The Pirates of Ersatz

by Murray Leinster

  VIII

  Hoddan did not worry about his followers--captives--noting theobsolescence of the space fleet into which they presently drifted.Ancient hulks and impractical oddities did not seem antique or freakishto them. They had no standards in such matters. The planet Darth seemedslightly off to one side in space, at some times, and at others itseemed underfoot while at others it looked directly overhead. At alltimes it moved visibly, while the spaceboat and the ships in orbitseemed merely to float in nearly fixed positions. When the dark part ofDarth appeared to roll toward the spaceboat again all the bright speckswhich were ships about them winked out of sight and there were onlyfaraway stars and a vast blackness off to one side like nothingness madevisible.

  The spearmen were wholly subdued when there was light once more andeccentric shapes around them. There was a ring-ship--the hull like ametal wheel with a huge tire, with pipe passages from the tire part tothe hub where the control room was located. It seemed unbelievable thatsuch a relic could still exist, dating as it did from the period beforegravity-fields could be put into spacecraft. It would have provided acrazy sort of gravity by spinning as it limped from one place toanother. Whoever had collected this fleet for the emigrants from Colinmust have required only one thing--that there be a hull. Given somethingthat would hold air, a Lawlor drive, a gravity-unit, and air apparatuswould turn it into a ship that could go into overdrive and hence crossthe galaxy at need. Those who bargained with the emigrants had beencontent to furnish nothing more than that.

  But this could not be appreciated by Hoddan's involuntary crew. Thespaceboat drew up alongside the gigantic hulk which was the leader's.The seven Darthians were still numbed by their kidnaping and thesituation in which they found themselves. They looked with dull eyes atthe mountainous object they approached. It had actually been designed asa fighter-carrier of space, intended to carry smaller craft to fightnonexistent warships under conditions which never came about. It musthave been sold for scrap a couple of hundred years since, and patched upfor this emigration.

  Hoddan waited for the huge door to open. It did. He headed into theopening, noticing as he did so that an object two or three times thesize of the spaceboat was already there. It cut down the room formaneuvering, but a thing once done is easier thereafter. Hoddan got theboat inside, and there was a very small scraping and the great doorclosed before the boat could drift out again.

  Hoddan turned to his companions--followers--victims, once the spaceboatwas still.

  "This," he said in a manner which could only be described as one ofsmiling ferocity, "is a pirate ship, belonging to the pirate fleet wepassed through on the way here. It's manned by characters so murderousthat their leaders don't dare land anywhere away from their homestar-cluster, or all the galaxy would combine against them, toexterminate them or be exterminated. You've joined that fleet. You'regoing to get out of this boat and march over that ship yonder. Thenyou're going to be space pirates under me."

  They quivered, but did not protest.

  "I'll try you for one voyage," he told them. "There will be plunder.There will be pirate revels. If you serve faithfully and fight well,I'll return you to Don Loris' stronghold with your loot after the onevoyage. If you don't--" He grinned mirthlessly at them--"out the airlock with you, to float forever between the stars. Understand?"

  The last was pure savagery. They cringed. The outside-pressure meterwent up to normal. Hoddan turned off the visionscreens, so ending anyview of the interior of the hold. He opened the port and went out.Sitting in something like continued paralysis in their seats, the sevenspearmen of Darth heard his voice in conversation outside the boat. Theycould catch no words, but Hoddan's tone was strictly businesslike. Hecame back.

  "All right," he said shortly. "Thal, march 'em over."

  Thal gulped. He loosened his seat belt. The enlistment of the seven inthe pirate fleet was tacitly acknowledged. They were unarmed save forthe conventional large knives at their belts.

  "Frrrd, _harch!_" rasped Thal with a lump in his throat. "Two, three,four. _Hup_ two, three, four. _Hup_--"

  Seven men marched dismally out of the spaceboat and down to the floor ofthe huge hold. Eyes front, chests out, throats dry, they marched to thelarger but still small vessel that shared this hold compartment. Theymarched into that ship. Thal barked, "_Halt!_" and they stopped. Theywaited.

  Hoddan came in very matter-of-factly only moments later. He closed theentrance port, so sealing the ship. He nodded approvingly.

  "You can break ranks now," he said. "There's food and such stuff around.The ship's yours. But don't turn knobs or push buttons until you'veasked me what for!"

  He went forward, and a door closed behind him.

  He looked at the control board, and could have done with a littleinformation himself. When the ship was built, generations ago, there'dbeen controls installed which would be quite useless now. When thepresent working instruments were installed, it had been done so hastilythat the wires and relays behind them were not concealed, and it wasthese that gave him the clues to understand them.

  The space ark's door opened. Hoddan backed his ship out. Its rockets hadsurprising power. He reflected that the Lawlor drive wouldn't have beendesigned for this present ship, either. There'd probably been a quantityorder for so many Lawlor drives, and they'd been installed on whateverneeded a modern drive-system, which was every ship in the fleet. Butsince this was one of the smallest craft in the lot, with its low massit should be fast.

  "We'll see," he said to nobody in particular.

  Out in emptiness, but naturally sharing the orbit of the ship from whichit had just come, Hoddan tried it out tentatively. He got the feel ofit. Then as a matter of simple, rule-of-thumb astrogation, he got from alow orbit to a five-diameter height where the Lawlor drive would takehold by mere touches of rocket power. It was simply a matter ofstretching the orbit to extreme eccentricity as all the ships went roundthe planet. After the fourth go round he was fully five diameters out ataphelion. He touched the Lawlor drive button and everybody had that verypeculiar disturbance of all their senses which accompanies going intooverdrive. The small craft sped through emptiness at a high multiple ofthe speed of light.

  Hoddan's knowledge of astrogation was strictly practical. He went overhis ship. From a look at it outside he'd guessed that it once had been ayacht. Various touches inside verified that idea. There were twostaterooms. All the hull-space was for living and supplies. None was forcargo. He nodded. There was a faint mustiness about it. But there'd beena time when it was some rich man's pride.

  He went back to the control room to make an estimate. From the pilot'sseat one could see a speck of brightness directly ahead. Infinitesimaldots of brightness appeared, grew swiftly brighter and then dartedoutward. As they darted they disappeared because their motion became tooswift to follow. There were, of course, methods of measuring thisphenomenon so that one could get an accurate measure of one's speed inoverdrive. Hoddan had no instrument for the purpose. But he had thefeel of things. This was a very fast ship indeed, at full Lawlor thrust.

  Presently he went out to the central cabin. His followers had foundprovisions. There were novelties--hydroponic fruit, for instance--andthey'd gloomily stuffed themselves. They were almost resigned, now.Memory of the loot he'd led other men to at Ghek's castle inclined themto be hopeful. But they looked uneasy when he stopped where they weregathered.

  "Well?" he said sharply.

  Thal swallowed.

  "We have been companions, Bron Hoddan," he said unhappily. "We foughttogether in great battles, two against fifty, and we plundered theslain."

  "True enough," agreed Hoddan. If Thal wanted to edit his memories of thefighting at the spaceport, that was all right with him. "Now we'reheaded for something much better."

  "But what?" asked Thal miserably. "Here we are high above our nativeworld--"

  "Oh, no!" said Hoddan. "You couldn't even pick out its sun, from wherewe are now!"

  Thal gulped.

  "I ...
do not understand what you want with us," he protested. "We arenot experienced in space! We are simple men--"

  "You're pirates now," Hoddan told him with a sort of genialbloodthirstiness. "You'll do what I tell you until we fight. Then you'llfight well or die. That's all you need to know!"

  He left them. When men are to be led it is rarely wise to discuss policyor tactics with them. Most men work best when they know only what isexpected of them. Then they can't get confused and they do not get ideasof how to do things better.

  * * * * *

  Hoddan inspected the yacht more carefully. There were still traces ofdecorative features which had nothing to do with space-worthiness. Butthe mere antiquity of the ship made Hoddan hunt more carefully. He founda small compartment packed solidly with supplies. A supply-cabinet didnot belong where it was. He hauled out stuff to make sure. It was ... ithad been ... a machine shop in miniature. In the early days, beforespacephones were long-range devices, a yacht or a ship that went beyondorbital distance was strictly on its own. If there were a breakdown, itwas strictly private. It had to repair itself or else. So all earlyspacecraft carried amazingly complete equipment for repairs. Only linersare equipped that way in recent generations, and it is almost unheard-offor their tool shops to be used.

  But there was the remnant of a shop on the yacht that Hoddan had in handfor his errand to Walden. He'd told the emigrant leaders that he went toask for charity. He'd just assured his followers that their journey wasfor piracy. Now--

  He began to empty the cubbyhole of all the items that had been packedinto it for storage. It had been very ingenious, this miniature repairshop. The lathe was built in with strength-members of the walls as partof its structure. The drill press was recessed. The welding apparatushad its coils and condensers under the floor. The briefest ofexaminations showed the condensers to be in bad shape, and the coilsmight be hopeless. But there was good material used in the old days.Hoddan began to have quite unreasonable hopes.

  He went back to the control room to meditate.

  He'd had a reasonably sound plan of action for the pirating of aspace-liner, even though he had no weapons mounted on the ship noranything more deadly than stun-pistols for his reluctant crew. But heconsidered it likely that he could make the same sort of landing withthis yacht that he'd already done with the spaceboat. Which should beenough.

  If he waited off Walden until a liner went down to the planet's greatspaceport, he could try it. He would go into a close orbit around Waldenwhich would bring him, very low, over the landing grid within an hour orso of the liner's landing. He'd turn the yacht end for end and applyfull rocket power for deceleration. The yacht would drop like a stoneinto the landing grid. Everything would happen too quickly for the gridcrew to think of clapping a force field on it, or for them to manage itif they tried. He'd be aground before they realized it.

  The rest was simply fast action. Hoddan and seven Darthians,stun-pistols humming, would tumble out of the yacht and dash for thecontrol room of the grid. Hoddan would smash the controls. Then they'drush the landed liner, seize it, shoot down anybody who tried to opposethem, and seal up the ship.

  And then they'd take off. On the liner's rockets, which were carried foremergency landing only, but could be used for a single take-off. Afterone such use they'd be exhausted. And with the grid's controls smashed,nobody could even try to stop them.

  It wasn't a bad idea. He had a good deal of confidence in it. It was thereason for his Darthian crew. Nobody'd expect such a thing to be tried,so it almost certainly could be done. But it did have the drawback thatthe yacht would have to be left behind, a dead loss, when the liner wasseized.

  Hoddan thought it over soberly. Long before he reached Walden, ofcourse, he could have his own crew so terrified that they'd fight likefiends for fear of what he might do to them if they didn't. But if hecould keep the space-yacht also--

  He nodded gravely. He liked the new possibility. If it didn't work,there was the first plan in reserve. In any case he'd get a modernspace-liner and a suitable cargo to present to the emigrants of Colin.And afterward--

  There were certain electronic circuits which were akin. The Lawlordrive unit formed a force field, a stress in space, into which a nearbyship necessarily moved. The faster-than-light angle came from the factthat it worked like a donkey trotting after a carrot held in front ofhim by a stick. The ship moving into the stressed area moved the stress.The force fields of a landing grid were similar. A tuning principle wasinvolved, but basically a landing grid clamped an area of stress arounda spaceship, and the ship couldn't move out of it. When the landing gridmoved the stressed area up or down--why--that was it.

  All this was known to everybody. But a third trick had been evolved onZan. It was based on the fact that ball lightning could be generated bya circuit fundamentally akin to the other two. Ball lightning was anarea of space so stressed that its energy-content could leak out onlyvery slowly, unless it made contact with a conductor, when all bets wereoff. It blew. And the Zan pirates used ball lightning to force thesurrender of their victims.

  Hoddan began to draw diagrams. The Lawlor drive-unit had been installedlong after the yacht was built. It would be modern, with no nonsenseabout it. With such-and-such of its electronic components cut out, andsuch-and-such other ones cut in, it would become a perfectly practicalball lightning generator, capable of placing bolts wherever one wantedthem. This was standard Zan practice. Hoddan's grandfather had used itfor years. It had the advantage that it could be used inside a gravityfield, where a Lawlor drive could not. It had the other advantage thatcommercial spacecraft could not mount such gadgets for defense, becausethe insurance companies objected to meddling with Lawlor driveinstallations.

  * * * * *

  Hoddan set to work with the remnants of a tool shop on the ancient yachtand some antique coils and condensers and such. He became filled withzest. He almost forgot that he was the skipper of an elderly craft whichshould have been scrapped before he was born.

  But even he grew hungry, and he realized that nobody offered him food.He went indignantly into the yacht's central saloon and found his sevencrew-members snoring stertorously, sprawled in stray places here andthere.

  He woke them with great sternness. He set them furiously to work on thathousekeeping--including meals--which can be neglected in a feudal castlebecause strong outside winds blow smells away and dry up smelly objects,but which must be practiced in a spaceship.

  He went back to work. Suddenly he stopped and meditated afresh, andceased his actual labor to draw a diagram which he regarded with greataffection. He returned to his adaptation of the Lawlor drive to theproduction of ball lightning.

  It was possible to wind coils. A certain percentage of the oldcondensers held a charge. He tapped the drive-unit for brazing current,and the drill-press became a die-stamping device for small parts. Hebuilt up the elements of a vacuum tube such as is normally found only ina landing grid control room. He set up a vacuum-valve arrangement in thebase of a large glass jar. He put that jar in the boat's air lock, bledthe air to emptiness, and flashed the tube's quaint elements. He broughtit back and went out of overdrive while he hooked the entire newassembly into the drive-circuit, with cut-outs and switches to beoperated from the yacht's instrument board.

  Finished, he examined the stars. The nearby suns were totally strange intheir arrangement. But the Coalsack area was a space-mark good for halfa sector of the galaxy. There was a condensation in the Nearer Rim for asecond bearing. And a certain calcium cloud with a star-cluster behindit was as good as a highway sign for locating one's self.

  He lined up the yacht again and went into overdrive once more. Two dayslater he came out, again surveyed the cosmos, again went into overdrive,again came out, once more made a hop in faster-than-light travel--and hewas in the solar system of which Walden was the ornament and pride.

  He used the telescope and contemplated Walden on its screen. The spaceyac
ht moved briskly toward it. His seven Darthian crewmen, aware ofcoming action, dolefully sharpened their two-foot knives. They did notknow what else to do, but they were far from happy.

  Hoddan shared their depression. Such gloomy anticipations beforestirring events are proof that a man is not a fool. Hoddan's grandfatherhad been known to observe that when a man can imagine all kinds oftroubles and risks and disasters ahead of him, he is usually right.Hoddan shared that view. But it would not do to back out now.

  He examined Walden painstakingly while the yacht sped on. He saw anocean come out of the twilight zone of dawn. By the charts, the capitalcity and the spaceport should be on that ocean's western shore. After asuitable and very long interval, the site of the capital city camearound the edge of the planet.

  From a bare hundred thousand miles, Hoddan stepped up magnification toits limit and looked again. Then Walden more than filled the telescope'sfield. He could see only a very small fraction of the planet's surface.He had to hunt before he found the capital city again. Then it was veryclear. He saw the curving lines of its highways and the criss-crosspattern of its streets. Buildings as such, however, did not show. But hemade out the spaceport and the shadow of the landing grid, and in thevery center of that grid there was something silvery which cast a shadowof its own. A ship. A liner.

  There was a tap on the control-room door. Thal.

  "Anything happening?" he asked uneasily.

  "I just sighted the ship we're going to take," said Hoddan.

  Thal looked unhappy. He withdrew. Hoddan plotted out the extremelyroundabout course he must take to end up with the liner and the yachttraveling in the same direction and the same speed, so capture would bepossible.

  He put the yacht on the line required. He threw on full power. Actually,he headed partly away from his intended victim. The little yacht plungedforward. Nothing seemed to happen. Time passed. Hoddan had nothing to dobut worry. He worried.

  Thal tapped on the door again.

  "About time to get ready to fight?" he asked dolefully.

  "Not yet," said Hoddan. "I'm running away from our victim, now."

  * * * * *

  Another half hour. The course changed. The yacht was around behindWalden. The whole planet lay between it and its intended prey. Thecourse of the small ship curved, now. It would pass almost close enoughto clip the topmost tips of Walden's atmosphere. There was nothing forHoddan to do but think morbid thoughts. He thought them.

  The Lawlor drive began to burble. He cut it off. He sat gloomily in thecontrol room, occasionally glancing at the nearing expanse of rushingmottled surface presented by the now-nearby planet. Its attraction bentthe path of the yacht. It was now a parabolic curve.

  Presently the surface diminished a little. The yacht was increasing itsdistance from it. Hoddan used the telescope. He searched the space aheadwith full-width field. He found the liner. It rose steadily. The gridstill thrust it upward with an even, continuous acceleration. It had tobe not less than forty thousand miles out before it could take tooverdrive. But at that distance it would have an outward velocity whichwould take it on out indefinitely. At ten thousand miles, certainly, thegrid-fields would let go.

  They did. Hoddan could tell because the liner had been pointed base downtoward the planet when the force fields picked it up. Now it wabbledslightly. It was free. It was no longer held solidly. From now on itfloated up on momentum.

  Hoddan nibbled at his fingernails. There was nothing to be done forforty minutes more. Presently there was nothing to be done for thirty.For twenty. Ten. Five. Three. Two--

  The liner was barely twenty miles away when Hoddan fired his rockets.They made a colossal cloud of vapor in emptiness. The yacht stirredfaintly, shifted deftly, lost just a suitable amount of velocity--whichnow was nearly straight up from the planet--and moved with precision anddirectness toward the liner. Hoddan stirred his controls and swung thewhole small ship. Here, obviously, he could not use the space-drive forits proper purpose. But a switch cut out certain elements of the Lawlorunit and cut in those others which made the modified drive-unit into aball lightning projector.

  A flaming speck of pure incandescence sped from the yacht throughemptiness. It would miss-- No. Hoddan swerved it. It struck the liner'shull. It would momentarily paralyze every bit of electric equipment inthe ship. It would definitely not go unnoticed.

  "Calling liner," said Hoddan painfully into a microphone. "Callingliner! We are pirates, attacking your ship. You have ten seconds to getinto your lifeboats or we will hull you!"

  He settled back, again nibbling at his fingernails. He was acutelydisturbed. At the end of ten seconds the distance between the two shipswas perceptibly less.

  He flung a second ball lightning bolt across the diminished space. Hesent it whirling round and round the liner in a tight spiral. He endedby having it touch the liner's bow. Liquid light ran over the entirehull.

  "Your ten seconds are up," he said worriedly. "If you don't get out--"

  But then he relaxed. A boat-blister on the liner opened. The boat didnot release itself. It could not possibly take on its complement ofpassengers and crew in so short a time. The opening of the blister was asign of surrender.

  The two first ball lightning bolts were miniatures. Hoddan now projecteda full-sized ball. It glittered viciously in emptiness, the plasma-gasnecessary for its existence furnishing a medium for radiation. It spedtoward the liner and hung off its side, menacingly. The yacht from Darthmoved steadily closer. Five miles. Two.

  "All out," said Hoddan regretfully. "We can't wait any longer!"

  A boat darted away from the liner. A second. A third and fourth andfifth. The last boat lingered desperately. The yacht was less than amile away when it broke free and plunged frantically toward the planetit had left a little while before. The other boats were alreadystreaking downward, trails of rocket-fumes expanding behind them. Thecrew of the landing grid would pick them up for safe and gentle landing.

  Hoddan sighed in relief. He played delicately upon the yacht'srocket-controls. He carefully maneuvered the very last of the noveltieshe had built into an originally simple Lawlor drive-unit. The two shipscame together with a distinct clanking sound. It seemed horribly loud.

  Thal jerked open the door, ashen-white.

  "W-we hit something! Wh-when do we fight?"

  Hoddan said ruefully:

  "I forgot. The fighting's over. But bring your stun-pistols. Nobody'dstay behind, but somebody might have gotten left."

  He rose, to take over the captured ship.