“I’m beginning to get it!” the captain acknowledged. “But what makes you think we won’t get robbed blind there?”

“They’re not crooks that way — at least not often. The Daal goes for the skinning alive thing,” Goth explained. “You get robbed, you squawk. Then somebody gets skinned. It’s pretty safe!”

It did sound like the Daal had hit on a dependable method to give his planet a reputation for solid integrity in business deals. “So we sell the cargo there,” the captain mused. “They take their cut — probably a big one—”

“Uh-huh. Runs around forty per.”

“Of the assessed value?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Steep! But if they’ve got to see the stuff gets smuggled to buyers in the Empire or somewhere else, they’re taking the risks. And, allowing for what the new drive engines will cost us, we’ll be on Uldune then with what should still be a very good chunk of money… Hmm!” He settled back in his chair. “What were those other ideas?”

The first half of the week-long run to Uldune passed uneventfully. They turned around the plans Goth had been nourishing, amended them here and there. But basically the captain couldn’t detect many flaws in them. He didn’t tell her so, but it struck him that if Goth hadn’t happened to be born a witch she might have made out pretty well on Nikkeldepain. She seemed to have a natural bent for the more devious business angles. As one of their first transactions on the reformed pirate planet, they would pick up fictitious identities. The Daal maintained a special department which handled nothing else and documented its work so impeccably that it would stand up under the most thorough investigation. It was a costly matter, but the proceeds of the cargo sale would cover the additional expense. If the search for the Venture and her crew spread east of the Empire, established aliases might be very necessary.

In that respect the Sheewash Drive had turned into a liability. Used judiciously, however, it should be an important asset to the independent trader the Venture was to become. This was an untamed area of space; there were sections where even the Empire’s heavily armed patrols did not attempt to go in less than squadron strength. And other sections which nobody tried to patrol at all…

“The Sea of Light, f’rinstance,” Goth said, nodding at the twisted purple cosmic cloud glow the captain had observed on his first look out of the screens. It had drifted meanwhile over to the Venture’s port side. “That’s a hairy place! You get too close to that, you’ve had it! Every time.”

She didn’t know exactly what happened when one got too close to the cloud. Neither did anyone else. It had been a long while since anybody had tried to find out.

The Drive wouldn’t exactly allow them to go wherever they chose, even if Goth had been able to make regular and unlimited use of it. But as an invisible and unsuspected part of the ship’s emergency equipment it would let them take on assignments not many others would care to consider.

There should be money in that, the captain thought. Plenty of money. Once they were launched, they shouldn’t have much to worry about on that score. But it meant having the Venture rebuilt very completely before they took her out again.

The prospects for the next few years looked good all around. Goth evidently wasn’t at all disturbed by the fact that it might be at least that long before she saw her people again. The witches seemed to look at such things a little differently. Well, he thought, the two of them should see and learn a lot while making their fortune as traders; and he’d take care of Goth as best he could. Though from Goth’s point of view, it had occurred to him, it might seem more that she was taking care of Captain Pausert.

He couldn’t quite imagine himself developing witch powers. He’d tried to pump Goth about that a little and was told in effect not to worry — he’d know when it began to happen and meanwhile there was no way to hurry it up. Just what would happen couldn’t be predicted. The type of talents that developed and the sequence in which they appeared varied widely among Karres children and the relatively few adults in whom something brought klatha into sudden activity. Goth was a teleporting specialist and had, perhaps because of that, caught on to the Sheewash Drive very quickly and mastered it like a grown-up. So far she’d done little else. The Leewit, besides being the possessor of a variety of devastating whistles, which she used with considerable restraint under most circumstances, was a klatha linguist. Give her a few words of a language she’d never heard before, and something in her swept out, encompassed it all; and she’d soon be chattering away in it happily as if she’d spoken nothing else in all her young life.

Maleen was simply a very good all-around junior witch who’d recently been taken into advanced training three or four years earlier than was the rule.

Goth clearly didn’t think he should be given much more information than that at present; and he didn’t press her for it. As long as he didn’t attract any more vatches he’d be satisfied. He retained mixed feelings about klatha. Useful it was, no doubt, if one knew how to handle it. But it was uncanny stuff.

There were enough practical matters on hand to keep them fully occupied. He gave Goth a condensed course in the navigation of the Venture; and she told him more of what had been going on east of the Empire than he’d ever learned out of history books. It confirmed his first impression that life around here should be varied and interesting…

One interesting variation came their way shortly after the calendric chronometer had recorded the beginning of the fourth day since they’d turned on course for Uldune. It was the middle of the captain’s sleep period. He woke up to find Goth violently shaking his shoulder.

“Uh, what is it?” he mumbled.

“You awake?” Her voice was sharp, almost a hiss. “Better get to the controls!”

That aroused him as instantly and completely as a bucketful of ice-cold water…

There was a very strange-looking ship high in the rear viewscreen, at an indicated distance of not many light-minutes away. Its magnified image was like that of a flattened ugly dark bug striding through space after them on a dozen spiky legs set around its edges. The instruments registered a mass about twice that of the Venture. It was an unsettling object to find coming up behind one.

“Know who they are?” he asked.

Goth shook her head. The ship had been on the screens for about ten minutes, had kept its distance at first, then swung in and begun to pull up to them. She’d put out a number of short-range query blasts on the communicators, but there’d been no response.

It looked like trouble. “How about the Drive?” he asked.

Goth indicated the open passage door. “Ready right out there!”

“Fine. But wait with it.” They didn’t intend to start advertising the Sheewash Drive around here if they could avoid it. “Try the communicators again,” he said. “They could be on some off-frequency.”

He hadn’t thrown the override switch on the throttled main drive engines yet. It might have been the Venture’s relatively slow progress which had attracted the creepy vessel’s interest, giving whoever was aboard the idea that here was a possibility of easy prey which should be investigated. But if they set off at speed now and the stranger followed, it could turn into a long chase… and one long chase could finish his engines.

If they didn’t run, the thing would move into weapons range within less than five minutes.

“Captain!”

He turned. Goth was indicating the communicator screen. A green-streaked darkness flickered on and off in it.

“Getting them, I think!” she murmured.