"Space Pirates abduct a child!" the headlines blared.
The boy read them, but did not understand them, nor did the grown-up woman reading them in the next chair understand them either. Why would pirates want a child? The boy understood that the headline referred to him. He read on:
"The interstellar flyer I.S.S. Little Treasure which left on a routine voyage last week for the Ice Worms was reported late yesterday as having been destroyed by pirates. The Captain, whom the pirates had spared, told how he had been set adrift in the escape-raft in which he had been storing!"
The boy started to read faster and faster. He wanted to see what had happened to the Captain. It went on to say that the last the Captain saw of the ship a pirate ship was shooting at it and that the I.S.S. Little Treasure was not well built and might very well have been badly damaged—or had the pirates scuttled it?
"So," said the woman next to him, "this is the little boy the Captain of the ship scuttled?"
The boy took the paper away from the woman so that he could read on.
"After having his raft anchored as close to its destination as possible to avoid drifting, and free of the pirates and their ship, the Captain says that he is still uncertain where the Little Treasure was headed. He does not know whether or not the pirates did anything to the passengers and crew, and is uncertain, therefore, of their next course of action."
The boy thought about this and then asked the woman what that meant. The woman explained that when ships and spacecraft went on voyages all the passengers and crew had a set schedule attached to which they had to adhere, or else a large amount of money credited to their accounts.
The boy thought about this and asked whether there was money to be collected from these pirates. The woman said that there were at least several hundreds of patrons in the leagues that the pirates were from who might track them down. But, as the boy already knew, the Captain's account was not large and he could not afford to pay the huge fine that would be requested if the pirates were found.
The boy then thought that, in the event that the pirates didn't take his parents, there was a chance that the Captain might give him a job when the boy found him. Captain O'Bell had only two other passengers aboard and both were girls. He might have found something in common with the boy and hired him.
But life is rarely so simple, he thought, as when you are a child. And the girl who gave the announcement did not say anything else about the pirates. The boy next read about the doomed I.S.S. Little Treasure. He read on and the paper moved on to other matters.
"The Captain of the Little Treasure has been threatened by the pirates but has refused to heed them. He has also refused to tell what he knows about them, saying that he has something to protect and does not want more trouble than necessary. He has, however, told the League of League Captains about the pirates, and word has now spread to the leagues in each other's neighborhood. The League has urged the Captain not to reveal information about the pirates unless the League decides that it has a worth-while pursuit, but the Captain is unwilling to talk."
The boy breathed out as he read these words, and his spine slowly straightened under his blue and orange nylon sleeping bag. The boy had heard enough of the Captain's refusal to talk. The Captain had been left to drift in his raft for seven days, and now that he was back he would have to deal with this matter. He had to tell the world about the pirates, or else the world wouldn't know what was going on until the pirates were ready to move to the next stage of their plan.
The boy knew the next words. He had heard them before:
The Chief Officer of the I.S.S. Little Treasure was unavailable for comment. He, like the Captain, is too ill to talk to the League's press about what happened.
The boy then thought that Captain O'Bell's job probably looked very secure to him. The Chief Officer and the Captain had been left drifting in the raft when the pirates led them away from the few other passengers. It made sense now that the Captain would refuse to talk. There was so much that O'Bell might have to say of his misfortune.
The boy was again impressed that the Captain of the Little Treasure was too ill to talk to the press. He had been rescued by the pirates, and while he was ill there were no able-bodied males remaining to help him. There was no one who could tell how much the Captain might want to talk. The boy now knew that the Captain would not tell the League or the press about the pirates.
"I am the Captain of the Little Treasure," the boy heard the Captain say as he did the first day he read the papers.
"I tell you that I will not tell you anything that would cause any additional damage to my ship or crew."
The crowd hooted. The boy was confused. The Captain was making no sense. The boy imagined him as a straight-talking sort of person who would say the right thing whenever he could. He was not sure if he was doing the right thing or not.
But, the boy thought, the Captain would not want to talk neither to the League nor the press. He would be, after all, too embarrassed to say anything.