“I see your problem,” I said. “Your sales will suffer if it gets out that something can reach through one of your hulls and smash a crew to bloody smears. But where do I come in?”
“We want to repeat the experiment of Sonya Laskin and Peter Laskin. We must find—”
“With me?”
“Yes. We must find out what it is that our hulls cannot stop. Naturally you may—”
“But I won’t.”
“We are prepared to offer one million stars.”
I was tempted, but only for a moment. “Forget it.”
“Naturally you will be allowed to build your own ship, starting with a No. 2 General Products hull.”
“Thanks, but I’d like to go on living.”
“You would dislike being confined. I find that We Made It has reestablished the debtor’s prison. If General Products made public your accounts—”
“Now, just a—”
“You owe money on the close order of five hundred thousand stars. We will pay your creditors before you leave. If you return—” I had to admire the creature’s honesty in not saying “When.” “—we will pay you the residue. You may be asked to speak to news commentators concerning the voyage, in which case there will be more stars.”
“You say I can build my own ship?”
“Naturally. This is not a voyage of exploration. We want you to return safely.”
“It’s a deal.” I said.
After all, the puppeteer had tried to blackmail me. What happened next would be its own fault.
They built my ship in two weeks flat. They started with a No. 2 General Products hull, just like the one around the Institute of Knowledge ship, and the lifesystem was practically a duplicate of the Laskins’, but there the resemblance ended. There were no instruments to observe neutron stars. Instead, there was a fusion motor big enough for a Jinx warliner. In my ship, which I now called Skydiver, the drive would produce thirty gees at the safety limit. There was a laser cannon big enough to punch a hole through We Made It’s moon. The puppeteer wanted me to feel safe, and now I did, for I could fight and I could run. Especially I could run.
I heard the Laskins’ last broadcast through half a dozen times. Their unnamed ship had dropped out of hyperspace a million miles above BVS-1. Gravity warp would have prevented their getting closer in hyperspace. While her husband was crawling through the access tube for an instrument check, Sonya Laskin had called the Institute of Knowledge. “. . . We can’t see it yet, not by naked eye. But we can see where it is. Every time some star or other goes behind it, there’s a little ring of light. Just a minute. Peter’s ready to use the telescope . . .”
Then the star’s mass had cut the hyperspatial link. It was expected, and nobody had worried—then. Later, the same effect must have stopped them from escaping from whatever attacked them into hyperspace.
When would-be rescuers found the ship, only the radar and the cameras were still running. They didn’t tell us much. There had been no camera in the cabin. But the forward camera gave us, for one instant, a speed-blurred view of the neutron star. It was a featureless disk the orange color of perfect barbecue coals, if you know someone who can afford to burn wood. This object had been a neutron star a long time.
“There’ll be no need to paint the ship,” I told the president.
“You should not make such a trip with the walls transparent. You would go insane.”
“I’m no flatlander. The mind-wrenching sight of naked space fills me with mild but waning interest. I want to know nothing’s sneaking up behind me.”
The day before I left, I sat alone in the General Products bar, letting the puppeteer bartender make me drinks with his mouths. He did it well. Puppeteers were scattered around the bar in twos and threes, with a couple of men for variety, but the drinking hour had not yet arrived. The place felt empty.
I was pleased with myself. My debts were all paid, not that that would matter where I was going. I would leave with not a minicredit to my name, with nothing but the ship . . .
All told, I was well out of a sticky situation. I hoped I’d like being a rich exile.
I jumped when the newcomer sat down across from me. He was a foreigner, a middle-aged man wearing an expensive night-black business suit and a snow-white asymmetrical beard. I let my face freeze and started to get up.
“Sit down, Mr. Shaeffer.”
“Why?”
He told me by showing me a blue disk. An Earth government ident. I looked it over to show I was alert, not because I’d know an ersatz from the real thing.
“My name is Sigmund Ausfaller,” said the government man. “I wish to say a few words concerning your assignment on behalf of General Products.”
I nodded, not saying anything.
“A record of your verbal contract was sent to us as a matter of course. I noticed some peculiar things about it. Mr. Shaeffer, will you really take such a risk for only five hundred thousand stars?”
“I’m getting twice that.”
“But you only keep half of it. The rest goes to pay debts. Then there are taxes . . . But never mind. What occurred to me was that a spaceship is a spaceship, and yours is very well armed and has powerful legs. An admirable fighting ship, if you were moved to sell it.”
“But it isn’t mine.”
“There are those who would not ask. On Canyon, for example, or the Isolationist party of Wunderland.”
I said nothing.
“Or you might be planning a career of piracy. A risky business, piracy, and I don’t take the notion seriously.”
I hadn’t even thought about piracy. But I’d have to give up on Wunderland.
“What I would like to say is this, Mr. Shaeffer. A single entrepreneur, if he were sufficiently dishonest, could do terrible damage to the reputation of all human beings everywhere. Most species find it necessary to police the ethics of their own members, and we are no exception. It occurred to me that you might not take your ship to the neutron star at all, that you would take it elsewhere and sell it. The puppeteers do not make invulnerable war vessels. They are pacifists. Your Skydiver is unique.
“Hence, I have asked General Products to allow me to install a remote-control bomb in the Skydiver. Since it is inside the hull, the hull cannot protect you. I had it installed this afternoon.