Galaxy Blues by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online

equipment necessary to latch on to a craft whose pilot was willing to alter delta-V at whim. Not unless she wanted to position her craft directly in front of mine…but even if she was foolish enough to do so, my lifeboat would collide with her vessel like a coupe ramming a maglev train.
    I’d never do anything like that. For one thing, it would be suicidal; I would die a quick but horrible death. For another, there were also passengers aboard, and the last thing I wanted to do was put their lives in danger. But Commodore Tereshkova didn’t know I was bluffing; perhaps she’d realized that I’d just trimmed my fuel reserves by three-quarters of a percent, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t pull silly crap like that again. And no one but a fool would play chicken with a madman.
    The comlink went silent, doubtless while she talked it over with her bridge team and tried to determine if I was the lunatic I seemed to be. While they did that, I took the opportunity to get a new flight profile from the nav subsystem and feed the updated info into autopilot. To my relief, I discovered that all I’d done was shave twenty minutes from my ETA. I’d just let out my breath when Tereshkova’s voice returned.
    â€œAll right, ensign. Have it your way, if you must.” There was an undercurrent of resignation in her voice. “You may proceed with your present course.”
    â€œThank you, Commodore. Glad you see it my way.” Another thought came to me. “I meant it when I said that all I want is amnesty. You’ll communicate this to your people, won’t you?”
    â€œI’ll…” A brief pause. “I’ll ask them to take this into consideration. Lee over.”
    â€œThank you, ma’am. Lou Brock , over.” I waited for another moment, but when I heard nothing more, I switched off the comlink.
    All right, then. For better or for worse, I was on my own.
    XII
    The Robert E. Lee remained on my scope for another hour or so, but gradually it veered away, its course taking it farther from my lifeboat. Although I had little doubt that its crew continued to track me, the fact remained that it was a faster ship, and it had its own schedule to keep. Through my porthole, I caught a brief glimpse of its formation lights as it peeled away, its passengers probably enjoying dinner and drinks as they chatted about the minor incident that had occurred shortly after the ship had come out of hyperspace. Sweetheart, did you hear about the man in Cabin 4 who lost his mind? Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s been properly dealt with…oh, steward? Another glass of wine, please?
    It took another eighteen hours for me to reach Coyote. I didn’t have table service; my sustenance was the ration bars I found in the emergency locker, which tasted like stale peanut butter, and tepid water that I sipped from a squeezebulb. I caught catnaps now and then, only to wake up an hour or so later to find my hands floating in front of my face.
    Little sleep, then, and no coffee. Not much in the way of entertainment, either, save for a brief skim of the emergency tutorials on the comp, which told me little that I hadn’t known before. I sang songs to myself, mentally revisited great ball games and tried to figure out where critical errors had been made—the World Series of ’44 between Havana and Seoul was one that I studied more than once—and reviewed my life history in case I ever wanted to write my memoirs.
    The rest of the time, I stared out the window, watching Coyote as it gradually came back into view, growing larger with each passing hour. My flight was long enough that I witnessed most of a complete day as it rotated on its axis; what I saw was a planet-size moon a little larger than Mars, lacking oceans but instead crisscrossed by complex patterns of channels, rivers, estuaries, and streams, with a broad river circumscribing its equator. By the time I