Free Intrepid by Mike Shepherd

he didn’t want to roll out a welcome mat for just anyone. Thought that would keep down the layabouts.”
    “Has it?”
    “Wasn’t much more than a couple of dozen families until twenty years ago.”
    “What changed that?”
    “Say you’re a kid, eighteen, twenty, and your folks are true believing Abdicators. What do you do if you want off Xanadu?”
    “Are you in the same system with Xanadu?”
    “No. We’re next door to them, one jump over. Grampa came out a different set of jumps. Figured us to be five good long jumps from anyone. But we’re only three jumps, if you don’t mind a real crazy sermon after the second one.”
    “How do they feel about you taking their rebels?” Kris said.
    “It’s working out fine. We weren’t interested in the rest of the human race any more than they were. We just didn’t mind if you skipped assembly meetings. Didn’t have any real assemblies except for square dancing every Saturday night.”
    “Do they know you’re here?”
    “No, the ship that dropped by had been to Xanadu and gotten the very cold shoulder. But as they were about to close down their on-planet sales, a couple of dozen immigrants showed up and asked for a ride to Pandemonium.
    “A market that close got the skipper’s attention, and he was mighty glad for the guiding hand. Anyway, I can’t really say we weren’t glad for his coming, either. Our population had grown quite a bit, and we needed just about everything he had.”
    “Which he gave you out of kindness?” Kris said.
    “Nope, we don’t have that much hayseed in our hair. In the early years, Grampa paid for the start-up using some really strange hydrocarbon strings native to the planet. It had been a while since anyone came by, and we had a lot of them stored up. I’m told that some of them do really nice things with food.”
    The strange biologies among the stars had provided more than one new spice and cured several diseases. The real question was why a ship captain who had such a source would quit visiting.
    “He has fifty containers,” Captain Drago put in. “We’d have no problem carrying them.”
    “So, do we head to Pandemonium direct or via Xanadu?” Kris asked.
    “You’re in charge,” Drago said. Kris snorted at that.
    “Why not leave the crazies alone?” mFumbo suggested.
    “I don’t think either my grampa or my father would like that,” Kris said slowly. “You got nutcases who think we all need to crawl back into Mother Earth’s womb to hide from some really nasty alien horde they say is coming. And aren’t a bit bothered by the thousands of people that would have to die for every one that survived. On top of that, they believe that some kind of good aliens will take them away when they die, and if you died doing what the Guides tell you to do, those selfsame aliens will treat you like kings and queens.”
    Kris shook her head. “Seems to me that we ought to check in on them every fifty years or so.”
    “That sounds fairly logical,” Jack said, with only a bit of a scowl on his face. “But are you sure it’s not just a Longknife thing? Something horribly dangerous needs doing so, of course, you’ve got to be the one to do it. . . on a shoestring?”
    “Could be, but let’s just suppose you’re a Guide and you hate all things human. Who do you want to be the first human that pries open your Pandora’s box of worms, snakes, and worse? Some Joe Blow merchant captain or one of those damn Longknifes?”
    The farmer glanced at the captain. “You didn’t tell me there was a Longknife involved here.”
    “I distinctly remember you did not ask.”
    “All the ships in human space,” the young farmer groaned, “and I have to walk onto this one.”
    “I rest my case,” Kris said. What was it with her family!

8
    It took three days to get away from Cuzco. Kris found it painfully slow, but Captain Drago assured her they were actually making record time. . . all things considered.
    Those “things”