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Chapter 17

Bronson Star broke away from Dunlevin without further incident. She was bound, at first, for nowhere in particular. Her inertial drive was running only to provide a comfortable half-standard gravity, her Mannschenn Drive was in operation only to make it virtually impossible for any Dunlevin warships—the Free People's Navy did, Grimes knew, possess two obsolescent frigates—to intercept her.

Grimes, Hodge and Susie sat around the table in the wardroom. There was coffee—not very good. There was a bottle of some unnamed liqueur that had been distilled by the late General Mortdale's senior mess sergeant. Grimes, sipping the smooth, potent and palatable fluid, rather hoped that the noncommissioned officer had survived the Bacon Bay debacle; as he had been one of the two men left with Major Briggs to keep guard on the ship this was possible. The drugged soldiers had been dumped from the airlock, onto the beach, shortly prior to lift-off.

Grimes raised his glass in a toast. "Here's to Sergeant Whoever-He-Is. Here's to his continuing good health."

Susie said, a little sourly, "He was a good cook and even better at persuading the autochef to produce liquor. But I can't help feeling a bit sorry that we didn't kill the pongoes before we threw them out."

"Too many people died," said Grimes. "I rather hope that Briggs and the two sergeants didn't."

"And if they didn't," said Susie, "and if they were taken prisoner, they'll sing. They'll sing like a male voice trio—or, if the Free People's Secret Police is as bad as the Royalist Underground makes out, like a soprano trio."

"So," asked Grimes, "what?" He lifted and lit his pipe then continued. "Nobody on Dunlevin thinks that Bronson Star lifted off all by her little self. They know that she must have had a crew."

"And now," said Susie, "they know who was in the crew. The Underground will know—and what the Underground knows the royalist refugee enclaves on Bronsonia, Porlock and a few other planets will soon know."

"With your share of the salvage money you should be able to buy protection," said Grimes. "That's why I think we should return to Bronsonia as soon as possible. We—the three of us—won this ship back from Paul and Lania and their mob. Even though I was, at the time of the original seizure, employed by Bronson Star's owners, I was, legally, neither master nor crew member. My name was on neither the Articles nor the Register. The salvage claim should stick."

"And you want your share," said Susie, "to pay your fines and port dues so that you can get your own little ship back."

"Of course," agreed Grimes.

"I see your point, John. But you're not a known criminal. Hodge and I are. There was the first skyjacking, remember. The met. satellite. Captain Walvis will not have forgotten how I massaged the back of his neck with a pistol muzzle while he broke out of orbit to intercept Bronson Star."

"You could claim," said Grimes, "that you acted under duress."

"Ha! And even if the court believed it, there'd still be the Dunlevin royalists out for revenge."

"We could go out to the Rim," contributed Hodge. "Change the ship's name, our own names. Set up shop as a one-ship tramp company."

"You've been reading too many space stories, Hodge," said Grimes. "That's the sort of thing that people do in fiction, never in fact. Known space is festooned with red tape. All—and I mean all—data concerning every merchant ship is fed into the memory banks of the Master Registry back on Earth—and those banks are instantly accessible to every port authority on every planet—on every planet that runs to a spaceport, that is. And those that don't haven't been discovered or settled yet."

"Surely we could buy false ship's papers and personal papers," said Hodge.

"Who from?" asked Grimes. "And, more importantly, what with?"

Susie laughed. "Mortdale brought the royalist war chest aboard at Porlock. Folding money, in good Federation credit bills. The accumulation of contributions from refugees such as my revered parents. . . . I haven't made a proper count yet—but there's plenty. Even if we can't—as you say—have the ship's identity changed we can pay to have ourselves . . . transmogrified? Is that the right word? But you know what I mean."

"But where?" said Grimes, more to himself than to the others. "But where? It can't be too far away; I want to get Bronson Star back to where she came from before there's too much of a hue and cry. Probably already the Survey Service has been ordered to keep its eyes skinned for us—and if they find us where we shouldn't be they'll be claiming the salvage money."

"Looking after yourself, Grimes," commented Hodge rather nastily.

Susie sprang to his defense. "And why shouldn't he? Nobody else is."

"I looked after him," grumbled the engineer. "If it hadn't been for me he'd never have gotten off Dunlevin."

"If it hadn't been for him," said Susie, "we'd never have gotten off Dunlevin. We'd be undergoing interrogation by the Secret Police right now."

"We're all in this," said Grimes. "But our ways have to part." He looked at Susie regretfully, and she at him in the same way. "I must get you to some world where you can use your ill-gotten gains to buy yourselves new lives. Then I must get myself back to Bronsonia to look after my own affairs."

"Without an engineer?" asked Hodge.

"I've covered quite a few light years in Little Sister without one. Of course, her engines are designed so as to require minimal maintenance. But the ones in this ship should hold out for the voyage from. . . . From? From wherever it is to Bronsonia. And if they don't . . . I'll just have to yell for help on the Carlotti—if that hasn't broken down, too."

"You could just drop us off somewhere in one of the boats," said Susie but looked relieved when Grimes refused to consider this expedient.

"We'll sleep on it," he said at last after several minutes more of fruitless discussion. He raised no objection when Susie accompanied him to the captain's quarters which, with the feeling that he was once more putting himself in his rightful place, he had reclaimed.

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Framed