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Updated: May 19, 2025
And Jellico took to pacing the room, while Tang and Wilcox who had started a game of four dimensional chess made countless errors of move, and Stotz glared moodily at the wall, apparently too sunk in his own gloomy thoughts to rise from the mess table in the alcove.
And Groft for the first time seated himself in the high seat. The clan was no longer without a chieftain. Groft held his father's place. "Show over?" Dane heard Stotz murmur and Van Rycke's disappointing reply: "Not yet. They'll probably make a night of it. Here comes another round of drinks " "And trouble with them," that was Captain Jellico being prophetic. "By the Coalsack's Ripcord!"
Tang turned to his neighbor, Johan Stotz, the Queen's Engineer. "What's he going for?" Stotz shrugged. Weeks was a self-effacing man so much so that even in the cramped quarters of the spacer very little about him as an individual impressed his mates a fact which was slowly dawning on them all now.
"Barring accident " the words rang in the air. Here on the frontiers of the star lanes there were so many accidents, so many delays which could put a ship behind schedule. Only on the main star trails did the huge liners or Company ships attempt to keep on regularly timed trips. A Free Trader did not really dare to have an inelastic contract. "What does Stotz say?" Dane asked Ali.
That left Jellico, Van Rycke, Karl Kosti, the giant jetman whose strength they had to rely upon before, Stotz the Engineer, Medic Tau and Steen Wilcox. If it were strength alone he would have chosen Kosti, but the big man was not too quick a thinker Jellico got to his feet, the embodiment of a star lane fighting man. In the flickering light the scar on his cheek seemed to ripple.
Hope which was snapped out when Ali brought the news that Stotz could not be roused and must have taken ill during a sleep period. One more inert patient was added to the list and nothing learned about how he was infected. Except that they could eliminate Sinbad, since the cat had been in custody during the time Stotz had apparently contracted the disease.
If some infection were aboard it would be better for Ali and himself to be exposed, than to have Johan Stotz with all his encyclopedic knowledge of the ship's engines contract any disease. They found the jetman half sitting, half lying in the short foot or so of corridor which led to his own cubby. He had been making for his quarters when the seizure had taken him.
Yes, a light cruiser, one of the fast ships maintained by the big Companies, could make the transition to Sargol with a slight margin to spare. Stotz nodded his approval at this practical solution. "I'm going with it " That did jerk them all up short.
Then they labored to build up a shielding of the tough radiation dulling alloy which was used to line rocket tubes. And they could only praise the foresight of Stotz who carried such a full supply of spare parts and tools. It was a task over which they often despaired, and Ali improvised frantically, performing weird adjustments of engineering structure.
Dane sat up and dropped his feet to the deck in almost one movement. "I can't shift him alone," Ali stated the obvious. The giant jetman was almost double his size. "We must get him to his quarters. And I won't ask Stotz " For a perfectly good reason Dane knew. An assistant two of the apprentices could go sick, but their officers' continued good health meant the most to the Queen.
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