The Great Hydration

Limply aware that in truth this was the only way out of the legal trap he had set himself, he allowed her to lead him through the port. The eight of them made the lighter’s cabin crowded. O’Rourke handled the controls. He disengaged from the port and ferried them the short distance to the Enterprise. Behind them, the Invicta lay dead in space, effectively unmanned.

Minutes later they had gathered in what was generally known as the Ops Room. Joanita was applying a freezing cold liquid to the grey patches, enabling her to peel them off. Boris Bouche rubbed the frigid sensation from his temple with his fingers. He glanced accusingly at Northrop.

“Take a lesson from this, Roncie. Some people still know how to serve their masters. Miss Serstos has behaved magnificently.”

“Yes, I think I’ve worked out why she was included on the defence team,” Northrop replied, in his best sarcastic voice. He added, “I take it you’ve used a neural damping field.”

“Obviously. But first we had to switch off the Invicta’s electronic defences. That was Joanita’s job.”

Pulling a tab off Shelley, Joanita smiled with pleasure at the praise she was receiving. “Three hours in the Commissioner’s private quarters! That old stick is sure going to be mad when he wakes up.”

Krabbe too had a broad smile on his face. “Bureaucrats are such fools! All she had to do was flutter her eyelashes and Amundsen was practically giving her the keys to the kingdom!”

You had to hand it to the partners, Northrop thought. They really knew how to exploit people’s talents.

A neural damper was not a common device, but as a pursuit ship the Invicta would be protected against that and similar perils by a buffer field. The partners’ answer was simple. Get Joanita to disable the buffer.

The grey tabs were an antidote. They stimulated the brain’s mechanism for consciousness arousal, the ascending reticular system, and so kept one awake even inside a damping field. Joanita would have been wearing one when she turned the buffer off. O’Rourke, watching like a spider on the Enterprise, would have seen the buffer go down and projected the damper in almost the same instant. With everyone around her unconscious, all Joanita had to do then was find her way to the cells and apply tabs to the partners and their bondmen.

A most resourceful woman. An asset to the firm of Krabbe & Bouche, Partners.

Northrop wondered briefly if he had unwittingly played a part in the theatrical performance at the hearing. Had his defection already become known?

No, he didn’t think so. Krabbe’s shock had been genuine.

“A neural damper,” he repeated. “That’s illegal technology.”

He had not seen it or the reticular stimulator before, though he had heard the latter could be a mind-bending torture instrument, keeping a victim awake indefinitely. Bouche answered with a dirty chuckle.

“Sure it is. But I’m not certain we actually used it. At least, I doubt if Amundsen will put it in his report. He’ll be too embarrassed.”

“Let’s go,” Krabbe ordered.

The drive was engaged. The Enterprise shot off into interstellar space, to look for pastures new.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Holding the traditional oak rod in his right hand, for the second time in his life Roncie Reaul Northrop intoned the words that put him in fealty to Karl Henry Krabbe and Boris Oliver Bouche, Partners. They held similar oak rods. They promised to protect him and to treat him well. Remuneration was not mentioned. By custom that resulted from some vague notion of ‘reciprocal good will’ that was supposed to arise between master and bondperson.

Northrop knew what was coming next. The short ceremony over, its record safely locked in the ship’s files (alongside the first identical ceremony) it was customary for the master to give his new slave a moral homily. This one would not be like the first. Karl Krabbe put on the pained and anxious expression Northrop had seen so many times when he was about to give someone a dressing-down.

“You do understand, Roncie, that this time it’s real? This time you can’t go through the form then change your mind like you did before. Conduct like that is bad for you, bad for us, bad for everybody. Now I’m going to be straight with you. I know you resented it when we stopped you leaving us. I suppose you imagine we were thinking only of ourselves, but that’s not true! After all, we can always get another nuke man. No, we had your welfare in mind just as much, if not more so, as ours. We take our oaths seriously, even when you don’t. We’re responsible for you, you’re like family. Let’s face it, where were you when we recruited you? In a bar, half drunk, with no money and no prospects. A drifter and a bum. You may be a fine engineer, but when it comes to taking charge of your own life you’re hopeless. Without us to take care of you, you’ll never amount to anything.”