CHEEVER MCFARLAND BULKED large over the controls of Fortune's Reward, hands delicate and sure, nearly caressing in their motions. Despite his size he sat comfortably in the pilot's chair, which was locked at the rearmost limits of its track. At this stage in the flight his attention was securely on the board—with its dozen of lights, meters, knobs, and switches—and on the screens ahead.
The pilot's choice of screens for the main board was sparse: centered was local space forward, with radar ranging imposed over the combined straight visual and near infrared view; rear view was a super wide angle in radar encompassing everything not on the front screen at half-size below it. Some few of the screens were surprising—especially the left corner screen, showing a double-deck transcription of the last 144 syllables of Com One's radio communication in Terran—incoming on top, outgoing on the bottom.
The co-pilot's board was live, and Pat Rin yos'Phelium sat, ill-at-ease, in the chair before it. He scrupulously avoided the controls, concentrating instead on the Jump equations he was engaged in framing for the pilot's approval. As if in testimony to the fact that he sat second by the pilot's whim alone, instead of the proper view of space outside the ship, the screen above his board showed a mosaic of thumbnails: every system on the ship represented in an order known only to the pilot.
Pat Rin finished his last calculation and filed it. Leaning back in his chair, as far away from the board as he could reasonably sit, he watched the screens as Cheever McFarland threaded Fortune's Reward through the crowded spaceways of near orbit.
From time to time Pat Rin saw a pause, a decision point, pass through the pilot's hands. At the third such he glanced up and saw a new window open on the left.
"I'm watching for long-range interception," the Terran said, calmly matter-of-fact. "cause in here, with all this mess, the normal thing to do is be worried about the next 72 seconds or so, then the next 720 seconds, and not much beyond because so many of the orbits are tight and the maneuvering's hectic. But if someone was looking for us to be Jumping from a particular point, more or less, they'd likely be close to an interception trajectory somewhere down the line, like three hours or so when a ship like ours might normally be expected to Jump."
A lesson in piloting, forsooth. Pat Rin moved a hand in acknowledgment.
"And so right now, there's a ship moving parallel, but that ain't a problem—I doubt anybody'd be trying to chase us with an ore-ship. There's also one summat behind that got underway from the repair docks about the time we hit orbit. Shows up fine on visual but the beacon on it's a bit funny and out of adjustment, I'd say. They been tuning their orbit something fierce, just like a ship right out of dock might."
Pat Rin moved his hand again as Cheever checked in with control once more, confirming by voice his destination and learning that, "due to heavy traffic," the Portmaster requested all ships add another quarter planetary diameter to Jump run-up.
"Damn," Cheever said under his breath and hit the com button.
"Control, can we stay on original schedule? I've got a novice here calculating that Jump for all he's worth and we'll be in your way all day if he's gotta start over!"
The delay might have been due to more than the crawl of light across space; the answer was a half-chuckle. "Oh, aye, that's a stet then, Fortune's Reward. And I'm to tell you your novice owes a drink to the submaster next trip through."
"To hear is to obey, Control. Fortune's Reward out."
Pat Rin glanced at his pilot quizzically.
"I could have recalculated those equations—the quarter diameter is scarcely a—"
A Terran headshake.
"Sure it ain't. But now we got an excuse when we Jump a bit ahead of time with all the wrong energy levels, just in case we're being snooped."
And so they were prudent, on the off-chance that Korval's enemy had found him. Cheever McFarland was a man who took his own advice, then, and built plans upon worst-case projections.
"Tell you what," the pilot was saying, "once we Jump I'll adjust that side and you can shadow me inbound to Teriste. I'll probably ask questions to see if you're paying attention."
Pat Rin bit back a sharp retort. It was never good luck to argue with an elder willing to teach what was needed—especially with Plan B in effect.