Jeffries smiled weakly. "Frankly, you expect me to fail?"
Captain Edwards nodded. "I do. But the junketing around will give you a bit of a rest and the seeking for this character will keep your mind alert. So, Lieutenant Jeffries, go out and catch me Black Morgan, the Pirate!"
Jeffries grinned. "And meanwhile I shall also make a landing on the mythical planet Vulcan, locate the Gegenschein, and bring back a covey of Voimaids with their equally mythical pet, the Hydrae."
Edwards laughed. "Yup," he said, still chuckling. "Now scat, because I have work to do."
Jeffries nodded and saluted genially. "I'm it," he said. Then he turned and left the office.
Captain Edwards looked after the leaving officer and nodded paternally. Jeffries was an excellent officer. He was loyal, ambitious, and zealous. Cases assigned to him came in after a reasonable length of time, and they were sealed shut and glued down with all the necessary evidence. Those cases that were not to go to court, complete, were those in which the criminal preferred to shoot it out, and Lieutenant Jeffries was both brave and an excellent shot—as well as being a good strategist. He'd been working too hard, and as Edwards said, a real vacation would have been boring.
The will-o'-the-wisp known as Black Morgan, the Pirate, would give him a rest.
Jeffries went home to pack. Black Morgan was a space pirate and the place to look for him was in space. That space piracy was impossible for divers reasons seemed to make little difference to Black Morgan. He did it.
Lieutenant Jeffries made his plans, knowing the facts. First was to encounter Black Morgan. Theorizing how it would be possible to commit piracy on a ship traveling at twenty-five hundred miles per second, running at 3-Gs constant acceleration would do no good. It had been agreed impossible. Yet Black Morgan did it.
So Jeffries must first encounter the villain and then take after him. With but six months, Jeffries could not even begin to inspect the corners of the solar system that hadn't been covered before.