Pirates of the Thunder by Jack L. Chalker Page B

interstellar colonization. The time frame was not clear in the records, but the evidence here was clear enough. The Thunder was a veteran indeed.
    Slave ship, Hawks couldn’t help thinking.
    “How many worlds are charted as being part of the settlement?” he asked Star Eagle.
    “Four hundred and forty-seven,” was the reply. “But it might not be complete. The region spans over forty thousand light-years.”
    He tried doing some quick math in his head. That was only about thirteen or fourteen million a world!
    “The initial populations were not large,” the computer agreed. “Nor was Mars, the prototype, if you remember. There are almost two hundred million Martians now, and they have a relatively slow birth rate. You forget that Earth was limited in its reproductive rates and carefully regulated, but that this does not necessarily hold true for these worlds. It is entirely possible that we could find planets with billions on them—or planets with few, if any, survivors. How would we know?”
    “Four hundred forty-seven,” Raven commented. “Minimum. Good thing we know where three of the rings are.”
    “Ever the optimist,” Hawks retorted. “We know the worlds where they are, but nothing about those worlds and nothing about how many possible leaders could have them. And that leaves us with just four hundred and forty-four other worlds in which to find the last ring. Perhaps our grandchildren or great-grandchildren might find it.”
    “Don’t you worry, Chief. We’ll find it. We didn’t come this far to fail in that. Stealin’ it, and the others, will be the tough job.”
    “Please pardon the intrusion,” Chow Dai put in, “but might I be permitted to ask why, if this Master System knows that we know, it will not just collect or hide all four, perhaps all five, from us before we can even try for them?”
    It was a good question. “There’s no easy answer to that,” Hawks told her. “It remains a possibility, but I think not for several reasons. First, those rings are the only avenue to us. It knows we’re going after them, and so it will be waiting for us. Second, there’s something very odd going on here. There’s more than just us in this. Maybe you should ask Raven about that.”
    The Crow’s eyebrows went up. “Don’t know what you mean, Chief. I told you the straight stuff. Chen’s the only one I know behind all this. Word of honor.”
    Hawks privately doubted that Raven’s honor was worth very much, but he knew it was fruitless to press the point. It was even possible that the former security man was telling the truth. Why would Chen select this crew—particularly this group—and think they had a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding? He’d asked himself that a thousand times and had no answer, yet Chen was a wily, even brilliant man. Did Chen, and perhaps Raven, know something that might explain it, and might also explain how they had been able in the first place to pull this off under a system that had some cracks but no chasms? They had walked through the Grand Canyon of cracks in Master System’s rule, and they should not have been able to do so.
    In many ways, the Thunder proved something of a disappointment in that beyond its transport bays and incredible lengths of corridors and catwalks there was little else with any use for humans. In spite of the mysteries of the bridge and its interfaces, the ship had never been built with humans in mind for anything except cargo. Much of the romance engendered by the mere sight and thought of such a ship was gone in the sterile metals and plastics of the reality. Star Eagle could show them more than they could see themselves on the screens —of the bridge—another anomaly. If the ship was run by a remote computer brain directly connected to service and security subbrains and to the mobile machines they controlled, why were there viewing screens on the bridge?
    The star drive was actually forward and well shielded against any type