“Here.”
“Use the inductors on the enemy ship.”
“But, sir they're so slow! What if the alien attacks?”
“Don't argue with me, you—” Snarling, the Captain delivered an impassioned monologue on the virtues of unquestioning obedience. When he switched off, the Alien Technologies Officer was back at the viewer and the Telepath had gone to sleep.
The Captain purred happily, wishing that they were all this easy.
When the occupants had been killed by heat he would take the ship. He could tell everything he needed to know about their planet by examining their life-support system. He could locate it by tracing the ship's trajectory. Probably they hadn't even taken evasive action!
If they came from a Kzin-like world it would become a Kzin world. And he, as Conquest Leader, would command one percent of its wealth for the rest of his life! Truly, the future looked rich. No longer would he be called by his profession. He would bear a name…
“Incidental information,” said the A-T Officer. “The ship was generating one and twelve sixty-fourth gee before it stopped rotating.”
“Little heavy,” the Captain mused. “Might be too much air, but it should be easy to Kzinform it. A-T, we find the strangest life forms. Remember the Chunquen?”
“Both sexes were sentient. They fought constantly.”
“And that funny religion on Altair One. They thought they could travel in time.”
“Yes, sir. When we landed the infantry they were all gone.”
“They must have all committed suicide with disintegrators. But why? They knew we only wanted slaves. And I'm still trying to figure out how they got rid of the disintegrators afterward.”
“Some beings,” said the A-T Officer, “will do anything to keep their beliefs.”
Eleven years beyond Pluto, eight years from her destination, the fourth colony ship to We Made It fell between the stars. Before her the stars were green-white and blue-white, blazing points against nascent black. Behind they were sparse, dying red embers. To the sides the constellations were strangely flattened. The universe was shorter than it had been.