"You know what you're doing, don't you?" asked the reporter.
"I think so."
"You're forcing my mind into accepting something that has never happened before, and something that has no basis for its—"
"You mean piracy? I wonder. We've all read tales about the Jolly Roger being painted on the side of a sleek ship of space while the pirate, who at heart is a fine fellow though uninhibited, hails down the cruiser carrying radium. He swipes the stuff and kisses all the women whilst menacing the men with a gun hand full of searing, coruscating, violently lethal ray pistol. But that sounds fine in stories. The trick is tougher than it sounds, Thomas. You've got to catch your rabbit first."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that finding a ship in space to prey upon is somewhat less difficult than juggling ten billiard balls whilst riding a horse blind-folded. Suppose you were to turn pirate. This is what would happen:
"You'd get the course of the treasure ship from the spaceport, fine and good, by resorting to spies and such. You'd lie in wait out there in the blackness of space, fixing your position by the stars and hoping that your error in fix was less than a couple of thousand miles. It's more likely to be a hundred thousand miles, though. The time comes. You look to your musket, sharpen your sword, and see to the priming of your Derringers that are thrust into the red sash at your waist. You are right on the course, due to your brilliant though lawless navigator who was tossed out of astrogator's school for filching the teacher's whiskey. Then the treasure ship zoops past at a healthy hundred miles per second and you decide that since she is hitting it up at 2-G, you'd have to start from scratch at a heck of a lot better to catch her within the next couple of light years.
"So you give up, join the Congregational Church and pass the collection plate every Sunday."
"But suppose you took the course as laid and applied the same acceleration? Suppose you followed on the heels of your quarry until you were both in space? You could do it then, couldn't you?"
"Gosh," said Channing, "I never thought of that. That's the only way a guy could pirate a ship—unless he planted his men aboard and they mutinied."