HE CAME OF a long line of ship captains, which probably explains the whole matter. His grandfather was the Captain Trent who found the hole in the Coalsack, that monstrous dust cloud between Syrtis and the whole Galliene region, and thereby cut months from the time formerly needed to go around the Coalsack to the new colonies beyond it. A great-great-great-grandfather was the Captain Trent who charted the interstellar meteoric streams in the Enid group of suns, whereby no less than eight highly desirable planets became available for human occupation, and one was named after him.
Farther back still, a many-more-times-great-grandfather commanded the second colony-ship to reach Delva. He arrived to find the first arrivals hysterical with terror and demanding to be taken off and carried home, which couldn’t be done with his ship already loaded to capacity. But that Captain Trent went into the jungles with eight spacemen and found out the activity cycle of the giant saurians who’d appeared to make the colony impossible. Now there was a game refuge for those beasts, carefully watched lest an interesting species be wiped out by hide-hunters.
There were other Captain Trents, all the way back to one who skippered a trading ship in the eighteenth century, when ships sailed oceans of water only, and a coasting-voyage from London to Scotland took as long a time as nowadays from Rigel to Punt, and when a sailing ship took as long to reach the Azores as is now required for the sixty-light-year journey from Deneb to Kildare.
But the similarity between such sailing and modern journeying did not end with the time between ports. In those early days, as now, a ship leaving harbor was strictly on its own until it dropped anchor again. There was, as today, no communication between ports except by ship. Hence a cargo in strong demand in a given port last week might be worthless in an overstocked market this week, because in the interval one ship or two had come in with the same commodity to offer. So in those days, as now, all ship captains were traders. They bought wisely and sold shrewdly, depending on a percentage of the voyage’s profits for their reward.
Also, then as now, there were ships which left port and were never heard of more. Some struck reefs and some perished in storms. But other dangers were of human origin, and that Captain Trent of the eighteenth century was not gentle with their originators.
It was related of him that he once sailed into an English port with shot-holes in his sails and patches on his hull and a fished repair to his foremast, and with hanged men swinging at his yardarms. He explained curtly that a pirate had attacked his ship and he couldn’t spare hands to guard those who surrendered, so he’d hanged them. At the time he was much admired. But he was forgotten now. Yet a great-great-great-and-so-on-grandson of that Captain Trent was the captain of the space-merchantman Yarrow, who made the most profitable voyage of any ship captain so far recorded.
It didn’t look promising at its outset. The Yarrow was an elderly merchant ship of a size becoming unprofitable in modern times. Her record, though, was honorable. She was driven by old and dependable Lawlor engines which faithfully thrust her through emptiness at a good speed in normal space, but a good many times faster than light when an overdrive field surrounded her hull. There had never been any trouble with her air, and she’d been surveyed in her fortieth year and certified for voyages of any length in the galaxy. But her size was against her. A skipper who could make money with her would be better employed in a larger ship. It would require very special conditions to make it profitable to send her to space again.
But those conditions did exist. The owners of the Yarrow explained them to Captain Trent. He listened. They mentioned that space commerce in the Pleiad group was almost at an end. It was bad enough that a privateer had been commissioned by the government of Loren to force trade with that unprosperous planet. That was very bad—legal, perhaps, but undesirable. But out-and-out piracy had been practiced to such a degree that even the pirates of the Pleiads now complained of the poor state of business. Hence the possibility of good profits and the offer of the ship to Captain Trent.
The owners of the Yarrow explained that magnificent profits could be earned even by a ship of the Yarrow’s size in a trading voyage to the Pleiads if, first, she had a skipper of Captain Trent’s ability to handle her, and, second, if she was equipped with a defense against pirates that had been developed by one of the space-line’s ship engineers.
Trent observed that he didn’t hold with gadgets. He seemed reluctant. The owners raised their offer. Fifteen percent of the voyage’s profits instead of ten to the skipper. An absolutely free hand in the choice of ports to be called at. His own selection of cargo to be put on board. His own crew. A guarantee of so much for making the voyage, whether profitable or not.
These were very unusual concessions. Captain Trent listened, apparently unconvinced. The owners sweated. They explained urgently that the Yarrow was a dead loss while it remained idle. They were anxious to get it out to space. They added as a final lure that they would send McHinny along to be the ship’s engineer and operate the pirate-frustrating device. He was its inventor. He’d be the ideal operator. The Yarrow would be safe against danger from pirates, which had practically stopped trade between the solar systems of the Pleiads. What more did he want? Salvage rights? He could have them too.
It was a custom of owners to offer salvage rights when they wanted to convince a skipper of their generosity. Salvage rights amounted to an agreement that if Captain Trent should find an opportunity for salvage, in space or aground, that he could make use of the Yarrow for the job, provided only that he paid charter-rate for the use of the ship during salvage operations.
Captain Trent smiled politely and, after reflection, accepted the proposal. The Yarrow’s owners clapped him on the back and congratulated him on their generosity, and then feverishly got the Yarrow ready to lift off. In three days the ship was loaded with cargo Trent had approved. The landing-grid lifted her to space. And then the owners relaxed, gratefully.
Because this was the day before the insurance rates on ships and cargos for the Pleiads were to be raised to twenty-four percent. The Yarrow’s owners had wanted to get her off ground before that rise in premiums. As Trent saw it, if he did make the voyage and get home again, there’d be a good profit for the owners. But if he didn’t return, they’d collect full-value insurance on the Yarrow and her cargo. Trent was aware that on the whole they’d prefer the insurance.
It didn’t bother him. Prices should be high and profits excellent in a sector of space where space commerce had become so hazardous that pirates themselves had run up against the law of diminishing returns.
Trent checked the Yarrow’s position by sighting and identifying the planet Gram. But he didn’t go aground there. He went back into overdrive and drove around the Beta Cloud—an isolated space-danger a light-year in extent, the result of a semi-nova outbreak of the sun in its middle—and made his first landing at Dorade. He learned that the situation of piracy and grounding of space craft still existed in the Pleiads. Here, thriftily, he made two deals. One was for the sale of some not particularly desirable cargo, and the other was the purchase of small arms and police equipment manufactured for export to other planets’ police departments. It amounted to a swap of this for that. He learned that the state of things in the Pleiads was worse. Most skippers stayed out of the Pleiads altogether. Interstellar trade in general had been cut by ninety per cent among the Pleiad worlds. Some shipowners there had sent their ships far away, with instructions not to return while space travel was so perilous in their home stellar group. Some had grounded all their ships. The only real communication between inhabited planets of the Pleiads was by small space craft not worth a pirate’s or a privateer’s attention. But there weren’t many of them.
Trent judged this to be a promising state of things. He lifted off from Dorade. On the next leg of his journey he instructed his crewmen in the use of the just-acquired weapons. In particular he drilled them in the fine art of combat inside a spaceship’s eloquences of compartments, tanks, holds, and other places they’d never imagined as combat areas. They found the instructions fascinating. He informed them of practical but unusual methods by which men in spaceboats could board other space craft, using shaped charges against a metal hull to give them entry. These instructions, of course, were to prepare against pirates.
The Yarrow’s crewmen were charmed. They formed a zestful conviction that Captain Trent planned some highly profitable piracy himself. They learned their novel lessons with enthusiasm and hope.
The Yarrow went on its way. Trent’s several-times-great grandfather would have kept his crew chipping paint or tightening or slacking off stays to adjust to differences of humidity from day to day. If they were merchant seamen, they already knew how to fight. But Trent exercised his crew with weapons.
They anticipated interesting consequences of their new combat efficiency. They looked at Trent with bright eyes, waiting for him to tell them they were about to capture a space liner loaded with treasure and with terrified and hence docile females.
He gave them no such information, but he did keep them busy. Presently the Yarrow landed on Midway. He went aground, alone. He asked questions. He admitted that he planned to go trading in the Pleiads.
Officials on Midway warned him solicitously. Only one ship had left Midway for the Pleiads in months. None at all had come from them. The one ship to risk going in was the Hecla, and she’d lifted off only the day before. Her skipper’d judged from the latest reports of missing ships that the pirates were working on the far side of the Pleiad group. He was making a full-power dash for Loren. Trent had better not imitate him.
But Trent did. He lifted the Yarrow off Midway after only three hours aground. Immediately she was in space again he had the small-arms weapons passed out once more.
For four days out of Midway the Yarrow drove steadily, in overdrive and of course in illimitable isolation. She was surrounded by her overdrive field. Through it no light could pass, nor any message of any kind but one. Every instrument aboard her, mad. . .
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