Morgan spoke at last. "I trust you have all enjoyed your meal?”
Heads nodded around the room and Charlotte thanked him for his hospitality. Michael saw a light in Morgan's eyes which he did not like when Charlotte had finished speaking; it was the look of a man who had not seen a woman for a very long time. Michael was worried by it, but made no comment. As everybody relaxed in the afterglow of the meal, Harry Morgan began his story and his audience listened with rapt attention.
Eleven years previously Morgan was the owner and Captain of what was even then an elderly, but well preserved freighter called the Cygnus. He ran a freelance, commercial carrying business with a small crew. He could not compete with the secret C.A.M.I.D. powered vessels which left the Earth on a regular basis. It was simply too expensive to land his great ship and take-off fully laden from Earth. However, he had discovered that there were certain cargoes which the bigger companies were reluctant to handle. These included explosives, gasoline, propane gas, acids and other nasty substances; all of which were needed by the space colonies.
He had personally approached several of the larger Companies and offered to do the dangerous work for them. Without exception, they had all been delighted to subcontract to him.
The unfortunate thing about the old freighters was that they were relatively slow. Harry Morgan was able to increase his velocity by locking the Cygnus into Earth orbit and then using a much smaller vessel to service, load and unload the big freighter. In this way he was able to accept contracts from several different places for every trip. He was then able to use his full fuel load for the whole journey instead of wasting half of it on escaping the Earth's atmosphere. In spite of this, the journeys were still measured in months rather than in days.
The business prospered for several years and Harry started to accumulate a little wealth. He was an excellent engineer and kept his Ships well maintained. As the money became available he upgraded his electronics and strived to modernize his ship whenever the situation allowed it.
Six years ago as he had returned from a trip to a deep-space monitoring station named Perseus, which was situated diametrically opposite to Mars in the same orbit, he had been politely stopped and boarded by a Customs Unit. Harry was totally straight and above board so he had nothing to fear and made the Officers welcome.
He soon found out that it was a cover-up for a secret operation. On board the Customs vessel was an American Government Official who wished to talk business. Before the ‘business’ talks began, Harry had been obliged to sign a document of the Official Secrets variety which bound him not to discuss details of the meeting with anyone who was not a Government Official with written credentials to prove their involvement in the scheme.
The bones of the matter were that the Americans were setting up another top-security Penal Colony on Mars. It was being kept secret and its location undisclosed, since it was to house many of the Political Dissidents who were becoming more numerous in the U.S.A. and who were polluting the 'Morals' of the people in the street, as well as the other prisoners, with their socialist ideas of a fair deal for all the American people.
In its wisdom the Government had decided to isolate these people in as remote a place as possible; the Southern Plains of Mars were about as remote, desolate and lonely as Man could imagine.
Needless to say, the weaponry and other undesirable items needed to be taken in advance and in secret, since this particular facet of Government did not particularly wish the Military to know its strength. Neither did they want the area patrolled and, more to the point, they did not wish the Russians to know that they would be doing some exploratory prospecting in the area, using the prisoners as the prospecting team.
The Government offered to pay all the expenses and provide fuel and provisions. In addition they offered Morgan two million dollars clear profit to complete the Mission, fifty percent paid in advance. Understandably Harry Morgan graciously accepted the contract and, in his heart, considered himself to be a good patriot by doing so.
The Cygnus was loaded in the usual way. The American Authorities had stockpiled in many different places, so there was nothing odd about the comings and goings of the small feeder ship as it shuttled back and forth with its sometimes deadly cargo.
The amount of arms startled even Harry Morgan. It really looked as though the mere establishment of a penal colony was only a fraction of the truth. He was even more surprised when the shuttle arrived with two brand new Laser/ Neutron Cannons.
These had been originally developed in the Twentieth Century for the Star Wars initiative which the Americans had used so successfully in its Orbital Defence System. One of these awesome weapons was now fixed to the hull of the Black Swan and Michael now remembered where he had seen one before. He also remembered where he had heard of Harry Morgan; he had been asked to keep a lookout for the Cygnus whilst he was on his routine patrols. It had been listed as 'Missing' and the Crew were officially presumed dead.
Morgan was a good enough business man to realise that it was no concern of his, so he asked no questions and consequently was told no more lies.
Eventually the loading was completed and the Cygnus was fully fuelled and provisioned. The ship was carrying its usual complement of six crewmen. Although the ship was big, it only needed this many men. Every crewman worked when there was a major handling manoeuvre, but once on course the ship was in free-fall and only one man was needed on watch.
It was a long haul to Mars from Earth and the two Planets could not have been in a worse conjunction. It had probably been planned this way so that other vessels would be less interested in making the trip. Whatever the reason it was going to be a six month voyage. In addition he had been given an unusual trajectory, well away from the normal routes, again to reinforce the security of the Mission. Captain Morgan realised that he would be very much on his own.
The first two months passed without incident; the orbit of the Moon was quickly passed and then, after a perfect course correction, the pursuit of Mars began. Unlike the C.A.M.I.D. powered vessels the conventional rockets were unable to attempt Sun grazing manoeuvres. They had to content themselves with spiral trajectories always going away from the Sun. This increased the distance of the voyage immensely.
The problems started on the sixty-third day of the voyage. The duty man was startled to see a faint blip on his radar scope. He immediately called the Captain who was also mystified since there was no record whatsoever of anything on this particular trajectory; there should have been no ships and they were nowhere near any known Asteroid orbits.
A quick calculation confirmed that they were on a collision course. Captain Morgan decided that it would be easier to slow his vessel and let whatever it was pass in front of them. The Crew quickly pressurized the fuel tanks and prepared to fire the retro-rockets. By this time the scope showed several large Asteroid-type rocks and an accompanying cloud of debris and a small rock field.
Unbelievably there was a small cluster of space ships contained within the centre of it all. Morgan opened all the hailing channels on his radio and tried to get a response. He failed.
With a bone-shuddering roar the retro-rockets were fired and Morgan burnt them for a full two minutes and drastically reduced the velocity of his Ship; he also covered himself and his crew with abrasions and bruises from the restraining straps in the process.
It was an error. He should have tried to outrun the rock field and pick up his course again later. The debris was much more scattered than the scope showed and when the battering on the hull started it was as though a thousand men with hammers were running round the hull and going berserk trying to break in.
The damage reports soon started to come in. The hull was holed in dozens of places and the fuel tanks were not spared. The Crew quickly depressurized the fuel tanks and stemmed the flow; by quick action they managed to seal about half the cabins and the control room.
On the outside the Cygnus looked as though it had been sand blasted, any protrusions had been ripped off on the side where the cloud had hit them; this included fuel valves and all the radio and radar antennae. There was no way the vessel could make Mars in its devastated state. They had lost velocity and three engines. One engine still remained so Morgan decided to hand fly the ship and match orbits with the cluster of large rocks and vessels which were approaching rapidly.
It was a difficult manoeuvre under the circumstances but Morgan was a superb pilot and knew his vessel. Thirty minutes later he was tucked inside the large rocks next to the other ships which looked deserted.
There was still no response from the other vessels so Morgan decided to investigate. He took two of his crew with him and traversed to the nearest ship. It was undamaged and contained two perfectly preserved corpses. Harry checked the gauges but the oxygen had all gone; without oxygen only death remained.
A similar story was repeated in the next four vessels and Harry Morgan admitted that he felt a strange feeling of helplessness and uneasiness. They decided to be thorough and complete their search and found six space suited figures in the final rocket. Unlike the others, these bodies were still neatly arranged in their seats. Expecting the worst, Harry went to the first one and very nearly did something very unhygienic inside his space suit when the supposed corpse slowly reached up and gripped his arm.
All six men were still alive but each had virtually no oxygen left. Harry and his men quickly coupled the survivors to their own tanks and took them back to the Cygnus. The men were very weak and half-starved but with a little care from Harry and his Crew plus some neat oxygen, soup and coffee, they soon started to pull round. Two were English, two were American and two were Russian.
Their story was simple they had struck it rich. The irony of it all was almost unbelievable. All the vessels had been wildcat prospectors rock-hopping amongst the known Asteroids. The Skippers had met in the 'Prospectors Bar' on Ceres, a place completely lacking in reputation, had got drunk together and started to bemoan their lot.
None of the Skippers had found any luck for at least six months; funds and morale were almost exhausted. One of the Skippers had suggested a joint venture to try a long range prospecting run based on the notion that six vessels properly provisioned could do the job of one large vessel. The general opinion was that they had nothing to lose.
The following day when the drunken euphoria had worn off, the Skippers sat down, pooled their resources and made their plans. Everybody, including the Crews, had put all their remaining funds into a common purse and then spent every last vestige of remaining money on provisions and kitting-out. A week later they formed a small convoy and blasted off in a determined attempt to reach the far side of the Asteroid belt.
They skirted along the edge of the belt in high spirits, however the problems soon began. They had completely miscalculated their fuel consumption. There were so many course corrections and collision avoidance manoeuvres that within three months there was practically no fuel left. There was no hope of getting back and they were way past the charted prospecting territories.
The Skippers held a meeting and decided to re-enter the belt at the next convenient point and stake their claim. It was decided that if they were successful they would try to raise help on the radio. If none came they would die; rich or poor, it would not matter any more.
It would be true to say that when they did finally re-enter the belt, all the Skippers were, in fact, lost. They found a large cluster of rocks and matched orbits with them. They had come to the end of their fuel and it was only a matter of time before all their other resources ran out as well.
Within hours of arriving they sent out their teams to study the rocks around them. It was the jackpot. There was uranium, platinum, gold, silver and crystal. One of the rocks was pure crystal and weighed at least twenty tons. It was an amazingly rich discovery and within hours every member of the expedition was rich beyond their wildest dreams; but it was to no avail.
However, human endeavour was such that they took on board as much ore and crystal as they could. Oxygen was still plentiful but fresh food and water were in short supply. The water was soon replenished by the fortuitous discovery of a large block of ice weighing about ten tons. It contained various chunks of rock, including gold nuggets up to about two pounds in weight, but as the water was melted down it was found to be sweet and suitable for consumption.
The Skippers met together to discuss their situation. Although there was little fresh food left, one of the Skippers had purchased several tons of surplus Military field rations. It was still untouched and, being canned, would last indefinitely. They decided to sit tight and just stay with their claim and wait for rescue. By living on meagre rations they estimated that they could survive for between nine to twelve months.
The next task was to make, an accurate map and fix the position of their claim. They had a lot of time on their hands and consequently made a very good job of it. A few weeks later another rock field came into view and to add to their consternation it was running obliquely to their own. There were a few collisions as the two fields passed through each other, but no damage was done and eventually the two fields diverged.
One of the Skippers was most puzzled by this event and went back to his computer to make some calculations. He did not like what he discovered. His results proved that their rich claim was in a highly elliptical orbit which took them close to the Sun and out as far as the orbit of Jupiter. Further calculations confirmed that the rock cluster would pass just beyond the orbit of Mercury and was travelling very quickly. It had to be, otherwise it would have been drawn into the Sun a long time ago. The lucky part was that they were on that portion of the orbit which was heading out towards the orbit of Jupiter.
The computers soon determined that a complete orbit was in the region of seven hundred and seventy two days. It would take about a year to get back to a similar point on the opposite leg of their orbit. Unless they were rescued, it did not matter what happened to them, after that they would soon be dead anyway. So they resolutely drifted along with their claim, doing their best to keep themselves occupied.
Month followed month, they broadcasted on their tiny radios begging for help, but no help came. Eventually the situation became critical. In order to give their Crews the best chance, the Skippers and the First Officers made a suicide pact and packed all their Crews off to the sixth vessel, which was carrying the remainder of the oxygen supplies. As their oxygen ran out the Skippers and their First Officers perished with their ships.
Some Crewmen also died. They went out under the guise of doing some further prospecting and never came back. The last six were made of sterner stuff and decided to sit it out to the bitter end. Then along came Harry Morgan.
The chances of their paths actually crossing in this part of the Solar System were billions to one against. In reality not only had their paths crossed, they had actually come very close to colliding.
As the survivors regained their strength, Harry learned the truth about their predicament. The rock field and everything it contained was starting to slowly accelerate as the Sun’s gravity acted on it. Soon the temperature would increase and they would all burn up unless precautions were taken .
All the survivors readily accepted Harry Morgan as their new Skipper. There was a genuine feeling of gratitude for their rescue and subsequent prolongation of life, even if it was only going to be temporary. Two of the survivors were excellent engineers but the others were basically prospectors with some training as crewmen.
In his usual efficient way Captain Morgan organized the hull repairs on the Cygnus. One by one, the various parts of the ship were re-pressurized as they were resealed. The only thing Harry could not do was to repair the three stricken motors. The valves which had been ripped off were irreplaceable and one engine was of little use to them apart from minor manoeuvres.
Harry did not like wasting anything. So the thought of leaving behind six perfectly serviceable space craft was as repulsive as dying with them. He sat down with the Engineers and asked for suggestions. One suggestion was to weld two ships together, another was to restyle the rocketry on the Cygnus with the engines from the other craft.
Having listened to all the suggestions, Harry decided that the sensible way was to weld all the smaller craft to the Cygnus to form one enormous vessel. It would be difficult but not impossible. He reasoned that the outer hulls would help to shade the Cygnus from the Sun when they passed close. Harry also knew the contents of his cargo; it contained a lot of welding gear and a lot of sheet metal.
He sat down with his computer and soon came up with a design. It was not pretty but it was extremely serviceable and with all the rockets coupled together would also be extremely powerful. At this point the procession passed the orbit of the planet Earth. Unfortunately for them they were diametrically opposite their home planet and were enroute for the Sun.
Harry started work on the project as soon as possible. They carefully collected and arranged the other rockets around the Cygnus by using some of the many jet packs they had available. Harry then carefully marked the hulls to ensure perfect alignment, matching the marks to the computer predicted marks on the hull of the Cygnus. Once in position the welding commenced using struts and metal from his cargo as required.
In a surprisingly short time the seven ships became one. By this time they were up to the orbit of Venus. Needless to say it was beginning to get hot. At this point in time Harry had another brainwave. He reasoned that anything he could put between themselves and the Sun would increase their chances of survival. Consequently Harry and his men became Cosmic Bricklayers. They gathered up loose boulders and moved large rocks to the Sun side of the Cygnus and started to build a wall.
The job was awkward and it lacked the finesse of the Lakeland dry stone wallers, they also used huge boulders but it was effective. The temperature of the outer hulls started to drop as they came under its protective shade and radiation levels were drastically reduced. The crew worked as long as possible to make their wall as big as they could in the time available.
The orbital speed was now very quick and Harry had still not connected up the rockets and sorted out the fuel systems. There was no choice but to sit out the unpleasant swing round the Sun. Soon it was too hot to work outside. The Sun was enormous, filling the heavens, the heat was unbearable. The Crew did everything they could to keep cool.
The Cygnus survived the trauma better than they had hoped. Some wiring was charred but the slow rotation of the hull prevented any outbreak of fire and distributed the heat evenly. The men inside the Ship, however, suffered horribly. There were many unpleasant burns and scalds among the Crew but two weeks later the cabin temperature started to drop, the water went off the boil and it became possible to make ice cubes.
For three more weeks the men licked their wounds and gave their scalds, burns and blisters chance to heal. On the surface they were all relatively unharmed. Beneath the surface, however, there was a lot more damage. Harry did not realize it but the experience had left him and his Crew mentally scarred. The heat, the suffering and the situation had changed Harry's way of thinking. Instead of having a good business brain, Harry was now the proud possessor of a guiltless, criminal mind, blessed with a high degree of megalomania and thoughts of Empire building.
With this aim firmly in mind, Harry set about completing the space ship. The hull was charred and burned but otherwise unharmed. He still had quite a lot of fuel. His greatest fear had been that the fuel would ignite, but by carefully jettisoning it to eliminate the pressure build-up he had kept it in a non-volatile state. He had lost a little but saved a lot.
The somewhat less than lawful antics of his long dead ancestor, Henry Morgan, preyed incessantly on his mind. So much so that, eventually, Harry decided that he was going to pick up where Henry had left off. He took one look at the old, charred Cygnus and in honour of the piratical connection re- christened it the Black Swan.
The voyage continued past the orbits of Venus, Earth and Mars and as they approached the main Asteroid belt again Harry completed the controls of his conglomerate space craft. A complicated system of pipes was run from the central fuel tanks to the auxiliary engines and a test firing was arranged.
Harry decided that he would fire the engines in diagonally matched pairs and give them a fifteen second burn. Soon everything was set. Engines one and four worked perfectly, as did numbers two and five. The problem came with engines three and six; both were Russian, Harry had deliberately matched them for that very reason. Within five seconds of firing it was obvious that the output on one was vastly superior to the other.
The Ship went into a sickening eccentric spin and it took a long time and all of Harry's skill to regain control and stabilize it.
The Engineers tackled the problem and soon discovered that one engine was much more fuel efficient than the other, which was much older. A reduction in fuel flow and an ingenious compensating valve fashioned by one of the Engineers was incorporated into the feed mechanism. Very gingerly a second firing was carried out and this time the results were not quite as drastic, the spin was less eccentric and was more easily controlled. After further adjustments a third firing was very timidly attempted. This time it was perfect, all the way through the power band to maximum.
The Black Swan was now the possessor of six new engines and one of its own originals. Given a little more time Harry was convinced that another of the originals could be made functional. At the present moment in time the Black Swan had sufficient power to operate as an interplanetary craft. All he was short of was fuel and a few other essential supplies and Harry had already decided that he was going to steal these items.
He knew he had a lot of weapons in his hold and in a flash of inspiration remembered the two large cannons. He made up his mind to have one fitted to the hull and he was quite correct in his assumption that it would add a lot of authority to his demands.
The Engineers enthusiastically tackled the problem. They adapted a television sight to the weapon and mounted it on a spare rotating antenna base. They added an elevating mechanism, a few simple controls and a remote firing button, then welded it to the hull, just above the bridge. When the power supply was connected the Black Swan became a war machine with a weapon capable of destroying or causing extensive damage to any ship, military or commercial.
The results of the test firings meant that the Black Swan had left the sanctuary of the rich rock field and was now on course for the fringes of the known Asteroid territories. The men had readily accepted the ideas of piracy and Harry, with his meticulous eye for detail, soon made them some suitable uniforms and had them swear a blood oath of allegiance to him.
To celebrate the occasion in an appropriate manner the spirit store was broached and the men had a wild, drunken party lasting two days. They took another two days to recover and finally set about starting their new careers. They had a computer fix on the orbit of their original rock field and could return to it at will to mine its wealth. However Harry needed another main base in the belt itself. By a study of various rock formations he found one to suit his purpose and then went carefully on the prowl.
Their first capture for want of a better word, became the basis of their standard trap, only this time the distress signal was a genuine one. They homed in on the signal to discover the old prospector’s vessel in absolutely perfect condition except for its crew. The problem was the crew. There had only ever been one man in it, a determined old veteran called Josiah Smith.
If the vessel was old then Josiah was ancient, since he was at least fifty years older than his ship, and that was far from being new. Harry's men boarded the small vessel and found Josiah in a lot of pain and very ill. They took him to the Black Swan and genuinely did their best to resuscitate him. It was to no avail; Josiah was too old and too far gone. He was grateful for his rescue and his passing was made easier by being in the company of fellow human beings. He bequeathed all his goods and his ship to the crew and died quietly in Harry's arms two days after they rescued him.
The old vessel contained a large supplies of food, fuel and oxygen which were gratefully received into the resources of the Black Swan. The old ship was rigged up to be carried by the bigger ship and became the basis of their piratical attacks after a few cosmetic and theatrical alterations.
Harry needed two things. Firstly he obviously needed essential supplies such as oxygen, fuel, food and water. Secondly he needed people to mine the vast riches of the rock field they had found. He did not really want slaves, he preferred volunteers, but he would use his prisoners for work if that was how they wanted it. Either way he could not release anybody to go and report on his activities. The mortality of privately owned vessels was still high, approaching twenty percent in some years, within the Asteroid territories, so a few more catastrophes would go unnoticed for quite awhile.
At first they terrorized only the outer fringes of the known Asteroid belt picking up a few small rockets and some stores. He gained some very willing volunteers, men who had not had any luck at all and also some prisoners, mostly British, who did not want to know and were outraged by his whole operation.
The Black Swan returned to the rock field and set up a colony using the captured vessels as quarters. The prisoners and volunteers alike were set to work extending the solar rock barriers to make life a little more tolerable on their close visits to the Sun.
Eventually the food and fuel supply problem became acute. Harry used some of his bona-fide volunteer prospectors to run to Ceres and cash in some of their spoils and to buy supplies and food using their small craft. However the large amounts required by Harry's organization could not be purchased without arousing undesirable official interest. In addition time, physical size and distance were against him and he dared not show the Black Swan at an Official Base as yet.
Harry had little doubt that soon there would be security warships out looking for them. He wondered if they would be retracing his steps to find out what actually happened to the supplies intended for Mars. If it was a British C.A.M.I.D. powered vessel, he was convinced he would be able to lose it within the Asteroid belt. On the other hand, if he was accosted by an American or Russian patrol ship, then he would have to fight.
The Operation was getting bigger and soon the demands outflanked the supplies. Harry held a council of war with his men and they decided to go for the big time and trap some big freighters. It was easier than he could ever have imagined.
The Hercules, the Titan and the Atlas simply fell into his hands as they dutifully answered the weak distress call. His radio jamming equipment had prevented any warning messages being sent and the haul had been very rich. It was a perfect crime.
Even though he knew nothing concerning the operation of C.A.M.I.D. units Harry considered it only a matter of time before his computers cracked the codes to switch the units back on. He had people working round the clock totally involved in this problem. Once they were operational he was convinced that he had some pilots amongst the prisoners and again it was only a matter of time before he coerced one of the Officers into piloting the big vessels .
At this point Michael interrupted. "Why do you not coerce one of the Captains?" he asked.
"Sadly the Captains were extremely uncooperative," replied Morgan. "I soon realized that they were still controlling their crews, so I instigated the oldest strategy of command divide and rule.”
"You keep the Cap