Drifter's Run

by William C. Dietz

  Suddenly on the defensive, Lando held up a hand. "No, no, I didn't say that. I just wondered if you should consult with your father or something."

  All signs of concern vanished from Melissa's face. "Oh, no, Daddy always goes along with my decisions, he calls me his little business agent." She smiled brightly.

  Lando sighed. Great. A deep-space tug with a ten-year-old girl as its business agent. On the other hand, anything that made him hard to find was a plus right now, and a tug could be just the ticket.

  He forced a smile. "I see. Tell me, Ms. Sorenson…"

  "Everyone calls me Melissa. Except Daddy that is. He calls me Mel."

  "Thanks. My friends call me Pik. Tell me, Melissa, if I accept the job, where's the ship headed?"

  The girl looked thoughtful. "That's hard to say, Pik. Daddy works this system mostly, but we'll go anywhere if the price is right, and the big companies let us. Daddy will find something. He always does."

  Lando nodded understandingly. Well, what the hell. Anywhere was better than here. And even if it wasn't he could always quit, and go to work for someone else.

  He smiled. "Okay, Melissa, you've got yourself a pilot. And in answer to your original question, I can start right now."

  Melissa's face lit up with happiness. "Really? That's wonderful, Pik. Now, if you'll thumbprint this contract, we'll be all set."

  Suddenly Lando found himself holding a neat-looking printout, six pages of printout to be exact, single-spaced and full of legal jargon.

  Skimming through the contract, Lando saw all the usual responsibility, liability, and damage clauses, along with two other paragraphs of special interest.

  One granted him a slightly substandard salary, with the promise of a "ten percent share of any salvage that said company might realize during the lifetime of the contract," and the other obligated him to "Sorenson Tug & Salvage for a minimum of six standard months, or until injury, dismemberment, or death renders the incumbent unable to carry out his/her duties."

  The wording seemed slightly redundant but Lando got the idea. It was a good contract, good for Sorenson Tug & Salvage that is, and it caused Lando to eye Melissa suspiciously.

  But her cute little face was absolutely free from any hint of guile, sharp dealing, or subterfuge. For one fleeting moment Lando considered asking for more money, but it didn't seem fair to lean on a ten-year-old girl, so he let it go.

  Lando signed by pressing his thumb against the lower right-hand corner of the contract, accepted his copy, and watched the original disappear into a small case along with Melissa's portacomp.

  The girl was organized, you had to give her that.

  Melissa looked up and smiled. "Do you need to collect your gear or something?"

  "Nope," Lando replied, "everything I need is all right there." He gestured toward the suitcase that he'd left by the door.

  An adult might have questioned the single bag, or the fact that Lando had it with him, but not Melissa.

  Like most children she took adult activities at face value, unless they had something to do with business, in which case Melissa assumed they were lying. Except for the ones who underestimated her abilities… and they deserved whatever they got.

  Melissa moved on to the next problem. "Good. In that case I'll call for a robo-porter."

  "A robo-porter?" Lando asked, looking around the room. "What for? Have you got lots of luggage or something?"

  Melissa giggled. "Heavens no! I travel light. It's for Daddy. The spaceport's quite a ways from here… and Daddy's too heavy for me to carry."

  "Too heavy for you to carry…" Lando said suspiciously. "What's wrong with him? Where is he?"

  Melissa put a finger to her lips and motioned for Lando to follow. Together they tiptoed into the bedroom. The walls were dimmed to near darkness but Lando had no difficulty seeing a man sprawled across the bed.

  Moving in closer, Melissa patted the man's shoulder protectively and looked up into Lando"s face. There was something sad about her expression.

  "This is my daddy. He's sick, but he'll wake up in two or three hours."

  Lando felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as his eyes confirmed what his nose already told him. Melissa's father, Captain Ted Sorenson, wasn't sick. Not in the usual sense anyway. He was dead drunk.

  2

  It took more than two hours to load Captain Sorenson's unconscious form aboard the robo-porter, cover it with a blanket, and make their way up to the moon's surface.

  Lando had expected a certain amount of attention. After all, the combination of a man, a little girl, and what appeared to be a dead body should turn a few heads, and would have anywhere else.

  But most of those who lived in the moon station saw stranger sights every day, and besides, they had other things to worry about. Like making enough credits to go somewhere else.

  The robo-porter was little more than a beat-up metal platform with a drive mechanism and a low order processor. Having accepted a load, the robo-porter would electronically imprint on its customer, and follow until released.

  Nice in theory, but their particular machine had some sort of processing dysfunction, and followed anyone of Lando's approximate size and shape. As a result it had a tiresome tendency to carry its unconscious passenger off in unpredictable directions.

  Each time they chased the robo-porter down Lando was forced to stand in front of the machine, recycle its imprint function, and start all over. That, plus a screeching drive wheel, was just about to drive Lando crazy when Melissa found a solution.

  The robo-porter had just followed a tall willowy naval lieutenant down a side corridor, when Melissa called, "Hey, Pik! Wait a minute! I think I've got the answer."

  Taking Lando's place in front of the robo-porter's eye, Melissa recycled the imprint function, and led the device away. Ten minutes and a whole series of twists and turns later, the machine was still with them.

  "It's 'cause I'm smaller," Melissa explained cheerfully. "There aren't very many kids around here, so there's less chance of a screwup."

  About fifteen minutes later they left a lift tube and entered a large open space. A transparent dome curved up and over their heads. The planet Snowball hung suspended above them. It seemed ready to fall at any moment.

  Lando assured himself that it wouldn't happen. And given the laws of physics, the moon wouldn't fall on Snowball either.

  The planet had a slightly pink albedo and a surface temperature of -290 degrees F.

  The atmosphere was too thick to see through, but Lando knew most of the planet's surface was covered with oceans of ethane, ebbing and flowing around occasional islands of ice.

  Just great for the robotic gas scoops that cruised the planet's surface but not very good for people. They stayed on the moon.

  The dome's floor was part passenger terminal and part warehouse. All sorts of sentients came and went. Lando saw humans, Finthians, Zords, Lakorians, and a few aliens he couldn't name, all going about their various chores.

  Meanwhile hundreds of machines rolled, whirred, hissed, rumbled, and creaked their way through the crowd.

  There were lowboys stacked high with cargo modules, tall mincing auto loaders stepping over and around sentients and machines alike, and short multi-armed maintenance bots that dashed every which way in a valiant attempt to keep things running.

  Working together the sentients and their machine helpers were trying to load, unload, and service the circle of ships that surrounded the dome.

  There were freighters, couriers, scouts, tankers, and a dozen more. Appearance depended on function, racial preference, and a whole host of other factors. In fact, the only thing the ships had in common was their size. All of them were small. Due to the moon's gravity, and the relatively small dome, larger ships were forced to remain in orbit.

  "Our tender's over there," Melissa said eagerly as she pointed across the dome. "Lock 78."

  Now that negotiations were over Lando noticed that Melissa had undergone a change. T
he mostly serious business manager had disappeared. In her place was a naturally gregarious little girl. Of the two Lando preferred the second.

  "It's a good thing you're here," Melissa said seriously, "Daddy gets mad when I fly the tender. He says I'm too young. Still, what am I supposed to do when he's sick?

  "Mom flew the tender when she was alive, she could do anything, but that was a long time ago. She died trying to salvage a wreck. Daddy said it would have been a big score, big enough to retire on, but the wreck's drives went critical and blew up. I miss Mommy… but Daddy and I do okay. Do you have any children?"

  An alcoholic father, a dead mother, Melissa's nine or ten years had been far from pleasant. Lando felt a tightness in his throat. "No, Melissa. I don't have any children. But if I did, I'd want a little girl just like you."

  Melissa's eyes shone as she looked up into his face. "Really? You're probably just saying that to be nice, but I like it anyway. We're almost there."

  The robo-porter picked that particular moment to follow a short, stumpy Lakorian toward a distant ship, but was quickly retrieved and guided to Lock 78.

  Melissa touched the red indicator light located next to the lock and was rewarded with a synthesized voice. It said, "Manual override engaged. Please call for attendant."

  Melissa said something ungirlish under her breath and hit the attendant call button.

  It took a while, but eventually a Zord rolled up, stepped off his motorized platform, and examined them with a baleful eye. Like all of his race the Zord was vaguely humanoid. But while the alien had two legs, four armlike tentacles, and a skinny torso, any resemblance to a human ended there. Folds of brown leathery skin hung all over his face, and a writhing mass of tentacles surrounded his oral cavity.

  Because Zords have no vocal apparatus they use the tentacles that surround their oral cavities to communicate via high-speed sign language.

  While Lando knew enough sign language to get by, Melissa was a good deal more proficient, and took charge of the situation. Melissa's fingers were a blur of motion as she stated her case.

  The tentacles around the Zord's mouth writhed in response, and although most of the interchange was too fast for Lando to follow, it was soon apparent that some sort of dispute was in progress.

  It seemed that Melissa wanted to charge the docking fee to her father's account, and that was fine with the Zord so long as she paid the existing balance first.

  Melissa replied that she'd be happy to pay the existing balance, if and when the station paid the damages owed her father from their last visit. She claimed that a deranged maintenance bot had entered the ship, dismantled part of the control system, and left.

  At this point the Zord consulted his portacomp, found no records pertaining to a deranged maintenance bot, and noticed that an incoming shuttle was queued up for Melissa's slot.

  On the universal theory that time is money, the Zord decided to let the matter of the unpaid balance go for the moment, and settled for a two-day docking fee cash-on-the-portacomp.

  Melissa agreed, and as she produced exact change from a carefully zipped pocket, Lando got the feeling that things had gone her way. The smug little smile that she wore as the lock hissed open seemed to confirm it.

  It took a while to maneuver the robo-porter through the tender's lock, down a short corridor, and into a tiny cabin.

  After that they rolled Captain Sorenson into a bunk, strapped him in, and guided the robot out through the lock.

  As the lock cycled closed Lando headed for the ship's control room. The tender was larger than Lando had expected, and a good deal newer, although he didn't see a scrap of luxury in her boxy hull. She looked like what she was, a good honest work boat, sturdy and plain.

  Lando noticed that the ship was clean and well maintained. Good. At least Sorenson did something right.

  The control room was small, but not especially cramped. As Lando dropped into the pilot's seat the tender's navigational computer sensed his presence and activated the ship's control panel.

  "Welcome," a voice said. "Please provide appropriate identification."

  Lando looked at Melissa. She smiled. "This is Melissa. Confirm."

  A moment passed while the computer recorded her voice, analyzed it, and confirmed her identity. "Identity confirmed," the voice said. "Instructions?"

  "Meet Pik Lando," Melissa replied. "He'll have level one access to this ship. Confirm."

  "Level one access confirmed," the computer replied. "Recording."

  "Say something," Melissa instructed, "so the NAVCOMP has a sample of your voice."

  Lando thought for a moment and said:

  "Cannon to right of them,

  Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them

  Volley'd and thunder'd Storm'd at with shot and shell,

  Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of death,

  Into the mouth of hell."

  "Identity recorded," the computer said. "Thank you."

  There was curiosity in Melissa's eyes. "What was that?"

  "One of my father's favorite poems," Lando replied. "He was a soldier in his younger days and had a taste for blood and thunder poetry."

  "Where's your father now?" Melissa asked, completely oblivious to the pain in Lando's eyes.

  "He's dead," Lando replied gruffly, and for a moment he remembered the ambush, the hell of blaster fire, his father's charred body.

  Well, the bastards had paid for their treachery, and paid in blood. For as his father fell, Lando had turned three men and the sand they stood on into black glass. He'd been on the run ever since.

  Lando pushed the thoughts away and turned his attention to the tender's control panel. As his fingers danced across the buttons, Lando missed Melissa's hurt look and the slight tremble in her lower lip.

  Screens came to life, indicator lights shifted from amber to green, and a faint whine sounded inside the cabin. The tender was ready to lift.

  Lando double-checked his indicator lights, got a clearance from moon station traffic control, and fired both drives. The ship lifted up and away.

  "Lots of power," Lando commented, glancing in Melissa's direction.

  The little girl had strapped herself into the co-pilot's position. Something about the way Melissa sat there told Lando that she really could fly the tender if she had to. It was clear she didn't want to though, and Melissa looked relieved as the tender moved up and away, a dot against Snowball's vast presence.

  "Yup," Melissa said, patting the tender's control panel, "Daddy says she has strong legs. And hyperdrive too. Daddy says we're lucky to have her. Even though she isn't big enough for a serious tow, we can use her beams to move things around, and that helps a lot. We got her from a tramp freighter. They couldn't pay their bill, so Daddy took the tender in trade."

  "He got a good deal," Lando said matter-of-factly. "Where's your ship?"

  Melissa punched some instructions into the ship's computer and nodded her satisfaction when a three-dimensional representation of Snowball appeared on Lando's main control screen.

  Because the tender was moving in the opposite direction, the moon was now in the process of disappearing behind Snowball's considerable bulk. A complex tracery of parking orbits had also appeared, each representing a ship, and each bearing an alphanumeric code.

  "That's us," Melissa said, pointing to a red delta, with the code "J-14" flashing on and off next to it. The "J" stood for the first letter of the ship's name, and the "14" for the orbit to which that particular vessel was assigned.

  "What's the 'J' stand for?" Lando asked as he put the tender into a long gentle curve. "Jasmine? Jennifer? Justine?"

  "Of course not," Melissa said stoutly. "Those are silly names. 'J' stands for 'Junk.'"

  "Junk?" Lando asked disbelievingly. "You have a tug named Junk?"

  "Yes," Melissa said defensively. "And what's wrong with that? It's a joke. Mother was an engineer and a darned good one. Right after she married Daddy she designed Junk and put her to
gether. Look! There she is!"

  Melissa pointed toward a point of reflected light in the middle of the forward view screen. The point of light quickly resolved into a dark silhouette against the pink marbling of Snowball's surface.

  Lando dumped power and fired the tender's retros. He gave the controls a gentle nudge and they slid along the tug's starboard side. Lando wanted a look at his new home.

  In a few seconds Lando saw why Melissa's mother had christened the tug Junk. She was far from pretty. Larger spaceships rarely have the streamlined grace of smaller craft designed for atmospheric use, but they often have a symmetry that's pleasing to the eye, and a sense of majesty. Not this one. Junk was just plain ugly.

  Most of her hull was cylindrical, a common enough shape, but that's where any similarity to other ships ended. For one thing the ship had two enormous drives fitted to her stern, understandable on a tug, but ugly as hell.

  And adding insult to injury, Junk was equipped with heavy-duty lateral thrusters mounted bow and stern. Again, given the fact that tugs are often required to move heavy objects port and starboard, the thrusters made a lot of sense. Unfortunately however they looked like large black warts.

  Then there was the bridge. On most ships it was nothing more than a control room tucked safely inside the vessel's hull. But Junk's bridge looked a lot like its maritime forerunners. It was a long rectangular box mounted at right angles to the hull and perched atop two large pylons.

  Lando guessed that the pylons were hollow and provided access to the rest of the ship. The purpose of the whole affair was clear, to provide good 360-degree visibility during close maneuvers, but like the rest of the ship's fittings the bridge helped give the ship a raw ungainly appearance.

  And then there was the maze of weapons blisters, launch tubes, cooling towers, com masts, solar panels, beam projectors, and God knows what else that covered the ship's hull like an exotic skin disease.

  "Beautiful, isn't she?" Melissa asked, her face beaming as she watched the tug slide by.

  "Just gorgeous," Lando agreed dryly, pulling up and firing retros to match speed with the tug. "Where's the launching bay?"