A Yarrow spaceman hauled them across and to the Yarrow's open airlock at the ends of the space-rope lines. Instants later Trent was in the control room, his helmet off but otherwise attired for space. He stared out of the viewports. He began to frown, and then to scowl. The Hecla's skipper came unsteadily to the control room door.
"I… I suggest," he said shakenly, "that we… get away from here as soon as possible."
"This is my ship," said Trent curtly. "I give the orders. Ah!"
He hadn't turned from the viewport. He'd been watching the Hecla, drained of air and without any living thing aboard, left as a derelict between the stars. But now the abandoned ship suddenly drew away from the Yarrow. She swung in space. She began to drive. She went away into the infinite distances between the suns of the galaxy. She dwindled to the tiniest of specks in the starlight. She disappeared altogether.
The Hecla's skipper's mouth dropped open.
"What—"
"I don't like pirates," said Trent. "I'm afraid we didn't damage that one too badly, because it managed to stay in overdrive. But I didn't want it to come back and loot the Hecla. So I sent your ship driving off. Pure spite on my part."
"But what are we waiting for?" asked the skipper anxiously.
"Nothing now," Trent told him. "I've an errand in the engine room, but that can wait."
He examined the drive detector with almost microscopic care. It reported nothing. He set the Yarrow on course. He threw the drive switch. The Yarrow swept away from there.
Trent entered the engine room. It still smelled of vaporized metal and burnt insulator. McHinny paced up and down, swearing steadily and with undiminished indignation. He had invented the device which Trent had unsuccessfully used to blast the pirate ship. Now his gadget, which should have prevented all danger from the pirate ship, was a scorched, swollen, discolored wreck. A thread of smouldering insulation still sent a twig of gray smoke into the air above it.
"It didn't work," said Trent flatly. "What happened?"
McHinny was instantly and fiercely on the defensive. Hell hath no fury like an inventor defending his claim to genius.
"You didn't work it right!" he cried bitterly. "You ruined everything! You turned it on when there were two ships in range! Two! You overloaded it!"
Trent said nothing. This was defense, not fact. The Hecla's drive had been burnt out by the pirate. It couldn't constitute half of an overload of overdrive tension.
"And the mate hurried me!" snapped McHinny furiously. "He kept saying I had to hurry and get it back together! I was improving it, and he rushed me to get it together again!"
Trent frowned. "Can you repair it?" he asked detachedly. "If it can be made to work we'll try it again."
"I'll have to rebuild it!" fumed the engineer. "And I won't stand for anybody telling me what to do! I invented it! I know all about it! I won't do anything unless I have a free hand!"
Trent raised his eyebrows. "All right," he said, "but we were lucky. Next time you remember that you're right in the same ship with the rest of us!"
He turned and started for the control room, contemplating his next move. The plans of the Yarrow's Captain Trent bore a strong family resemblance to the plan his ancestor had carried out in the days of sail. He believed that pirates did not like to fight. They preferred to murder. He suspected that they would be astonished if attacked, because they were accustomed only to attacking. And he believed that violent action when they didn't expect it might yield interesting results.
In short, his views were not those of the average trading-ship captain entering reluctantly into pirate-infested star groups. He'd had lively hopes of profitable action. He still might very well manage to find or contrive activity of a congenial kind. What he considered non-success in the Hecla matter only moved him to modify his intentions, not to abandon them.
There was a girl in the control room when he reentered it. The Hecla's skipper spoke with something approaching reverence.
"Captain, Miss Hale wants to thank you. Her father is the planetary president of Loren."
Trent nodded politely. The girl said in a still unsteady voice, "I do want to thank you, Captain. If it hadn't been for you—"
"Only too pleased," said Trent as politely as before. "I'm glad we happened along."
"I… I can only offer words," said the girl, "but when we get to Loren, my father will at least—"
"I'm sorry, but I'm not going to Loren," said Trent. "The Yarrow's bound for Sira. You'll go aground there."
The Hecla's skipper said urgently, "But Captain Trent, this is Miss Hale! Her father's the planetary president. She was bound home. Surely you can swing ship off-course long enough to put her aground on her home world!"
Trent shook his head regretfully. A few hours earlier, he'd more or less intended to head for Loren himself. But events just past required a change of plan. The encounter with a pirate ship which had captured but not yet looted a merchantman hadn't ended the way he'd have wished. His plans had to be changed. They now called for an immediate call on Sira.
"I'm truly sorry," he said, "but I have to go to Sira. For one thing, it's three days nearer than Loren, and those three days are important to me."
"You don't realize—"
The girl put her hand on the skipper's arm. "No. If Captain Trent is bound for Sira, to Sira we go. I can surely get home from there! Of course we must get word to my father about the pirate pretending to be the Bear. But Captain Trent has surely done enough in saving us from… what would have happened if he hadn't appeared, and especially if he hadn't acted as he did."
Trent cocked his head inquiringly to one side. "The Bear?"
"Our privateer," explained the girl. "We're on a terrible predicament on Loren. We have to have antibiotics, first, and what other off-planet supplies we can. But we have to have antibiotics! Our soil bacteria are death to Earth-type crops. Without antibiotics we'll starve! So we licensed a privateer. You see, with a pirate in action hereabouts and interstellar trade cut to ribbons, trading ships don't come to us. But there are some things we have to have. So our privateer stops ships and requisitions goods, and we pay for them with what we can, later. It's an emergency."
Trent said courteously, "Hmmmmm."
"This morning," she added, "when the pirate showed on our detectors, we put on full drive to avoid it like any other ship. But it overhauled us and closed in. We tried to dodge and twist away, but it finally got close and blew our overdrive and we were helpless. We broke out of overdrive when the blow-up came, and there was the pirate. And it said, 'Commissioned privateer Bear, of Loren, calling. What ship's that?' "
The Hecla's skipper took over the tale, fiercely. "I said, 'The devil you say! This is the Hecla, and Miss Hale's aboard! You're going to find yourselves in trouble!'
The girl interpolated, "It did look exactly like the Bear!"
Trent held up his hand. "Just a moment! You were hailed by the pirate, pretending to be the Bear, which I understand is a privateer."
The girl nodded. "Yes. That's right."
"And you were not upset? Oh, I see now. The Hecla is registered as owned on Loren. You were stopped by a ship claiming to be a privateer from Loren. Naturally, you didn't expect to be looted by a privateer from your home world. Is that the way of it?"