Derelict For Trade

8

Captain Jellico looked up at his cargo master, determined not to show any of the exasperation he felt.

"So you’re saying that I-S cargo master cut in and took your deal?"

Van Ryke’s white brows formed a line of perplexity in his face. "I wish it were that simple," he said. "I don’t think Mdango cut in on us—I think that Tapadakk offered her my deal, but did it in such a way as to make it look like I-S pulled the deal out from under us."

Jellico let his breath out slowly. "Any idea why?"

Van Ryke lifted his hands. "If I knew that, I could have done some fast talking and saved it. He’s been most apologetic, but only over the com. I can’t seem to get to him to agree to see me in person. But it’s only been an hour; for Kanddoyds, that’s an impossible rush. What I want to make certain of is if he’s suddenly changed his mind and doesn’t want to deal with us at all. If so, why?"

"Has Mdango or any of her crew been talking us down?"

Van Ryke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It would be the most obvious explanation. The Queen had run afoul of Inter-Stellar ships in the past, and despite the fact that the Queen was only one ship, and I-S was a huge Company, big Companies were made up of human beings, most of whom were as loyal to their Companies as the Queen's crew were to the Solar Queen. Jellico knew that there were plenty of people in I-S who might like to see a bit of revenge taken for the Queen's wins over some of their colleagues.

"I don’t get the impression they’ve heard anything about us at all," Van Ryke said slowly. "I think their ship, the Corvallis, has been making runs in totally different lanes than we’ve been used to. No one in our crew has reported any negative encounters, or even any comments, from their crew up in the recreation areas—and we humanoid Traders stand out up there, so it’s not like they couldn’t find us if they half tried."

"All right," Jellico said. "Then we’ll rule out malice—at least on the part of I-S. Now, what about Tapadakk?"

Van Ryke sighed. "It is possible, except it wouldn’t make any sense. We spent four solid days dancing around in their interminable negotiations, and I can’t believe even a Kanddoyd would spend all that time for nothing. He seemed eager to deal; our cargo isn’t all that tempting, but he’s got a surplus of mosaic works of various sorts that we could move pretty well back in Terran space, where they are rarer, and he did have two or three buyers set up in a complicated ring. He just seemed to be waiting for us to get our papers on Starvenger and wind up our registry business."

"That was yesterday," Jellico said.

Van Ryke nodded. "Tapadakk and I finished our talk about the time Thorson and Shannon left registry yesterday, with our papers in hand, so we know it’s nothing to do with that. Anyway, that’s about the time we set up today’s meeting. Then an hour ago, I get this com message—just before I’m to leave for our meeting to accomplish what I hoped was the last stage of negotiation—and he ups and tells me that he’s not good enough, his goods aren’t good enough, he’s desolately and abjectly sorry but our exalted trade would grace another cargo better, et cetera et cetera. I thought I’d go over and try to get him in person again."

Jellico nodded. "Right. Do what you can. We’re running out of time."

Van Ryke nodded and walked out.

Jellico leaned back in his chair and glared at the various calculations Wilcox had printed out for him. Then he tabbed the intercom. "Ya."

"Captain?" came the comtech’s voice.

"Progress?"

"Still working—I have some algorithms roughed out that might be what we need."

"Keep at it."

"Right, Captain."

They both cut the connection. The hoobat let out a sudden metal-rending shriek, and Jellico grabbed his chair to anchor himself and reached to give the cage a swat.

"Fnerble," Queex squawked, settling down happily as the cage rocked and bounced.

"Just what I was thinking," Miceal Jellico said grimly.

Karl Kosti leaned back in the padded seat and stared out at the long tubes of the Kanddoyd buildings. He rather liked the crazy curves and angles, the strings of lights. He was in a good mood. His muscles ached from a good workout in heavy grav, and he had an excellent meal before him, and something interesting to look at. It entertained him to figure out how to power this habitat and the buildings inside it.

It would have been nicer if he could have eaten in decent grav, but the gym for Traders was down in Shver territory, a rare concession. Of course they wouldn’t have food places there. The Shver didn’t like outsiders, and they didn’t like public eating. Plain, straightforward. Karl rather liked the Shver. He preferred them to the gyrating, buzzing, clacking Kanddoyds who talked in such convoluted sentences it was like their mouths were full of mush. The Shver said exactly what they thought, or they kept silent. He appreciated that—and he also liked them as sparring partners in the gym. For once he didn’t have to worry about going easy on his partner, for they massed a lot more than he did. He liked that too. Few humans massed as much as he, and fewer of those were anywhere near as strong.

He tabbed the heat button on his bulb of spiced wine and sipped, enjoying the pleasant tang on his tongue, and the warmth down his throat. His eyes stayed on the buildings as, gradually, the chatter of the spacehounds around him resolved from white noise into individual words.

"... hijackers," someone said.

Hijackers? Karl didn’t want to look—ordinarily he despised gossip, but that subject would get anyone’s attention.

"I wonder how much credit it takes to smooth that one over," a woman said. Her voice was sharp.

"Kind of makes you wonder what registry is worth, don’t it?" a man’s voice grated. "Knowin’ you can get a quitclaim, free and clear, on someone else’s ship?"

"Eventually," the woman said, "the New Hope catches up with ’em. You gotta believe that."

Another man laughed. It was an ugly laugh. "Yeah, I like that," he said. "Sanford Jones holds out his hand in welcome—you ship with him for eternity."

"Sometimes," the first man said, "it’s a right fine thing to help old Sanford get that crew real quick."

"Yeah," the woman said. "As quick as the crew aboard the hijacked ship got sent to Jones."

Karl had forgotten the Kanddoyd buildings and his mental calculations of energy production. Who were these people? Seemed as if they were talking not just generally, but specifically—and if he understood them right, they were working up to taking someone out.

He looked around, and to his surprise saw three faces watching him.

A woman, short gray hair, big brown eyes narrowed in a mean look, and the strong arms of a cargo wrangler, stared right at Karl, and said, "Patrol might look the other way, but we don’t."

The tall, dark-faced man on her right side said, "If Trade Authority won’t do something about jacking, then it’s up to Traders to keep our name clean."

The man on the left, a squat fellow with red hair and the characteristic powerful upper torso of the Martian colonist, twisted his thin lips in an ugly grin and said, "I’d certainly think twice about fouling the air around honest spacers, if I had bloody hands."

Karl glanced to his own left, and to his right, and he realized that the white noise had completely stopped, that everyone in the place was watching.

The woman said, "Seems like when we’re done, we ought to rename that ship, too, shouldn’t we? How’s Solar Scum? Or better, Killer Queen!"

Karl realized they really were talking about him. A chill of shock twitched along his muscles, followed by anger. Hot, glorious anger.

"You talk about the Solar Queen," he said, "you clean up your mouth."

"Then you better clean your hands, jacker," the man on the right fired back.

"Say that again," Karl warned, "and I’ll have to clean up your mouth for you."

The woman threw her bulb into the recycler and crossed her arms. "Is ’bloody killer’ and ’pirate’ nicer?"

Karl didn’t answer. There were times when you talked, and there were times when talk would be worthless. He flexed his hands and launched across the table, aiming at the nearest wrangler’s throat.

Jellico swung himself up from his desk and hit the door control.

Outside his cabin Sinbad strolled, tail high, licking his chops. Since he wasn’t coming from the direction of the galley, Jellico wondered where the cat had been begging. With delicate grace Sinbad descended to the lab level, and Jellico followed. He glanced around swiftly when he stepped in. The only person in view was Craig Tau.

Jellico looked down into the sterile chamber the two medics had rigged for Alpha and Omega. One of the cats was batting at a little toy; the other was busy licking her fur. Sinbad hopped up to stare at them, sniffed, then turned away and with a flick of his long tail vanished outside the hatchway again.

"How are Alpha and Omega?" Jellico asked Tau.

"Check out," the medic said. "Whatever hit the crew, it escaped these cats. They are completely clean. We could let them out today, if you want."

"Wait," Jellico said.

Tau nodded, obviously comprehending immediately: better to keep them tanked up until the mystery of their home-ship was solved. Tau

looked down at his desk and said, "Want an update on the other matter we’ve discussed?"

"Any changes?"

"Nothing, really."

"It can wait," Jellico said; the last thing he wanted to think about now was long-term effects of strange substances they had encountered on earlier runs. There was too much to think about right now.

The medic turned back to his work, and Jellico backed out the hatchway, stopping when he heard voices coming down the ladder well.

"... getting into my garden and eating all the fruit." That was Frank Mura, and he sounded angry.

Jellico frowned. Whatever had gotten the quiet, controlled Frank upset was something he’d better know about.

"I can assure you that we have not let the cats out," Rael Cofort’s voice came, calm and emotionless.

"If it’s not the cats, it’s someone human," Mura said. "Someone who should know better. All they have to do is ask—no one has accused me yet of short-rationing the Queen's crew, not in all the years I’ve served on her."

"Do you think it’s possible," the woman said slowly, "that someone got hungry when you were off-shift—or on leave?"

"I haven’t left the Queen and I don’t intend to," Mura snapped. "The sooner we blast away from this trash can the happier I’ll be."

"I promise to keep my eyes and ears open," Cofort said.

Jellico started up the ladder then. A moment later he heard the galley door hiss shut. Rael Cofort appeared at the top of the well, saw Jellico, and backed into the mess so he could finish ascending. He followed her in.

"More things disappearing?" he asked.

She gave a nod, and leaned against a bulkhead. "Food, mostly. And he’s also angry because little odd bits of gear have been strewn about here and

there." She absently tucked a loose strand of gold-highlighted hair back into its coronet.

Jellico looked away, wanted something to do with his hands, so he drew a hot bulb of jakek. "Runs a clean ship. Matter of pride," he said.

Cofort gave a nod, then bit her lip.

"What’s on your mind?" Jellico prompted.

She tipped her chin back toward the galley. "Frank. You know he hasn’t been off-ship—"

Jellico said, "Right."

She sighed. "Well, it’s obvious he is disturbed by the Kanddoyds. Not surprising, given their looks and the parallel destruction of homelands. And it would be easy to dismiss his annoyance at the little things going wrong on board as hostility against Exchange."

"But you think that’s a mistake?"

She gave her head a quick shake. "I don’t know what to think. I really like the cylome, and personally, I find the Kanddoyds I’ve met to be congenial, and even the Shver—those who are willing to talk to Terrans—are interesting. But I get a sense that there’s something askew here."

"Like?"

She shrugged. "I can’t really say. Different things—even Mura’s missing food. Then there was the way the com center closed up on Dane and Rip so suddenly yesterday."

"You don’t think they’d overstepped their boundaries?"

"Not those two," she said with obvious conviction. "I have to admit I’ve been waiting around here for them to return from today’s check—maybe it’s just my imagination."

Jellico grinned. "So you’ve been watching your chrono too?"

A swift flush of color rose in her cheeks, and she grinned back.

For a moment his mind emptied of everything but the curve of her lips, and the merry gleam in her eyes. Did she feel it too, this compulsion like the iron for the magnet?

It was a relief when, this time, she was the first to turn away.

Tang Ya looked again at the numbers on the computer screen.

He’d found it the day before, and had been working ever since, as yet without saying anything to his crewmates. Tang Ya liked to have all his facts at hand before going to the captain and facing Jellico’s curt, but always penetrating, questions.

Sleep tugged at his eyelids and the back of his neck seemed to be on fire. He glanced at the array of crushed jakek tubes at the side of his console, and felt a distinct wish for something stronger—like Crax seed.

Though once he handed this data off, his job would not end, and he would not have the luxury of the recovery time a bout with Crax seed required.

Instead, he had to rely on his own adrenaline. So again he typed in the dates.

Computers, of course, had no emotions, nor did the script reflect the operator’s emotions unless the operator manipulated the fonts to that end.

Somehow, though, it seemed strange for the bare text to appear in the same bland alphanumerics, picked for their clarity, as more nominal calculations. Still, there it was, the mute evidence at last that something was badly askew here. Unless the comparative timetables for all the registered planets were wrong—which had not happened yet, in all the years he’d used them—the Starvenger had officially been abandoned eighteen months ago, Terran Standard.

A year and a half ago.

A year and a half ago the ship was declared abandoned— leaving aboard two cats who, if Craig Tau was to be believed, had been abandoned no more than ten weeks.

He cleared the screen once again, and this time called up the coded log

from the Starvenger's hydrogarden. He’d worked at this during spare moments while he was on duty, and during some of his own free time, but he’d felt no strong compulsion to decrypt that log.

Now he felt different.

A little energy flowed into him again. He flexed his hands, swung his arms, and performed the isometrics he’d been taught as a child. He sensed he was on the verge of something. if he just kept at it.

"I need more compute power," he murmured, tapping into the ship’s computer. He wished he dared to reach through the line connecting the Queen to Exchange’s compute arrays, for he knew he’d solve the dilemma if he just had an enormous pattern-search space. But he hadn’t, which required him to be clever.

He called up the holding matrices he’d set going, and nodded with satisfaction. The genetic neural algorithms he’d bred up had been patiently probing for hidden patterns in the organization of the other computer—and it looked like they were settling toward a solution. He had to know how it was set up first before he could work on decoding it.

Then he glanced at the corner of his screen. The little icon he’d set up as a measure of progress shimmered suddenly, then snapped into a line.

A moment later the screen below flickered, and ordered ranks of alphanumerics appeared. It was still in some kind of code, but he knew how to break codes. The biggest problem had been finding the patterns that would give him clues to the unfamiliar computer’s organization.

Flexing his hands again, he called up the sherlocks he’d specifically designed, and set them onto the code. At once they went to work, and again his icon wavered in a foggy line. This would not take long, though, he suspected. He reached for another tube of jakek, flicked the heat tab with his thumbnail as his eyes watched the screen, where his sherlock programs continued their patient unraveling.

He was halfway through the tube when the icon clicked once again into a firm line. He keyed the console, and the codes flickered into readable script.

Paging down through it, he scanned through his blurring eyes, just to

make certain it made sense; then he set up some search fields and set them going. This time it only took seconds to scan.

When he saw the results, he let out his breath in a big sigh, got up, and hit the door control.

It was time to dump everything into Jellico’s lap.

The subdued booms and thuds of footsteps on the outer lock ladder made both Jellico and Rael Cofort look up quickly. Rael Cofort passed by in silence, going in to the mess. Jellico remained where he was, and half a minute later, there was Dane Thorson’s tall, lanky form. Rip Shannon’s dark, pleasant face was at his shoulder. "Cap’n?"

"What’s the word?"

Thorson spread his huge hands. "Dead space," he said. "Until the Festival of the Dancing Sprool is over—whenever that might be." He frowned suddenly. "Hell! Is that the name of the Shver hibernation period? If so, we’re sunk—they hibernate for three months! I’d better check—" He ducked out, and they heard the click of his magnetic boots going up the ladder to the main computer databank.

"What happened?" Cofort asked from the mess hatchway.

"We went back, just as we were told to," Rip said. "But they told us that we had to continue our business with the Jheel that had begun to help us. And when we asked for him, we were told just what Dane told you—that he’d withdrawn from duty for this festival, and he’d return when it was over. All his business would have to wait."

"No one would cooperate?" Jellico asked, his suspicions intensifying as he walked with his navigator apprentice into the mess cabin.

Rip gave his head a quick shake. "On the contrary," he said. "The other workers who spoke Terran were really apologetic. One woman even tried to help, but she said that the Jheel had put a lock on the Starvenger inquiry, so she could do nothing. She said they earn promotions by how many jobs they successfully complete, so it wasn’t surprising."

Jellico frowned. "This is not how Trade does business—"

"—in Terran space," Cofort added, from the other side of the cabin.

Jellico finished, "—and we’re not in Terran space. Right."

"Three months," came Dane’s doleful voice from the hatchway. "They hibernate for a full three months."

"How hibernation can be called ’Dancing’ anything, I don’t understand," Rip said dryly. Then he turned a serious look to the captain. "I know you and Jan are trying to get us a cargo as soon as possible. Does this mean we have to drop our inquiry as a bad business?"

Jellico was watching Cofort, who stood by a bulkhead, her dark blue eyes narrowed in an expression of abstract concentration. "On the surface it would seem so," he said. "We’ll think it over."

Both young men looked relieved, and moved to draw some food from the server. Jellico knew what those expressions of relief meant: they both were confident that The Captain Would Think of Something.

He hefted his tube and moved out of the galley to consider what he had heard. As he started toward his cabin, he saw Karl Kosti coming up toward the galley.

The big man was frowning, which was not in itself a cause for alarm.

"Rough crowd," Karl said as he moved on past.

Jellico turned and watched, wondering what that portended; it was rare for the most taciturn member of the crew to offer any kind of unasked-for comment.

The answer was immediately forthcoming. The intercom tone sounded, and Jasper Weeks, who was currently manning the bridge, said, "Captain?"

Jellico reached for a wall console and tabbed the key. "On my way."

Moments later he was in the bridge, as Weeks, with an apologetic expression on his mild, bleached-pale face, played back the message just received.

A Shver visage appeared on the screen, gray, wrinkled, and glowering.

"Am I Lictor of Monitors of Harmony, and the Shauv of Clan Norl. Have I instructions for you, in accordance with the Concord of Harmony. Initiating a fracas, has committed your unit Karl Kosti. Required of you is confinement to your vessel of said unit for the remainder of your stay." There was no further word, and the image blanked.

Jellico reached to hit the com, then pulled back his hand when he saw Kosti standing right behind him. "What’s the story, Karl?"

"Wasn’t me started that fight," Kosti said. "Riffraff from a company ship, strutting big—"

"You learned how to ignore that kind of talk when you were half-grown," Jellico said, exasperated.

Kosti gave a brief nod, impassive as a rock. "Brag talk is so much noise. Talk about how Free Traders are barely legal thieves, and how they jump ships to claim derelicts—that I couldn’t sit by and eat. Especially when ignoring them would have been agreement, in which case half the spacers there were ready to lynch me," Kosti added reflectively.

"So there’s talk about our claiming the Starvenger?

Weeks said quietly, "It’s to be expected gossip would get out. How many ships come out of jump and find an empty sitting on their jump point?"

Jellico said, "But if talk is going around about our having pulled in a derelict, then it should mention that our vids of the catch were legit—and accepted by Trade as so."

Kosti shook his head. "All I can tell you is what I heard. It was humans who started it, three cargo wranglers off that Deneb-Galactic ship docked down that way." He jerked his head in one direction. "Monitors pinned the blame on me."

Jellico felt and suppressed a flash of annoyance. No use in lodging a formal complaint with Trade over what might turn out to be a lot of gaseous talk in a bar. "We’ll comply, of course," he said. "You may’s well take your turn out at the Starvenger—replace Thorson. I need him here anyway."

Kosti gave his short nod and moved silently away.

Jellico tapped his fingers on the arm support of his command pod, trying to sort through his reactions. There was too much bad luck here, but it all seemed random and unconnected. He’d be a fool to give in to conspiracy suspicions without some hard evidence of connections—if any.

He said to Jasper, "Carry on," and got up from his seat.

In the doorway to the hatch he met Tang Ya. The Martian colonist’s eyes were red-rimmed, his face lined with exhaustion. "My algorithms cracked that code," Ya said, grinning despite his evident tiredness.

Jellico let out a sigh of relief at the first break they’d had since Flindyk had given them the spool to speed along their business. "Good work," he said. "What did you find?"

Ya said, "I think you’d better know this first." He handed Jellico a printout on which he read the date of the insurance quitclaim, registered in local time. Jellico had seen that before. He swallowed his impatience and read on—freezing when he saw the date in Terran Standard.

He looked up at Ya, whose wide-set eyes were narrowed to slits of perplexity. "That’s not the only mystery," the comtech said. "The lab record is mostly a kind of diary mixed in with daily reports on the hydroponics. I haven’t read it all, only done a couple of searches. One thing I came up with," he said slowly, "is the fact that there’s no mention anywhere of the Starvenger, or of Olben Kayusha or Nim Miscoigne."

"Odd, but possible," Jellico said. "You could ask how often Frank mentions the ship he’s lived on for years—or my name—down in his logs."

Ya nodded quickly. "I thought of that, but none of it explains why the writer of the record called that ship Ariadne."