That was the way to go, toward the first two stars. It was the sort
of decision that can be made in a hurry and still be sound. Head
toward suns and worlds and the lanes where other ships could be found.
The cruiser would have to be gotten rid of before any planets were
approached--the faster the better since every ship in the galaxy would
be looking for it. Then meet another ship--ship X--and capture it.
Abandon the cruiser and ... do what?
My tenuous line of logic was ready to snap at this point so I
strengthened it with some akvavit and a fresh cigar. With my eyes half
closed in reverie I tried to rebuild the flight. Capture the new ship
and--head for a planet. As long as she was alone in space Angelina
was in constant danger. A planetfall and a change of personality were
called for. When I looked up those two target stars in the catalog the
planetary choice was obvious. A barbaric sounding place named Freibur.
There were a half dozen other settled planets around the two suns,
but all eliminated themselves easily. Either too lightly settled, so
that a stranger would be easily spotted, or organized and integrated so
well that it would be impossible to be around long without some notice
being taken. Freibur shared none of these difficulties. It had been in
the league for less than two hundred years, and would be in a happily
chaotic state. A mixture of the old and new, pre-contact culture and
post-contact civilization. The perfect place for her to slip into
quietly, and lose herself until she could appear with a fresh identity.
Reaching this conclusion produced a double glow of satisfaction. This
was more than a mental exercise in survival since I was now roughly
in the same place Angelina had been. The incident with the scuttling
charge was a strong indication of the value the Corps put on their
ships--and the low value they placed on deserters. Freibur was a place
that would suit me perfectly. I retired happily with a slight buzz on
and a scorched mouth from the dehydrated cigars.
When I dragged myself back to consciousness it was time to drop out
of warpspace and plot a new course. Except there was one thing I
had to do first. A lot of the little facts I knew had _not_
been picked up in the Corps. One fact--normally of interest only to
warpdrive technicians--concerns the curious propagation of radiation
in warpspace. Radio waves in particular. They just don't go anyplace.
If you broadcast on one frequency you get a strong return signal on
all frequencies, as if the radio waves had been squeezed out thin and
bounced right back. Normally of no interest, this exotic phenomena
is just the thing to find out if your ship is bugged. I put nothing
beyond the Special Corps, and bugging their own ships seemed a logical
precaution. A concealed radio, transmitting on a narrow band, would
lead them right to me wherever I went. This I had to find out before
getting near any planets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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