"And this ignorance hampered your early efforts?"

"It did more than hamper them, it crippled them. I've already given you an idea of how long it took us simply to find our suppliers. If any of us had crewed on a pirate ship, we would have had the information and known exactly where to go."

"But once your ship was outfitted, things started to go easier, right?"

"Quite the contrary. It wasn't until our ship was fully outfitted and we went hunting for our first opponent that we began to realize how little we knew about pirates. In many ways, that's when our real problems first began...."

CHAPTER THREE

"How much longer until they can see us?"

As Puck's voice came over the intercom, Tambu punched the 'talk' button on his command console, not taking his eye from the two ships on the viewscreen.

"Stow the chatter, Puck." he ordered. "Just keep watching that upper turret.

As might well be expected, they were all nervous. The next few minutes could well be the culmination of nearly a year's preparations.

Refitting the ship had taken much longer than any of them had anticipated, not to mention costing considerably over the original estimates. The results were heartening, however. The ship, now named the Scorpion, had a sting to be reckoned with in the form of four long-range slicers. Hendricks had assured them that they were now armed better than any ship currently registered. The only discomforting thought was that not all pirate ships were registered.

Even more important than the weapons, and twice as costly, were the custom scanners which allowed them to appraise a situation from a position well outside the range of another ship's detection equipment.

That plus several months of practice made the Scorpion and her crew formidable opponents. When they were all in agreement that they were ready to do combat, a new problem arose. How do you find the pirates?

Their only solution had led them here, to the Weisner System, which reported the highest frequency of pirate attacks. Prepared for a waiting game, they had struck paydirt almost immediately. In orbit over Magnus, the largest inhabited planet in the system, their detectors found two ships lying side by side. One was disabled and showed signs of recent damage, while the other seemed to be unscratched, and had two turret guns prominently mounted on her exterior.

It could be a pirate in the process of looting a victim. Then again, it could simply be a commercial ship answering a distress call. The problem was one captains had been wrestling with for over a decade. How do you tell a pirate from any other ship until he fires on you?

A hurried conference among the Scorpion's crew yielded the current course of action. They would ease close enough to the two ships that their guns would be in firing range, but the smaller guns of the functional ship would be unable to reach them to return fire... hopefully. From that position, they would hail the ship, offering assistance, and try to determine the situation confronting them.

Of course, there were several precautions they took to insure their safety in the maneuver. First, they kept their solar sails furled, relying on their storage batteries for power. Although this meant less power for their weapons or for emergency flight, Tambu reasoned that the fighting, if there was any, would be over quickly one way or another.

They angled their approach so that they were not aligned with the guns of their potential opponent, thus guaranteeing themselves first-shot capability before any fire could be brought to bear on them. Finally, Egor and Puck were manning batteries of two guns each, keeping them closely trained on the turret guns of the ship they were approaching while Whitey handled the actual maneuvering of the Scorpion. Tambu stood by ready to handle the talking once they opened communications.

They had taken every precaution possible, short of simply bypassing the entire situation. Both of the ships they were approaching had their sails out, obviously not combat ready in their vulnerability. Still the crew of the Scorpion were wet-palmed nervous-individually and as a group.

Another few minutes...

"Whitey?" Tambu asked abruptly.

"Yes, captain?"

"Am I set with a hailing frequency?"

It was a needless question, one that he had asked before. Tambu was no more immune to the strain of nerves than any of the others in his crew.

"Sure are, captain. They should be able to hear you now if you want to start."

They were within the range of the Scorpion's armaments now. Tambu knew that if he waited much longer, they would be vulnerable to return fire from the other ship. Licking his dry lips, he reached for the hailing microphone.

"Captain!"

At least two voices called to him from the ship's intercom, their exact identity lost in the garble of their overlap.

"I see it!" he barked. "Open fire!"

One of the turret guns on the functional ship they were approaching had begun to move, swiveling toward them in smooth silence.

Even as Tambu gave the order, the guns of the Scorpion opened up, the orange beams of slicers darting out like striking snakes toward their would-be assailant.

Though the crew of the Scorpion had practiced often and long with their slicers in mock attacks on small asteroids and occasionally on the face of an uninhabited planet, they had never seen the actual effect of their weapons on another ship. Now they had a front-row seat.

There was no explosion, no shower of sparks or flame. The portion of the rival ship which came into contact with the orange beams simply melted away like thin plastic before a soldering iron. One of the beams hit a sail, severing the tip. The remaining portion of the sail crumpled slowly as the severed tip began to drift away into open space. Both turret guns simply vanished, erased completely by direct hits from the slicers.

"Cease fire!" Tambu shouted, finding his voice at last.

The beams halted at the sound of his command, and silence reigned as they surveyed their handiwork.

The stricken ship's hull was already healing itself. The outer hulls on all ships were triple thickness with auto guidance to slide new plates into place in event of damage severe enough to cause interior pressure loss. Soon the exterior of the ship would be repaired. They could only guess at the interior damage of their attack.

Tambu's eyes wandered to the third ship, floating silently next to their recent opponent. Having now seen how fast a ship could heal itself after an attack, he could appreciate anew the extent of the attack which had wrecked such havoc as to leave a ship gaping open like that.

"We got him!" Puck's awe-filled voice came over the intercom.

"Keep your guns on him!" Tambu snapped. "We don't know if he has any more surprises up his sleeve."

"Captain?" Whitey joined the conversation. "Aren't you going to try hailing them now?"

There was something in her voice that caught Tambu's attention. In contrast to Puck's enthusiasm, Whitey seemed almost pensive. "Is something bothering you, Whitey?" he asked.

"Well... it occurs to me that except for some shooting, nothing has changed." she replied hesitantly. "We still don't know whether or not they're pirates."

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then the crew erupted in protest.

"Cm'n, Whitey!" Egor groaned. "He was getting ready to shoot at us."

"That's right," Puck added. "He wouldn't have done that if-"

"Sure he would," Whitey interrupted. "Any of us would. If an unidentified ship came easing up to us with its sails in and its guns out, what would we do? We'd crank our guns around and cover the bastard until he said who he was and what he wanted. That ship couldn't have known whether or not we were pirates just like we didn't know if he was a pirate--and we still don't."