«I lived,» I told him.
Carlos rubbed his hands together briskly. «Sigmund! Why did you bomb Bey's ship?»
Ausfaller blinked in surprise. «Did he tell you it was his ship? It wasn't. He was thinking of stealing it. I reasoned that he would not steal a ship with a hidden time bomb aboard.»
«But how did you come into it?» Carlos slid into the booth beside him. «You're not police. You're in the Extremely Foreign Relations Bureau.»
«The ship belonged to General Products Corporation, which is owned by Pierson's puppeteers, not human beings.»
Carlos turned on me. «Bey! Shame on you.»
«Damn it! They were trying to blackmail me into a suicide mission! And Ausfaller let them get away with it! And that's the least convincing exhibition of tact I've ever seen!»
«Good thing they soundproof these booths,» said Carlos. «Let's order.»
Soundproofing field or not, people were staring. I sat down. When our drinks came, I drank deeply. Why had I mentioned the bomb at all?
Ausfaller was saying, «Well, Carlos, have you changed your mind about coming with me?»
«Yes, if I can take a friend.»
Ausfaller frowned and looked at me. «You wish to reach Earth, too?»
I'd made up my mind. «I don't think so. In fact, I'd like to talk you out of taking Carlos.»
Carlos said, «Hey!»
I overrode him. «Ausfaller, do you know who Carlos is? He had an unlimited parenthood license at the age of eighteen. Eighteen! I don't mind you risking your own life; in fact, I love the idea. But his?»
«It's not that big a risk!» Carlos snapped.
«Yeah? What has Ausfaller got that eight other ships didn't have?»
«Two things,» Ausfaller said patiently. «One is that we will be incoming. Six of the eight ships that vanished were leaving Sol system. If there are pirates around Sol, they must find it much easier to locate an outgoing ship.»
«They caught two incoming. Two ships, fifty crew members and passengers, gone. Poof!»
«They would not take me so easily,» Ausfaller boasted. «The Hobo Kelly is deceptive. It seems to be a cargo and passenger ship, but it is a warship, armed and capable of thirty gees acceleration. In normal space we can run from anything we can't fight. We are assuming pirates, are we not? Pirates would insist on robbing a ship before they destroy it.»
I was intrigued. «Why? Why a disguised warship? Are you hoping you'll be attacked?»
«If there are actually pirates, yes, I hope to be attacked. But not when entering Sol system. We plan a substitution. A quite ordinary cargo craft will land on Earth, take on cargo of some value, and depart for Wunderland on a straight-line course. My ship will replace it before it has passed through the asteroids. So you see, there is no risk of losing Mr. Wu's precious genes.»
Palms flat to the table, arms straight, Carlos stood looming over us. «Diffidently I raise the point that they are my futzy genes and I'll do what I futzy please with them! Bey, I've already had my share of children, and yours, too!»
«Peace, Carlos. I didn't mean to step on any of your inalienable rights.» I turned to Ausfaller. «I still don't see why these disappearing ships should interest the Extremely Foreign Relations Bureau.»
«There were alien passengers aboard some of the ships.»
«Oh.»
«And we have wondered if the pirates themselves are aliens. Certainly they have a technique not known to humanity. Of six outgoing ships, five vanished after reporting that they were about to enter hyperdrive.»
I whistled. «They can precipitate a ship out of hyperdrive? That's impossible. Isn't it? Carlos?»
Carlos's mouth twisted. «Not if it's being done. But I don't understand the principle. If the ships were just disappearing, that'd be different. Any ship does that if it goes too deep into a gravity well on hyperdrive.»
«Then … maybe it isn't pirates at all. Carlos, could there be living beings in hyperspace, actually eating the ships?»
«For all of me, there could. I don't know everything, Bey, contrary to popular opinion.» But after a minute he shook his head. «I don't buy it. I might buy an uncharted mass on the fringes of Sol system. Ships that came too near in hyperdrive would disappear.»
«No,» said Ausfaller. «No single mass could have caused all of the disappearances. Charter or not, a planet is bounded by gravity and inertia. We ran computer simulations. It would have taken at least three large masses, all unknown, all moving into heavy trade routes simultaneously.»
«How large? Mars size or better?»
«So you have been thinking about this, too.»
Carlos smiled. «Yeah. It may sound impossible, but it isn't. It's only improbable. There are unbelievable amounts of garbage out there beyond Neptune. Four known planets and endless chunks of ice and stone and nickel-iron.»
«Still, it is most improbable.»
Carlos nodded. A silence fell.
I was still thinking about monsters in hyperspace. The lovely thing about that hypothesis was that you couldn't even estimate a probability. We knew too little.
Humanity has been using hyperdrive for almost four hundred years now. Few ships have disappeared in that time, except during wars. Now eight ships in ten months, all around Sol system.
Suppose one hyperspace beast had discovered ships in this region, say during one of the Man-Kzin Wars? He'd gone to get his friends. Now they were preying around Sol system. The flow of ships around Sol is greater than that around any three colony stars. But if more monsters came, they'd surely have to move on to the other colonies.
I couldn't imagine a defense against such things. We might have to give up interstellar travel.
Ausfaller said, «I would be glad if you would change your mind and come with us, Mr. Shaeffer.»
«Um? Are you sure you want me on the same ship with you?»
«Oh, emphatically! How else may I be sure that you have not hidden a bomb aboard?» Ausfaller laughed. «Also, we can use a qualified pilot. Finally, I would like the chance to pick your brain, Beowulf Shaeffer. You have an odd facility for doing my job for me.»
«What do you mean by that?»
«General Products used blackmail in persuading you to do a close orbit around a neutron star. You learned something about their homeworld — we still do not know what it was — and blackmailed them back. We know that blackmail contracts are a normal part of puppeteer business practice. You earned their respect. You have dealt with them since. You have dealt also with Outsiders without friction. But it was your handling of the Lloobee kidnapping that I found impressive.»
Carlos was sitting at attention. I hadn't had a chance to tell him about that one yet. I grinned and said, «I'm proud of that myself.»
«Well, you should be. You did more than retrieve known space's top Kdatlyno touch sculptor: you did it with honor, killing one of their number and leaving Lloobee free to pursue the others with publicity. Otherwise the Kdatlyno would have been annoyed.»
Helping Sigmund Ausfaller had been the farthest thing from my thoughts for these past eight years, yet suddenly I felt damn good. Maybe it was the way Carlos was listening. It takes a lot to impress Carlos Wu.
Carlos said, «If you thought it was pirates, you'd come along, wouldn't you, Bey? After all, they probably can't find incoming ships.»
«Sure.»
«And you don't really believe in hyperspace monsters.»
I hedged. «Not if I hear a better explanation. The thing is, I'm not sure I believe in supertechnological pirates, either. What about those wandering masses?»
Carlos pursed his lips, said, «All right. The solar system has a good number of planets — at least a dozen so far discovered, four of them outside the major singularity around Sol.»
«And not including Pluto?»
«No, we think of Pluto as a loose moon of Neptune. It runs Neptune, Persephone, Caina, Antenora, Ptolemea, in order of distance from the sun. And the orbits aren't flat to the plane of the system. Persephone is tilted at 120 degrees to the system and retrograde. If they find another planet out there, they'll call it Judecca.»