Derelict For Trade

13

Craig Tau ruffled Omega’s ears and stroked the sides of the cat’s muzzle, smiling at the resultant loud purr. Alpha headbutted his other hand, and he knelt down and for a time did nothing but pet the cats.

It felt good to empty his mind, to just play with the animals. They lived so much in the moment, without worrying about missing ships, or lying rumors, or vanishing credit—or personal problems among their crewmates.

A scratch on his arm brought his attention round to Sinbad, who batted him again. Now he had three cats to stroke. He reached down and scratched Sinbad’s wedge-shaped head, watching with a grin as the notched ears went flat and the eyes narrowed with pleasure. Sinbad’s rusty-sounding purr was twice as loud as the others’.

"Well, old friend, what should I do?" Tau addressed the cat.

Sinbad licked his lips and purred louder.

"That’s what I thought," Tau said with a wry laugh. "Keep my mouth shut."

Alpha jumped up onto his knee and tried to settle into a loaf despite the microgravity. Claws pricked through Tau’s trouser leg as the cat pulled itself down into his lap, making him wince. He gently lifted the cat down, hooking his calves under his seat to keep from drifting forward off the chair. He threw a couple of the toys he’d fashioned, and watched all three cats leap after them, their tails stretched behind them in the stabilizing position of a free-fall-acclimated animal. Sinbad lagged behind, not yet as adept in microgravity. Another clue to the identity of the Ariadne's crew: they’d evidently spent a lot of time in microgravity, which meant outside of human space where habitats were common.

The two new cats seemed healthy and happy, and Tau was glad he’d decided to let them out of isolation. Sinbad had been more forbearing than he’d dared to hope, for a cat who’d had the entire ship as his own territory for so long. Or perhaps he knew he’d be no match for the two newcomers under these strange conditions they seemed to know so well.

Of course the two had not ventured out into the ship yet; they seemed

content, for now, to stay in the lab.

Tau straightened up, his gaze on the three cats. If only it was that easy with humans, he thought. Of course, with some people it probably was that easy. But he’d served as medic for a shipful of reticent individualists for years now, and he wasn’t sure if he should break habit—no, tradition —and get the two on his mind to talk, or to just keep his own mouth shut.

It didn’t help when one of the persons under consideration was the captain and the other was the colleague with whom he worked the closest.

"Laboring hard, I see."

Tau looked up, saw Rael Cofort in the hatchway. She was smiling, looking immaculate as always from her coronet of auburn hair to the neat brown uniform. Tau’s gaze traveled back up to her face, noted the tired eyes above the smile, and he wondered when he should break that silence.

Perhaps he could better gauge his approach through the relative safety of work. "There’s something Captain Jellico wanted me to discuss with you," he said, and watched the subtle flicker in her eyes when he mentioned the captain’s name. The captain reacted the same way when Rael was mentioned.

"Have you ever been to Sargol?" he asked.

Cofort looked up from petting the loudly purring Omega. "Never heard of it," she said, smiling. "Except that mention in your records about the plague, and the incident with the drink."

"Good," Tau said. "Then you noted that those who took the drink were the ones who escaped succumbing to the plague."

Cofort nodded, stretching out a hand to Alpha. "And I read your lab reports on the new antibodies in their blood."

"Well, the change in their biochemistry may have gone deeper than we think," Tau said.

Cofort dropped her hands. Now he had all her attention.

"The captain has, as yet, asked me not to discuss it in front of Weeks

and the three apprentices, for a number of reasons—mostly to protect them. But it seems they are showing subtle signs of having been affected by the esperite we were exposed to before we landed on Trewsworld."

"Esperite," she repeated in a whisper.

"The exposure was minimalized, and so far none of us older ones have shown any effects, either ill or otherwise. But the young four, the ones who took that drink on Sargol, seem to react to one another’s moods without being aware of it. Sometimes they appear to know where the others are, again without thinking about it. Could be coincidence; for the first item, they’re all good friends, which would explain shared moods, and as for the second, it might just be logical deductions, for they’ve all helped each other in duties often enough and can easily extrapolate where the others might be. But. it seems to happen rather often."

She nodded, her manner now professional. "But we don’t discuss it before the others."

"Before any of the others, actually: as yet only the captain and I have talked it over. Now you know."

She did not make any direct reference to the captain. "What would you have me do?"

"Observe only, for now. If any—incident—occurs you think worthy of notice, get it into the lab reports. I’ll show you the password to that particular subdirectory."

She sighed, then straightened up. "Does the captain know you’re telling me?"

"No," Tau said. "He’s got enough on his mind. But you’re a medic, which means you need to be fully briefed."

Her lips tightened, her gaze going abstract, and suddenly Tau took his risk. "As your physician aboard the Solar Queen," he said, "I am concerned about you."

Rael Cofort’s smile deepened at the corners, and one of her brows lifted with an ironic quirk. "Is there anyone else you are concerned with?"

Craig Tau faced her. "The captain has never been gabby, but I don’t remember when I’ve seen him this taciturn. Both of you have walked around this little ship doing your duties, unfailingly polite, and if you’ve addressed two words to one another since the day you were chased, I haven’t heard either of them. Did you two have an argument?"

"No," Cofort said, pulling herself down into a chair. "We kissed."

Tau whistled.

She laughed softly. "It was a mistake, of course, but I have to admit it was the nicest mistake I’ve ever made."

Tau expelled his breath in a sigh. "Care to explain?"

She gave a tiny shrug—not enough to bounce her up from her seat—then said, "Perhaps I’d better, if you think it will help. I know Miceal won’t talk; it’s just not in his nature. I suspect the two of us ought to have talked it out by now— we might even have, had we had the time. But we came back to find the Tooe problem waiting, and then when all that got settled, Kosti’s fight, then Ali’s..." She shrugged again. "The fact is, we’re both in love. No, nothing’s been said, but I know how I feel, and I can feel how he feels. But neither of us is made for the kind of lighthearted fling that Ali, for instance, finds so easy. Love, and leave, and no regrets—no good-byes."

"Then. if you do both feel the same way."

"Why don’t we do something about it?" Cofort’s brilliant eyes lifted toward the lab ceiling, as if she could look through the decking of steel to the captain’s cabin. Then her gaze returned to Tau’s face. "Because I can feel the conflict in him. For some reason he can’t take the risk. And, loving him as I do, if I can’t make him happy, I’ll try to make him comfortable. If he needs to be loved from a distance, then that’s what I’ll do. I don’t know—maybe there have been too many hard good-byes in his life, and he doesn’t want to chance another. I know as well as he does how unstable the Trade life is; I grew up in it. Lost both parents to it."

The light tap of magboots on the deckplates outside the lab made Rael stop. Both doctors faced the hatchway, where Ali appeared, grinning. "Let the cats free?" The expression on his handsome face altered to one of appraisal—and interest. "Did I walk in at the wrong time?"

"Not at all," Rael Cofort said, her poise at least the equal of his. "You’re just in time to help me recalibrate the chromatographic analyzers."

Tau turned away to hide his grin, and left the lab.

Without any clear plan in mind he demagged his boots and one-handed himself up the ladder. Some idea of finding the captain to assess his appearance flitted through his thoughts, to disappear when Tang Ya shouted down from the control deck, "Got it!"

Tau glanced up the ladder access, saw the upper portion of Ya’s broad chest as the comtech grinned down at him.

"Be right there," came Jellico’s voice.

A few moments later, they were all crowded into the control area, where Ya could put his data on the big screen. Steen Wilcox sat with his console lit, the screen glowing with the data that had come with the official transfer of claim of the Starvenger.

Ya paged down through the unfamiliar script. Then, as he tabbed quickly, the screen split and data ranked itself in the new screen. Touching his finger to the console, he watched as a highlight bar appeared at a date. Tau noticed it was just a couple of months earlier, by Standard Terran Time.

"Here’s the last entry," Ya said. "Note the date."

"Eighteen Standard months after the Starvenger was reported abandoned," Wilcox said.

Ya nodded. "Also note the fact that both doctors"—he pointed in Tau’s direction—"said that the cats, when we found them, had probably been abandoned from four to ten weeks."

Tau felt the tightening in his gut that indicated danger.

"What’s in those last entries?" Jellico asked. "Any indication of what happened?"

"Nothing," Ya said. "Mostly notes on the progress of the hydro, plus notes on her experiments with growing grapes. Our writer was the cook

and hydro tech of the Ariadne. She was apparently a grandmother—there are references to messages waiting at various stops from her grandchildren—and had been cook on that ship for decades. Nothing whatever about the Starvenger, or the names of the supposed owners. Other names show up, but nothing that matches the data from the Starvenger."

"So this old date—" Wilcox tapped his screen. "Is it possible that Ariadne's crew found the Starvenger and just set up housekeeping on board without bothering to go through channels?"

"If so, then Corlis—that’s the cook here—faked up a damn good set of records, going back twenty-seven years. Most of it about plants, and the rest concerning food supplies, meals, eating habits and tastes of the crew, and experiments with growing and cooking."

"A faked set of records, and the other computers cleaned out," Jellico said. "And the cats, any mention of them?"

"Only once," Ya said. "But it matches what Tau said: one of them had had a litter about a year ago, and they found homes for the kittens on one of their stops."

Everyone looked over at Tau, who nodded. "Alpha was definitely a mother. I’d say within the last year."

Jellico rapped a tattoo with his fingers on the control console as he stared up at the data. "Then that leaves us with one alternative: that ship never was the Starvenger, but the name and registry were added."

"Can we take a shuttle and go check?" came Ali’s voice from behind, in the hatchway.

Jellico looked up with a grim smile. Next to Ali Rip Shannon stood, his dark eyes narrowed with challenge.

"No," the captain said. "If there’s dirty work been done, and the doers are on this habitat, then they’re watching just for that. Steen." He turned suddenly to Wilcox.

"Finding it," the navigator said. He’d already started a search, and within moments the big screen flickered, and Ya’s data was replaced by

the vids of their discovery and capture of the derelict. Steen spooled forward, then enlarged the picture so they could scrutinize the hull where the name and number were painted. There it was, clear and sharp: STARVENGER. He tabbed the vid forward slowly, but there was no visible trace of any other painting—nothing but that blackened scoring down one side.

"It’s got to be under there," Ya said, reaching up to touch the screen. "Though there’s no way to recover it."

"Not here," Jellico said. "At Trade there are special stress analyzers and the like to check for that kind of thing. But even if we found it, these people could just say we did it ourselves. We need proof."

"The cats?" Ali asked.

The captain shook his head.

"Could say they were ours," Wilcox spoke up. "Worse, if someone really wanted to make trouble, they could say the cats technically own the ship—"

"But they aren’t sentient," Rip protested.

Ali grinned. "Though they seem smarter than some of the idiots we’ve met of late on Harmonious Exchange."

Some of the others chuckled, but the captain did not crack a smile.

"The point is taken, though: if someone wanted to make trouble for us, we could get mired in a legal battle that would ruin us long before anything was decided. No, what we need is some kind of proof—"

"And I think I know where we can get it," said a new voice.

Everyone turned to see Dane Thorson loom in the hatchway behind the other two apprentices, a wide grin on his bony face. "First, though, where’s Van?"

"Got a com from someone at the Trade Center," Wilcox said. "Left just after you did."

"Well, I can tell it all over again," the apprentice cargo master said. He

pointed down at Tooe, who stood at his elbow. "I went up to her hideout." He paused, sending an anxious look at the captain. Jellico’s face hadn’t changed. Dane scraped a big hand through his yellow hair, making it stand up wildly. "I know it’s off limits, but she kept talking about it, and I had this instinct to go. Strong one. So—well, I did. Anyway, the short version is, her people deal in data trade, and they have a link on what might be the rotten connection in the Trade office. They’re looking for data for us."

"And in trade, what do we give them?" Jellico asked.

To everyone’s surprise, Thorson’s lean cheeks showed color. "Uh, as it turns out, we won’t have to."

"Save Momo," Tooe spoke up in her high voice, which reminded Tau of a bird. "Shver hunt, try to kill Momo, Dane save. We get data for Dane," she finished proudly.

"Were you seen?" the captain asked.

Dane grimaced. "I’m afraid so." He explained quickly; Tau winced, remembering his own encounter with cryo once—those burns were excruciating, even without freeze amputation.

"That’s bad," Steen muttered.

Rael Cofort, coming up from behind, said, "Not necessarily. Those Shver youths are not supposed to be up there— at least technically—but more important, they won’t make a public issue of the fight due to pride."

Dane nodded his corroboration. "That’s what I thought as well." He made a face. "Though they’ll remember it, and we’ve already had a kind of run-in with someone from Clan Golm."

Cofort smiled at him, her deep blue eyes bright. "You seem to make a habit of rescuing people."

Now Dane’s face was deep red, and he looked down, as if someone had attached a new pair of feet to his legs. "Anyone here would have done it—probably better," he mumbled. Then he looked up. "Anyway, we set up a signal system. One of Nunku’s gang will give us the signal if she gets any data."

As everyone began talking, Dane sidled over to Tau and said, "I’ve got a question about Nunku." Tau listened in growing surprise and pain as Thorson described the weird leader of Tooe’s gang. "Do you think there’s any way to help her?"

Tau sighed. "I don’t have the technology. From what you describe, she probably was taken at a very young age into free fall—"

"She was," Dane said. "Escaped, actually. Taught herself everything, including Terran, since she knew she’d been born Terran." He scratched his head. "You should hear her! All she could get when she was little was a vid-tape of some ancient historical plays, and she learned off that. Didn’t know it wasn’t current—or true!"

Tau shook his head, trying to imagine one’s single reference point to Terra being a piece of fiction about a time a millennium ago. "Remarkable. Well, as for her physiological growth, I’m afraid that’s remarkable as well: the living in free fall while still growing, combined with what was inevitably a poor diet, made her bones grow the way you describe. There are probably places that could treat someone like that, probably with some form of electromediated calcium involution, but it would cost as much as our ship is worth for the medtech."

Tooe’s yellow eyes switched from Tau to Dane and back as each spoke. Now she said, "No Nunku leave. She stay in Spinner, stay with klinti people, never leave. Knows data, knows console, likes nest."

Tau winced. It sounded like a hellish life to him, but from the sound of it Nunku had found a niche for herself and her gifts. "We won’t interfere, Tooe," he said.

As Dane and Tooe started away, Rael Cofort slid up to Tau’s other side. "If I can, I’d like to go up there with them and see if there’s anything I can do," she said quietly.

Tau nodded. "We can research the syndrome, and make up a packet of mineral supplements and whatever else might be needed—"

"Well," came the mellow voice of Jan Van Ryke.

Tau broke off, looking up as the cargo master bounced in, his white brows soaring.

"Something to report?" Jellico asked.

"Something indeed," Van Ryke said, grinning. "A mysterious person has offered to buy the Starvenger from us. At twice the going rate, I should mention. Take her as is, no questions asked, just sign over the papers, take our credit, and run." He paused, looking around at his audience.

"And?" Steen prompted, knowing the cargo master of old.

"And, it seems, our good friend Tapadakk is now desperate to sell us a fine cargo once we come into some money."

"So he knows about the offer, then," Jellico said.

"It seems so." Van Ryke nodded, rubbing his hands.

"Twice?" Frank Mura said, from behind Dane Thorson. "We going to take it, Captain?"

Jellico looked around. The entire crew, except for the two on duty at the Starvenger, were gathered around the narrow accessway to the control deck. Tau saw intensity in each face as they waited for the captain to answer.

"Talk it out in the mess," the captain said, pointing below.

With speed born of long practice the crew members dropped down to the galley level and crowded into the mess cabin. With the two missing, there were still twelve, Tau realized as he sat in his usual place, next to Frank Mura. The engine crew usually sat in a group, and the cargo master and his apprentice nearby, Dane standing so his long arms and legs didn’t get in anyone’s way. The rest filed in. Rael Cofort stood near Tau, and the little Rigelian ranged herself alongside Dane. She pushed herself up towards the ceiling and touched him occasionally on the shoulder with her foot as she drifted down, keeping herself high enough to see over the Terran heads. Tau noticed she now oriented her head to the same direction as the Terrans, unlike her behavior when she was first discovered.

The captain scanned them once again, his hard face impossible to read.

"Who wants to sell?"

The others looked around, then Karl Kosti said, "I do. And I think I speak for Jasper as well. We know what runnin’ two crews is like—we did that with the Space Wrack."

"He’s got a point," Ya said.

"Except there are more of us now—and new crew is not impossible to find," Van Ryke put in. "True, we can’t go back to Terraport and trust Psycho to select crew for us, but I’m confident in our own abilities to find people who will synch in. We’ve had good luck so far." And he gave a gallant bow in Rael Cofort’s direction.

The captain did not look up. "Anyone else?"

No one spoke. Rip Shannon’s dark eyes were narrowed with suppressed feeling, and Ali rubbed his knuckles restlessly against his other palm.

"If we accept the offer, we drop the investigation," Jellico said. "If we drop the investigation, then we’ve made a mistake."

"But we haven’t," Ali protested.

Wilcox muttered in a low voice, "That’s what we have to settle."

Jellico nodded once. "Exactly. We’re legally liable if we sell, knowing there’s something crooked. And I have to add, we’d deserve everything they throw at us."

Several people murmured, then fell silent.

Jellico smiled slightly. "Now, if you really believe we’re chasing space dust."

Kosti said, "There’s something stinking about this deal. I admit, my first thought was to get rid of it—let some other poor slob deal with it, and run with the money." He shook his head. "We ought to ride it until it lands—or crashes."

"Starvenger or Ariadne," Rip said, "they were Traders, just like us. We owe it to them to solve this thing."

Jellico assessed them once again, and his expression lightened fractionally. "Do I have a consensus, then?"

He waited for the "Aye, Captain"s and "Yes, sir!"s to die away, then turned to Van Ryke. "I think it a mistake to turn this down flat. Can you spin it out?"

Jan laughed, and rubbed his hands as he drifted up slightly from his place. "Can I!" he repeated, with every evidence of pleasure. "Nothing would suit me more than to use some of Tapadakk’s same techniques on him. Yes, Captain, if need be, I can spin out the negotiations until our Kanddoyd friend goes into his old-age molt."

They all laughed, and Jellico said, "Thorson, brief the cargo master on what you and Tooe learned. Then we’ll all sit down and plan a strategy."