“Aw, shit. Three days?” I groaned. “We don’t have three days. More yols down the hole.” I waved a weary hand. “Well, do the minimum.”
The mechanic nodded and left to talk to his hired hands.
I had to dip into my reserve to pay for even that minimal fixup. Now I was riding on empty. More than ever did we need Alastar with its Myscol payout. If I had been a bolder man, I’d risk flying in without the repairs, but experience and wisdom of age told me to temper that impulsive plan. I didn’t trust Bantam’s warp drive not to leave us stranded out in no-man’s land as it had Alastar.
We bundled up and set a course for Daerzoo. ETA 1 hour. I hoped the gamble was worth it. We’d be in time—for what?—to get the spoils, hoping no other parties had got there ahead of us?
I had Noss soon adjust our course to rendezvous with Alastar. If it weren’t for her encrypted homing beacon, we’d have a tough time finding her, like the proverbial needle in a haystack. It was a risk. I just hoped others hadn’t been listening in too long.
Alastar loomed up on the viewport against the faraway stars. A defiant old bird of a previous generation—her prow shaped like a hammerhead, her body that of a sleek mermaid with twin tail fins. Her robust Vega-6 drive was not so robust any more. I wonder what she thought of her new owners. I killed the homing signal that had alerted us to her position via the spider.
“Let’s check her out and find that Myscol and transfer it to Bantam. How I’d like to get her to a safe port…then auction her off as quickly as possible for real this time.”
“Won’t they be looking for her?” Noss fumbled with the autopilot. “Crosschecking drive codes, insurance records, the like.”
“They can’t patrol every port in the galaxy, Noss. Places out this way could give two shits about some heist back on Gistron station.”
Noss smiled. His wrist looked less puffy and bruised than earlier, though he wouldn’t be doing any handstands too soon.
He murmured, “The ship looks okay. We can keep her on impulse drive to wherever she needs to go in the meantime.”
“How long would it take us to get her to Daerzoo?” Blest asked.
“Two weeks,” Wren answered. “Give or take a day or so.”
“Two weeks we don’t have,” I mused. “This is The Dim Zone, remember?”
“Can’t we go over and fix it?” Blest piped up.
“Yeah,” I barked, “like the hyperdrive just needs a screwdriver and a bit of elbow grease.”
“I dunno, just asking.” Blest withdrew, flushed-faced.
“All the same, a few of us’ll go over and see what’s gotten into her.”
Noss and Wren stayed aboard and I took Blest with me on the shuttle: a small oblong, eight-legged craft built for short distant hops from ship to ship. I flicked the spider’s remote to engage and opened Alastar’s starboard hatch. We maneuvered Lander to dock in the starboard port. The steel-grey door closed shut and we hung inside the landing bay while the pressure equalized. The little green light blinked and Blest and I hopped out, guns at the ready. I motioned him to cover me in case there were some unpleasant surprises we hadn’t counted on.
We moved to the forward hall, weapons drawn, choosing not to err on the side of caution. The place was quiet as a tomb. Pilot emergency lights showed through a dim ambience. Eerie. A sixth sense alerted me to something indefinable.
We crept up the companionway then stalked the corridor leading to the bridge. I held up a hand to Blest to cool his heels. Something felt not quite right.
I saw that a small white plastic dish lay out on the conference table. A fresh vacuum pack of oat flakes sat beside it. Could have been maintenance crew. But why would they have been so careless when potential buyers were roaming about the ship? It seemed odd.
Blest was about to blurt out something, but I put a finger to my lips.
I heard a muffled sneeze. Also caught a glimpse of the console panel to the left of the nav displaced, as if someone had tried to put the cover hastily back on. So my suspicions were not unfounded. I cautioned Blest and crept over to the wall and kicked open the hatch.
A pale figure, some thirty-years old, sat hunched in the dimness, quivering like a jellyfish.
“Who are you?” I hauled him up. The pale-faced man held up his hands. I recognized him from Halley’s crew. “Bloody hell.” Blest’s gun was in his face, the barrel practically shoved up his nose.
“My n-name’s Krel Follee. Don’t shoot! Lew told me to make sure Alastar was ready to fly on short notice. To unlock the nav system.”
“So did you?” I demanded.
The stowaway shook his head, a pronounced quiver on his bottom lip. A momma’s boy, some geek clever with tech, with a high pitched whine to his voice and a nervous tic on the left cheek.
He didn’t answer right away and I wondered if his explanation were a cover. His logic made sense but now we had a problem on our hands. “Lucky we found you, otherwise you’d be a skeleton by the time anyone came looking for you.”
“Lucky, how? I got your friend jamming a gun down my throat.”
I croaked out a mirthless laugh, impressed despite myself at Follee’s spunk. “Lower your weapon, Blest.” Blest withdrew his R4. I gave an update to Noss and Wren over the com. “Found Halley’s geek code cruncher hunched in
