Poul Anderson - Margin of Profit

“Hoy there!” cried Firmage. “If I know you, you robber, you’ve just come up with the answer.”

“Oh, no, no, no. By good St. Dismas I swear it. I have some beginning thoughts, maybe, but I am only a poor rough old space walloper without the fine education all you Freemen had. I could so easy be wrong.”

“What is your idea?”

“Best I not say, just yet, until it is more clear in my thick head. But please to note, he who tries solving this problem takes on all the risk, and it may well be some small expense. Also, without his solution nobody has any more profits. Does not a little return on his investment sound fair and proper?”

There was more argument. Van Rijn smiled with infinite benevolence.

He was satisfied with an agreement in principle, sworn to by mercantile honor, the details to be computed later. Beaming, he clapped his hands. “Freemen, we have worked hard tonight and soon comes much harder work. By damn, I think we deserve a little celebration. Simmons, prepare an orgy.”

Captain Torres was shocked. “Are you seriously asking us to risk that?”

Van Rijn stared out through the office wall. “In all secrecy,” he answered. “I must have a crew I can trust.”

“But—”

“We will not be stingy with the bonuses.”

Torres shook his head. “Sir, I’m afraid it’s impossible. The Brotherhood has voted absolute refusal of any trips into the Kossaluth except punitive expeditions—which this one is not. Under the constitution, we can’t change that policy without another vote, which would have to be a public matter.”

“It can be publicly voted on after we see if it works,” urged Van Rijn. “The first trip will have to be secret.”

“Then the first trip will have to do without a crew.”

“Rot and pestilence!” Van Rijn’s fist crashed down on the desk and he surged to his feet. “What sort of cowards do I deal with? In my day we were men! We would have sailed through Hell’s open gates if you paid us enough!”

Torres sucked hard on his cigarette. “I’m stuck with the rules, sir,” he declared. “Only a Lodgemaster can…well, all right, let me say it!” His temper flared up. “You’re asking us to take an untried ship into enemy sky and cruise around till we’re attacked. If we succeed, we win a few measly kilo-credits of bonus. If we lose, we’re condemned to a lifetime of purgatory, locked up in our own skulls and unable to will anything but obedience and knowing how our brains have been chained. Win, lose, or draw for us, you sit back here plump and safe and rake in the money. No .”

Van Rijn sat quiet for a while. This was something he had not foreseen.

His eyes wandered forth again; to the narrow sea. There was a yacht out there, a lovely thing of white sails and gleaming brass. Really, he ought to spend more time on his own ketch—money wasn’t as important as all that. It was not such a bad world, this Earth, even for a lonely old fat man, it was full of blossoms and good wine, clean winds and beautiful women and fine books. In his forebrain, he knew how much his memories of earlier days were colored by nostalgia—space is big and cruel, not meant for humankind. Let’s face it, here on Earth we belong.

He turned around. “You say a Lodgemaster can legally come on such a trip without telling anyone,” he remarked quietly. “You think you can raise two more like yourself, hah?”

“I told you, we won’t! And you’re only making it worse. Asking an officer to serve as a common crewhand is grounds for a duel.”

“Even if I myself am the skipper?”

The Mercury did not, outwardly, look different after the engineers were finished with her. And the cargo was the same as usual: cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, tea, whiskey, gin. If he was going to Antares, Van Rijn did not intend to waste the voyage. Only wines were omitted from the list, for he doubted if they could stand a trip as rough as this one was likely to be.

The alteration was internal, extra hull bracing and a new and monstrously powerful engine. The actuarial computers gave the cost of such an outfitting—averaged over many ships and voyages—as equal to three times the total profit from all the vessel’s Antarean journeys during her estimated lifetime. Van Rijn had winced, but ordered his shipyards to work.

It was, in all truth, a very slim margin he had, and he had gambled more on it than he could afford. But if the Kossalu of Borthu had statistical experts of his own—always assuming, of course, that the idea worked in the first place.

Well, if it didn’t, Nicholas van Rijn would die in battle or be executed as useless; or end his days as a brain-churned slave on a filthy Borthudian freighter; or be held for a ruinous ransom. The alternatives all looked equally bad.

He installed himself, the dark-haired and multiply curved Dorothea McIntyre, and a good supply of brandy, tobacco, and ripe cheese, in the captain’s cabin. One might as well be comfortable. Torres was his mate, Captains Petrovich and Seichi his engineers. The Mercury lifted from Quito Spaceport without fanfare, hung unpretentiously in orbit till clearance was given, and accelerated on gravity beams away from the sun. At the required half-billion kilometers’ distance, she went on hyperdrive and outpaced light.

Van Rijn sat back on the bridge and stuffed his churchwarden. “Now is a month’s voyage to Antares,” he said piously. “Good St. Dismas watch over us.”

“I’ll stick by St. Nicholas,” murmured Torres. “Even if you do bear the same name.”

Van Rijn looked hurt. “Do you not respect my integrity?”

Torres grinned. “I admire your courage—nobody can say you lack guts and you may very well be able to pull this off. Set a pirate to catch a pirate.”

“You younger generations have a loud mouth and no courtesy.” The merchant lit his pipe and blew reeking clouds. “In my day we said ‘sir’ to the captain even when we mutinied.”

“I’m worrying about one thing,” said Torres. “I realize that the enemy probably doesn’t know about the strike yet, and so they won’t be suspicious of us—and I realize that by passing within one light-year of Borthu itself we’re certain to be attacked—but suppose half a dozen of them jump us at once?”

“On the basis of what we know about their patrol patterns, the estimated probability of more than one ship finding us is only ten per cent, plus or minus three.” Van Rijn heaved his bulk onto his feet. One good thing about spacefaring, you could set the artificial gravity low and feel almost young again. “What you do not know so well yet, my young friend, is that there are very few certainties in life. Always we must go on probabilities. The secret of success is to arrange things so the odds favor you—then in the long run you are sure to come out ahead. It is your watch now, and I recommend to you a book on statistical theory to pass the time. As for me, I will be in conference with Freelady McIntyre and a liter of brandy.”

“I wish I could arrange my own captain’s chores the way you do,” said Torres mournfully.

Van Rijn waved an expansive hand. “Why not, my boy, why not? So long as you make money and no trouble for the Company, the Company does not interfere with your private life. The trouble with you younger generations is you lack initiative. When you are a poor old feeble fat man like me you will look back and regret so many lost opportunities.”

Even in low-gee, the deck vibrated under his tread as he left.

Here there was darkness and cold and a blazing glory of suns. The viewscreens held the spilling silver of the Milky Way, the ruby spark of Antares among distorted constellations, the curling edge of a nebula limned by the blue glare of a dwarf star. Brightest among the suns was Borthu’s, yellow as minted gold.