“Well, we’re getting back into the area where our chart should be more accurate. This star system is on our charts, both your grampa’s and mine and that other one we don’t talk about.”
“That sounds good, Nelly. Why the long face?” Captain Drago said.
“Well, there should be a whole lot more star system here. At least nine planets, some really huge, and I only count four dinky rock ones. There also ought to be several old-style jumps and another fuzzy one besides the one we’re headed for. Somebody robbed this system blind in the last million or so years.
“A thirteen-billion-year-old universe,” Sulwan said with a sigh, “and something in the last million years wrecks this system and makes a mess of my fine navigation. Don’t you hate it when that happens?”
“Yes,” Captain Drago snapped. Clearly, the situation was way beyond where he wanted to hear jokes.
“Captain,” Nelly said timidly.
“Yes.” His words were sharp, but not quite sharp enough to take a head off . . . if Nelly had one.
“I think next jump, if you have Navigator Sulwan hold our revolutions to twenty per minute clockwise, that we should jump closer to the middle of the probability cone rather than the outside.”
“Wouldn’t that put us likely in Iteeche territory?” the captain said.
“Yes, sir. But we’re more likely to get help there than we are out in vacant space,” the computer said.
The captain gnawed his lower lip some more and glanced at Kris.
“We do have an Imperial Representative if we have to do some talking. And you said it’s essential that we make a report to King Raymond. The risk seems worth it to me,” Kris said.
“Be it on your head,” he said. “Sulwan, hold our revolutions to twenty clockwise next jump.”
“Yes, sir.”
An acceleration of .05 gee is close enough to zero gee to hardly make a difference, but it’s far enough to make moving around a potential pain. The high-gee carts were brought out, locked down at stations, and most of the crew spent their time sleeping at their battle stations.
Kris ordered her laser crews to stay at their battle stations with no more than half sleeping at any time.
There was something about the hairs on the back of her neck. Maybe it was the not-quite-zero gee. Maybe it was being this close to Iteeche territory.
Or maybe it was just that her hair was growing out during this long cruise, and she needed a haircut.
Whatever it was Kris stayed at her battle station and waited for whatever came next.
But the only thing that came her way was the next jump, exactly eighteen hours later.
53
“We’ve got a gas bag nearby,” was the first thing Chief Beni reported after the jump.
“We’re in Iteeche space,” was the next thing Kris heard. That came from Nelly.
“Pass Sulwan the coordinates of our refueling stop,” the captain ordered.
Sulwan was already working on a course. She did not look happy. “We’ll need to decelerate at 3.2 gees if we’re to make orbit.”
“Engineer,” the captain said. “Can you give us 3.2 gees deceleration?”
“If that’s what you need, that’s what you’ll get. How soon?”
“High-gee deceleration in one minute,” Sulwan announced to all hands. “Three-point-two gees as fast as we can make it happen.”
“You’ll have it in sixty seconds,” Engineering assured them.
“Good,” the captain said, then went on. “Are there any ships or colonies in the system?”
“No,” both Nelly and the chief reported at the same time.
“Thank a merciful Allah for a small favor,” Sulwan whispered. Hers was very likely only one of many prayers whispered around the ship. Kris even offered up a thanks To-Whom-It-May-Concern.
Then they got down to the real work at hand.
Decelerating at 3.2 gees put everyone in high-gee stations for the duration of that burn. The engineers monitored the consumption of reaction mass and advised Captain Drago that they would need to tap into the ship’s water supply.
“Any trashy novels, worn clothes, anything you’ve been thinking of getting rid of, now would be the time to dump them,” was passed through the boat.
“Princess, would you mind touching base with your Iteeche associate and letting me know how close this system is to a main shipping lane?” Captain Drago asked. “Also, let’s get the word out to all hands that once we park this wreck in orbit, I want us to go back to being a hole in space. If something drops through one of those jump points, I don’t want them spotting us before we spot them.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Chief Beni said, and started checking his board for any noisemakers on the ship. He hadn’t had an active sensor going since they ditched their pursuers.
Kris decided now would be a good time to pay a visit to Ron, and got her high-gee station rolling toward Iteeche country. That was no mean feat.
The Wasp was in desperate need of a yard period, and steering a motorized lounge chair through the ship was not the breeze it had been in days gone by. Kris, however, did manage to arrive at her goal with only a few new scrapes on her paint job.
There was still a Marine guard outside the hatch at the entry to the Iteeche quarters.
He called inside and got immediate permission to enter. That was nice, but maneuvering Kris’s high-gee station over the knee knockers was slow going. However, with her bum knee, Kris was not about to try walking around at over triple her weight.
Inside, it turned out the Iteeche were not taking chances either. All three of them were floating in tubs of water.
“How long will we be stuck in here?” came from the translation computer that Kris had given Ron. Who complained was hard to say. Floating naked in supportive water, the three of them didn’t look all that different.
No, Kris could tell them apart. Ron was clearly the younger, lacking many of the wrinkles that covered the others. His coloring was also healthier, although Kris would be hard put to explain that conclusion.
Of the two older Iteeche, one had tossed Kris a casual salute, a touch of one of his four arms to his forehead. She’d bet money the respectful one was Ted, the Navy officer. That left only the Army officer to be the one complaining.
“We expect to make orbit around the closest gas giant in less than twenty-four hours,” Kris said.
“Will we have to go through another one of those smashups?” the grumpy one demanded.
“He means the shake, rattle, and roll when you refueled the ship,” Ted corrected from his Navy experience.
“We’re going to try to avoid that this time,” Kris said.
“Then how are you going to capture the reaction mass?” Ron asked.
“It’s going to be interesting, but we hope to fly the balloot through the upper atmosphere using three of the ship’s launches.”
“That is not possible,” Ted said. “You cannot fly anything through those clouds in any kind of formation, and tying them together is just inviting disaster.”
The coloring around Ron’s neck showed serious concern.
“That’s what everyone tells me. But the alternative is to risk the Wasp in another session of cloud dancing, and none of us wants to do that.”
“Who will be flying the balloot?” Ron asked.
“Only volunteers. And crazy ones at that,” Kris assured him.
“So it is you and two others,” he said.
“Yep,” Kris agreed.
“It might not be the impossibility for them that this would be for us,” Ted said.
“You know something I don’t?” Kris asked.