Downbelow Station

i

Norway moved as the Fleet moved, hurling their mass into realspace in synch. Com and scan flurried into action, searching for the mote which was giant Tibet, which had jumped in before them, advance guard, in this rout.

“Affirmative,” com sent to command with comforting swiftness. Tibet was where she was supposed to be, intact, probe untouched by any hostile activity. Ships were scattered about the system, commerce, quickly evaporating bluster from some self-claimed militia. Tibet had had one merchanter skip out in panic, and that was bad news. They needed no tale-bearers running to Union; but possibly that was the last place a merchanter wanted to head at the moment

And a moment later confirmation snapped out from Europe, from the flagship’s operations: they were in safe space with no action probable.

“Getting com out of Pell itself now,” Graff relayed to her post at controls, still listening. “Sounds good.”

Signy reached across the board and keyed signal to the rider-captains, advising them. Fast to Norway’s hull, so many parasites, they did not kick loose. Com was receiving direct and frantic id’s from the militia ships scrambling out of their projected course as they came insystem dangerously fast, out of system plane. The Fleet itself was more than nervous, running as they were in one body, probing their way into the last secure area they hoped to have left.

They were nine now. Chenel’s Libya was debris and vapor, and Keu’s India had lost two of its four riders.

They were in full retreat, had run from the debacle at Viking, seeking a place to draw breath. They all had scars; Norway had a vane trailing a cloud of metallic viscera, if they still had the vane at all after jump. There were dead aboard, three techs who had been in that section. They had not had time to vent them, not even to clean up the area, had run, saved the ship, the Fleet, such as remained of Company power. Signy’s boards still flashed with red lights. She passed the order to damage control to dispose of the corpses, whatever of them they could find.

Here too there might have been an ambush — was not, would not be. She stared at the lights in front of her, looked at the board, with the drugs still weighting her senses, numbing her fingers as she manipulated controls to take back Norway’s governance from comp synch. They had scarcely engaged at Viking, had turned tail and run — Mazian’s decision. She had never questioned, had respected the man for strategic genius — for years. They had lost a ship, and he had pulled them, after months of planning, after maneuvers that had taken four months and unreckoned lives to set up.

Had pulled them from a fight from which their nerves were still jangled, from a fight which they could have won.

She had not the heart to look beside her to meet Graff’s eyes, or Di’s, or the faces of the others on the bridge; and no answer for them. Had none for herself. Mazian had another idea… something. She was desperate to believe that there was sane reason for the abort.

Get out quickly, redo it. Replan it. Only this time they had been pushed out of all their supply lines, had given up all the stations from which they had drawn goods.

It was possible Mazian’s nerve had broken. She insisted otherwise to herself, but reckoned inwardly what moves she would have called, what she would have done, in command of the Fleet. What any of them could have done better than had been done. Everything had worked according to plan. And Mazian had aborted. Mazian, that they worshipped.

Blood was in her mouth. She had bitten her lip through.

“Receiving approach instructions from Pell via Europe,” com told her.

“Graff,” she said, “take it over.” She reserved her own attention to the screens and the emergency com link she had plugged into her ear, direct link with Mazian when he should decide finally to use it, when he should decide to communicate with the Fleet, which he had not, silent since the orders which had hurled them out of a battle they had not lost.

It was a routine approach, all routine. She received clearance through Mazian’s com, keyed the order to her rider captains, scattering Norway’s fighters as other ships of the Fleet were shedding their own, backup crews manning them this time. The riders would keep an eye on the militia, blast any that threatened to bolt, then come and dock to them after the great carriers were safely berthed at station.

Com chatter continued out of Pell; go slow, station pleaded with them, Pell was a crowded vicinity. There was nothing from Mazian himself.

ii

Mazian — Mazian himself, and not Union, not another convoy. The whole Fleet was coming in.

Word ran through the station corridors with the speed of every uncontrolled channel, through the station offices and the smallest gathering on the docks, through Q as well, for there were leaks at the barriers, and screens showed the situation there. Emotion ran from outright panic while there had been the possibility of Union ships… to panic of a different flavor when they knew it for what it was.

Damon studied the monitors and intermittently paced the floors of dock command blue. Elene was there, seated at the com console, holding the plug to her ear and frowning in concentrated dispute with someone. Merchanters were in a state of panic; the militarized ones were an impulse away from bolting entirely, in dread of being swept up by the Fleet, crews and ships as well impressed to service. Others dreaded confiscations, of supplies, of arms, of equipment and personnel. Such fears and complaints were his concern; he talked to some of them, when he could offer any assurance. Legal Affairs was supposed to prevent such confiscations by injunction, by writs and decrees. Decrees… against Mazian. Merchanters knew what that was worth. He paced and fretted, finally went to com and took another channel, contacting security.

“Dean,” he hailed the man in charge, “call me alterday shift. If we can’t pull them off Q, we still can’t leave those freighter docks open to easy intrusion. Put some live bodies in the way. Uniform some of the supervisory staff if you haven’t enough. General call-up; get those docks secure and make sure you keep the Downers out of there.”

“Your office authorizes it.”

“It authorizes it.” There was hesitation on the other end; there were supposed to be papers, counter-signatures from the main office. Stationmaster could do it; stationmaster’s office had its hands full trying to make sense out of this situation. His father was on com trying to stall off the Fleet with argument.

“Get me a signed paper when you can,” Dean Gihan said “I’ll get them there.”

Damon breathed a soft hiss, shut down the contact, paced more, paused again behind Elene’s chair, leaning on the back of it. She leaned back in a moment’s lull, half-turned to touch his hand. Her face had been white when he had come into the room. She had recovered her color and her composure. Techs kept busy, dispensing the finer details of orders to the dock crews below, preparations for station central to start shifting freighters out of berth to accommodate the Fleet. Chaos — there were not only freighters in dock, there were a hundred merchanters assigned permanent orbit with the station about Downbelow, a drifting cloud of freighters for which there had been no room. Nine ships of vast size were moving in on that, sending ships off dock out into it. Mazian’s com was firing a steady catechism of questions and authorizations at Pell, as yet refusing to specify what he wanted or where he meant to dock, if he meant to dock at all.

Us next? The nightmare was with them. Evacuation. Pregnancy was no state in which to contemplate a refugee journey to God knew where, through jump — to some long-abandoned Hinder Star station; to Sol, to Earth… He thought of Hansford. Thought of Elene… in that. Of what had been civilized men when they started. “Maybe we won,” a tech said. He blinked, realized that too for a possibility, but not possible… they had always known at heart that it was impossible, that Union had grown too big, that the Fleet could give them years, as it had until now, but not victory, never that. The carriers would not have come in in this number, not for any other reason than retreat.

He reckoned their chances if Pell refused evacuation; reckoned what awaited any Konstantin in Union hands. The military would never let him stay behind. He set his hand on Elene’s shoulder, his heart beating fit to break, realizing the possiblity of being separated, losing her and the baby. He would be put aboard under arrest if there were an evacuation, the same way as it had happened on other stations, to get vital personnel out of Union hands, people put on whatever ship they could reach. His father… his mother… Pell was their lives; was life itself to his mother — and Emilio and Miliko. He felt sick inside, stationer, out of generations of stationers, who had never asked for war.

For Elene, for Pell, for all the dreams they had had, he would have fought.

But he did not know where to begin.

iii

Signy had it visual now, the hubbed ring of Pell’s Station, the distant moon, the bright jewel of Downbelow, cloud-swirled. They had long since dumped velocity, moved in with dreamlike slowness compared to their former speed, as the station’s smooth shape resolved itself into the chaos of angles its surface was.

Freighters were jammed into every berth of the visible side, docking and standby. There was incredible clutter on scan, and they were moving slowly because it took that long for these sluggish ships to clear an approach for them. Every merchanter which had not been swept into Union hands had to be hereabouts, at station, in pattern, or farther out, or hovering off in the deep just out of system. Graff still had controls, a tedious business now. Unprecedented crowding and traffic. Chaos indeed. She was afraid, when she analyzed the growing tautness at her gut. Anger had cooled and she was afraid with a helplessness she was not accustomed to feel… a wish that by someone very wise and at some time long ago, other choices had been made, which would have saved them all from this moment, and this place, and the choices they had left.

“Carriers North Pole and Tibet will stand off from station,” the notification came from Europe. “Assume patrol.”

That was mortally necessary; and on this particular approach, Signy wished herself and her crew on that assignment. There was bitter choice ahead. She did not look forward to another operation like Russell’s Station, where civ panic had anticipated the military action for the station’s dismantling, mobs at the docks… her crew had had enough of that. She had, and disliked the thought of letting troops loose on a station when they were in the mood hers were in now.

Another message came through. Pell Station advised that it had shifted a number of freighters out of berths to accommodate the warships in one sequence and without immediate neighbors on the docks. The dislodged freighters would be moving through the pattern of the orbiting ships in a direction opposite to their entry of that pattern. Mazian’s voice cut in, deep and harsh, a repeated advisement that, whatever disruption in the patterns of ships about Pell, if any freighter tried to jump system they would be blown without warning.

Station acknowledged; it was all they could do.

iv

Nothing worked. In Q nothing ever seemed to. Vassily Kressich punched buttons totally dead and punched them again, hit the com unit with the heel of his hand and still had no response from station com central. He paced the limits of his small apartment. The breakdowns infuriated him, drove him almost to tears. They happened daily; the water, the fans, the com, vid, supplies, shortages driving home over and over again the misery of his living, the decay, the pressure of bodies, the senseless violence of people driven mad by crowding and uncertainty. He had the apartment. He had his possessions; he kept these things meticulously in order, scrubbed often and obsessively. The smell of Q clung to him, no matter how he washed and how diligently he scrubbed the floors and sealed the closet against the pervading smell. It was an antiseptic reek, of cheap astringents and whatever chemicals the station used to combat disease and crowding and keep the life-support in balance.

He paced the floor, tried the com again, hoping, and it did not work. He could hear commotion outside in the corridor, trusted that Nino Coledy and his boys would have things under some control… hoped so. There were times when he could not get out of Q, in the occasional disturbances, when the gates sealed and even his council pass did not suffice to make an exception. He knew where he ought to be — outside, restoring order, managing Coledy, trying to restrain the Q police from some of their excesses.

And he could not go. His flesh cringed at the mere thought of confronting the mobs and the shouting and the hate and the uglinesses of Q… of more blood, and more things to disturb his sleep. He dreamed of Redding. Of others. Of people he had known who turned up dead in the corridors, or vented. He knew that this cowardice was ultimately fatal. He fought it, knowing where it led, that when once he appeared to come apart, he was lost… and knowing that, there were days when it was difficult to walk those halls, when he felt his courage inadequate. He was one of them, no different from the rest; and given shelter, he did not want to come out of it, did not want to cross even that brief space necessary to reach the security post and the doors.

They would kill him, Coledy or one of the rival powers. Or someone with no motive at all. Someday in the madness of rumor which swept Q, they would kill him, someone disappointed in an application, someone who hated and found him a symbol of authority. His stomach knotted now every time he opened the door of his apartment. There were questions, outside and he had no answers; there were demands, and he could not meet them; eyes, and he could not face them. If he went out this day, he had to come back, when the disorder might be worse; he was never permitted out of Q more than one shift at a time. He had tried, tested his credit with them — finally gathered the courage to ask for papers, to ask for release, days after the last disturbance — asked, knowing it might get back to Coledy; asked knowing it might cost him his life. And they had denied him. The great, the powerful council of which he was a member… would not hear him. He had, Angelo Konstantin said, too great a value where he was, privately made a show of pleading with him to stay where he was. He said nothing more of it, fearing it would go more public, and he would not live long after that.

He had been a good man, a brave man once. He had reckoned himself so, at least, before the voyage; before the war; while there was Jen, and Romy. He had twice been mobbed in Q, once beaten senseless. Redding had tried to kill him and would not be the last. He was tired and sick, and rejuv was not working for him; he suspected the quality of what he had gotten, suspected the strain was killing him. He had watched his face acquire new lines, a hollowed hopelessness; he no longer recognized the man he had been a year ago. He feared obsessively for his health, knowing the quality of medical care they had in Q, where any medicines were stolen and might be adulterated, where he was dependent on Coledy’s largesse for drugs as well as wine and decent food. He no longer thought of home, no longer mourned, no longer thought of the future. There was only today, as horrible as yesterday; and if there was one desire he had left, it was to have some assurance it would not be worse.

Again he tried com, and this time not even the red light came on. Vandals dismantled things in Q as fast as their own repair crews could get them working… their own crews. It took days to get Pell workmen in here, and some things stayed broken. He had nightmares of such an end for them all, sabotage of something vital by a maniac who did not consider personal suicide enough, the whole section voided. It could be done. In crisis.

Or at any moment.

He paced the floor, faster and faster, clenched his arms across his stomach, which hurt constantly when he was under stress. The pain grew, wiping out other fears.

He gathered his nerve at last, put on his jacket, weaponless as most of Q was not, for he had to pass checkpoint scan. He fought nausea, setting his hand on the door release, finally nerved himself to step out into the dark, graffiti-marred corridor. He locked the door after him. He had not yet been robbed, but he expected to be, despite Coledy’s protection; everyone was robbed. Safest to have little; he was known to have much. If he was safe it was that what he had belonged to Coledy in his men’s eyes, that he did — if word of his application to leave had not gotten to their ears.

Through the hall and past the guards… Coledy’s men. He walked onto the dock, among crowds which stank of sweat and unchanged clothes and antiseptic sprays. People recognized him and snatched at him with grimy hands, asking news of what was happening over in the main station.

“I don’t know, I don’t know yet; com’s dead in my quarters. I’m on my way to learn. Yes, I’ll ask. I’ll ask, sir.” He repeated it over and over, tearing from one pair of clutching hands to the next, one questioner to the other, some wild-eyed and far gone in the madness of drugs. He did not run; running was panic, panic was mobs, mobs were death; and there were the section doors ahead, the promise of safety, a place beyond which Q could not reach, where no one could go without the precious pass he carried. “It’s Mazian,” the rumor was running Q dockside. And with it: “They’re pulling out. All Pell’s pulling out and leaving us behind.”

“Councillor Kressich.” A hand caught his arm and meant business. The grip pulled him abruptly about. He stared into the face of Sax Chambers, one of Coledy’s men, felt threat in the grip which hurt his arm. “Going where, councillor?”

“Other side,” he said, breathless. They knew. His stomach hurt the more. “Council will be meeting in the crisis. Tell Coledy. I’d better be there. No telling what council will hand us otherwise.”

Sax said nothing — did nothing for a moment. Intimidation was a skill of his. He simply stared, long enough to remind Kressich that he had other skills. He let go, and Kressich pulled away.

Not running. He must not run. Must not look back. Must not make his terror evident. He was composed on the outside, though his belly was tied in knots.

A crowd was gathered about the doors. He worked his way through them, ordered them back. They moved, sullenly, and he used his pass to open their side of the access, stepped through quickly and used the card to seal the door before any could gather the nerve to follow. For a moment then he was alone on the upward ramp, the narrow access, in bright light and a lingering smell of Q. He leaned against the wall, trembling, his stomach heaving. After a moment he walked on down the ramp on the other side and pressed the button which should attract the guards on the other side of Q line.

This button worked. The guards opened, accepted his card, and noted his presence in Pell proper. He passed decontamination, and one of the guards left his post to walk with him, routine, whenever the councillor from Q was admitted to station, until he had passed the limits of the border zone; then he was allowed to walk alone.

He straightened his clothes as he went, trying to shed the smell and the memory and the thoughts of Q. But there was alarm sounding, red lights blinking in all the corridors, and security personnel and police were everywhere evident There was no peace this side either.

v

The boards in central com were lit from end to end, jammed with calls from every region of the station at once. Residential use had shut itself down in crisis; situation red was flashing in all zones, advising all residents to stay put.

They were not all regarding that instruction. Some halls of the halls on monitor were vacant; others were full of panicked residents. What showed now on Q monitor was worse.

“Security call,” Jon Lukas ordered, watching the screens. “Blue three.” The division chief leaned over the board and gave directions to the dispatcher. Jon walked over to the main board, behind the harried com chiefs post. The whole of council had been called to take whatever emergency posts they could reach, to provide policy, not specifics. He had been closest, had run, reaching this post, through the chaos outside. Hale… Hale, he fervently hoped, had done what he was told, was sitting in his apartment, with Jessad. He watched the confusion in the center, paced from board to board, watched one and another hall in confusion. The com chief kept trying to call through to the stationmaster’s office, but even he could not get through; tried to route it through station command com, and kept getting a channel unavailable blinking on the screen.

The chief swore, accepted the protests of his subordinates, a harried man in the eye of a crisis.

“What’s happening?” Jon asked. When the man ignored the question for a moment to handle a subordinate’s query, he waited. “What are you doing?”

“Councillor Lukas,” the chief said in a thin voice, “we have our hands full. There’s no time.”

“You can’t get through.”

“No, sir, I can’t get through. They’re tied up with command transmission. Excuse me.”

“Let it foul,” he said, when the supervisor started to turn back to the board, and when the man looked at him, startled: “Give me general broadcast.”

“I need the authorization,” the com chief said. Behind him, red lights began to flash and multiply. “It’s the authorization I need, councillor. Stationmaster has to give it.”

“Do it!”

The man hesitated, looked about him as if there were advice to be had from some other quarter. Jon seized him by the shoulder and faced him to the board while more and more lights flashed on the jammed boards.

“Hurry it,” Jon ordered him, and the chief reached for an internal channel and punched in a mike.

“General override to number one,” he ordered, and had the acknowledgment back in an instant. “Override on vid and com.” The com center main screen lit, camera active.

Jon drew a deep breath and leaned into the field. The image was going everywhere, not least to his own apartment, to the man named Jessad. “This is Councillor Jon Lukas,” he said to all Pell, breaking into every channel, operations and residential, from the stations busy directing incoming ships to the barracks of Q to the least and greatest residence in the station. “I have a general announcement. The fleet presently in our vicinity is confirmed to be that of Mazian, proceeding in under normal operations for docking. This station is secure, but will remain under condition red until the all-clear is given. Operations in the com center and elsewhere will proceed more smoothly if each citizen will refrain from the use of communications except in the most extreme necessity. All points of the station are secure and there has been no damage or crisis. Records will be made of calls, and failure to regard this official request will be noted. All Downer work crews, report to your section habitats at once and wait for someone to direct you. Stay off the docks. All other workers continue about your assigned business. If you can solve problems without calling central, do so. As yet we have nothing but operations contact with the Fleet; as soon as information becomes available, we will make it public. Please stay by your receivers; this will be the quickest and most accurate source of news.”

He leaned out of the field. The warning lights went off the console camera. He looked about him to find the chaos on the boards much less, as the whole station had been otherwise occupied for a moment. Some calls returned at once, presumably necessary and urgent; most did not. He drew a deep breath, thinking in one part of his mind of what might be happening in his apartment, or worse, away from it — hoping that Jessad was there, and fearing that he would be discovered there. Mazian. Military presence, which might start checking records, asking close questions. And to be found harboring Jessad -

“Sir.” It was the com chief. The third screen from the left was alight. Angelo Konstantin, angry and flushed. Jon punched the call through.

“Use procedures,” Angelo spat, and broke off. The screen went dark, as Jon stood clenching his hands and trying to reckon whether that was because he had caught Angelo with no good answer or because Angelo was occupied.

Let it come, he thought in an excess of hate, the pulse pounding in his veins. Let Mazian evacuate all who would go. Union would come in after… would have need of those who knew the station. Understandings could be reached; his understanding with Jessad paved the way for that. It was no time to be timid. He was in it and there was no retreat now.

The first step… to become visible, a reassuring voice, and let Jessad see him doing it. Become known, have his face familiar all over the station. That was the advantage the Konstantins had always had, monopoly of public visibility, handsomeness. Angelo looked the vital patriarch; he did not. He had not the manner, the lifelong habit of authority. But ability — that he had; and once his heart had begun to settle out of the initial dread of the disorder out there, he found advantage in the disorder; in any events that went against the Konstantins.

Only Jessad… he remembered Mariner, which had died when Mazian had crowded in on the situation there. Only one thing protected them now… that Jessad had to rely on him and on Hale as his arms and legs, having no network yet of his own; and at the moment Jessad was neatly imprisoned, having to trust him, because he dared not try the halls without papers — dared not be out there with Mazian coming in.

He drew in a breath, expanded with the thought of the power he actually had. He was in the best of positions. Jessad could provide insurance… or what was another body vented, another paperless body, as they sometimes ended up vented out of Q? He had never killed before, but he had known from the time he accepted Jessad’s presence that it was a possibility.

i

The warning lights must still be on outside in the corridor. The salvage center kept to a deliberate pace. The supervisor walked the aisles between the machines and silenced any talk by his presence. Josh carefully kept his head down, unfastened a plastic seal from a small, worn-out motor, dropped it into a tray for further sorting, dropped clamps into yet another tray, disassembled the components into varied categories, for reuse or recycling according to wear and type of material.

There had been, since the original com announcement, no further word from the screen on the forward wall. No discussion was allowed after the initial murmur of dismay at the news. Josh kept his eyes averted from the screen, and from the station policeman at the door. He was more than three hours past his shift’s quitting time. They should all have been dismissed, all those on partial. Other workers should have arrived. He had been here over six hours. There was no provision for meals here. The supervisor had finally sent out for sandwiches and drinks for them. There was still a cup of ice on the bench in front of him. He did not touch it, wishing to seem completely busy.

The supervisor stopped a moment behind him. He did not react, did not break the rhythm of his actions. He heard the supervisor move on, and did not look to see.

They did not treat him differently from the others here. It was his own troubled mind, he persuaded himself, which made him suspect they might be watching him in particular. They were all closely supervised. The girl by him, a solemn, slow-moving child and ever so careful, was doing the most complex job of which she was capable, and nature had cheated her of much capacity. Many here in the salvage center were of that category. There were some who entered here young, perhaps to seek a track up through the job classifications, to gain elementary mechanical skills and to go higher, into technical positions or manufacture. And there were some whose nervous behavior indicated other reasons for being here, anxious, obsessive concentration… strange to observe the symptoms in others.

Only he had never been a criminal as they might have been, and perhaps they trusted him less for that. He cherished his job here, which kept his mind busy, which gave him independence… quite as the sober girl beside him cherished her place, he thought. At first, in his zeal for demonstrating his skill, he had worked with feverish quickness; and then he saw that it upset the child beside him, and that distressed him, because she could not do more, could never do more. He compromised then, and did not make his efficiency obvious. It was enough to survive. It had looked to be enough for a long time.

Only now he felt sick to his stomach and wished he had not eaten all his sandwich, but even in that matter he had not wanted to seem different from those about him.

The war had gotten to Pell. Mazianni. The Fleet was at hand.

Norway, and Mallory.

He did not think some thoughts. When the dark crowded him, he worked the harder and blinked the memories away. Only… war… Someone near him whispered about having to evacuate the station.

It was not possible. It could not happen.

Damon! he thought, wishing that he could get up and leave, go to the office, be reassured. Only there was no reassurance to be found, and he was afraid to try it.

Mazian’s Fleet. Martial law.

She was with them.

He might break, if he was not careful; the balance of his mind was delicate and he knew it. Perhaps to have asked for this oblivion was in itself insane, and Adjustment had made him no more unbalanced than he had ever been. He suspected every emotion he felt, and therefore tried to feel as few as possible.

“Rest,” the supervisor said. “Ten-minute break.”

He kept working, as he had through previous rest periods. So did the girl beside him.

ii

“We hold Pell,” Signy told her crew and the troops, those present with her on the bridge and those scattered throughout the ship. “Our decision — Mazian’s, mine, the other captains — is to hold Pell. Company agents have signed a treaty with Union… handed them everything in the Beyond and called for us to stand aside while they do it; they turned our contact code over to Union. That’s why we aborted the strike… why we took out. No knowing what of our codes is betrayed.” She let that sink in, watching grim faces all about her, aware of the whole body of the ship and all the listeners elsewhere within it. “Pell… the Hinder Stars, this whole edge of the Beyond… this is what we have left secure. We aren’t going to take that order from the Company; we aren’t going to accept surrender, however it’s cloaked. We’re off the leash, and this time we fight the war our own way. We’ve got ourselves a world and a station; and the whole Beyond began from that. We can rebuild the Hinder Star stations, all that used to exist between here and the Sun itself. We can do it. The Company may not be smart enough to want a buffer now between themselves and Union, but they will, believe me they will, and they’ll be smart enough at least not to trifle with us. Pell’s our world now. We’ve got nine carriers to hold it. We’re not Company anymore. We’re Mazian’s Fleet, and Pell is ours. Any contrary opinions?”

She waited for some, although she knew her people like family… for some might have other opinions, might have second thoughts about this. There was reason they should.

A sudden cheer erupted off the troop decks, found echo, all channels open. People on the bridge were hugging one another and grinning. Graff embraced her; armscomper Tiho did; and others of her officers of many years. Some were crying. There were tears in Graff’s eyes. None in her own; might have been, but that she felt guilt… still, irrationally, the habit of an outworn loyalty. She embraced Graff a second time, pushed back, looked around her. “Get all of us ready,” she said. It was going all over the ship, open com. “We’re moving in to take station central before they know what’s hit them. Di, hurry it.”

Graff started giving orders. She heard Di doing so, down in the troop corridors, distinctive echo. The bridge moved into activity, techs jostling one another in the narrow aisles getting to posts. “Ten minutes,” she shouted, “full armament, all available troops arm and out.”

There was shouting elsewhere, the com giving evidence of troops rushing to suit even before the orders were officially passed. The commands began echoing through the corridors. Signy walked back to her small office/quarters and took the precaution of helmet and body armor, none for her limbs, trading risk for freedom of motion. Five minutes. She heard Di counting over the open com, with outright chaos feeding out from various command stations. No matter. This crew and the troops knew their business in the dark and upside down. All family here. The incompatible met early accidents and those left were close as brothers, as children, as lovers.

She headed out, slipping her pistol openly into the armor-holster, rode the lift down; armored troops pouring down the corridor at a rattling run hit the wall to give her room the instant they recognized her coming through, so that she could run to the fore, where she belonged.

“Signy!” they cried after her, jubilant. “Bravo, Signy!”

They were alive again, and felt it.

iii

“No,” Angelo said at once. “No, don’t try to stop them. Pull back. Pull back our forces immediately.”

Station command acknowledged and turned to its business. Screens in the council chamber began to reflect new orders; the muffled voice of security command gave reports. Angelo sank back in his chair, at the table in the center of council, amid the partially filled tiers, the soft murmurings of panic among those who had contrived to get back here through the halls. He propped his mouth against his steepled hands and sat studying the incoming reports which cut across the screens in rapid sequence, views of the docks, where armored troops boiled out. Some of the council had waited too long, could not get out of the sections where they worked or where they had taken up an emergency post. Damon and Elene came in together, for refuge, out of breath, hesitated at the door. Angelo beckoned his son and daughter-in-law in on personal privilege, and they approached at his urging and settled at two of the vacant places at the table. “Had to leave dock office in a hurry,” Damon said quietly. “Took the lift up.” Hard behind them came Jon Lukas and his clutch of friends to seat themselves, the friends in the tiers and Jon at the table. Two of the Jacobys made it, hair disheveled and faces glistening with sweat. It was not council; it was a sanctuary from what was happening outside.

On the screens matters were worsening, the troops headed in toward the heart of the station, security trying to keep up with the situation by remote, switching from one camera to the next in haste, a rapid flickering of images.

“Staff wants to know if we lock the control-center doors,” a councillor said from the doorway.

“Against rifles?” Angelo moistened his lips, slowly shook his head, staring at the flick of images from camera to camera to camera.

“Call Mazian,” Dee said, a new arrival. “Protest this.”

“I have, sir. I have no answer. I reckon he’s with them.”

Q disorder, a screen advised them. Three known dead; numerous injured.…

“Sir,” a call broke through the message. “They’re mobbing the doors in Q, trying to batter them down. Shall we shoot?”

“Don’t open,” Angelo said, his heart pounding at the acceleration of insanity where there had been order. “Negative, don’t fire unless the doors are breached. What do you want — to let them loose?”

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t.” The contact went dead. He wiped his face, feeling ill.

“I’ll get down that way,” Damon offered, half out of his chair.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Angelo said. “I don’t want you gathered up in any military sweep.”

“Sir,” an urgent voice came at his elbow, a presence which had come down from the tiers. “Sir — ”

Kressich.

“Sir,” Kressich said.

“Q com is down,” security command advised. “They’ve got it out again. We can splice something in. They can’t have reached the dock speakers.”

Angelo looked at the man Kressich, a haggard, grayed individual, who had gotten more so in the passing months. “Hear that?”

“They’re afraid,” Kressich said, “that you’re going to leave here and let the Fleet leave them for Union.”

“We don’t know what the Fleet’s intention may be, Mr. Kressich, but if a mob tries to breach those doors into our side of the docks, it’s going to be beyond our power to do anything but shoot. I suggest you get on the com link to that section when they get it patched, and if there’s a speaker they haven’t broken, make that clear to them.”

“We know we’re pariahs whatever happens,” Kressich returned, lips trembling. “We asked, we asked over and over, speed up the checks, run id’s, purify our records, do it faster. Now it’s too late, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily, Mr. Kressich.”

“You’re going to see to your own people first, get them on the available ships in comfort You’re going to take our ships.”

“Mr. Kressich — ”

“Work has been progressing,” said Jon Lukas. “Some of you may have clear papers. I wouldn’t jeopardize them, sir.”

There was sudden silence from Kressich, an uncertain look, his face an unwholesome color. His lips trembled and the tremor spread to his chin, his hands locked upon each other.

Amazing, Angelo thought sourly, how easily it comes down to small concerns; and how accurately he does it.

Congratulations, Jon.

Easy to deal with the refugees of Q. Offer all their leaders clear paper and reason with them. Some had, in fact, proposed that.

“They’ve got blue three,” Damon muttered. Angelo followed his gaze to the monitors, on which the flow of armored troops and their stationing along the corridors had become a rapid, mechanical process.

“Mazian,” said Jon. “Mazian himself.”

Angelo stared at the silver-haired man in the lead, mentally counting off the moments it would take that tide of soldiery to flow up the spiraling emergency ramps to their level, to the doors of the council itself.

That long, he still held the station.

iv

The images changed. Lily fretted, sprang up and walked back and forth, a step toward the buttons on the box, a step toward the dreamer, whose eyes were troubled.

Finally she dared reach for the box, to change the dream.

“No,” the dreamer told her sharply, and she looked back and saw the pain… the dark, lovely eyes in the pale face, the white, white sheets, all about her light, save the eyes, which gazed on the sights in the halls. Lily came back to her, interposed her body between dream and dreamer, smoothed the pillow.

“I turn you,” she offered.

“No.”

She stroked the brow, touched so, so gently. “Dal-tes-elan, love you, love you.”

They are troops,“ Sun-her-friend said, in that voice so still and calm that it shed peace on others. ”Men-with-guns, Lily. It’s trouble. I don’t know what may happen.“

“Dream them gone,” Lily pleaded.

“I have no power to do that, Lily. But see, there is no using the guns. No one is hurt.”

Lily shivered, and stayed close. From time to time on the ever-changing walls the face of Sun appeared, reassuring them, and stars danced, and the face of the world shone for them like the crescent moon. And the line of men-in-shells grew, filling all the ways of the station.

v

There was no resistance. Signy had not drawn her gun, although her hand was on it. Neither had Mazian or Kreshov or Keu. Threat was for the troops, leveled rifles with the safeties off. They had fired one warning burst on the docks, nothing since. They moved quickly, giving no time for thought in those who met them now, no hint that there was argument possible. And there were few who lingered to meet them at all in these sections. Angelo Konstantin had given orders, Signy reckoned — the only sensible course.

They changed levels, up a ramp at the end of the main hall. Boots rang in complete vacancy; the sharp report of troops in their wake filing off to station themselves at the appointed line-of-sight intervals sent up other echoes. They passed from the emergency ramp to the area of station control; troops moved in there too, under officers, lowered rifles, while other detachments headed down the side halls to invade other offices: no shooting, not here. They kept moving down the center corridors, passed from cold steel and plastics to the sound-deadening matting, entered the hall of the bizarre wooden sculptures, whose eyes looked no less shocked now than before.

And the human faces, the small group gathered in the anteroom of the council chambers, were as round-eyed.

Troopers swept through, pushed at the ornate doors to open them. The leaved doors swung to either side and two troopers braced like statues facing inward, rifles leveled. The councillors inside, in a chamber far from filled, rose and faced the guns as Signy and Mazian and the others walked through. There was dignity in their posture, if not defiance.

“Captain Mazian,” said Angelo Konstantin, “can I offer you to sit and talk this over with us… you and your captains?”

Mazian stood still a moment. Signy stood between him and Keu, Kreshov on the other side, surveying faces. Not the full council, not by half. “We don’t take that much of your time,” Mazian said. “You asked us here, so we’re here.”

No one had moved, not to sit, not to shift position.

“We’d like an explanation,” Konstantin said, “of this — operation.”

“Martial law,” Mazian said, “for the duration of the emergency. And questions… direct questions, Mr. Konstantin, regarding agreements you may have made with certain Company apents. Understandings… with Union, and the flow of classified information to Union intelligence. Treason, Mr. Konstantin.”

Blood left faces all about the room.

“No such understandings,” Konstantin said. “No such understandings exist, captain. This station is neutral. We are a Company station, but we do not permit ourselves to be drawn into military action, or used as a base.”

“And this… militia… you have scattered about you?”

“Sometimes neutrality needs reinforcement, captain. Captain Mallory herself warned us of random refugee flights.”

“You claim ignorance that information… was handed to Union by civilian Company agents. You aren’t party to any agreements, arrangements, or concessions which those agents may have made with the enemy?”

There was a moment of heavy silence. “We know of no such agreements. If there were any agreements to be made, Pell was not informed of them; and if we had been we would have discouraged them.”

“You’re informed now,” Mazian said. “Information was passed, including code words and signals which jeopardize the security of this station. You’ve been handed to Union, stationmaster, by the Company. Earth is folding up its interests out here. You’re one. We’re another. We don’t accept such a situation. Because of what’s already been turned over, other stations have been lost. You’re the border. With what forces we have, Pell is both necessary to us and tenable. Do you understand me?”

“You’ll have every cooperation,” Konstantin said.

“Access to your records. Every security problem should be weeded out and set under quarantine.”

Konstantin’s eyes shifted to Signy and back again. “We’ve followed all your procedures as outlined by captain Mallory. Meticulously.”

“There’ll be no section of this station, no record, no machine, no apartment, if need be, where my people don’t have instant access. I would prefer to withdraw most of my forces and leave yours in charge, if we can have this clearly understood: that if there are security problems, if there are leaks, if a ship bolts from pattern out there, or if order breaks down in any particular, we have our own procedures, and they involve shooting. Is that clear?”

“It is,” Konstantin said, “abundantly clear.”

“My people will come and go at will, Mr. Konstantin, and they’ll shoot if they judge it necessary; and if we have to come in shooting to clear the way for one of ours, we will, every man and woman in the Fleet. But that won’t happen. Your own security will see to it — or your security with the help of ours. You tell me which way.”

Konstantin’s jaw clenched. “So we are plain on both sides, Captain Mazian, we recognize your obligation to protect your forces and to protect this station. We will cooperate; we will expect cooperation from you. When I send a message hereafter, it goes through.”

“Absolutely,” Mazian said easily. He looked to right and left of him, moved finally, walked a space toward the doors while Signy and the others still faced council. “Captain Keu.” he said, “you may discuss matters further with council. Captain Mallory, take the operations center. Captain Kreshov, check through security records and procedures.”

“I’ll want someone knowlegeable,” Kreshov said.

“The security director will assist you,” Konstantin said. “I’ll call that order ahead.”

“I also,” Signy said, glancing at a familiar face at the central table, the younger Konstantin. The young man’s expression altered at that look, and the young woman by him reached a hand to his.

“Captain,” he said.

“Damon Konstantin… yourself, if you will. You can be of help.”

Mazian left, taking a few of the escort with him, for a general tour of the area, or more than likely, further operations, the taking of other sections, like the core and its machinery. Jan Meyis, Australia’s second in command, was on that delicate task. Keu drew back a chair at the council table, taking possession of it and the chamber; Kreshov followed Mazian out. “Come on,” Signy said, and young Damon paused for a glance at his father, who was thin-lipped and upset, at parting with the young woman at his side. They did not, Signy reckoned, think much of her company. She waited, then walked with him to the door where she gathered up two of her own troopers for escort, Kuhn and Dektin.

“The command center,” she directed Konstantin, and he showed her out the door with incongruous and natural courtesy, tending the way they had come in.

Not a word from him; his face was set and hard.

“Your wife back there?” Signy asked. She collected details… on those of consequence. “Who?”

“My wife.”

“Who?”

“Elene Quen.”

That startled her. “Station family?”

“The Quens. Off Estelle. Married me and stayed off her last run.”

“She’s lost. You know that.”

“We know.”

“Pity. Children, you two?”

It was a moment before he answered that one. “On the way.”

“Ah.” The woman had been a little heavy. “There are two of you Konstantin boys, aren’t there?”

“I have a brother.”

“Where is he?”

“On Downbelow.” The expression was more and more anxious.

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not worrying.”

She smiled, mocking him.

“Are your forces on Downbelow too?” he asked.

She kept the smile, saying nothing. “I recall you’re from Legal Affairs.”

“Yes.”

“So you’d know quite a few of the comp accesses for personnel records, wouldn’t you?”

He shot her a look that wasn’t frightened. Angry. She looked to the corridor ahead, where troops guarded the windowed complex of central. “We’re assured your cooperation,” she reminded him.

“Is it true that we were ceded?”

She smiled still, reckoning the Konstantins, if anyone, to have their wits about them, to know their value and that of Pell. “Trust me,” she said with irony. command central, a sign said, with an arrow pointing; communications, another; blue one, 01-0122. “Those signs” she said, “come down. Everywhere.”

“Can’t.”

“And the color keys.”

“The station is too confusing — even residents could get lost — the halls mirror-image, and without our color-keys…”

“So in my ship, Mr. Konstantin, we don’t mark corridors for intruders.”

“We have children on this station. Without the colors…”

“They can learn,” she said. “And the signs all come off.”

Station central lay open before them… occupied by troops. Rifles swung anxiously as they entered, then recentered. She looked all about the command center, the row upon row of control consoles, the technicians and station officers who worked there. Troops visibly relaxed at her presence. Civs at their posts looked relieved as well — at that of young Konstantin, she reckoned; for that purpose she had brought him.

“It’s all right,” Signy said to the troops and the civs. “We’ve reached an accommodation with the stationmaster and the council. We’re not evacuating Pell. The Fleet is setting up a base here, one we’re not going to give up. No way Union’s coming in here.”

A murmur went among the civs, eyes meeting eyes with subdued looks of relief. From hostages they were suddenly allies. The troops had grounded their rifles.

“Mallory,” she heard whispered from point to point of the room. “That’s Mallory.” In that tone, which was not love… nor was it disrespect.

“Show me about,” she said to Damon Konstantin.

He walked about the control center with her, quietly named the posts, the personnel who filled them, many of whom she would remember; she was good at that when she wanted to be. She stopped a moment and looked about her, at the screens, the rotating schematic Downbelow, dotted with green and red points. “Bases?” she asked.

“We’ve got several auxiliary sites,” he said, “trying to absorb and feed what you left us.”

“Q?” She saw the monitor on that section too, seething human mass battering at a sealed door. Smoke. Debris. “What do you do with them?”

“You didn’t give us that answer,” he replied. Few took that tone with her. It amused her.

She listened, looked about her at the grand complex, bank upon bank, boards with functions alien to those of a starship. This was commerce and the maintenance of a centuries-old orbit, cataloging of goods and manufacture, of internal and onworld populations, native and human… a colony, busy with mundane life. She surveyed it with a slow intake of breath, a sense of ownership. This was what they had fought to keep alive.

Com central came through suddenly, an announcement from council. “… wish to assure station residents,” said Angelo Konstantin, with council chambers in the background, “that no evacuation of this station will take place. The Fleet is here for our protection…”

Their world.

It only remained to put it in order.

i

Police had come in, quiet men, who stood by the door and talked to the supervisor. Josh saw them from under his brows and kept his head down, his fingers never missing a turn of the piece he was removing. The young girl by him had stopped outright, nudged him hard in the ribs.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey, it’s police.”

Five of them. Josh ignored the blows in his ribs and she only jabbed him the harder.

Above them the com screen came on. The light caught his eyes and he looked up for an instant at another general announcement, for the return of limited freedom of passage in green section. He ducked his head and resumed work.

“They’re looking this way,” the girl said.

They were. They were making gestures in this direction, Josh shot a look up and down again, up once more, for troops had come in, armored. Company soldiers. Mazianni. “Look,” the girl said. He set himself back to work. The silken voice of central continued over the com, promising that it was all safe. He stopped believing it.

Footsteps were in the aisle, coming from the other side, heavy steps and many of them. They reached him and stopped behind him. He kept working in a last, feverish hope. Damon, he thought, wished. Damon!

A hand touched his shoulder and made him turn. He stared up into the supervisor’s face, unfocused, on the security police from the station and a soldier in the armor and insignia of Mazian’s Fleet.

“Mr. Talley,” said one of the police, “will you come with us, please?”

He realized the wrench in his hand as a weapon, carefully laid it on the counter, wiped his hand on his coveralls, and stood up.

“Where are you going?” the girl beside him asked. He had never known her name. Her plain face was distressed. “Where are you going?”

He did not answer, not knowing. One of the police took him by the arm and brought him away down the aisle and up the side of the shop to the door, They were all staring. “Quiet,” the supervisor said. There was a general murmuring. The police and the troops brought him outside into the corridor and stopped there. The door closed, and a troop officer, in body armor only, faced him to the wall and searched him.

The man took his papers from his pocket. He faced about again when they let him and stood with his back against the wall, watching the officer go through the papers. Atlantic, their insignia said. A sick terror worked in him. Company soldiers had the papers in their hands, and they were all his claim to harmlessness, proof of what he had been through, that he was no danger to anyone. He reached out to recover them and the officer held them out of reach. Mazianni. The shadow came back.He withdrew his hand, remembering other encounters, his heart pounding. “I have a pass,” he said, trying to keep the tic from his face, which came when he was upset. “It’s with the papers. You can see I work here. I’m supposed to be here.”

“Mornings only.”

“We were all held,” he said. “We were all held over. Check the others. We’re all from morning shift.”

“You’ll come with us,” one of the troopers said.

“Ask Damon Konstantin. He’ll tell you. I know him. Hell tell you that I’m all right.”

That delayed them. “I’ll make a note of that,” the officer said.

“It’s possibly true,” said one of the station police. “I’ve heard something like that. He’s a special case.”

“We have our orders. Comp spat him out; we have to clear the matter. You lock him up in your facilities or we lock him up in ours.”

Josh opened his mouth to state a preference. “We’ll take him,” the policeman said before he could plead.

“My papers,” Josh said. He stammered and flushed with shame. Some reactions were still too much to control. He held out a demanding hand for his papers and it shook visibly. “Sir.”

The officer folded them and carefully put them into his belt-kit. “He doesn’t need them. He’s not going anywhere. You take him and put him away, and you have him available if any of us want him, you understand that? He may go into Q later, but not till command’s had a chance to review it”

“Understood,” the policeman said crisply. He seized Josh’s arm, led him down the corridor. The troops walked behind, and finally, at an intersection of corridors, their path and that of the troops diverged.

But there were Mazianni at every visible hallway. He felt cold and exposed… felt profound relief when the police stopped at a lift and took him into the car alone; they were, for that ride up and around to red sector one, without the troops.

“Please call Damon Konstantin,” he asked of them. “Or Elene Quen. Or anyone in their offices. I know the numbers.”

There was silence for most of the ride.

“We’ll report it through channels,” one said finally, without looking at him.

The lift stopped, red one. Security zone. He walked out between them, through the transparent partition and to the desk at the entry. Troops were inside this office too, armored and armed, and that sent a wave of panic through him, for he had hoped that in this place at least he was under station authority.

“Please,” he said at the desk, while they were checking him in. He knew the young officer in charge; he had been here when he was a prisoner. He remembered. He leaned forward toward him and lowered his voice, desperately. “Please call the Konstantins. Let them know I’m here.”

Here too there was no answer, only an uncomfortable shift of the eyes away from him. They were afraid, all the stationers — terrified of the armed troops. Soldiers drew him away from the desk, led him down the corridor to the detention cells, put him into one, barren and white and furnished only with sanitary facilities and a white bench extruded from the walls. They delayed to search him again, strip search this time, and left him his clothing on the floor.

He dressed, sank down finally onto the bench, tucked his feet up and rested his head against his knees, tired from his long working and knotted up with fear.

ii

Vittorio Lukas rose from his seat and walked the curve of Hammer’s dingy bridge, hesitated at the twitch of the stick in the hand of the Unioner who continually kept an eye on him. They would not let him come within reach of controls; in this tiny, steeply curved rotation cylinder — most of Hammer’s unlovely mass was a null-G belly, aft — there was a line on the tiles, marked in tape, which circumscribed his prison. He had not discovered yet what would happen if he crossed it without being called; he never meant to find out. He was allowed most of the circuit of the cylinder, the crew quarters where he slept; the tiny main-room section… and this far into the operations area. From here he could make out one of the screens and see scan past the tech’s shoulder; he lingered, staring at it, at the backs of men and women in merchanter dress who were not merchanters, his belly still queasy from drugs and his nerves crawling from jump. He had spent most of the day throwing up his insides.

The captain was standing watching the screens, saw him, beckoned him. Vittorio hesitated; at a second signal came walking ahead into that forbidden operations zone, not without a backward glance at the man with the stick. He accepted the captain’s friendly hand on his shoulder as he took a closer look at scan; prosperous looking sort, this man… might have been a Pell businessman, urged his crew rather than snapping orders. They all treated him well enough, even with politeness. It was his situation and the potentials in it which had him terrified. Coward, his father would say in disgust. It was true. He was. This was no place and no company for him.

“We’re moving back soon now,” the man said… Blass, his name was, Abe Blass. “Didn’t jump far, just enough to stay out of Mazian’s way. Relax, Mr. Lukas. Your stomach treating you better now?”

He said nothing. The mention of his malaise brought a spasm to his gut.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Blass said softly, hand still on his shoulder. “Absolutely nothing, Mr. Lukas. Mazian’s arrival doesn’t trouble us.”

He looked at the man. “And what if the Fleet spots us when we come in again?”

“We can always jump,” Blass said. “Swan’s Eye won’t have strayed from her post; and Ilyko won’t talk; she knows where her interests lie. Just rest easy, Mr. Lukas. You still seem to have some apprehensions of us.”

“If my father on Pell is compromised…”

“That won’t be likely to happen. Jessad knows what he’s doing. Believe me. It’s all planned for. And Union takes care of its friends.” Blass patted the shoulder. “You’re doing very well for a first jump. Take an old timer’s advice and don’t push yourself. Just relax. Go on back to the main room and I’ll talk to you as soon as our move in is plotted.”

“Sir,” he murmured, and did as he was told, wandering past the guard back up the curving deck to the deserted main room. He took a seat at the molded table/bench arrangement, leaned his arm on the table, swallowed heavily.

It was not all nausea from jump. He was terrified. Make a man of you, he could hear his father saying. He seethed with misery. He was what he was, and he did not belong here, with the likes of Abe Blass and these grim very-same people. His father had made him expendable. If he were ambitious he would try to make points for himself in these circumstances, ingratiate himself with Union. He did not. He knew his abilities and his limits, and he wanted Roseen, wanted his comforts, wanted a good drink he could not have with the drugs filling his system.

It was not going to work, none of it; and they would snatch him Unionside where everyone walked in step, and that would be the end of everything he knew. He feared changes. What he had at Pell was good enough. He had never asked much of life or of anyone, and the thought of being out here in the center of nothing at all… gave him nightmares.

But he had no choices. His father had seen to that.

Blass came finally, sat down and solemnly spread charts on the table and explained things to him as if he were someone of consequence to the mission. He looked at the diagram and tried to understand the premises of this shifting about through nothing, when he could not in fact understand where they were, which was essentially nowhere.

“You should feel very confident,” Blass said. “I assure you you’re in a far safer place than the station is right now.”

“You’re a very high officer in Union,” he said, “aren’t you? They wouldn’t send you like this… otherwise.”

Blass shrugged.

“Hammer and Swan’s Eye … all the ships you’ve got near Pell?”

Blass shrugged again. That was his answer.

i

The men had come and gone for a long time, men-in-shells, carrying guns. Satin shivered and tucked further back into the shadows by the cargo lift. They were many who had run when the Lukas directed, who had run again when the stranger men came, by the ways that the hisa could use, the narrow ways, the dark tunnels where hisa could breathe without masks and men could not. Men of the Upabove knew these ways but they had not yet shown them to the strangers, and hisa were safe, though some of them cried deep in the dark, deep, deep below, so that men would not hear.

There was no hope here. Satin pursed her lips and sidled backward in a crouch, waited while the air changed, scampered back into safe darkness. Hands touched her. There was male-scent. She hissed in reproof and smelt after the one who was hers. Arms folded her about. She laid her head wearily against a hard shoulder, comforting as she was comforted. Bluetooth offered her no questions. He knew that there was no better news, for he had said as much when she had insisted on going out to see.

It was trouble, bad trouble. Lukases spoke and gave orders, and strangers threatened. Old One was not here… none of the long-timers were, having gone somewhere about their own business, to the protection of important things, Satin reckoned. To duties ordered by important humans and perhaps duties which regarded hisa.

But they had disobeyed, had not gone to the supervisors, no more than the Old Ones had gone, who also hated Lukases.

“Go back?” someone asked finally.

They would be in trouble if they turned themselves in after running. Men would be angry with them, and the men had guns. “No,” she said, and when there was muttering to the contrary, Bluetooth turned his head to spit a surlier negative. “Think,” he said. “We go there, men can be there, bad trouble.”

“Hungry,” another protested.

No one answered.

Men might take their friendship from them for what they had done. They realized that clearly now. And without that friendship, they might be on Downbelow always. Satin thought of the fields of Downbelow, the soft clouds she had once thought solid enough to sit on, the rain and the blue sky and the gray-green-blue leaves, the flowers and soft mosses… most of all the air which smelled of home. Bluetooth dreamed of that, perhaps, as the heat of her spring faded, and she had not quickened, being young, in her first adult season. Bluetooth saw things now with a clearer head. He mourned the world at times. At times she did. But to be there always and forever…

Sky-sees-her, that was her name; and she had seen truth. The blue was false, a cover stretched out like a blanket; truth was black distances, and the face of great Sun shining in the dark. Truth would always hang above them. Without the favor of humans, they would return to Downbelow without hope, forever and ever to know themselves shut off from the sky. There was no home now, not now that they had looked upon Sun.

“Lukases go away sometime,” Bluetooth murmured against her ear.

She burrowed her head against him, trying to forget that she was hungry and thirsty, and did not answer him.

“Guns,” said another voice, near them. “They will shoot us and we will lose ourselves forever.”

“Not if we stay here,” said Bluetooth, “and do what I said.”

“They are not our humans,” said Bigfellow’s deep voice. “Hurt our humans, these.”

“This is a man-fight,” Bluetooth returned. “Nothing for the hisa.”

A thought came. Satin lifted her head. “Konstantins. Konstantin-fight, this. We will find Konstantins, ask what to do. Find Konstantins, find Old Ones too, near Sun’s Place.”

“Ask Sun-her-friend,” another exclaimed. “She must know.”

“Where is Sun-her-friend?”

There was silence. No one knew. The Old Ones preserved that secret.

“I will find her.” That was Bigfellow. He wriggled close to them, reached out a hand to her shoulder in the dark. “I go many places. Come. Come.”

She drew in her breath, lipped uncertainly at Bluetooth’s cheek.

“Come,” Bluetooth agreed suddenly, drawing her by the hand. Bigfellow hastened off just ahead, a pattering of feet in the dark. They went after him and others followed, up the dark corridors and the ladders and the narrow places, where sometimes there was light and most times not. Some fell behind, for they went among pipes and in cold places and places which burned their bare feet, and past machinery which thundered with ominous powers.

Bluetooth pushed into the lead at times, letting go her hand; at times Bigfellow shoved him aside and went first again. Satin doubted in fact that Bluetooth had the least idea where he was going or what way would lead them to Sun-her-friend; to the Sun’s Place they had been, and dimly she had that sense she had on the earth, that said in her heart what way a place should be… up was true; she thought that it should be left… but sometimes the tunnels did not bend left; and they wound. The two males pushed ahead, one and then the other, until they were all panting and stumbling; more and more fell behind; and at last the one behind her caught her hand, pleaded by that gesture… but Bluetooth and Bigfellow pushed on and she was losing them. She parted from the last of their followers and kept going, trying to overtake them.

“No more,” she pleaded when she had caught them on the metal steps. “No more, let us go back. You are lost.”

Bigfellow would not heed. Panting, he edged higher; she tugged at Bluetooth and he hissed in frustration and went after Bigfellow. Madness. Madness had settled on them. “You show me nothing!” she wailed. She bounced in despair and hastened after, panting, trying to reason with them, who had passed beyond reasoning. They passed panels and doors where they might have gotten out into the open; all these they rejected… but at last they came to a place where they were faced with choices, where a light burned blue above a door; where the ladders extended everywhere, up and down and in three other directions.

“Here,” Bigfellow said after a little hesitation, feeling of the buttons at the lighted door. “Here is a way.”

“No,” Satin moaned. “No,” Bluetooth objected too, perhaps recovering his senses; but Bigfellow pushed the first button and slipped into the air chamber when the door opened. “Come back,” Bluetooth exclaimed, and they scrambled to stop him, who was mad with the rivalry, who did this for her, and for nothing else. They went in after him; the door closed at their backs. The second door opened under Bigfellow’s hand as they caught up with him, and there was light — it blinded.

And suddenly guns fired and Bigfellow went down in the doorway with a smell of burning. He cried and shrieked horribly, and Bluetooth whirled and hit the other door button, his hard arm carrying her with him as the door opened and wind surged about them. Man-voices bellowed over a sudden wail of alarms, silenced as the door closed. They hit the ladders and ran, ran blindly down and through the darkways, deep, deep into the dark. They dragged their breathers down, but the air smelt wrong. They finally stopped their running, sweating and shivering. Bluetooth rocked and moaned with pain in the dark, and Satin searched him for a wound, found his fingers locked on his upper arm. She licked the sore place, which was hot and burned, soothed it as best she could, hugged him and tried to still the rage which had him trembling. They were lost, both lost in the darkways; and Bigfellow was horribly dead, and Bluetooth sat and hissed with pain and anger, muscles hard and quivering. But in a moment he shook himself, lipped at her cheek, shivered as she put her arms about him.

“O let us go home,” he whispered. “O let us go home, Tam-utsa-pitan, and no more see humans. No machines, no fields, no man-work, only hisa always and always. Let us go home.”

She said nothing. The disaster was hers, for she had suggested, and Bigfellow had wanted her and Bluetooth had risen to the challenge of his daring, as if they had been in the high hills. Her disaster, her doing. Now Bluetooth himself spoke of leaving her dream, unwilling to follow her further. Tears filled her eyes, doubts for herself, loneliness, that she had walked too far. Now they were in worse trouble, for to find themselves they must go up again to the man-places and open a door and beg help, and they had seen the result of that. They held each other and did not stir from where they were.

ii

Mallory looked tired, a hollowness to her eyes as she paced the aisles of command central, countless circuits of it, while her troops stood guard. Damon watched her, himself leaning against a counter, hungry and tired himself, but it was, he reckoned, nothing to what the Fleet personnel must be feeling, having gone through jump, passing from that to this tedious police duty; workers, never relieved at their posts, looked haggard, muttered timid complaints… but there was no other shift for these troops.

“Are you going to stay here all night?” he asked her.

She turned a cold look on him, said nothing, walked on.

He had watched her for some hours, a foreboding presence in the center. She had a way of moving that made no noise, no swagger, no, but it was, perhaps, the unconscious assumption that anyone in her way would move. They did. Any tech who had to get up did so only when Mallory was patroling some other aisle. She had never made a threat — spoke seldom, mostly to the troopers, about what, only she and they knew. She was even, occasionally and before the hours wore on, pleasant. But there was no question the threat was there.

Most residents on-station had never seen close up the kind of gear that surrounded Mallory and her troops; had never touched a gun with their own hands, would be hard put to describe what they saw. He noted three different models in this small selection alone, light pistol; long-barreled ones; heavy rifles, all black plastics and ominous symmetries; armor, to diffuse the burn of such weapons… that gave the troops the same deadly machined look as the rest of the gear, no longer human. It was impossible to relax with such among them.

A tech rose at the far side of the room, looked over her shoulder as if to see if any of the guns had moved… walked down the aisle as if it were mined. Gave him a printed message, retreated at once. Damon held the message in his hand unread, conscious of Mallory’s interest. She had stopped pacing. He found no way to avoid attention, unfolded the paper and read it

psscia/ pacpakonstant indamon/ au1-1-1-1-1/1030/ 10/4/52/2136md/0936a/start/talley papers confiscated and talley arrested by fleet order/ sec office given choice local detention or military intervention/talley confined this post/ talley request message sent konstantin family/ herein complied/request instruction/request policy clarification/ saundersredoneseccom/ enditenditendit.

He looked up, pulse racing, caught between relief it was nothing worse and distress for what it was. Mallory was looking straight at him, a curious, challenging interest on her face. She walked over to him. He considered an outright lie, hoping she would not insist on the message and make an issue of it. He considered what he knew of her and reckoned otherwise.

“There’s a friend of mine in trouble,” he said. “I need to leave and go see about him.”

“Trouble with us?”

He considered the lie a second time. “Something like.”

She held out her hand. He did not offer the message.

“Perhaps I can help.” Her eyes were cold and her hand stayed extended, palm up. “Do we assume,” she asked when it was not forthcoming, “that this is something embarrassing to station? Or do we make further assumptions?”

He handed over the paper, while there were choices at all. She scanned it, seemed perplexed for a moment, and gradually her face changed.

“Talley,” she said. “Josh Talley?”

He nodded, and she pursed her lips.

“A friend of the Konstantins. How times do change.”

“He’s Adjusted.”

The eyes flickered.

“His own request,” he said. “What else did Russell’s leave him?”

She kept looking at him, and he wished that there were somewhere else to look, and somewhere else to be. Adjustment spilled things. It thrust Pell and her into an intimacy he did not want… which too clearly she did not want — those records on station.

“How is he?” she asked.

He found even the asking bizarrely ugly, and simply stared.

“Friendship,” she said. “Friendship, and from such opposite poles. Or is it patronage? He asked for Adjustment, and you gave it to him; finished what Russell’s started… I detect offended sensibilities, do I not?”

“We’re not Russell’s.”

A smile to which the eyes gave the lie. “How bright a world, Mr. Konstantin, where there’s still such outrage. And where Q exists… on the same station. Within arm’s reach one of the other, and administered by your office. Or maybe Q itself is misplaced compassion. I suspect you must have created that hell by half-measures. By exercise of your sensibilities. Your private object of outrage, this Unioner? Your apology to morality… or your statement on the war, Mr. Konstantin?”

“I want him out of detention. I want his papers back. He has no politics any longer.”

No one talked to Mallory that way; plainly no one did. After a long moment she broke contact with his eyes, a dismissal, nodded slowly. “You’re accountable?”

“I make myself accountable.”

“On that understanding… No. No, Mr. Konstantin, you don’t go. You don’t need to go in person. I’ll clear him through Fleet channels, send him home… on your assurance things are as you say.”

“You can see the records if you want.”

“I’m sure they’d contain nothing of news.” She waved a hand, a signal to someone behind him, a tiny move. His spine crawled with the sudden realization there had been a gun at his back. She walked over to the com console, leaned over the tech and keyed through to the Fleet channel. “This is Mallory. Release the papers and person of Joshua Talley, in station detention. Relay to appropriate authorities, Fleet and station. Over.”

The acknowledgment came back, impersonal and uninterested.

“May I,” Damon asked her, “may I send a call to him? He’ll need some clear instruction…”

“Sir,” one of the techs nearby said, facing about in her place. “Sir — ”

He glanced distractedly at the anguished face.

“A Downer’s been shot, sir, in green four.”

The breath went out of him. For a moment his mind refused to work.

“He’s dead, sir.”

He shook his head, sick at his stomach, turned and glared at Mallory. “They don’t hurt anything. No Downer ever lifted a hand to a human except to escape, in panic. Ever.”

Mallory shrugged. “Past mending now, Mr. Konstantin. Get on about your own business. Someone slipped and fired; there was a no-shoot order. It’s our business, not yours. Our own people will take care of it.”

“They’re people, captain.”

“We’ve shot people too,” Mallory said, unruffled. “Get on about your business, I say. This matter is under martial law, and I’ll settle it.”

He stood still. Everywhere in the center faces were turned toward them, and the boards flashed with neglected lights. “Get to work,” he ordered them sharply, and backs turned at once. “Get a station medic to that area.”

“You try my patience,” Mallory said.

“They are our citizens.”

“Your citizenship is broad, Mr. Konstantin.”

“I’m telling you — they’re terrified of violence. If you want chaos on this station, captain, panic the Downers.”

She considered the point, nodded finally, without rancor. “If you can mend the situation, Mr. Konstantin, see to it. And go where you choose.”

Just that. Go. He started away, glanced back with sudden dread of Mallory, who could cast away a public argument. He had lost, had let anger get the better of him… and go, she said, as if her pride were nothing.

He left, with the disturbed feeling that he had done something desperately dangerous.

“Clear Damon Konstantin for passage,” Mallory’s voice thundered through the corridors, and troops who had made to challenge him did not.

iii

He ran, leaving the lift on green four, his id and card in hand, flashed both at a zealous trooper who tried to bar his way, and won through. Troops were gathered ahead, blocking off all view. He ran up and, roughly seized, showed the card and pushed his way past the troopers.

“Damon.” He heard Elene’s voice before he saw her, swung about and met her arms in the press of armored troops, hugged her in relief.

“It’s one of the temporaries,” she said, “a male named Bigfellow. Dead.”

“Get out of here,” he wished her, not trusting the troops’ good sense. He looked beyond her. There was a good deal of blood on the floor at the access doorway. They had gotten the dead Downer into a bodybag and onto a stretcher for removal. Elene, her arm linked with his, showed no inclination to leave.

“Doors got him,” she said. “But the shot may have killed him first. — Lt. Vanars, off India” she murmured, for a young officer urged his way toward them. “In charge of this unit.”

“What happened?” Damon asked the lieutenant. “What happened here?”

“Mr. Konstantin? A regrettable error. The Downer appeared unexpectedly.”

“This is Pell, lieutenant, full of civilians. The station will want a full report on this.”

“For the safety of your station, Mr. Konstantin, I’d urge you to review your security procedures. Your workers blew the lock. That cut the Downer in half, when the emergency seal went; someone had that inner door open out of sequence. How far do these tunnels go? Everywhere?”

“They’ve run,” Elene said quickly, “down, away from here. They’re probably temporaries and they don’t know the tunnels well. And they’re not about to come out again with the threat of guns out here. They’ll hide down there till they die.”

“Order them out,” Vanars said.

“You don’t understand the Downers,” Damon said.

“Get them all out of the tunnels. Seal them up.”

“Pell’s maintenance is in those tunnels, lieutenant; and our Downer workers live in that network, with their own atmospheric system. The tunnels can’t shut down. I’m going in there,” he said to Elene. “They may answer.”

She bit her lip. “I’m staying right here,” she said, “till you come out.”

There were objections he would have made. It was not the place for them. He shot a look at Vanars. “It may take me a while. Downers aren’t a negotiable matter on Pell. They’re frightened, and they can get into places they can die in and cause us real trouble. If I get into trouble, contact station authorites, don’t send troops in; we can deal with them. If another gun goes off in their vicinity we may not have a maintenance system, sir. Our life-support and theirs are linked, a system in precise balance.”

Vanars said nothing. Did not react. It was impossible to know if reason meant anything with him or the rest of them. He squeezed Elene’s hand, drew away, and shouldered his way past the armored troops, tried to avoid stepping in a dark pool of blood as he carded open the lock.

The door opened, closed behind him, started its cycle automatically. He reached for the human breathing gear which always hung on the right of entry of such chambers, slipped it on before the effects became severe. His breath took on the suck and hiss he associated subconsciously with Downer presence, loud in the metal chamber. He opened the inner door and the echo came back out of far depths. He had a dim blue light where he was, but he paused to unlock the compartment by the door and take out a lamp. The powerful beam cut through the dark into a web of steel.

“Downers!” he called, his voice echoing hollowly down and down. He felt the cold as he walked through the door and let it seal, stood on the joining platform from which the ladders ran in all directions. “Downers! It’s Damon Konstantin! Do you hear me? Call out if you hear me.”

The echoes died very slowly, depth upon depth.

“Downers?”

A moan drifted up out of the dark, an echoing keening which stirred the hairs at his nape. Anger?

He went further, gripping the light with one hand, the thin rail with the other, stopped and listened. “Downers?”

Something moved in the dark depths. Soft footfalls rang very softly on metal far below. “Konstantin?” an alien voice lisped. “Konstantin-man?”

“It’s Damon Konstantin,” he called again. “Please come up. No guns. It’s safe.”

He stayed still, feeling the slight tremor in the scaffolding as feet trod it far down in the dark. He heard breathing, and his eyes caught the light far below, shimmer like illusion. There was an impression of fur, and another glimmer of eyes, ascending by stages. He stayed very still, one man, and fragile in these dark places. They were not dangerous… but no one had attacked them with guns before.

They came, more distinct in his hand-held light, bedraggled and struggling up the last stage, panting, the one hurt and the other wide-eyed with terror.

“Konstantin-man,” that one said with a quavering lisp. “Help, help, help.”

They held out hands, pleading. He set the lamp down on the grating on which he stood and accepted them as children, touched the male very carefully, for the poor fellow was bleeding all down his arm and drew back his lips in a fretful snarl.

“All right,” he assured them. “You’re safe, you’re safe now. I’ll get you out.”

“Scared, Konstantin-man.” The female stroked her mate’s shoulder and looked from one to the other of them with round, shadowed eyes. “All hide gone find no path.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“More, more, more we, dead hungry, dead ’fraid. Please help we.”

“Call them.”

She touched the male, a gesture eloquent of worry. The male chattered something to her, pushed at her, and she reached and touched at Damon.

“I’ll wait,” Damon assured her. “I wait here. All safe.”

“Love you,” she said in a breath, and scrambled back down with a ringing of the metal steps, lost at once in the dark. In a moment more, shrieks and trills sounded out into the depths until the echoes redoubled; voices woke out of other places, male and female, deep and high, until all the depths and dark went mad. A shriek erupted by him: the male shouted something down.

They came in the silence which followed, ringings of steps on the metal deep below, callings occasionally echoing sharply and moanings rising which stirred the scalp. The female came running back to stroke her mate’s shoulder and to touch his hands. “I Satin, I call. Make he all right, Konstantin-man.”

“They have to come through the lock few at a time, you understand, careful of the lock.”

“I know lock,” she said. “I careful. Go, go, I bring they.” She was already hastening down again. Damon put his arm about the male and brought him into the lock, dragged his mask up for him, for the fellow was muzzy with shock, snarling with pain but making no attempt to snap or strike. The next door opened, on the flare of light and armed men, and the Downer started within the circle of his arm, snarled and spat, yielded to a reassuring hug. Elene was there, breaking through the troops, holding her hands out to help.

“Get the troops back,” Damon snapped, light-blinded and unable to distinguish Vanars. “Out of the way. Quit waving guns at them.” He urged the Downer to sit on the floor by the wall, and Elene was ordering the medic over. “Back these troops out of here!” Damon said again. “Leave us to it!”

An order was passed. To his great relief the India troopers began to pull back, and the Downer sat still, with some persuasion yielded his injured arm to examination as the medic knelt down with his kit. Damon tugged his own mask down, stifling in it, squeezed Elene’s hand as she bent down beside him. The air stank of sweating, frightened Downer, a pungent muskiness.

“Name’s Bluetooth,” the medic said, checking the tag. He made a few swift notes and began gently to treat the injury. “Burn and hemorrhage. Minor, except for shock.”

“Drink,” Bluetooth pleaded, and reached for the kit. The medic rescued it and quietly promised him water when they could find some.

The lock opened, yielded up a near dozen Downers. Damon stood up, reading panic in their looks. “I’m Konstantin,” he said at once, for the name carried importance with the Downers. He met them with outstretched hands, suffered himself to be hugged by sweating, shock-hazed Downers, gentle enfoldings of powerful furred arms. Elene welcomed them likewise, and in a moment another lockful had spilled out, making a knot which filled the corridor and outnumbered the troops who stood in the end of the hall. The Downers cast anxious looks in that direction, but kept together. Another lockful, and Bluetooth’s mate was with them, chattering anxiously until she had found him. Vanars came among them, quite without swagger in this brown-furred flood.

“You’re requested to get them to a secure area as quickly as possible,” Vanars said.

“Use your com and clear us passage via the emergency ramps via four through nine to the docks,” Damon said. “Their habitat is accessible from there; we’ll escort them back. That’s quickest and safest for all concerned.”

He did not wait for Vanars’s comment in the matter, but waved an arm at the Downers. “Come,” he said, and they fell silent and began to move. Bluetooth, his arm done up in a white bandage, scrambled up not to be left, and chattered something to the others. Satin added her own voice, and there was a general and sudden cheerfulness among the Downers. He walked, hand in hand with Elene, and the Downers strode along about and behind them with the peculiar accompaniment of the breather-sounds, moving gladly and quickly. The few guards along their route stayed very still, suddenly in the minority, and Downers chattered with increasing freedom among themselves as they reached the end of the hall and entered the spiraling broad ramp which led to doors on all the nine levels. An arm snaked about Damon’s left as they descended; he looked and it was Bluetooth, and Satin was with him, so that they came four abreast down the ramp, bizarre company… five, for another had joined hands with Elene on the right. Satin cried something. A chorus answered. Again she spoke, her voice echoing in the heights and depths; and again the chattering chorus thundered out, with a bounce in steps about them. Another yelled from the rear; and voices answered; and a second time. Damon tightened his hand on Elene’s, at once stirred and alarmed at this behavior, but the Downers were content to walk with him, shouting what had begun to sound like a marching chant.

They broke into green nine, and marched down the long hall… entered the docks with a great shout, and the echoes rang. The line of troops which guarded the ship accesses stirred ominously, but no more than that. “Stay with me,” Damon ordered his companions sternly, and they did so, up the curving horizon into the area of their habitat, and there to a parting. “Go,” he told them. “Go and mind you be careful. Don’t scare the men with guns.”

He had expected them to run, scampering free as they had begun to do about him. But one by one they came and wished to hug him and Elene, with tender care, so that the parting took some little time.

Last, Satin and Bluetooth, who hugged and patted them. “Love you,” Bluetooth said. “Love you,” said Satin, in her turn.

No word, no question about the dead one. “Bigfellow was lost,” Damon told them, although he was sure by Bluetooth’s burn that they had been somewhere involved in the matter. “Dead.”

Satin bobbed a solemn agreement “You send he home, Konstantin-man.”

“I’ll send,” he promised. Humans died, and did not merit transport. They had no strong ties to this soil, or to any soil, a vague distressed desire toward burying, but not at inconvenience. This was inconvenient, but so was it to be murdered far from home. “I’ll see it’s done.”

“Love you,” she said solemnly, and hugged him a second time, laid her hand most gently on Elene’s belly, and walked away with Bluetooth, running after a moment to the lock which led to their own tunnels.

It left Elene standing with her own hand to her stomach and a dazed stare at him. “How could she know?” Elene asked with a bewildered laugh. It disturbed him too.

“It shows a little,” he said.

“To one of them?”

“They don’t get large,” he said. And looking past her, to the docks, and the lines of troops. “Come on. I don’t like this area.”

She looked where he had, to the soldiers and the more motley groups which ranged the upcurving horizon of the docks, near the bars and restaurants. Merchanters, keeping an eye on the military, on a dock which had been taken away from them.

“Merchanters have owned this place since Pell began,” she said, “and the bars and the sleepovers. Establishments are shutting down, and Mazian’s troops won’t be happy. Freighter crews and Mazian’s… in one bar, in one sleep-over — station security had better be tight when any of those troops go on liberty.”

“Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “I want you out of this. Running out here, going out into that corridor with the Downers — ”

“Where were you?” she shot back. “Down in the tunnels.”

“I know them.”

“So I know the docks.”

“So what were you doing up in four?”

“I was down here when the call came; I asked Keu for a pass and got one, got his lieutenant to cooperate with dock offices; I was doing my job, thank you; and when the call came through Fleet com, I got Vanars up there before someone else got shot.”

He hugged her gratefully, walked with her around the turn into blue nine, another barren vista of troops stationed at intervals and no one in the corridors.

“Josh,” he said suddenly, dropping his arm.

“What?”

He kept his pace, headed for the lift, gathered his papers from his pocket, but they were India troops, and they were waved through. “Josh got picked up. Mallory knows he’s here and where he is.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Mallory agreed to release him. They may have let him loose already. I’ve got to check comp and find out where he is, whether still in detention or back at his apartment”

“He could sleepover with us.”

He said nothing, thinking about that.

“Which of us,” she asked, “is really going to sleep easy otherwise?”

“Not much sleep with him around either. We’ll be jammed up in that apartment. As good have him in bed with us.”

“So I’ve slept crowded. So it could drag on more than one night. If they get their hands on him — ”

“Elene. It’s one thing if station handles a protest. There are things in this, personal things with Josh…”

“Secrets?”

“Things that don’t bear the light. Things Mallory might not want out, you understand me? She’s dangerous. I’ve talked to multiple murderers less cold-blooded.”

“Fleet captain. It’s a breed, Damon. Ask any merchanter. You know there’re probably kin of the merchanters on-station standing in those lines, but they’ll not break formation to hail their own mothers, no. What the Fleet takes… doesn’t come back. You don’t tell me anything I don’t know about the Fleet. I can tell you that if we want to do something we should do it. Now.”

“If we bring him in with us, we risk having that act in Fleet files…”

“I think I know what you want to do.”

She had her own stubbornness. He reckoned matters, stopped at the lift, his hand on the button. “I figure we’d better get him,” he said.

“So,” she said. “Thought so.”

i

Jon lukas walked nervously through the vacant halls, despite the pass Keu had given to all of them in the council chambers. Troops might be withdrawn progressively starting at maindawn, they had been promised. Had to, he reckoned. Some of them were already being rotated off to rest, some Fleet crew, armorless, taking up guard in their places. It was all quiet; he was not even challenged but once, at the lift exit, and he walked to his door, used his card to open it.

The front room was deserted. His heart lurched with the immediate fear that his unbidden guest had strayed; but then Bran Hale appeared in the hall by the kitchen and looked relieved to see him.

“All right,” Hale said, and Jessad came out, and two others of Hale’s men after him.

“About time,” Jessad said. “This was growing tedious.”

“It’s going to stay that way,” Jon said peevishly. “Everyone has to stay here tonight: Hale, Daniels, Clay… I’m not having my apartment door pour a horde of visitors out under the troops’ noses. They’ll be gone come morning.”

“The Fleet?” Hale asked.

“The troops in the halls.” Jon went to the kitchen bar, examined a bottle which had been full when he left it and which now had two fingers remaining. He poured himself a drink and sipped it with a sigh, his eyes stinging with exhaustion. He walked over to the chair he favored and sank down as Jessad took his place opposite, across the low table, and Hale and his men rummaged at the bar for another bottle. “I’m glad you were prudent,” he said to Jessad. “I was worried.”

Jessad smiled, cat-eyed. “I surmise you were. That for a moment or two you thought of solutions. Maybe you’re still thinking in that line. Shall we discuss it?”

Jon frowned, slid a glance at Hale and his men. “I trust them more than you, and that’s a fact.”

“It’s likely you thought of being rid of me,” Jessad said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you aren’t right now more concerned about where rather than if. You might get away with it entirely. Probably you would.”

The directness disturbed him. “Since you bring it up yourself, I suppose you’ve got a counter proposal.”

The smile persisted. “One: I’m no present hazard; you may want to think matters over. Two: I am undismayed by Mazian’s arrival.”

“Why?”

“Because that contingency is covered.”

Jon lifted the glass to his lips and took a stinging swallow. “By what?”

“When you jump to land in the Deep, Mr. Lukas, you can do it three safe ways: not throw much into the jump in the first place… if you’re in regions you know very, very well; or use a star’s G to pull you up; or — if you’re good — the mass in some null point. A lot of junk in Pell’s vicinity, you know that? Nothing very big, but big enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Union Fleet, Mr. Lukas. Do you think there’s no reason Mazian has his ships grouped for the first time in decades? Pell’s all they have left; and the Union Fleet is out there, just as they sent me ahead, knowing where they’d come.”

Hale and his men had gathered, settled on the couch and along the back of it. Jon shaped the situation in his mind, Pell a battle zone, the worst of all scenarios.

“And what happens to us when it’s discovered there’s no way to dislodge Mazian?”

“Mazian can be driven off. And when that’s done he has no bases at all. He’s done; and we have peace, Mr. Lukas, with all the rewards of it. That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m listening.”

“Officials have to be taken out. The Konstantins have to be taken out. You have to be set in their place. Have you the nerve for that, Mr. Lukas, despite relationships? I understand there’s a — kinship involved here; yourself, Konstantin’s wife — ”

He clamped his lips together, flinching as he always did, from the thought of Alicia as she was now. Could not face that. Had never been able to stomach it. It was not life, linked to those machines. Not life. He wiped at his face. “My sister and I don’t speak. Haven’t, for years. She’s an invalid; Dayin would have told you that.”

“I’m aware of it. I’m talking about her husband, her sons. Have you the nerve, Mr. Lukas?”

“Nerve, yes, if the planning makes sense.”

“There’s a man on this station named Kressich.”

He sucked in a slow breath, the drink resting in his hand against the chair arm. “Vassily Kressich, elected councillor of Q. How do you know him?”

“Dayin Jacoby gave us the name… as the concillor from that zone; and we have files. This man Kressich… comes from Q when the council meets. He then has a pass which will let him do so, or is it visual inspection?”

“Both. There are guards.”

“Can those who do the inspecting be bribed?”

“For some things, yes. But stationers, Mr. Whoever-you-are, have a natural reluctance to doing anything to damage the station they’re living in. You can get drugs and liquor into Q; but a man… a guard’s conscience about a case of liquor and his instinct for self-preservation are two different things.”

“Then we’ll have to keep any conference with him brief, won’t we?”

“Not here.”

“That’s up to you. Perhaps the lending of an id and papers. I’m sure among your many faithful employees something can be arranged, some apartment near the Q zone — ”

“What kind of conference are you talking about? And what are you looking for from Kressich? The man is spineless.”

“How many employees do you have in all,” Jessad asked, “as faithful and trusted as these men here? Men who might take risks, who might kill? We have need of that sort.”

Jon cast a look at Bran Hale, feeling short of breath. Back again. “Well, Kressich isn’t the type, I’ll tell you.”

“Kressich has contacts. Can a man stay seated atop that monster of Q without them?”

ii

Com buzzed. The light was on, a call coming through. Josh looked at it across his room, stopped in his pacing. They had let him go. Go home, they had said, and he had done so, through corridors guarded by police and Mazianni. They knew at this moment where he was. And now someone was calling his room, hard after his arrival.

The caller insisted; the red light stayed on, blinking. He did not want to answer, but it might be detention checking to be sure he had gotten here. He was afraid not to respond to it. He crossed the room and pushed the reply button.

“Josh Talley,” he said into the mike.

“Josh. Josh, it’s Damon. Good to hear your voice. Are you all right?”

He leaned against the wall, caught his breath.

“Josh?”

“I’m all right. Damon, you know what happened.”

“I know. Your message got to me. I’ve taken personal responsibility for you. You’re coming to our apartment tonight. Pack what you need. I’m coming there after you.”

“Damon, no. No. Stay out of this.”

“We’ve talked it over; it’s all right. No argument.”

“Damon, don’t. Don’t let it get on their records…”

“We’re your legal sponsors as it is, Josh. It’s already on the records.”

“Don’t.”

“Elene and I are on our way.”

The contact went dead. He wiped his face. The knot which had been at his stomach had risen into his throat. He saw no walls, nothing of where he was. It was all metal, and Signy Mallory, young face and age-silvered hair, and eyes dead and oldest of all. Damon and Elene and the child they wanted… they prepared to put everything at risk. For him.

He had no weapons. Needed none, if it were to be himself and her alone, as it had been in her quarters. He had been dead then, inside. Had existed, hating his existence. The same kind of paralysis beckoned now… to let things be, accept, take cover where it was offered; it was always easier. He had not threatened Mallory, having had nothing to fight for.

He pushed from the wall, felt of his pocket, making sure his papers were there. He walked into the hall and through it past the unmanned front desk of the hospice, out into the open where the guards stood. One of the local security started to challenge him. He looked frantically down the corridor where a trooper stood.

“You!” he shouted, disturbing the vacant quiet of the hall. Police and trooper reacted, the trooper with leveled rifle and a suddenness which had almost been a pulled trigger. Josh swallowed thickly, held his hands in plain view. “I want to talk with you.”

The rifle motioned. He walked with hands still wide at his sides, toward the armored trooper and the dark muzzle. “Far enough,” the trooper said. “What is it?”

The insignia was Atlantic’s. “Mallory of Norway” he said. “We’re good friends. Tell her Josh Talley wants to talk with her. Now.”

The trooper had a disbelieving look, a scowl finally. But he balanced the rifle in the crook of his arm and reached for his com button. “I’ll relay to the Norway duty officer,” he said. “You’ll be going in, in either case — your way, if she does know you, and on general investigation if she doesn’t.”

“She’ll see me,” he said.

The trooper pushed the com button and queried. What came back came privately over his helmet com, but his eyes flickered. “Check it, then,” he said to Norway. And after a moment more: “Command central. Got it. Out.” He hooked the com unit to his belt again, and motioned with the rifle barrel. “Keep walking down that hall and go up the ramp. That trooper down there will take you in charge and see you talk to Mallory.”

He went, walking quickly, for he did not reckon it would take Damon and Elene long to reach the hospice.

They searched him. Of course they would do so. He endured it for the third time this day, and this time it did not bother him. He was cold inside, and outer things did not trouble him. He straightened his clothes and walked with them up the ramp, past sentries at every level. On green two they entered a lift and rode it the short rise and traverse into blue one. They had not even asked for his papers, had scarcely looked at them more than to be sure that the folder held nothing but papers.

They walked a short distance back along the matting-carpeted hall. There was a reek of chemicals in the air. Workmen were busy peeling all the location signs. The windowed section further, crammed with comp equipment and with a few techs moving about, was specially guarded. Norway troops. They opened the door and let him and his guards in, into station central, among the aisles of busy technicians.

Mallory, seated at the end of the counters, rose to meet him, smiled coldly at him, her face haggard. “Well?” she said.

He had thought the sight of her would not affect him. It did. His stomach wrenched. “I want to come back,” he said, “on Norway.”

“Do you?”

“I’m no stationer; I don’t belong here. Who else would take me?”

Mallory looked at him and said nothing. A tremor started in his left knee; he wished he might sit down. They would shoot him if he made a move; he thoroughly believed that they would. The tic threatened his composure, jerked at the side of his mouth when she turned away a moment and glanced back again. She laughed, a dry chuckle. “Konstantin put you up to this?”

“No.”

“You’ve been Adjusted. That so?”

The stammer tied his tongue. He nodded.

“And Konstantin makes himself responsibile for your good behavior.”

It was all going wrong. “No one’s responsible for me,” he said, stumbling on the words. “I want a ship. If Norway is all I’ve got, then I’ll take it.” He had to look at her directly, at eyes which flickered with imagined thoughts, things which were not going to be said here, before the troopers,

“You search him?” she asked the guards.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stood thinking a long moment, and there was no smile, no laughter. “Where are you staying?”

“A room in the old hospice.”

“The Konstantins provide it?”

“I work. I pay for it.”

“What’s your job?”

“Small salvage.”

An expression of surprise, of derision.

“So I want out of it,” he said. “I figure you owe me that.”

There was interruption, movement behind him, which stopped. Mallory laughed, a bored, weary laugh, and beckoned to someone. “Konstantin. Come on in. Come get your friend.”

Josh turned. Damon and Elene were both there, flushed and upset and out of breath. They had followed him. “If he’s confused,” Damon said, “he belongs in the hospital.” He came and laid a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on, Josh.”

“He’s not confused,” Mallory said. “He came here to kill me. Take your friend home, Mr. Konstantin. And keep a watch on him, or I’ll handle matters my way.” There was stark silence.

“I’ll see to it,” Damon said after a moment. His fingers bit into Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on.”

Josh moved, walked with him and Elene, past the guards, out and down the long corridor with the work crews and the chemical smell; the doors of central closed behind them. Neither of them said anything. Damon’s grip shifted to his elbow and they took him into a lift, rode it down the short distance to five. There were more guards in this hall, and station police. They passed unchallenged into the residential halls, to Damon’s own door. They brought him inside and closed the door. He stood waiting, while Damon and Elene went through the routine of turning on lights, and taking off jackets.

“I’ll send for your clothes,” Damon said shortly. “Come on, make yourself at home.”

It was not the welcome he deserved. He picked a leather chair, mindful of his grease-stained work clothes. Elene brought him a cool drink and he sipped at it without tasting it.

Damon sat down on the arm of the chair next to his. Temper showed. Josh accepted that, found a place at his feet to stare at.

“You ran us a circular chase,” Damon said. “I don’t know how you got past us but you managed it.”

“I asked to go.”

Whatever Damon would have wanted to say, he swallowed. Elene came over and sat down on the couch opposite him.

“So what did you have in mind?” Damon asked evenly.

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved. I didn’t want you involved.”

“So you ran from us?”

He shrugged.

“Josh — did you mean to kill her?”

“Eventually. Somewhere. Sometime.”

They found nothing to say. Damon finally shook his head and looked away, and Elene came over behind Josh’s chair, laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“It didn’t work,” Josh said finally, tripping on the words. “It went everyway wrong. I’m afraid now she thinks you put me up to it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Elene’s hand brushed his hair, descended again to his shoulder. Damon simply stared at him as if he were looking at someone he had never seen before. “Don’t you ever,” Damon said, “think of doing that again.”

“I didn’t want you two hurt. I didn’t want you taking me in with you. Think how it looks to them — you, with me.”

“You think Mazian runs this station all of a sudden? And you think a captain in the Fleet is going to break relations with the Konstantins, whose cooperation Mazian needs… in a personal feud?”

He thought that over. It made sense in a way he wanted to believe, and therefore he suspected it.

“It’s not going to happen,” Damon said. “So forget about it. No trooper is about to walk into this apartment, you can depend on it. Just don’t give them excuses for wanting to. And you came close. You understand that? The worst thing you can do is give them a pretext. Josh, it was Mallory’s order that got you out of detention. I asked it. She did it a second time back there… as a favor. Don’t depend on a third.”

He nodded, shaken.

“Have you eaten today?”

He considered, confused, finally thought back to the sandwich, realized that at least part of his malaise was lack of food. “Missed supper,” he said.

“I’ll get you some clothes of mine that will fit. Wash up, relax. We’ll go back to your apartment tomorrow morning and get whatever you need.”

“How long am I going to stay here?” he asked, turning his head to look at Elene and back at Damon. It was a small place. He was aware of the inconvenience. “I can’t move in on you.”

“You stay here until it’s safe,” Damon said. “If we have to make further arrangements, we will. In the meantime I’m going to do some review on your papers or whatever excuse I can contrive that will excuse your spending the next few working days in my office.”

“I don’t go back to the shop?”

“When this is settled. Meanwhile we’re not going to let you out of our sight. We make it clear they’ll have to create a major incident to touch you. I’ll put my father onto it too, so that no one in either office gets caught by a surprise request. Just, please, don’t provoke anything.”

“No,” he agreed. Damon gave a jerk of his head back toward the hall. He rose and went with Damon, and Damon searched an armload of clothing out of the lockers outside the bath. He went into the bath, bathed and felt better, clean of the memory of the detention cell, wrapped himself in the soft robe Damon had lent him, and came out to the aroma of supper cooking.

They ate, crowded at the table, exchanged what they had seen in their separate sections. He could talk without anxiousness finally, now that the nightmare was on him, and he was no longer alone in it.

He chose the far corner of the kitchen, made himself a pallet on the floor, out of the amazing abundance of bedding Elene urged on him. We’ll get a cot by tomorrow, she promised him. At the least, a hammock. He settled down in it, heard them settle in the living room, and felt safe, believing finally what Damon had told him… that he was in a refuge even Mazian’s Fleet could not breach.

i

Council was breaking up early, having passed what measures were set before it to pass, with Keu of India sitting in grim witness of what they said and what they did, his stone-still countenance casting a pall on debate. On this third day of the crisis, Mazian made his demands, and obtained.

Kressich gathered up his notes and came down from the uppermost tier into the sunken center of the chambers, by the seats about the table, delayed there, resisting the outflow of traffic, looking anxiously toward Angelo Konstantin, who conferred with Nguyen and Landgraf and some of the other representatives. Keu still sat at the table, listening, his bronze face like a mask. He feared Keu… feared to raise his business in front of him.

But he went nevertheless, edged insistently as close as he could get to the head of it, into that private company about Konstantin where he knew he was not wanted, Q’s representative, reminder of problems no one had time to solve. He waited, while Konstantin finished his discussion with the others, stared at Konstantin intently so that Konstantin should be aware that his particular attention was wanted.

At last Konstantin took note of him, stayed a moment from his evident intention to leave in Keu’s company, for Keu had risen. “Sir,” Kressich said. “Mr. Konstantin.” He drew from his folder of papers one which he had prepared, proffered it to Konstantin’s hand. “I have limited facilities, Mr. Konstantin. Comp and print isn’t accessible to me where I live. You know that. The situation there…” He moistened his lips, conscious of Konstantin’s frown. “My office was nearly mobbed last night. Please, sir. Can we assure my constituents… that the Downbelow appointments will continue?”

“That’s under negotiation, Mr. Kressich. The station is making every effort to get procedures back to normal; but programs are being reviewed; policy and directions are being reviewed.”

“It’s the only hope.” He avoided Keu’s stare, kept his eyes fixed on Konstantin. “Without that… we’ve got no hope. Our people will go to Downbelow. To the Fleet. To any place that will take them. Only the applications have to be accepted. They have to see there’s hope of getting out. Please, sir.”

“The nature of this?” Konstantin asked, lifting the paper to view.

“A bill I haven’t the facilities to reproduce for the council to consider. I hoped your staff…”

“Regarding the applications.”

“Regarding that, sir.”

“The program remains,” Keu interrupted coldly, “under discussion.”

“We’ll try,” Konstantin said, placing the paper among the others he held “I can’t bring this up on the floor, Mr. Kressich. You understand that. Not until the basic issues in question are resolved at other levels. I’ll have to hold it, and I earnestly beg that you don’t bring up the question tomorrow, although of course you can do that. Public debate might upset negotiations. You’re a man experienced in government; you understand me. But in courtesy, if we can bring this up at some future meeting… I’ll of course have my staff prepare this or other bills for distribution. You understand my position, sir.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, sick at heart. “Thank you.”

He turned away. He had hoped, dimly. He had hoped also for a chance to appeal for station help, security, protection. He did not want Keu’s sort of protection. Dared not ask. They had seen the Fleet’s mercy, in the persons of Mallory and Sung and Kreshov. The troops would come in; take Coledy’s organization apart as a beginning; his security; all the protection he had.

He walked out into the council chambers foyer, past the mocking, amazed stares of Downbelow statues, out the glass doors into the hall, and, unmolested by the guards, walked toward the lift which would take him down to the blue niner level, to go home, back to Q.

There was something like normal traffic in the corridors of main station now, thinner than usual, but station residents were back about their jobs and moving freely if cautiously; no one tended to linger anywhere.

Someone jostled him in meeting. A hand met his, pressed a card into it. He stopped, with a confused impression of a man, a face he had not bothered to see. In terror he resisted the impulse to look about. He pretended to adjust the papers in his folder, walked on, and farther down the hall examined the card: an access card, a bit of tape on its surface: green nine 0434. An address. He kept walking, dropped the hand with the card to his side, his heart hammering against his ribs.

He could ignore it, pass on back into Q. Could turn the card in, claim to have found it, or tell the truth: that someone wanted to contact him without others’ knowledge. Politics. It had to be. Someone willing to take a risk wanted something from the representative of Q. A trap — or hope, a trade of influence. Someone who might be able to move obstructions.

He could reach green nine; just an accidental wrong button on the lift. He stopped in front of the lift call plate, alone, coded green and stood in front of the panel so no one passing might notice the glowing green. The car came; the doors opened. He stepped in and a woman came darting in at the last moment, punched the inside plate to code green two. Doors shut; he looked furtively at her as the car began to move, averted his eyes quickly. The car made a one-section traverse and started down. She got off at two; he stayed on, while the car picked up passengers, none that knew him. It stopped at six, at seven, acquired more. At eight, two got out; nine: he exited with four others, walked toward the docks, his fingers sweating on the card. He passed occasional troopers, who kept a general watch on the flow of traffic in the halls. None of them was likely to notice an ordinary man walking down a hall, stopping at a door, using a card to enter. It was the most natural of actions. Crossway four was coming up. There was no guard there. He slowed, thinking desperately, his heart speeding; he began to think of walking on.

A walker just behind him hooked his sleeve and brusquely swept him forward. “Come on,” the man said, and turned the corner with him. He made no resistance, fearing knives, instincts bred in Q. Of course the deliverer of the card had come down too… or had some confederate. He moved puppetlike, walked the crosshall to the door. Let free, the walker passing on, he used the card.

He walked in. It was a small apartment, with an unmade bed, discarded clothes lying all over it. A man walked out of the nook which served as kitchen, a nondescript man in his middle thirties. “Who are you?” the man asked him.

It set him off balance. He started to pocket the card, but the man held out his hand demanding it. He surrendered it “Name?” the man asked.

“Kressich.” And desperately: “I’m due… they’ll miss me any minute.”

“Then I won’t keep you too long. You’re from Russell’s Star, Mr. Kressich, yes?”

“I thought you didn’t know me.”

“A wife, Jen Justin; a son, Romy.”

He felt beside him for a littered chair, leaned on it, his heart paining him. “What are you talking about?”

“Am I correct, Vassily Kressich?”

He nodded.

“The trust your fellow citizens of Q have placed in you… to represent their interests. You are, of course, one j whose initiative they respect… regarding their interests.” j

“Make your point.”

“Your constituency is in a bad position… papers entangled. And when the military security gets tighter, as it will, with Mazian’s forces in control — I do wonder, Mr. Kressich, what kind of measures could be set up. You’ve all opposed Union after one fashion and the other, of course, some out of genuine dislike; some out of self-interest; some out of convenience. You, now, what sort were you?”

“Where do you get your information?”

“Official sources. I know a great deal about you that you never told this comp. I’ve done research. To put it finely, I’ve seen your wife and son, Mr. Kressich. Are you interested?”

He nodded, unable to do more than nod. He leaned on the chair, trying to breathe.

“They’re well. On a station the name of which I know… where I saw them. Or perhaps moved by now. Union has realized their possible value, knowing the name of the man who represents so formidable a number of people on Pell. Computer search turned them up, but they’ll not be lost again. Would you like to see them again, Mr. Kressich?”

“What do you want from me?”

“A little of your time. A little preparation for the future. You can protect yourself, your family, your constituents, who are pariahs under Mazian. What help could you get from Mazian in locating your family? Or how could he get you to them? And surely there are other families divided, who may now repent a rash decision, a decision Mazian forced them to take, who may understand… that the real interest of any Beyonder is the Beyond itself.”

“You’re Union,” Kressich said, to have it beyond doubt

“Mr. Kressich, I’m Beyonder. Aren’t you?”

He sat down on the arm of the chair, for his knees were unsteady. “What is it you want?”

“Surely there’s a power structure in Q, something you would know. Surely a man like you… is in contact with it.”

“I have contacts.”

“And influence?”

“And influence.”

“You’ll be in Union hands sooner or later; you realize that… if Mazian doesn’t take measures of his own. Do you realize what he might do if he decides he wants to stay here? You think he’s going to have Q near his ships? No, Mr. Kressich, you’re on the one hand cheap labor; on the other a nuisance. Depending on the situation. The way things are going to go — very soon — you’re going to be a liability to him. What means can I use to contact you, Mr. Kressich?”

“You contacted me today.”

“Where is your office?”

“Orange nine 1001.”

“Is there com?”

“Station. Just station can call through to me. And it breaks down. Anytime I want to call, I have to clear it through com central; it’s set up that way. You can’t — can’t call through. And it’s always broken.”

“Q is prone to riot, is it not?”

He nodded.

“Could the councillor of Q… arrange one?”

A second time he nodded. Sweat was running down his face, his sides. “Can you get me off Pell?”

“When you’ve done what you can for me, a guaranteed ticket off, Mr. Kressich. Gather your forces. I don’t even ask to know who they are. But you’ll know me. A message from me will use the word Vassily. That’s all. Just that word. And if such a call should come, you see that there is — immediate and widespread disturbance. And for that, you may begin to look forward to that reunion.”

“Who are you?”

“Go on now. You’ve lost no more than ten minutes of your time. You can make up most of it. I’d hurry, Mr. Kressich.”

He rose, glanced back, left in haste, the corridor air cold on his face. No one challenged him, no one noticed. He matched the pace of the main corridor, and decided that if challenged about the time, he had talked to Konstantin, talked to people in the foyer; that he had gotten ill and stopped in a restroom. Konstantin himself would attest that he had left upset. He wiped his face with his hand, his vision tending to blur, rounded the corner onto green dock, and kept walking, into blue, and toward the line.

There was a knock at the door. Hale answered it, and Jon turned tensely from his place by the kitchen bar, let go a profound sigh of relief as Jessad walked in, and the door closed behind him.

“No trouble,” Jessad said, “They’re covering up the signs, you know. Preparing for in-station action. Makes finding directions a little difficult.”

“Kressich, confound you.”

“No trouble.” Jessad stripped off his coat and tossed it to Hale’s man Keifer, who had appeared from the bedroom. Keifer felt the jacket pocket at once, recovered his papers with understandable relief. “You didn’t get stopped,” Keifer said.

“No,” Jessad said. “Just walked right to your apartment, went in, sent your partner out with the card… all very smooth.”

“He agreed?” Jon asked.

“Of course he agreed.” Jessad was in an unusual mood, feeling a residue of excitement, his normally dull eyes alive with humor. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink.

“My clothes,” Keifer objected.

Jessad laughed, sipped at the drink, then set it down and began to take off the shirt. “He’s back in Q by now. And we control it.”

ii

Ayres sat down at the table in the main room, ignored the guards, to lean his head against his hands and try to recover his balance. He remained as he was for several breaths, then rose, walked to the water dispenser on the wall, unsteady on his feet. He moistened his fingers and bathed his face with the cold water, took a paper cup and drank to settle his stomach.

Someone joined him in the room. He looked, scowled instantly, for it was Dayin Jacoby, who sat down at the only table. He would not have gone back to it, but his legs were too weak to bear long standing. He did not bear up well through jump. Jacoby fared better, and that too he held against him.

“It’s close,” Jacoby said. “I have a good idea where we are.”

Ayres sat down, forced his eyes into focus. The drugs made everything distant. “You should be proud of yourself.”

“Mazian… will be there.”

“They don’t confide in me. But it makes sense that he would… Is this being recorded?”

“I have no idea. What if it is? The fact is, Mr. Ayres, that you can’t retain Pell for the Company, you can’t protect it. You had your chance, and it’s gone. And Pell doesn’t want Mazian. Better Union order than Mazian.”

“Tell that to my companions.”

“Pell,” Jacoby said, leaning forward, “deserves better than the Company can give it. Better than Mazian will give it, that’s sure. I’m for our interest, Mr. Ayres, and we deal as we must.”

“You could have dealt with us.”

“We did… for centuries.”

Ayres bit his lip, refusing to be drawn further into this argument. The drugs he had to have for jump… fogged his thinking. He had already talked, and he had resolved not to. They wanted something of him, or they would not have brought him out of confinement and let him up onto this level of the ship. He leaned his head against his hand and tried to reason himself out of his muzziness while there was still time.

“We’re ready to go in.” Jacoby pursued him. “You know that.”

Jacoby was trying to frighten him. He had been prostrate with terror during the last maneuvering. He had endured jump twice now, with the feeling that his guts were twisted inside out. He refused to think of another one.

“I think they’re going to have a talk with you,” Jacoby said, “about a message for Pell, something to the effect that Earth has signed a treaty; that Earth supports the right of the citizens of Pell to choose their own government. That kind of thing.”

He stared at Jacoby, doubting, for the first time, where right and wrong lay. Jacoby was from Pell. Whatever Earth’s interests, those interests could not be served by antagonizing a man who might, despite all wishes to the contrary, end up high in the government on Pell.

“You’ll be interested, perhaps,” Jacoby said, “in agreements involving Pell itself. If Earth doesn’t want to be cut off… and you protest it seeks trade… it has to go through Pell, Mr. Ayres. We’re important to you.”

“I’m well aware of that fact. Talk to me when you are in authority over Pell. Right now the authority on Pell is Angelo Konstantin, and I have yet to see anything that says differently.”

“Deal now,” Jacoby said, “and expect agreement The party I represent can assure you of safeguards for your interests. We’re a jumping-off point, Mr. Ayres, for Earth and home. A quiet takeover on Pell, a quiet stay for you while you’re waiting on your companions to overtake you, for a journey home in a ship easily engaged here at Pell; or difficulties… prolonged difficulties, resulting from a long and difficult siege. Damage… possibly the destruction of the station. I don’t want that; I don’t think you do. You’re a humane man, Mr. Ayres. And I’m begging you — make it easy on Pell. Just tell the truth. Make it clear to them that there’s a treaty, that their choice has to be Union. That Earth has let them go.”

“You work for Union. Thoroughly.”

“I want my station to survive, Mr. Ayres. Thousands upon thousands of people… could die. You know what it is with Mazian using it for cover? He can’t hold it forever, but he can ruin it.” Ayres sat staring at his hand, knowing that he could not reason accurately in his present condition, knowing that most of what he had been told in all his stay among them was a lie. “Perhaps we should work together, Mr. Jacoby, if it can assure an end to this without further bloodshed.”

Jacoby blinked, perhaps surprised.

“Probably,” Ayres said, “We are both realists, Mr. Jacoby… I suspect you of it. Self-determination is a nice term for last available choice, is it not? I comprehend your argument. Pell has no defenses. Station neutrality… meaning that you go with the winning side.”

“You have it, Mr. Ayres.”

“So do I,” he said. “Order — in the Beyond — benefits trade, and that’s to the Company’s interest. It was inevitable that independence would come out here. It’s just come sooner than Earth was ready to understand. It would have been acknowledged long ago if not for the blindness of ideologies. Brighter days, Mr. Jacoby, are possible. May we live to see them.”

It was a lie as sober-faced as he had ever delivered. He leaned back in his chair with nausea urging at him from the effects of jump and from outright terror.

“Mr. Ayres.”

He looked back at the doorway. It was Azov. The Union officer walked in, resplendent in black and silver.

“We are monitored,” Ayres observed sourly.

“I don’t delude myself with your affection, Mr. Ayres. Only with your good sense.”

“I’ll make your recording.”

Azov shook his head. “We go heralded,” he said, “but by a different warning. There’s no hope that Mazian’s ships will all be docked. We brought you along first for the Mazianni; and secondly because in the taking of Pell station it will be useful to have a voice of former authority.”

He nodded weary assent. “If it saves lives, sir.”

Azov simply stared at him. Frowned, finally. “Take time to recover your equilibrium, sirs. And to contemplate what you might do to benefit Pell.”

Ayres looked to Jacoby as Azov left and saw that Jacoby was also capable of anxiety. “Doubts?” he asked Jacoby sourly.

“I have kin on that station,” Jacoby said.