“The bet is to you,” Ryhrnn said.

  “I raise fifty.” Jack tossed a coin onto the pile.

  “You want to go get yourr ship back.”

  “Yes.”

  “You need to get a rride. You need a captain. You don’t need me. I rraise you anotherr fifty.” The Thrynn tossed in the money.

  “I need a crew. To fly the Ida Mae back. And I’m going to have to split the value of what we recover with that crew. And if another captain flies us, he and his crew are going to want a share, too.” Jack had learned that the hard way.

  “A sharre of the value of the Ida Mae,” Ryhrnn said. “A ship which you believe has finely-tuned insstrumentss, reflecting almost two million MU worth of sscam trraining purrchassed from Perrssonnel. But you sstill arre not ansswerring my quesstion, Jack. Why me?”

  “You’ve got twenty years of experience, and you’re kicking your heels at Starport,” Jack said. “Wait, do you have heels? Never mind, you know what I mean. And why is no one hiring you?”

  “They’d rratherr pay lesss for youngerr Thrrynn.”

  “Whereas I value your experience, and will cut you in for an equal share.”

  “You think trraining is a sscam.”

  “Training is a scam, but experience is real. It’s like that old saying, mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. With a good crew in a good ship, we’ll get rich. Starting with the value of the ship itself. We need to go quickly, though, before anyone else goes after the salvage rights. Also, it’s probably best to keep our numbers small. I can run the helm and sick bay, and if you take comms, I’d really like to take on just one more crewmember.”

  “I fold.” Ryhrnn tossed his cards into the center of the table.

  Jack left the pot where it was. “Especially one we didn’t have to actually pay.”

  “You want an andrroid.”

  Jack nodded.

  “You want Z70-3322.”

  “I understand you called him Zed,” Jack said.

  “But why should I carre? Why should I find any of thiss interressting? If you get yourr ship back, you’rre not rreally going to ssell it and divvy up the pot.”

  “Well.” Jack cleared his throat. “There’s also the matter of the cargo pods full of plutonium.”

  Jack picked his way over the burnt-out carapace of a terrain vehicle. The all-atmosphere suit he wore was patched in three places and he could hear the soft hiss of a slow leak somewhere in its fabric. He was pretty sure he had enough air to finish the task, despite the leak.

  The Starport’s junkyard was on the exterior, and consisted of nothing but a large magnetic plate to which junk adhered. The Starport was shaped like a wheel with six spokes, and the junkyard hunkered down in a heap between the spoke leading to Personnel and the spoke leading to Operations. Jack and Ryhrnn had accessed the junkyard by a maintenance tunnel that exited the back of Johnson’s, bribing the Velox who was mopping out the bar to let them pass.

  To his left and right, Jack was pretty sure that a transparent sheet of film stretched across both patches of apparently open space, to catch stray bits of junk that detached from the hull of the Starport before they drifted away and became short-lived meteorites on Arth.

  He was pretty sure the film was there because he saw a length of pipe, and a smashed computer console, and something that looked an awful lot like a ribcage, all about three meters over his head and apparently stationary. But it was possible that junk was simply there, moving on the same trajectory as the Starport and at the same speed, so they appeared to be trapped by a restraining film.

  Beyond the junk on one side, the blue and brown surface of Arth stretched in a broad arc.

  “They don’t show you this part of the Starport in training vids.” Jack chuckled. “I guess they don’t show you the latrines or the flophouse, either. Or Johnson’s. None of the good stuff, now that I’m thinking about it.”

  “Zed was decommissioned ten Arrth-days ago,” Ryhrnn grumbled. The Thrynn also wore an all-atmosphere suit; his was suited to his anatomy, of course, so it had a triangular elastic sack stretched out behind him to hold his tail, swinging back and forth. The suits had metal plates in their soles, which meant that the two men had to pull hard to disengage their feet from the hull, but it also meant that they were unlikely to go floating away from the Spaceport. “The ssame day Captain Pulasski rreturrned carrrying you. What makes you think he’s herre?”

  “This junk gets recycled into ships,” Jack said. “And they scrape it clean every thirty Arth-days. And it’s due to get scraped tomorrow. And there’s been no emergency shipbuilding or major repairs in drydock in the last ten days, so I don’t know where else he could be.”

  “I gatherr you’rre not much of a prrogrrammerr.”

  “Bingo. That’s why we need the android. All the crunchy skills. Navigation, engineering.”

  “Sso you don’t expect me to be a prrogrrammerr, eitherr. Good.”

  “Look, you last shipped out with Zed, what, six months ago?”

  “Yess.”

  “And since then, Zed has been on the bridge of the Tropicana.”

  “Wherre you met him.”

  “Not exactly. But I saw him damaged on the surface of the planet where my crew died.”

  “You arre gambling that his voice rrecognition matrrixs has not been changed.”

  “Or if it has, at least he’ll identify you as non-hostile.”

  “Hmm.”

  “There.” Jack pointed.

  “It’s an andrroid arrm.”

  Jack pried open a folded sheet of aluminum. He shook free a scattering of ceramic tiles, which rose from the Starport’s hull and began drifting away. Jack watched them and was reassured when the bulk of them stopped, obviously snared by a transparent film.

  But about a quarter of the tiles kept moving, drifting farther away from the hull and toward the suddenly-threatening face of Arth.

  So the film wasn’t completely intact.

  “Yikes,” he said.

  “Keep yourr eyes on yourr worrk,” the Thrynn said. “I learrned that in one of my firrsst trraining ssessions.”

  With the tiles out of the way, the android’s entire body was visible. Or rather, his entire body that remained, since the reason Z70-3322 had been decommissioned was that he’d lost both his legs. He was humanoid, but in a very approximate and clunky way, with a cylindrical chest and piston arms. His joints were large and ball-like, but his fingers were slender. The paint job on his face was obviously intended to make him look friendly and non-threatening, but instead the android reminded Jack of an aged circus clown, with the makeup hiding his sinister smile chipping from age and wear.

  Really, all androids struck Jack that way.

  Jack grabbed Zed’s barrel-shaped torso and shifted the android onto his side. “The power switch should be at the base of the cranium.”

  Ryhrnn found the switch and flipped it. Zed’s eyes blinked with golden light once, and then in a slow, irregular pulse, and then rapidly, until finally the bursts of light melted together into a steady glow.

  “Ryhrnn,” the android said in a smooth, crisp voice. It was a voice designed to sound cheerful and reassuring, but it had a manic edge.

  “Zed,” the Thrynn said. “Thiss is Captain Jack Durrian.”

  The android swiveled its face toward Jack. “Then the Tropicana succeeded in its rescue mission. Where are the other survivors, and why am I here?”

  Jack nodded the go-ahead to the Thrynn.

  “You werre junked, Zed,” Ryhrnn said.

  Zed blinked. “Protocol. But it isn’t protocol to turn me on again before recycling.” The android’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Am I to be permitted to experience recycling while conscious?”

  “What?” Jack snapped. “No, ew.”

  “It is a great mystery to my people,” Zed said.

  “It’s just like being turned on and turned off,” Jack told him.

  “That has happened to me many times,” Zed said. “I would be disappointed to learn that the great and final turning off was no different than the experience of being put into storage. Absent the experience of being turned back on again.”

  “This is crazy,” Jack said. “You don’t experience things, you’re programmed. Also, you don’t have a people. You’re manufactured.” The android was acting far too enthusiastic. Did it have circuitry damage beyond its missing legs?

  “You’re manufactured, too,” the android shot back. “And your process is considerably more disgusting than mine.”

  “You’re just acting alive,” Jack said. “I’m on to you.”

  “Is that so?” The light of Arth’s star caught in the android’s frozen eyes and twinkled.

  “Zed,” Ryhrnn said. “We’rre not rreccycling you. You’rre going to be ourr navigatorr and engineerr.”

  “Might you recycle me someday?”

  “Therre comes a day when we all go to the Grreat Rreccycler in the Void,” Ryhrnn said solemnly. “We can rrejoicce in the fact that today does not appearr to be ourr day. Will you come with uss?”

  Zed’s head swiveled to face Jack. “Shall I pretend I have a choice in the matter?”

  Jack shook his head. “I know you’re a robot, and I’m okay with it.”

  Jack picked up the pace as they approached the docking bay. It wouldn’t be enough to fool the biometrics on the Tropicana, he needed to fool the biometrics on the docking bay itself, if he wanted to get away with the heist. “Ryhrnn,” he said, “can you check Zed’s manual dexterity? We want to make sure his piloting skills haven’t been, uh, mechanically impeded. I’m also a little worried about his, uh, personality.”

  The Thrynn stopped and set Zed’s torso on the ground. While he ran a simple diagnostic examination, instructing the android to perform certain operations with his hands and then watching the range of motion, Jack took the bundle from his pocket.

  It was a human hand, wrapped in a clotted scarf. Specifically, it was the hand of Q. Quentin Pulaski. Jack pressed Pulaski’s index finger against the sensor pad. He spun on his heels and immediately spoke in a very loud voice, saying, “Captain Q. Quentin Pulaski agreed to lend us his ship.”

  His timing was perfect. He said “Captain Q. Quentin Pulaski” at the same time that the speaker beside the door said “Captain Q. Quentin Pulaski,” recognizing the fingerprint it had been offered.

  “The Tropicana is a jolly vessel,” Zed said.

  “I know you’re a robot,” Jack told him.

  “Of course, you know I’m synthetic, Captain,” the android said. “If I were flesh and blood like you, and had been tossed outside the Starport with my legs torn off, I wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.”

  “Instead,” Jack said, “you’ve never lived in the first place.”

  “A technicality,” Zed said as Ryhrnn bent to hoist him. “A quibble.”

  “Not to those of us who are alive,” Jack said.

  The docking bay was a vast, shadowy hangar, and it took Jack several minutes to find the right ship, squinting to read the names on the hulls. There she was, staring down a launch tube as if the universe wanted Jack Durian to take her.

  The Tropicana had the standard configuration of an Interstel prospecting vessel, a long body with cargo bays attached all along both sides of the neck. A neck full of pods was twelve cargo pods, which Jack knew very well. A spherical node at the front end housed the bridge. A biometric scanner blinked beside its main hatch, but this one wasn’t going to announce the name of the person it was scanning. Jack screened the hatch from view with his torso and pressed Pulaski’s fingertip to the sensor pad.

  “It’s very generous of Captain Pulaski to let us borrow his ship,” Zed said as they climbed the short extendible ramp and boarded.

  Jack had tried throwing himself upon Pulaski’s sense of generosity. In the end, that hadn’t worked out well for Pulaski.

  “Yes,” he said.

  They turned right and entered the bridge, where Jack seated himself in the captain’s chair. Ryhrnn deposited Zed in the navigator’s seat.

  “Oh, look!” Zed cried. “See how much space we can save because I don’t have legs! We can probably store six hundred monetary units of endurium just in this space where my feet are supposed to go!”

  “Lucky us,” Jack said.

  “We’rre not going forr endurrium,” the Thrynn purred. “Arre we, Captain?”

  “We’re going to recover a downed ship,” Jack said. “The Ida Mae.”

  “Your ship that crashed,” Zed said. “You told us you didn’t have the coordinates.”

  “I’ve done some calculations,” Jack told him. “I know where the ship is. Rerouting engineering to navigation.”

  The Thrynn settled into the comms seat and taped the auditory interface to his temple. He was too big for the chair and his tail hung awkwardly over one arm.

  “Engineering controls received,” the android said cheerfully. “There’s a lot of value in a ship.”

  “You’ll get what you have coming. Prepare to launch.” Jack turned on the captain’s console.

  PASSWORD:

  Jack looked for the sensor pad to provide a biometric override, and there wasn’t one. Nuts.

  The Tropicana hummed, its bridge lights coming on in rows and strips. Jack felt sweat trickle down the small of his back.

  “Ready to launch,” Zed announced.

  “Launch,” Jack said.

  “Votiputox wee green blobbie Gazurtoid,” the android said.

  Zed was asking for the launch code. Jack didn’t have the launch code, because the captain’s console was password-protected and somehow, the Tropicana lacked a biometric override. What kind of paranoid son of a bitch was Q. Quentin Pulaski, not to have an override at his own captain’s chair? What kind of sick mutiny was he afraid of?

  Jack cleared his throat. “One zero zero zero five six.”

  “Launching.”

  The Tropicana pulsed its engines and fired itself along the launch tube before it. As the ship accelerated to maneuvering speed, rings of light telescoped past the ship on the viewscreen, coalescing into a single band a split second before the Starport burped the ship out into open space.

  But the code was wrong, Jack had pulled it out of thin air. Starport Police would be after them immediately.

  “Make for the nearest flux,” Jack said. “Now.”

  “If we are to return to collect the Ida Mae,” the android objected, “the nearest flux is not the most efficient, and will add three jumps to our journey.”

  “Objection noted and overridden,” Jack said. “The nearest flux, at maximum speed.”

  “Aye aye,” the android said. Arth flashed across the viewscreen as the Tropicana fired lateral thrusters to reorient itself, and then the ship accelerated abruptly.

  “Captain,” Ryhrnn said, “we arre being hailed. On the Starrporrt Policce channel, ssir.”

  “Ignore the hail,” Jack said. “Into the flux, Zed.”

  “We are successfully locked into orbit,” Zed said.

  “Good work,” Jack mumbled.

  “You see?” Zed said. “You think of me as a person.”

  “Trust me,” Jack said, “I do not.”

  “Aboarrd ssome ships,” Ryhrnn said slowly, “thiss moment would be ccelebrrated with a little gin.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “I’ll go to the galley.”

  He made a detour to the engine room; he might not have the time to do it later. Finding the Tropicana’s shield generators, he traced the various power couplings and data conduits through their tangled routes until he was sure he knew how the shields got energy. Then he took a fire ax and cut through the power couplings.

  In the galley, he found no gin. There was, however, a bottle with a hand-printed label that read, AGED NIKH BRANDY. Choosing not to ask himself whether the bottle contained a liquor made by Nikh or made of the tentacled creatures, he took the bottle and two tumblers and stomped back to the bridge.

  “Captain,” Zed said, “we’ve lost shields.”

  “We’ll have to look at that once we’ve landed.” Jack poured brandy out for himself and for the Thrynn. The liquid had a bright golden color and smelled vaguely of ammonia, but he took a sip anyway. It burned going down, but the aftertaste was surprisingly pleasant. “Take us to the planet where you picked me up.”

  Ryhrnn sipped his glass thoughtfully and looked at Jack. “If thiss is a mission of pirraccy, you should prrobably tell uss up frront.”

  Jack snorted. “Piracy?”

  “Did we jusst ssteal thiss ship, Jack?” Ryhrnn asked.

  “What?” Jack forced a laugh, and then, to cover up the awkwardness of his dry chuckle, he gulped brandy. It didn’t taste as good the second time. “No. Why would you say that?”

  “Well, we had a hurrried launch. Ourr crrew is sskeleton and . . . unorrthodoxs. But mosstly, I ssay that because we ignorred Starrporrt Policce and rran when they trried to hail uss.”

  “I screwed up the launch code,” Jack said.

  “We could have communicated that to the Ss.P.”

  Jack shrugged and tried to laugh ruefully. “I guess I’m just in too much of a hurry. I miss my ship! You must know how it is.”

  “No,” Ryhrnn said, “I have neverr been captain. We arre not going to ssteal anything then, Jack?”

  “We’re just going to recover the Ida Mae,” Jack said, “and then everyone gets what they have coming.”

  What the Thrynn had coming now was a laser blast between the shoulder blades. He was getting too suspicious.

  “Here are the longitude and latitude,” Jack said. “Prepare to land.”

  They rolled out of the Tropicana in the ship’s terrain vehicle. The vehicle was open, consisting mostly of struts, knobby tires, and a cargo bed, so Jack and Ryhrnn wore all-atmosphere suits. Jack didn’t carry a sidearm, which was a deliberate move on his part; the Thrynn was armed with a stubby laser rifle. Ryhrnn relaxed once they rolled down onto the orange- and white-streaked sand—maybe he noticed that he was the only one who was armed. Jack had carried Zed down and settled him into the driver’s seat; Zed drove the vehicle.