The Pantheon Run

    "The Pantheon Run."

    Those words caused Spratt to spit out the oversized bite of stangal fat on which he had been gnawing with a sound that was something between a cough and a laugh.  He repeated the words, his tone a mixture of sarcasm and contempt.

    "The Pantheon Run?"

    "I don't think I should have to repeat myself.  I challenged you to the Pantheon Run.  If you don't want to accept. . ."

    "Don't want to accept?  Missy, I don't know why you'd want to challenge me.  When's the last time that any boat in this system has beaten mine on any run?  Why do you think that it'll be any different on that hell run?  I'll give you credit for one thing, Bickford, you have bigger balls than any man in my crew, even if they make you delusional."

    "So that means you don't want to accept?"

    "We have someone paying the freight?"

    "The Aeroes need two loads of water hauled from Artemis to Poseidon.  Winner gets the full pay.  That's my terms, are you in or out?"

    Spratt sat back in his chair, his chins glistening from the grease of the stangal fat, a broad grin stretching the folds of his jowls into a grotesque mask.  He was a bellicose, gelatinous piece of humanity, for if gluttony could be embodied, it would be Spratt.  His balding hairline was hidden by his captain's hat, which seemed several sizes too small for the mass of flesh that was his head.  His tiny black eyes seemed playful, but there was an ever-present air of mistrust and uncertainty in them.  The rest of his mountainous form was covered in a captain's uniform that contained enough material to create three uniforms for a normal person and was adorned with badges of honor that had most certainly been bought.  The grin remained frozen on his face as he spoke with Bickford, revealing his yellowed, ground teeth.

    "When will we be doing this," he asked while placing more of the stangal fat in his mouth.

    "At 2300 hours three days from now, Artemis meridian time.  My counsel has all the papers drawn up for the agreement, if you're up to it.  Of course, we'll give your counsel time to look over it."

    Spratt slowly chewed his fat as he considered things, his open mouth revealing a pulpy mash of food and saliva.  Finally, he said, "What's your angle in all this?"

    "The spirit of competition and all that.  Like you said, you've always been able to beat me.  Maybe I think I can take you on the big run."

    "And, in the odd chance that you could somehow win, what would it mean?  I mean, not that you could.  I'll give it to you that your ship is smaller and maybe a bit more agile than mine, but I have power on my side, and that's always made the difference before.  But, say you did win, and you'd have to cheat to do so, what would it mean?  How often does any freighter have to make that sort of run?"

    "Maybe I just need a really big double payload right now, and I figure that you're the person to help me out."

    "'Need?'  That sounds a little desperate to me."

    "Take it as you will.  Are you in or out?"

    Spratt raised himself from his chair, slowly maneuvering his mass to a standing position.  Even with a table seperating them, Spratt's form seemed to engulf Bickford's slim figure.

    "I like desperation," he said.  "It forces people to do the stupidest things.  I'm not saying yes or no until my consul looks over everything, but if it's all on the up and up, I think we've got a deal.  I'm just hoping that, for your sake, once we're done you have the fuel to get back to Artemis."

    "I'll take my chances, captain."  With that, Bickford turned on her heels and left the Hephaestus Station commissary along with the two crewmen who had accompanied her, leaving Spratt standing there, still grinning and chewing on his fat.

    If Spratt had a given name, nobody remembered it.  What was known was that he was the offspring of Commander Gerald Spratt, the most successful merchant mercenary to run the spaceways of the Sigilian system.  Regulations and some law enforcement had recently come to the spaceways of humanity's second star system after the one in which their species had originated, but in the days of Commander Spratt, when the system first found its need for merchant vessels, the law was whatever the strong decided it should be.  Thus, while other merchants were concerned with finding ships that could safely navigate the tricky Sigilian spaceways, the Commander became obsessed with building the strongest, most fortified ship that he possibly could.  Once he did this, he no longer had to worry himself with cargo contracts that the other vessels negotiated with merchants.  All he had to do was to stop a vessel it mid-run, kill the crew, take the cargo and complete the run.  Those who received the cargo had no choice but to pay the Commander for it.  This infuriated and frightened the other captains, who sought similar vessels of their own and attempted to form coalitions to battle Commander Spratt's ship.  But the Commander was a crafty man and for the rest of his lifespan he was able to stay away from the reach of those who sought revenge against him while using his fortune to create an even more powerful and invincible ship.  Eventually, the merchants of the Sigilian system were forced to negotiate with the Commander in order to ensure the safe transport of their cargo, and from there the Commander amassed what many felt to be the system's largest fortune, a fortune that became the sole possession of his son upon his death.

    Spratt considered himself to be many things, but the one thing that he did not fancy himself to be was ship's captain in spite of the fact that he insisted on wearing the uniform.  Spratt was a negotiator, a simple job as, even in an age in which a rule of law was at least being attempted, he could still enforce his will at the point of a gun.  It was a given that he controlled all of the contracts that he inherited, and whenever any new lucrative run was created, it was understood that Spratt would be given the contract.  Bickford was the closest thing that Spratt had to competition, and then that was hardly fair.  For though even he had to agree that Bickford was reliable, her ship was a straight freighter, nothing more, and was humble in comparison to the beast that Spratt helmed.  Fortunately for her, Spratt could not handle every run and had no desire to do so even if he could, so Bickford and her colleagues received the scraps that Spratt discarded.  His only other function on his own ship was as the unquestioned administrative authority; his decisions went unquestioned, even if they were difficult or impossible for his crew to carry out.  All other duties fell to his crew, many of whom had forebears who worked for the Commander.  The Master Helmsman, for instance, was a man named Dobbs who was the son of the Commander's second-in-command, and he acted as the functioning captain for the freighter.  For the most part, Spratt separated himself from day-to-day ship's activities, and instead spent his days locked away in his cabin gorging himself on delicacies such as stangal fat.

    Captain Kara Bickford was the polar opposite of Spratt.  Tall and slim, she was the portrait of the weathered space freighter captain. Because of this, her crew sometimes described her when she was not present as "Captain Tall and Plain."  Bickford was well aware that she was no beauty, and as she had passed the age of fifty Earth units, she also knew that it was unlikely that she would ever be considered attractive.  Still, in a location and business in which gender relations had devolved and female roles had, for the most part, returned to those that once existed on old Earth, Bickford had carved a reputation as one of the system's most effective freighter captains.  She had done that by eschewing the tough-as-nails approach that many of the small number of female freighter captains had adopted, as she viewed this as simply a means of overcompensating for what they felt were their shortcomings.  Had Bickford been attractive, she would have had no problem in using her charms in order to entice the crew to do her bidding.  As it was, she had taken a maternal approach to her crew, taking pains to get to know something of each crew members background and personality.  That was not to say that she would not be hard if she had to be, as many crew members who had spent months in the freighter's brig could attest.  For the most part, though, the crew was devoted to her, despite the complaints they made among themselves of her bitchiness and her inability to understand the infrastructure of the ship itself. 

    She saw Spratt's operation as something of a cancer on the freighter industry in the Sigilian system.  In speaking with the captains of other freighters in cantinas and stations throughout the system, she argued as to how Spratt's ship was a detriment to every other freighter in the system, and she could find no opposition to her opinions.  Most of those captains were well aware of the fact that she would have the most to gain if anything ever were to happen to Spratt.  It was a general consensus, however, that dealing with spaceways that were dominated by Bickford was much more preferrable to the crumbs that they were forced to accept with Spratt controlling the spaceways.  Still, there was little anyone was willing to do about it, thus the opposition to Spratt amounted to little more than a great deal of grousing.

    Most of those who were present at the Hephaestus Station on the day she challenged Spratt were curious as to why Bickford would challenge him the way she did.  Such challenges were not uncommon among the lesser freighters of the system, but most felt that very little could be gained by a challenge on the Pantheon Run, and nothing could be gained from challenging Spratt. 

    The Pantheon Run was the longest and most arduous run that a freighter could endeavor to make.  It took its name from the fact that early explorers who first found their way to the Sigilian system followed the traditions of the predecessors on Earth by naming the seven planets and four dwarf planets of the system after figures of mythology.  Artemis was the second-closest planet to the star Sigil after Ajax, Poseidon was the dwarf planet furthest out, and thus the run took its name from the fact that it covered nearly the entire pantheon of the Sigil system.  Artemis was an oddity in explored star systems in that not only did it have an abundant supply of liquid water near both of its poles, but it also contained life and had an oxygen-rich atmosphere in which humans could survive, though it was not a very comfortable life for humans as Artemis was very close to Sigil and the majority of the planet was an arid desert.  Still, the areas just below each pole featured what could be described as a tropic environment, very humid and unpleasant for humans but still livable.  The plant life that early explorers had found on Artemis was a surprise, particularly since space travellers had been searching for a planet outside of their solar system that contained life for nearly two centuries and found nothing but futility.  Their search came to an end when they not only found plant life on Artemis, but also found that the fourth planet from Sigil, Telemachus, contained both plant and a several small forms of animal life.  Telemachus was not as hospitable to humans as Artemis was as its atmosphere contained less oxygen and the planetary temperature was much cooler, reaching temperatures as high as 10 degrees celsius at the equator but dipping well below freezing elsewhere.  This was a haven for explorers, though, as it contained several forms of life that could be best described as insect or reptilian, the most dominant of these being the stangal.  The stangal was a red beast with leathery skin and which was no bigger than a common Earth housecat and whose fat, which contained a rich flavor, had become a delicacy for those who later came to the Sigil system to settle, much to the chagrin of the explorers who sought to impact Telemachus' ecosystem as little as possible.

    While most humans had colonized livable regions on Artemis and Telemachus, space stations such as the one that orbited Hephaestus, Sigil's third planet, existed throughout the galaxy.  The least populated and hardest to maintain were those that were the furthest from the two life-sustaining planets, and the furthest of these was Poseidon.  Not only did freighters that hauled payloads to Poseidon face the usual perils of space travel, but they also had to concern themselves with fueling, as the journey to Poseidon generally took up most of the fuel of the average freighter and Poseidon rarely had the fuel available in their stores to furnish a freighter with the fuel to make the journey home.  Spratt held the majority of the contracts to Poseidon, for which he charged a sizable fee, and even he took the journey in increments and made frequent stops at fueling statons.  Straight runs to Poseidon had succeeded on the rare occasions, and when one did it was the stuff of legend among freighter crews.  More often than not the foolhardy endeavor met with disaster, with many a crew lost in the space between Poseidon and the fueling station on Xerxes, the dwarf planet closest to Sigil.

    The thing that concerned Spratt in the days preceding their challenge was that Bickford did not have a reputation as a daredevil.  On the contrary, she was known for her no-nonsense, effecient approach to hauling freight.  Spratt had his ship's consul look over the agreement papers that she had drawn up three times, searching for any clause or fine print that may be detrimental to him while also looking for some mistake which Bickford may have made of which he could take advantage.  Finally satisfied of the former and disappointed by the latter, he saw no choice but to accept her challenge as it had been made openly in public.  After all, in the unlikely situation that she might win the challenge, he could easily destroy her ship on the journey back and claim the pay, later stating that she had met with some form of calimity along the spaceways. 

    The appointed time came and Spratt's ship arrived at the cargo station above Artemis, finding Bickford's freighter to already be there.  Docking in a bay alongside her ship, his behemoth overshadowed hers, being three times as long and twice as wide.  The payload of water supplied by the Aeroes, the Artemis outfit charged with supplying water to the outlying dwarf planets, would fill most of Bickford's cargo area, while Spratt's ship would have plenty of space left over once the equivolent amount was loaded into his ship.  The loading time would be quite extensive, and there was still filework to be filled out with the Aeroes, routine work for any run.  On a normal run, Spratt would remain in his quarters and find ways to amuse himself while he passed the time.  On this day, however, he would leave the ship and walk towards the cantina, ordering himself some mead alcohol and a large tray of Artemis delicacies.

    His reason for leaving the ship was a mystery to everyone, including his crew, but his demeanor became notably more attentive once John Gross, Bickford's consul, entered the cantina.  Mr. Gross was a tall man, nearly as tall as Spratt, but much thinner and with an air of dignity about him.  He was a contemporary of Bickford's, but he wore his age much better than she did, his taut features adorned by a mane of well-manicured silver-gray hair.  He walked towards the bar and ordered a virgin drink, looking over some figures on his computer pad as he did so.  Spratt hefted his weight away from the table at which he had been seated and made his way to the bar, ordering some more mead alcohol even though the glass at his table sat unfinished.  Despite his mass, Mr. Gross paid no attention to him, and at length Spratt felt the need to speak.

    "A long journey to Posiedon," he said unnecessarily.

    "Hm," was all that Mr. Gross would say as he continued to gaze into the device in his hand.

    "Pretty dangerous, too.  Hard for a ship like mine to make that run, much less a small ship like the one your captain runs."

    "I suppose so."

    "Of course, the hard thing's going to be the fuel.  You have to make a pretty straight trip to go all the way to Poseidon and then back to Xerxes without taking up all your fuel.  I would imagine your captain's at least smart enough to make one fuel stop along the way."

    "I would image.  I really don't know what her plan is."  Mr. Gross had not taken his eyes off of his computer pad.

    "The thing is, we can make the run straight.  It'll be hard, I know that, but we can make that run all the way while your ship is losing all that time at the fueling station.  I still don't get what your captain is gaining by doing this."

    "If you don't see it, then I certainly don't.  I'm just a consul going about ship's business."

    "Isn't any of your crew worried about it?"

    "I suppose so.  But they all trust Captain Bickford.  We haven't lost a lot of men on her watch and I doubt if we start now."

    "So that's just it.  They're just going to follow her blindly in, no matter how foolish she's being?"

    "I don't think I'd describe the captain as a fool, and most men would find a fight on their hands if she were described as such in front of the crew."

    "I don't think you want a fight with me."

    "No, I don't," Mr. Gross finished what he was working on and finally looked up, "I have a run to start.  Unless you would like to rethink your end of the challenge?"

    "Not a chance.  I'm just sorry that we'll be losing such a perfectly good freighter crew today."

    "Then let's hope that luck and safety is with both of us," Mr. Gross said, raising his glass.  Spratt did not respond, so Mr. Gross quickly finished his drink and left.

    Spratt downed what was left of his mead alcohol, but left his unfinished drink and delicacies at the table, moving as quickly as he could towards his ship.  Everything he knew suggested to him that he had no reason for worry from the likes of Bickford, but he felt ill at ease about the challenge and now wished that his ego had not gotten the best of him at the Hephaestus Station.  It would have been easy for him to simply ignore her, much like an elephant on old Earth ignoring a gnat.  But once the challenge was accepted there was no going back, because even with the means at his disposal, he would have lost face among the other freighters.  Spratt had been considered invincible since he had taken over the freighter from his father and he was not about to allow the delusions of a second-rate freighter captain to affect his status.

    Once back aboard his ship, Spratt found Mr. Dobbs, who was at the helm checking on the preparations for the journey.  Spratt roughly placed his ham-sized hand on his slight, lithe master helmsman's shoulder, nearly knocking the man backwards in the process.

    "How soon are we prepared to leave, Mr. Dobbs," he asked gruffly, showering Dobb's face with saliva.

    "Another half an arc or 270 degrees," Dobbs stated, steadying himself while consulting the ship's clock.  "Another 100 degrees until our payload is fully loaded at the very least, 200 degrees to make sure we're fully fueled and after that we need to finish full systems checks."

    "Belay the system checks.  I want this crate leaving the station before Bickford is finished."

    "But, sir, its a long journey.  We need to know that we're prepared. . ."

    "I said, belay the systems checks," Spratt shouted in a high-pitched voice as he landed a smack across the older man's cheek.  "I will not lose to this woman today, understand.  And I will not have your delays costing me time.  I told you what to do, now do as you're ordered."

    "Yuh-yes, sir," Dobbs said in a low voice, humbled by the assault in full view of the bridge crew.

    "I expect this ship to leave in no less than 180 degrees," Spratt continued.  "Any more time than that and you'll be spending time in the brig, understood?"

    Spratt did not wait for an answer, but instead turned on his heels and made his way towards his quarters.  There, his consul, Mr. Nickels, was waiting for him with some last-minute figures to go over.

    "I don't like it, Nickels," Spratt said as he applied his thumb to each of the forms that came up on the consul's computer pad, thus signifying his approval.  "She's up to something.  I'm thinking that we're headed on a fool's errand."

    "Are you saying that we may need to back down," Nickels asked.  "Because I can. . ."

    "Hell, no.  I'm saying nothing of the sort.  But we need to be prepared, Nickels, we don't know what sort of trick's going to come along the way.  Shortest line, no fuel stops.  And we need to keep an eye on her."

    "Yes, sir.  But certainly she's going to have to stop. . ."

    "I do not give a damn if she stops five times, we're not stopping.  Do I need to make myself any more clear?"

    The consul nodded his head and left, leaving Spratt alone in his quarters.  Spratt felt an odd sense of unease, though, and could not sit still, something of which he was generally quite comfortable doing.  At length, he felt his ship begin to move away from the docking bay well within the time limit he had given his helmsman.  Despite this, he could not settle in his quarters, and finally his discomfort gave way to a desire to be present on the bridge, to take an active role in leading the journey.  Slapping a palm against the door of his quarters, he moved his heft as quickly as he could towards the bridge.

    "That'll be all, Mr. Dobbs," Spratt said as he loudly entered the bridge.  "I'm taking the bridge from here."

    "Sir?"

    "I'm pretty sure you heard me, you petering little fart.  I said that I've got the bridge, you can sit in the master helmsman's spot, for once.  We've got a run to make and I'm going to make sure we make it right."

    With no further word, Mr. Dobbs moved to the rear, leaving the captain's chair to Spratt.  Spratt sat down and pretended to scan the console, which was nothing more than an incomprehensible grouping of lights and circuitry to him.

    "Do we know where Bickford is," Spratt asked to anyone in the bridge who might have cared to answer.

    "Uh, she left at the same time that we did," Mr. Dobbs stated after a pause.  "But--but we're currently ahead of her."

    "How far?"

    "We're leading her by more than one and a half astral units."

    "What's our speed?"

    "We're moving ahead at factor seven and climbing."

    "Get us up to factor nine.  Now."

    "But sir, we're still in Artemis' gravitational field.  If we try climbing too fast. . ."

    Spratt lifted himself up quickly and stood over Mr. Dobbs, this time landing a fist directly on the bridge of the master helmsman's nose.  "I said now," he cried.  "Does that have a different meaning to you than I think it has?"

    "Nuh-no, sir," Mr. Dobbs said, blood running down his nose and around his mouth.  With shaking hands, he worked over the controls of the console and the ship's engines began to whine.

    Gradually, a soft rumble began to be felt in the ship, a rumble that grew louder as the ship's speed increased.  The bridge began to vibrate to a point where the crewmen present could feel every muscle in their bodies quake.  The ship itself began to rattle, its devices clicking and chirping in time with the vibrations.

    "What the hell's going on up there," asked the voice of the ship's engineer, Mr. Stamos, over the comm.

    "Take care of him," Spratt impatiently told Mr. Dobbs.

    "We're moving ahead at factor nine," Mr. Dobbs said into the comm.

    "Are you crazy?  We're going to tear apart the ship if we try that this close to Artemis.  Not to mention the fuel. . ."

    Spratt impatiently leaned over to his own comm and spat into it, "Stamos, you worthless son of a bitch, this is Spratt.  We are moving along at factor nine.  If you piss in this comm one more time we'll be jettisoning you're ugly carcass outside.  Understood?"

    "And if we keep trying to ignore the laws of physics, we'll be dead anyway.  We'll be. . ."

    "Bastard," Spratt screamed, his voice trembling with the ship's vibrations.  "You will get off this comm now or I will personally come down there and shove your comm so far up your ass that it'll come out of your eyes.  Get me?  I don't want to hear you again."

    No more would be heard from Stamos, but the same could not be said of the ship.  Every inch of the ship was now shaking wildly as the engines strained to achieve the acceleration that Spratt desired.  Even Spratt was silenced as he could do nothing but hold against the forces working on the ship, but even though it felt as if the ship may shake apart at any moment, Spratt refused to rescind his order.  The crewmen were no longer controlling the ship but simply trying to maintain their composure as they felt their spines quake in the maelstrom that surrounded them.  The control console went wild, some of the sensor lights wildly blinking emergency information to those viewing them, other lights shutting down completely.  Then, suddenly, the quaking ceased, and for several moments all was quiet on the bridge while the crewmen attempted to ensure themselves that they were, indeed, still among the living.

    "Where is she," Spratt finally asked the crew.

    This time, it was a navigator named Mr. Crowley who found the bravery to speak, simply asking, "Sir?"

    "Where is she?  Where is that bitch?"

    "She's not on our scanners, sir," another crewman stated, making a quick check of the instuments in front of him.

    "What do you mean, she's not on our scanners?  There's no way she could've passed us."

    "She didn't," Mr. Dobbs said.  "Her ship doesn't have the capabilities to reach factor nine while still in a planet's gravitational field.  She has to be that far behind us."

    "So, it worked," Spratt gloated, leaning back in his chair.  "That's what happens when you take the bull by the balls.  If you women would ever develop a spine, you might find that out."

    "Sir, shouldn't we check the ship's status?"

    "Why would we need to do that, Mr. Dobbs?"

    "We put the ship through quite a bit back there, sir.  We don't know that there might not have been some sort of damage done to it."

    "The ship is fine, Dobbs.  It's no wonder we don't make half the runs we should if you coddle it like this all the time.  The Commander designed this to be a fortress, not some sort of pussy ship that falls apart when you work it.  But do what you have to do if it makes you feel better.  Crowley!"

    "Yuh-yes, sir?"

    "Find us the straightest path possible, and I do mean the straightest path, to Poseidon.  I don't want to use any extra space, and I don't want to hear any bitching about what might happen to the ship.  Understood?"

    The crew fell silent as they went about their individual duties, Mr. Dobbs working over the console in order to check the ship's functions.  Finally, having gained all the information he needed, he addressed the captain.

    "Sir, other than some minor damage to the hulls, the only loss that occurred was that we lost engine seven."

    "What do you mean, we lost engine seven.  We can't afford to lose the power of an entire engine."

    "No worry there, sir.  We have two auxillery engines, one of them kicked in once we lost seven."

    "Then there's no problem at all, is there?"

    "Sir?"

    "Yes, Mr. Dobbs?"

    "When engine seven blew, Mr. Stamos was standing nearby attempting to cool it down.  There was a small explosion, only minor damage to the ship.  But, sir, Mr. Stamos is dead."

    Spratt leaned back hard against his chair, his posture betraying his frustration.  "Stupid bastard.  Served him right.  He was useless down there, anyway, did nothing but bitch.  Do we have anyone to handle the engineering down there?"

    "Stamos had an apprentice, Mr. Larson.  He would be best qualified to handle the job."

    "Then have him do so.  And make sure he knows I'm not going to tolerate him being the same sort of spineless bastard that Stamos was."



    The journey from Artemis to Poseidon took approximately seven weeks Artemis time or, as some of the spacecrafts in the military still liked to go by, nine weeks old Earth time, depending on a craft's speed and how straight a line one took.  Given its size, Spratt's ship was not the fastest one travelling the spaceways, and neither was it faster than Bickford's on a short run.  But Spratt had never had to rely on speed as he was always able to depend on the tactics of intimidation.  Moreover, on a long run, Spratt's ship held more fuel than any other freighter in the system, so he could afford to maintain a faster speed longer than the other ships.  Still, despite the assurances of his crew that Bickford was nowhere in sight, Spratt coerced his men to take a straighter line than they would have normally considered prudent.  This caused the ship to run into obstacles that they would have avoided on a routine run, the worst of which was the astroid belt between Telemachus and Dionysus and the odd gravitational-magnetic field that surrounded Cronos, Sigil's largest planet.  Because luck was on Spratt's side, the ship survived those hazards, but not without a cost; several astroids caused cosmetic damage to the ship while also destroying one of the smaller cargo areas, empty of payload but containing two crewmen, and Cronos destroyed the ship's communications systems.  The result, beyond the three deaths that had occurred on the journey, was several injuries, most of which received derision from Spratt, an inability to contact nearby space stations or spacecrafts, and a generally disgruntled crew that remained loyal to Spratt simply because it was all they had ever known.

    At length, Poseidon was in sight.  The nearness of the journey's end had put everyone in a better mood, including Spratt, and momentarily the injustices that most felt were incurred on the preceding excursion were forgotten.  The general mood was made even better by the fact that they knew that they had made record time to Poseidon and had done so with enough fuel to easily return to Xerxes.  Even with the communications system down, none of the ship's other instruments had detected Bickford since they had departed from Artemis, and even the most seasoned of the crew could not help but think that she was well behind them, if she had not run into some hazard that might have damaged or destroyed her ship.  This did not matter as much as one might think, as the two captains had the foresight to have their respective consuls place insurance on their opposite's cargo, meaning that Spratt would get paid for the second load whether or not it arrived.  The loss of his biggest rival, even though he did not consider her much of one, would only be a bonus for Spratt.

    On the day cycle in which the ship was to reach Poseidon, Spratt woke at an uncustomarily early hour and made his way to the bridge, taking the captain's chair from Mr. Dobbs.  For most of the journey he had been anxious and tightly wound, his wrath easily incurred by those on the bridge.  At this time, with success so close at hand, he allowed himself to relax, his demeanor returned to the apathy for which he was known.  He brought a flat container of stangal fat with him, along with a large thermos of mead alcohol, and despite his rules forbidding such items on the bridge, he ate and drank as the freighter neared its destination.

    "How soon do we arrived," he asked through a mouthful of fat.

    "Within an arc, sir," Mr. Crowley answered.

    "Still no sign of the bitch?"

    "None that we can detect."

    "Which is to say no, is that not correct, Mr. Crowley?"

    "Yes, sir, we have no sign of Captain Bickford's vessel."

    "Captain Bickford.  Just because someone somehow got their hands on a second-rate freighter does not qualify them to be called captain, Mr. Crowley.  It would be a favor to this system if she had gotten that junk-heap of hers destroyed my some space rock simply because it would take her out of the system.  I still cannot fathom why she would have challenged us like this, but it's all good in the end, am I right?"

    "Sir," Mr. Dobbs said, "we may still have a problem in landing, being that we have no means of requesting landing permission from the docking bay."

    "And why should I have to wait for permission from anybody, Mr. Dobbs?  Did we lose any of our guns on the journey?  If another ship is heading for our dock, we blast them.  Who's to come after us out here?  I would think you would know how to handle something like this, Mr. Dobbs."

    "Yes, sir," Dodd said towards Spratt, then, after signalling the weapons room, he said into the comm, "Mr. Jarwal?"

    "Jarwal here," came the voice from the comm.

    "I am currently placing a target for a strike.  Be prepared to fire on my mark."

    "Certainly, Mr. Dobbs."

    Mr. Dobbs then made his way over to the long-range visual scanner in order to find his mark.  The scanner had the capability to pinpoint the docking bay on Poseidon even though Spratt's freighter was still well above the planet's atmosphere.  Mr. Dobbs peered into the scanner's viewing lens in order to choose a bay that suited the needs of the freighter, then his plan was to keep the parameter of that bay in view in the case another ship might approach it.  However, within the first few moments he spotted something that caused a wave of nausea to come over him, and he stepped away from the scanner and sat slowly in the nearest empty seat, his face ashen in pallor.

    "Bickford," he said in a voice that was nearly inaudible.

    Having been unable to hear him, Spratt turned in his chair, annoyed yet unconcerned.  "What the hell," he said, "looking through a scanner's gotten you sick?  Just how much of a woman have you become, Mrs. Dobbs?"

    "It's--it's Bickford, sir," Mr. Dodd said, still weak but now loud enough for Spratt to understand.  "Shuh-she's there.  Down there, her ship is there!"

    "What the hell are you talking about, you mumbling pile of snot," Spratt asked, moving his girth out ot the captain's chair as quickly as he could.  "She had better not be down there.  You've been telling me all along that there's been no sign of her."

    "There hasn't been," Mr. Crowley said quickly, also exhibiting disbelief for Mr. Dodd's statement.  "Our scanners haven't registered her ship's signal at all since we left Artemis."

    "I know-I know," Mr. Dobbs replied.  "But there it is, it's unmistakable.  Somehow she's there."

    Spratt bolted towards the scanner, needlessly bumping Mr. Dobbs hard in the process.  What he saw in the scanner confirmed Mr. Dobbs' observation and without hesitation he was at the comm.  "Jarwal," he screamed into the comm.

    "Yes, sir."

    "Are the guns ready?"

    "Prepared to fire, sir."

    "I'm fine-tuning the target now.  On my mark you will fire."

    Mr. Jarwal did not get the opportunity to reply to Spratt's directive as, at that moment, the freighter experienced a sudden impact that caused such a shock that its interior vibrated wildly.  When the crew had recovered, Spratt being the last to do so, he yelled loudly, "What the hell was that?"

    "I don't know," Mr. Crowley said as he checked his instruments.  "I think we've been fired on."

    "Are they crazy?  Prepare to give them an answer."

    "I don't think that would be very wise, sir."

    "Have your brains turned completely gone to crap?  I don't recall asking you what you think, I said answer their fire!"

    "I could do that, sir, but we'd lose our lives in the process.  We're being fired on by a military cruiser."

    Mr. Crowley's statement startled Spratt, and with good reason.  Decades ago, the Commander had forged an agreement with the military, who really had no desire to become engaged in civilian commerce.  As odious a person as the Commander may have been to some in the military, he still possessed the most efficient means of freight transfer in the system, underhanded tactics or no.  The military's slim resources were spent in manufacturing small spacecraft for easy manueverability and thus they had few crafts which could handle a large payload.  So the Commander, and his son after him, worked out an agreement in which they would be the primary transporter of freight, for which they were given a hefty fee, in return the military would turn a blind eye to how the Commander and his offspring conducted their business affairs.  It had been decades since their operation had any sort of conflict with the military, and Spratt had no reason to think that there should be a reason for one now.

    After hastily peering into Mr. Crowley's scanner to confirm his navigator's statement, Spratt stood silently for a moment, then said, "Let's land this thing, and quick, before they make debris out of us.  But be sure, I'm going to find out what's going on once we get landed."

    With no bay in which to dock, the crew was forced to land the ship on a nearby plateau.  This proved to be no mean feat as the ship was designed for bay docking and its landing equipment was badly underused.  At length, however, all eight of the landing legs were successfully extended and the ship made a hard but safe landing on the planet's surface.  The military craft landed immediately afterwards and a unit of five spacesuit-clad soldiers made their way towards Spratt's ship.

    "Open up the airlocks," Spratt commanded.  "We'll see what's up the sleeves of these little pukes."

    It took some time for the airlocks to do their work, opening up to welcome their guests, then closing around them and allowing the oxygen to build up in the airlock before opening the inner hatches.  During this time, Spratt sat silently, watching on the monitors while the military crew slowly removed their helmets as the air quality came within safe parameters.  The leader, a soldier with a major's insignia on his jacket, was an older man as cruiser pilots went, a man with hard-chiseled features and the military's trademark shaved scalp which was worn no matter the gender of the soldier.  Once the inner hatch had opened, the soldiers stepped briskly forward and, after a few inquiries, made their way to the bridge.

    "Captain Spratt," the major said upon entering the bridge, "I take it that there must be something wrong with your communications system.  Otherwise we would have received an answer when we hailed you."

    "We lost it when we passed Cronos.  We didn't much think we'd be needing it that badly, particularly from the likes of the military."

    "You don't need communications?  Seems to me that would be pretty important for a freighter ship, particularly one making a run like you just made.  You know, it lets people around you know what you're intending to do.  For instance, you could have told Captain Bickford's ship over there that you were planning to fire on them."

    "What's it any business of yours?  Since when does the military concern itself with what I do?"

    "It's a new day, Captain Spratt.  We're developing law in this system now, and part of that law means that if someone wins a competition fairly, the other party doesn't have the right to blow them off the spaceways."

    "How do you know about what me and Bickford had agreed to?"

    "It was a secret?  No, I think most of the pilots in this system knew about the wager between this ship and Captain Bickford."

    "And so you're taking sides, is that it?"

    "And you're playing the part of the wronged party?  You're the bullied one, the oppressed, the weak who needs to be protected?  I think we both know a little better than that, don't we, Captain Spratt.  Let's just say that, unknown to you, this little competition had a group of referees."

    "I say again, why?"

    "For our own reasons, that's why.  Perhaps Captain Bickford has had a new means of transport in which we're interested.  Perhaps, just perhaps, if this means passes a number of tests, and it certainly seems to have passed the first one, the military may be looking to someone else to haul its freight.  Or maybe not.  Like I said, the military has its own purposes."

    "I'm warning you, major, I know people. . ."

    "Captain, you are in no position to warn us.  If you think you have friends in the military, then you are dead wrong.  Quite frankly, the top brass grew weary of you years ago and has been looking for alternative means of freight-hauling for quite some time.  Now, they may have found it, and no one, and I mean no one, is going to shed a tear that they don't have to deal with you and your extortion any longer.  Now, if I were you, and if I were I'd immediately commit suicide, but if I didn't I would head back to Artemis or wherever it is you feel like infecting with my presense and lick my wounds, because from here on out Captain Bickford is under our protection."

    Spratt could not say anything as the crew turned to leave, but he remained in one spot, motionless, the only sign of life within him was an intense gaze which seemed to hold an inferno of hatred.  Seemingly to add the insult to the injury, the major stopped just as he was to step out of the bridge and spoke over his shoulder to Spratt.

    "And don't forget, captain," he said, "you still have a payload to deliver."

    In the time it took the crew to exit the freighter and return to their cruiser Spratt sat motionless, his eyes burning relentlessly throughout.  Finally, as the cruiser rose from Poseidon's surface, Spratt wordlessly exited the bridge and made his way to his cabin, ignoring the presense of all along his way.  Once there, he called only for his consul, and the two of them talked privately there while the freighter delivered its payload and disembarked from Poseidon.



    Xerxes was widely considered to be the most desolate ball of ice in the entire Sigilian system.  It may have been avoided entirely, even by the system's scientists and explorers, if a planner had not found it to be the optimal location for a fueling station to serve the outer dwarf planets.  At present, the one and only hub of activity on the entire surface of Xerxes was the massive fueling station, a fueling station which had been developed over several decades of old Earth time, and the adjascent cantina and cafe which served as a respite to keep freighter crews and other spacefarers from developing a case of the space crazies.

    Edmund Thatch had long been a low-level crewman aboard Spratt's freighter, a station-minder who had never incurred Spratt's wrath simply because Spratt never knew that he existed.  Thatch had a lifelong inclination to drink, drinking inconspicuously while serving duty aboard the freighter, drinking very conspicuously once off of the ship.  Today the freighter was docked at Xerxes and the crew was in a bad mood, mostly because everyone was waiting for the ramifications of what had transpired on Poseidon, knowing that Spratt would never allow this to go unanswered.  Thatch considered this as good a reason to drink as any, and as soon as he could make his way off of the freighter he was stationed at the cantina's bar.

    He had drank himself to a point where all around him was nothing more than haze, so he was not quite sure at what point the small, shivering man sitting next to him entered the room or which one of them had initiated the conversation.  The man may have gone forever unremembered to Thatch had he never brought up the fact that he was a crewman aboard Bickford's freighter.  Even in his inebriated state of being, this fact was important enough to warrant its safekeeping in Thatch's memory, as was the topic that the crewman seemed determined to relate.

    "Everyone else was so gung-ho," the crewman was saying, staring intensely into his drink but never really drinking it.  "Maybe I'm a coward, that's all.  Or maybe all this isn't for me.  I wasn't always on a freighter crew, you know.  I was a maintenance tech on Artemis before I decided I wanted to travel.  But not like that I don't.  Not ever again."

    "What are you talking about," Thatch asked, attempting to sound sober but possessing enough self-realization to know that he was failing horribly.  "We travelled through space.  We travelled fast.  We do it all the time.  Your crew does it, my crew does it.  Maybe we went faster than we would have liked, but it's not like you don't get used to it."

    "But it wasn't like that.  Speed I can handle.  Hell, if you're in a low enough part of the ship you don't even notice the speed, not unless you hit something.  But we didn't travel fast.  The truth is, we didn't travel at all."

    "What the hell are you talking about.  Of course you travelled.  You beat our asses to Posiedon, and don't think that that's not going to cause all sorts of troubles for us."

    "Yeah, we got to Poseidon first, but we didn't travel there, at least not the way I like to think about travel.  It was more like we blinked ourselves there, like one moment we were in one spot and, blink, all of a sudden we're above Poseidon."

    "You blinked your way to Poseidon?  Buddy, I thought I'd drank  maybe a little too much, but you need to go home and sleep it off. "

    "No, listen to me.  It's not like that.  It's one of those things, have you ever heard of them, you know, like a space warp?"

    "You mean like they use in the stories in the features down at the cinema?"

    "Yeah, exactly.  You're in one place, then, all of a sudden, you're a long distance away.  Only, when you see them on the screen, it's usually like they go through some kind of different space, but with us, we were all of a sudden, like, just there."

    "You're saying your captain used a space warp to beat Spratt?"

    "Yeah, or I think they called it a wormhole when they told us about it a couple of arcs before we went.  The military has been developing them, I guess, and somehow Bickford got herself involved with them and they gave her permission to use one."

    "You know, either you're drunk, crazy, someone's put you up to this or you're just trying to rub it in the face of the first Spratt man you see.  Any way, I don't care because I ain't buying some made up crap about how Bickford beat us with space magic, so just go away."

    "No, no, listen, I can prove it.  After we left Artemis, did you guys see any sign of us whatsoever?"

    "Don't know.  I'm not a bridge man and I don't really ever want to be there."

    "But you heard stuff, right?"

    "Yeah, I guess I heard a little.  Something about us being so far ahead and that there was no reason for Spratt to be pushing us that hard.  It's all second-hand stuff to me, you know, half of what we hear down in the stations isn't true."

    "Well, this time it was.  Because, listen man, when we left Artemis, we didn't even head towards Posiedon.  In fact, we went in almost the opposite direction.  We did that for two revolutions, two and a half days Artemis time, until we came up on this huge contraption out in deep space just floating there, no sign of anyone manning the thing but big enough for us to push our freighter through.  That's when they told us what they were going to do, then they drove the ship through that thing and, poof. . ."

    The little man made an explosive gesture as he finished, then he sat silently and stared into his drink.  He did this for quite some time, and finally Thatch decided that he had to break the silence himself.

    "So, this thing, it's still there?"

    "Yeah, I guess.  I don't know why it wouldn't be.  It's just this big thing, floating there in space on the opposite side of Sigil from Artemis."

    "And all you had to do was go through it?"

    "I guess, but it wasn't like I was on the bridge or anything.  I just know that we were sitting there about as far away from Posiedon as you can get and then, bam, we were there."

    The shivering man went silent again, and this time Thatch decided to leave him that way.  Mumbling an excuse for leaving, he left his bar seat and began to amble his way towards the cantina exit, trying to convince himself that he was sobering up, although nothing could have been further from the truth.  He made his way through the corridors that led to the docking bays, occasionally stopping to close his eyes in order to stop everything from spinning, an act that, in fact, made things worse.  Finally, he made it to the service entrance of Spratt's ship and, once inside, stopped to urinate and drink a container of water in a vain attempt to remove the alcohol from his body.  Thus, with the hope that he could now carry a conversation that was at least somewhat coherent, he began to look for the first senior crew member he could come across, which in this case turned out to be Mr. Nickels, the ship's consul.

    "Mr. Nickels, a word with you, please," Thatch yelled out as he tried to catch up to the consul in the cramped confines of the ship's lower reaches.  For his part, Mr. Nickels was preoccupied with some matter on his computer pad, and Thatch had to hail him three more times before he turned his attention to the crewman.

    "And you are. . .," Mr. Nickels asked, peering above his spectacles down at Thatch.

    "Edmund Thatch, sir, I'm a station-minder in compartment 354.  Sir, I have a bit of information that Spratt may find useful."

    Considering the concentrated alcohol vapor that was emanating from Thatch's mouth, Mr. Nickels already considered this to be a waste of his time.  He began to turn from Thatch without another word, but Thatch grabbed ahold of his arm, holding him tight.

    "I would imagine that you have something of the utmost importance to discuss with me to risk internment in the brig," Mr. Nickels said, pulling away from Thatch's grasp.

    "My apologies, sir, but when I tell you what I've just heard, I think both you and Spratt will be glad you've listened to me."

    "What you just heard?  In the cantina?  Among all the other drunks?  It could have been anything, crewman, and nothing in which I would be interested."

    Mr. Nickels once again turned and began to once again work his computer pad when, in desperation, Thatch yelled out, "A wormhole!"

    Mr. Nickels would never know why he paid any heed to whatever nonsense came out of this drunk's mouth, but for some reason the utterance interested him, perhaps because, since leaving Poseidon, he had gone through daily meetings with a highly distraught and emotional Spratt, trying to think of the means in which they had been cheated.  At this point he was willing to entertain any idea, no matter how exotic it may seem.

    Thus, he turned back to the station-minder, asking, "What do you mean, a wormhole?"

    "It's how they beat us, sir.  It's how they got to Poseidon before we did.  They used, you know, one of those space warp things, in order to cheat space and get there before us."

    "Who told you this?"

    "One of the crew from Bickford's ship.  He said it was on the opposite side of Sigil from Artemis.  He was kind of shaken up and he was spilling his guts about it, about how they were in one spot and, poof, they were in another."

    "Is there any reason why I should believe the word of another drunk in the cantina?"

    "What reason does he have to lie, sir?  Besides, he was really troubled by it, he was talking more to himself than he was to me."

    Mr. Nickels once again peered down at Thatch, examining the crewman for a moment.  Then, satisfying himself that this may be worth pursuing, he turned to go to Spratt's quarters.

    "Don't forget to mention to Spratt who told you this," Thatch called after him with a sense of pride, badly needing another drink.



    Colonel Orin Mycroft was a nervous man, prone to sweat under the duress of even the slightest stress.  At the moment, with a blustering Spratt on his comm, Col. Mycroft was perspiring profusely.

    "What can I say, Spratt?  There's people up here who just don't like you."

    "I don't give a damn who likes me and who doesn't," Spratt was yelling into the comm, the saliva flying from his mouth being almost audible on the colonel's comm.  "We've had this agreement, we had it for decades, and if someone up there is trying to screw with me there will be hell to pay."

    "I understand what you're trying to say, but it's out of my hands.  This is something that's been decided by higher up, and when I say that I mean by way higher up."

    "So you're telling me it's true, then?  The military has some sort of wormhole portal that Bickford used to beat me?"

    "Something like that, but to be truthful, I'm as much in the dark about it as you are.  They've been experimenting with man-made singularities for awhile, and from what I understand, they were considering a wormhole project in order to expedite transport to old Earth, so I suppose it's possible that one of those things exist."

    "It's not just possible, you decaying bit of feces, it factual.  This second-rate freighter captain who couldn't pilot her way out of her toilet was helped by your people to beat me using a wormhole and I want my due.  I say again, when I find out things for sure, there will be hell to pay."

    "It's not me, mind you, Spratt, I see no reason to change things, everything's always worked out between us and you, at least that's how I see it.  But it's these higher-ups, for some reason they have it in for you.  Having said that, I don't see what you're going to be able to do.  You can't take on the military, that would be suicide."

    "I'll tell you one thing I can do, I can go to this wormhole portal and I can check it out, see if it's truthful.  Then, maybe I use the damned thing for my own purposes.  Maybe I can make it to Poseidon in a blink of an eye, and when I do, believe me, there's no way the military's going to be able to escort that bitch forever.  One time she'll come through there, and we'll be waiting and that'll be the end for 'captain' Kara Bickford."

    "You know me, Spratt, I'm not hearing any of this, and I'm not confirming that anything like that exists.  Just know that once matters are settled, we're ready to resume business as usual."

    Spratt contemptuously switched off his comm without acknowledging the colonel's peace offering.  He sat back in his cabin recliner and tried to relax, but the more he did so, the more he thought about Posiedon, and the more agitated he became.  With him, it had not been a simple wager like what would have taken place with the average freighter captains working the Sigil system.  He had a reputation, the reputation, that he had unquestioned supremacy over the spaceways.  That Bickford had challenged him had struck him as both amusing and, in a way, insubordinate, but that she had won had causes something much deeper than embarassment in him.  He would not rest until that embarrassment had been avenged, and that vengeance could mean nothing less than the death of Captain Kara Bickford.

    Spratt's freighter arrived on the opposite side of Sigil in less than two days Artemis time and, once there, began a sweep of the sector in search of the mysterious wormhole ring.  After nearly a week Artemis time they had found nothing and, inwardly, this heartened those who knew the object of Spratt's search as they thought it would be a better use of their resources to search for Bickford's ship in the Artemis region and destroy it there rather than go on a wild search for something that may be dangerous.  However, there hopes were dashed on the eighth day Artemis when a gray circular portal appeared in the viewing port, its center being the purest form of blackness, its blinking and undulating lights indicating activity although there was apparently no one there to man the thing.

    Upon learning of the discovery, Spratt had once again taken the captain's chair, and now sat at the bridge impatiently awaiting Mr. Crowley's report.  Finally, the navigator looked up from his instruments and glanced back at Spratt.

    "The center of that ring is a dense gravitational field, the ring itself is a protective magnetic field generator, or a man-made event horizon.  There is every evidence that this is the wormhole portal that Captain Bickford utilized."

    "Good," Spratt said, nervously rubbing the folds of his chins.  "Prepare to enter it."

    "Sir," Mr. Dobbs asked in a stunned tone.

    "Mr. Dobbs, at some point get the crap out of your ears so that you can properly obey orders.  I'll say it again, prepare to enter it."

    Mr. Dobbs sat at his station for a moment, seemingly in inward turmoil, tremors running throughout his body.  Then, suddenly and calmly, he simply said the word, "No."

    Now it was Spratt's turn to sit silently for a moment, a moment which allowed his rage to build, which allowed the audacity of Mr. Dobbs' insubordination to sink into his being.  Once properly enraged, Spratt stood up out of his chair and glared at Mr. Dobbs.

    "Mr. Dobbs," he said in a low tone, "I will give you a chance to repeat yourself, and when you do your answer had best be, 'yes, sir,' or your life won't be worth a whore's promise."

    For his part, Mr. Dobbs now stood, also.  "I said, 'no,' and I meant no.  We don't know what this thing is, sir, other than a very powerful gravitational field, and we need to at least study it before we go killing ourselves."

    "I would say that I've already discussed this with the military and I know what we're doing, but then I would be explaining myself to an insignificant bucket of puke such as yourself, and that I won't do.  So, you'd best stand down, Mr. Dobbs, or face the consequences."

    "Do what you will, sir.  I won't put this crew in jeopardy, not while I'm on the bridge."

    Spratt quickly and nonchalantly took a blaster from the console beside his station and fired it at Mr. Dobbs' skull, exploding it into an infinite number of fragments.  The rest of the master helmsman's body stood for an instant , as if in shock, before falling to the floor.

    Spratt looked about the room, his eyes wild, the blaster still smouldering in his hand.  "Does anyone else on the bridge wish to question my decisions here," he asked in a low and menacing tone. 

    As no one answered, he said, "Then let's proceed.  Mr. Crowley, you are currently master helmsman, unless you also can't handle the duty.  And someone get a sanitation man up here to get rid of this garbage."



    Had someone on Spratt's bridge been checking the scanners at that moment, Spratt may have reconsidered his decision to enter what he considered to be a wormhole portal.  He may have noticed Bickford's freighter nearby, cloaked somewhat by a magnetic field provided to her by the military, but detectable with a due amount of diligence.  But Bickford knew that Spratt would be too preoccupied with his apparent victory to pay attention to the seemingly empty space surrounding him.  It was the second time that she had gambled against him and won.  Beside her stood Colonel Orin Mycroft, no longer sweating nor particularly nervous.  The duo watched the viewing port as Spratt's craft neared the ring, seemingly stopping for the briefest of instants before quickly disappearing into the ring's blackness, moving as if it were being sucked inside.

    "Where do you think it'll wind up," Bickford asked, her eyes still on the ring.

    "The other side of the universe, perhaps," Mycroft said, pouring himself another cup of herb brew.  "Maybe he'll even end up close to old Earth, for all we know.  But, if I were to lay odds, and understanding as little as I do about singularities, I would say that every particle of that spaceship has pretty much collapsed under the gravitational field.  In other words, their pretty much dead."

    "Good enough," Bickford said, finally turning away from the image and pouring herself some of the brew.  "It seemed to fool him pretty well, then, the identical freighters that we designed and you built."

    "Now, captain, Spratt's downfall was just a side benefit of our arrangement.  We've long felt that a couple of freighters would work a lot better for us than one big freighter, we've just always had Spratt in the way, and there was no way we were going to hand that son of a bitch a second freighter."

    "Yes, it's all very practical and all, and believe me, colonel, you've made the right choice.  You'll never regret using us as your primary carrier.  But, admit it, having him think that the ship that left Artemis was the same as the ship that we already had on Poseidon was more than a bit of fun, wasn't it?"

    "And he did fall for it!  Damn, I thought that there'd be no way for this to work, that certainly it would fall apart when we tried to convince him that it was a wormhole.  The scientists could hardly get that thing out there to work as a fake black hole, and once they did they were scared to death of it.  It's a good thing we pointed Spratt towards it before they start dismantling it.  But why would someone even consider doing something as foolish as entering a contraption like that?"

    "Desperation, colonel.  Spratt lived his entire life living comfortably on a reputation that he inherited and never deserved.  Somewhere deep inside of him he knew that, and when we challenged him, he became desperate to prove that he was worthy, even though he could not be considered to be even close to worthy of his reputation.  After that, he might as well have been a puppet, he was so easy to manipulate."

    Bickford sat back in her captain's chair and took a long draught of the brew, then looked back out at the ring floating in space.  "As a man once told me," she said, "I like desperation.  Desperation makes people do the stupidest things."