Again their eyes met. This time Ramona's expression was thoughtful, rather than guarded.
"I'll talk to my crew," she said at last. "For my part, though, the main hesitation isn't money... it's position. I worked a long time to get where I am, captaining my own ship. In all honesty, I'm not sure how content I'd be working under someone else again. Still, if you let me go, I'll probably end up crewing again for a while. I just don't know. I'll have to think about it."
"What if I offered you a position as captain of your own ship?" Tambu asked.
Hope flashed across the girl's face for a moment.
"I don't want to sound suspicious again," she said carefully, "but that sounds a little too good to be true. You capture a pirate ship and crew, then offer to turn them loose again intact? What's to keep us from going back to business as normal as soon as you turn your back?"
"For one thing, your crew would probably be divided up among the available ships under various commanders. For another, we'll probably be operating as a fleet for a while, which would tend to discourage independent action. There is also the minor detail that I plan to be on board your ship."
"That sounds to me like I'd be captain in title only."
"Not at all," Tambu assured her. "It's my plan that the captains under my command have complete autonomy on their ships, providing, of course, that they stay within the general guidelines I set forth for them. I envision my own position to be more of an overall coordinator for the entire force. I suspect that if all goes well, that will occupy my time to a point where I will have neither the time nor the inclination to bother with the operational details of a single ship-including the one I'm on."
He uncoiled from his perch and seated himself at his desk once more.
"My decision to travel on board your ship is to enable myself to more readily obtain specific information from you rather than to imply any distrust. That is actually the answer I should have given you in the first place. I'll have to trust you, as I'll have to trust all my captains. If I don't, the force hasn't a hope of success."
Now it was Ramona's turn to rise and pace as she thought.
"Just how large a fleet are you envisioning?" "I have no exact figure in mind," Tambu admitted, "but I expect we will grow well beyond the three ships we have currently."
"My crew isn't big enough to man even these three ships," she pointed out.
"I know. We'll have to do some additional recruiting. I'll want your advice on that, too."
"Aren't you risking trouble using ex-pirates for crew? I don't mean with mutiny, I'm thinking more about your reputation."
"My crew might object a bit, at first, but they'll accept it. If not, they can be replaced."
"I was more concerned with reactions from the people you'll be dealing with outside the force. I'm not sure how the merchants will take to being protected by the very people who were stealing from them not too long ago."
"We already have a solution to that." Tambu smiled. "We'll change the names of the ships and crew. That way no one outside the force has to know anything about your past. In fact, there's no reason for anyone to know within the force, either. Your crew doesn't know anything about my crew's background or vice versa. There's no reason they should be told, just as there's no reason we should have to give any background information to the new recruits."
"It'll sure make recruiting a lot easier if the new people don't have to admit to any past indiscretions." Ramona admitted. "Even though God knows what we'll get as a result. It's a little like the old French Foreign Legion."
"It's not a bad parallel. I don't really care what the crew did before they joined, as long as they toe the line once they're under my command."
"Discipline could be a problem," Ramona observed thoughtfully. "You know what would really be effective?"
"What's that?"
"If we made you into a real mystery figure. An omnipresent power with no face." Her voice grew more excited as she warmed to the idea. "You know how superstitious crewmen are. You could become a kind of a boogey-man. It could work against the ships we'll be fighting as well as within our own force." "And just how would we accomplish that?" "Hell, we've got a good start already! My crew is already spooked by the way you popped up out of nowhere and blitzed our ship before they could even get a shot off. All we have to do is keep you out of sight, and they'll do the rest. Sound doesn't travel through space, but rumors do. The myth will grow on its own. All we have to do is give it room."
"It won't work." Tambu shook his head. "The one thing I do insist on is meeting each person who's going to serve under me. I have to know who and what I'm commanding if we're going to be effective."
"Do it over a viewscreen. If you keep your sending camera off, you can talk to them and observe them to your heart's content, and all they'll see is a blank screen. As a matter of fact, that would help to build the mystery. Everyone would form their own impression, which means they'll talk about you among themselves trying to get confirmation." "I'll have to think about it."
"Now is the ideal time to start," Ramona pressured. "Right now, the only ones who know what you look like are your crew and myself. If you wait, then you'll have to try to get cooperation out of the combined crews as well as any new recruits. The sooner you start, the easier it will be."
"But if I'm planning to be on your ship-" "You can board ahead of the crew. There's a room off my cabin you could take up residence in without anyone being any the wiser. When they talk to you on the viewscreen, they won't know if your signal is coming from somewhere on board or from another ship."
Tambu leaned back and stared at the ceiling as he turned the thought over in his mind.
"It's a good idea," he admitted finally. "Maybe we can give it a try and see how it works. I'll talk to my crew."
"It'll work," Ramona declared triumphantly. "You know, I think we'll work well together. Who knows? If we play our cards right, we might end up ruling the universe."
"Who wants it? Right now I'll settle for eking out a humble, but substantial, living."
"I know, I know. But when you talk to the new recruits, you might make some veiled references to a secret master plan. It'll help us fill the rosters if they think they're getting in on the ground floor of something big." "They are," Tambu announced solemnly. "The question is how big-and I figure we won't know the answer to that for a long time yet."
INTERVIEW IV
"Then your original crew was surprised by your plans of expansion?" Erickson asked. Tambu seemed tyrannical, even in his early career.
"I had not deliberately withheld the information from them. The plan had been half-formed in my mind for some time, and I had simply forgotten to tell them about my thinking on the subject. If I had reached a firm decision before encountering the Mongoose and its captive, I would have discussed it with them."
"How long had you been thinking about it before you actually implemented the plan?" the reporter pressed.
"I guess it had been in the back of my mind all along," Tambu admitted. "I was always aware of the limitations of a single ship, both in terms of firepower and of coverage."
"Coverage?"
"One ship can be in only one place at a time. If the pirates could figure out where our one snip was, they would know where we weren't, and therefore where it was safe for them to operate. Three ships complicated the problem for them."
"I see," Erickson nodded. "Once you had three ships, though, how did you deploy your original crew-the ones you could be sure of in terms of loyalty?"
"Egor and Whitey were each placed in charge of a ship. I assigned Puck under Whitey."