Horn looked up at the sky. The Theban had been locked on to the grid from an unusually low altitude, but it took time to bring her to ground. Horn knew it was very likely the tramp had come down some or all of the route the Danae was to traverse. The Danae had long since lifted off from Canna II. She'd have headed towards the Inner Rim. At Thotmes she'd have landed and lifted off again to thread her way through the Beryliines. That was tricky astrogation, but the ship lane through was well surveyed and beaconed. After landing on Wolkim for passengers and freight, she'd turn and come down the Rhymer passage and triumphantly to Formalhaut where Horn was waiting.
She should be safe in all this journeying, and Horn knew it; but he was nevertheless uneasy. It was the sort of unease a man gets when he knows something about space. It was Horn's profession to design space-drive engines. Designed, as such things were, for specific hulls, engines were no longer separate mechanisms but parts of the hull itself. And they were trustworthy. Space travel was recognized as safe. Even large financial institutions entrusted enormous sums in interstellar credit notes to space transportation. Which meant much more safety than passenger traffic required. When ships were truisted to carry money, they had to be safe indeed!
Nowadays ships didn't even carry engineer officers. They carried auxiliary drives instead. There hadn't been an engine failure in a modern ship in scores of years, and anyhow there weren't enough qualified men to ride uselessly through the void, waiting for accidents that didn't happen. So Horn wasn't worried about the Danae's drive. He worried about space itself.
Space wasn't empty. Accidents could happen despite totally trustworthy ship engines. The stellar population of the galaxy wasn't only bright and shining suns, warning passing ships of their existence and the planets and meteor streams that might circle them. There were dark stars too, and unfortunately they were much more numerous than bright ones. There were gravitational stresses, where space should be clear. There were dust clouds too small to be detected until a ship was almost upon them. And there were streams of meteorites in motion - it couldn't be said they were in orbit - between wholly separated suns.
So Horn worried. Ships did sometimes vanish in space as they did on planetary seas. Gravitational stresses corresponded to ocean currents throwing well-found ships off course. Minute dust clouds were like hidden rocks or shoals. And meteor streams were like icebergs or derelicts floating awash, into which ships could crash to their destruction. There were still definite dangers in between the stars. But disasters were rare. With surveyed ship lanes and beacons marking them, with patrollings of even the best known for new dangers that might develop, with elaborate systems of warnings to mariners of space - why travel between the stars was no more dangerous than ocean voyages had been back in the days of sailing ships.
But that was enough to make Horn worry, with Ginny on the way to marry him. When he thought of Ginny, his sensations were magnificent. So he worried, absurdly and to no purpose.
The grid operatorwas sitting upright now. A lot of the job of landing a ship was pure routine, but a careless operator could do plenty of harm. This man, though, was skilled. He did as little as possible, leaving all that he could to the grid itself. Still, there was a certain necessary deftness in the way he let the self-operating devices do the routine part, while he took over and with practised judgment did those parts that required a man's experience.
A great streak of light shot skyward. High, high up, there was a flicker of silvery reflection. It came down and down, enlarged, became an object with the powerful light beam following it. It was a ship. It landed. Then the blindingly bright lights dimmed and went out. The ship was a small, squat, battered tramp ship of space, antiquated in design and firmly fixed upon its landing fins.
An exit port opened. Three men came down the side ladder of the tramp. They reached the tarmac and moved towards the control office. The spaceport light cast a peculiar yellowish glow upon them.
"You're in for an argument," said Horn. "They're coming to insist on immediate repairs. It sounded that way, anyhow."
"So what?" demanded the operator. "Those characters come in from space when it's noon, ship time, but way before dawn at the spaceport here. If they have to wait, they have to wait!"
The three figures trudged towards the grid control office. The operator said, "One of 'em's carrying a walkie-talkie. What's that for?"
"Privacy," said Horn. "Anybody could pick up a ship-to-ground conversation. Maybe this skipper wants to have a very private chat with you. He may offer you a bribe."
The operator grunted. Again there was stillness all about the airport. Innumerable lights shone unwinkingly, their colour and steadiness contrasting with even the brightest of twinkling stars in the sky overhead. The operator and the guards at the spaceport gate would be the only men on duty anywhere around. Horn was probably the only man inside the spaceport who wasn't there on night watch. He'd stopped to make a necessarily futile query about the Danae, because Ginny was aboard her. There was no visible movement anywhere except the three men trudging across the glistening black tarmac in the yellow glow of the spaceport lights.
There was a clicking voice. A recorded voice said, "Log entry?"
The operator said, "Log note: space tramp Theban requested emergency landing; reason, engine trouble. Engines apparently over-age and failing. Landed. That's all."
There was another click. The operator had proved himself awake on night watch and the landing of the Theban was recorded, with the time. The time the Theban was aground would be charged for, of course.
The three trudging figures were very near, below the office. They went out of sight. A buzzer reported them at the ground-floor door. The operator pressed the door-opening button. Footsteps sounded, coming up. A scowling red-haired man in soiled garments entered the office. He carried a walkie-talkie. Two even more soiled men followed him.
"I'm from the Theban," said the red-headed man truculently. "We're in a hurry. We need some repairs quick. I came to make a deal. How about some action?"
"Maybe you can get the action, come morning," said the operator, "but not earlier."
The red-headed man said, "We want it now. How much?"
"No deal," said the operator. "It's out of the question. And I can't lift you off again after an emergency landing without a survey of the repairs needed and done. Those are orders."
The red-headed man scowled. He repeated, "How much?"
Horn interposed. "I listened to the communicator while your drive was running. It's an old Riccardo drive, isn't it?"
The red-haired man stared at him coldly. "Yes. Riccardo. Type VI. What of it?"
"It's pretty old," said Horn mildly. "You should have an engineer aboard. When Riccardo drives were in use, every ship carried an engineer."
"We've got an engineer," said the red-headed man angrily. "He's no good. He says we need repairs he can't make."
"Judging by the noise those engines make," said Horn, "he's quite right. My guess would be that your phase separator is about gone. It's a complicated piece of equipment. It would take a very good man to do anything with it. If your engineer won't try to patch it, he's got sense. You'll find that even repair shops would rather work on modern engines. They know them better."