“Let’s not go off with only half our jets spitting,” he said mildly. “Survey doesn’t sell worlds which can’t be exploited—”
”Not to the Companies, no,” Wilcox commented, “but who’s going to listen to a kick from a Free Trader—unless he’s Cofort!”
“I still say,” Van Rycke continued in the same even tone, “that we ought to explore a little farther—”
“Yes?” Jellico’s eyes held a spark of smouldering anger. “You want us to go there and be stranded? She’s burnt off—so she’s got to be written off our books. You know there’s never any life left on a Forerunner planet that was assaulted—”
“Most of them are just bare rock now,” Van Rycke said reasonably. “It looks to me as if Limbo didn’t get the full treatment. After all—what do we know about the Forerunners—precious little! They were gone centuries, maybe even thousands of years, before we broke into space. They were a great race, ruling whole systems of planets, and they went out in a war which left dead worlds and even dead suns swinging in its wake. All right.
“But maybe Limbo was struck in the last years of that war, when their power was on the wane. I’ve seen the other blasted worlds—Hades and Hel, Sodom, and Satan, and they’re nothing but cinders. This Limbo still has vegetation. And because it isn’t as badly hit as those others I think we might just have something—”
He is winning his point, Dane told himself—noticing the change of expression on the faces around the table. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to believe that we’ve been taken so badly, because we want to hope that we can win even yet. Only Captain Jellico looked stubbornly unconvinced.
“We can’t take the chance,” he repeated, his lips in an obstinate line. “We can fuel this ship for one trip—one trip. If we make it to Limbo and there’s no return cargo—well,” he slapped his hand on the table, “you know what that will mean—dirt-side for us!”
Steen Wilcox cleared his throat with a sharp rasp which drew their attention. “Any chance of a deal with Survey?” he wanted to know.
Kamil laughed, scorn more than amusement in the sound. ”Do the Feds ever give up any cash once they get their fingers on it?” he inquired.
No one answered him until Captain Jellico got to his feet, moving heavily as if some of the resilience had oozed out of his tough body.
“We’ll see them in the morning. You willing to try it, Van?”
The Cargo-Master shrugged. “All right, I’ll tag along. Not that it’ll do us any good.”
“Blasted—right off course—”
Dane stood again at the open hatch looking out into a night made almost too bright by Naxos’ twin moons. Kamil’s words were not directed to him, he was sure. And a moment later that was confirmed by an answer from Rip.
“I don’t call luck bad, man, ’til it up and slaps me in the face. Van had an idea—that planet wasn’t blasted black. You’ve seen pictures of Hel and Sodom, haven’t you? They’re cinders, as Van said. This Limbo, now—it shows green. Did you ever think, Ali, what might happen if we walked on to a world where some of the Forerunners’ stuff was lying around?”
“Hm—” the idea Rip presented struck home. “But would trading rights give us ownership of such a find?”
“Van would know—that’s part of his job. Why—” for the first tune Rip must have sighted Dane at the hatch, “here’s Thorson. How about it, Dane? If we found Forerunner material, could we claim it legally?”
Dane was forced to admit that he didn’t know. But he determined to hunt up the answer in the Cargo-Master’s tape library of rules and regulations.
“I don’t think that the question has ever come up,” he said dubiously. “Have they ever found usable Forerunner remains—anything except empty ruins? The planets on which their big installations must have been are the burnt off ones—”
“I wonder,” Kamil leaned back against the hatch door and looked at the winking lights of the town, “what they were like. All of the strictly human races we have encountered are descended from Terran colonies. And the five non-human ones we know are all as ignorant of the Forerunners as we are. If they left any descendants we haven’t contacted them yet. And—” he paused for a long moment before he added, “did you ever think it is just as well we haven’t found any of their installations? It’s been exactly ten years since the Crater War—”
His words trailed off into a thick silence which had a faint menacing quality Dane could not identify, though he understood what Kamil must be aiming at. Terrans fought, viciously, devastatingly. The Crater War on Mars had been only the tail end of a long struggle between home planet and colonist across the void. The Federation kept an uneasy peace, the men of Trade worked frantically to make that permanent before another and more deadly conflict might wreck the whole Service and perhaps end their own precarious civilization.
What would happen if weapons such as the Forerunners had wielded in their last struggle, or even the knowledge of such weapons, fell into the wrong Terran hands? Would Sol become a dead star circled by burnt off cinder worlds?
“Sure, it might cause trouble if we found weapons,” Rip had followed the same argument. “But they had other things besides arms. And maybe on Limbo—”
Kamil straightened. “Maybe on Limbo they left a treasure house stored with bags of Thork gems and Lamgrim silk—or their equivalent, sure. But I don’t think the Captain is in the mood to hunt for it. We’re twelve men and one ship—how long do you think it would take us to comb a whole planet? And our scout flitters eat fuel too, remember? How’d you like to be stranded dirt-side on some planet like this Naxos—have to turn farmer to get food? You wouldn’t care for it.”
Dane had to admit inwardly that he certainly wouldn’t care for that. And if the Queen did set down so—locked in some port for lack of funds to get her off-world again—he wouldn’t even have his back pay as a meagre stake to tide him over until he could get another ship. The others must be thinking of that also.
Sometime later Dane lay awake on his narrow bunk amazed at how quickly all their hopes had crashed. If Limbo had only proved to be what they first thought—or even if they only had a big enough reserve to go and inspect their purchase—But suddenly Dane sat up—there had been that other Trader who had bid against Van Rycke at the auction. Could be be persuaded to take Limbo off their hands at a big discount?
But with a burnt off, he wouldn’t want it even at half what they had paid Survey. The risk was too great—no one would make a dry-run on such short odds. Only a man with Cofort’s backing could take a chance—and Cofort had shown no interest in this particular “bargain”.
In the morning it was a glum crew who trailed in and out of the mess cabin. All of them carefully avoided the end of the table where a grim Captain Jellico sat sipping at a cup of Mura’s own secret brew which was usually served only at moments of rejoicing. This was no celebration—it must be that the steward believed they needed heartening.
Van Rycke came in, his tunic sealed trimly from his belt to his broad chin, his winged officer’s cap perched on his head, ready for a town visit. Jellico grunted and pushed away his cup as he arose to join him. And so daunting was the Captain’s scowl that not one of the others dared to wish them good luck on their mission.
Dane climbed down into the cargo hold, studying its empty space and making a few measurements of his own. If they were fortunate enough to get a pay load he wanted to be ready for its stowing. The hold was in two sections—a wide chamber which took in almost a third of the ship and a small cabin sized space above it in which choice or unusual items could be stored.
In addition, on the same level, was the tiny room where was shelved and boxed their “trade goods”, small items used to attract the attention of savages or backward civilizations—gadgets, mechanical toys, trinkets of glass, wire, enamelled metal. Dane, trying out his memorization of the store catalogue, made the rounds of the cases. He had been taken on two tours of instruction by Van Rycke, but he had not yet lost his sense of wonder at the kinds and quality of the goods, and the display of knowledge and imagination of the Cargo-Master who had assembled this collection. Here were the presents for chieftains and petty kings, the exciters which would bring the people of primitive villages flocking to view such off-world wonders. Of course the supply was strictly limited, but it had been chosen with such care, such insight into humanoid and X-Tee psychology, that it must go a long way to win customers for the Queen.