Zach Hughes - Closed System

"He fancies himself to be a great leader," Jeannyhad said. "He's a bad dude, Audrey—"

"Don't call me Audrey," Pat had said.

"—standing tall and alone on the frontier of theinhabited galaxy. And look at this. He's been buying warships from the Zede munitions plants."

The figures were impressive. Taratwo, a small,insignificant planet, had the most powerful fleetarm of any independent planet or group of inde­pendent planets.

Pat whistled through his teeth in surprise. Itwould take a full UP battle fleet to reduce Taratwo'spower, and not without loss, because Taratwo had been buying the latest, most powerful ships andweapons, every modern weapon except, of course, reducers.

"Let's run down all recorded trips by free trad­ers," Pat had said, not too concerned about Tara­two's powerful fleet. The Skimmer was armed, true,but no one in his right mind would use an entirefleet to chase—if the need arose—one small deep-space tug converted into an armed mercenary.

Taratwo seemed to welcome free traders. Iso­lated as they were, no established trade routeswithin a dozen parsecs, free traders would keepthem up to date and bring in the latest in, forexample, medicines.

There in Jeanny's office at X&A Headquarterson Xanthos, they had stared, together, at a holo­graphic chart of the Taratwo sector. Jeanny shud­dered. "It's lonely out there," she'd said.

Pat had nodded, musing. Taratwo was alone, theonly populated planet in a twelve-parsec radius of space. She was a relatively new planet, as plane­ tary age goes, and she was, in theory, too small to hold a viable atmosphere. Mountain formation wasstill going on, and that made for considerable vol­ canic activity along with the resultant earthquakes. Population was under half a billion. Chief exportswere heavy metals and gemstones.

"Well, Audrey," Jeanny had said, "you havepicked an odd profession. You can expect odd placesand odd people."

"Don't call me Audrey," Pat had said.

"You're a mercenary, a gun for hire," Jeannyhad said. "Nice citizens and nice planets don'toften need a man with a gun."

"I think of myself as a knight in shining armor."he'd said, "soaring into the nebulous distances of the universe on missions of true and pure good."

"Batshit," Jeanny had said. "It's just a way ofrunning from responsibility."

He had made the statement with a mock look ofarrogance on his face, eyes idealistically wide, eye­brows raised, for he would never admit to anyonethat he'd been naive enough, in the beginning, tosee it just that way when lucky coincidence ofbirth had made it possible for him to purchase hisfreedom from the halls of learning and from eagerfreshmen with an unexpected legacy from an un­cle who had been forgotten since he boarded acolony ship aimed for a star near the Coal Sack.

"Knight, hell," Jeanny had said. "You're a bum in an antique space tug which carries enough ar­mament to take on a destroyer."

"For defense against pirates," he'd said, remem­bering as he said it that the Zede "businessmen" had said much the same thing.

"We blasted the last pirates off the Hogg Moons,"Jeanny had said. "Why don't you grow up, Audrey Patricia?"

"Don't call me Audrey Patricia," he'd said, be­fore thanking her for her help.

From Jeanny's office he'd gone directly to UPCentral Control. Although space travel was safe,and ships dependable, anything mechanical or electronic or subatomic would break down sooner or later, usually at the most inopportune time. UPCentral Control's vast array of computers kept trackof every registered ship in UP space, and everyregistered ship always left a flight plan on file withControl, or one of its many outposts scatteredthroughout populated space. It took two days toget a list of twenty-two ships which had filed flightplans including a stop at Taratwo in the past fiveyears. That was not a lot of traffic, but all theships had returned safely to home ports.

So, he'd gone over all of it in his mind. He'dreread the file on Taratwo. It was time to do some­thing. He punched orders into the computer.

"OK, old man, let's put it in B for boogie," hesaid, pushing a button. He felt that eerie momentof disorientation which goes with the territory whenpower is discharged in the core of a blink genera­tor and a ship ceases to exist at one point in spaceto exist with an almost immeasurable time lapse at another point.

Upsilon Ophiuchus was a small, yellowish sun glowing weakly at less than one old astronomical unit away from a small, almost barren ball shroud­ed in volcanic smoke and ash. The sun was toosmall, too weak, to ever make that sad, barrenplanet rich and pleasant like the more desirableUP worlds. In fact, when the planet's inner firescooled a bit over the millennia she'd go cold. Mostof her atmosphere would have been bled off intospace by that time, and what remained would be frozen in small caps of polar ice. He, of course, would not be around to see that happen, nor wouldany of the people alive on Taratwo.

He checked the approach instructions for Taratwoand activated the voice communicator. This was a measure of the backwardness of the planet, to have to use audio. At up-to-date facilities, approach was handled efficiently and silently by intercomputer communication.

"Taratwo Space Control, Taratwo Space Con­trol," he sang out, feeling good to be needed, "thisis the free trader Skimmer. Come in."

"Signal Two, Skimmer," said a voice with anodd and rather interesting accent. For a momenthis old interest in words and their developmentand usage was back with him, but he could notidentify the accent. He gave the computer instruc­tions to send on the proper wavelength and punchedup a cup of coffee with cream and sugar as heheard the only slightly mechanical-sounding voiceof the computer send the ship's ID, hull number,registration, licenses, all the numbers and lettersassigned by a host of red-tape artists on a thou­sand planets.

"Signal Two received," said Taratwo Space Con­trol. "Hold one."

Pat waited. He had the coffee cooled just rightwhen the accented voice came again. "Skimmer, you are number one for Space Port Old Dublin.Landing instructions follow on channel eleven."

He switched channels, grinning. He was not sur­prised to be number one for the pad. Skimmer's sensors showed nothing else in near space other than Taratwo's sad excuse for a moon.

Flux thrusters grumbled to break Skimmer's fallinto atmosphere. There was a high layer of ash,then a band of relatively clear air, high, before theship plunged into the lower smoke and ash. Below,the lights of Old Dublin, Taratwo's principal city,were lit, but they could not dispel the appearanceof gloom over the planet, the result of the sun'sfiltered half-light.

"You see, old man, you're in better conditionthan you thought," Pat said, as Skimmer settledonto her assigned pad without so much as a clank.

The ship was alone, squarely squat, sturdy. Thepad was at the northern end of the Old DublinSpace Port. Pat had activated the armaments con­sole, sat with the fire director's helmet pushedback loosely on his head. All he had to do was jamthe helmet in place and think and the ports wouldfly open to reveal Skimmer's teeth, instantly readyto defend the ship against unpleasant surprises.

A vehicle separated from a line of one-story build­ings at a distance of approximately a mile andcame toward the ship. Pat kept power in the gen­erator and in the flux drive, for he was, by nature,a cautious man. The oncoming vehicle did notseem to be armed. There was only one occupant,male, in uniform. Pat activated the sound pickupson the hull as the vehicle drew near and stoppedat a respectful distance.

"Captain Audrey Patricia Howe?" The voice wasaccented like the voice of the Taratwo controller.