He swallowed hard. "Heads!" he said.

I flipped the coin.

"Tails it is!" I told him.

He stared at my palm suspiciously. I grinned and handed him the copper piece. There was nothing wrong with it.

"I never cheat!" I said.

I walked over to where she stood collecting rust in the red Jupiterlight—the ship I'd picked out. She wasn't so ancient as old ships go. She must have been built around 2097, just a hundred years before I'd won her. We were riding hard on your luck!

"Got a navigator's license?" the yardmaster asked.

"Sure! Want to see it?"

He shook his head. "Never mind! Take her and get going before I start telling myself I'm the System's prize sap!"

The control room was as musty as a tomb, and when I switched on the cold lights our shadows looked like black widow spiders dangling from the overhead.

"She'll never hold together!" Pete groaned.

"Don't be like that!" I chided. "All of these ships have to pass a rigid inspection."

Pete blinked. "You sure of that?"

"Well ... maybe the inspectors skip a ship here and there," I conceded.

I went over her from stem to stern, to make sure she wouldn't fly about when I gave her the gun. While I inspected the atomotors Pete kept giving me uneasy looks, like he was dying to ask me where I'd picked up my knowledge of ghost ships, but was scared I'd say something to shake his confidence in me.

I wasn't worried. I can be awfully sure of myself when I'm around anything mechanical, from an inch-high rheostat to the guide lines on a sixty-foot control board.

The ship had the right feel about her. I'd have trusted my life to her, but Pete kept sniffing like he could smell the odor of charred 

 Prev. P 4/25 next