The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (53 page)

"Very, very thorough!" Wansing nodded to the
shelves. "The last time I found I had made a million maels. But twice
before that, I had lost approximately the same amount. I shall have to count
them again, I suppose!" He closed a shelf softly. 'Tin sure I counted
those before. But they move about constantly. Constantly! It's horrible."

"You've got a slave here called Goth," the captain
said, driving to the point.

"Yes, I have!" Wansing said, nodding. "And
I'm sure she understands by now I meant no harm! I do, at any rate. It was
perhaps a little—but I'm sure she understands now, or will soon!"

"Where is she?" the captain inquired, a trifle
uneasily.

"In her room perhaps," Wansing suggested.
"It's not so bad when she's there in her room with the door closed. But
often she sits in the dark and looks at you as you go past—" He opened
another drawer, and closed it quietly again. "Yes, they do move!" he
whispered, as if confirming an earlier suspicion. "Constantly—"

"Look, Wansing," the captain said in a loud, firm
voice. "I'm not a citizen of the Empire. I want to buy this Goth! I'll pay
you a hundred and fifty maels, cash."

Wansing turned around completely again and looked at the
captain. "Oh, you do?" he said. "You're not a citizen?" He
walked a few steps to the side of the counter, sat down at a small desk and
turned a light on over it. Then he put his face in his hands for a moment.

"I'm a wealthy man," he muttered. "An
influential man! The name of Wansing counts for a great deal on Porlumma. When
the Empire suggests you buy, you buy, of course—but it need not have been I who
bought her! I thought she would be useful in the business—and then, even I
could not sell her again within the Empire. She has been here for a week!"

He looked up at the captain and smiled. "One hundred
and fifty maels!" he said. "Sold! There are records to be made
out—" He reached into a drawer and took out some printed forms. He began
to write rapidly. The captain produced identifications.

Maleen said suddenly: "Goth?"

"Right here," a voice murmured. Wansing's hand
jerked sharply, but he did not look up. He kept on writing.

Something small and lean and bonelessly supple, dressed in a
dark jacket and leggings, came across the thick carpets of Wansing's store and
stood behind the captain. This one might be about nine or ten.

"I'll take your check, captain!" Wansing said
politely. "You must be an honest man. Besides, I want to frame it."

"And now," the captain heard himself say in the
remote voice of one who moves through a strange dream, "I suppose we could
go to the ship."

The sky was gray and cloudy; and the streets were
lightening. Goth, he noticed, didn't resemble her sisters. She had brown hair
cut short a few inches below her ears, and brown eyes with long, black lashes.
Her nose was short and her chin was pointed. She made him think of some thin,
carnivorous creature, like a weasel.

She looked up at him briefly, grinned, and said:
"Thanks!"

"What was wrong with
him?"
chirped the
Leewit, walking backwards for a last view of Wansing's store.

"Tough crook," muttered Goth. The Leewit giggled.

"You premoted this just dandy, Maleen!" she stated
next.

"Shut up," said Maleen.

"All right," said the Leewit. She glanced up at
the captain's face. "You been fighting!" she said virtuously.
"Did you win?"

"Of course, the captain won!" said Maleen.

"Good for you!" said the Leewit.

"What about the take-off?" Goth asked the captain.
She seemed a little worried.

"Nothing to it!" the captain said stoutly, hardly
bothering to wonder how she'd guessed the take-off was the one operation on
which he and the old
Venture
consistently failed to co-operate.

"No," said Goth, "I meant when?"

"Right now," said the captain. "They've
already cleared us. We'll get the sign any second."

"Good," said Goth. She walked off slowly down the
hall towards the back of the ship.

The take-off was pretty bad, but the
Venture
made it
again. Half an hour later, with Porlumma dwindling safely behind them, the
captain switched to automatic and climbed out of his chair. After considerable
experimentation, he got the electric butler adjusted to four breakfasts, hot,
with coffee. It was accomplished with a great deal of advice and attempted
assistance from the Leewit, rather less from Maleen, and no comments from Goth.

"Everything will be coming along in a few minutes
now!" he announced. Afterwards, it struck him there had been a quality of
grisly prophecy about the statement.

"If you'd listened to me," said the Leewit,
"we'd have been done eating a quarter of an hour ago!" She was
perspiring but triumphant-she had been right all along.

"Say, Maleen," she said suddenly, "you
premoting again?"

Premoting? The captain looked at Maleen. She seemed pale and
troubled.

"Spacesick?" he suggested. "I've got some
pills—"

"No, she's premoting," the Leewit said scowling.
"What's up, Maleen?"

"Shut up," said Goth.

"All right," said the Leewit. She was silent a
moment, and then began to wriggle. "Maybe we'd better—"

"Shut up," said Maleen.

"It's all ready," said Goth.

"What's all ready?" asked the captain.

"All right," said the Leewit. She looked at the
captain. "Nothing," she said.

He looked at them then, and they looked at him—one set each
of gray eyes, and brown, and blue. They were all sitting around the control
room floor in a circle, the fifth side of which was occupied by the electric
butler.

What peculiar little waifs, the captain thought. He hadn't
perhaps really realized until now just how
very
peculiar. They were
still staring at him.

"Well, well!" he said heartily. "So Maleen
'premotes' and gives people stomach aches."

Maleen smiled dimly and smoothed back her yellow hair.

"They just thought they were getting them," she
murmured.

"Mass history," explained the Leewit, offhandedly.

"Hysteria," said Goth. "The Imperials get
their hair up about us every so often."

"I noticed that," the captain nodded. "And
little Leewit here— she whistles and busts things."

"It's
the
Leewit," the Leewit said,
frowning.

"Oh, I see," said the captain. "Like
the
captain,
eh?"

"That's right," said the Leewit. She smiled.

"And what does little Goth do?" the captain
addressed the third witch.

Little Goth appeared pained. Maleen answered for her.

"Goth teleports mostly," she said.

"Oh, she does?" said the captain. "I've heard
about that trick, too," he added lamely.

"Just small stuff really!" Goth said abruptly. She
reached into the top of her jacket and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle the size
of the captain's two fists. The four ends of the cloth were knotted together.
Goth undid the knot. "Like this," she said and poured out the
contents on the rug between them. There was a sound like a big bagful of
marbles being spilled.

"Great Patham!" the captain swore, staring down at
what was a cool quarter-million in jewel stones, or he was still a
miffel-farmer.

"Good gosh," said the Leewit, bouncing to her
feet. "Maleen, we better get at it right away!"

The two blondes darted from the room. The captain hardly
noticed their going. He was staring at Goth.

"Child," he said, "don't you realize they
hang you without trial on places like Porlumma, if you're caught with stolen
goods?"

"We're not on Porlumma," said Goth. She looked
slightly annoyed. "They're for you. You spent money on us, didn't
you?"

"Not that kind of money," said the captain.
"If Wansing noticed— They're Wansing's, I suppose?"

"Sure!" said Goth. "Pulled them in just
before take-off!"

"If he reported, there'll be police ships on our tail any—"

"Goth!" Maleen shrilled.

Goth's head came around and she rolled up on her feet in one
motion. "Coming," she shouted. "Excuse me," she murmured to
the captain. Then she, too, was out of the room.

But again, the captain scarcely noticed her departure. He
had rushed to the control desk with a sudden awful certainty and switched on
all screens.

There they were! Two sleek, black ships coming up fast from
behind, and already almost in gun-range! They weren't regular police boats, the
captain recognized, but auxiliary craft of the Empire's frontier fleets. He
rammed the
Venture's
drives full on. Immediately, red-and-black fire
blossoms began to sprout in space behind him— then a finger of flame stabbed
briefly past, not a hundred yards to the right of the ship.

But the communicator stayed dead. Porlumma preferred risking
the sacrifice of Wansing's jewels to giving them a chance to surrender! To do
the captain justice, his horror was due much more to the fate awaiting his
three misguided charges than to the fact that he was going to share it.

He was putting the
Venture
through a wildly erratic
and, he hoped, aim-destroying series of sideways hops and forward lunges with
one hand, and trying to unlimber the turrets of the nova guns with the other,
when suddenly—!

No, he decided at once, there was no use trying to
understand it-There were just no more Empire ships around. The screens all
blurred and darkened simultaneously; and, for a short while, a darkness went
flowing and coiling lazily past the
Venture.
Light jumped out of it at
him once, in a cold, ugly glare, and receded again in a twisting, unnatural
fashion. The
Venture's
drives seemed dead.

Then, just as suddenly, the old ship jerked, shivered,
roared aggrievedly, and was hurling herself along on her own power again!

But Porlumma's sun was no longer in evidence. Stars gleamed
and shifted distantly against the blackness of deep space all about. The
patterns seemed familiar, but he wasn't a good enough navigator to be sure.

The captain stood up stiffly, feeling a heavy cloud. And at
that moment, with a wild, hilarious clacking like a metallic hen, the electric
butler delivered four breakfasts, hot, one after the other, right onto the
center of the control room floor.

The first voice said distinctly: "Shall we just leave
it on?"

A second voice, considerably more muffled, replied:
"Yes, let's! You never know when you need it—"

The third voice, tucked somewhere in between them, said
simply:
"Whew!"

Peering about the dark room in bewilderment, the captain
realized suddenly that the voices had come from the speaker of an intership
communicator, leading to what had once been the
Venture's
captain's
cabin.

He listened; but only a dim murmuring came from it now, and
then nothing at all. He started towards the hall, then returned and softly
switched off the communicator. He went quietly down the hall until he came to
the captain's cabin. Its door was closed.

He listened a moment, and opened it suddenly.

There was a trio of squeals:

"Oh, don't! You spoiled it!"

The captain stood motionless. Just one glimpse had been
given him of what seemed to be a bundle of twisted black wires arranged loosely
like the frame of a truncated cone on—or was it just above?—a table in the
center of the cabin. Where the tip of the cone should have been burned a round,
swirling, orange fire. About it, their faces reflecting its glow, stood the
three witches.

Then the fire vanished; the wires collapsed. There was only
ordinary light in the room. They were looking up at him variously— Maleen with
smiling regret, the Leewit in frank annoyance, Goth with no expression at all.

"What out of Great Patham's Seventh Hell was
that?" inquired the captain, his hair bristling slowly.

The Leewit looked at Goth; Goth looked at Maleen. Maleen
said doubtfully: "We can just tell you its name—"

"That was the Sheewash Drive," said Goth.

"The what-drive?" asked the captain.

"Sheewash," repeated Maleen.

"The one you have to do it with yourself," the
Leewit said helpfully.

"Shut up," said Maleen.

There was a long pause. The captain looked down at the
handful of thin, black, twelve-inch wires scattered about the table top. He
touched one of them. It was dead-cold.

"I see," he said. "I guess we're all going to
have a long talk." Another pause. "Where are we now?"

"About three light-years down the way you were
going," said Goth. "We only worked it thirty seconds."

"Twenty-eight!" corrected Maleen, with the
authority of her years. "The Leewit was getting tired."

"I see," said Captain Pausert carefully.
"Well, let's go have some breakfast."

They ate with a silent voraciousness, dainty Maleen, the
exquisite Leewit, supple Goth, all alike. The captain, long finished, watched
them with amazement and—now at last—with something like awe.

"It's the Sheewash Drive," explained Maleen
finally, catching his expression.

"Takes it out of you!" said Goth.

The Leewit grunted affirmatively and stuffed on.

"Can't do too much of it," said Maleen. "Or
too often. It kills you sure!"

"What," said the captain,
"is
the
Sheewash Drive?"

They became reticent. People did it on Karres, said Maleen,
when they had to go somewhere else fast. Everybody knew how there.

"But of course," she added, "we're pretty
young to do it right!"

"We did it pretty good!" the Leewit contradicted
positively. She seemed to be finished at last.

"But how?" said the captain.

Reticence thickened almost visibly. If you couldn't do it,
said Maleen, you couldn't understand it either.