to the troops. After one or two small run-ins, I had keyed-in a whole set of reflex responses that made me as good as the battalion champion.
Usually, though, we didn’t see much of the planets we visited. It was normal practice, all across the Galaxy, for a world to channel all its space-faring commerce and traffic through a single port, for economy of facilities and ease of control. The ports I saw were like ports in all times and climes: cities without personality, reduced to the lowest common denominator of the thousand breeds of being they served.
After that, we found another slot, and another after that, on a small, fast lugger from Thlinthor; and on that jump we had a change in luck.
3
I was sound asleep in the off-watch cubbyhole I rated as a scraper when the alarm sirens went off. It took me thirty seconds to roll out and get across the deck to the screens where Fsha-fsha and half a dozen other on-watch crewmen were gaping at a sight that you only see once in a lifetime in Deep Space: a derelict hulk, adrift among the stars. This one was vast—and you could tell at one glance that she was old. . . .
We were five hundred miles apart, closing on courses that were only slightly skew; that made two miracles. We hove-to ten miles from her and took a good look, while the power officer conferred with Command Deck. Then the word came through to resume course.
“Huh?” Both Fsha-fsha and I swiveled on him. From the instant I’d seen the hulk, visions of prize-money had been dancing in my head like sugarplums. “He’s not going to salvage her?” Fsha-fsha came as close to yelling as his mild nature would let him.
The power officer gave him a fishy look from fishy eyes in a fishy face. Like the rest of the crew, he was an amphibian who slept in a tank of salty water for three hours at a stretch—and like all his tribe, he was an agoraphobe to the last feathery scale on his rudimentary rudder fin. “It ith not practical,” he said coldly.
“That tub’s fifty thousand years old if she’s a day,” Fsha-fsha protested. “And I’m a mud-puppy if she’s not a Riv Surveyor! She’ll be loaded with Pre-collapse star maps! There’ll be data aboard her that’s been lost since before Thlinthor lofted her first satellite!”
“How
Usually, though, we didn’t see much of the planets we visited. It was normal practice, all across the Galaxy, for a world to channel all its space-faring commerce and traffic through a single port, for economy of facilities and ease of control. The ports I saw were like ports in all times and climes: cities without personality, reduced to the lowest common denominator of the thousand breeds of being they served.
After that, we found another slot, and another after that, on a small, fast lugger from Thlinthor; and on that jump we had a change in luck.
3
I was sound asleep in the off-watch cubbyhole I rated as a scraper when the alarm sirens went off. It took me thirty seconds to roll out and get across the deck to the screens where Fsha-fsha and half a dozen other on-watch crewmen were gaping at a sight that you only see once in a lifetime in Deep Space: a derelict hulk, adrift among the stars. This one was vast—and you could tell at one glance that she was old. . . .
We were five hundred miles apart, closing on courses that were only slightly skew; that made two miracles. We hove-to ten miles from her and took a good look, while the power officer conferred with Command Deck. Then the word came through to resume course.
“Huh?” Both Fsha-fsha and I swiveled on him. From the instant I’d seen the hulk, visions of prize-money had been dancing in my head like sugarplums. “He’s not going to salvage her?” Fsha-fsha came as close to yelling as his mild nature would let him.
The power officer gave him a fishy look from fishy eyes in a fishy face. Like the rest of the crew, he was an amphibian who slept in a tank of salty water for three hours at a stretch—and like all his tribe, he was an agoraphobe to the last feathery scale on his rudimentary rudder fin. “It ith not practical,” he said coldly.
“That tub’s fifty thousand years old if she’s a day,” Fsha-fsha protested. “And I’m a mud-puppy if she’s not a Riv Surveyor! She’ll be loaded with Pre-collapse star maps! There’ll be data aboard her that’s been lost since before Thlinthor lofted her first satellite!”
“How