII

“I told you,” Sandor said, “I’ve got no inclination to heroics. You want to deal, I’ll deal.”

It was a tight gathering, that in the cold dockside office—a dozen Mazia

“What have you got to deal with?” Edger asked him.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. You keep your hands off my ship and off my crewman.”

“Might have need of perso

“No. No deal at all on that. Look, you want cargoes—I’m not particular. You feed me goods and I’ll shift them where you like. You want some of your own people to go along, fine.” There was a chair a trooper had his foot in. Sandor gestured at it, looking at Edger. ‘‘You mind? Captain to captain, as it were—” Edger made a careless, not quite amused gesture and he captured the chair from the trooper, dragged it over and sat down, leaned on the desk and jabbed a finger onto it amid the papers. “Do I figure right, you’ve got your sights on Pell? Maybe Mallory’s playing your game out there; maybe you’re going to pull it off.”