Crashlander

«Just barely. The same goes for the kzinti. The kzinti are ferocious enough. Trouble is, if we ever learned they were preying on our ships, we'd raise pluperfect hell. The kzinti know that, and they know we can beat them. Took them long enough, but they learned.»

«So you think it's humans,» said Carlos.

«Yeah. If it's pirates.»

The piracy theory still looked shaky. Spectrum telescopes had not even found concentrations of ship's metals in the space where they have vanished. Would pirates steal the whole ship? If the hyperdrive motor was still intact after the attack, the rifled ship could be launched into infinity, but could pirates count on that happening eight times out of eight?

And none of the missing ships had called for help via hyperwave.

I'd never believed pirates. Space pirates have existed, but they died without successors. Intercepting a spacecraft was too difficult. They couldn't make it pay.

* * *

Ships fly themselves in hyperdrive. All a pilot need do is watch for green radial lines in the mass-sensor. But he has to do that frequently, because the mass sensor is a psionic device; it must be watched by a mind, not another machine.

As the narrow green line that marked Sol grew longer, I became abnormally conscious of the debris around Sol System. I spent the last twelve hours of the flight at the controls, chain-smoking with my feet. I should add that I do that normally when I want both hands free, but now I did it to annoy Ausfaller. I'd seen the way his eyes bugged the first time he saw me take a drag from a cigarette between my toes. Flatlanders are less than limber.

Carlos and Ausfaller shared the control room with me as we penetrated Sol's cometary halo. They were relieved to be nearing the end of a long trip. I was nervous. «Carlos, just how large a mass would it take to make us disappear?»

«Planet size, Mars and up. Beyond that it depends on how close you get and how dense it is. If it's dense enough, it can be less massive and still flip you out of the universe. But you'd see it in the mass sensor.»

«Only for an instant … and not then, if it's turned off. What if someone turned on a giant gravity generator as we went past?»

«For what? They couldn't rob the ship. Where's their profit?»

«Stocks.»

But Ausfaller was shaking his head. «The expense of such an operation would be enormous. No group of pirates would have enough additional capital on hand to make it worthwhile. Of the puppeteers I might believe it.»

Hell, he was right. No human that wealthy would need to turn pirate.

The long green line marking Sol was almost touching the surface of the mass sensor. I said, «Breakout in ten minutes.»

And the ship lurched savagely.

«Strap down!» I yelled, and glanced at the hyperdrive monitors. The motor was drawing no power, and the rest of the dials were going bananas.

I activated the windows. I'd kept them turned off in byperspace lest my fladander passengers go mad watching the Blind Spot. The screens came on, and I saw stars. We were in normal space.

«Futz! They got us anyway.» Carlos sounded neither frightened nor angry, but awed.

As I raised the hidden panel Ausfaller cried, «Wait!» I ignored him. I threw. the red switch, and Hobo Kelly lurched again as her belly blew off.

Ausfaller began cursing in some dead flatlander language.

Now two-thirds of Hobo Kelly receded, slowly turning. What was left must show as what she was: a No. 2 General Products hull, puppeteer-built, a slender transparent spear three hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, with instruments of war clustered along what was now her belly. Screens that had been blank came to life. And I lit the main drive and ran it up to full power.

Ausfaller spoke in rage and venom. «Shaeffer, you idiot, you coward! We run without knowing what we run from. Now they know exactly what we are. What chance that they will follow us now? This ship was built for a specific purpose, and you have ruined it!»

«I've freed your special instruments,» I pointed out. «Why don't you see what you can find?» Meanwhile I could get us the futz out of here.

Ausfaller became very busy. I watched what he was getting on screens at my side of the control panel. Was anything chasing us? They'd find us hard to catch and harder to digest. They could hardly have been expecting a General Products hull. Since the puppeteers stopped making them, the price of used GP hulls has gone out of sight.

There were ships out there. Ausfaller got a close-up of them: three space tugs of the Belter type, shaped like thick saucers, equipped with oversized drives and powerful electromagnetic generators. Belters use them to tug nickel-iron asteroids to where somebody wants the ore. With those heavy drives they could probably catch us, but would they have adequate cabin gravity?

They weren't trying. They seemed to be neither following nor fleeing. And they looked harmless enough.