Bott’s eyes snapped open and he jerked upright, fully expecting to find himself surrounded by a few dozen Imperial troopers.
But no, this was the dim, elegant bridge he’d come to know, the same smooth, graceful, unbearable lines he’d seen all along, and no more.
Wait. He blinked. Some lines were different. He rose from his seat, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The navighator’s chair was turned to the side, and someone was in it. A few seconds were required for the memory that he had a passenger to surface. He supposed, with the troubles aboard her own ship, that she hadn’t had much sleep lately either.
She curled into an impossibly small bundle, one knee almost right under her nearly nonexistent nose. One hand clutched her prayerstone. Bott settled back into his seat and checked the monitors.
He’d been out for hours, but not so many as he’d feared. As far as he could tell, the Drover was still following the course he’d set.
Reaching up to remove the cards he’d inserted, he inquired, “Ship?”
“What is it, lummox?”
“Speak up.” That voice had never been so gentle. “I can barely hear you?”
“Have you no manners at all, you grubby pirate? It’s naptime.”
“Oh!”
Swiveling, Bott found Nubry uncurling in a hurry. Her head whipped right to left, and she was lifting her prayerstone to her forehead when she spotted her host.
“Ph!” he said again. She smiled. “I thought it was all a dream. Did I? Yes, I did!”
“Mightmare, really.” The ship’s voice was normal again. “With that pirate involved.”
“And a slave ship.” murmured Bott.
“Now now,” said the librarian, stretching her arms high above her head. “There are plenty of NICE pirates.”
“Possibly,” the computer replied, “But irrelevant in this case. Was there something you wanted, Wafflebeard the Nice, or were you just making conversation?”
Bott felt his cheek, which turned out to be covered with small square dents from the console he’d been using as a pillow. Nubry laughed.
“Do you want this back?” One hand extended a slim, delicate cushion from the captain’s chair while she used the other to pat her hair back into place. “I stole it from behind you since you were lying forward.”
“No, keep it. What else could I expect from a Dangerous Rebel?” He grinned to show this was meant as a joke and, when she laughed, turned back to his console. “Ship, are we still bound for the Library Planet?”
“And where is Sheriff Parimat?” Nubry put in.
“Yes, we are, and yes, she is, if you were going to ask whether she is still following us.” The main screen blipped on to show the Rhododendron again. “She is, however, falling farther and farther behind. She’d do better without the Imperial Transport hanging on her side that way.”
“Did you activate the cloaking device?” Bott asked his passenger.
“No.” She put her feet on the floor and looked under the chair. “I didn’t like to, since this is your command. Oh, here’s the manual.”
“Do you hear that, lummox? That’s manners, in case you have not encountered them before. A less thoughtful person would have called this ‘your ship’.”
“Activate it now, then.” Bott considered his console for a moment and then looked up. “Please.”
“Oh, very nice,” the ship said. “It may take years of effort, but we make progress. Speaking of which, I suppose you are both perfectly certain you want to go to this Library Planet?”
Nubry planted a finger on the Table of Contents of the ship’s manual. “Are we? Yes, we are!” Her hair bobbled as she turned her head up. “Why not?”
“If it has been hidden since the Great Weed, it must have some fairly potent security devices, mustn’t it?”
Nubry looked to the captain, whose eyes narrowed. “It’s a trick,” he told her.
The main screen shifted the Rhododendron to a smaller auxiliary and now showed a segment of space which included a dozen flat whit ovals. “See those buoys, boy?”
“Ot’s a trick,” Bott repeated, louder this time. “I’d bet my breakfast that it’s another trick of yours. I can smell a weapon at a hundred shiplengths.”
“They can smell you long before that,” the computer replied, voice light and airy.
Nubry closed the instruction manual on her finger. “Can’t you signal them? If those are automatic, a cloaking device wouldn’t conceal us completely.”
“They’re probably using a very archaic code; the Weed was eons ago.” The computer seemed to be thinking it over. “Should I bother?”
“You must have all kinds of codes,” Nubry said, leaning farther forward. “Can you, please? We could all be blown up!”
“That may matter to YOU,” the ship replied.
“You’d go to pieces with us,” Bott reminded the ship.
“I may have mentioned this before,” the computer told him, “But I don’t know how long it would take to live down a reputation for having helped a pirate and, I beg your pardon, a book trafficker.”
Nubry, who didn’t seem the least offended, nodded, the ball of hair bouncing on her head again. “A book trafficker with all the records of the Interstellar Wrestling Federation.”
“No! Really? They gave me only twenty years’ worth, for settling arguments among the crew.”
Bott got the idea. “Well, you won’t get a chance to see the rest if we’re blown to smithereens.”
“I’ll signal them, then.” The computer’s voice sounded a little weary. “I’ll ask if they could just blow up one of us and I know which they can have.”
Nubry laughed again. “Oh, Dassie, you’re….”
A white flash filled the main screen. “Full stop!” Bott ordered.
The whiteness vanished, leaving a row of red characters hanging where one of the ovals had been. “Is that something you can read?” he asked Nubry.
Nose and forehead wrinkled. “It’s a very old font….”
“I think it says ‘Breakfast for one’,” suggested the computer.
“Don’t be dumb,” Bott snapped. “That was so fr ahead of us it must have been a warning shot.”
“It’s still a weapon, then,” grumbled the computer. “Incoming message. Decoding. Here it is.”
“Ahoy the ship!” A new voice came from the computer. “Have you a card?”
Bott raised his plastic arsenal. “All kinds of cards. Which one do you want?”
“I tink they mean a library card,” said Nubry raising a hand.
“What would I be doing with a library card?” Bott demanded.
“Probably using a corner of it to scratch fleas.”
Nubry leaned forward, calling into a patch on the arm of her chair. “No, please: we’re here to make a delivery.”
There was a pause for transmission and translation. “Ah! Were we expecting a delivery?”
“It’s books!” Nubry bounced a little in the chair. “It’s the library of the fleet of the Dangerous Rebels, to add to your collection. We have….”
The voice broke in with “Excellent. Proceed by proper course to Landing Area 5, on Near Schloggina. We’ll meet you.”
“Near Schloggina!” Nubry fell back against her chair.
“Hail libraries!” the voice replied, “Over and out.”
“I don’t even see that planet,” Bott complained.
“A planet-sized cloaking device,” noted the Drover. “That’s tech ology nearly as nice as mine.”
“Near Schloggina,” murmured Nubry, raising her prayerstone again to her forehead.
Bott was studying his monitors. “What’s Near Schloggina?”
She sat up. “It was the great library bazaar city. The conventions they had there are a library legend! They had…oh, free bookmarks and toe bags, and posters, and rulers, and coffee mugs, and…and…oh, Dassie, how soon will we be there?”
“Estimated time of arrival, thirty minutes,” the Drover informed her. Bott looked in vain for any indication of this on his monitors.
“I’d better go redd up the shelves.” The librarian rose and hurried from the bridge without another word.
“Do what?” Bott demanded. But the door had sooshed shut behind her.
“It has to do with brains and a sense of tidiness,” the computer informed him. “You wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
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