Read Ebook: Spillthrough by Galouye Daniel F

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Ebook has 251 lines and 12204 words, and 6 pages

Altman didn't answer.

Twisting the gooseneck in his hand, Brad sucked in a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. But he didn't say what had leaped into his mind. Instead he glanced over at the panel's screen.

Altman's ship showed up there--a large, greenish-yellow blip. There were other small dots on the scope too. As he looked, the large blip coasted over to one of the dots. The two became one mark on the screen.

"You're picking up my cargo!" Brad shouted.

"The stuff not in orbit around the Fleury ain't yours any longer, Conally," Altman laughed. "You oughta bone up on your salvage laws."

"You damned scavenger!"

"Now, now, Brad," the other said smoothly. "What would you do if you were in my position? Would you let top priority cargo slip through to normal and get lost off the hyperlane? Or would you scoop it up and bring it in for bonus price?"

"You're not after a bonus," Brad roared into the mike. "You're after a contract.... Altman, I'll pay two thousand for a ten-minute tow up-arc. That'll almost wipe out my profit on this haul."

"No sale."

Brad gripped the mike with both hands. "So you're just going to sit around and pick up cargo droppings!"

"The book says I gotta stick around until you come aboard, until you get underway on hyperpower, or until there just ain't any more ship or crew.... Might as well pick up cargo; there's nothing else to do."

"And when I come aboard you'll want to unload the Fleury too, I take it."

"Wouldn't you?"

Half the spilled crates were in close orbit around the SS Fleury. The tri-D scope showed that. Brad estimated distances of several of the objects as he clamped the helmet to the neckring of his suit and clattered to the pilot compartment airlock.

In the lock he unsnapped the hand propulsor from its bulkhead niche and clamped it to his wrist plate while the outer hatch swung open and the lock's air exploded into a void encrusted with a crisscross of vivid, vari-colored lines. The individual streaks, he estimated, averaged at least ten degrees in length. That indicated he was a reasonable period of time away from spillthrough into normal space where the lines would compress into the myriad normal pinpoints that were stars, undistorted by hyperspace perspective. When the streaks decreased to four or five degrees, he reminded himself, that was the time to start worrying about dropping out the bottom of the trough.

He waited until one of the square, tumbling objects rolled by, obscuring sections of the out-of-focus celestial sphere as it whirled in its orbit. Timing it, he waited for the box to complete another revolution. Just before it arrived the third time, he pushed off.

As he closed in on the crate, he knew his timing had been correct. He intercepted it directly above the hatch and clung clumsily to a hand ring as its greater mass swept him along in an altered orbit. A quick blast from his propulsor eliminated the rotation he had imparted to the object and he reoriented himself with respect to the ship. Spotting the ruptured sideplate where the cargo had burst through the hull, he steered his catch toward the hole with short bursts of power.

The bent plate made a natural ramp down which he slid the crate onto the gravity-fluxed deck. Inside, he degravitated the chamber, floated the box into position and double-lashed it to the deck.

Pushing away from the ship again, he checked the length of the stellar grid streaks. They were still approximately ten degrees long. It looked hopeful. He might have time to collect all the orbiting cargo before he got dangerously close to spillthrough. Then he'd see about pushing on up-arc until the fuzzy streaks stretched to forty or fifty degrees--perhaps even ninety, if he could allow himself the luxury of wishful thinking. There he'd be at quartercrest and would have time to rest before worrying about being drawn down the arc again toward normal space.

While he jockeyed the fourth crate into the hold, a huge shadow suddenly blotched out part of the star lines off to the port side. It was the Cluster Queen pursuing a crate not in orbit around the Fleury. Brad shrugged; he'd be unable to pick up the ones that far out anyway.

The truth, Brad realized, was that the Cluster Queen was drawing closer both spatially and on the descending node of the hyperspatial arc! Altman was violating the law; he was going to take the cargo in orbit. And he could well get away with it too, since it would be the word of only one man aboard the Fleury against the word of the entire crew of the Queen.

There were still six boxes in orbit. He pushed out again toward the closest and saw he had not been wrong in his reasoning. The Queen's outline was razor-edge sharp; it was close enough to stretch across fifty-five degrees of the celestial sphere.

He kept it in the corner of his vision as he hooked on to the crate and started back to the ship. The Queen was reversing attitude slowly. When he had first spotted it, it was approaching at an angle, nose forward. But now it had gyroed broadside and was continuing to turn as it drifted slowly toward Brad and the box.

"Altman!" he cried into his all-wave helmet mike. "You're on collision course!"

Brad kicked away from the crate and streaked back toward the Fleury.

There was a laugh in the receiver. "Did you hear something, Bronson?"

"No, captain," another voice laughed. "For a moment I thought maybe I picked up a small blip near that crate. But I don't guess Conally would be stupid enough to suit up and try to hustle his own cargo."

Brad activated his propulsor again and gained impetus in his dash for the Fleury's hatch.

"Still," Altman muttered, "it seems like I heard somebody say something about a collision course."

The Cluster Queen was no longer turning. It had stabilized, with its tubes pointed in the general direction of the Fleury and her floating crates.

Perspiration formed on Brad's forehead as he glanced up and saw the other ship steady itself, settling on a predetermined, split-hair heading. Somebody, he realized grimly, was doing a good job of aiming the vessel's stern.

He got additional speed out of his propulsor, but the tubes swung slowly as he covered more of the distance to his hatch. It seemed he couldn't escape his position of looking up into the mouths of the jets.

"We better not take chances, then," Altman was not hiding the heavy sarcasm in his words. "Blast away!"

Brad kicked sideways, stiffened his arm and hit the wrist jet full force. He shot to one side on a course parallel with the Fleury.

A blinding gusher of raw energy exploded--a cone of blistering, scintillating force that streaked through space between himself and the disabled ship. The aiming was perfect. Had he not swerved off when he did, had he stayed on his original course, he would have been in the center of the lance of hell-power.

As he drifted shakily into the hatch, the Queen wasn't even a dot against the trellis of star traces. But, while he looked, a miniature lance of flame burst in the general direction in which Altman's vessel had gone--scores of miles away. He was maneuvering a standard turn to approach again, Brad realized.

If he repeated the performance against the hull of the Fleury, he would shake things up considerably, but at least the alloys of the plates could stand the heat--possibly the thrust too ... but not for long.

Invigorating effects of hot coffee flowed through Brad as he sat strapped in the pilot's seat and allowed himself the luxury of a cigarette.

But his eyes were fastened on the screen. The Cluster Queen was drawing up to the last orbiting crate. He watched the large blip and the dot become one.

Abruptly, there was motion in the direct-view port overhead. The Queen and the crate drifted into view. He switched his gaze from the screen and watched grapples clamp the crate like giant mandibles, drawing it into the Queen.

His chest and abdomen hurt and he wanted to get out of the seat and stretch, move around, do something. But that might be disastrous. If Altman was going to play any more tricks with his tubes, he would be ready to do it now, after the last box had been retrieved. And Brad realized it wouldn't be healthy being shaken around inside an erratically spinning compartment.

"That's the last one, Altman," he spoke dully into the mike.

"Say!" The irony was still in the other's voice. "Were you out there when we blasted to avoid collision?"

Brad said nothing.

"Sorry if we warmed your tail," Altman continued. "But you should'a stayed inside. Our instruments show you're getting close to spillthrough. Ain't you gonna do anything about it?"

Brad snapped to alertness. Now he realized the origin of the pains in his stomach and chest--the pin-prick sensations that seemed to be spreading throughout his flesh. He glanced out the direct-view port. Altman was right. The sky was no longer a grid of star streaks. The lines had shrunken; their lengths now stretched scarcely over three or four degrees. The scope showed the Queen was still there spatially, but the fuzziness of her outline indicated she was well out of danger--high up on the ascending node of the arc.

"What's on the program, Altman?" Brad asked bitterly. "Let me guess.... I slip through the barrier. Passage at slow speed makes pretty much of a pulpy mess out of my body. You pop the Queen through in a milli-second.... You got a nice story to tell: You arrived as I was slipping through. You couldn't do anything to stop me. You plunged through after me. With a dead skipper aboard, the ship and cargo were free to the first one who came along. You took the cargo, it being high priority stuff. You left the ship, it being outdated, battered, useless and drifting in normal interstellar where it would never be found. You took what was left of the skipper, it being good evidence to substantiate your tale."

There was a long silence. Apparently Altman wasn't going to interrupt it. Brad looked back at the scope. The Queen had withdrawn spatially and hyperspatially.

The pains in his body rose sharply and he grimaced, biting down on his lips. A knife slipped into his abdomen, twisted and shot up through his chest and into his head. Then an incendiary bomb went off somewhere in his stomach.

He reached for the control of the good main hyperjet. Then, as his face contorted with near agony, he punched down on it.

Now it would take the Queen a little while to get a bearing on him along four co-ordinates. It would be a reprieve of several' hours--even the Fleet ships couldn't do it in less time than that without a signal to home in on.

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