Union Alliance - Merchanter's Luck Part 2

"Next time you remember to bring your baby down," Allison said. "You bring her with you the next time we dock."

There had been no end of the wail over the forgotten doll at the start of their liberty. Middle zones of the s.h.i.+p went inaccessible during dock; and young Will III had offered to eel through the emergency accesses after it, but no, it was a lark for Will, but a good way to take a fall, and Tish learned to keep track of things. Everyone learned. Early.

"Go," Tish crowed, anxious. Prolonged dock was no fun for the littlest, in cramped s.p.a.ces and adult noise.

"Bye," Allison said, and Tish slid down and worked her way through adult legs to bedevil some of her other several hundred cousins, while Allison shut her eyes and wished the noise would stop. Her wishes were narrow at the moment, centered on her own comfortable, clean-smelling bed.

Then the bell rang, the Cinderella stroke that ended liberty and liberties, and the children were shushed and taken in arms. Conversations died. People remembered hangovers and feet and knees that ached from walking unaccustomed distances on the docks, recalled debts run up that would have to be worked off oddjobbing. "I lied," someone said louder than other voices, the old joke, admitting that after-the-bell accounts were always less colorful. There was laughter, not at the old joke, but because it was old and comfortable and everyone knew it. They drifted for the cus.h.i.+ons, and there was a general snapping and clicking of belts, a gentle murmur, a last fretting of children. Allison bestirred herself to pull her belt out of the housings and to clip it as Eilis settled into the seat next to hers and did the same.

Baccha.n.a.le was done. The Old Man was back in the chair again, and the posted crew, having put down their authority for the stay on station, took it up again.

Dublin prepared to get underway.

Chapter III.

Lucy was never silent in her operation. She had her fan noises and her pings and her pops and crashes as some compressor cycled in or a pump went on or off. Her seating creaked and her rotation rumbled and grumbled around the core... a rotating ring with a long null G center and belly that was her holds, a stubby set of generation vanes stretched out on top and ventral sides: that was the shape of her. She moved along under insystem propulsion, doing her no-cargo best, toward the Viking jump range, outbound, on the a.s.signed lane a small s.h.i.+p had to use.

Sandor reached and put the interior lights on, and Lucy's surroundings acquired some cheer and new dimensions. Rightward, the corridor to the cabins glared with what had once been white tiles-bare conduits painted white like the walls; and to the left another corridor horizoned up the curve, lined with cabinets and parts storage. Aft of the bridge and beyond the shallowest of arches, another s.p.a.ce showed, reflected in the idle screens of vacant stations, bunks in brown, worn plastic, twelve of them, that could be set manually for the pitch at dock. Their commonroom, that had been. Their indock sleeping area, living quarters, wardroom-whatever the need of the moment. He set Lucy's autopilot, unbelted and eased himself out of the cus.h.i.+on: that was enough to get himself a stiff fine if station caught him at it, moving through the vicinity of a station with no one at controls.

He found the pulser unit in under the counter storage, taped it to his wrist and handed himself across the bridge, fighting the spiral drift along to the right-hand corridor, a controlled stagger with right foot on the tiled footing curve and left on the deck. He got the Pharmaceuticals he wanted and brought them back to his place on the bridge, another stagger down the footings and swing along the hand grips. Then he knelt down in the pit and used tape and braces to rig her as she had been rigged before, taped the drugs he would need for jump to the side of the armrest where he could get at them; taped down some of the safety controls-also illegal; he set up the rig for the sanitation kit, because he would need that too, much as he dreaded it.

A second trip, rightward, this time, past sealed cabins, into the narrow confines of the galley and galley storage. He filled water bottles, and took an armful of them back to the bridge, jammed them into the brace he had long ago rigged near the command console... scared, if he let himself think about it. He swallowed such feelings, bobbed his head up now and again to check scan, down again to open up the underdeck storage where he had shoved some of the dried goods, not to have to suit up for the chill of the holds to hunt for them. He knelt there counting the packets out, taped them where he could get at them from the chair. His braced limbs shook from the strain of G. He dropped a packet and lunged after it, taped it where it belonged.

The lane still showed clear. He crawled up and held onto the back of the cus.h.i.+on, staring at the instruments, finally edged his way back to one of the brown plastic bunks at the aft bulkhead, to give his back a little relief from the strain. His eyes stung with fatigue. He rested his hands beside him, arms pulled askew by the spiral stress of acceleration, leaned his head against the bulkhead, not really comfortable, but it was a change from the long-held position in the cus.h.i.+on, and he could get the com or the controls from here if he had to.

There were compartments all about the ring, private quarters. Diametrically opposite the bridge was the loft, where the children had been... he never went around the ring that far. This was home, this small s.p.a.ce, these bunks aft of the bridge, plastic mattresses patched with tape and deteriorating with age. One had been his when he was ten, that over there, nearest lie part.i.tion spinward; and there had been Papa Lou's, which he never sat on; and one his mother's; he had had brothers and sisters and cousins once, and there had been three children under six, cousins too. But Papa Lou had vented them and old Ma'am too, when their boarders turned ugly and it was clear what they were going to do.

They had had Lucy's armament, but that had been helpless against a carrier and its riders.h.i.+ps; they had had only two handguns on the s.h.i.+p... and the boarders who had ambushed them in the nullpoint had said they were not touching crew, only cargo. It had been Lucy's clear choice then, open the hatch or be blown entirely. But they lied, the Mazianni, pirates even then, in the years when they had called themselves the Company Fleet and fought for Pell and Earth. They respected nothing and counted life nothing, and into such hands Papa Lou had surrendered them... not understanding.

He himself had not understood. He had not imagined. He had looked at the armored, faceless invaders with a kind of awe, a child's respect of such power. He had-for that first few moments they had been aboard-wanted to be one of them, wanted to carry weapons and to wear such sleek, frightening armor-one brief, ugly temptation, until he had seen Papa Lou afraid, and begun to suspect that something evil had come, something far less beautiful inside the armor, that had gotten into the s.h.i.+p's heart. He always felt guilt when he recalled that... that he had admired, that he had wanted to frighten others and not be frightened-he reasoned with himself that it was only the glitter that had drawn him, and that any child would have reacted the same, in the confusion, in the shaking of reliable references, in ignorance, if not in innocence. But he always felt unclean.

Most of it had happened here, on the bridge, in the commonroom and the corridor, in this widest part of the s.h.i.+p where they had gathered everyone but the children, and where the boarders started showing what they meant to do. But Papa Lou had gotten to the command chair and voided the part of the s.h.i.+p where the children and the oldest had taken refuge, before they shot him; and most of them had died, shot down in the commonroom and on the bridge; and some of them had been taken away for slower treatment.

But three of them, himself and old Mitri and Cousin Ross, had lain there in the blood and the confusion because they were half dead-himself aged ten and standing with crew because he had slipped around the curve and gotten to his mother's side. They had not died, they three, which was Ross's doing, because Ross was mad-stubborn to live, and because after they had been left adrift, Ross had dragged himself from beside the bunk where he had fallen on him and Mitri, and gotten the med kit that was spilled all over where the pirates had rifled it for drugs. That was where his mother had been lying shot through the head: he recalled that all too vividly. She had gotten one of the boarders at the last, because they had given the women the two guns-they needed them most, Papa Lou had said-and when Papa Lou vented the children his mother had shot one of the boarders before they shot her, got an armored man right in the faceplate and killed him, and they dragged him off with them when they left the s.h.i.+p, probably because they wanted the armor back. But Aunt Jame had died before she could get a clear shot at any of them.

Here they had fallen, here, here, here, twelve bodies, and more in the corridor rightward, and himself and Mitri and Ross.

Those were his memories at times like this, fatigued and mind-numbed, or cooking a solitary meal in the galley, or walking past vacant cabins, sights that washed out all the happier past, everything that had been good, behind one red-running image. Everywhere he walked and sat and slept, someone had died. They had scrubbed away all the blood and made the plastic benches and the tiles and the plating clean again; and they had vented their dead at that lonely nullpoint, undisturbed once the pirate had gone its way-sent them out in s.p.a.ce where they probably still drifted, frozen solid and lost in infinity, about the cinder of an almost-star. It was a clean, decent disposal, after the ugliness that had gone before. In his mind they still existed in that limbo, never decayed, never changed... they went on traveling, no suit between them and s.p.a.ce, all the starry sights they had loved pa.s.sing continually in front of their open, frozen eyes-a company of travelers that would stay more or less together, wherever they were going. All of them. Only Ma'am and the babies had gone ahead, and the others would never overtake them.

Mitri had died out on the hull one of the times they had had to change Lucy's name, when they had run the scam on Pan-paris, and it had gone sour-a stupid accident that had happened because the Mazianni had stripped them of equipment they needed. Ross had spent four hours and risked his life getting Mitri back because they had thought there was hope; but Mitri had been dead from the first few moments, the pressure in the suit having gone and blood having gotten into the filters, so Ross just called to say so and stripped the suit and let Mitri go, another of Lucy's drifters, but all alone this time. And he, twelve, had sat alone in the s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+vering, sick with fear that something would happen to Ross, that he would not get back, that he would die, getting Mitri in.

Leave him, he had yelled at Ross, his own cowardice, before he had even known that Mitri was dead; he remembered that; and remembered the lonely sound of Ross crying into the mike when he knew. He had thrown up from fright after Ross had come in safe. Another lonely nullpoint, those points of ma.s.s between the burning stars that jumps.h.i.+ps used to steer by; and he could not have gotten Lucy out of there, could not have handled the jump on his own, if he had lost Ross then. He had cried, after that, and Mitri had haunted him, a shape that tumbled through his dreams, the only one of Lucy's ghosts that reproached him.

Ross had died on Wyatt's, dealing with people who tried to cheat him. The stationers, beyond doubt, had cremated him, so one of them was forever missing from the tally of drifters in the deep. In a way, that troubled him most of all, that he had had to leave Ross in the hands of strangers, to be destroyed down to his elements... but he had had only the quick chance to break Lucy away, to get her out before they attached her, and he kept her. He had been seventeen then, and knew the contacts and the ports and how to talk to customs agents.

He slept in Ross's old bunk, in this one, because it was as close as he could come to what he had left of family, and this one bed seemed warmer than the rest, not so unhappily haunted as the rest. Ross had always been closer than his own mind to him, and because he had not cast out Ross's body with his own hands, it was less sometimes like Ross was dead than that he had gone invisible after the mishap at Wyatt's, and still existed aboard, in the programs comp held-so, so meticulously Ross had recorded all that he knew, programed every operation, left instructions for every eventuality... in case, Ross had said, simply in case. The recorded alarms spoke in Ross's tones; the time signals did; and the instruction. It was company, of sorts. It filled the silences.

He tried not to talk to the voice more than need be, seldom spoke at all while he was on the s.h.i.+p, because he reckoned that the day he started talking back and forth with comp, he was in deep trouble.

Only this time he sat with his eyes fixed on the screens on the bridge, with his shoulder braced against the acceleration, and a vast lethargy settled over him in the company of his ghosts. Ross, he thought, Ross... I might love her; because Ross was the closest thing he had ever had to a father, a personal father, and he had to try out the thought on someone, just to see if it sounded reasonable.

It did not. There were story-tapes, a few aged tapes Ross had conned on Pan-paris when they were young and full of chances. He listened to them over and over and conjured women in his mind, but he knew truth from fancy and refused to let fancy take a grip on him. It had to do with living... and solitude; and there were slippages he could not afford. He had been drunk, that was all; was sober now, and simply tired.

He had been crazy into the bargain, to have paid what he had paid to get clear of station. And he was outbound, accelerating, committed... He was headed for a real place out there, was about to violate lane instructions, headed out to new territory with forged papers. It was a real place, and a real meeting, where a dream could get badly bent.

Where it could end. Forever.

(Ross... I'm scared.) No noise but the fans and the turning of the core, that everpresent white sound in which the rest of the silence was overwhelming. Little human sounds like breathing, like the dropping of a stylus, the pus.h.i.+ng of a b.u.t.ton, were whited out, swallowed, made null.

(Ross... this may be the last trip. I'm sorry. I'm tired...) That was the crux of it. The certainty settled into his bones. The last trip, the last time-because he had run out of civilized stations Unionside. Even Pell, across the Line-they had called at once, when it was himself and Ross and Mitri together; and Lucy had been Rose. They owed money there too, as everywhere. Lucy was out of havens; and he was out of answers, tired of fear, tired of starving and sleeping the way he had slept on the way into Viking, marginally afraid that the old man he had hired might rob him or get past the comp lock or-it was always possible-kill him in his sleep. And once, just once to see what others had, what life was like outside that terror, with the fancy bars and the fancy sleepovers and a woman with something other than larceny in mind- He had never had a place to go before, never had a destination. He had lived in this narrow compartment most of his life and only planned what he would do to avoid the traps behind him. Pell, Allison Reilly said; and deals; and it agreed with the rumors, that there were routes opening, hope-hope for marginers like him.

It was a joke of course, the best joke of a humorous career. A surprise for Allison Reilly-she would turn and stare open-mouthed when he tapped her on the shoulder in some crowded Pell Station bar. He knew what Lucy could do, and what he could do that great, modern s.h.i.+p of hers would never try- Stupid, she would say. That was so. But she would always think about it, that a little s.h.i.+p had run jump for jump against Dublin Again. And that was something of a mark to make in his life, if nothing else. There was, in a sense, more of Lucy left than there was of him... because there was no end to the traveling and no end to the demands she made on him. He had given all he had to keep her going; and now he wanted something out of her, for his pride. He had no Name left; Lucy had none. So he did this crazy thing-in its place.

He shut his eyes, yielded to that G that pressed him uncomfortably against the bulkhead, drowsing while he could. The pulser was taped to his wrist so that the first beep from the outrange buoy would bring him out of it. Station would have his head on a plate if they knew; but it was all the chance he had to go into jump with a little rest.

The pulser stung his wrist, brought him out of it when it only felt as if he had fallen asleep for a second. He lurched in blind fright for the controls and sat down and realized it was only the initial contact of the jump range buoy, and engine shutdown, on schedule.

Number one for jump, it told him; and advised him that there was another s.h.i.+p behind. A chill went up his back when he reckoned its bulk and its speed and the time. That was Dublin, outbound, overtaking him much more slowly, he suspected, than it could, because of their order of departure-because Lucy, ordinarily low priority, was close enough to the mark now that Dublin was compelled to hang back off her tail. The automated buoy was going to give them clearance one on the tail of the other because the buoy's information, transmitted from station central, indicated they were not going out in the same direction.

And that was wrong.

He checked his calculations, rechecked and triple-checked, lining everything up for an operation far more ticklish than calculating around the aberrations of Lucy's docking jets. Nullpoints moved, being more than planet-sized ma.s.s, in the complicated motions of stars. Comp had to allow for that. No one sane would head into jump alone, with a comp that had no backup, with trank and food and water taped to the board: he told himself so, making his prep, darting glances back to comp and scan, listening to the buoy beeping steadily, watching them track right down the line. He put the trank into his arm. It was time for that... to dull the senses which were about to be abused. Not one jump to face... but three; and if he missed on one of them, he reckoned, he would never know it.

There was speculation as to what it was to be strung out in the between, and speculation about what the human mind might start doing once the drugs wore off and there was no way back. There were tales of s.h.i.+ps which wafted in and out of jump like ghosts with eerie wails on the receiving com, d.a.m.ned souls that never came down and never made port and never died, in time that never ended... but those were drunken fancies, the kind of legends which wandered station docksides when crews were topping one another with pints and horror tales, deliberately frightening stationers and insystem s.p.a.cers, who believed every word of such things.

He did not, above all, want to think of them now. He had little enough time to do anything hereafter but keep Lucy tracking and keep his wits about him if things went wrong. If he made the smallest error in calculation he could spend a great deal of time at the first nullpoint getting himself sorted out, and he could lose Dublin. The transit, empty as he was, would use up a month or more subjective time; and Dublin would shave that... would laze her way across the s.p.a.ce of each nullpoint, maybe several days, maybe a week resting up, and head out again. Lucy did not have such leisure. He had no plans to dump all velocity where he was going, could not do that and hope to outpace Dublin's deeper st.i.tches into the between.

The trank was taking hold. He thought of Dublin behind him, and the hazard of it. He reached for the com, punched it in, narrow-focused the transmission, a matter between himself and that sleek huge merchanter that came on his tail. "Dublin Again, this is US 48-335 Y Lucy, number one for jump. Advise you the buoy is in error. I'm bound for Pell. Repeat, buoy information is in error; I'm bound for Pell: don't crowd my departure."

Lucy's cold eye located the appropriate reference star, bracketed it, and he saw that The terror he ought to feel eased into a bland, tranked consciousness in which death itself might be a sensation mildly entertaining. He started the jump sequence, pushed the b.u.t.ton which activated the generation vanes while the buoy squalled protest about his track-felt it start, the sudden, irreversible surety that bizarre things were happening to matter and to him, that things were racing faster and faster...

... conscious again and still tranked, hyper and sedated at once, a peculiar coincidence of mental states, in which he was aware of alarms ringing and Lucy doing her mechanical best to tell him she was carrying dangerous residual velocity. The power it took to dump had to be measured against the power it took to acquire-No dice throws. Calculate. Move the arm, punch the b.u.t.tons. Dump the speed down to margin or lose the s.h.i.+p on the next-Wesson's Point: present location, Wesson's Point, in the appropriate jump range. Entry, proceeding toward dark ma.s.s: plot bypa.s.s curve down to margin; remember the acquire/dump balance- "Sandy" That was Ross's comp's voice. "Sandy, wake up. Get the comp."

There were other voices, that sang to him through the hum of dissolution.

Dead, Sandor. All dead. Sandy, -wake up. Time to wake up. Vent!

... acceptable stress. Set to auto and trank out for time of pa.s.sage; set cus.h.i.+on and pulser; two hours two minutes crossing the nullpoint, set, mark. Dead, Sandor. All dead.

He came out of sleep with the pulser stinging his wrist and with an ache all the way to his heels, unbelted and leaned over the left side of the cus.h.i.+on to dryheave for a moment, collapsed over that armrest weighing far more than he thought he should and caring far less about survival than he should, because he had gone into this too tired, with his defenses too depressed, and the trank was not wearing off. He ought to be attending to controls. He had to get something to eat and drink, because he was going again in half an hour, and that was too little time.

He reached down and got one of the foil packets, managed with palsied fingers to get it open, and got the ripped corner to his lips -chewed food which had no taste but salt and copper-felt after the water and sucked mouthfuls of that, dropped the empty foil and the empty bottle, felt the food lying inert in his stomach, unwanted. He got the other shot home, beginning to trank out again... forced his eyes to focus on the boards, while Lucy shot her way along at a hairbreadth margin from disaster. Sometimes there was other junk ringing a nullpoint, a dark platelet of rocks and ice and maybe, maybe lost s.p.a.cers who used the deep dark of this place for a tomb...

He held his eyes open, alternately trying to throw up and trying to cope with the flow of data which comp itself had to sort and dump in a special mode because it came so fast... still blind, ripping along at a velocity that would fling even a smallish planet into his path before the computer could deal with it Lucy headed for the other side of the nullpoint's gravity well with manic haste, but in that close pa.s.s they had gotten bent as light was bent, and the calculations had to take that into account. He sat there ignoring the scan-blindness into which they were rus.h.i.+ng, trying to tell by the fluttering pa.s.sage of data whether the numbers converged, reality with his calculations, trying to learn if there was error in position, and how that was going to translate in jump.

And screaming in the back of his mind was the fact that he was playing tag with a very large s.h.i.+p which could play games with distances which Lucy barely made, in a time differential he could not calculate, and that on some quirk of malign fate he could still run into them, if they just happened to coincide out here. Dublin was either here now or out ahead of him, because his lead was going to erode and change to lag somewhere in the transit. s.h.i.+ps missed each other because s.p.a.ce was wide and coincidences were statistically more than rare; but not when two s.h.i.+ps were playing leapfrog in the same nullpoints...

Second jump... statistically better this time... a vast point, three large ma.s.ses in juxtaposition, a kink in the between that hauled s.h.i.+ps in and slung them along in a complicated warping... Dump it now, dump the speed down...

'Wake up, Sandy."

And his own voice, prerecorded: "The referent now is Pell's Star. Push the track reset, Sandy. The track reset..."

He located the appropriate b.u.t.ton, stared entranced at the screen... no rest possible here. The velocity was still extreme. His tongue was swollen in his mouth. He took another of the water bottles and drank, hurting. Food occurred to him; the thought revolted him; he reached nonetheless and located the packet, ate, because it was necessary to do.

He was crazy, that was what-he swallowed in mechanical, untasting gulps, unable to remember what b.u.t.tons he had pushed, trusting his own recorded voice giving him the sequences as comp needed them, trusting to that star he saw bracketed ahead of him, if that was not itself a trick of a mind which had come loose in time. He recalled Dublin; if Allison Reilly knew remotely what he was doing this moment she would curse him for the risk to her s.h.i.+p. He ought to dump more of the velocity he had, right now, because he was scared. Tripoint was deadly dangerous, with no margin for high-speed errors...

But Lucy was moving with the sureness of a woman with her mind made up, and he was caught in that horrible impetus and the solid power of her, because a long time ago she had hollowed him out and taken all there was of him. He moved in a continual blur of slow motion, while the universe pa.s.sed at much faster rates. There was debris in this place. He was pa.s.sing to zenith of the complicated accretion disc... so he hoped. If he had miscalculated, he died, in an impact that would make a minor, unnoticed light.

He dumped down: the recorded voice told him to. He obeyed. The data coming in sorted itself into more manic strings of numbers. He punched in when the voice told him, froze a segment, matched up-found a correspondence with his plotted course. He grinned to himself, still scared witless, human component in a near C projectile, and stared at the screens with trank-dulled eyes.

He kicked into Pell jump range with velocity that had the incoming-range buoy screaming its automated indignation at him, advising whatever lunatic had just come within its scan that he was traveling too fast and headed dead-on for trafficked zones.

Dump! it warned him, dopplered and restructured by his com. Its systems were hurling machine-to-machine warnings at Lucy's autoalert, which Lucy was primed to obey. She was kicking in the vanes in hard spurts, which s.h.i.+fted him in and out of reals.p.a.ce in bursts of flaring nausea. There were red lights everywhere until he hit the appropriate b.u.t.ton and confirmed the dump order Lucy was obeying.

Chapter IV.

The velocity fell away: some time yet before the scan image had time to be relayed by the buoy to Pell central, advising them that a s.h.i.+p was incoming, and double that time before central's message could come back to Lucy. Sandor extricated himself from his nest with small, numb movements, offended by the reek of his own body. His mouth tasted of copper and bile. His hands were stiff and refused coordinated movement. He rolled out of the cus.h.i.+on in the pit and hit the deck on his knees in a skittering of empty water bottles and foil papers sliding under his hand. "Wake up, Sandy," comp was telling him. He reached the keyboard still kneeling, hooked an arm over it and managed to code in the one zero one that stopped it, about the most that his numbed brain was capable of doing in straight sequence.

Wake up. Not that much time left before they would want answers out of him, before his absence from controls would be noticed. He had the pulser still on his wrist. He levered himself up by his arms on the counter, looked at the blurring lights and the keys, trying to recall the sequence that would put it on watch. Autopilot was still engaged: Lucy was following lane instructions from the buoy. That was all right.

He located the other control, while his stomach spasmed and his vision grayed, got the code in-no acceleration now. He could not have stood with any stress hauling at him. He groped for the edge of the counter at his right and worked his way up out of the pit, walked blind along the counter until he blinked clear on the lighted white of the corridor that led to maintenance storage, and the cubbyhole of a shower in the maintenance section. He peeled everything off that he was wearing, shoved it in the chute and hoped never to see it again, felt his way into the cabinet and leaned there while the jets blasted off filth and dead skin and shed hair. Soap. He lathered; found his razor in its accustomed place and shaved by feel, with his eyes shut and the water coursing over him. He felt alive again, at least marginally. He never wanted to leave the warmth and the cleanliness... could have collapsed to the floor of the cabinet and curled up and slept in the warm water.

No. Out again. There was not that much time. He shut the water off, staggered out into the chill air and gathered clothes from the locker there. He half-dried, pulled the coveralls on and wiped his wet hair back from his eyes. The pulser, waterproof, had not alerted him: Lucy was still all right. He went out into the corridor with an armload of towels and disinfectant and went back to clean up the pit, smothering the queasiness in his stomach.

He disposed of all the untidiness, another trip back to storage and disposal, then came back and fell into the cus.h.i.+on that stank now of disinfectant... shut his eyes, wilted into the contours, fighting sleep with a careful periodic fluttering of his eyelids.

They already had his ID, lying though that was. It was automatic in Lucy's computer squeal, never ceasing. He had the station scan image from the buoy, estimates of the positions of all the s.h.i.+ps in Pell System, large and small-and when he brought his mind to focus on that, on the uncommon number of them, a disturbance wended its way through his consciousness, a tiny ticking alarm at the scope of what he was seeing. s.h.i.+ps in numbers more than expectation. Traffic patterns, lanes in great complexity, shuttle routes for approach to the world of Downbelow, to moons and mining interests. A collection of merchanters, who got together to set rates and to threaten Union with strikes; who served Union ports and disdained the combines... That was all it had been. But it had grown, expanded beyond his recollections. Sol trade-sounded half fanciful, until now.

Harder to run a scam here, if they were short and overcrowded. Or it might even be easier, if station offices were too busy to run checks, if they were getting such an influx on the strength of these rumors that a s.h.i.+p with questionable papers could lose itself in the dataflow... no, it was just a matter of rethinking the approach and the tactics...

"This is Pell central," a sudden voice reached him, and the pulser stung him mercilessly, confusing him for the instant which to reach for first. He shut the pulser down, keyed in the mike, leaning forward. "You have come in at velocity above limit. Consult regulations regarding Pell operational restrictions, section 2, number 22. This is live transmission. Further instruction a.s.sumes you have brought your speed within tolerance and keep to lane. If otherwise, patrol will be moving on intercept and your time is limited to make appropriate response. Query why this approach? Identify immediately... We are now picking up your initial dump, Lucy. Please confirm ID and make all appropriate response."

It was all ancient chatter, from the moment of station's reception of his entry, the running monologue of lightbound com that a.s.sumed he could have begun talkback much, much earlier.

"We don't pick up voice, Lucy. Query why silence."

He reached lethargically for the com and punched in, frightened in this p.r.i.c.klishness on station's part. "This is Stevens' Lucy inbound on 4579 your zenith on buoy a.s.signed lane. I confirm your contact, Pell central. Had a little com trouble." This was a transparent lie, standard for any s.h.i.+p illicitly out of contact. "Please acknowledge reception." In his ear, Pell was still talking, constant flow now, telling him what it perceived so that he would know where he was on the timeline. "Appreciate your distress, Pell central. This is Stevens talking, of Stevens' Lucy, merchanter of Wyatt's Star Combine, US 48-335 Y. Had a scare on entry, minor malfunction, put me out of contact a moment. I'm all right now. Had a backup engaged, no further difficulty. Please give approach and docking instructions. I'm solo on this run and wanting a sleepover, Pell central. I appreciate your a.s.sistance. Over."

Communication from Pell ran on, an overlapping jabber now, as the com board gave up trying to compress it and created two flows that would drive a sane man mad. He slumped in the seat which embraced him and held his aching bones, unforgiving even in its softest places. He blinked from time to time, kept his eyes open, to make sure the lines on the approach graph matched. He listened for key words out of the com flow, but Pell seemed convinced now that he was honest-still possible, another, dimmer voice insisted in his head, that some patrol s.h.i.+p could pop up out of nowhere, meaning business.

Station op, in the long hours, began to send him questions and instructions. He was on the verge of hallucinating. Once station queried him sharply, and he woke in a sweat, eyes scanning the instruments wildly, trying to find out where he was, how close-and too close, entering the zone of traffic.

"You all right, Lucy?" the voice was asking him. "Lucy, what's going on out there?"

"All right," he murmured. "I'm here. Receiving you clear. Say again, Pell central?"

Getting in was nightmare. It was like trying to line up a jump blind drunk. He stared slackjawed at the screens and did the hairbreadth lineup maneuvers on visual alone, which no larger s.h.i.+p could have dared try, but he was far too fuzzed to use comp and read it out, only to take its automated warnings, which never came. He was proud of himself with a manic satisfaction as he made the final touch, like the same drunk successfully walking a straight line: only one beep out of comp in the whole process, and Lucy nestled into the lockto dead center.

He was so satisfied he just sat there. Dockside com came on and told him to open his docking ports, and his hands were shaking so violently he had trouble getting the caps off the switches.

"This is Pell customs and dock security," another voice came through. "Have your papers ready for inspection."

He reached for com. "Pell customs, this is Stevens of Lucy. We've come in without cargo due to a scheduling foulup at Viking. You're welcome to check my holds. I'm Wyatt's Star Combine. I'm carrying just s.h.i.+p-consumption goods. Papers are ready." He tried to gather his nerves to face official questions, suddenly recalled the gold stored in a drop panel in the aftmost hold, and his stomach turned over. He reached and opened the docking access in answer to a blinking light and a repeated request from dock crews on the s.h.i.+elded-line channel, and his ears popped from the slight pressure change as the hatch opened. "Sorry, Pell dock control. Didn't mean to miss that adjustment. I'm a little tired."

A pause. "Lucy, this is Pell Dock Authority. Are you all right aboard? Do you need medical a.s.sistance?"

"Negative, Pell Dock Authority."

"Query why solo?"

He was too muddled to think. "Just limped in, Pell Dock." The fear was back, a knot clenched in the vicinity of his stomach. "This is a hired-crew s.h.i.+p. My last crew met relatives on Viking and ran out on me. I had no choice but to take her out myself; and I couldn't get cargo. I limped in all right, but I'm pretty tired."

There was a long silence. It frightened him as all thoughtful reactions did, and sent a charge of adrenalin through him. "Congratulations, then, Lucy. Lucky you got here at all. Any special a.s.sistance needed?"

"No, ma'am. Just want a sleepover. Except-is Reilly's Dublin at dock? Got a friend I want to find."

"That's affirmative on Dublin, Lucy. Been in dock two days. Any message?"

"No, I'll find her."

A silence. "Right, Lucy. We'll want to talk to you about dock charges, but we can do the paperwork tomorrow if you're willing to leave your s.h.i.+p under Pell Security seal."

"Yes, ma'am. But I need to come by your exchange and arrange credit"

A pause. "That was WSC, Lucy?"

"Wyatt's Star, yes, ma'am. A twenty, that's all. Just a drink, a sandwich, and a place to sleep. Want to open an account for WSC at Pell. Transfer of three thousand Union scrip. I can cover it."

Another pause. "No difficulty, Lucy. You just leave her open all the way and we'll put our own security on it while customs checks her. What's your Alliance ID?"

Apprehension flooded through him, rapid sort in a tired brain. "Don't have that, Pell Dock. I'm fresh from Unionside."

"Unionside number, then."

"686-543-5608."