Chapter 11

The shooting died down to occasional rattles of small arms, usually followed by yells for quarter. An explosion thundered from across the crater. The Lester Dawes fired her big guns a few times. A machine gun stuttered. A pistol banged, far away. It took two hours before all the pirates had been hunted out of hiding and captured, or killed if found by their former captives, who were accepting no surrender whatever.

Blackie Perales had been one of the latter; he had been found, his clothes in rags and covered with dirt and grease, hiding under a machine in one of the shops back of the dock in which the Harriet Barne was being rebuilt. He had tried to claim that he was one of the pirates’ prisoners who had eluded the roundup at the beginning of the battle and had been hiding there since. As soon as the real prisoners saw and recognized him, they had fallen upon him and clubbed, kicked and stamped him out of any resemblance to humanity. At that, what he got was probably only a fraction of what he deserved.

The egg breakage had been heavy, and not at all confined to the bad eggs. A third gunboat, the Banshee, had been destroyed with all hands during the final attack from outside; in addition, a dozen men had been killed during the fighting in the galleries. Everybody was shocked, except Klem Zareff, who had been in battles before. He was surprised that the casualties had been so light.

At first glance, the spaceport looked like a handsome prize of victory. The docks and workshops were all in good condition; at worst, they only needed cleaning up. There was a collapsium plant, with its own mass-energy converter. There were foundries and machine-shops and forging-shops and a rolling-mill, almost completely robotic. At first, Conn thought that it might be possible to build a hyperdrive ship here, without having to go to Koshchei at all.

Closer examination disabused him of this hope. There was nothing of which the framework of a ship could be built, and no way of producing heavy structural steel. The rolling-mill was good enough to turn out eighth-inch sheet material which when plated with a few micromicrons of collapsium would be as good as a hundred feet of lead against space-radiations, but that was the ship’s skin. A ship needed a skeleton, too. The only thing to do was go on with the Harriet Barne.

It was sunset before he finished his tour of inspection and let his jeep down in a vehicle hall off the lower gallery outside what had originally been the spaceport officers’ club. It was crowded, and a victory celebration seemed to be getting under way. He saw his father with Yves Jacquemont, Sylvie, Tom Brangwyn, and Captain Nichols. Nichols had gotten clean clothes from the pirates’ store of loot, and had bathed and shaved. So had Jacquemont, though he had contented himself with trimming his beard. It took him a second or so to recognize the young lady in feminine garb as his erstwhile battle comrade, Sylvie.

“Well, our pay goes on from the day we were captured,” Nichols was saying. “My instructions are to resume command of the ship. Tomorrow, they’re sending a party out to go over her.”

Conn stopped short. “What’s this about the ship?”

“Captain Nichols was in screen contact with his company’s office in Storisende,” Rodney Maxwell said. “They’re continuing him in command of her.”

“But ... but we took that ship! We lost three gunboats and about twenty-five men...”

“She still belongs to Transcontinent & Overseas,” his father said. “That’s been the law on stolen property as long as there’s been any law.”

Of course; he should have known that. Did know it; just didn’t think.

“We broke an awful lot of eggs for no omelet; fought a battle for nothing.”

“Well, of course, I’m prejudiced,” Sylvie said, “but I don’t think getting us out of the hands of that bloodthirsty maniac and his cutthroats was nothing.”

“Wiping out the Perales gang wasn’t nothing, Conn,” Tom Brangwyn said. “You got no idea at all how bad things were, the last couple of years.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He was ashamed of himself. “But I needed a ship, and now we have no ship at all.”

“A ship means something to you?” Yves Jacquemont asked.

“Yes.” He told him why. “If we could get to Koshchei, we could build a hypership of our own, and get our brandy and things to markets where we could get a decent price for them.”

“I know. I was in and out of Storisende on these owner-captain tramps for a couple of years before I decided to retire and settle here,” Jacquemont said. “The profit on a cargo of Poictesme brandy on Terra or Baldur is over a thousand percent.”

“Well, don’t give up too soon,” Nichols advised. “You can’t keep the Harriet Barne, of course, but you’re entitled to prize-money on her, and that ought to buy you something you could build a spaceship out of.”

“That’s right,” Jacquemont said. “Everything else besides the frame can be made here. Look, these pirates burned me out; except for the money I have in the bank, I lost everything, home, business and all. As soon as I can find a place for Sylvie to stay, I’ll come back and go to work for your company building a spaceship. And a lot of the men who were working here are farm-tramps and drifters, one job’s as good as another as long as they get paid for it. And I know a few good men in Storisende--engineers--who’d be glad for a job, too.”

“You think it would be all right with Mother and Flora if Sylvie stayed with us?” Conn asked.

“Of course it would; they’d be glad to have her.” Rodney Maxwell turned to Yves Jacquemont. “Let’s consider that fixed up. Now, suppose you and I go into Storisende, and...”

The Transcontinent & Overseas people arrived at Barathrum Spaceport the next morning; a rear-rank vice-president, a front-rank legal-eagle, and three engineers. They were horrified at what they saw. The Harriet Barne had been gutted. Bulkheads and decks had been ripped out and relocated incomprehensibly; the bridge and the control room under it were gone; she had been stripped to her framework, and the whole underside was sheathed in shimmering collapsium.

“Great Ghu!” the vice-president almost howled. “That isn’t our ship!”

“That’s the Harriet Barne,” her captain said. “She looks a little ragged now, but--”

“You helped these pirates do this to her?”

“If I hadn’t, they’d have cut my throat and gotten somebody else to help them. My throat’s more valuable to me than the ship is to you; I can’t get anybody to build me a new one.”

“Well, understand,” one of the engineers said, “they were converting her into an interplanetary ship. It wouldn’t cost much to finish the job.”

“We need an interplanetary ship like we need a hole in the head!” The vice-president turned to Rodney Maxwell. “Just how much prize-money do you think you’re entitled to for this wreck?”

“I wouldn’t know; that’s up to Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong. Up to the court, if we can settle it any other way.”

“You mean you’d litigate about this?” the lawyer demanded, and began to laugh.