I do hope you will bring the Hecla to Loren in completion of such an arrangement. I am anxious to have my father thank you for me as I thank you for myself. Since you have made the spaceways quite safe again, I am sailing for home on the Cytheria, which will leave today and stop first at Midway and then go on to Loren. I do hope to introduce you to my father. He owes you so much! And so do I.
Sincerely,
Marian Hale.
Considered dispassionately, it was not a remarkable letter, though it had cost much more effort and spoiled paper in its composition than most. But Trent didn't read it dispassionately. Marian was in space. Now. And there were pirate ships in space. He burst into explosive words at the next to last sentence. The Yarrow's mate stared at him.
"I've sold some of the Yarrow's cargo," said Trent feverishly, "but no money's passed, so that's all right. I'm going to get the Yarrow cleared for immediate lift-off for Loren. You get the small arms from the Hecla while I get clearance and a lift-off order." Then he said fiercely, "Don't let anything keep you from having those small arms on board and anything else you have to have by the time I'm back!"
He left the Yarrow and headed for the spaceport office practically at a run. As he ran, he swore bitterly. In a perfectly real sense it was not his business that Marian Hale took passage on a spaceship at a time he considered dangerous. It wasn't his business that ships lifted off from Manaos at the same time. But he'd brought Marian off the Hecla when by the laws of probability neither she nor any other member of the Hecla's company should ever have been heard of again. He felt no responsibility for any of the Hecla's crew even now. They could take care of themselves. But Marian couldn't. Trent had the extremely unhappy feeling that nobody but himself was qualified to protect Marian from disaster. He'd proved it. Now she very likely was heading for further disaster and again nobody but himself seemed to be qualified to do anything about it.
He reached the spaceport office, and it was more than two hours after sunset. There was a clerk on duty, to be sure, but he was on stand-by watch. He read placidly in an office chair placed in a good light. He looked up inquiringly when Trent came in the office door.
"Lift-off clearance," said Trent curtly. "The Yarrow. She came in an hour ago. I'm taking her out again. Make it fast!"
The clerk recognized Trent. There weren't many people on at least half a dozen planets of the Pleiads who wouldn't have recognized him today and tomorrow and probably the day after tomorrow. But fame is fleeting, and notoriety is more so, and Trent did not and wouldn't ever have that steady, recurrent, repetitive mention in the news tapes that would make anybody recall his name after three days of no public mention. But the clerk did recognize him tonight. He even tried to be obliging. But there was difficulty.
"The Yarrow came in under her mate," said the spaceport clerk uneasily, "and you want to take her out again as skipper. I know it's perfectly all right, Captain, but I can't order the grid operator to lift you off unless…"
Trent exploded. The clerk looking almost frightened, set about the unsnarling of red tape. Trent paced up and down the office, muttering to himself, while a clerk made vision-phone calls, and located somebody who would have to sign something, and somebody else who would have to authorize something, and somebody else still who must put an official stamp on it. And Trent halted sometimes to listen to a particular conversation, and then began to pace again.
He did not think tenderly of Marian. He raged, because he had saved her once from a very great danger she hadn't gotten into of her own accord, and out of which nobody else could have helped her. Now someone had let her get back into danger of which she had no clear realization, and nobody else seemed to comprehend. Again nobody had any idea of how to get her out. This was not romance in any ordinary sense. But it was an infuriating thing to have happen. Trent clenched and unclenched his hands and fumed.
The news tapes all over the city—all over the planet, for that matter—murmured coyly of exciting news. The news was that the Yarrow had come into port, and the Yarrow was that gallant ship which had rammed a pirate and damaged it, so that Captain Trent could later recapture a ship that pirates had seized and bring it into port with pirate prisoners. The story was already being twisted and made inaccurate.
A spaceman who'd helped salvage the Hecla heard it. He'd gone out in the Yarrow to find the then-derelict ship. Now he was a hero, and slightly drunk, and he felt a fine sentimental regard for that old ship the Yarrow on which he'd gone out to accomplish fame. He resolved generously to visit his former shipmates and tell them of his triumphs. He began a not-too-accurate progress toward the ship. He encountered a fellow-hero of the Hecla's salvage. That friend knew of two more nearby. A newsman picked up the intended sentimental journey. He gathered the rest, and went along with his camera to get a picture and a story about heroes' friendships for each other and their plans for further anti-pirate activity. They wobbled a little as they walked, but their intentions were firmly emotional.
They got to the Yarrow, and the mate was tearing his hair. Word had somehow gotten out that the Yarrow was about to lift off. He was being besieged. A freight-broker, in particular, offered double freight and something extra for the mate to take one large crate to Loren. The mate did not know whether to pass up the business or accept it. The crewmen hadn't gotten back with the small arms and he didn't know what to do about if. Trent wasn't one to turn down business. He was called away to answer a message from the spaceport office. It was Trent, insisting on haste. A big truck ran the crate up to a cargo door. The members of the Hecla's salvage crew went into the Yarrow's forecastle for a sentimental greeting of their oldest friends. They weren't there. The salvage crew sat down to wait for them, and promptly fell asleep.
A totally frustrating and bewildering development infringed on Trent's plans. Orders from the highest authority on the planet commanded that no ship be lifted off or allowed to lift itself off from the spaceport until further orders. Police came and stood by, lounging, so that nothing could be done by the spaceport crew against these orders. More police appeared. Presently the spaceport was totally police-occupied. Trent protested furiously, and as he was a personage of some note since his capture of pirates, a high official told him in confidence that there'd been an ultra-long-range message from the other side of the solar system. It said that a ship bound for Manaos had been stopped by a pirate. Then it had been released, incredibly, but for the fact that it brought a message from the pirates. That ship was on the way and should land tonight. It had been in the hands of the pirates for two days while the message was prepared. The pirates then took half of its crew for captives and contemptuously let the rest go, to deliver their message. The remainder of the crew finished rewinding the overdrive coil. They'd come on to land at Manaos with the message. And they were being met at the spaceport by what was practically the government of Manaos. Because Trent had brought in pirates captured in the act of piracy, and they had threatened retaliation from their fellow-freebooters and this message might be another threat.