Andre Norton: Derelict For Trade

Except for thebleep from the computer consoles and the occasional rapid tick of keys, the control deck of the Solar Queen was silent.

Dane Thorson watched the tall, panther-lean man in the command pod, and felt his guts tighten.

Captain Jellico’s gaze stayed on the constantly changing displays and readouts on his console. His face was emotionless, as always, but the subtle signs of tension were there to be read in the whiteness of the blaster scar on his cheek, and the taut muscles of his back.

At the astrogation console Steen Wilcox leaned forward, his fingers working steadily as he coaxed displays and readouts from his navputer—numbers that flickered so fast across the displays they were incomprehensible to Dane.

But Dane didn’t have to be able to interpret them. As assistant cargo master, he had no job right now. He had squeezed into the back of the cramped control deck only because he couldn’t just sit in his cabin, like his senior, Jan Van Ryke, or in the mess with the steward, Frank Mura, and the medic Craig Tau. Dane was not able to play a game of cards like those two, apparently ignoring the tension gripping the ship—nor did he have Van Ryke’s unflappable attitude toward life. Dane knew they were in danger, perhaps the worst they’d faced yet, and he had to face danger straight on.

"Damn, damn, damn," Wilcox muttered under his breath. The display lights underlit his face with a weird yellow glow. "I don’t like coming out of hyper this close to a planet, Chief."

"We have to." Jellico’s voice was clipped, precise. "My calcs so far are proving true right to the tenth decimal—we don’t have enough fuel left for snapout in flat space. We’ve got to use a gravity well."

Dane Thorson glanced again at the fuel-level panel. He’d been watching it for the last hour—he knew they all had. The captain had computed it very close, but he was right; unless they exploited the dimensional weakness caused by a planetary mass, they wouldn’t have enough fuel to emerge from hyperspace—or rather, snapout wouldn’t leave them enough fuel to rendezvous with Exchange, the Trade city in orbit above Mykos. As it was, it would be close.

"One minute to snapout," the captain said, and the engines snarled as they wound up towards the surge of power that would catapult them back into normal space. Dane pressed himself into his seat, reaching to connect his restraining belt—

And a tremendous bang shook the ship.

Dane’s head rocked, and he clutched at his pod arms. Trouble lights flickered on the captain’s console, and from the com to the engine deck came fluent curses from the usually taciturn Johan Stotz.

The pseudo-gravity of hyperspace suddenly vanished as the familiar fleeting nausea of snapout seized Dane, and he almost flew out of his seat before he managed to get his magnetic boots back on the deck and cinch up his seat belt.

"Snapout!" Wilcox exclaimed, and then, in a sharp voice, "We hit a knot!"

"Coordinates," Jellico commanded. "Find out where we are—and what lies on our course."

Wilcox’s fingers were already flying over his console.

Dane looked at Captain Jellico, whose face was unchanged as he scanned his instruments. This was the most dreaded of all events, save plague, for the gravitational distortion that had thrown them out meant the existence of a close or large mass, and where there was one, there were likely many. Had they somehow flown into an uncharted asteroid cluster? Dane wondered. No, Steen Wilcox was too good for that.

As he watched the ordered haste of his fellow crew members at the controls, Dane became aware of a presence near him, and a faint, pleasant smell of lavender. He glanced up. The new medic, Rael Cofort, stood in the bridge hatch just behind his seat, a watchful look in her changeable violet eyes. So she too had to be on hand to see what happened.

It was something they had in common—a thought that made Dane vaguely uncomfortable. He turned his head to dismiss the thought, and watched the farseeing sensors of the Solar Queen slowly paint a picture of their course, while Wilcox’s navputer oriented them.

"We’re in the Mykos system, about twenty-five light-minutes from the sun," the astrogator said presently. He worked his console a bit longer.

"No masses detected on course—we’re about fifteen degrees above the ecliptic." Then he paused, looked from his console readout to his keys and back again. A chill seized Dane; it was rare to see the astrogator hesitate like that.

After another longer pause, without any change in his tone, Wilcox pronounced a death sentence on their careers as Free Traders.

"Insufficient fuel to reach any port," he said.

No one spoke. The truth was there on the screen for everyone on the bridge to see: they were billions of miles from where they had intended to emerge, without enough fuel to brake their tremendous velocity in time to bring them safely to the nearest port.

Dane cleared his throat, about to suggest they radio for help, but he pressed his lips together. That was for the captain to say. The Old Man knows as well as I do that the salvage fees would bankrupt us , he thought.

But Jellico was not looking at the screen. He had turned slightly in his pod, and was regarding Wilcox, his hard eyes narrowed in question.

"And?" he said.

Wilcox’s shoulders hunched. "We’re headed straight at the Mykos cylomes at about five percent cee. Unless a salvage tug reaches us in sixteen hours or less, the habitat defenses will blow us out of space."

For a moment nobody said anything, and Dane reflected bitterly on the irony of their position. Few human Free Traders liked docking at the artificial habitats called cylomes—the cylindrical habitats favored by many alien races outside the human sphere of influence. Unfortunately for the Queen their low fuel situation had made the choice for them.

There’d been a lot of grousing in the mess-cabin strategy session when they’d discussed this option, even though the hospitality of the Kanddoyd race towards humans was well known. But now, even that option had been snatched from them, and they might not even have to worry about bankruptcy; ravening plasmabolts of the Kanddoyd defenses would see to that. Habitats were so vulnerable to space debris that their defenders tended to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.

The silence was broken by the leisurely click of magboots on the deckplates. Dane looked up, saw the comfortable bulk of cargo master Van Ryke looming over him, the white-blond bushy brows raised in mild question.