The Sheewash Drive wasn't something Pausert had mastered yet and with klatha powers you had to be ready . . . or you could get hurt. You could even be killed—or, as one witch had said, darkly, "worse." Pausert wasn't prepared to contemplate what "worse" could mean, though sometimes he had uneasy images of being turned inside-out for trying. But the pattern of the Sheewash seemed to be almost in his grasp. The two witch sisters kept it up for about a minute, but that would be enough to make the Venture disappear from tracking screens. As the wire collapsed and the globe of orange fire winked out of existence, the captain was already setting another course-vector and pulling the engines back to normal cruising speeds. This detour would avoid their next scheduled stop, the Sheris system, and take them on a rather odd tangent to the Alpha Dendi stars instead. That was quite a dense cluster which ships in a hurry avoided. There was a lot of intersolar dust there, and that would make visual tracking difficult. Captain Pausert relaxed, and went to fix the two young witches some food. Using klatha energies, especially for something as powerful as the Sheewash Drive, left the young witches exhausted and starving. So it had to be used judiciously. Neither Goth nor the Leewit could do the Sheewash Drive again too soon.
* * *
It was two days later, just as they were entering the first of the dust-veils around the Alpha Dendi cluster, when Hulik do Eldel paged the captain. He got up, and, still sleepy, headed into the control room.
"Vezzarn told me about our followers, Captain." She pointed an elegant finger at the detector-screen. There was one large and fifteen smaller blips, in the same formation. "Looks like they're still behind us."
Pausert blinked at them. This was only a couple of hours into his sleep period, and he wasn't at his brightest. It certainly looked like the same pattern. But how could the Imperials possibly have caught up with them, or even followed them at all?
"Shall I try hailing them, Captain?"
Pausert shrugged tiredly and flopped into the command chair. "It can't do any harm, I suppose. But I don't think they're chasing after us to buy Councilor Rapport's tinklewood fishing-poles."
There was no response on the Empire general beam-length, but as Hulik flicked the dials, they picked up a jabber of some unknown language. "Ship-to-ship communication over there, I think," said Hulik. "They've obviously forgotten to switch over to narrow beam."
Pausert had already hit the ship's intercom.
"What is it, Captain?"
"Goth, we need the Leewit's translation skills down here. Fast. We've got ships on our tail and they're talking to each other on broad-beam."
"We're coming."
"I'm recording, Captain," said Hulik. "Also trying to get visuals, but they're at long range."
Goth and the Leewit tumbled into the control room. The Leewit, besides her equipment-shattering whistles, was also a klatha-translator. She could instantly translate any language, even robot and machine tongues.
She started immediately. "They say . . . tubes overhot. This pace very much longer cannot be kept to."
She paused, before continuing. Obviously, only the communication officer of the ship in trouble with its tubes had forgotten to set his equipment to narrow beam. They were only getting half the conversation. "The one who spoke earlier says it matters not. If their tubes blow they will get none of the Agandar's loot anyway."
She paused again. "Oh! He says he hopes . . . Beelzit . . . I'm not going to translate that. Filthy mind! Should wash his mouth out with soap." She reached for the transmitter-switch, without a doubt, to give the com-officer a lesson.
Hastily, Captain Pausert slapped his hand over it. "Easy now. Let's save it. They don't know we know their ship-channel. That could be useful."
The Leewit scowled at him. "S'pose so," she said reluctantly. "But I was looking forward to it. That was really filthy."
Hulik shook her head in amazement. "The Agandar's loot! But . . . what loot, Captain? Did he leave anything on the ship?"
Pausert tried to think. "Well, there was his personal gear, and the crate the Sheem robot was in. We dumped the crate. I think his gear is stashed in the corner of the hold, with a few bales of unsold cargo. I've got a few of those educational toys, some tinklewood fishing poles and those allweather cloaks left over from the cargo I loaded on Nikkeldepain."
He saw that Hulik, Goth and the Leewit were all heading for the door. "Go and look then," he said crossly. "It'll be nothing more than his clothes and toiletries. You can't hide a ton of loot in a couple of holdalls."
"He did raid the Star diamond concession on Coolum's World," pointed out Hulik.
Goth grinned at the captain. "I remember Wansing, that crook of a jeweler you rescued me from on Porlumma, talking about it. They found some top-quality stones there as big as your head."
"And if you do find them there, I'll return them to their owners!" he called after them, irritably. There were times that he felt at a distinct disadvantage, being an honest man. Then he rather determinedly turned to face the screens again.
* * *
The twenty or so suns in the cluster marked on the charts were never all visible at one time. Planetoids, asteroids and intersolar dust hung in gravity-whirled skeins. It was, the captain admitted, the perfect place for an ambush. He'd been planning on being well-slept and alert when they went into it, but, thanks to Hulik's call when she'd spotted the following ships and the excitement that followed with searching the Agandar's gear, he'd never gotten it.
Ha. Some treasure! No alien crowns or head-size diamonds. Toiletries and clothes, as he'd predicted. A few personal items. The most exciting thing was a pack of cards with hand-painted face-cards that the Leewit had appropriated to play with. The captain supposed that it was all right for her to do so. After all, the late Agandar still owed him for damages his war-robot had done to the ship. A pack of cards was a pretty cheap exchange.
What was worrying Pausert far more was that they'd had to cut speed here in order to dodge all the space-debris. And they'd lost sight of the Agandar's fleet. The captain had tried every dodge in the book to make sure that they weren't actually being followed, but the dust, rocks and moonlets made this a perfect place for the enemy to hunt, rather than the Venture to hide. The pirates had a number of ships to cover the possible routes through the lenticular cluster.
The captain had gambled on the most difficult route also being the one least likely for them to encounter an ambush. So far, he'd been right. But it was slow going, and the trip was taking a toll on the ship's crew. Even at reduced speed, they had very little time to react to obstacles. The ship simply couldn't run on automatic systems. One of the senior ship-handlers, either Vezzarn or Pausert himself, had to be there. Pausert had been teaching Goth and Hulik—even, when he could get her attention, the Leewit—but none of them were good enough yet for this kind of seat-of-your-pants flying, with all the instant decision-making it took.
On the other hand, the Leewit was bidding fair to become a superb shot with the nova guns. She seemed to have a gift for anticipation; which, considering her witch background, could actually be real precognition starting to develop.