Dave Duncan - Wildcatter

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Your troubles. You can’t fool me. Speak up.” Why, for instance, had they decided to change over so soon? Usually they stayed one gender for at least a month.

Jordan smiled ruefully and folded into a sitting posture. “I was planning a special welcome-home ceremony, but I discovered I’d have to restrain myself for a few days. Eat up. You can help best by getting your strength back. We think we can risk returning you to standard atmospheric pressure in three or four days.”

“So you’re shorthanded. Where’s Reese?”

“In bed. And JC also. ‘Unknown pathogen.’ Meredith was right when she said this thing could escape any containment.”

“But what is it?” A century of galactic exploration had turned up a fantastic variety of viruses and bacteria. It seemed incredible that there could be anything really new to human medical science now. Reese and Control between them should be able to type any sort of infective agent and zap it with the appropriate drugs.

“They don’t know. Meredith survived it and it looks as if you will. The rest of us can only hope we’ll do as well when we catch it. Drink your soup while it’s hot.”

“Next time bring a steak.”

“Soft biscuits and warm milk.”

Seth said something no gentleman should say to a lady.

When Jordan had hurried off to attend to a million duties, Seth drank soup and brooded over the news. In theory the trip back to Earth should take only a few days, retracing the jumps they had made on the way here. In practice, space was never still, and Golden Hind had journeyed not merely 1,500 light years’ distance, but at least 1,500 years. If one of their havens had disappeared, Hanna would have to start all over, ferreting out a new route.

When Golden Hind arrived in near-Earth space, Control would automatically report this unknown infection and ISLA would slap a quarantine order on the ship. There were very few precedents for that, and no way of knowing how long the ban would last. Of course the news of a sentient species would ring around the world, but the new celebrities would not be available to be feted.

Seth was a made man. He would have his plog edited into shape by then and royalties would come pouring in for years. Meredith might work up hers from Galactic’s records, but it would not be as complete or as dramatic as Seth’s. She would have a cast-iron legal case against Galactic for attempted murder, so in the end she would be rich also.

But the others? They would be famous and broke. Golden Hind would be seized by the banks and the crew would be very lucky to see even the termination bonuses they had been promised in their contracts. They would not benefit from the samples Seth had so diligently collected. Even if everyone recovered completely from the mysterious infection, the voyage home was not going to be a happy one.

After eating, he decided to pay a call on his fellow sufferer. Wrapping himself in a bed sheet—since no one had yet thought to bring him any clothes—he floated along the Gut to the biologist’s cabin to visit with Meredith. Even in free fall, he felt weak, tending to bounce off walls. He found her alert, reading text on the monitor, and wearing very little more than he was. She was barely recognizable as the bedraggled, starving, poisoned, wreck he had known on the planet. Now she was a dream of womankind, her hair clean and shiny, her eyes bright. The way they lit up at the sight of him was flattering.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Great, thanks to you. I’ve watched dozens of replays of me being carried by that team of stretcher-bearers you organized. It’s incredible! However did you do it?”

“Out of desperation. They’re smart little critters.”

“Well I can’t thank them, but I am eternally grateful to you.”

“No need. I’d have done it for anyone, even JC. It wasn’t just because you’re a red-hot sex bomb.”

“I bet that helped.” Golden eyebrows rose.

“You bet,” he admitted.

“So you do hope to cash in your IOU’s some time?”

His denial died stillborn. He nodded.

She said, “There is never any time like the present.”

Testosterone receptors started flashing in Seth’s limbic area.

“I’m still as weak as a newborn kitten.”

“I can fix that.”

He floated a little closer. “Sounds dangerous. I ought to get into shape first.”

“We must begin your training at once.”

He had to kiss her then. Her response was anything but sisterly, and for the next thirty minutes or so conversation was brief and incoherent.

Golden Hind ’s shuttle had always been off-limits to everyone except the prospector, but Seth had invited Jordan up there a couple of times “for an inspection.” The inspections had been mutual and intimate. So he’d had experience in free fall sex and knew how it was done. If Meredith did not, she had a natural gift for it. Convalescence was going to be a lot less boring from now on. As they floated in recovery mode, still tightly entwined, he reflected that this had been the fastest wooing he’d ever heard of.

“Mm,” she murmured. “That was very nice. What’s your turnaround time?”

“Usually an hour or so, but after that epic, I feel like I’ll need a month.”

“Dylan used to manage a lap every twenty minutes.”

“Screw Dylan.”

“I did. I bet I can bring you up to speed too.”

“You have my permission to try.”

Meredith was not only an enthusiast, she was an expert. She came close−twenty-seven minutes.

Paradise was short-lived though. Two days later, Control reported that the convalescents should now be able to return to standard atmospheric pressure, and they both reported for duty. Everyone else except Jordan had succumbed to the mysterious plague. Reese had been first to go and ought to be first to recover. Golden Hind was drifting in a haven about two hundred light years from Cacafuego. So far Hanna had been able to retrace the incoming jumps, but no one was willing to step into her shoes as navigator. A few days’ delay hardly mattered on such a journey.

By evening, Jordan looked blurred and battered; she reluctantly admitted to having a headache, which was the first sign of the mysterious infection. Seth fetched the medic tester. As soon as it took a blood sample, Control ordered complete bed rest. Jordan gratefully staggered off in search of an empty bunk. Was Seth Broderick now in charge?

In the commodore’s stateroom, Reese was conscious, but apparently content to lie and stare at the ceiling. Tied down on the other bed like a beached whale, JC mumbled and twitched in delirium.

“Dr. Platte, ma’am, I have the honor of informing you that you are now the ranking officer aboard. Ma’am?”

Reese rolled her eyes in his direction without moving her head. While she did not look her legal age of ninety-four, she was certainly not at her best. Her hair was a limp tangle; the clumsy tuck in her lip was more evident than usual.

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Take charge, ma’am.”

“I’m not capable at the moment. You, on the other hand, are Mr. Know-it-all, the universal understudy for the entire crew. Consider yourself acting captain until further notice.”

Seth felt as if he needed to shake seawater out of his ears. Since when had Reese ever paid anyone a compliment, especially him?

“Is that an order, ma’am?”

“No, it’s a statement of fact. You are the most fucking infuriating asshole, Broderick. You could run this ship singlehanded. You always know best. You run up the wildest prospector’s plog in history, which will bring you billions. You discover the only other intelligent species in the galaxy, so the rest of us will get nothing. Giving you orders doesn’t do any good. You don’t even take direct orders from the captain. I’d report you for mutiny if I wasn’t so ashamed.”