Starship

by Michael D. Resnick

  “That presents a problem,” said Cole. “It was bought when the economy was booming, and now we're in a deep recession. Besides, we don't want to sell it for peanuts. We want to know what it's worth, and then either sell it or hang on to the necklace until we can get a decent price for it.”

  “All right,” said Forrice, annoyed that Cole kept putting up new obstacles, even if they were just imaginary ones. “Take it to a jeweler and get it appraised.”

  “I'll do better than that,” said Cole. “I'll take it to three jewelers. One says fifty, one says forty-five, one says forty-two. Now what? How do I get the real value for the necklace?”

  “You go to an insurance company, and whichever appraisal they choose is the right one.”

  “And if they disagree with all three and bring in their own appraiser, then what?”

  “Then that's the official value of the necklace.”

  “Why?” asked Cole.

  “Because that's the amount they'll pay out if it's stolen,” answered the Molarian.

  “Very good,” said Cole with a smile.

  “I don't even know what I'm saying,” complained Forrice irritably.

  “You will, and soon,” promised Cole. “Now once this necklace is stolen, its description and holograph go out to five million worlds, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Why?” asked Cole. “It's not the insurance company's necklace. It's mine.”

  “But they're on the hook for it's full value,” said Forrice, “so they're every bit as anxious to see it recovered as you are. Maybe more so.”

  “One last question,” said Cole. “You're the thief who stole the necklace. Who would you rather deal with—a fence who might pay you four or five percent of its appraised value because it's hot property and he might have to sit on it for years, and even then he's risking jail time every time he tries to sell it, or an insurance company that's got to pay its full value if it's not recovered?”

  “I see!” said Forrice with an expression of dawning comprehension on his face. “That's it!”

  “And that's what we're going to do,” said Cole. “Even estimating lower than anyone else has suggested, those diamonds have a value in excess of ten million credits. As for the jewelry, who knows? But we'll know when we find out who insured it and for how much.”

  “You can't just walk up to these companies and say, ‘I stole your diamonds or your tiara or whatever, and I want what they're worth or I won't give them back to you,'” said Forrice.

  “Of course not,” answered Cole. “There's no reason for them to deal with us under those circumstances, when there's no profit to be made. But let's get back to my hypothetical necklace again. You're the insurance company. I walk into your office, and I hand you my own holograph of the necklace with some way to date it so you know I took the holo after it was stolen. I don't ask for the full value. Hell, you'd call the police and lock me away. No, I explain to you that my profession is retrieving lost articles. I explain that I heard about the necklace and was fortunate enough to retrieve it. I'll return it to your company in exchange for a reward amounting to one-third of its market value, and since I don't like the way you're staring at me, I also want a pledge from you, in writing, that you won't prosecute me or discuss our transaction with any authorities.”

  “Damn, that's good!” said Forrice.

  “Let's get back to the diamonds, and let's say they're worth twelve million credits. You pay me four million, you get them back and return them to their legal owner, and the crisis is over. On the other hand, if you turn me in to the police or refuse to deal with me, you may feel morally superior, but do you feel superior enough to pay out another eight million credits? And if you think you may someday be able to blackmail me on your own or the company's behalf, I'll agree to—in fact, I'll insist upon—a one-question test while tied in to a Neverlie Machine, and that one question will be: Are you the one who stole these diamonds from Blantyre IV? And of course I will say I didn't, and the Neverlie Machine will confirm it, because I stole them from the pirates who stole them from Blantyre IV.”

  “And if they ask more?”

  “I'm not so foolish as to have the necklace on my person while they're negotiating with me. If they stick to my terms and our mutually agreed-upon resolution, I'll deliver it to them within twenty-four hours. If they don't, they've lost the full insurance value on the necklace, and I guarantee they're not going to let that happen. They're not lawmen out for justice. They're a business that's concerned with profit and loss. What do you think they'll do?”

  “I think you've solved it, Wilson,” said Sharon. “If we're going to survive out here, that's clearly what our version of piracy has to be.”

  “Less romantic and more profitable, I agree,” said Cole. He turned to Forrice. “As soon as this meeting breaks up, I want you to find out who insured the diamonds, how much they were insured for, and where the company's nearest branch office is. Sharon—do the same with the jewelry. In the meantime I want Christine to compute exactly what it costs to run the Teddy R for a Standard day, a week, and a month—fuel, food, hydroponics garden, repair, ammunition, everything. Then we'll be able to figure out if we're in profit or loss—and if we're in profit, I suppose we'll need to hand out dividends.”

  “You make it sound awfully colorless and businesslike,” said Forrice.

  “Let's hope that's exactly what it becomes,” said Cole.

  Cole contacted the hospital and learned that they had given Chadwick prosthetic eardrums. Right at the moment they were working too well; he was complaining about the volume, and the fact that he could overhear conversations taking place ten and twelve rooms away. Cole decided that wasn't such a bad weapon to have in his arsenal, and asked if there was some way they could allow Chadwick himself to adjust the volume as he wished. The answer was negative. They told him that they'd have the volume right in another few hours, and he made arrangements for the shuttle to bring Chadwick back to the Teddy R as soon as the doctors finished with him.

  “Four Eyes, this is Cole,” he said, adjusting his communicator.

  “I know who it is,” replied the Molarian. “Your ugly image is staring at me from three feet away.”

  “Actually, it's staring well beyond you,” said Cole. “I just ate.”

  “Are we through insulting each other,” asked Forrice, “or do we trade a few more before you tell me why you're bothering me during red shift?”

  “How are we coming on finding out who insured the diamonds and the jewelry?”

  “The diamonds were insured by the Pilargo Company.”

  “Republic or Frontier?” asked Cole.

  “Republic,” answered the Molarian. “They're headquartered on Deluros VIII.”

  “Shit! Wouldn't you know it?” Cole paused for a moment. “What's their closest branch? Have they got any offices on the Inner Frontier?”

  “I thought you might ask,” said Forrice, “so I checked. They don't have anything on the Frontier. Their closest branch is on Benjamin II, but it's awfully small. I don't think they'd have the kind of money we're looking for. My guess is we'll have to go to New Madrid.”

  “New Madrid?” repeated Cole. “That's a good four hundred light-years into the Republic!”

  “Next time we're going to screw an insurance company, I'll be sure to tell them to relocate to Keepsake or Binder X,” said the Molarian.

  “Did you find out how much the diamonds were insured for?”

  “That's a little problematical,” answered Forrice. “They have a blanket policy covering all their shipments from Blantyre IV at ninety percent of market value. They don't insure each batch separately.”

  “Okay, we can work from there,” said Cole. “How about the jewelry?”

  “Still working on it. It's harder to find, since they belonged to an individual rather than a publicly traded or Republic-owned company. I imagine we'll know within a Standard day or two. Christine is much better at this kind of detail work than I am.
Once she takes charge during white shift, it ought to go a little faster.”

  “All right,” said Cole. “Now tell Morales I want to meet him in the mess hall.”

  “I think he's there already.”

  “Tell him to stay there. I'll join him in just a minute or two.”

  Cole broke the connection, walked to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on his face, left his cabin, and took the airlift up to the mess hall. Esteban Morales was sitting alone at a small table, staring at him.

  “Good morning,” said Cole. “Or afternoon. Or evening. Whatever your schedule is.”

  “Hello, sir,” said Morales. “Mr. Forrice told me you wanted to see me?”

  “Four Eyes is a lot of things good and bad,” said Cole with a smile, “but I'm pretty sure ‘Mister' isn't one of them.”

  “I'm sorry, sir.”

  “I was just commenting, not correcting.” He stared at Morales for a moment. “I'm betting you're too young to have ever served in the military. Am I right?”

  “Yes.” Then, “Excuse me. I meant yes, sir.”

  “You're still not in the military,” said Cole. “Forget about the sir.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Morales. “I mean, yes.”

  “I've got a job for you,” continued Cole. “It's simple enough, but it just so happens that you're the only person aboard the ship who can do it.”

  “Oh?” said Morales, unable to hide his excitement. “What is it?”

  “I want you to rent a small ship. One-man or two-man, no bigger.”

  “Rent a ship?” repeated Morales, disappointed. “Anyone can do that.”

  “Yeah, but you're the only one who can do it in the Republic without getting arrested.”

  “I don't understand, sir.” Morales fidgeted awkwardly. “I mean, I don't understand.”

  “If you're more comfortable calling me sir, go ahead and do it,” said Cole. “I just wanted you to know that you don't have to.” He ordered a sandwich from the floating menu, then returned his attention to Morales. “Every other member of the crew is either a mutineer, or helped break a mutineer out of the brig, stole the Teddy R, and fled to the Inner Frontier. If anyone else on the ship tries to do anything requiring identification, they'll set off alarms from here all the way to Deluros.”

  “I don't have any money, sir,” replied Morales. “I joined the Achilles when I was fifteen, and Captain Windsail didn't pay us very often or very well.”

  “That's not a problem,” answered Cole. “We'll give you enough money to rent it for a day or two. But you're the only one whose ID won't be connected with the Teddy R.”

  “I'm happy to do it, sir,” said Morales. “But we have our own starship and three functioning shuttles. Why do you need to rent a ship?”

  “We've done what we can to erase all traces of the ship's and shuttles' registration, but they're close to a century old, and there can't be that many military vessels of this age still in service. Most people don't know it or think about it, but the Navy doesn't sell old ships to private parties; it salvages what it can and then scraps them. So if I land in the shuttle, or orbit the world we're going to in the Teddy R, there's always the possibility that someone will be bright enough to report it to the authorities, and the world I'm going to is four hundred light-years into the Republic; if there's a Navy ship anywhere in the area, we probably can't outrace it to the Frontier, and we sure as hell can't outgun it. And even if we reach the Frontier ahead of it, it doesn't have to stop when it's in hot pursuit—especially against the one ship that the Republic wants even more than they want the enemy.”

  “I'll rent a two-man ship and come with you, sir,” said Morales.

  “I'm going alone. It's a one-man job.”

  “If you're disabled in any way, you'll need someone to pilot the ship.”

  “If I'm disabled, I'm not going to be able to get back to the ship.”

  “Sure you will,” said Morales. “You're Wilson Cole. We heard all about you, even on the Frontier.”

  “You never heard that I made a getaway after being torn up by pulse and laser blasts,” said Cole.

  “Just the same, I think I should come, sir,” continued Morales. “What if the spaceport insists that the pilot be the man who rented the ship?”

  “All right, Mr. Morales, that's a valid point,” admitted Cole. “You'll come along. But you won't leave the ship once we touch down.”

  “How soon do you need me to rent the ship, sir?” asked Morales.

  “As soon as possible. The Teddy R can only enter so many more atmospheres before it burns up or falls apart, so take the shuttle.”

  “I could leave it as collateral,” suggested Morales.

  Cole shook his head. “I don't want to give anyone a full day to identify it. I'll assign a crew member to take you down and drop you off. The shuttle will stay on the planet until you signal it that you've got the ship.”

  “Then should I follow it back up to the Teddy R?”

  “Take a good look at it,” said Cole. “If it looks like transferring from here to there will be easy, follow the shuttle up. If not—and most of these one-and two-man jobs were never designed to transfer people or anything else between ships—then tell whoever's piloting the shuttle to bring me back down and I'll get onto the ship at the spaceport.”

  “So should I leave right now?” asked Morales.

  “Check with Four Eyes, or if it's close to white shift, with Christine Mboya, have whoever's in command spot the next inhabited planet along our route and radio ahead to make sure you can rent a ship, and then take it from there.” He raised his voice. “You paying attention to all this, Colonel Blacksmith?”

  Sharon's image suddenly appeared. “Yes.”

  “Pick a crew member—not Christine, and not yourself—to go down with Mr. Morales when he's ready to procure a ship.”

  “How's he going to pay for it?”

  “How much does a ship cost to rent?”

  Sharon laughed. “You've been in the service too long, Wilson.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I'll bet you've never rented a ship, or even an aircar.”

  “You'd win,” said Cole. “What am I missing?”

  “They're going to want a refundable deposit. They may only charge you a thousand credits or so for a day, but they're not about to trust a total stranger with a three-hundred-thousand-credit spaceship without a substantial deposit.”

  “We haven't got that much money on the Teddy R. That's what we're renting a ship for, so we can go get it.” He lowered his head in thought for a moment. “Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll give Mr. Morales half a dozen diamonds. That should be a sufficient deposit. And I'll send Bull Pampas and Braxite and maybe the tall woman who's never in the science lab when I need her—what's her name?—Idena Mueller. Might as well give her something to do.”

  “What, for instance?” asked Sharon.

  “I should have thought that would be obvious,” answered Cole. “If they won't accept the diamonds, we're going to steal the ship.”

  “And take it to a planet that'll be on the lookout for it?” demanded Sharon.

  “We'll have Bull, Braxite, and Mueller stay there and explain, gently but firmly, that the ship will be returned within one Standard day and, as long as the people connected with the rental agency are reasonable and behave themselves, they'll be paid their fee plus a bonus.”

  “And if they're not?”

  “Then the fee will go to their survivors and we'll keep the bonus.”

  “You'd really kill them?”

  “Hell, no,” said Cole. “But I won't tell them if you won't. And you have to admit that Bull and Braxite are pretty impressive-looking specimens of their respective races.”

  “Then why send Idena Mueller at all?”

  “There might be twenty employees. You might have a female customer in the ladies' room when they make their threats, a customer who can contact the cops. That's not to say that Sokolov o
r some other man can't do the job, but why upset people more than we have to?”

  “That from a guy who's going to threaten to kill them,” said Sharon in amused tones.

  “I know from many long and vigorous nights spent together that subtlety isn't your strong point,” said Cole, “but there's a difference between killing them and threatening to kill them.”

  “Were you being subtle last night before or after you—?”

  “Don't say it,” he interrupted. “You'll shock our newest crew member. Just contact the three I mentioned and have them standing by.”

  Her image vanished and he turned back to Morales. “Okay, come with me to the science lab.”

  “The science lab?”

  “Yeah. That's where I've stashed the diamonds.”

  “Is there any particular reason why?”

  “Yeah. In all the time I've been aboard the Teddy R, I have never seen anyone willingly go there. At least, once I made sure they couldn't stash their drug supplies there.”

  “They took drugs?”

  “Once upon a time,” said Cole. Suddenly his face hardened, and there was something cold, almost frightening, about his eyes. “Not anymore.”

  For the first time Morales saw some hint of what made this very pleasant man the most decorated officer in the Fleet—and even why the Fleet would declare him its greatest enemy.

  “I'm sorry, sir,” said Morales as the two-man ship sped toward New Madrid.

  “It wasn't your fault,” replied Cole. “No honest man was ever going to take those diamonds as a deposit.” He shrugged. “It was just our bad luck—and his—that we ran up against an honest man.”

  “And his?” repeated Morales. “Are you going to kill him when we get back?”

  “No, of course not,” said Cole. “But if he'd been a reasonable man, not made a fuss, and promised to keep his mouth shut, I'd have left him a diamond or two. We're going to need to rent ships again; it would have been nice to find someone we could trust. Now that we know he's going to turn over descriptions and any holodisks he's got of the four of you to the authorities, I figure he's blown a very handsome tip. Which reminds me,” he added, “when we return the ship and pick up Bull and the others, let's go over every inch of that place and see if we can find and destroy any images he's got of us.”