Pay Me, Bug!

Chapter 01

WHEREIN the Woods, Noting Our Hero's Sudden Departure, Resolve to Give Chase

There were two competing theories about the difficulties involved in superluminal navigation.

The first, popular in universities and laboratories, stated that all things were measurable, and as far as navigation was concerned, all measurable things could be measured to any required accuracy. It was, according to this theory, simply a matter of finding the numbers and entering them in the correct order. The second, popular on the bridge of most space-faring vehicles across the known galaxy, stated that every tool was finite in scope and fallible in operation, making any of those measurements prone to error.

Grif Vindh, captain of the Fool's Errand, was an experienced pilot; as such, he favored the latter theory.

It wasn't that he felt superluminal travel was inherently unsafe--it was unsafe in theory, but in practice he felt it was safer than anyone had a right to expect from an engineering end-run around the laws of physics that enveloped a ship in a field of artificial space and time, hurtling it through the galaxy at speeds the universe would just as soon pretend didn't exist. Of course, on those statistically rare occasions when something did go wrong, the results were usually catastrophic... and catastrophic results was one of Grif's three least favorite phrases, right up there with honest government official and mandatory tax on imported goods.

But the danger of a catastrophic result folding Grif and his crew into five or six more dimensions than they really ought to have was the kind of thing that could be monitored and avoided in most instances. What bothered him a little more was that from the time they jumped to tach to the time they dropped out they were flying blind. He had to trust his on-board instrumentation to keep track of their direction and relative speed. He had to trust that the superluminal beacon sitting at their destination was functioning properly, that it was sending them accurate drop coordinates, and that it wasn't sending another ship the same drop coordinates at the same time. He trusted his ship and his crew enough that he didn't expect a fumble on his end.

What really bothered him--and bothered him every trip he took, all the way back to his first jump as a stowaway--was that when a ship was in tach it was completely engulfed in a solid, uniform, mind-numbingly dull gray field. It was an effect that someone had once, in a fit of misguided poetry, called "The Gray Wake." Grif preferred "The Gray Wall of Infinite Boredom," but the other name was the one that took.

The gray was ever-present: the "Pilot's Nest," set forward from the rest of the bridge and sunk into the deck, was encased in a bubble of transparent alloy that provided the pilot a magnificent view… when the ship wasn't surrounded by endless gray nothing. That gray nothing gave Grif the impression that he was hanging in the middle of oblivion.

He sighed, then pushed his chair back along its guide rail until it locked into the far position, taking him out of the nest and into the bridge proper. Immediately he felt the bridge crew tense: the click of his chair entering the bridge meant their captain was going stir crazy.

Grif looked at his crew, the older, white-haired man sitting to his left, and the dark-haired beauty to his right -- both trying their best to ignore him -- and sighed again.

"Morgan."

The white-haired man sitting to his left shifted at the mention of his name, but didn't look up.

"Shouldn't we be getting a beacon signal right about now?"

"I don't know." Morgan made no effort to disguise his annoyance. "I'm a sensor tech. Ask your navigator."