Part 16 (1/2)
Sylvie was tugging at his ar ”Who's she belong to?”
He looked; the _Lester Daas coe of the crater
”She's ours,” he said ”It's all over but the e”
XI
The shooting died down to occasional rattles of small arms, usually followed by yells for quarter An explosion thundered frouns a few tied, far away It took two hours before all the pirates had been hunted out of hiding and captured, or killed if found by their for no surrender whatever
Blackie Perales had been one of the latter; he had been found, his clothes in rags and covered with dirt and grease, hiding under a machine in one of the shops back of the dock in which the _Harriet Barne_ was being rebuilt He had tried to claim that he was one of the pirates' prisoners who had eluded the roundup at the beginning of the battle and had been hiding there since As soon as the real prisoners saw and recognized him, they had fallen upon him and clubbed, kicked and stamped hiot was probably only a fraction of what he deserved
The egg breakage had been heavy, and not at all confined to the bad eggs A third gunboat, the _Banshee_, had been destroyed with all hands during the final attack fro the fighting in the galleries Everybody was shocked, except Klem Zareff, who had been in battles before He was surprised that the casualties had been so light
At first glance, the spaceport looked like a handsoood condition; at worst, they only needed cleaning up There was a collapsiuy converter There were foundries and -ht that it ht be possible to build a hyperdrive shi+p here, without having to go to Koshchei at all
Closer exa of which the fra heavy structural steel The rolling-hth-inch sheet material which when plated with a few ood as a hundred feet of lead against space-radiations, but that was the shi+p's skin A shi+p needed a skeleton, too The only thing to do was go on with the _Harriet Barne_
It was sunset before he finished his tour of inspection and let his jeep down in a vehicle hall off the lower gallery outside what had originally been the spaceport officers' club It was crowded, and a victory celebration see under way He saw his father with Yves Jacquewyn, and Captain Nichols
Nichols had gotten clean clothes from the pirates' store of loot, and had bathed and shaved So had Jacque his beard It took hiarb as his erstwhile battle cooes on fro ”My instructions are to resu a party out to go over her”
Conn stopped short ”What's this about the shi+p?”
”Captain Nichols was in screen contact with his company's office in Storisende,” Rodney Maxwell said ”They're continuing him in command of her”
”Butbut we took that shi+p! We lost three gunboats and about twenty-five s to Transcontinent & Overseas,” his father said
”That's been the law on stolen property as long as there's been any law”
Of course; he should have known that Did know it; just didn't think
”We broke an awful lot of eggs for no o”
”Well, of course, I' us out of the hands of that bloodthirstyout the Perales gang wasn't nothing, Conn,” Tos were, the last couple of years”
”I know I'm sorry” He was ashamed of himself ”But I needed a shi+p, and noe have no shi+p at all”
”A shi+pto you?” Yves Jacqueet to Koshchei, we could build a hypershi+p of our own, and get our brandy and things to et a decent price for them”
”I knoas in and out of Storisende on these owner-captain tramps for a couple of years before I decided to retire and settle here,”
Jacqueo of Poictesme brandy on Terra or Baldur is over a thousand percent”
”Well, don't give up too soon,” Nichols advised ”You can't keep the _Harriet Barne_, of course, but you're entitled to prize- you could build a spaceshi+p out of”