Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed

Jak had always shown some curiosity about the planet and was especially intrigued by the idea of hunting sanrabs from a flashing airors with his bare hands.

"They taste good, huh?" Jak had asked back when Lex first told him about sanrabs.

"As good as meacr steak," Lex said.

"I've never eaten meacr steak. I had a steak from an Earth bovine once. Let's see, I think it was when I graduated from finishing school. I was, oh, sixteen years old, I guess. And it took my old man a week to find the steak. It was about half a pound and we split it five ways, my dad and my mother, me and my sister and brother."

"Meacr steak is better than cow steak," Lex told the Sub-Chief.

That night, over a bottle of the Captain's best brandy, Lex brought the subject up again, adding some tales about eating shellfish off the shell, roasted on a bed of coals beside the big seas of Texas.

"The Emperor's balls," Jak said, after listening to Lex talk food for fifteen minutes. He got up and

swallowed a bulk pill. "You're making me hungry."

"Jak," Lex said, "you've never told me about your family."

"Not much to tell," Jak shrugged. "They're all dead."

"I didn't know."

"Freighter brought in a new strain of bug from an outworld. Before they could find the cure half the city

was dead or dying. My folks were among the first. The old man worked at the port."

"And you never formed a permanent relationship with a woman?" Lex asked.

"Came close," Jak said. "Don't like to talk about that ."

Lex held his tongue, although he wanted to know. "Well, Jak, it looks like you've got no real tie to

anything except the fleet."

"Mate, mother and bedfellow," Jak said, grinning. "But sometimes I wish this old tub had hot and cold running females aboard."

"Jak, what if I gave you a chance to eat a meacr teak so big you'd have to chew for two hours to get it down?"

"Who do I have to kill?"

"Let me ask one more question. You're a career man, right? What are you going to do when you've done your thirty?"

"I'll be fifty," Jak said. "I'll have forty or fifty more good years, barring some hairy-assed bug or accident. I'm going to take my savings and my pension and go out on the Deneb frontier and buy a place. They say there are planets there where a man can own as much as ten acres. I figure if prices don't go up too much I'll be able to buy at least five."

"Jak," Lex said, "my dad gave me a hundred thousand acres of good graze land when I was sixteen." "Shit," Jak said. "A man can run enough meacrs on five thousand acres to live good on Texas." "First you have to be on Texas," Jak said, a little miffed to have his dream of owning five acres of land to

call his own diminished by the Texican's bragging.

"How'd you like to be on Texas, with five thousand acres of grazing land to call your own?"

"Shit."

Lex held his breath and took the plunge. "I'm going. You wanta go?"

"Sure," Jak said, laughing.

"Think about it, Jak. It would mean never seeing any of the Empire again."

"You're not shitting me," Jak said, his face going serious. "You've talked with Wal?"

"Yeah," Lex said. "And I'm hanging my neck out a mile to tell you about it."

"The Emperor's balls," Jak said, standing up, a grin on his face. "Five thousand acres?"

"With a stream through the middle with big trees on the banks and a starting stock of meacrs."

"I'll pay for it, Lex. I'll take my savings—"

"You'll pay for it by helping me get there. You won't be able to stop by an Empire bank to draw out

your savings."

"How? I mean—"

"Later, Jak. Tell me this. Any others you'd trust? Any good men who might like to leave Empire?"

"I don't know. Tech-Chief Form. He's got no love for the Emperor. He was pressed. When he finished his first tour he went home to find his wife dead. She'd gone off with a spacer on leave and he'd crashed an atmoflyer, drunk. He's talked about the Deneb frontier with me."

"Feel him out, will you? It takes at least three. We've got me and you and the Captain, but we could sure use Form. Anyone else?"

"I don't know," Jak said. "I'm not sure. Most of them have families."

"We've got to play it right," Lex said. "We're going fake a dead ship and put the crew in lifeboats near a planet. We have to make the Empire think the Grus died in space, because I don't want to mess up my planet's trade deals with the Empire, and if they knew got away it just might. We can't take any risk, like Asking someone to go and have him say no and then tell what happened when he got back to Empire."

"I wouldn't swear to anyone but Form," Jak said.

"Then it'll have to be the four of us."

"Shit, four good men can blink this old tub."

"Let's take her to Texas, then."

"Buddy, I'm with you," Jak said, faking Lex's slow talk, grinning "Five thousand acres? How much is that?"

"Further than you can see," Lex said.

They could see the planet. They were that close. It was a small star among the hoard of stars and the Captain, in L.S.A., the ship's air becoming foul, made sure that the lifeboat chiefs had the coordinates down. The boats left the lock one by one. The last boat was moved into line, the one which was scheduled to hold Wal, Lex, Blant Jakkes and the Tech-Chief. But it didn't leave the hold.

The Grus had been disabled by some skillful work on the part of Lex, working with Tech-Chief Form. First the generator went, then the life support system. Anyone left on board, according to the endless tests run by crew techs before the order to abandon, would live only as long as the air lasted, and it was getting stale.

The boats left, traveling at sub-blink speeds, a long and tedious journey ahead of them before planetfall, and the life support system came miraculously to life, beginning to rebuild the stale air. The generator worked beautifully after Lex and Form did a bit of tinkering. When the boats were past a given point on the trip to the planet, a drone went out, laden with a rigged weapon which, upon a signal, detonated, making a star of some size for the boats to see. Their reports would state that they had seen the Grus die in a blaze of fire.

Lex stood on the bridge beside Captain Wal and felt free for the first time in over two years. In the improving air of the ship, he felt he could almost catch a sniff of the sweetness of Texas. Below, Form was charging for a blink. The Captain was checking the Complete Empire Spaceways for the hundredth time, making sure that he'd chosen the least frequented blinkways to reach that sector of the rim where the original meat for metal trade had taken place. Lex reasoned that if trade were continuing between Texas and the Empire, it would be conducted in that sector, for it was big, the stars were widely spaced and there was room for maneuver.

Between the Grus and a possible meeting with a Texican ship were thousands, millions of stars and hundreds, thousands of planets occupied by Empire and a billion chances of being detected by an Empire ship. To enhance their chances, Lex and Jakkes crawled the hull, after the first blink, to paint out Empire fleet markings and paint on merchant fleet numbers. The Grus was old enough to pass for a surplus military ship turned to civilian use.

From near the core to the open spaces along the periphery is quite a jump, but they had unlimited power, drawn from the stuff of the stars, their life support system was regenerative over an indefinite period and with only four of them aboard there was only a slight drain on expendable supplies. The old Grus leaped from point to point along well-charted but infrequently used starways, taking the long way around thickly populated sectors, always alert, the four men working four on and four off in pairs, so that two men were always awake. The strain, after the first week, began to show on all of them. Wal issued wakers to all when he himself dozed off just before a blink.