The Coming Event

'Did you enjoy the fur?'

'We both enjoyed it.' She laughed with a soft amusement. 'I didn't kill it, Earl. I fed it and kept it for a pet until winter came and it ran off to mate. I used to hear it barking from the hills at night and, sometimes, I would bark back.' She snuggled a little closer. 'Can you understand that?'

'Yes.'

'Did you ever have a pet? On Earth, Earl? Did you?'

There had been no time for pets, no time for softness of any kind. To catch an animal was to gain a meal and to feed one was to invite starvation. Trust, love, affection, generosity-all were luxuries he'd never known.

She seemed to sense this and she didn't press the question, talking instead of her own world.

'You'd like Manita, Earl. We live simple lives close to nature. Hunting, fishing, growing crops. No one tells another what to do. There are no pressures. A man doesn't have to prove himself. To live. To share. To help when help is needed.'

'But you left.'

'I said we lived simple lives not that we are ignorant. To keep what we have we must be as educated as those who might want to take it from us. So I learned. I was always good at finding my way around and it was natural I should become a navigator. I like it so I do it. When I stop liking it I do something else.'

'Like hunting down a legend?'

'Of course. But it isn't that to you, is it? It's real and you want to go back home.' Her tone gentled. 'At times I feel the same. I remember the open plains and the hills and the nights when the sky glowed with stars. The meetings and pairings and the fun. The hunts, too, and the fishing, but most of all, I think, the freedom. That's when I begin to get restless.'

'And move?'

'Yes.'

'And when you stop liking what you're doing now?'

She said, 'What you're really saying is what happens when I stop liking you. Isn't it obvious? We stop being lovers. We stop being companions. You want more?'

'I wasn't talking about us. I'm talking about our partnership. Does that end too?'

For a long moment she stared at him then, smiling, she said, 'Earl, you fool, for us there'll be no ending. We'll go on until we find a new beginning. Then, maybe, you'll go running into the hills and, at night, I'll hear you barking.'

'And will you bark back?'

'Maybe. That's for you to guess.' She grew serious. 'Don't worry, Earl, I'm no quitter. Once I start a thing I see it through. If Earth exists we'll find it.'

'It exists.'

'Then we'll find it.' She stretched like a cat on the soft comfort of the bed. 'Now kiss me before I go and check the controls.'

Maynard's death had robbed the Moira of experienced command. Seated in the big control chair Dumarest checked the instruments and studied the screens, going through a routine which he had learned from service with various freetraders, knowing it wasn't enough. To stand a temporary watch to relieve a tired captain was a different matter from accepting the full responsibility of a ship and all it contained.

As yet they had been lucky. Space was clear and the automatics capable of maintaining flight and safety, but space was also deceptive and odd vortexes of energy lay in unexpected places. Swirling maelstroms of force could take a ship and rip it apart with opposed energies. Nodes held within their parameters the fury of dying suns. In these areas the instruments couldn't be trusted and only an experienced hand and eye could guide a ship on a safe route.

Experience Dumarest lacked and he knew it.

'Earl?' Ysanne spoke from the intercom. 'How is it going?'

'All right as yet. Are we on course?'

'The same as I set. Barely any deviation.'

Proof of the superior efficiency of the Moira's equipment but enough to have missed their target had it been distant.

'Change,' ordered Dumarest. 'Set a new course.'

'To where?'

'Take your pick. I want a random pattern to throw off any pursuit.'

'From whom? We took care of that other ship.'

'Just do it.'

This precaution could be unnecessary but there could always have been a third vessel which had remained unseen or which had arrived just after they had left. A ship could be following them with its sensors picking up the spatial disturbance left by their passage.

Such a command decision was a part of a captain's duties. As it was his job to oversee the general running of the ship and crew. To insure that there were correct supplies, fuel for the engines, air for the tanks. To delegate authority but never to be careless. No matter what happened to a ship; in the end only one person alone was responsible.

Craig reported from the intercom, 'Generator's showing signs of mounting inefficiency, Earl. I'd like to strip it down and monitor the coils.'

'Have you replacements?'

'No. We were due for a refit but Pendance had to act in a hurry.'

A decision was needed and Dumarest made it. 'Leave things as they are for now. Checking will take time and the gain needn't be worth it. Let me know if the condition gets worse.'

'As you say, Earl.'

As the voice died an alarm flashed red, the glow holding for a long moment before the ruby turned green. A node of potential danger had been spotted by the sensors and avoided by the computer guidance system.

'Relax,' said Ysanne from behind the chair. 'Those lights will send you crazy if you stare at them long enough. That was Maynard's trouble. He couldn't trust the machines and ended by doubting himself.' She moved so as to stand to one side, the braids of her hair reflecting the winking telltales in oily shimmers. 'I've fed the course changes into the system. Three at varying angles and different periods. After the last we head to where we're going.'

'Sorkendo?'

She betrayed her surprise. 'How did you know we came from Sorkendo?'

'Why go back there?'

'Pendance has funds stashed away in the Homtage Bank and I figured we could get them. Land and claim he was dead and use them for a refit and supplies.'

Dumarest said, 'Were you checked in at the bank as a full crew-partner? Was Craig?'

'I wasn't and I'm sure Jed wasn't either. Does it matter? They know we're both a part of the Moira's crew.'

'It doesn't signify. Crews have been known to mutiny. A smart captain doesn't make it easy for them to gain any benefit from it.'

'Maynard, then?' She frowned as she remembered. 'Damn! We cycled him through the lock. We should have taken his hands first and used his prints to authenticate a deposition as to our right to claim.'

The very suggestion revealed her lack of knowledge in certain areas.

'They wouldn't have accepted it,' said Dumarest. 'You aren't the first to have thought of that. In any case Pendance had probably radioed the bank to freeze his account.'

'Of course! Why didn't I think of that?' She threw back her braids with an impatient gesture. 'You'd have done better to have killed him, Earl. Well, if we can't go to Sorkendo, where else?'

To where the Cyclan wouldn't be waiting and they could find a captain willing to work for nothing but a promise. A world on which they could ready the Moira for a long journey-and to find it soon!

There was a subtle beauty in madness. An insidious attraction which manifested itself in the fabrication of complex logic which built alien worlds from accepted premises and realms of enticing fantasy from minor