<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/42/WalterBlack.jpg)</div><em>If I leave here tomorrow,<br/>Would you still remember me?<br/>For I must be travellin' on, now<br/>There's too many places I got to see...</em><br/><br/><br/>Walter Black, captain of the cutter<em>Ellie May</em>,  sat in the pilot's seat with his arms folded over his chest, boots kicked up on the console, one leg crossed over the other.  The music piped in, high and tinny, from the ship's ancient sound system. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np0solnL1XY)  Nevertheless, Walter sang along, bobbing his head in time to the beat, fully immersed in the song.  The women were below, Stars knew doing what.  Normally he'd join them, whatever they were doing, but it was his shift, and there was a potential bounty to be had.<br/><br/><br/><em>If I stay here with you, girl<br/>Things just couldn't be the same<br/>'Cause I'm as free as a bird now<br/>And this bird you cannot change!</em><br/><br/><br/>He stared through the cockpit glass at the endless void of space.  If he weren't so used to the spectacle, he'd be dumbfounded with awe.  The stars glittered at him, millions and billions of them, like twinkling diamond dust on a black satin sheet.  The big one nearby, the bright red burning ball, that was obviously Alpha Centauri, the only solar system he'd ever known.   But that small yellow dot, fifteen degrees to the port side and about thirty off the meridian--that, he knew, was Sol, the birthplace of humanity.  Somewhere out there, 4.37 light years away, was Old Earth.  He wondered if his ancestors had gazed up at the stars on a long night, just like this, and if they had been similarly awestruck.    Of course, when you were in space, it was always night.<br/><br/><br/><em>Bye and bye baby, it's been sweet love,<br/>Though this feelin' I can't change<br/>Please don't take it so badly<br/>'Cause Stars know I'm to blame...</em><br/><br/><br/>Of course, Old Earth and its solar system were far, far away now, and had crystallized into the Terran Confederation.  Out here, meanwhile, around Alpha Centauri and its handful of inhabitable planets--this was wild space.  Free space.  No law to govern but the local laws of the various colonies, no two of which could ever seem to agree on anything.  Yes sir, freedom, complete freedom; that included the freedom to freeze or suffocate in space, or to be shot by a space bandit or by one of the native Centaurians.<br/><br/><br/><em>And if I stay here with you, girl<br/>Things just couldn't be the same<br/>'Cause I'm as free as a bird now<br/>And this bird you cannot change!</em><br/><br/><br/>But that was just the way Walter liked it.  Give him the<em>Ellie May</em>, his reliable old girl; give him the blaster at his hip; and give him the stars through his viewport, and he was a happy man.  Even now, as he watched, a comet was hurtling through the blackness of night, a fiery missile on an inscrutable journey.<br/><br/><br/><em>Oh oh, oh oh oh oh<br/>And this bird you cannot change<br/>And this bird you cannot change<br/>Stars know, I can't change...</em><br/><br/><br/>Wait a minute... that was no comet!  Walter sat up, pulling his feet off of the console.  Tricky, tricky, he thought.  Using lateral blowback from the engines in order to mimic a comet's heat signature?  Yes, that was definitely the sign of someone with something to hide.<br/><br/>Instantly Walter was in motion.  With one hand punching the coordinates of the target into the ship's targeting systems, he hammered on the throttle button with the other.  The action of the<em>Ellie May</em>'s engines firing into life caused a dull, subsonic vibration in the metal floorplates.  Walter grinned manically.<br/><br/>"C'mon, girl.  Let's show 'em what we got, baby doll."<br/><br/>His left hand moved from the computer to the cutter's intercom.  A green light flashed on, indicating he was broadcasting ship-wide.  "Strap in and buckle down, ladies," he shouted into the microphone. "Paycheck's been spotted on the horizon and the old girl's spoiling for a fight."<br/><br/>That done, he grabbed the manual navigation stick with both hands. He knew that the ship's computer could pilot on its own, if necessary, but it never seemed to handle quite as well as when he or one of the women flew it manually.<br/><br/><em>FWOOM!</em>A giant, invisible hand pressed him back in his seat as the ship accelerated from a standstill to pursuit speed.  Directly in the center of the cockpit window was the target.<br/><br/>"That's it.  Come to papa," grinned Walter.<br/><br/><br/><em>Stars know, I can't change<br/>Stars help me, I can't change<br/>Stars, I can't change<br/>Won't you fly high, free bird? Yeah...</em>