“Never. I listen to everything any crewman wants to tell me. You know that, Joe, if you’ll stop and think.”
“What about the woman on board, then? Didn’t we all tell you that was asking for bad luck, that nothing good could come of a woman on a ship?” There was a mutter of agreement from the other crewmen, Robert Doonan and Patrick O’Rourke. “And hasn’t there been bad luck,” Munroe went on, “and more than bad? That scientist fellow dead, and Sean as well.”
“Sean Wilgus didn’t have to die. It was from his own actions. He killed Dr. Hamilton, and he would have killed me, too.”
“Maybe. But Sean was a good crewman, you’ve said so yourself.”
“And I’ll say it again, Joe. Sean was first-rate.”
“So what do you call that, if not bad luck? A good man gone, with the Cuchulain ready to fall apart, and every able-bodied crewman needed to hold it together and fly.”
“I know that better than anyone.” Shaker didn’t raise his voice, but his tone became more intense. “Hold your distance, Joe Munroe, and listen to me.”
The floor above my head sounded with a sudden clatter of heavy boots. I was in agony. What was going on up there? If only I could see.
“Think, before you threaten me.” It was Danny Shaker again. “Wasn’t I the one who said we needed something more than the usual trip out, something profitable enough for us to afford a complete refit? Didn’t we all agree on that, long before we left Erin?—back even when Paddy Enderton was aboard with us. Didn’t you agree with it, and drink with me to fame and fortune?”
“You had the golden tongue, and you know it. Promising us fortune, more money and women than we knew what to do with—”
“Not women, Joe. I never said one word about women. That came from Paddy, and your own ideas about what he’d found. No, what I promised you was simple: triple wages, guaranteed, and a shot at something more valuable than anything on Erin. I said we’d have a shot at the Godspeed Drive.”
“Godspeed Drive!” There was contempt in Joe Munroe’s voice, and again Doonan and O’Rourke were muttering in agreement, louder than before. Even without seeing them, I could sense the swing in mood.
“Aye, you heard me, the Godspeed Drive,” Shaker said. He lowered his voice, so I could only just hear him. “You don’t understand, even now, what that drive would mean to anyone who had it. All of you, I want you to think about it for a minute. Imagine this: Instead of the poor old Cuchulain, staggering along through space for months at a time, you’d have a ship that could whip across the whole Maveen system in seconds. From Erin to Antrim, like that. “I heard him snap his fingers. “And more than the span of the Forty Worlds. If you couldn’t find what you wanted here, you’d be able to take a hop to another star, and find it there. With that sort of power, think about what it would bring to you and me and the rest of the crew. We wouldn’t just do well on Erin. We’d control the supply of every rare material. We’d make every other ship in the system obsolete. We’d own the whole Forty Worlds, and everything in them. You talk about wanting women? People would find you women by the hundred—by the thousand—and push them at you, for a sniff at the sort of power we’d have. All of that, and more. It can be ours—it will be ours, once we get to the Godspeed Base. That’s my goal now, as it has been all along: Find Godspeed Base, and lay our hands on a ship with the Godspeed Drive.”
I thought it was a great speech, but it didn’t work.
“Which we’ll never do.” It was a new voice, and so wheezy and throaty it could only be Robert Doonan. “I don’t know where it is and what it is, this hellhole you dragged us to, but I know one thing. It’s no more your damned ‘Godspeed Base’ than I’m the Skibbereen Whore. As for that rotten kid, the one who gave us the coordinates to come here and has had us running all over in the rain and mud for the past two days until we’re ready to drop… if ever I set eyes on him again, I’ll slit his skinny throat.”
Doonan stopped, but only to start coughing.
“I hate to say this, but Joe and Robbie are right.” It was Pat O’Rourke, his deep voice rumbling. “This can’t be the Godspeed Base. Couldn’t ever have been. We’ve been talking, the three of us, and we agree you’ve done us wrong. It’s time for a change. A change of leader.”
There was a long silence. I strained my ears, and heard no more than air pumps and the background hum of electrical equipment.
Something was going to happen, I just knew it. But what?
“So it’s come to that, has it?” said Danny Shaker at last.
“It has,” Pat O’Rourke replied, and the other two murmured assent.
“Well, I’ll tell you something, Pat. I’m not a man to stay where he’s not wanted. We’ll go on back to the Cuchulain, and you and the rest can pick your own chief. But while we’re doing that, I’m going to give all of you a few things to stew on. First, I never said this had to be Godspeed Base. Think back, and you’ll recall what I did say. This was a place that we had to go to, because it could lead us to find the Godspeed Drive. It was, and if we just keep going, I say it will. Second, you’d better decide who’s going to do the hard thinking for you when it’s not my responsibility.”
“We’ll manage.” But Munroe didn’t sound too confident.
“You will? Then start with this one, Joe Munroe. You’ve been looking for a world full of women, a place to make you all rich. How? You’ll have your fun with any women you find, that I believe. But women can’t make you rich if you leave them out here in the Maze. Are you proposing to ship a load of them away on the Cuchulain ?—you, who was the first to say that even one woman on board brought nothing but bad luck. No? What, then? Are you proposing to set up some sort of pleasure camp out here in the middle of nowhere, where other ships will come for a bit of bought fun? I could organize that sort of thing, yes, and make it work. But are you sure that you could? Just how are you going to become rich? I can answer that question, and see a dozen ways to turn women in the Maze into real wealth on Erin. But can you, Joe?”
There was a long silence, until finally Danny Shaker continued: “And even that’s not the whole story. You see, there’s something else you don’t know, something that happened when you were off on this last run around on the surface—a chase, you’ll remember, that I told you before you left was going to be a big waste of time and effort. I walked a little way to see what conditions on the ground were like, but I stayed close to the ship. And guess who was waiting here for me when I got back.”
I heard Shaker’s footsteps approaching. The hatch above my head was suddenly lifted, and Danny Shaker’s face appeared in the opening. “Come on out, Jay,” he said. “There’s a few people who’d like to talk to you.”
The way the crewmen reacted to my appearance, I thought I was going to be murdered on the spot. Only surprise kept them fixed where they stood.
“Jay’s been down there cleaning up the lower hold,” Shaker said. “Everybody’s favorite job.” And then to me. “Here. Show the lads this, and tell them what you told me.”
He was holding out the navigation aid. I took it with hands that trembled.
“This world,” I said. “Paddy’s Fortune—it isn’t Godspeed Base, and there’s no Godspeed Drive here. But you have to come here first, because this”—I held out the navaid—“gives directions as to how to get to the real Godspeed Base from here. If we hadn’t come here first, we wouldn’t know where to go next.”