Read Online Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers by Glen Cook - Free Book Online

had jumped on him wearing hobnailed boots on all four feet.
    He was aboard a ship he and Mouse had studied from the surface of Carson’s. She was a typical interstellar vessel of an obsolete class now common only among the Rim Run Freehaulers.
    A similar vessel had appeared in the hologram. It was approaching the harvestship.
    The surprise was in their relative sizes.
    The starship became a needle falling into an expanding, cosmic ocean of scrap. The service ship retained its holo dimensions. Danion swelled till she attained epic proportions.
    Moyshe could not begin to guess her true dimensions. His most conservative estimate staggered him. She had to be at least thirty kilometers in cross-section, twenty thick, and sixty long. That was impossible. There were countries on Old Earth smaller than that.
    And stretching far beyond the dense central snarl of the ship were those spars spreading silvery sails and nets.
    Did she sunjam on stellar winds?
    She couldn’t. The Starfish stayed away from stars. Any stars, be they orbited by settled worlds or not. They stayed way out in the Big Dark where they could not be found.
    The whole thing had to be a brag show. Pure propaganda. It just had to be.
    He could not accept that ship as real.
    His normal, understandable operation-opening jitters cranked themselves up a couple of notches. Till that ship had declared itself he had thought he could handle anything new and strange. Change was the order of the universe. Novelty was no cause for distress.
    But this mission held too much promise of the new and unknown. He had been plunged tabula rasa into a completely alien universe.
    Nothing created by Man had any right being so damned big.
    Light returned. It drowned the dying hologram. BenRabi looked around. His jaw was not the only one hanging like an overripe pear about to drop.
    Despite prior warning, everyone had believed themselves aboard a harvestship. Cultural bias left them incapable of believing the Fishers could have anything better.
    Moyshe began to realize just how poorly he had been prepared for this mission. He had done his homework. He had devoured everything the Bureau had known about Starfishers. He had considered speculation as well as confirmed fact. He knew all there was to know.
    Too little had been known.
    “That’s all you’ll need to know about Danion ’s outside,” the Ship’s Commander told them. “Of her guts you’ll see plenty, and you’ll have to learn them well. We expect to get our money’s worth.”
    They had the right to ask it, Moyshe figured. They were paying double the usual spacer’s rates, and those were anything but poor.
    The man talked on awhile, repeating the security officer’s injunctions. Then he turned the landsmen over to ratings, who showed them to their quarters. BenRabi’s nervousness subsided. He had been through this part before, each time he had boarded a Navy warship.
    He got a cabin to himself. The Seiner assigned to him helped settle him in. From the man’s wary replies, Moyshe presumed he could expect to be aboard for several days. Payne’s Fleet was harvesting far from Carson’s.
    Once the man had left and benRabi had converted his barren cubicle into a Spartan cell, he lay down to nap. After looking for bugs and spy-eyes, of course. But sleep would not come. Not with all the great lumpy surprises his mind still had to digest.
    Someone knocked. Mouse, he guessed. The man never used a buzzer. He made a crochet a means of identification.
    Yes. It was Mouse. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Masato Iwasaki. Oh. You’re in Liquids too? Good.” He stuck out a hand. They shook.
    “BenRabi. Moyshe. Nice to meet you.” Silly game, he thought. But it had to be played if they wanted people to believe that they had just met.
    “You wouldn’t happen to play chess?” Mouse asked. “I’m looking for somebody who does.”
    He was addicted to the game. It would get him into trouble someday, benRabi thought. An agent could not afford