Galaxy's End: Book One by LeRoy Clary (popular ebook readers txt) 📗

It was as simple as that.

Something he had said came rushing back to me. When asked about why we chose which ship, he had said, “I needed to think about this being a good ship and that your captain should choose it to travel with us.”

Yes, that was the way to do it. Don’t order us but put the suggestion in our heads that we would be happier on this old freighter than a sleek, modern vessel with all the amenities. More than a nudge, as I used, but the same idea. He’d come at the problem obliquely.

If he had ordered us to take this ship, we wouldn’t have.

That also told me a pair of items I hadn’t known. First, he was much better at empathy than he pretended, and that suggested his carelessness and mistakes had been on purpose to mislead us. Second, he had used his power in a large spaceport with hundreds or thousands of people. Not all of them had rushed to buy passage on this ship. Only Captain Stone.

That inferred he could direct his empathy to people he’d never met.

I said, trying to not let on that he was more proficient than I, “Tell me about directing the urge to buy the tickets. You said my captain should believe she should travel on this ship. How did you do that? I mean, how did you direct that thought to only my captain, a person you didn’t know?”

He gave me a judging sort of look as if he’d discovered a fact about me, which he probably had. The question probably showed I didn’t know something he did.

It seemed to give him the confidence he hadn’t had a moment ago.

I said in a softer tone without taking my eyes off Chance, “Bert, project the shortest route to the nearest airlock for me and be prepared to flood this compartment with a sleeping gas of your choosing.”

A 3-D image of the inside of the ship appeared in front of my face with a red trail outlined. I ignored it as I watched the blood drain from Chance’s face. He now understood he didn’t have an advantage over me.

“I asked you a question,” I said.

He hesitated; his eyes locked on the short red stripe suspended in front of me. A few dozen steps at most. “Like you, I felt around out there until I located a person who reacted to the mention of their name in their head.”

“I see,” I told him flatly as I lied. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t see anything of the sort, but it had the ring of truth in its simplicity. Just search for a person who reacts to their name.

“Why was it important for us to use this ship?”

“I just follow orders. No idea. I do what they say, and they pay me.”

“Did you know the ship was going to be captured by others?”

“No.”

“But you knew you were going to kill the captain. Before we lifted off, you knew that.”

“My family,” he said defensively.

My emotions were torn. If Bert and Bill were taken and threatened in the same way, I might do what Chance had. Or I might not. I’d like to think I’d protect my family but the idea of innocent people dying because of me, or worse, at my instigation, didn’t sit well. Could I shove a needle into the neck of someone under the right circumstances?

I decided I could. Probably everyone could with the right motivation. Find a thing I cared for more than the life of a stranger and issue an ultimatum I believed.

I recalled a scene from a video production where four people stood on the edge of a cliff. A man and his wife. The wife was held twenty feet away, dangling over the side. The husband had a trussed woman beside him. If he didn’t shove the unknown woman over the edge, the wife would die. I forget why and how it was set up that way, but silly as it seemed at the time, I understood.

Chance had been in a comparable situation.

I wanted to like and allow Chance to be free, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes. When he thought I wasn’t looking his expression changed—not for the better. I’d already learned a couple of things about empathy from him and suspected there was more he could teach. I also suspected he would kill me and escape if he had the opportunity.

I stood and walked from the cabin lost in my thoughts. I wandered the passageway a few times from one end to the other attempting to rid myself of tension. I didn’t want to go back into his cabin. I also didn’t want to return to the friction on the bridge.

I headed for the galley.

Inside were five passengers. The steward was out of sight, probably either mixing a drink or preparing food. I sat at an empty table and tried not to stare.

Four passengers sat together engrossed in a game involving dice and credit chips. I’d seen them all before. The fifth was a female, at first glance. I didn’t see why I made that assumption. It was poor manners to apply human traits to aliens. What looked female might be either, both, or neither.

The number of egg-layers exceeded those races that gave live birth. Genetically, it was a good survivor trait. A clumsy pregnant female was easy prey. A female who laid eggs was at once prepared to protect them with all the ferocity of her race.

Some males carried and birthed fertilized eggs, the eggs were often transferred from one sex to the other during mating. I’d once known a female Tragi, which is almost human in appearance. She had confided that she laid a new egg two or three times a year. They were not fertile