Plague Ship by Andre Norton (best free e reader TXT) 📕

“Make what?” That was Ali up from the search of Kosti’s quarters. “Nothing,” he gave his report of what he had found there and then returned to the earlier question. “Make what?”

Swiftly Dane outlined their suspicions⁠—that the seat of the trouble lay in the hydro and that they should clean out that section, drawing upon emergency materials at the I-S E-Stat.

“Sounds all right. But you know what they do to pirates?” inquired the Engineer-apprentice.

Space law came into Dane’s field, he needed no prompting. “Any ship in emergency,” he recited automatically, “may claim supplies from the nearest E-Stat⁠—paying for them when the voyage is completed.”

“That means any Patrol E-Stat. The Companies’ are private property.”

“But,” Dane pointed out triumphantly, “the law doesn’t say so⁠—there is nothing about any difference between Company and Patrol E-Stat in the law⁠—”

“He’s right,” Rip agreed. “That law was framed when only the Patrol had such stations. Companies put them in later to save tax⁠—remember? Legally we’re all right.”

“Unless the agents on duty raise a howl,” Ali amended. “Oh, don’t give me that look, Rip. I’m not sounding any warn-off on this, but I just want you to be prepared to find a cruiser riding our fins and giving us the hot flash as bandits. If you want to spoil the Eysies, I’m all for it. Got a stat of theirs pinpointed?”

Rip pointed to the figures on the computer. “There she is. We can set down in about five hours’ ship time. How long will it take to strip the hydro and reinstall?”

“How can I tell?” Ali sounded irritable. “I can give you oxgy for quarters for about two hours. Depends upon how fast we can move. No telling until we make a start.”

He started for the corridor and then added over his shoulder: “You’ll have to answer a com challenge⁠—thought about that?”

“Why?” Rip asked. “It might be com repairs bringing us in. They won’t be expecting trouble and we will⁠—we’ll have the advantage.”

But Ali was not to be shaken out of his usual dim view of the future. “All right⁠—so we land, blaster in hand, and take the place. And they get off one little squeak to the Patrol. Well, a short life but an interesting one. And we’ll make all the Video channels for sure when we go out with rockets blasting. Nothing like having a little excitement to break the dull routine of a voyage.”

“We aren’t going to, are we⁠—” Dane protested, “land armed, I mean?”

Ali stared at him and Rip, to Dane’s surprise, did not immediately repudiate that thought.

“Sleep rods certainly,” the Astrogator-apprentice said after a pause. “We’ll have to be prepared for the moment when they find out who we are. And you can’t reset a hydro in a few minutes, not when we have to keep oxgy on for the others. If we were able to turn that off and work in suits it’d be a quicker job⁠—we could dump before we set down and then pile it in at once. But this way it’s going to be piece work. And it all depends on the agents at the Stat whether we have trouble or not.”

“We had better break out the suits now,” Ali added to Rip’s estimate of the situation. “If we set down and pile out wearing suits at once it will build up our tale of being poor wrecked spacemen⁠—”

Sleep rods or not, Dane thought to himself, the whole plan was one born of desperation. It would depend upon who manned the E-Stat and how fast the Free Traders could move once the Queen touched her fins to earth.

“Knock out their coms,” that was Ali continuing to plan. “Do that first and then we don’t have to worry about someone calling in the Patrol.”

Rip stretched. For the first time in hours he seemed to have returned to his usual placid self. “Good thing somebody in this spacer watches Video serials⁠—Ali, you can brief us on all the latest tricks of space pirates. Nothing is so wildly improbable that you can’t make use of it sometime during a checkered career.”

He glanced over the board before he brought his hand down on a single key set a distance apart from the other controls. “Put some local color into it,” was his comment.

Dane understood. Rip had turned on the distress signal at the Queen’s nose. When she set down on the Stat field she would be flaming a banner of trouble. Next to the wan dead lights, set only when a ship had no hope of ever reaching port at all, that signal was one every spacer dreaded having to flash. But it was not the dead lights⁠—not yet for the Queen.

Working together they brought out the space suits and readied them at the hatch. Then Weeks and Dane took up the task of tending their unconscious charges while Rip and Ali prepared for landing.

There was no change in the sleepers. And in Jellico’s cabin even Queex appeared to be influenced by the plight of its master, for instead of greeting Dane with its normal aspect of rage, the Hoobat stayed quiescent on the floor of its cage, its top claws hooked about two of the wires, its protruding eyes staring out into the room with what seemed closed to a malignant intelligence. It did not even spit as Dane passed under its abode to pour thin soup into his patient.

As for Sinbad, the cat had retreated to Dane’s cabin and steadily refused to leave the quarters he had chosen, resisting with tooth and claw the one time Dane had tried to take him back to Van Rycke’s office and his own hammock there. Afterwards the Cargo-apprentice did not try to evict him⁠—there was comfort in seeing that plump gray body curled on the bunk he had little chance to use.

His nursing duties performed for the moment, Dane ventured into the hydro. He was practiced in tending this vital heart of the ship’s air supply.