Dave Duncan - Wildcatter

Smiles broke out all over. They would not be pariahs, lepers, outcasts from their home world. That had been part of the problem—although far from all of it.

JC segued smoothly back into his speech, confident that it would be viewed by billions as soon as he returned to Earth. “Although mankind has been exploring the stars for more than a century…”

He lambasted Galactic by giving Prospector Meredith Tsukuba credit for making first contact with the centaurs and attributing sentience to them; he belabored the way she had then been abandoned to die and the way Commodore Duddridge had flouted ISLA rules by posting a yellow beacon, instead of a purple. He even lauded “young” Seth Broderick for his heroic rescue and the way he had clearly established that the centaurs were capable of speech, reasoning, and cooperation. He did not mention that he wanted to strangle the aforementioned young man for ruining the whole expedition and everyone aboard except Seth himself.

“I call on him now to make his report. Prospector Seth Broderick!”

Applause.

“Even before I went down to the planet’s surface,” Seth said, “Commodore Lecanard suggested that the Galactic expedition that preceded us had made a discovery that it did not wish to reveal—something extremely valuable. This was characteristically observant of him.” Soap him up before you push him off the plank. “Commodore, sir, this gets us into legal matters. Is it possible to turn off Control’s recording function for a few minutes?”

JC choked, coughed, turned scarlet, and finally managed to say, “Possible, yes. But it would be illegal.”

Again Jordan interrupted, looking even angrier than before. “I was expressly assured that it was not possible. The ship’s specs and ISLA’s GenRegs say the same. This is your own doing? You were an IT engineer, once. You have been meddling with Control’s software?”

JC put on an even harder internal struggle, but lost again, seemingly just before suffering an apoplectic fit. “I think there could be a way to suspend recording, but it has never been tested and I refuse to try it now. Let us have your report, Prospector!”

He had been given his chance.

Seth was not ready to report anything yet. “When you hired me, Commodore, you assured me that the crew, meaning the people present here, other than Meredith Tsukuba, would be sharing between them fifteen percent of the ownership of Mighty Mite Ltd. Is that true?”

“Certainly it is! Are you accusing me of being a liar?”

Certainly he was a liar, but men of his stature must not be accused without very good evidence.

“And will those shares make us rich?”

JC choked, gasped, spluttered… And whispered, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is nothing to share. Thanks to you and your hellish stupidity in proving that those freaks are sentient, ISLA will interdict the planet and there won’t be any profits. You wanted to be famous. You wanted to go down as the first man in history to discover an intelligent species. Idiot! You really believe you’re the first to find evidence of intelligent species in the galaxy? The trick is to back off quick and keep your mouth shut, but oh no, not you! Why do you think Indra keeps finding such wonderful stuff on Floren and yet never investigates the lesser continent? Why won’t it even let its ships overfly it? Because they’d see fields down there, and roads, that’s why!

“Why do you think Star Ventures never went back to Pixie, in spite of the terrific chemical feedstock they brought back on the first visit? Because they traded for some of them, and if the truth ever gets out, ISLA will fine them trillions, that’s why.

“But thanks to you and your insanity, Mighty Mite will declare bankruptcy an hour after we establish radio contact. That goes for you too, boy! You may think you own the copyright on your plog, but the creditors will seize that as well, or tie it up in the courts for a hundred years. We’re all flat broke together.”

Seth ignored all the angry glares directed at him. “You too, sir?”

“Including me, yes.”

What? For a moment Seth was stumped, and then he saw the way out. “But your wife is wealthy? Are your children?”

Still JC could not refuse to answer. “They have property, yes. What the hell have you done to me? I don’t feel well…”

“I have done nothing to you, sir. We’re discussing what you have done to us. Remember when we started, when we all dreamed of bringing back things of great value from Cacafuego, things big enough to make the expedition a roaring success. Were you planning to cheat us out of our cut?”

JC shrank back like a cowed dog. He swallowed a few times and nodded, growing older by the minute. He could not resist the truth compulsion. “Yes.”

The audience sat up straighter on their chairs. Jordan opened her mouth but Seth raised a warning hand and plunged ahead.

“How? Cheat us how?”

“Greenhorn Corporation. It’s a privately owned company that loaned Mighty Mite some of its start-up money. It has first call on any and all discoveries that we make. Mighty Mite is a worthless shell. Greenhorn would have taken all the profits and none of the debt. But that isn’t going to happen, you idiot! If you’d left that woman to die and ignored the centaurs, Mighty Mite could have staked Cacafuego and then Greenhorn could have stripped it of everything it had. You had to go and play knight in shining armor. Now ISLA claims all samples, living or dead. We’re still broke.”

“True,” Seth admitted. “Who owns Greenhorn?”

“Several people.”

“How much do you control?”

JC looked around despairingly. “Twelve percent. It doesn’t matter now.”

Jordan said, “But it could have mattered very much. This was fraud you were planning! You were hoping to cheat us, and Mighty Mite’s shareholders, and the banks and funds that had loaned it money?”

“A lawyer could call it that. My lawyers wouldn’t. And I would have seen you each got a reasonable reward.”

“You would have defined the ‘reasonable’ part of course.”

Silence: Seth had made a statement, not asked a question.

Meredith chuckled, although she wasn’t smiling. “I’m waiting to hear a motion that you be put outside to walk home, Mr. Lecanard.”

“Control is still recording,” JC said quickly. He, too, must smell the bloodlust in the air.

“So it is,” Jordan said softly. “And since you have confessed to attempted fraud, you could now sell each of us two percent of this Greenhorn Corporation for the sum of one dollar and our promise not to sue. That is to say the six of us will pay you six dollars for your entire holdings. We could make that legally binding, couldn’t we?”

Choke… Gasp… “Yes.”

“Yes, let’s do that,” Hanna said. Her face was flushed as red as Betelgeuse and her fingers were hooked like claws. “Just on principle.”

It took a little while to get the wording right, but Control pulled some precedents from its archives and approved the final brief text. Crushed, JC appended his sig, and so did the others.

“Commodore,” Jordan said, “You are confined to quarters for reasons of health.” Several people nodded, as if to confirm that strangulation was a definite health hazard. “You may go now.”

Crushed, JC rose and crept out of the room. The captain moved to the head of the table.

“Control, I terminate this meeting and reverse its classification as the official wake. We will schedule a proper wake for tomorrow.” She stared hard at Seth. “What have you seen that the rest of us haven’t, Prospector?”

Seth grinned. No one else did, but he was feeling very good now.

“I’ve seen what Commodore Duddridge saw. As JC guessed, Duddridge had seen that Cacafuego did offer a hugely profitable discovery. You have just seen it start to pay off!