Poul Anderson - Margin of Profit

The ship drove on through night, pulsing in and out of four-dimensional reality and filled with waiting.

Dorothea sat on a wardroom couch, posing long legs and high prow with a care so practiced as to be unconscious. She could not get her eyes from the screen.

“It’s beautiful,” she said in a small voice. “And horrible.” Nicholas van Rijn sprawled beside her, his majestic nose aimed at the ceiling. “What is so bad, my little sinusoid?”

“Them…lying out there to pounce on us and—Why did I come? Why did I let you talk me into it?”

“I believe there was mention of a tygron coat and Santorian flamedrop earrings.”

“But suppose they catch us?” Her fingers fell cold on his wrist. “What will happen to me?”

“I told you I have set up a ransom fund for you. I also warned you maybe they would not bother to collect, and maybe we get broken to bits in this fight and all die. Satan’s horns and the devil who gave them to him! Be still, will you?”

The intraship speaker burped and Torres’ voice said: “Wake of highpowered ship detected, approaching from direction of Borthu.”

“All hands to posts!” roared Van Rijn.

Dorothea screamed. He picked her up under one arm, carried her down the hall—collecting a few scratches and bruises en route—tossed her into his cabin, and locked the door. Puffing, he arrived on the bridge. The visual intercom showed Petrovich and Seichi, radiation-armored, the engines gigantic behind them. Their faces were drawn tight and glistening with sweat. Torres was gnawing his lip, fingers shaking as he tuned in the hypervid.

“All right,” said van Rijn, “this is the thing we have come for. I hope you each remember what you have to do, because if not we will soon be very dead.” He dropped into the main control chair and buckled on the harness. His fingers tickled the keys, feeling the sensitive response of the ship. So far they had been using only normal power, the great converter had been almost idling; it was good to know how many wild horses he could call up.

The hypervid chimed. Torres pressed the Accept button and the screen came to life.

It was a Borthudian officer who looked out at them. Skintight garments were dead black on the cat-lithe frame. The face was almost human, but hairless and tinged with blue; yellow eyes smoldered under the narrow forehead. Behind him could be seen the bridge, a crouching gunnery officer, and the usual six-armed bassalt idol.

“Terran ship ahoy!” He ripped out crisp, fluent Anglic, only subtly accented by a larynx and palate of different shape. “This is Captain Rentharik of the Kossalu’s frigate Gantok . By the law, most sacred, of the Kossaluth of Borthu, you are guilty of trespass on the dominions of His Frightfulness. Stand by to be boarded.”

“By double-damn, you out-from-under-wet-logs-crawling poppycock!” Van Rijn flushed turkey red. “Not bad enough you pirate my men and ships, with all their good expensive cargoes, but you have the copperbound nerve to call it legal!”

Rentharik fingered the ceremonial dagger hung about his neck. “Old man, the writ of the Kossalu runs through this entire volume of space. You can save yourself punishment—nerve-pulsing, to be exact—by surrendering peacefully and submitting to judgment.”

“By treaty, open space is free to ships of all planets,” said Van Rijn. “And it is understood by all civilized races that treaties override any local law.”

Rentharik smiled bleakly. “Force is the basis of law, captain.”

“Ja, it is, and now you make the mistake of using force on Van Rijn! I shall have a surprise for your strutting little slime mold of a king.”

Rentharik turned to a recorder tube and spoke into it. “I have just made a note to have you assigned to the Ilyan run after conditioning. We have never found any way to prevent seepage of the Ilyan air into the crewman’s helmets; and it holds chlorine.”

Van Rijn’s face lit up. “That is a horrible waste of trained personnel, captain. Now it so happens that on Earth we can make absolutely impervious air systems, and I would gladly act as middleman if you wish to purchase them—at a small fee, of course.”

“There has been enough discussion,” said Rentharik. “You will now be grappled and boarded. There is a fixed scale of punishments for captured men, depending on the extent of their resistance.”

The screen blanked.

Torres licked sandy lips. Tuning the nearest viewscreen, he got the phase of the Borthudian frigate. She was a black shark-form, longer and slimmer than the dumpy merchantman, of only half the tonnage but with armor and gun turrets etched against remote star-clouds. She came riding in along a curve that would have been impossible without gravitic acceleration compensators, matching velocities in practiced grace, until she loomed huge a bare kilometer away.

The intercom broke into a scream. Van Rijn swore as he saw Dorothea having hysterics in the cabin. He cut her out of the circuit and thought with anguish that she would probably smash all the bottles—and Antares still eleven days off!

There was a small, pulsing jar. The Gantok was in phase and the gravity-fingers of a tractor beam had reached across to lay hold of the Mercury .

“Torres,” said Van Rijn. “You stand by, boy, and take over if anything happens to me. I may want your help anyway, if it gets too rough. Petrovich, Seichi, you got to maintain our beams and hold ’em tight, no matter what the enemy does. O.K.? We go!”

The Gantok was pulling herself in, hulls almost touching now. Petrovich kicked in the full power of his converter. Arcs blazed blue with million-volt discharges, the engine bawled, and ozone was spat forth sharp and smelling of thunder.

A pressor beam lashed out, an invisible hammerblow of repulsion, five times the strength of the enemy tractor. Van Rijn heard the Mercury’s ribs groan with the stress. The Gantok shot away, turning end over end. Ten kilometers removed, she was lost to vision among the stars.

“Ha, ha!” bellowed van Rijn. “We spill all their apples, eh? By damn! Now we show them some fun!”

The Borthudian hove back into sight. She clamped on again, full strength attraction. Despite the pressor, the Mercury was yanked toward her with a brutal surge of acceleration. Seichi cursed and threw in all the pressor power he had.

For a moment Van Rijn thought his ship would burst open. He saw the deckplates buckle under his feet and heard steel shear. Fifty million tons of force were not to be handled lightly. The Gantok was batted away as if by a troll’s fist.

“No so far! Not so far, you dumbheadl Let me control the beams.” Van Rijn’s hands danced over the pilot board. “We want to keep him for a souvenir!”

He used a spurt of drive to overhaul the Gantok . His right hand steered the Mercury while his left wielded the tractor and the pressor, seeking a balance. The engine thunder rolled and boomed in his skull. The acceleration compensator could not handle all the fury now loosed, and straps creaked as his weight was hurled against them. Torres, Petrovich, and Seichi were forgotten, part of the machinery, implementing the commands his fingers gave.

Now thoroughly scared, the Borthudian opened her drive to get away. Van Rijn equalized positive and negative forces, in effect welding himself to her hull by a three-kilometer bar. Grinning, he threw his superpowered engine into reverse. The Gantok strained to a halt and went backwards with him.

Lightning cracked and crashed over his engineers’ heads. The hull shuddered as the enemy fought to break free. Her own drive was added to the frantic repulsion of her pressors, and the gap widened. Van Rijn stepped down his own pressor. When she was slammed to a dead stop, the blow echoed back at him.