"I doubt it. They would want to rob the liner, not disintegrate it."
Baker excused himself and strolled toward the afterdeck of "A" class.
He had lied to the lady. (The hyper-Orwell focused directly on him picked up the tiny whisper of his subvocalizations.) He was a pirate, but there was one part of the cargo he did want to destroy, not steal—the first-grade readers for the Mission Houses for Alien Natives on Ignatz XI. Men called him a traitor to the human race, but he seethed at the corruptive propaganda being fed to the swinoid youngsters of the planet.
This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.... This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none....
It was insidious, evil. It said in effect that races who shared a common ancestor with the pig had better trade with Earthmen on their terms—on any terms—if they hoped to go on being allowed to eat.
Double-dealing Earthmen with their devious schemes were daily robbing literal-minded extraterrestrials like the Ignatz swinoids blind. Sometimes it made him ashamed to be an Earthman. Let some call him a renegade! He was going to help these sentient beings.
He had a plan, even if he lacked the armed battle cruiser that the pirates had in the teletapes. There was a small corvet waiting for him on Ignatz XI. It lacked the restricted official light-drive of military and police craft, having only a civilian planetary-field booster, but if all went well, it would be sufficient for his escape.
Baker glanced at the dial of his watch—it showed no tell-tale color of listening devices within his area. (The detector had been sold to him by an ETI agent and, of course, it lied.) Confident, he stepped over the chain separating him from the stairs to "B" Deck.
Wurmong was waiting for him as planned.
"Si," the fat, swarthy man said, "my brother, my nephews, my cousins—we will bring our extra luggage to the cargo hold tonight."