For a very considerable period, then, he alternated between time in and out of overdrive. For as long as the pirate stumblingly tried to follow, Trent ran the Hecla on a zigzag pattern of tracks with which his ancestors in the last two wars on Earth were familiar. They'd used it to thwart submarines. Captain Trent of the Yarrow and the Hecla used it to elude a pirate.
It worked very well. In due time he made a planet-fall on the world of Manaos, and again in due time its landing-grid sent up fumbling, nudging fields of force, and they locked onto the Hecla and drew her down to ground.
And there Trent adopted the manners and customs of businessmen. He behaved with great sedateness. He reported to the spaceport authorities that he'd brought in the salvaged Hecla. She'd been attacked by pirates. A full account of the event was on file on the planet Sira. She'd been abandoned by her captain and crew because she was disabled, with her overdrive and Lawlor units useless, her air gone, and the return of the pirate to be anticipated. An account of this was also on file on Sira. He, Trent, had found and salvaged her. He resigned her now to the custody of the Admiralty Court on Manaos, making due claim for salvage on the ship and her cargo.
And then he mentioned negligently that he had twelve members of the pirate's crew welded into an emptied cargo hold, to whom food and water had been supplied through small openings since their capture. He'd be glad to have them taken off his hand. And then he asked if by any chance his proper ship the Yarrow had come into port on Manaos.
She hadn't.
There was great enthusiasm on Manaos over the capture of the pirates. An imposing array of police in ground-cars and with copters flying overhead went to the spaceport to receive them from Trent. There were mobs in the street to observe the cavalcade. Other crowds tried to crash the spaceport gate to watch as the police went into the Hecla to remove the prisoners. Trent and his crewmen identified them separately—they'd make formal depositions about them later—and then let the police bring them out of the cargo hold.
After nearly two weeks' imprisonment with no coddling, the prisoners were not prepossessing. They were unshaven and disheveled and repulsive. But above all they were defiant.
Stridently and with fury, they announced to news cameras that they would not be hanged. Their shipmates and their ship's companion pirate vessels would be working from this moment to gather hostages for their safety. They'd take tens of dozens of spacemen and space travelers prisoner and hold them. If anything happened to the captive pirates, much more and worse would befall the prisoners the pirates would take. The un-piratical Pleiad worlds could count, rasped the prisoners, on having not less than a dozen crewmen and passengers in space murdered for every pirate punished. There would be picture-tapes, presently, of the details of sample pirate captives being killed, to show precisely what would happen on a larger scale if Trent's captives were harmed.
These defiances, of course, were broadcast live to every vision-screen on the planet. Then small and very agile space craft took to space and vanished, bound for the other Pleiad worlds. They took with them the highest value in cargo such minute space craft could carry. It was news. They'd be paid so extravagantly for news that they felt the risk of themselves being captured by pirates was justified.
The twelve prisoners were carried by helicopter to an official prison, since their defiance meant danger to them if they were carried through the streets. Then police had to be posted about the Hecla to protect Trent from admirers and still more from newsmen.
He was practically besieged in the Hecla for three days. Then the cordon of camera-carrying watchers more or less diminished, because the Hecla's salvage crew was at large upon the town and were much more exciting sources of news. They'd originally slipped out of the ship to spend their wages. But they found they couldn't. They were everywhere surrounded by admirers who wouldn't let them spend their money. People gloated because somebody had been victorious over a pirate ship, the victory consisting of escape from it and the use of police-type weapons upon a dozen of its crew. The men who'd salvaged the Hecla found that they had innumerable friends who wanted to buy them drinks and bask in their society. They even found themselves possessed of vast charm to the ladies they met about the spaceport. They told highly embroidered tales of pirates and piracy and deeds of derring-do, and everybody was convinced that the age of piracy was at an end.
Trent waited for the Yarrow. He found himself less popular than his crewmen. They, at least, said nothing discouraging to anybody. But Trent did. Asked for advice about ships taking to space again, he pointed out that he'd cost one pirate ship some men. That was all. There might be more than one pirate ship. He was inclined to think, he said curtly, that the planets of a given star-group should cooperate and establish something like an armed force to make piracy unprofitable. He didn't think that impractical, but he did not think that his own personal salvage of one ship the pirates had disabled justified anyone else in lifting off ground. Not yet.
His opinion was too sensible to make a good news story. In the first week after he brought the Hecla to ground, no less than three previously grounded ships left the Manaos spaceport to attempt business as usual but at higher prices among the stars. During the second week, four more left for emptiness. In the third week—when he was beginning to worry about the Yarrow—four more lifted off. The same thing was undoubtedly happening through the Pleiad group as the news of Trent's achievement spread. He wasn't happy about it. When the Yarrow finally came into port, long after sundown and with the mate in command, the mate reported stolidly that he'd completed the trading deals Trent had arranged on Sira. He felt that he could have traded much more and at a higher profit but for the news that tiny news-carrying craft were spreading energetically through the Pleiads.
"All kinds of ships are lifting off," said the mate stolidly. "They're racing to try to hit high-priced markets with their merchandise. That Miss… Miss Hale, she took passage on the Cytheria, bound first to Midway and then to Loren. She left port the same day we did. There's a letter for you."
He handed it over. Trent read it. He swore despairingly.
Long ago and away back in the succession of Captains Trent, a certain Captain Trent, after due reflection, decided that he'd made a mistake about the young lady he'd just bidden a decorous good-bye to on the quarterdeck of a ship her father owned. Having reflected, he decided that she shouldn't, after all, be allowed to return to a state of tutelage under her father. He was plainly not calculated to be a good influence on her. He was not a fit companion for her. He was positively not qualified to pass on so important a matter as who should be the young lady's husband. And having come to this conclusion, that Captain Trent immediately put out to sea to overtake her ship. Conservative persons considered that he carried a hazardous amount of sail, considering the weather. But it was rumored that he had permitted no delay for any purpose whatever except the loading of his barkentine's guns.
This, however, was hardly a parallel to Trent's actions now. His motivation was a polite and wholly decorous letter from Marian Hale.
Dear Captain Trent;
I've just heard of your marvellous achievement in re-taking the Hecla from pirates who'd boarded her, and of coming into port on Manaos with half the pirate crew in irons. I am boasting that I know you personally! Please let me suggest, though, that you let my father make a proposal in settlement of salvage on the Hecla. It will certainly not be less to your advantage than an Admiralty Court award, and the legal expenses will be much less!