could do it with no indications of droopiness, he could. But the complications created by the others, and the need to be alert for more trouble from them, had cut heavily into the time he should have kept free for rest. The sensible move might be to lock all three of them up in their respective cabins.
And if there were
Chapter EIGHT
For a while, the passengers and the one-man crew seemed to be on their best behavior. The Chaladoor, however, was not. There were several abrupt alerts, and one hard run from something which blurred the detectors and appeared in the viewscreens’ visual magnification as a cloud of brown dust. It displayed extraordinary mobility for a dust cloud. An electric-blue charge crackled and snapped about the
And finally there was Worm Weather in the viewscreens again…
It was nothing like the previous occasion. One had to be alertly observant to catch them; and hours might pass without any sign at all. Then a tiny hazy glow would be there for a minute or two, moving distantly among the stars, and disappearing in the unexplained fashion of the Nuri globes. The lounge screens remained off — the captain had let it be known that the temporary malfunction was now permanent — so neither Vezzarn nor the passengers became aware of that particular phenomenon. But for the two responsible for the
The captain, therefore, wasn’t too surprised when he discovered himself waking up in the control chair during a watch period once more. Nor — at the moment — was he too concerned. He’d rigged up a private alarm device guaranteed to jar him out of deepest slumber, which he left standing on the desk throughout his watches. It had to be reset manually every three minutes to keep it silent, and, even in the Chaladoor, there were few stretches where anything very serious was likely to develop without previous warning in three minutes. At the first suggestion of drowsiness he turned it on.
But then came a disturbing recollection. This time he had not turned it on. He remembered a wave of heavy sleepiness, which had seemed to roll down on him suddenly, and must have literally blanked him out in an instant. It had been preceded by a momentary sense of something changing, something subtly wrong on the ship. He hadn’t had time to analyze that…
For an instant, his thoughts stopped in shock. Automatically, as he grew aware there’d been a lapse in wakefulness, he’d glanced over the detector system, found it inert, shifted attention to the ship’s screens.
There was something very wrong there!
The appearance of the route pattern ahead of the
Three hours plus, the console chronometer told him silently. A good three hours and twenty minutes! He flicked on Goth’s intercom buzzer, held it down, eyes still rapidly searching the screens for anything of significance the detectors had left unregistered. A dozen times over, in those three hours, some Chaladoor raider could have swept down on them and knocked them out of space… “Goth?”
The intercom screen remained blank. No answer.
Now fright surged through the captain. He half rose from the chair, felt sudden leaden pain buckling his left leg under him, and fell back heavily as Laes Yango’s sardonic voice said from somewhere behind him, “Don’t excite yourself, sir! The child hasn’t been hurt. In fact, she’s here in the room with us.”
Hulik do Eldel and Vezzarn were also in the control room with them. Goth sat on the couch between the two, leaning slumped against Hulik, head drooping. All three looked as if they had fallen asleep and settled into the limply flexed poses of complete relaxation. “What did you do?” the captain asked.
Yango shrugged. “Traces of a mind drug in the ventilation system. If I named it, you wouldn’t know it. Quite harmless. But unless the antidote is given, it remains effective for twelve to fourteen hours. Which will be twice the time required here.”
“Required for what?” Yango had put a small gun-like object on the armrest of the chair in which he sat as he was speaking. A paralysis-producing object, and the captain could testify to its effectiveness. He was barely able to feel his left leg now, let alone use it.
“Well, let’s take matters in order, sir,” the trader replied. “I can hardly have your full attention until you’ve accepted the fact that there’s nothing you can do to change the situation to your advantage. To start with then, I have your gun and the personal weapons of your companions. Your leg will regain its normal sensations within minutes, but let me assure you that you won’t be able to leave that chair until I permit it.” He tapped the paralyzer-producer. “You’ve experienced its lightest effect. That should be enough.
“Another thing you must remember, sir, is that I don’t need you. Not in the least. You live by my indulgence. If it appears that you’re going to be troublesome, you’ll die. I can handle this ship well enough.
“Now the explanation. I am a collector of sorts. Of items of value. Which might on occasion be ships, or people…” Yango’s left hand made an expansive gesture. “Money I obtain where I can, naturally. And information. I am an avid collector of information. I’ve established what I believe to be one of the most efficient, farthest-ranging information systems presently in existence.
“One curious item of information that came to me some time ago concerned a certain Captain Pausert who has been until recently a citizen in good standing of the independent trans-Empire Republic of Nikkeldepain. This Captain Pausert was reported to have purchased three enslaved children on the Empire planet of Porlumma and to have taken them away with him on his ship.
“These children, three sisters, were believed to be natives of the witch world Karres and, in the emphatic opinion of various citizens of Porlumma, already accomplished sorceresses. Subsequently there were several reports that reliable witnesses had seen Captain Pausert’s ship vanish instantly when threatened with attack by other spacecraft. It was concluded that by purchasing the Karres children he had gained control of a spacedrive of unknown type, perhaps magical in nature, which permitted him to take short-cuts through unknown dimensions of the universe and reappear in space at a point far removed from the one where he had been last observed.
“This, sir, was an interesting little story, particularly when considered in the light of other stories which have long been current regarding the strange world of Karres. It became far more interesting to me when, some while later, I received other information suggesting strongly that Captain Pausert, his ship, and one of the three witch children he had picked up on Porlumma were now at my present base of operations, Uldune. I initiated an immediate, very comprehensive investigation.
“It became evident that I was not the only one interested in the matter. Several versions, variously distorted, of the original story had reached Uldune. One of them implied that Captain Pausert was not a native of Nikkeldepain, but himself a Karres witch. Another made no mention of Karres or witchcraft at all but spoke only of a new spacedrive mechanism, a technological marvel which made possible the instantaneous transmission of an entire ship over interstellar distances.
“I proceeded cautiously. If you were Captain Pausert, it seemed that you must indeed control such a drive. There was no other good examination for the fact that you had arrived on Uldune so shortly after having been reported from several points west of the Empire. This was no trifling concern. There were competitors for this secret, and I arranged matters so that, whatever might happen, I should still eventually become its possessor. During your stay on Uldune, a full half of the Agandar’s fleet of buccaneer ships were drawn into the vicinity of the planet, under orders to launch a planned, all-out attack on it if given the word. Not an easy operation, but I was determined that if the Daal obtained the drive from you — for a time there seemed reason to believe that those
