At first glance, the spaceport looked like a handsome prize of victory. The docks and workshops were all in good condition; at worst, they only needed cleaning up. There was a collapsium plant, with its own mass-energy converter. There were foundries and machine-shops and forging-shops and a rolling-mill, almost completely robotic. At first, Conn thought that it might be possible to build a hyperdrive ship here, without having to go to Koshchei at all.
Closer examination disabused him of this hope. There was nothing of which the framework of a ship could be built, and no way of producing heavy structural steel. The rolling-mill was good enough to turn out eighth-inch sheet material which when plated with a few micromicrons of collapsium would be as good as a hundred feet of lead against space-radiations, but that was the ship's skin. A ship needed a skeleton, too. The only thing to do was go on with the Harriet Barne.
It was sunset before he finished his tour of inspection and let his jeep down in a vehicle hall off the lower gallery outside what had originally been the spaceport officers' club. It was crowded, and a victory celebration seemed to be getting under way. He saw his father with Yves Jacquemont, Sylvie, Tom Brangwyn, and Captain Nichols. Nichols had gotten clean clothes from the pirates' store of loot, and had bathed and shaved. So had Jacquemont, though he had contented himself with trimming his beard. It took him a second or so to recognize the young lady in feminine garb as his erstwhile battle comrade, Sylvie.
"Well, our pay goes on from the day we were captured," Nichols was saying. "My instructions are to resume command of the ship. Tomorrow, they're sending a party out to go over her."
Conn stopped short. "What's this about the ship?"
"Captain Nichols was in screen contact with his company's office in Storisende," Rodney Maxwell said. "They're continuing him in command of her."
"But ... but we took that ship! We lost three gunboats and about twenty-five men...."
"She still belongs to Transcontinent & Overseas," his father said. "That's been the law on stolen property as long as there's been any law."
Of course; he should have known that. Did know it; just didn't think.
"We broke an awful lot of eggs for no omelet; fought a battle for nothing."