The journey would not take too long. Hook shouted for O'Steele. 'Check on our air supply, son. You may know what your damned captain ordered; I don't. I want a thorough rundown in all departments. Jump!'
'But—'
Hook stretched out a black-booted foot and kicked him. 'Jump!'
Lieutenant O'Steele jumped.
When he reported back Hook did the simple calculation in his head and swore luridly about the progenitors, life-style and eating and rutting-habits of Captain Copatec.
`The skint-living gonil! Too penny-pinching to stick a little extra reserve aboard! We'll reach Merfalla at the highest speed and turn-around these godforsaken Kriftech IP's can reach in about eight hours terran.'
`We have air for seven —'
`Then we make it stretch!'
The Krifman, whose name he had told them with a natural pride they had found ludicrous in the circumstances, was Rafflans, shouldered up, angry and suspicious. 'I'm no astronaut. Explain what you mean, pakash.'
Hook let the insult by.
`The shuttle can make about .02 C. Right? It's approximately a hundred million miles — Earth miles — to Merfalla on the course we have to run. That will take us eight or eight and a half hours, given the .02 C is average speed, including acceleration, turn-over and deceleration. You work it out, clunkhead.'
'I'm going to strip your arms and legs off you, Hook, as soon as — '
'Shut your ugly face, Rafflans, and go and quieten that woman having hysterics back there. She's using up more than her fair share of oxygen. Knock her out if you have to. But keep her quiet!'
Rafflans glared; but Hook glared back, and the Krifman took himself off.
'Right, O'Steele. The course is punched in, we're going, and if the damned engines blow up, then goodbye galaxy. You just keep her nice and trim and on course.'
Hook climbed out of the throne.
'What are you going to do?'
Hook turned on the pilot.
`What I'm going to do is no concern of yours, sonny. You keep this bucket headed for Merfalla and pray to your heathen fouled-up gods that she gets there in one piece.'
O'Steele shrank into the pilot's throne. Hook had no love for browbeating youngsters; but the lieutenant had broken once and might do so again, and he was needed to make sure the shuttle wasted not a second or a mile on course.
Hook ducked his head into the passenger compartment.
Rafflans was bending over an alien woman — she was something like an Iggutarian but with a heavier jaw and brow line and no tail — and the other passengers were sitting or lying down, some talking together, others praying, and a group of five in the aisle were calmly playing cards — the thin plastic circles whipped across with deceptive flickering speed and Hook chuckled. A shark was at work there. But at least he had a hard core of rascals to call on if necessary.
He went back to the astrogation compartment. The radio was standard HGL shuttle equipment and was interplanetary in scope. This was quite normal. The trick would be to see if there were enough spares of the right kind carried to transform the set into one capable of interstellar communication.
Hook loved to trick people.
Even as he worked on the rig, breaking open the spares locker, foraging for tools, letting all his electronic know-how channel skill and expertise from his brain into his fingers, transforming the circuitry, he could think with a chuckle that he would like to trick whatever local apparat net existed here. As a rule he would never cut into a net unless the emergency was foully dire. This emergency was dire; but so far he could cope.
Adapting the spares, twisting up circuits, laying out a five-dimensional path breadboard, he worked with a sureness of purpose habitual to him. Many electronics and radio men could have done what he was doing — it was not particularly clever given an accepted standard of competence — but then, who of those many radiomen could do a quarter of the other things that Hook could do? Ryder Hook was a jack of all trades in the galaxy; but anyone who assumed he was a master of none would make a mistake — a suicidal mistake.
Somewhere on a nearby world in space, certainly within ten parsecs or so, an apparat control would be functioning, dedicated to one or another econorg or system government. With those cunning organic and undetectable implants in his brain Hook could reach out and patch himself into the apparat net. Those sophisticated implants had been given him by Earth's armed services — he could sometimes bring himself to refer to them as EAS, with the corollary that as he had been a member of Intelligence they had always been called EASI, though the missions had never been that — and if for nothing else Hook would be grateful he had been recruited. Those days lay in the past. He had been Jack Kinch, the most notorious assassin of the galaxy, then; now he was Ryder Hook, his own real honest name, and a mere galactic adventurer, a loner in a galaxy of multi-system conglomerates. Hook preferred it that way.
He finished the last connection and sat back. The rig was enormous. It would have to be, given the crazy way he'd patched it up. It was almost as big as the palm of his hand — a radio set just to reach out five light years across interstellar space — as big as the palm of his hand! Clumsy and bulky it might be; it would work. Ryder Hook had made it, and Ryder Hook did not believe in making things that did not work.
He had boarded HGL starship Talcahhuano from that fertile and frisky little planet the inhabitants called Pantacles but which most other folk called The Spaceman's Pit. You could have a good time there, and Hook had done so. But a Boosted Man had chanced to land there, and after the resultant flurry had died down, it seemed the right time to move on. His lips drew back as he considered that he had intended to have a whale of a time on Mergone. Now disease had fouled up his purpose.
Well, Pantacles was within easy reach of this crazy set he had built.
He called out and immediately within the context of the ftl communications network dialled himself through by voice to HGL central.
`Which service do you require, taynor?'
`Communications.'
Instantly: `HGL Communications, taynor.
`I wish to place a person to person call to Taynor Shaeel.' Mind you, that was a laugh.
His Hermaphrodite friend Shaeel had tried, often enough, to have veself called by the title ves fellow citizens of Pertan Major preferred; but nobody in the galaxy could get accustomed to using a neuter, rather than a masculine or a feminine gender. Had Hook placed the person to person call with Tayniss Shaeel he would have been as accurate.
`Taynor Shaeel has left the Imperial Centre hotel.'
`Well,' said Ryder Hook. `For the sake of Dear Old Dirty Berti Bashti! Where's he gone?'
`Lancing, taynor. The exact forwarding address —'
Shattering through Hook's concentration on the set a series of thumps, bangs and shrieks erupted from the passenger compartment of the shuttle. Hook cursed.
`Forward a message to Taynor Shaeel. Tell him Ryder Hook is down on Merfalla and to get there with horse, foot and guns. Check?'
`Message acknowledge, taynor.'
Hook cut the connection — one of the leads was smouldering through, anyway — and burst back into the passenger compartment.
Rafflans, the Krifman, lay on the deck. The whey-faced Jahnian Rafflans had tangled with on the pedway when the doomed and diseased people had tried to board the shuttle stood now above the Krifman. In his hand the power gun bulked with chill and menacing ugliness. It was aimed at Rafflans' midriff.
`You cursed high and mighty Krifmans!' The Jahnian raved in a paroxysm of fury. 'You think you're a gift to the galaxy! Well, you'll feel differently when I blow you apart!'
The Jahnian's finger whitened on the trigger.
If he pulled that trigger all the way, if he blasted the Krifman through, the blast of power would smash on to punch cleanly through the hull of the shuttle. It would blast a hole through which all the air would rush. Long before anyone could leap for a puncture-pad, the air would be gone and they'd be breath
ing space.
Chapter Three
In the aisle seat directly abaft the control compartment a young girl sat with a fixed and shining expression on her face. She wore a bright and cheerful yellow shirt and purple trousers with a glitter-scarf draped across her shoulders. Her hair gleamed a rich and brilliant purple beneath the lights.
Hook bent and lifted her leg. He moved with a smooth fluidity of grace that had no time for checks or interruptions. He took off her shoe. The thing was a crystal artefact with plastileather straps and emerald studs, very fashionable. He threw the shoe at the Jahnian's hand and instantly followed his projectile.
The shoe struck the gun-holding hand. The Jahnian yelped. He looked up — and Hook hit him. His left hand closed around the Jahnian's wrist. His right chopped down on the being's neck. Jahnians have doubled-collar-bones and Hook's blow broke both as well as knocking the fellow unconscious. The gun was held in a such a grip that it could not fire. Hook would have as lief broken the hand off before he would allow that constricting finger to tighten more on the trigger.
'Womb-regurgitant idiots!' Hook said. 'How the hell did he get hold of a power-gun?'
Rattans looked sick. The Krifman elbowed himself up. He glared at Hook. 'Got it from his baggage, the gonil.'
Neither Krifman nor Earthman mentioned that one's life had been saved by the other, neither mentioned the omission. All their lives had been saved.
`They used to lock all power guns up in a starship's safe, one time,' said Hook. 'Dangerous things to have swanning about in space.'
`Yes,' said Rafflans. He stood up. He was back to his usual bulldozer form, now and started in on bellowing the passengers into sitting down. Had Hook been a routine space officer he would have wanted to hear the full story from Rafflans; as it was he had no time for recriminatory nonsense of that sort. They were all still alive — that was what counted in this man's galaxy.
He went back to the control compartment and the girl with purple hair stopped him. She smiled.
Hook rather cared for that smile.
`My shoe, Taynor Hook, please.'
However much Ryder Hook might care for a pretty girl's smile it still wouldn't make him perform uncharacteristic actions.
`You'll have to find it yourself, tayniss.'
`My! You are a big rough bear!'
Hook abruptly lost all interest in her. Empty-headed nitwit.
About to turn away he saw the girl for whom he had reserved a particularly warm investigation at a more opportune date walk down the aisle carrying the crystal shoe. She did not smile. She handed the shoe to the purple-headed girl.
`Here you are, Myza. Stop clowning about and let Taynor Hook get on with the job.' Then, with a straight look from her grey eyes at Hook, she added: 'Thank you. You saved all our lives again.'
Hook might, under other circumstances, have found this frank and sincere approach not to his liking. But he fancied this girl was just what she looked to be. She was not pretending.
He said: 'I think that Jahnian will need some attention. Would you care to, Tayniss —'
She responded formally. `Tayniss Elterich. Yes, I'll see to him.'
Hook fancied that if, as he expected, they dropped the formality of the taynor and tayniss, he would be as correct in addressing her, instead of miss, as fraulein. He let his harsh features crack into a kind of smile. The facial-gel didn't help that, either, and he was lopsidedly aware he must be grimacing like a loon.
The girl Myza flounced around on the seat putting her shoe back on. Hook watched for a moment as Fraulein Elterich walked back up the aisle. She wore a simple light-blue tunic and pants, and the sight was more interesting than anything else to hand. Hook went back to the control section as Myza called after him: `Fat chance you'll have, big bear.'
Decidedly, considered Ryder Hook, Myza was a girl to steer clear of.
Lieutenant O'Steele held the shuttle on course. Hook went back and checked the air. His face bore a look that would have frozen the marrow in the bones of Myza had she seen it.
'Seven goddam hours, and we have to fly eight,' he said. He was a man not given to extravagant gestures. So he did not strike his fist on to the console, or put a hand to his brow; but had he done so the gesture could not more perfectly have registered his feelings.
He looked at the energy gun he had twisted from the paralysed fingers of the Jahnian. It was a Krifarm model K-twelve. Some people claimed that power gun was as good as a Tonota Eighty. Either way, they'd both make a mess of their targets. He stuffed it down into a thigh pocket. His own Tonota Eighty remained in its low-slung holster.
Whilst it would be nice to inhabit a galaxy where weapons need not be carried, as he did not live in such a place, the opportunity did not arise. Many billions of good honest citizens walked about every day and never carried or touched a gun all their lives; but they were protected by their own multi-system conglomerates and lived peacefully on a fully-settled world. Out in the galaxy between spheres of interest conditions were somewhat different.
Hook checked the air again. He made up his mind and smashed the plastic plate, reached in and juggled the control valves. He squeezed the flow. Recycling could take place on its usual scale; but without an atmosphere plant aboard all the oxygen would eventually be burned up by their bodies.
'At that,' he said, with a bleakness habitual to him. 'It should quieten 'em down back there.'
He reached down the small, orange-painted emergency oxy bottle and went forward to stand abaft the pilot's throne. He moved quietly. O'Steele just did not hear him, scant centimetres away. Hook bent and stowed the orange oxy bottle under the throne.
When he straightened up again he said: 'You're doing all right, lad. But keep awake. The air's been throttled.'
His sudden voice made O'Steele jump.
'I didn't hear — throttled? Will it last?'
'If it doesn't, son, you'll be as dead as the rest of us.'
Rafflans appeared past the screen.
The Krifman had regained his usual composure after his undignified and frightening experience.
'They're complaining they're hungry back there, Taynor Hook.'
`So am I. They'll eat when we reach Merfalla.
As a craft programmed merely to take the passengers from starship to planet no rations had been put aboard her. Some of the people found the odd biscuit, bar of chocolate, stick of latik or apple. If there was to be a share out — 'See to it, Rafflans. I want no undue exertion from here on.' He glowered at the Krifman. 'If any of 'em start playing it funny, tap them on the head and put them to sleep. That way they'll use less oxygen.'
'Yes — '
'If I have to knock every single one of them unconscious to save oxy I'll do it. And you, too, Taynor Rafflans.'
'You would, too, you terran bastard.'
Rafflans went back and Hook said: 'I'll take over now, O'Steele. You get back and give Rafflans a hand.'
'But — '
'Jump! And breathe light.'
O'Steele jumped. And breathed lightly.
The hours ticked by as the mega kilometers were crossed through the emptiness of space. Outside this thin hull the galaxy flamed and coruscated away. Hook knew the heartlessness of that galaxy. He'd trade a sizeable proportion of it off right now for good sweet breathable air in here.
He felt muzzy.
He put the ship on auto and headed back to the passenger compartment.
Most of the people were silent, sitting or lying down, heads sunk on breasts, and some were already unconscious. The air felt thick on the tongue, metallic, unpleasant.
'How much longer, Hook?' asked Rafflans, in a voice fuzzy and strained.
'We'll make it, you Krifman bastard, never fear.
'Remember, when we do, I'm going to rip you apart?
'Sure. Now shut up and save oxy.'
Hook's head pained. Every now and then a knitting-needle of white-hot fire stabbed down into his frontal lobes, between his eyes. That expensive and sophi
sticated organic equipment he had inside his skull would be resonating like a campanile of best bronze dangers right now. He couldn't care less — he was going to take a long walk along the canal and find — what?
He shook his head. The fuzziness persisted. He'd been maundering then. He'd been treading familiar paths of his boyhood back on Earth when he'd wander along the canal bank to a lock and hope to earn a pek or two — one of the smallest units of money-metal — from pleasure-boat folk working through the lock.
He reached down under the throne and lifted the orange bottle. He twisted the seal and pressed the stud. A gust of oxy whiffed. The gas was compressed in there so that it was solidified; he aimed the blast to one side and sniffed its icy chill as it dissipated. At once he felt better. Most of the cylinder bulk was insulation. It would last half an hour at full throttle. He stowed it back.
Damned staccato way of living. He'd been looking forward to carrying on his life of ease down on Mergone. Damn disease! He just hoped Shaeel would for once have the sense to stop messing around and hurry out to Merfalla. The Hermaphrodite was so unpredictable. Then Hook chuckled. He knew he was himself a mass of contradictions ...
He kept blasting the oxy off and the control section remained just tolerably sweet. Twice he went back to the passenger compartment. The second time almost everyone was lying listlessly and the card players just lay slumped over with their money-metal toppled beside them. Hook looked at it and smiled and stepped over it.
Rafflans looked up.
'It's worse than I thought, Hook.'
'Yes. One of the bottles must have been almost empty. Damned skinflint Copatec.'
Rafflans hoisted himself up. The air was still breathable with that tangy metallic taste; but by now the recycling gear must be pumping back nothing like a normal oxy-nitrogen mix. Hook didn't care to check just what percentage of oxygen was coming through.
The Boosted Man Page 2
