Downbelow Station

i

The downer was with him again, a small brown shadow, not altogether unusual in the traffic in nine. Josh paused in the riot-scarred corridor, put his foot on a molding, pretended to adjust the top of his boot. The Downer touched his arm, wrinkled its nose in bending and peering up at his face. “Konstantin-man all right?”

“All right,” he said. It was the one called Bluetooth, who was on their heels almost daily, managing to carry messages to and from Damon’s mother. “We’ve got a good place to hide now. No more trouble. Damon’s safe and the man’s making no more trouble.”

The furred powerful hand sought his, forced an object into it. “You take Konstantin-man? She give, say need.”

The Downer slipped away in the traffic as quickly as he had come. Josh straightened, resisting the temptation to look about or to look at the metal object until he was some distance down the corridor. It turned out to be a brooch, metal that might be real gold. He pocketed it for the treasure it was to them, something salable on the market, something that needed no card, that would bribe someone unbribable by other means… like the owner of their current lodgings. Gold had uses other than jewelry: rare metals were worth lives — the going rate. And the day was coming when it would take greater and greater persuasion to keep Damon hidden. A woman of vast good sense, Damon’s mother. She had ears and eyes, in every Downer who flitted harmlessly through the corridors, and she knew their desperation — offered still a refuge that Damon would not take, because he above all did not want the Downer system subject to search.

The net was closing on them. The area of usable corridors grew less and less. A new system was being installed, new cards, and the sections the troops cleared stayed cleared. Those within a section when the troops sealed it were rounded up, checked against the wanted lists, and given new id’s… most of them. Some vanished, period. And the new card system hit the market harder and harder, the nearer it got. The value of cards and papers plummeted, for they would be valid only until the changeover was complete, and people were already getting shy of the old ones. Now and again an alarm went off, silent, somewhere in comp; and troops would come to some establishment and start trace procedure on someone they wanted… as if most of the people in unsecure sections were using their own cards. But the troops asked questions and checked id’s when they were roused — kept the areas open to their raids, kept the populace terrorized and suspicious each of the other, and that served Mazian’s purpose.

It also gave them a livelihood. It was their stock-in-trade, his and Damon’s, the purification of cards. It was their value within the system of the black market. A buyer wanted to check the worth of a stolen card, a new purchaser wanted to be sure that a card would not ring alarms in comp, someone wanted the bank code number to get at assets… the bars and sleepovers in the docks did not match up faces and id’s, not at all. And Damon had the access numbers to do it. He had learned them too, so that they worked a partnership and neither of them had to venture into the corridors on too regular a basis. They had it down to a science… using the Downer tunnels and even crossing through the section barriers — Bluetooth had shown them how — so that no single comp terminal would have a series of inquiries. They had never triggered an alarm, even though some of the cards had been dangerously hot. They were good; they had a trade — ironically of Mazian’s creation — which fed and housed and hid them with all the protections the market could offer its valuable operators. He had at the moment a pocketful of cards, each of which he knew by value according to the level of clearance and how much was in the credit account. Nothing in the latter, in most instances. Families of missing persons had gotten wise very quickly, and station comp had taken to honoring family requests that an account be frozen from access by a particular number… so rumor ran, and it was probably true. Most cards now were trouble. He had a few usable ones in the lot and a collection of code numbers. Cards which had belonged to single persons or independent accounts were the only ones still good.

But there were omens of more rapid change. It was his imagination, perhaps, but the corridors on all levels of green seemed more crowded today. It might well be so. All those who dared not submit to id and re-carding had crowded persistently into smaller and smaller spaces… green and white remained open sectors, but he personally had gotten nervous about white, not wanting to go into it longer than he must… had heard no rumors himself, but there was something in the air, something that reckoned another area was about to go under seal… and white was likeliest.

Green was the section with the big concourses, and the fewest troublesome bottlenecks where determined resistance could fight from room to room and hall to hall — if it came to fighting. He rather imagined another end for them, that when all the problems Mazian had on Pell were neatly herded into one last section, they would simply blow it, vent the section with doors wide open, and they would die without appeal and without a chance.

A few crazed souls had gotten pressure suits, the hottest item on the black market, and hovered near them, armed and wild-eyed, hoping to survive against all logic. Most of them simply expected to die. There was a desperate atmosphere in all of green, while those who had finally reconciled themselves to capture voluntarily moved into white. Green and white grew stranger and stranger, with walls graffiti’d with bizarre slogans, some obscene, some religious, some pathetic. We lived here, one said. That was all.

All but a very few lights in the corridors had been broken out, so that everything was twilight, and station no longer dimmed lights for mainday/alterday shifts; it would have become dangerously dark. There were some side corridors where all the lights were out, and no one went into those lairs unless he belonged there — or was dragged screaming into them. There were gangs, who fought each other for power. The weaker souls clung to them, paid them all their resources, not to be harmed, and perhaps to have the chance to harm others. Some of the gangs had started in Q. Some were Pell gangs which formed in defense and undertook other business ventures. He feared them indiscriminately, feared their unreasoning violence most of all. He had let his beard grow, let his hair grow, walked with a slouch and acquired as much dirt as possible, changed his face subtly with cosmetic… that commodity sold high on the market too. If there was any comedy in this grim place it was that most of these folk hereabouts were doing exactly the same thing, that the section was full of men and women who desperately did not want to be recognized, and who avoided each others’ eyes in a perpetual flinching as they walked the halls… some who swaggered and tried to threaten, unless troops were at hand… more who flitted like downcast ghosts, scurrying along in evident hope no one would set a hue and cry after them.

Perhaps he had changed so much in appearance that no one did recognize him. No one had yet pointed a finger at him or at Damon in public. There was some loyalty left on Pell, perhaps — or their involvement with the market protected them, or others who knew them were just too frightened to start something. Some of the gangs were linked into the market.

Occasional troopers walked in the halls, some back in nine two, no less common than Downers about their business. Green dock was still open as far as the end of white dock; and Africa and occasionally Atlantic or Pacific occupied the first two berths of green, while the other ships berthed in blue dock, and troops came and went freely through the personnel access beside the section seals on that end of green. Troops entered green and white on liberty or on duty, mingling with the condemned… and the condemned knowing that all they had to do to escape was to go up to those troops or to the cleared-area access doors and turn themselves in. Some did not believe that the Mazianni would decompress the section, simply because of that close and almost friendly association. Troopers shed their armor on liberty, walked about laughing and human, hung out in the bars… staked out a couple of establishments for themselves, it was true… but mingled in other bars, turned an occasional benevolent smile on the market.

So much the easier to handle the victims until it came, Josh reckoned. They still had choices left, played the game with the troops, dodged and struggled… but all it took was a button pushed somewhere in central, no personal contact, no watching faces as they died. All clinical and distant.

He and Damon planned, wild and futile schemes. Damon’s brother was rumored to be alive. They talked of stowing away on one of the shuttles, taking one over, getting to Downbelow and into the bush. They had as likely a chance of stealing a shuttle from armed troops as they did of walking to Downbelow, but the planning occupied their minds and gave them hope.

And more realistic… they could try to pass the seals into the cleared sections, and chance the alarm-rigged access doors, regimented security, checkpoints at every corner and card use at every move… that was the way of life over there. Mallory’s doing. They had been checking it out. Too many men-with-guns, was Bluetooth’s warning. Cold they eyes.

Cold indeed.

And meanwhile there was the market and there was Ngo’s.

He approached the bar along green nine, not by the tunnel ways which led to the corridor outside Ngo’s back door, for that was for emergencies and Ngo had no love for anyone using the back way without cause… wanted no one seen in the main room who had not come in by the front door and wanted no access alarms going off in comp. Ngo’s was a place where the market flourished, and as such it tried to be cleaner than most, one of almost a score of bars and entertainment concessions along green dock and the niner access which had once thrived in the traffic of merchanters… a line of sleepovers and vid theaters and lounges and restaurants and one anomalous chapel completing the row. Most of the bars were open; the theaters and the chapel and some of the sleepovers were burned out shells, but the bars functioned, most like Ngo’s, as restaurants as well, the channels through which station still fed the population, arid black-market food augmented what the station was willing to supply.

He cast cautious glances one way and the other as he approached the front and ever-wide door of Ngo’s, not obvious looks around, but a rhythm of walking and looking as a man might who was simply making up his mind which bar he wanted.

A face caught his eye, abruptly, heart-stoppingly. He delayed a half a beat and looked toward Mascari’s, across the corridor at the emptying of nine onto the docks. A tall man who had been standing there suddenly moved and darted within Mascari’s.

Dark obscured his vision, a flash of memory so vivid he staggered and forgot all his pattern. He was vulnerable for that instant, panicked… turned for Ngo’s doorway blindly and went inside, into the dim light and pounding music and the smells of alcohol and food and the unwashed clientele.

The old man himself was tending bar. Josh went to the counter and leaned there, asked for a bottle. Ngo gave it to him, no asking for his card. That all came later, in the back room. But his hand shook in taking the bottle, and Ngo’s quick hand caught his wrist. “Trouble?”

“Close one,” he lied… and perhaps not a lie. “I got clear. Gang trouble. Don’t worry. No one tracked me. Nothing official.”

“You better be sure.”

“No problem. Nerves. It’s nerves.” He clutched the bottle and walked away toward the back, stopped a moment against the back doorway that led into the kitchen and waited to be sure his exit was not observed.

One of the Mazianni, maybe. His heart still pounded from the encounter. Someone with Ngo’s under surveillance. No. His imagination. The Mazianni did not to need to be so subtle. He unstopped the bottle and drank from it, Downer wine, cheap tranquilizer. He took a second long drink and began to feel better. He experienced such flashes… not often. They were always bad. Anything could trigger it, usually some small and silly thing, a smell, a sound, a momentary wrong way of looking at a familiar thing or ordinary person… That it should have happened in public — that most disturbed him. It could have attracted notice. Maybe it had. He resolved not to go out again today. Was not sure about tomorrow. He took a third drink and a last look over the patrons at the dozen tables, then slipped back into the kitchen, where Ngo’s wife and son were cooking up the orders. He paid them a casual glance, received sullen stares in return, and walked on through to the storeroom.

He pushed the door open on manual. “Damon,” he said, and the curtain at the rear of the cabinets opened. Damon came out and sat down among the canisters they used for furniture, in the light of the batteried lamp they used to escape comp’s watchful economy and infallible memory. He came and sank down wearily, gave Damon the bottle and Damon took a drink. Unshaven, both of them, with the look of the unwashed, depressed crowds which collected down here.

“You’re late,” Damon said. “You trying to give me ulcers?”

He fished the cards out of his pocket, arranged them by memory, made quick notes with a grease pencil before he should forget. Damon gave him paper and he wrote the details for each one, and Damon did not talk to him the while.

Then it was done, his memory spilled, and he laid the batch on top of the next canister and reached for the wine bottle. He drank and set it down. “Met Bluetooth. Said your mother’s fine. Give you this.” He drew the brooch from his pocket and watched as Damon took it into his hands with that melancholy look that told him it might have some meaning beyond the gold itself. Damon nodded glumly and pocketed it; he did not much speak of his family, living or dead, not in reminiscence.

“She knows,” Damon said, “she knows what it’s coming to. She can see it from her vid screens, hear it from the Downers… Did Bluetooth say anything specific?”

“Only that your mother thought we needed it.”

“No word of my brother?”

“It didn’t come up. We weren’t in a place we could talk, the Downer and I.”

Damon nodded, drew a deep breath and leaned his elbows on his knees, head bowed. Damon lived for such news. When it failed him his spirits fell, and it hurt. Hurt both of them. He felt as if he had dealt the wound.

“It’s getting tight out there,” Josh said. “Lots of anxiety. I delayed a little along the way, listening, but no news; everyone’s scared but no one knows anything.”

Damon lifted his head, took the bottle, drank down half the remaining wine, hardly a swallow. “Whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to do soon. Either go into the secured sections… or try for the shuttle. We can’t go on here.”

“Or make ourselves a bubble in the tunnels,” he said. In his reckoning, it was the only realistic idea. Most humans were pathologically frightened of the tunnels. What few humans who would try them… maybe they could fight them off. They had the guns. Might be able to live there. But they were about out of time… for any choices. It was not an existence to look forward to. And maybe we’ll be lucky, he thought miserably, looking at Damon, who looked at the floor, lost in his own thoughts. Maybe they’ll just blow the area.

The storeroom door opened. Ngo came in on them, walked up and gathered up the cards, read through the notations, pursed his wrinkled mouth and frowned. “You’re sure?”

“No mistakes.”

Ngo muttered unhappily at the quality of the merchandise, as if they were at fault, started to leave.

“Ngo,” Damon said, “heard a rumor the market’s going for the new paper. That so?”

“Where did you hear that?”

Damon shrugged. “Two men talking in front. That true, Ngo?”

“They’re dreaming. You see a way to get your hands into the new system, you tell me.”

“I’m thinking on it.”

Ngo muttered to himself and left

“That so?” Josh asked.

Damon shook his head. “Thought I might jar something loose. Ngo won’t shake or there’s no way anyone knows.”

“I’d bet on the latter.”

“So would I.” Damon set his hands on his knees, sighed, looked up. “Why don’t we go out and get something to eat? No one out there who’s trouble, is there?”

The memory which had left him came back with dark force. He opened his mouth to say something, and of a sudden came a rumbling which shook the floor, a boom and crash which overrode screams from outside.

“The seals,” Damon exclaimed, on his feet. Cries continued, wild screams, chairs overturning in the front room. Damon rushed for the storeroom door and Josh ran with him, out as far as the back door, where Ngo and his wife and son had scrambled to get out, Ngo with his market records in hand.

“No,” Josh exclaimed, “Wait… that would have been the doors to white… we’re sealed — but there were troops up at nine two — they wouldn’t have troops in here if they were going to push the button — ”

“Com,” Ngo’s wife exclaimed. There was an announcement coming through the vid unit in the front room. They rushed in that direction, into the restaurant area, where a handful of people were clustered about the vid and a looter was busy gathering an armful of bottles from the bar. “Hey!” Ngo shouted in outrage, and the man snatched two more and ran.

It was Jon Lukas on the screen. It always was when Mazian had an official announcement to station. The man had become a skeleton, a pitiable shadow-eyed skeleton. “… been sealed off,” Lukas was saying. “White-area residents and others who wish to leave will be permitted to leave. Go to the green dock access and you will be permitted to pass.”

“They’re herding all the undesirables in here,” Ngo said. Sweat stood on his wrinkled face. “What about us who work here, Mr. Stationmaster Lukas? What about us honest people caught in here?”

Lukas repeated all the announcement. It was probably a recording; doubtful if they ever let the man on live.

“Come on,” Damon said, hooking Josh’s arm. They walked out the front door and around the corner onto green dock, walked far along the upward curve, where a great mass of people had gathered looking toward white. They were not the only ones. There were troops, moving out along the far-side wall, by the berths and gantries.

“Going to be shooting,” Josh muttered. “Damon, let’s get out of here.”

“Look at the doors. Look at the doors.”

He did look. The massive valves were tightly joined. The personnel access at the side was not open. It did not open.

“They’re not going to let them through,” Damon said. “It was a lie… to get the fugitives to the docks over there.”

“Let’s get back,” Josh pleaded with him.

Someone fired; their side, the troops — a barrage came over their heads and into the shopfronts. People shrieked and shoved, and they fled with it, down the dock, into nine, into Ngo’s doorway, while riot surged past and down the hall. A few others tried to follow them, but Ngo rushed up with a stick and fended them off, all the while shrieking curses at the two of them for running in with trouble after them.

They got the door closed, but the crowd outside was more interested in running, the path of least resistance. The room lights came on full, on a room full of tangled chairs and spilled dishes.

In silence Ngo and his family began cleaning up. “Here,” Ngo said to Josh, and thrust a wet, stew-soiled rag at him. Ngo turned a second frowning look on Damon, although he did not order: a Konstantin still had some privilege. But Damon started picking up dishes and straightening chairs and mopping with the rest of them.

It grew quiet outside again, with an occasional pounding at the door. Faces stared at them through the plastic window, people simply wanting in, exhausted and frightened people, wanting the service of the place.

Ngo opened the doors, cursed and shouted, let them in, set himself behind the bar and started doling out drinks with no regard to credit for the moment. “You pay,” he warned all and sundry. “Just sit down and we’ll make out the tickets.” Some left without paying; some did sit down. Damon took a bottle of wine and drew Josh to a table in the farthest corner, where there was a short ell. It was their usual place, which had a view of the front door and unobstructed access to the kitchen and their hiding places. The com music channel had come on again, playing something wistfully soothing and romantic.

Josh leaned his head against his hands and wished he dared be drunk. He could not be. There were the dreams. Damon drank. Eventually it seemed to be enough, for Damon’s shadowed eyes had an anesthetized haze which he envied.

“I’m going out tomorrow,” Damon said. “I’ve sat in that hole enough… I’m going out, maybe talk to a few people, try to make some contacts. There’s got to be someone who hasn’t cleared out of green. Someone who still owes my family some favors.”

He had tried before. “We’ll talk about it,” Josh said.

Ngo’s son served them dinner, stew, stretched as far as possible. Josh sipped a spoonful of it, nudged Damon with his foot when he sat there. Damon gathered up his spoon and ate, but his mind still seemed elsewhere.

Elene, perhaps. Damon spoke her name sometimes in his sleep. Sometimes his brother’s. Or maybe he was thinking of other things, lost friends. People probably dead. He was not going to talk; Josh knew that. They spent long hours in silences, in their separate pasts. He thought of his own happier dreams, pleasant places, a sun-lit road, dusty grain fields on Cyteen, people who had loved him, faces that he had known, old friends, old comrades, far from this place. The hours were filled with it, the long, solitary hours each of them spent in hiding, the nights, with music from Ngo’s front room jarring the walls most of the hours of mainday and alter-day, numbing, constant, or saccharine and pervasive. They stole sleep in the quiet times, lay listlessly in others. He did not intrude on Damon’s fancies, nor Damon on his. Never denied the importance of them, which were the best comfort they had in this place.

One thing they no longer considered, and that was either of them turning himself in. They had Lukas’s face before them, that death’s-head forewarning of Mazian’s dealing with his puppets. If Emilio Konstantin was still alive as rumor said… privately Josh wondered if it was good news or bad. And that too he did not say.

“I hear,” Damon said finally, “that maybe some of the Mazianni crew are on the take. I wonder if they could be bribed for more than goods. If there are holes in their new system.”

“That’s crazy. It’s not in their interests. It’s not a sack of flour you’re talking about. Ask that kind of question and we’ll have them on us.”

“Probably you’re right.”

Josh pushed the bowl back and stared at the rim of it They were running out of time, that was all. In the sealing of white… they were sealed too. All it took now was a sweep starting from the dock or from green one, checking in those who were willing to surrender, shooting down those who were not.

When they had white in order… it came. And it was beginning over there. Was already underway.

“I’d have to make the approach to the Fleet,” Josh said finally. “The troops would more likely recognize you than me. As long as I stay away from Norway troops…”

Damon was silent a moment, perhaps weighing odds. “Let me try another thing. Let me think about it. There’s got to be a way onto the shuttles. I’m going to check out the dock crews, find out who’s working there.”

It was not going to work. It had always been a mad idea.

ii

Another merchanter in. Arrivals were not unusual. Elene heard the report and got up from her couch, walked Finity’s narrow spaces to see what Wes Neihart had on scan.

“What’s the deal here?” a thin voice asked in due time. The freighter had jumped in at a respectful distance, fully cautious; it would take her a while to work her way in out of the jump range. Elene sat down at the second seat at the scan, feeling after the cushion. Her thickening body vexed her subconsciously; it was a nuisance she had learned to live with. The baby was kicking, an internal and unpredictable companionship. Quiet, she thought at him, winced and concentrated on scan. Other Neiharts moved in to see.

“Someone going to answer me?” the newcomer asked, much closer now.

“Give me id,” said the voice of another ship. “This is Little Bear, merchanter. Who are you? Keep coming; just give us id.”

The answer time passed, still shorter now; and other merchanters had started to move. There was a gathering bunch of observers on Finity’s bridge.

“Don’t like this one,” someone muttered.

“This is Genevieve out of Unionside, from Fargone. Rumor has it we’ve got something going on here. What’s the situation?”

“Let me take it,” another voice broke in. “Genevieve, this is Pixie II. Let me talk to the old man, all right, young fellow?”

There was a silence beyond what should have been. Elene’s heart started pumping overtime, and she swung about with an awkward and frantic wave at Neihart, but the general alert was already on its way, Neihart passing the signal to his nephew at comp.

“This is Sam Denton on Genevieve,” the voice returned.

“Sam, what’s my name?”

“Soldiers here,” Genevieve sputtered, and the voice went off very quickly. Elene reached frantically after com as communications everywhere crackled orders to stand or be fired on.

“Genevieve. Genevieve, this is Quen of Estelle. Answer.”

No one fired. On scan, ships, the hundreds of ships drifting within the null point range, sat reoriented to embrace the intruder.

“This is Union Lt. Marn Oborsk,” a voice returned at last. “Aboard Genevieve. This ship will destruct before capture. The Dentons are aboard. Confirm your identity. The Quens are dead. Estelle is a dead ship. What ship are you?”

“Genevieve, you are not in a position to make demands. Put the Dentons off their ship.”

Again a long pause. “I want to know who I’m talking to.”

She let the silence ride for a moment. About her there was frantic activity on the bridge. Guns were being aimed, the relative positions calculated for speed, drift, and the probable sly use of docking jets to increase it. “This is Quen speaking. We demand you set the Dentons off that ship. We tell you this: that if Union sets its hands on another merchanter, there’s going to be the devil let loose. That the port of origin of any ship attacking or appropriating a merchanter vessel will be subject to the full sanctions of our alliance. That’s the name of what’s going on out here. Look your fill, Lt. Oborsk. We’re spreading. We outnumber your warships. If you want a kilo of commerce moved anywhere, from now on you deal with us.”

“What ship is speaking?”

They might have started shooting instead of talking. Calm them down; Keep them steady. She wiped her face and rolled a glance at Neihart, who nodded: they had them comped. “Quen is all you need to know, lieutenant. You’re far outnumbered. How did you find this place? Did you get it out of the Dentons? Or did just the wrong ship contact you? I’ll tell you this: the merchanter’s alliance will deal as a unit. And if you want real trouble, sir, you go lay hands on another merchanter vessel. You and Mazian’s Fleet can do what you like to each other. We’re not Company and we’re not Union. We’re the third side in this triangle and from now on we negotiate in our own name.”

“What is in progress here?”

“Are you able to negotiate or carry messages on your side?”

There was long delay.

“Lieutenant,” she pursued, “when authorized negotiators are willing to approach us we are fully prepared to talk with you. In the meantime kindly put the Dentons off. If you are willing to talk reasonably you’ll find us amiable; if on the other hand… harm comes to any merchanter, reprisals will be made for it. And that is a promise.”

There was the requisite silence. “This is Sam Denton,” another voice said finally. “I’m instructed to tell you that this ship is going to put about and that there is a destruct aboard. Got the whole family on here, Quen. That’s truth too.”

Of a sudden there was breakup. She flashed a look at vid and telemetry, saw the flare registered, suddenly grow, become a wash there was no mistaking even on vid. Her stomach tightened and the baby moved… she put her hand on the spot and stared at the screens in a moment of nausea, while static kept coming in.

A hand descended on her shoulder, Neihart’s.

“Who fired?” she asked.

“This is Pixy II,” a voice came back, rough and thick. “I did. They were nosing zenith toward the gap; engines flared. They’d have carried out too much.”

“We cope, Pixy.”

“Going in,” another ship sent. “Going to search the area.”

There was at least the possibility of a capsule… that Union might have allowed the Denton children to shelter there, for safety. There was not much chance that a capsule could have survived that.

Like Estelle, at Mariner. Like that. They were not going to find anything.

Other blips were showing up, ghostly presences in the sunless dark of the point, defined only as blips on scan, or by the sometime flick of runnings lights or a shadow on vid, occulting stars. They were friendly — hundreds of ships moving into the search area. “We’re in it now,” Neihart murmured; “Union won’t rest.” But they all knew that, from the time the word had gone out, from the time merchanters had begun to pass to merchanters the word where to come and the name that summoned them… a dead ship, and a dead name — from a disaster they all knew. Inevitable that Union get wind of it; by now Union was surely noticing the curious absence of ships from their stations, merchanters who did not come in on schedule. They were panicking perhaps, perceiving disappearances in zones where it could not be military action, with Mazian tied up at Pell. Union had appropriated ships — they had proven that — and before this ship came, it might have given its course to others. The next step was a warship sent in here… if Union could spare one from Pell.

And the word had not sped only to Union space. It had gone to Sol — for Winifred had recalled her Earthly ties, dumped her cargo, ridding herself of mass to jump as far as possible… had undertaken that long and uncertain journey to what welcome they did not know. Tell them about Mariner. Elene had asked of them. And Russell’s and Viking and Pell. Make them understand. They did it dutifully, because they had once been Earth’s. But it was gesture only. There was no answer coming.

They did not find a capsule, only debris and wreckage.

iii

The hisa had been coming and going from the beginning, quiet migration in and out of the gathering at the foot of the images, hushed and sober movement, by ones and twos and reverently, in respect to the dreamers who gathered there by the thousands. By day and by night they had come, carrying food and water, doing small and necessary things.

There were domes for humans now, diggings made by Downer labor, and compressors thumped away with the pulse of life, rude, patched domes unlovely… but they gave shelter to the old and to the children, and to all the rest of them as brief summer yielded to fall, as skies clouded and the days full of sun and the nights of stars grew fewer.

Ships overflew them, shuttles on their runs going and coming; they were accustomed to this, and it no longer frightened them.

You must not gather even the woods, Miliko had explained to the Old Ones through interpreters. Their eyes see warm things, even through trees. Deep earth can hide hisa, oh, very deep. But they see even when Sun doesn’t shine.

Downer eyes had gotten very round at that. They had talked among themselves. Lukases, they had muttered. But they had seemed to understand.

She had talked day upon day to the Old Ones, talked until she was hoarse and she exhausted her interpreters, tried to make them understand what they faced, and when she would tire, alien hands would pat her arms and her face and round hisa eyes look at her with profound tenderness, all, sometimes, that they could do.

And humans… by night she came to them. There was Ito, and Ernst and others, who grew moodier and moodier — Ito because all the other officers had gone with Emilio; and Ernst, a small man, who had not been chosen; and one of the strongest men of all the camps, Ned Cox, who had not volunteered in the first place… and began to be ashamed. There was a kind of contagion that spread among them, shame perhaps, when they heard news from main base, that told of nothing but misery. About a hundred sat outside the domes, choosing the cold weather and the reliance on breathers as if by rejecting comfort they proved something to each other and to themselves. They had grown silent, and their eyes were, as the Downers said, bright and cold. Day and night… in this sanctuary, in the place of hisa images… they sat in front of the domes in which others lived, in which others were all too eager to take their turns — they could not all get in at once. They stayed because they must; any desertion would be noted from the sky. They had elected sanctuary, and there was nothing left to do but to sit and think of the others. Thinking. Measuring themselves.

Dreaming, the hisa called it. It was what hisa came to do.

Use sense, Miliko had told them in the first days, when they were most restless, talking wildly about action. We’re to wait.

Wait on what? Cox had asked, and that began to haunt her own dreams.

This night, hisa were coming down the slope who had been sent for… days before. This night she sat with the others and watched them come, hands in her lap, watched small, distant bodies moving in the starless dark of the plain, sat with a curious tautness in her gut, and a tightness in her throat. Hisa… to fill up the number of humans, so that those who scanned the camp would find it undiminished. She carried the gun in a waterproof pocket; dressed warmly; still shivered in the uncertainty of things. Care for the hisa: that was what she was left to do; but go, the hisa themselves had told her. You heart hurt. You eyes cold like they.

Go or lose the people she commanded. She could no longer hold them otherwise.

Are you afraid to be left? she had asked the humans who would remain, the quiet, retiring ones, the old, the children, those men and women unlike those who sat outside — families and people with loved ones and those who were, perhaps, saner. She felt guilt for them. She was supposed to protect them and she could not; could not really even lead that band outside — she simply ran ahead of their madness. Many of these who would remain were Q, refugees, who had seen too much of horror, and were too tired, and had never asked to be down here at all. She imagined they must be afraid. The hisa elders could be perversely strange, and while Pell folk were used to hisa, they were still alien to these people. No, one old woman had said. For the first time since Mariner I’m not afraid. We’re safe here. Not from the guns, maybe, but from being afraid. And other heads had nodded, and eyes stared at her with the patience of the hisa images.

Now hisa moved near them where they sat… a small group of hisa, who came first to her and to Ito, and they stood up, looked back on the others who waited.

“See you,” Miliko said, and heads nodded, in silence.

Several more were chosen, the hisa taking those they would, and slowly, in the dark, they walked that track across and up the slope, as others would come down, in small groups. One hundred twenty-three humans would go this night; and as many hisa come to join the camp in their place. She hoped that the hisa understood. They had seemed to, finally, eyes lighting with merriment at the joke on the humans who looked down to spy on them.

They went by the quickest route, passed other hisa on the way down, who called out cheerfully to them… and she walked at a human’s best pace, panting, dizzy, resolved not to rest, for a hisa would not rest; and so they had all agreed to do it. She staggered as they made the final climb into the forest margin helped by the young hisa females who hovered about them… She-walks-far was one, and Wind-in-trees another, and more whose names she could not quite fathom nor the hisa say. Quickfoot, she had named the one and Whisper the other, for they set great store by human names. She had tried the names they called themselves, to please them as they walked, but her tongue could not master them and her attempts sent the hisa into nose-wrinkling gales of laughter.

They rested until the sun came up, in the trees and the bracken, and under a rocky ledge. By daylight they set out again, she and Ito and Ernst and the hisa who guided them, as other hisa had led others of them into the forest now, elsewhere. The hisa moved as if there were no enemies in all the world, with prank-playing, and once an ambush which stopped their hearts… Quickfoot’s joke. Miliko frowned, and when the other humans did, the hisa caught the mood and grew quieter, seeming perplexed. Miliko caught Whisper by the hand and tried earnestly and once more to make sense to her, who knew less human speech than those hisa they were accustomed to deal with.

“Look.” At last she grew desperate, seized a stick and crouched down, ripped up living and dead bracken to make a clear spot. She jabbed the stick at the ground. “Konstantin-man camp.” She drew a line. “River.” It was not likely, knowledgeable men said, that any drawn symbol was going to penetrate hisa imagination; it was not in their approach to things, lines and marks bearing no relationship to the real object. “We make circle, so, we eyes watch human camp. See Konstantin. See Bounder.”

Whisper nodded, suddenly enthusiastic, a quick bob of her whole body on her haunches. She pointed back in the direction of the plain. “They… they… they,” she said, and snatched the stick, waved it at the sky with the nearest thing to menace she had ever seen in a hisa. “Bad they,” she said, and hurled the stick at the sky, bounced several times, clapped her hands and struck her breast with her palms. “I friend Bounder.”

Bounder’s mate. Miliko stared at the young female’s intense expression, suddenly understanding, and Whisper seized her hand, patted it. Quickfoot patted her shoulder. There was a quick sputtering of conversation among all the hisa, and they suddenly seemed to take a decision, separated by pairs and each seized a human by the hand.

“Miliko,” Ito protested.

“Trust them; let’s go with it. Hisa won’t get lost; they’ll keep us in touch and get us back again when we have to. I’ll send a message to you. Wait on it.”

The hisa were anxiously urging them apart, each a separate way. “Take care,” Ernst said, looking back; and trees came between. She, Ernst, and Ito had guns, half the guns there were on all of Downbelow, except the troops’ and the other three were coming. Six guns and a little of the blasting materials for moving stumps — that was their whole arsenal. Go quietly, no more than three together, she had urged the hisa constantly, trying to keep their movements ordinary in human scan; and by threes the hisa had taken them, by their curious logic: she and Whisper and Quickfoot, three humans and six hisa, and now three units of three headed apart in haste.

No more pranks. Suddenly Quickfoot and Whisper were very serious indeed, slipping through the brush, turning this time to caution her when she made what their sensitive ears thought too much noise. The hiss of the breather she could not help, but she took care to break no branch, imitating the hisa’s own gliding steps, their stop and start swiftness, as if — the thought reached her finally — as if they were teaching her.

She rested when she must, and only then; once fell, hard, from walking too long, and the hisa scrambled to pick her up and to pat her face and stroke her hair. They held her as they did each other, tucked her up with their warmth, for the sky was clouding and the wind was chill. It started to rain.

She rose as soon as she could, insisted on their pace. “Good, good,” they said. “You good.” And by afternoon more met them, more females and two males. There was no sign of them one moment and then they came from a little hill within the woods, and from out of the trees and leaves like brown shadows in the misting rain, the water beading like jewels on their pelts. Whisper and Quickfoot spoke to them, their arms about her, and had an answer.

“Say… far walk they place. Hear. Come. Many come. They eyes warm see you, Mihan-tisar.”

There were twelve of them. One by one they came and touched Miliko’s hands and hugged her, and bobbed and bowed in solemn courtesy. What Whisper said was long, and drew long answers from one and the other.

“They see,” Quickfoot said, listening while Whisper talked. “They see human place. Hisa there hurt. Human hurt.”

“We’ve got to go there,” Miliko said, touching her heart “All my humans, go there, sit on hills, watch. You understand? Hear good?”

“Hear,” Quickfoot said, and seemed to translate.

The others started walking, leading the way; and what they should all do when they got there she did not know. Ito’s madness and that of the others frightened her. Six pistols could not take a shuttle, nor the rest of them when they should come… unarmed and by no means able to go against armored, heavy-armed troops. They could only watch, and be there, and hope.

They walked throughout the day, with rain sifting cold through the leaves and the wind shaking drops down on them when it was not actually raining. Streams were up, bubbling freely; they passed into wilder and wilder thicket.

“Human place,” she reminded them finally, despairing. “We have to go to the human camp.”

“Go human place,” Whisper confirmed, and in the next moment she was gone, slipping through the brush with such speed she tricked the eyes.

“Run good,” Quickfoot assured her. “Make Bounder walk far get she. Many he fall, she walk.”

Miliko frowned, perplexed, as much of hisa chatter was perplexing. But Whisper was off about sober business, that much seemed likely, and she struggled to keep moving.

At long last she saw a break in the trees, staggered toward it with the last of her strength, for there was smoke, the smoke of the mills, and soon after that she could make out the twilit glimmer of a dome. She sank to her knees at the edge of the woods, took a moment to realize where she was. She had never seen the camp from this angle before, high in the hills. She leaned there with Quickfoot patting her shoulder, for she was gasping and her vision kept clouding. She felt after the three spare cylinders she had in her left pocket and hoped she had not ruined the one in the mask. She had reckoned they could live out here for weeks; they could not be using them up like that.

The sun was going. She saw the lights go on in the camp, and as she worked out on the edge of an eroded overhang, she could see figures moving out there under the lights, a burdened line toiling back and forth, back and forth between the mill and the road.

“She come,” Quickfoot told her suddenly; Miliko looked back, suddenly missed the others, who had been behind them in the trees and now were nowhere in sight; blinked again as the brush parted and Whisper dropped to her haunches panting.

“Bounder,” Whisper breathed, rocking with her breaths. “He hurt, he hurt work hard. Konstantin-man hurt. Give, give you.”

She had a bit of paper clenched in her wet, furry fist. Miliko took it, smoothed out the sodden scrap very carefully, with the drizzle soaking it afresh and making it fragile as tissue. She had to bend very close and angle it to read it in the twilight… crabbed words and twisted.

“It’s pretty… bad here. Won’t pretend not. Stay out. Stay away. Please. I told you what to do. Scatter and keep out of their hands… fear… they… maybe won’t… maybe want… want more workers… I’m all right. Please… go back… stay out of trouble.”

The two hisa looked at her, dark eyes perplexed. Marks on paper — it was confusing to them. “Did anyone see you?” she asked. “Man see you?”

Whisper pursed her lips. “I Downer,” she said scornfully. “Many Downer come here. Carry sack, Downer. Bring mill, Downer. Bounder there, human see I, don’t see. Who I? I Downer. Bounder say you friend hurt work hard; mans kill mans; he say love you.”

“Love him too.” She tucked the precious note within her jacket, crouched within the leaves with her hood pulled over her head and her hand within her pocket on the butt of the pistol.

There was no action they could take that might not make things worse… that might not mean the lives of everyone down there. Even if they could take one of the ships… it would only bring reprisals down on them. Massive strike. Here. Back at the shrine. Lives for lives. Emilio worked down there to save Downbelow… to save what of it they could. And the last thing he wanted was some quixotic move from them.

“Quickfoot,” she said, “you run, find Downers, find all humans with me, understand. Tell them… Miliko talks with Konstantin-man; tell all wait, wait, make no trouble.”

Quickfoot tried to repeat it, muddled, not knowing all the words. Quietly, patiently, Miliko tried again… and finally Quickfoot bobbed assent. “Tell they sit,” Quickfoot said excitedly. “You talk Konstantin-man.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.” And Quickfoot fled.

The Downers could come and go. Mazian’s men did not, as Whisper said, see any difference in them, could not tell them apart. And that was the only hope they had, to keep communication between them, to let the men down there know that they were not alone. Emilio knew she was there. Maybe, for all he wished her elsewhere, that was some comfort.

i

Rumors floated all of green, but there was no sign of a shutdown, no searches, no imminent crisis. Troops came and went to the usual places. The dock-front bars rocked to loud music and troops on liberty relaxed, drank, some even openly intoxicated. Josh took a cautious look out the doorway of Ngo’s and ducked back in again as a squad of more businesslike troops headed up the hall, armored, sober, and with definite intentions. It made him somewhat nervous, as all such movements did when Damon was out of his sight. He endured the waiting under cover, his turn to sweat out the day in Ngo’s storeroom, haunting the front room only at mealtimes… but it was suppertime, and late, and he was beginning to worry intensely. Damon had insisted on going yesterday and this day, following up leads, hunting a contract — talking to people and risking trouble.

Josh paced and fretted, realized he was pacing and that Ngo was frowning at him from the bar. He tried to quiet himself, finally walked casually back to the alcove, leaned his head into the kitchen and asked Ngo’s son for dinner.

“How many?” the boy asked.

“One,” he said. He needed the excuse to stay out in the front room. Reckoned when Damon got back he could order a refill and another helping. Their credit was good, the one comfort of their existence. Ngo’s son waved a spoon at him, wishing him to get out.

He went to the accustomed table and sat down, looked toward the door again. Two men had come in, nothing unusual. But they were looking around too, and they started coming toward the back. He ducked his head and tried to camouflage himself in the shadow; market types, perhaps… some of Ngo’s friends — but the move alarmed him. And they paused by his table, pulled a chair back. He looked up in apprehension as one of them sat down and the other kept standing.

“Talley,” the seated man said, young, hard-faced with a burn scar across the jaw. “You’re Talley, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know any Talley. You’re mistaken.”

“Want you to come outside for a moment. Just come to the door.”

“Who are you?”

There’s a gun on you. I suggest you move.“

It was the long expected nightmare. He thought of what he could do, which was to get himself shot. Men died in green every day, and there was no law except the troops, which he did not need either. These were not Mazianni. It was something else.

“Move.”

He rose, walked clear of the table. The second man took his arm and guided him to the door, to the brighter light of the outside.

“Look over there,” the man at his back said. “Look at the doorway directly across the corridor. Tell me if I’ve got the wrong man.”

He looked. It was the man he had seen before, the one watching him. His vision blurred and nausea hit his gut, conditioned reflex.

He knew the man. The name would not come to him, but he knew him. His escort took him by the elbow and walked him in that direction, across the corridor and as the other went inside, took him into the dark interior of Mascari’s, into the mingled effluvium of liquor and sweat and floor-jarring music. Heads turned, of those in the bar, who could see him better than his unadjusted eyes could see them for the moment, and he panicked, not alone at being recognized, but knowing that there was something in this place which he recognized, when he ought to know nothing on Pell, not after that fashion, not across the gulf he had crossed.

He was pushed to the leftmost corner of the room, to one of the closed booths. Two men stood there, one a hangdog middle-aged man who rang no alarms with him… and the other… the other…

Sickness hit him, conditioning assaulted. He groped for the back of a cheap plastic chair and leaned there.

“I knew it was you,” the man said. “Josh? It is you, isn’t it?”

“Gabriel.” The name shot out of his blocked past, and whole structures tumbled. He swayed against the chair, seeing again his ship… his ship, and his companions… and this man… this man among them…

“Jessad,” Gabriel corrected him, took his arm and looked at him strangely. “Josh, how did you get here?”

“Mazianni.” He was being drawn into the curtained alcove, a place of privacy, a trap. He half turned, found the others barring the way out, and in the shadow when he looked back he could hardly make out Gabriel’s face… as it had looked in the ship, when they had parted company — when he had transferred Gabriel to Blass, on Hammer, near Mariner. Gabriel’s hand rested gently on his shoulder, pushing him into a chair at a small circular table. Gabriel sat down opposite him and leaned forward.

“My name here is Jessad. These gentlemen — Mr. Coledy and Mr. Kressich — Mr. Kressich was a councillor on this station, when there was a council. You’ll excuse us, sirs. I want to talk to my friend. Wait outside. See we get privacy.”

The others withdrew, and they were alone in the dim light of a fading bulb. He did not want to be alone with this man. But curiosity kept him seated, more than the fear of Coledy’s gun outside, a curiosity with the foreknowledge of pain in it, like worrying at a wound.

“Josh?” Gabriel/Jessad said. “We’re partners, aren’t we?”

It might be a trick, might be truth. He shook his head helplessly. “Mindwipe. My memory — ”

Gabriel’s face contracted in seeming pain, and he reached out and caught him by the arm. “Josh… you came in, didn’t you? You tried to make the pickup. Hammer got me out when it went wrong. But you didn’t know that, did you? You took Kite in and they got you. Mindwipe… Josh, where are the others? Where are the rest of us, Kitha and -

He shook his head, cold inside, void. “Dead. I can’t remember clearly. It’s gone.” He was close to being sick for a moment, freed his hand and rested his mouth against it, leaning on the table, trying to subdue the reactions.

“I saw you,” Gabriel said, “in the corridor. I didn’t believe it. But I started asking questions. Ngo won’t tell whom you’re with… but it’s someone else they’re after, isn’t it? You’ve got friends here. A friend. Haven’t you? It’s not one of us… it’s someone else. Isn’t it?”

He could not think. Old friendships and new warred with each other. His belly was knotted up with contradictions. Fear for Pell… they had put that into him. And killing stations… was Gabriel’s function. Gabriel was here, as he had been at Mariner -

Elene and Estelle. Estelle had died at Mariner.

“Isn’t it?”

He jerked, blinked at Gabriel.

“I need you,” Gabriel hissed. “Your help. Your skills…”

“I was nothing,” he said. The suspicion that he was lied to grew stronger still. The man knew him and claimed things that were not so, were never so. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We were a team, Josh.”

“I was an armscomper, on the probe ship…”

“The undertapes.” Gabriel seized his wrist, shook at him violently. “You’re Joshua Talley, special services. Deep-taught for that. You came out of the labs on Cyteen…”

“I had a mother, a father. I lived on Cyteen with my aunt. Her name was — ”

“Out of the labs, Josh. They trained you on all levels. Gave you false tapes, a fiction, a fake… something to lie on the surface, lies you could tell and convince them if you had to. And it’s surfaced, hasn’t it? It’s covered everything.”

“I had a family. I loved them — ”

“You’re my partner, Josh. We came out of the same program. We were built for the same job. You’re my backup. We’ve worked together, station after station, recon and operations.”

He tore free of Gabriel’s grip, blinked, blinded by a wash of tears. It began to shred, irretrievable, the farm, the sunny landscape, childhood -

“We’re lab-born,” Gabriel continued. “Both of us. Anything else… any other memory… they put it into us on tape and they can put something else in the next time. Cyteen was real; I’m real… until they change the tapes. Until I become something else. They’ve messed with your mind. Josh. They’ve buried the only thing that’s real. You gave them the lie and it washed right into your memory. But the truth’s there. You know comp. You’ve survived here. And you know this station.”

He sat still, his lips pressed against the back of his hand, tears rolling down his face, but he was not crying. He was numb, and the tears kept coming. “What do you want me to do?”

“What can you do? Who are your contacts? It’s not among the Mazianni, is it?”

“No.”

“Who?”

He sat unmoving for a moment. The tears stopped, the well of them dried up somewhere inside. All his memory seemed white, station detention and some far distant place confounded in his memory, white cells, and uniformed attendants, and he knew finally that he had been happy enough in detention because it was home, the universal institution, alike on either side of the lines of politics and war. Home. “Suppose I work it my way,” he said. “Suppose I talk to my contact, all right? I might be able to get some help. It’ll cost you.”

“How, cost?”

He leaned back in the chair, nodded toward the outside of the booth, where Coledy and Kressich waited. “You have pull of your own, don’t you? Suppose I contribute my share. What have you got? Suppose I could get you most anything on this station… and I don’t have the muscle to handle it.”

“I’ve got that,” Gabriel said.

“I’ve got the other. Only there’s one thing I want that I can’t carry off without force. A shuttle. A run to Downbelow when it comes off.”

Gabriel sat silent a moment. “You’ve got that kind of access?”

“I told you I had a friend. And I want off.”

“You and I might take that option.”

“And this friend of mine.”

“The one you’re working the market with?”

“Speculate what you want. I get you whatever accesses you need. You make plans to get us a way off this station.”

Gabriel nodded slowly.

“I’ve got to get back,” Josh said. “Start it moving. There’s not much time.”

“Shuttles dock in red sector now.”

“I can get you there. I can get you anywhere you want. What we need is force enough to take it when we do get there.”

“While the Mazianni are busy?”

“While they’re busy. There are ways.” He stared a moment at Gabriel. “You’re going to blow this place. When?”

Gabriel seemed to weigh answering at all. “I’m not suicide-prone. I want a way off as badly as anyone here, and there’s not a chance that Hammer can get to us this time. A shuttle, a capsule, anything that stands a chance of staying in orbit long enough…”

“All right,” Josh said. “You know where to find me.”

“Is there a shuttle docked there now?”

“I’ll check into it,” he said, and rose, felt his way past the shadowy arch and out into the noise of the outside, where Coledy and his man and Kressich rose from a nearby table in some apprehension; but Gabriel had come out behind him. They let him pass. He wove his way among the tables, past heads which stayed bowed over drinks and dinners, shoulders which stayed turned.

Outside air hit him like a wall of cold and light. He drew a breath, tried to clear his head, while the floor kept developing lattices of shadow, flashes of here and there, truth and untruth.

Cyteen was a lie. He was. Part of him functioned like the automaton he reckoned himself bred to be… he acknowledged instincts he had never trusted, not knowing why he had them — drew another breath, trying to think, while his body navigated its way across the corridor and sought cover.

Only when he had gotten back to his cold dinner on the back table in Ngo’s, when he sat in that familiar place with his back to the corner and the reality of Pell came and went at the bar in front of him, the numbness began to leave him. He thought of Damon, one life, one life he might have the power to save.

He killed. That was what he was created to do. That was why the like of himself and Gabriel existed at all. Joshua and Gabriel. He understood the wry humor in their names, swallowed at a knot in his throat. Labs. That was the white void he had lived in, the whiteness in his dreams. Carefully insulated from humanity. Tape-taught… given skills; given lies to tell — about being human.

Only there was a flaw in the lies… that they were fed into human flesh, with human instincts, and he had loved the lies.

And lived them in his dreams.

He ate the dinner, which kept sticking in his throat, washed it down with cold coffee, poured another cup from the thermal pitcher.

He might get Damon off. The rest had to die. To get Damon out he had to keep quiet, and Gabriel had to mislead the others following him, promise them all life, promise them help which would never come. They would all die, except himself and Gabriel, and Damon. He wondered how he should persuade Damon to leave… or if he could. If he must use reason… what reason?

Alicia Lukas-Konstantin. He thought of her, who had helped him in the process of helping Damon. She could never leave. And the guards who had given him money in hospital; and the Downer who followed them about and watched over them; and the people who had survived the hell of the ships and of Q; and the men and the women and the children…

He wept, leaning against his hands, while somewhere deep inside were instincts which functioned in cold intelligence, knowing how to kill a place like Pell, knowing that it was the only reason he existed.

The rest he no longer believed.

He wiped his eyes, drank the coffee, sat and waited.

ii

The dice rolled, came up two, and Ayres shrugged morosely, while Dayin Jacoby marked down another set of points and Azov set up for another round. The two guards always assigned here in the lower-deck main room sat watching from the benches against the wall, their young and flawless faces quite passionless. He and Jacoby, and rarely Azov, played for imaginary points, pledged against real credits when they reached some civilized point together; and that, Ayres thought, was an element as chancy as the dice rolls.

Tedium was the only present enemy. Azov grew sociable, sat black-clad and grim at the table, played with them, for he would not bend and gamble with his crew. Perhaps the mannequins amused themselves elsewhere. Ayres could not imagine it. Nothing touched them, nothing illumined those dull, hateful eyes. Only Azov… joined them from time to time as they sat in the main room, eight and nine hours a tedious day of sitting, for there was no work to do, no exercise to be had. Mostly they sat in the one room freely allowed them, and talked… finally talked.

Jacoby had no restraint in his conversation; the man poured out confidences of his life, his affairs, his attitudes. Ayres resisted Jacoby’s and Azov’s attempts to draw him out to talk about his homeworld. There was danger in that. But all the same he talked… about his impressions of the ship, about the present situation, about anything and everything he could feel was harmless; about abstracts of law and economic theory, in which he and Jacoby and Azov himself shared some expertise… joked lightly which currency they should pay their bets in; Azov laughed outright. It was inexpressible relief to have someone to talk to, and to exchange pleasantries with someone. He had a bond with Jacoby… like that of kinship, unchosen, but inescapable. They were each other’s sanity. He began at last to conceive such an attachment to Azov, finding him sympathetic and possessed of humor. There was danger in this, and he knew it.

Jacoby won the next round. Azov patiently marked down the points, turned to the mannequins. “Jules. A bottle here, would you?”

One rose and left on the errand. “I rather thought they had numbers,” Ayres said under his breath; they had already had one bottle. And then he repented the frankness.

“There’s much in Union you don’t see,” Azov said. “But you may get the chance.”

Ayres laughed, and suddenly cold hit his belly. How? stuck in his throat. They had drunk too much together. Azov had never admitted to his nation’s ambitions, to any designs beyond Pell. He let his expression change ever so slightly, and in that moment Azov’s did too… mutual dismay, a moment which lasted too long, slow-motion, alcohol-fumed, with Jacoby a third unwilling participant.

Ayres laughed again, an effort, tried not to show his guilt, leaned back in his chair and stared at Azov. “What, do they gamble too?” he asked, trying to mislead the meaning.

Azov pressed his lips to a thin line, looked at him from under one silvery brow, smiled as if he were dutifully amused.

I am not going home, Ayres thought despairingly. There will be no warning. That was his meaning.

iii

The dark place shifted with many bodies. Damon listened, started as he heard one moving near him, and again as a hand touched his arm in the blackness of the tunnel. He angled the lamp that way, shivering in the chill.

“I Bluetooth,” the familiar voice whispered. “You come see she?”

Damon hesitated, long, looked toward the ladders which stretched like spiderweb out of the range of the lamp he carried. “No,” he said sorrowfully. “No. I only walk through. I’ve been to white section. I only want to go through.”

“She ask you come. Ask. Ask all time.”

“No,” he whispered hoarsely, thinking that there were fewer and fewer times, that soon there would be no chance at all. “No, Bluetooth. I love her and I won’t. Don’t you know, it would be danger to her if I came there? The men-with-guns would come in. I can’t. I can’t, much as I want to.”

The Downer’s warm hand patted his, lingered. “You say good thing.”

He was surprised. A Downer reasoned, and though he knew that they reasoned, it surprised him to hear that train of thought follow human lines. He took the Downer’s hand and squeezed it, grateful for Bluetooth’s presence in an hour when there was little other comfort. He sank down on the metal steps, drew a quiet breath through the mask… drew comfort where it was to be had, to sit a moment safe from unfriendly eyes, with what had become, across all other differences, a friend. The hisa squatted on the platform before him, dark eyes glittering in the indirect light, patted his knee, simply companionable.

“You watch me,” Damon said, “all the time.”

Bluetooth bobbed slightly, agreement.

“The hisa are very kind,” Damon said. “Very good.”

Bluetooth tilted his head and wrinkled his brow. “You she baby.” Families were a very difficult concept for hisa. “You ’Licia baby.”

“I was, yes.”

“She you mother.”

“She is.”

“Milio she baby.”

“Yes.”

“I love he.”

Damon smiled painfully. “No halfway with you, is there, Bluetooth? All or nothing. You’re a good fellow. How much do the hisa know? Know other humans… or only Konstantins? I think all my friends are dead, Bluetooth. I’ve tried to find them. And either they’re hiding or they’re dead.”

“Make me eyes sad, Damon-man. Maybe hisa find, tell we they name.”

“Any of the Dees. Or the Ushants. The Mullers.”

“I ask. Some know maybe.” Bluetooth laid a finger on his own flat nose. “Find they.”

“By that?”

Bluetooth reached out a tentative hand and stroked the stubble on his face. “You face like hisa, you smell same human.”

Damon grinned, amused in spite of his depression. “Wish I did look like a hisa. Then I could come and go. They nearly caught me this time.”

“You come here ’fraid,” Bluetooth said.

“You smell fear?”

“I see you eyes. Much pain. Smell blood, smell run hard.”

Damon turned the back of his elbow to the light, a painful scrape that had torn through the cloth. It had bled. “Hit a door,” he said.

Bluetooth edged forward. “I make stop hurt.”

He recalled hisa treating their own hurts, shook his head. “No. But can you remember the names I asked?”

“Dee. Ushant. Mul-ler.”

“You find them?”

“Try,” Bluetooth said. “Bring they?”

“Come bring me to them. The men-with-guns are closing the tunnels into white, you know that?”

“Know so. We Downers, we walk in big tunnels outside. Who look at we?”

Damon drew a deep breath against the mask, stood up again on the dizzying steps, hugged the hisa with one arm as he picked up the lamp. “Love you,” he murmured.

“Love you,” Bluetooth said, and scampered away into the dark, a slight moving, a vibration on the metal stairs.

Damon felt his own way further, counting his turns and levels. No recklessness. He had come close enough, trying to enter white. He had rung an alarm over in white. He had a sickly fear it might bring investigation into the tunnels, trouble on the Downers, on his mother, on all of them. He still felt the tremor in his knees, although he had not hesitated to shoot when he had to; had fired on an unarmored guard; might have killed him; had meant to.

That sickened him.

And he still hoped he had, that the alarm had not involved his name. That the witness was dead.

He was still shaking when he reached the access to the corridor outside Ngo’s. He entered the narrow lock, tugged down his mask, used the security-cleared card he reserved only for extreme emergency. It opened without alarms. He hurried down the narrow, deserted hall, used a manual key to open the back door itself.

Ngo’s wife turned from the kitchen counter and stared at him, darted out into the main room. Damon let the door close behind him, opened the storeroom door to toss the breather mask in. He had forgotten it in his panic, brought it through with him. That was the measure of his wit. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, his face, tried to wash the stink of blood and fear and memory off him.

“Damon.”

“Josh.” He turned a weary glance toward the door to the front room, dried his face on the towel hanging there. “Trouble.” He went past Josh into the front room, walked to the bar and leaned against it. “Bottle?” he asked of Ngo.

“You come in that door again…” Ngo hissed unhappily.

“Emergency,” Damon said. Josh caught his arm gently from the side.

“Never mind the drink for a moment,” Josh said. “Damon. Come over here. I want to talk to you.”

He came, back into the alcove which was their territory. Josh backed him into the corner, out of sight of the other patrons who ate in the place. There was the clink of plates in the kitchen, where Ngo’s wife had retreated, with her son. The room smelled of Ngo’s inevitable stew. “Listen,” Josh said when they had sat down, “I want you to come with me across the corridor. I’ve found a contact I think can help us.”

He heard it and still it took a moment to sink in. “Who have you been talking to? Who do you know?”

“Not me. Someone who recognized you. Who wants your help. I don’t know the whole story. A friend of yours. There’s an organization… stretches out among the Q folk and Pell. A number of people who know you might have the skill to help them.”

He tried to absorb it. “You know what a candle’s chance we have with a Q mob — against troops? — and why go to you? Why you, Josh? Maybe they’re afraid I’d recognize faces and know something. I don’t like this.”

“Damon. How much time can we have? It’s a chance. Everything’s a risk at this point. Come with me. Please come with me.”

“They’re going to be checking all over white. I stumbled into an alarm over there… may have killed someone. They’re going to be stirred up, searching for someone using accesses…”

“Then how much time can we have left to think it over? If we don’t — ” He stopped, looked sharply about at Ngo’s wife, who brought them bowls of stew, setting them on the table. “We’re going somewhere. Keep it hot for us.”

Dark eyes stared at them both. Quietly, as everything about the woman was quiet, she gathered up the bowls and took them to another table.

“Won’t take long to find out,” Josh said. “Damon. Please.”

“What are they talking of doing? Rushing central?”

“Causing trouble. Getting to the shuttle. Setting up resistance on Downbelow… a small number of us. Damon, it all relies on your knowledge. Your skill with comp, and your knowledge of the passages.”

“They have a pilot?”

“I think there’s someone who is, yes.”

He tried to gather his wits. Shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? You talked about a shuttle. You planned for it.”

“Not to have another riot on the station. Not with more people killed, in a plan that’s never going to work…”

“Come and talk to them. Come with me. Or don’t you trust me? Damon, how long can we wait on chances? You haven’t even heard it out.”

He let go his breath. “I’ll come,” he said. “They’re going to start checking id’s in green soon enough, I’m afraid. I’ll talk to them. Maybe I know better ways. Quieter ones. How far is this place?”

“Mascari’s.”

“Across the corridor.”

“Yes. Come on.”

He came, out amongst the tables, past the bar.

“You,” Ngo said sharply as they passed. He stopped. “You don’t come back here if you bring trouble. You hear me? I helped you. I don’t want that kind of pay for it. You hear me?”

“I hear,” Damon said. There was no time to smooth it over. Josh waited by the front door. He walked out to join him, looked left and right and crossed the corridor with him into the noisier and darker interior of Mascari’s.

A man at the left of the entry rose and joined them. “This way,” the man said, and because Josh went without question, Damon swallowed his protests and went with them, to the far side of the room, which was so dark it was hard to avoid chairs.

A dim light burned in a curtained alcove. They went inside, he and Josh, but their guide vanished.

And in another moment a second man came in at their backs, young and scar-faced. Damon did not know him. “They’re coming,” the young man said, and quickly the curtains moved again, admitted two more to the alcove.

“Kressich,” Damon muttered. The other was not familiar to him.

“You know Mr. Kressich?” the newcomer asked.

“Only by sight. Who are you?”

“Name’s Jessad… Mr. Konstantin, is it? The younger Konstantin?”

Recognition of any kind made him nervous. He looked at Josh, finding discrepancies, bewildered. They were supposed to know him. This man should not be surprised.

“Damon,” Josh said, “this man is from Q. Let’s talk details. Sit down.”

He did so, at the small table, uncertain and apprehensive as the others settled with him. A second time he looked at Josh. He trusted Josh. Trusted him with his life. Would hand him his life at the asking, having no better use for it. And Josh had lied to him. Everything he knew of the man insisted Josh was lying.

Are we under some threat? he wondered wildly, seeking some cause for this charade. “What kind of proposal are we talking about?” he asked, wishing only that he could get himself out of here, and get Josh out, and get it all straight.

“When Josh said that he had contacts,” Jessad said slowly, “I didn’t suspect who. You’re far better than I dared hope.”

“Am I?” He resisted the temptation to look again in Josh’s direction. “What precisely do you hope, Mr. Jessad from Q?”

“Josh didn’t tell you?”

“Josh said I’d want to talk to you.”

“About finding a way to get this station back into your hands?”

He did not change expression in the least. “You think you have the means to do that.”

“I have men,” Kressich interjected. “Coledy does. We can raise a thousand men in five minutes.”

“You know what would happen then,” Damon said. “We’d have ourselves neck deep in troopers. Bodies in the corridors, if they didn’t vent us all.”

“You know,” Jessad said quietly, “that the whole station is theirs. To do with as they please. Except for you, there’s no authority to speak for the old Pell. Lukas… is done. He says only what Mazian hands him to read. Has guards about him everywhere. One choice is bodies in the corridors, true. The other is what they’ve given Lukas, isn’t it? They’d give you prepared speeches to read too. They’d let you alternate with Lukas, or outright dispose of you. After all, they do have Lukas, and he takes orders… doesn’t he?”

“You put it neatly, Mr. Jessad.” And what about the shuttle? he thought, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Josh, who met his eyes with a troubled stare. He glanced back again. “What’s your proposal?”

“You get us access to central. We take care of the rest”

“It’ll never work,” Damon said. “We’ve got warships out there. You can’t hold them off by holding central. They’d blow us; don’t you count on that?”

“I have means to make sure it works.”

“So let’s have it. Make your proposal, flat, and let me have the night to think about it.”

“Let you walk around knowing names and faces?”

“You know mine,” he reminded Jessad, and obtained a slight flicker of the eyes.

“Trust him,” Josh said. “It will work.”

Something crashed outside, even over the music. The curtains came inward, with Coledy, who landed atop the table with a hole burned in his forehead. Kressich sprang up shrieking in terror. Damon hurled himself back, hit the wall with Josh beside him, and Jessad clawed for a pocket. Shrieks punctuated the music outside, and armored troops with leveled rifles filled the doorway of the alcove.

“Stand still!” one ordered.

Jessad whipped out the gun. A rifle fired, and there was a burned smell as Jessad hit the floor, twitching. Damon stared at the troopers and the leveled rifles in dazed horror. Josh, at his side, did not move.

A trooper hauled another man in by the collar — Ngo, who flinched from Damon’s stare and looked apt to be sick.

“These the ones?” the trooper asked.

Ngo nodded. “Made me hide them out. Threatened me. Threatened my family. We want to go over to white. All of us.”

“Who’s this one?” The trooper nodded toward Kressich.

“Don’t know,” Ngo said. “Don’t know him. Don’t know these others.”

“Take them out,” the officer said. “Search them. Dead ones too.”

It was over. A hundred thoughts poured through Damon’s mind… going for the gun in his pocket — running for it, as far as he could get before they shot him down.

And Josh… and his mother and his brother…

They laid hands on him, turned him against the wall and made him spread his limbs, him and Josh beside him, and Kressich. They searched his pockets and took the cards and the gun, which in itself was cause for a shooting on the spot

They turned him about again, back to the wall, and looked at him more carefully.

“You’re Konstantin?”

He gave no answer. One hit him in the belly and doubled him, and he flung himself at the man shoulder-on and low, carried him and a chair over under the table. A boot slammed into his back and he was trampled in a fight which broke above him. He tore free of the man he had stunned, tried to claw his way to his feet by the table rim, and a shot burned past his shoulder, hit Kressich in the stomach.

A rifle clubbed him. His knees loosened, refusing to drive him to his feet; a second blow, on the arm stretched on the table. He went out, doubled as a boot slammed into him, stayed doubled against the blows until they knocked him half senseless. Then they hauled him up between two of them. “Josh,” he said dazedly. “Josh!”

They had Josh up too, slumped between two of them, trying to shake him into life, and he managed to get his feet under him. His head rolled drunkenly. He was bleeding from the temple. For Kressich there was no use in urging; he was still moving, gut-shot and bleeding fast. They were leaving him.

Damon looked about as they were taken out into the main room. Ngo had fled or they had taken him. The patrons had fled. There was only a scattering of corpses, and a few troops standing about with rifles.

The troops hauled him and Josh outside, into the corridor. A few at Ngo’s stood outside to stare as they were marched along and Damon turned his face aside, shamed to be publicly paraded in his arrest.

He thought they would be taken to the ships across the docks. And then they turned the corner onto the docks and headed left, and he realized otherwise. There was a bar the troops had taken for themselves, a headquarters, a place civs avoided.

Music, drugs, liquor — anything the civ sector had to offer — Damon stared numbly as they were hauled inside, into a lowering smoke and a thunder of music. A desk was there, incredibly enough, a concession to something official. The troops brought them to it and a man carrying a drink sat down and looked them over. “Got ourselves something here,” said the leader of the group which had brought them in. “Fleet’s looking for these two. Konstantin, this one. And we’ve got ourselves a Unioner here. Adjusted man, the rumor says… but Pell did the Adjusting.”

“Unioner.” The sergeant at the desk looked past Damon, grinned unpleasantly at Josh. “And how did the likes of you get onto Pell? Got a good story, Union man?”

Josh said nothing.

“I do,” a harsh voice said from the door, fit to shake the walls. “He’s Norway property.”

Laughter and conversation stopped, if not the music. The newcomers, armored as most in this place were not, came in with a brusqueness that startled the rest. “Norway” someone muttered. “Get out of here, Norway bastards.”

“What’s your name?” the newcomer bellowed.

“Or you shoot all of us?” someone else said.

The short man with the loud voice punched the com button at his shoulder and spoke something the music drowned, turned and waved his hand at the dozen troopers with him, who fanned out. He looked then at the rest, a slow circuit of the room. “You’re none of you in fit condition to handle anything. Straighten up this den. Any of our people in here I’ll skin ’em. Is there?”

“Try down the row,” someone shouted. “This is Australia territory. Norway’s got no call to be putting us on report.”

“Hand the prisoners over,” the short man said. No one moved. Rifles of the Norway troops leveled, and there were outcries of shock and rage from the Australia troopers. Damon stood with his vision hazing as two of the dozen moved in on him and Josh, as a rough grip seized his right arm and jerked him from the hand which held him, hauled him along toward the door. Josh came without struggling. He did. As long as they were together… it was the most they had left.

“Get them out,” the little man bellowed at his troops. They were pushed and hastened outside; two troopers stayed with their officer, in the bar. It was not until they were passing the niner corridor that other troops intercepted them, other Norway troopers.

“Get to the Australia post,” one yelled at the others, a woman’s voice. “McCarthy’s. Di’s got them all at rifle point. He needs some numbers in there, fast.”

The troopers headed past them at a run. Four of those escorting them kept on, taking them toward the blue dock access door, where guards stood.

“Pass us through,” the officer of their escort demanded. “We’ve got a potential riot situation back there.”

The guards were Australia. The lettering and emblem proclaimed it. Reluctantly the squad opened the emergency doors and let them through the passage.

Thereafter was blue dock, where Norway occupied a berth next India, Australia, and Europe. Damon walked, beginning to feel shock from his injuries, if not pain. There was only the military here, troops coming and going, supply bales being loaded by military crews in fatigues.

Norway’s access tube gaped before them. They walked the ramp, into the passage, passed through that chill into the airlock. Others met them, troops all with Norway’s emblem.

“Talley,” one said with a surprised grin. “Welcome back, Talley.”

Josh bolted. He made it as far as the middle of the access tube before they caught him.

iv

Signy looked up from her desk, for a moment dialed down the com noise, the reports of her troops on the docks and elsewhere. She gave a quizzical smile at the guards and at Talley. He was considerably the worse for wear… unshaven, diry, bloody. There was a swelling on his jaw.

“Come to see me?” she mocked him. “I hadn’t thought you’d ask again.”

“Damon Konstantin… they’ve got him aboard. The troops have got him. I thought you’d want to talk to him.”

That perplexed her. “You’re trying to turn him in, are you?”

“He’s here. We both are. Get him out of there.”

She leaned back, looked curiously at him. “So you do talk straight,” she said. “You never talked.”

And now he had nothing to say.

“They played games with your mind,” she observed. “And now you’re a friend of Konstantin’s, are you?”

“I appeal to you,” he said in a faint voice.

“On what grounds?”

“Reason. He’s useful to you. And they’ll kill him.”

She regarded him from half-lidded eyes. “Glad to be back, are you?” There was a call blinking, which was something com evidently could not handle.

She dialed up the sound and punched it through. “There’s a fight broken out,” she heard, “at McCarthy’s.”

“Di out of there?” she asked. “Give me Di.”

“Busy,” she heard. She waved a hand at the guards, dismissing the business of Talley. Another light was flashing.

“Mallory!” Talley shouted at her, being forced out the door.

“Europe’s wanting you,” Com said. “Mazian’s on.”

She punched through. They had gotten Talley out, to lock him up somewhere, she hoped.

“Mallory here, Europe.”

“What’s going on over there?”

“I’ve got trouble on the dock, sir. Janz needs instruction, by your leave, sir.” She punched out on him. “He’s down,” she was hearing on another channel. “Captain, Di’s shot.”

She clenched a fist and held it back from the unit “Get him out, get him out, what officer am I talking to?”

“This is Uthup,” a woman’s voice came back. “One of Australia’s shot Di.”

She punched another button. “Get me Edger. Quick!”

“We’re through the door,” she heard from Uthup. “We got Di.”

“General alert Norway troops. We have dock trouble. Get out there!”

“Edger here,” she heard. “Mallory, call your hounds in.”

“Call yours in, Edger, or I’ll shoot them on sight. They’ve shot Di Janz.”

“I’ll stop it,” he said, and cut out. alert was sounding in Norway’s corridors, a raucous klaxon, blue lights flashing. Boards and screens in her office were coming to life as the ship turned out to emergency ready.

“We’re coming in,” Uthup’s voice came back. “He’s still with us, captain.”

“Get him in, Uthup, get him in.”

“Going down there, captain.” That was Graff, heading to the dock. She started pushing buttons, hunting a visual and cursing at the techs; someone should have it on vid. She found it, the group coming in carrying more than one of their number, Norway troops pouring out onto the dock in haste and taking up positions around the umbilicals and access. “Get med on the com,” she ordered.

“Med’s ready,” she heard, watched a familiar figure reach the troops and take charge. Graff was out there. She found leisure for a quieter breath.

“Europe’s still holding,” com advised her. She punched that channel.

“Captain Mallory. What war are you fighting out there?”

“I don’t know yet, sir. I’m going to find out as soon as I can get my troops aboard.”

“You’ve got Australia’s prisoners. Why?”

“Damon Konstantin’s one, sir. I’ll be back in touch as soon as I can get a word out of Janz. Your leave, sir.”

“Mallory.”

“Sir?”

“Australia has two casualties. I want a report.”

“I’ll get one to you when I can learn what happened, sir. In the meanwhile I’m dispatching troops to green dock before we have some sort of trouble with civs over there.”

“India is moving forces in. Leave it at that, Mallory, and keep your troops out of there. Off the docks. Pull them all. I want to see you at soonest, hear?”

“With a report, sir. By your leave, sir.”

The light and the contact winked out. She slammed her fist onto the console and shoved the chair back, headed for the cubbyhole of a surgery in the half corridor off from the main lift topside.

It was not as bad as she had feared. Di kept a steady pulse under the medic’s ministrations, showing no signs of leaving them. Chest wound, a few burns. There was a great deal of blood, but she had seen far worse. A chance shot, in an armor joint. She stalked over to the door where Uthup stood, smeared with blood from head to foot of her armor. “Get your filthy selves out of here,” she said, herding them out into the corridor. “It’s going sterile in there. Who shot first?”

“Australia bitch, drunk and disorderly.”

“Captain.”

“Captain,” Uthup said thinly.

“You hit, Uthup?”

“Burns, captain. I’ll check in when they’re done with the major and the others, by your leave.”

“I tell you to stay out of that territory?”

“Heard over com they’d picked up Konstantin and Talley, captain. A sergeant was in charge and they were drunk as stationside merchanters in there. The major went in and they said it was off-limits to us.”

“Enough said,” she muttered. “I want a report, trooper Uthup; and I’ll back you on it. I’d have skinned you if you’d backed away from Edger’s bastards. Quote me on that where you like.” She walked off, through the troops in the corridor. “It’s all right, Di’s in one piece. Get yourselves out of here and let the meds work. Get back to quarters. I’m going to have a word with Edger, but if you or any of the others take to the docks I’ll shoot you with my own hand. That’s my word on it. Get below!”

They scattered. She walked forward to the bridge, looked about her at the crew who had gotten to stations. Graff was there, himself liberally bloodstained.

“Clean yourself up,” she said. “Mind your stations. Morio, get back there and interview trooper Uthup and anyone else in that detachment; I want names and id’s on those Australia troops. I want a formal complaint and I want it now.”

“Captain,” Morio acknowledged the order.

He left in haste; she stood on the bridge and looked about until heads turned to their work. Graff had left to put himself in order. She continued to pace the aisle until she realized she was doing it and stood still.

There was the matter of showing up on Mazian’s deck. There was blood on her uniform, Di’s blood. She decided finally to go and not to clean up.

“Graff’s in command,” she said brusquely. “McFarlane. I need an escort over to Europe. Move it.”

She started for the lift, hearing the order echoing in the corridors. Troops met her in the exit corridor, fifteen of them in full rig. She walked out through the troops which guarded the access ramp on the docks. She had no armor. It was a secure dock and she was not supposed to need any, but at the moment she would have felt safer walking green dock naked.

v

Mazian was not late showing up, not this time. It was an audience of two, herself and Tom Edger, and Edger had gotten there first. That was expected.

“Sit down,” Mazian told her. She took a chair on the opposite side of the conference table from Edger. Mazian had his own. at the head, leaned on his folded arms, glared at her. “Well? Where’s the report?”

“It’s coming,” she said. “I’m taking the time to interview and collect positive id’s. Di took names and numbers before they shot him.”

“Your orders that sent him in there?”

“My standing orders to my troops that they don’t back off from trouble if it sets itself in front of them. Sir, my people have been systematically harassed since the incident with Goforth. I shot the man, and my people are harassed, shouldered, subtle stuff, until someone got too drunk to know the difference between harassment and outright mutiny. A trooper was asked for her number and directly refused to give it. She was arrested and she drew her gun and opened fire on an officer.”

Mazian looked at Edger and back again. “I hear another story. That your troops are encouraged to stick together. That they’re still under your orders even on supposed liberty. That they go in squads and under officers and throw their weight around the dock. That the whole operation of Norway troops and personnel is insubordinate and provocative, direct defiance of my order.”

“I have given my troops no duties during their liberties. If they’re going in groups it’s for self-protection. They’re set upon in bars that are open to all but Norway personnel. That kind of behavior is encouraged among other crews. You have my complaint of that matter on your desk as of last week.”

Mazian sat and stared a moment, tapped the table in front of him, a slow, nervous gesture. Lastly he looked toward Edger.

“I’ve hesitated to file a protest,” Edger said. “But there’s a bad atmosphere building out there. Apparently there’s some difference of opinion about how the Fleet as a whole is ordered. Ship loyalties — loyalties to certain captains — are encouraged in some quarters, for reasons I refuse to guess at, perhaps by certain captains.”

Signy sucked air and slammed her hands down, all but out of her chair before colder sense asserted itself. Much colder. Edger and Mazian had always been close… were close, she had long suspected, in a way in which she could not intervene. She evened her breath, leaned back, looked only at Mazian. It was war; it was as narrow a chute as ever Norway had run, the straits of Mazian’s ambition, and Edger’s. “There is something vastly amiss,” she said, “when we start shooting at each other. By your leave… we’re the oldest in the Fleet, the longest survivors. And I’ll tell you plainly I know what’s afoot and I’ve played your charade, gone on with this station organization, which isn’t going to have any importance whatsoever when the Fleet moves. I’ve done your make-work operations and done them well. I’ve said no word to my troops or my crew about what I know; and I get the drift of things, that the troops are allowed to do what they like on this station because in the long run it doesn’t matter. Because Pell has stopped mattering, and the survival of it is now contrary to our interests. We’re aiming at something different now. Or maybe we always were, and you’ve moved us to it by degrees, never to shock us too much, when you finally propose what it is you really have in mind, the only choice you’ve left us with. Sol, isn’t it? Earth. And it’s going to be a long run and dangerous, with plenty of trouble when we get there. The Fleet — takes over the Company. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the only thing to do. Maybe it makes sense and it began to make sense a long time ago, when the Company quit backing us. But we don’t get there if Pell destroys the disciplines on which this Fleet has functioned for decades. We don’t get there if the units of it are homogenized into something that can’t work apart. And that’s what this harassment does. It tells me how to run Norway. If that starts, then it all breaks down. You take from the troops their badges and their designations, their identification and their spirit and it goes, it all goes… and whatever you call it, that’s what’s in progress out there, when a ship is made to conform to a standard against every rule they’ve ever known, when captains in this Fleet are subtly encouraging their troops to the harassment of mine, and they’re taking to it, in the absence of another enemy. The Fleet as a whole hasn’t existed in decades, but that was our strength… the latitude to do what had to be done, across all this vast distance. Homogenize us and we become predictable. And few as we are… then we’re done.”

“Amazing,” Mazian said softly, “that somehow you end up arguing for separation of the crews, when you’re the one complaining about lack of discipline. You’re an amazing sophist.”

“I’m being ordered to fall in line, to change every policy and order that exists on my ship. My troops perceive that as an insult to Norway, and they resent it. What else do you expect, sir?”

“The attitude of the troops rather reflects that of the officers in charge and of the captain, doesn’t it? Maybe you’ve encouraged it.”

“And maybe what happened in that bar was encouraged.”

“Sir.”

“With all respect — sir.”

“Your men moved in and removed prisoners from the custody of the troops who performed the arrest. Credit-snatching, doesn’t it seem so?”

“Removed prisoners from a drunken body of libertied troops in a bar.”

“Dock headquarters,” Edger muttered. “Tell it clear, Mallory.”

“The troops were drunk and disorderly in your dock headquarters, and one of the prisoners involved was Norway property. There was no commissioned officer in this dock headquarters. And the other prisoner was valuable and one my make-work operation on the docks would find useful. The question is why the prisoners were taken to that so-named headquarters at all, instead of to the blue dock facilities or to the nearest ship, which was Africa.”

“The arresting troops were reporting to their sergeant. Who was present, when your troop major broke into the place.”

“I suggest that that attitude is contributory to the atmosphere in which Maj. Janz was shot. If that was dock headquarters, Maj. Janz was fully entitled to walk in there and assume command of the situation. But he was told outright on entering that the so-named dock headquarters was staked out as Australia territory; the Australia sergeant present did not object to that insubordination. Now is a troop headquarters to be the private preserve of one ship, or what? Can it be that other captains are urging their crews to separatism?”

“Mallory,” Mazian cautioned her.

“The point, sir: Maj. Janz gave a proper order for surrender of the prisoners to his custody and received no cooperation from the Australia sergeant, who contributed to the trouble.”

“Two of my troopers were killed in that exchange,” Edger said tautly, “and how it started is still under inquiry.”

“From my side also, Captain. I expect the information momentarily and I’ll see that you get a copy when it goes in.”

“Captain Mallory,” Mazian said, “you make that report to me. At the soonest. As for the prisoners, I don’t care what you do with them. Whether they’re here or there is not the issue. Dissension is. Ambition … on the part of individual captains of the Fleet… is an issue. Whether you like it or not, Captain Mallory, you will walk in line. You’re right, we’ve operated separately, and now we have to work as a body. And certain free spirits among us are having trouble with that. Don’t like taking orders. You’re valuable to me. You see through to the heart of a matter, don’t you? Yes, it’s Sol. And by telling me that, you hope to be on the inside of councils, don’t you? You want to be consulted. Want to be in the line of succession, maybe. That’s very well. But to get there, captain, you have to learn to walk in line.”

She sat still, returned Mazian’s stare. “And not know where I’m going?”

“You know where we’re going. You said as much.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “I’m not adverse to taking orders.” She looked pointedly at Tom Edger and back again to Mazian. “I take them as well as others. We may not have worked partners in the past; but I’m willing.”

Mazian nodded, his handsome, actor’s face quite, quite affectionate. “Good. Good. So it’s settled.” He rose, went to the sideboard, pulled a brandy flask from its clamps and glasses from the cabinet and poured. He brought the glasses back, set them before him, slid them in either hand to Edger and to her. “I hope it will be settled once for all,” he said, sipping at his drink. “And I mean it should be. Any further complaints?”

There might be some from Tom Edger. She saw him sulk while she drank the liquid fire of the brandy. She smiled slightly. Edger did not respond.

“The other matter you brought up,” Mazian said, “the disposition of the station — is the case. Yes. And I’ll trust that information doesn’t go beyond present company.”

Hence this show, she thought. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“No formalities. In time all the captains will be given their instructions. You’re a strategist, in many ways the best. You would have been brought in early. You know that. Would have been already, but for the unfortunate incident with Goforth and the market operation.”

Heat flushed her face. She set the glass down.

“Temper, old friend,” Mazian said softly. “I have one too. I know my faults. But I can’t have you split from me. Can’t afford it. We’re getting ready to move. Within the week. Loading’s nearly finished. And we move before Union expects it… take the initiative, give them a problem.”

“Pell.”

“Just so.” He finished his brandy. “You have Konstantin. He can’t go back; we have to take out Lukas too. All those techs working and in detention. Anyone who could possibly manage comp and central and get Pell back into order. You rig it to collapse and you don’t leave anyone alive who could correct it. And particularly Konstantin; he’s dangerous in two regards, comp and publicity. Vent him.”

She smiled tautly. “When?”

“He’s already a liability. Nothing public. No display. Porey will see to the other one — to Emilio Konstantin. Clean wipe, Signy. Nothing left of help to Union. No refugees from this place.”

“I understand you. I’ll do the disposal.”

“You and Tom, for all your bickering, have done a good job. I was very worried about having Konstantin unaccounted for. You’ve done an excellent job. I mean that.”

“I knew what you were up to,” she said levelly. “So the comp is already set up that way; a key signal can scramble it completely. A couple more of the comp operators are still missing. I’m fixing to shut down green tomorrow. They’ll surrender or I vent the section and that fixes it anyway. I’ve got prints on the missing operators. I’ll pull in the informer Ngo and his lot. Ask questions and pinpoint what I can before we move. If agents can pull the comp people out so we’re absolutely sure, so much the better.”

“My men will cooperate,” Edger said.

She nodded.

“That’s the way,” Mazian said cheerfully. “That’s the kind of thing I expect from you, Signy; no more of this quarreling over prerogatives. Now will the two of you get about it?”

Signy finished her glass, rose. Edger did. She smiled and nodded at Mazian, but not at Edger, and walked out with a deliberate lightness.

Bastard, she thought. She did not hear Edger’s steps behind her. When she entered the lift and started down to meet her escort, Edger was not with her. He had stayed behind to talk to Mazian. Whore.

The lift whisked her down to exit level. Her troops were where she had left them, ramrod stiff and carefully avoiding any altercation with Europe troops who came and went in the suiting room. A trio of Europers were there with smiles which wiped themselves at once when she walked out among them.

She gathered up her escort and stalked out the lock, down the access to the dock, to the waiting lines of her own troops.

vi

It was better when she had had a chance to relax, to bathe, to get the dock mess straightened out and the reports written.

She cherished no illusions that there would be anything done to the Australia trooper who had fired on Di and lived… not, at least, officially: but that woman would do well not to walk alone where Norway troops were docked, as long as she lived.

Di was all right, out of surgery and burning mad. That was healthy. He had a splice in a rib and a good deal of the blood in him was borrowed, but he was able to face vid and curse with coherency. It helped her spirits. Graff was with him, and there was a list of officers and crew willing to sit and keep Di quiet, a show of concern which would greatly disturb Di if he realized the extent of it.

Peace. A few hours’ worth, until tomorrow, and operations in green. She propped her feet on her bed, sitting sideways at the desk in her own quarters, cross-handedly poured herself a second drink. She rarely had a second. When she did it went to thirds and fourths and fifths, and she wished Di or Graff were here, to sit and talk. She would go sit with them, but Di had a head of steam he was willing to let off, which would have his blood pressure up telling her the tale. No good for Di.

There were other diversions. She sat and thought a while, and, hesitating between the two, finally punched up the guard station. “Get Konstantin in here.”

They acknowledged. She sat back and sipped the drink, keyed in on this station and that to be sure that operations were going as they should and that the anger below decks stayed smothered. The drink failed to tranquilize; she still felt the urge to pace the floor, and there was not, even here, much floor to pace. Tomorrow…

She dragged her mind back from that. One hundred twenty-eight dead civs in stabilizing white sector. It was going to be far worse in green, where all who had real reason to fear identification had taken cover. They could vent it if the two comp-skilled techs could not be turned up in time; indeed they could. It was the sensible solution; a quick death, if indiscriminate; a means to be sure they had all the fugitives… and more merciful to those individuals than to be left on a deteriorating station. Hansford on a grand scale, that was the gift they would leave Union, rotting bodies and the stench, the incredible stench of it…

The door opened. She looked up at three troopers and at Konstantin — cleaned up, wearing brown fatigues, bearing a few patches on his face the meds had done. Not bad, she thought remotely, leaned forward on one arm. “Want to talk?” she asked him. “Or otherwise?”

He did not answer, but he showed no disposition to quarrel. She waved the troopers out. The door closed and Konstantin still stood there staring at something other than her.

“Where’s Josh Talley?” he asked finally.

“Somewhere aboard. There’s a glass in the cabinet over there. Want a drink?”

“I want,” he said, “to be set out of here. To have this station handed over to its own lawful government. To have an accounting of the citizens you’ve murdered.”

“Oh,” she said, laughed a breath and reassessed young Konstantin. Smiled sourly and pushed her foot against the bed, sending her chair back a bit. She gestured to the bed, a place for him to sit. “You want,” she said. “Sit down. Sit down, Mr. Konstantin.”

He did so. He stared at her with his father’s mad dark stare.

“You don’t really have any such illusions,” she asked him, “Do you?”

“None.”

She nodded, regretting him. Fine face. Young. Well-spoken; well-made. He and Josh were much alike. There were wastes in this war that sickened her. Young men like this turned into corpses. If he were anyone else… but his name happened to be Konstantin, and that doomed him. Pell would react to that name; and he had to go. “Want the drink?”

He did not refuse it. She passed him her own glass, kept the bottle for herself.

“Jon Lukas stays as your puppet,” he said. “Does he?”

There was no need to torment him with the truth. She nodded. “He takes orders.”

“You’re moving against green next?”

She nodded.

“Let me talk to them on com. Let me try to reason with them.”

“To save your life? Or to replace Lukas? It won’t work.”

“To save theirs.”

She stared at him a long, bleak moment.

“You’re not going to surface, Mr. Konstantin. You’re to vanish very quietly. I think you know that.” There was a gun at her hip; she rested her hand on it as she sat, reckoning that he would not, but in case. “Let’s say if I can find two individuals, I won’t vent the section. Names are James Muller and Judith Crowell. Where are they? If I could locate them right off… it would save lives.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know them?”

“Don’t know where they are. I don’t think they’re still alive, if they’re supposed to be in green. I know the section too well; had means to have found them if they were there.”

“I’m sorry for that,” she said. “I’ll do what I can as reasonably as I can. Promise you that. You’re a civilized man, Mr. Konstantin. A vanished breed. If I could find a way to get you out of this I’d do it, but I’m hemmed in on all sides.”

He said nothing. She kept an eye to him, sipped a mouthful from the bottle. He drank from the glass.

“What about the rest of my family?” he asked at last

Her mouth twisted. “Quite safe. Quite safe, Mr. Konstantin. Your mother does everything we ask and your brother is harmless where he is. The supplies arrive on schedule and we have no reason to object to his presence down there. He’s another civilized man, one — fortunately — without access to large crowds and sophisticated systems where our ships are docked.”

His lips trembled. He drank the last remaining in the glass. She leaned forward and poured him more of the liquor. Took a deliberate chance in leaning close to him. It was gambling; it evened scales. It was time to call it quits. If he outlived tomorrow he would learn too much of what would happen and that was cruelty. There was a sour taste in her mouth the brandy would not cure. She pushed the bottle at him. “Take it with you,” she said, “I’ll let you go back to your quarters now. My regards to you, Mr. Konstantin.”

Some men would have protested, cried and pleaded; some would have gone for her throat, a way of hastening matters. He rose and went to the door without the bottle, looked back when it would not open.

She keyed the duty officer. “Pick up the prisoner.” The acknowledgment came back. And on a second thought: “Bring Josh Talley while you’re at it.”

That brought a flicker of panic to Konstantin’s eyes. “I know,” she said. “He’s minded to kill me. But then he’s undergone some changes, hasn’t he?”

“He remembers you.”

She pursed her lips, smiled then without smiling. “He’s alive to remember. Isn’t he?”

“Let me talk to Mazian.”

“Hardly practical. And he won’t agree to hear you. Don’t you know, Damon Konstantin, he’s the source of your troubles? My orders come from him.”

“The Fleet belonged to the Company once. It was ours. We believed in you. The stations — all of us — believed in you, if not in the Company. What happened?”

She glanced down without intending to, found it difficult to look up again and meet his ignorant eyes.

“Someone’s insane,” Konstantin said.

Quite possibly, she thought. She leaned back in the chair and found nothing to say.

“There’s more than the other stations involved at Pell,” he said. “Pell was always different. Take my advice, at least. Leave my brother in permanent charge on Downbelow. You’ll get more out of the Downers if you do things the slow way. Let him manage them. They’re not easy to understand, but they don’t understand us easily either. They’ll work for him. Let them do things their own way and they’ll do ten times the work. They don’t fight. They’ll give you anything you ask for, if you ask and don’t take.”

“Your brother will be left there,” she said.

The light by the door flashed. She keyed it open. They had brought Josh Talley. She sat watching… a quiet exchange of glances, an attempt to question without asking questions… “Are you all right?” Josh asked. Konstantin nodded.

“Mr. Konstantin is leaving,” she said. “Come in, Josh. Come on in.”

He did so, with a backward anxious look at Konstantin. The door closed between them. Signy reached again for the bottle, added to the glass which Konstantin had left on the side of the desk.

Josh too was cleaner, and the better for it. Thin. His cheeks had gone very hollow. The eyes — were alive.

“Want to sit down?” she asked. From him she did not know what to expect. He had always been acquiescent, in everything. Now she watched, anticipating some act of craziness, remembering the time he had come to find her on the station, his shouting at her from the doorway. He sat down, quiet as he had ever been. “Old times,” she said, and drank. “He’s a decent man, is Damon Konstantin.”

“Yes,” Josh said.

“Still interested in killing me?”

“There’s worse than you.”

She smiled grimly and the smile faded. “Know a pair named Muller and Crowell? Know anyone by those names?”

“The names mean nothing to me.”

“Have any contacts on Pell who could handle station comp?”

“No.”

“That’s the sole official question. I’m sorry you don’t know.” She sipped at the glass. “Considering Konstantin’s welfare has you on good behavior. That it?”

No answer. But it was truth. She watched his eyes and reckoned well that it was.

“I wanted to ask you the question,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Who are they… the people you want? Why? What have they done?”

Questions. Josh had never questioned. “Adjustment agreed with you,” she said. “What were you up to when Australia’s men waded in on you?”

Silence.

“They’re dead, Josh. Does it matter now?”

His eyes went unfocused, the old absent look… back again. Beautiful, she thought of him, as she had thought a thousand times. And he was another one there was no sparing. She had thought she might, had reckoned without his sanity. When Konstantin went, he would become very dangerous. Tomorrow, she thought. It should be done tomorrow, at least.

“I’m Union,” he said. “Not a regular… not what the records showed. Special services. You brought me here yourself. And there was another one of us who found his own way on… the way he did at Mariner. His name was Gabriel. And he ruined Pell. He acted against you, never the Konstantins. He and his operation assassinated Damon’s family, lost him his wife… how it all went, I don’t know. I didn’t do it to him. But whatever the assumptions you’ve made, the power you’ve set in control of the station now… was bribed to murder by Gabriel. I know because I know the tactics. You’ve got the wrong man under arrest, Mallory. Your man Lukas was Gabriel’s before he was yours.”

The alcohol left her brain with cold suddenness. She sat with the glass in hand and stared into Josh’s pale eyes and found her breath short. “This Gabriel… where is he?”

“Dead. You got the head of it. Him. A man named Coledy; another named Kressich; Gabriel. Station knew him as Jessad. They were killed by the troops that took us. Damon didn’t know… didn’t know a thing about it. You think he’d have been there meeting with them if he’d known they killed his father?”

“But you got him there.”

“I got him there.”

“He knew about you?”

“No.”

She drew a deep breath, let it go. “You think it makes a difference to us, how Lukas got there? He’s ours.”

“I tell you so you know it’s finished. That there’s nothing more to go after. You’ve won. There’s no need for any more killing.”

“I should take a Unioner’s word there’s nothing more to hunt?”

No answer. He was not slipping off into nowhere. The eyes were very much alive, full of pain.

“It was quite an act, Josh, that you put on with me.”

“No act. I’m born for what I do. My whole past is tapes. I had nothing when they got through with me on Russell’s. I’m one of the hollow men, Mallory. Nothing real. Nothing inside. I belong to Union because my brain was programmed that way. I have no loyalties.”

“But one, maybe.”

“Damon,” he said.

She considered the matter. Drained the glass until her eyes stung. “So why did you get him involved with this Gabriel?”

“I thought I saw a way to get us off Pell. To get a shuttle for Downbelow. I have a proposition for you.”

“I think I know.”

“You’re in a position to get a man on a downbound shuttle… easily. Get him out of here if nothing else.”

“What, not back in control of Pell?”

“You said it yourself. Lukas’s mouth moves when you supply the words. That’s all you want. All you ever wanted. Get him out of here. Safe. What does it cost you?”

He knew what was ahead, at least where it regarded Konstantin’s chances. She looked up at him and down at the glass again. “For your gratitude? You imply a certain soft-headedness on my part, don’t you? Quite a trade. Does any deep-teach work with you?”

“Eventually, I imagine. What did you have in mind?”

She pushed the button. “Take him back.”

“Mallory — ” Josh said.

“I’ll think on your deal,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

“Can I talk to him?”

She thought about that. Nodded finally. “That’s cheap. You going to tell him how things were?”

“No,” he said in a thin voice. “I don’t want him to know any of it. In small things, Mallory, I trust you.”

“And hate my guts.”

He stood up, shook his head, looking down at her. The door light flashed.

“Out,” she said. And to the trooper who appeared in the doorway: “Put him with his friend. Give them any reasonable comfort they ask for.”

Josh left with the guard. The door closed and locked. She sat still, moved finally to prop her feet on the bed.

The thought had occurred to her that a Konstantin could be useful at a later stage of the war; if Union took the bait; if Union seized Pell and restored it. Then it might be useful to produce a Konstantin, in their hands — if he were like Lukas; but he was not. There was no use for him. Mazian would never go for it. The shuttle was one way out of the dilemma. And the thing would not be known — if the Fleet moved out soon. A long time before Union could ferret young Konstantin out of the bush. Long enough for the rest of the plan to work, Pell to die, depriving Union of a base, or live, causing Union organizational trouble. Josh’s idea might work. Might. She reached and poured yet another drink, sat with her hand white-knuckled round the glass.

Union operative. She was frankly embarrassed. Outraged. Wryly amused. She had some capacity for humility.

And that was what the Beyond came to be — a renegade Fleet and a world that bred creatures like Josh.

Who could do what Josh did. What Gabriel/Jessad had tried to do.

What they prepared to do.

She sat with arms folded, staring at the desktop. At last she sipped at the drink, reached and keyed the in-built comp. Troop assignments?

Locations and lists came back. They were all on the ship except the dozen guarding the access to the ship itself. She keyed the duty officer.

Ben, take a walk outside and bring in those twelve we’ve got on the dock. Don’t use the com. Report to me on comp when you’ve done that.

New code. Crew assignments?

They flashed back to her. The alterday crew was on duty. Graff was still with Di.

She keyed into com and started with Graff. “Get to the bridge,” she said. “Put a medic with Di. Di, stay quiet.”

She started keying pager calls through comp for others; had gotten to armscomper Tiho when the duty officer keyed back mission accomplished. The armscomper keyed message received. She took a final sip and stood up, remarkably clearheaded. At least the deck did not pitch.

She shrugged on her jacket and walked out and down the corridor to the bridge, stood there and looked about her as bewildered mainday and alterday crew turned and stared back at her.

“Open intraship,” she said. “All stations and quarters, every speaker.”

The com tech pushed the main switch.

“They ran us off the docks,” she said, clipping a button mike to her collar, as she did when they were on casual op. She reached her own station, the control post beside Graff’s, central to the bowed aisles. “Everyone’s aboard. Crew, troops, everyone’s aboard. Mainday to stations, alterday to backup. Flash battle stations. I’m pulling us out of here.”

There was stunned silence for a moment. No one moved. Suddenly everyone did, shifting seats, reached for controls and com, techs scrambling for the lateral posts shut down during dock. Boards hummed, tilting for use. Lights flashed red overhead and the siren went.

“No undock, rip her loose.” She flung herself back into her own cushion, reached for straps. She would have taken helm herself, but she did not, at the moment, trust her reflexes. “Mr. Graff, skin her by Pell and take her out bearing…” She sucked air. “Bearing nowhere at all. I’ll take her then.”

“Instructions,” Graff asked calmly. “If fired on do we fire?”

“No holds barred, Mr. Graff. Take her out.”

There were questions coming in via ship’s com, troop officers belowdecks wanting to know the emergency. The riders were on patrol. There was no bringing them in for consultation. There was no bringing them in at all. Graff was running his final check, setting up his sequence of orders, checking the positions of everything and making sure comp had it. Screens flashed a proposed course, a chute over Pell incredibly close to atmosphere, a whip behind the world and gone.

“Execute,” Graff said.

There was a crash, the lock seal, the emergency disengage; and a jolt that wrenched them out of Pell’s slow spin. They hammered into a zenith rise and mains cut in, slammed them over station. Something hit the hull and slid: trailing connection. They kept accelerating with Downbelow’s dark side looming at them.

“Mallory!” a voice shouted over ship-to-ship.

It was alterday. Captains were abed. Crews and troops were scattered on the dock and they had breached umbilicals…

She clenched her teeth as Norway hurtled over Pell’s far rim and headed for a course closer to a planet than comfortable. Held her breath and listened to the curses that crackled over com.

Pacific and Atlantic were ordered to intercept. They had not a prayer of getting into line in time, the rest of the Fleet in the way; and Norway had Downbelow coming up for cover. Australia was breaking loose from station, with no obstructions between them, and that was the danger. “Armscomp,” she ordered. “Aft screens. That’s Edger. Get him.”

No acknowledgment; Tiho reached for switches in rapid motion and lights flashed, screens shaping it up.

They had no riders for tail cover. Australia had none for bow. Norway’s combat seals went into place, segmenting them. G was increasing as cylinder synch calculated maneuver-possible. Over com came a frantic query from one of their own riders, asking instructions. She gave no answers.

Downbelow loomed in vid and they were still accelerating all out. Approach warnings were flashing. Australia was the bigger ship, the more at hazard.

Screens and lights flashed. They were fired on.

vii

“No.” Mazian hovered by his post, a hand pressed to the earplug while his bridge swirled in chaos. “Hold where you are, hold for troop pickup. Warn all troops blue dock is breached. Pick up any trooper on green no matter what ship. Over.”

Acknowledgments crackled back. Pell was in chaos, a whole dock breached, air rushing out the umbilicals, pressure dropped. Debris floated between Europe and India, troopers who had been on the dock, dead and drifting, sucked out when an access two meters by two was ripped from its moorings without warning. The dock was void. Everything had gone. Ships’ locks had closed automatically the instant the depressurization hit, cutting off even those closest to safety.

“Keu,” he said, “report.”

“I have given the necessary orders,” the imperturbable voice came back. “All troops on Pell are moving for green.”

“On the run… Porey, Porey are you still in link?”

“This is Porey. Over.”

“Pass orders: destroy Downbelow base and execute all workers.”

“Yes, sir,” Porey said. Anger vibrated through his tone. “Done.”

Mallory, Mazian thought, a word which had become a curse, an obscenity.

Orders were not yet disseminated, plans not firm. They had to assume the worst now and act on it. Disrupt the station’s controls. Get the troops off and run for it… they had to have them. Ruin anything useful.

Sun. Earth. It had to be now.

And Mallory… if once they could get their hands on her…

viii

Jon Lukas turned from devastation on the screens to chaos on the boards, techs scrambling frantically to relay calls to damage control and security.

“Sir,” one asked him, “sir, there’re troops trapped in blue, a sealed compartment. They want to know when we can get to them. They want to know how long.”

He froze. He had stopped having answers. The instructions did not come. There were only the guards, who were always about him, Hale and his comrades who were always with him, day and night, his personal and unshakable nightmare.

They had their rifles on the techs now. He turned, looked at Hale to appeal to him to use the helmet com to contact the Fleet, to ask information, whether it was attack or malfunction, or what had sent a Fleet carrier ripping over their heads and three others on its tail. Of a sudden Hale and his men stopped, all at the same time, listening to something only they could hear. And all at once they turned, leveled rifles.

“No!” Jon screamed.

They fired.

ix

There was little chance for sleep. They took it when they could, man and hisa, crouched the one in Q dome and the other in the mud outside, sleeping as best they might, shift by shift in their clothes, in the same mud-caked, stinking blankets, what sleep they were allowed. The mills never stopped; and the work went on day and night.

The flimsy doors of the lock slammed, one after the other, and Emilio lay stiff and still, apprehension confirmed — a sound had wakened him. It was not time to wake, surely it was not time. It seemed only minutes ago that he had lain down to sleep. He heard the patter of rain overhead; heard a number of boots crunching the gravel outside. There was no shuttle down; they roused both shifts of them out only for loading.

“Up and out,” a trooper shouted.

He moved. He heard moans about him, the other men wakened, winced in the strong light which swept over them. He rolled out of the cot, grimaced with the pain of strained muscles and blistered feet onto which he pulled water-stiffened boots. Fear worked in him, small things wrong, different from other nighttime rousings. He fastened his clothing, put on his jacket, groped at his throat for the breather mask which always hung there. Light hit his face again, drew groans of misery from others. He walked for the door among others who were going; outside, through the second door, up the wooden steps to the path. More lights in his face. He flung his arm up to shield his eyes.

“Konstantin. Round up the Downers.”

He tried to see past the lights, eyes watering… on a second try made out shadows beyond, others of their number brought up from the mills. Shuttle had to be coming down. It must be. No need to panic.

“Get the Downers.”

“All of you out,” someone inside shouted; the doors opened then straight through, deflating the dome crest as all others were herded out at gunpoint

A hand found his, childlike. He looked down. It was Bounder. The Downers were up. All the other hisa had gathered, bewildered by the lights and the hard voices invoking their name.

“All of them out now?” a trooper asked another. “We got them all,” the other said.

The tone of it was wrong. Ominous. Details became strangely clear, like the moment of a long fall, an accident, a time stretched thin… Rain and the lights, the glistening of water on armor… he saw them move… rifles lift…

“Hit them!” he yelled, and flung himself at the line. A shot popped into his leg and he hit the barrel, shoving it aside, following armored arms to armored body. He bore the man over, ripped for the mask while armored fists flailed, battered his head. Rifles went off; bodies hit the ground about him. He scooped up a handful of mud, Downbelow’s own armament, slammed it into armor faceplate, into the breather intake, found a throat under the armor rings and kept after it while shouts and Downer shrieks rang through the rain.

A shot went overhead and the man under him stopped fighting. He scrabbled in the thick mud for the rifle, rolled with it and looked up into a gun leveling at his face; he squeezed the trigger and slagged it before it aimed, the trooper staggering under fire from another quarter, screaming in the pain of diffused burns. Fire from behind, near the dome. He fired at anything in armor, heard Downer shrieks.

Light hit him; they were spotted. He rolled again, fired for the light, no skill at aiming, but it went down.

“Run,” a hisa voice shrieked at him. “All run. Quick, quick.”

He tried to get to his feet. A hisa seized him up and dragged him until another could help, into cover by the dome, where his own men had taken cover. Fire was coming back at them from the hill, the path which led to the landing field, their ship.

“Stop them!” he yelled at whatever of his men could hear. “Cut them off!” He managed a limping run, a little distance; shots hissed into the puddles about him. He slowed as others of his men kept going, tried to keep going.

“You come,” a hisa shrieked. “You come me.”

He fired as he could, ignoring the hisa that wanted him to retreat to the woods. Fire came back and a man of his fell, and fire started coming from the flanking woods, hitting the troops, driving them to run again, and he limped after. The troops had reached the hillcrest, disappeared over the shoulder of the hill; had surely called for help, reinforcements, for the probe’s big guns to be trained on that path to meet them the moment they charged over it. Emilio cursed tearfully, used the rifle for a crutch, and some of his men kept going still. “Keep low,” he yelled, and struggled further, with visions of the ship lofting, of all the helpless thousands who waited by the images. The troops had distance on them, and armor that protected them, and once over that hill…

They came up over it. Fire lit the dark, and most of his men flung themselves down at once, squirming back to cover from a fire they could not face. He crouched, came as far as he could, lay on his belly to look down from the hill into the fire of the heavy guns. The ground itself began to steam downslope. He saw troops regrouping against the probe’s lighted hatch, under an umbrella of fire that laced the slope, beams steaming through the rain and boiling earth as well as water. The troops could reach that safe haven; the ship would loft and hit them from overhead… nothing, nothing that they could do.

Shadow flooded toward the field, behind the lines of rallying troopers, like illusion, the pouring of a black tide toward that hatch. The troops silhouetted in the hatchway saw it, fired… must have called the others; they started turning and Emilio opened up fire on their backs, heart-chilled with the sudden realization what it was, what that other force must be. He scrambled to his knees, trying to get a shot at the troops in the open hatchway despite the beams slicing the hillside. The dark flood kept coming over their own fallen, carried the doorway, and suddenly gave way, retreating desperately.

Fire bloomed in the hatchway, spread and swept through the troops and the attackers; the sound came, and the shock hit his bones. He sprawled in the mud and lay there. Firing had stopped. There was silence… no more war, only the patter of rain in the puddles.

Downers babbled and chattered and scurried up behind him. He tried to gain his feet, meaning to get down there, where people of his own had fallen, blasting that hatchway.

Then the ship’s lights came back on, and the engines rumbled, and it began to fire again, guns sweeping the slope.

Still alive. He raged at it, hardly felt the hands which crept about his arms and sides and tried to carry him… Downers, bent doggedly on helping him, chattering and pleading with him.

Then the ship shut down both the firing and the engines. Rested dormant, lights winking, but with the hatch gaping dark and fire-blackened.

Downers pulled him away, threw arms about him as he tried to stand, and dragged him when his leg went out from under him. A hisa’s thin hand patted his cheek. “You all right, you all right,” a voice pleaded. Bounder’s. They crossed behind the hill, hisa gathering up more of the dead and wounded, and suddenly human figures were coming toward them out of the woods, humans and hisa together.

“Emilio!” he heard, Miliko’s voice. Others were running toward him behind her… Men and women left behind… he struggled for a few running steps and reached her, hugged her insanely, with the taste of despair in his mouth.

“Ito,” she said, “Ernst — they got them. The blast jammed their hatch.”

“They’ll get us,” he said. “They’ll call down the bigger stuff.”

“No. Got a com station in the bush; one message… one fast message to base two com unit at the gathering… it’ll get them out of there. We got them.”

He let go, because he could, began to fade — looked back toward the ship, invisible behind the hill; there was another flare of engines, ominous thunder, a desperate ship trying only to save itself.

“Hurry,” she said, trying to help him walk. He came, hisa hovering all about them. “Hurry,” the hisa kept saying, over and over again, surrounding all of them, some walking, others silent, carried by the hisa, over the face of the hill and beyond, deep among the rain-dripping trees, up into the hills… they kept moving until sense grayed and blackened and he sank down into wet bracken, was hauled up again by a dozen strong hands and carried at the last almost running. There was a hole in the hillside, a place among the rocks.

“Miliko,” he said, irrationally fearing the dark, close tunnel. They took him into it, and let him down, and in a moment arms gathered him up again and held him, rocking gently, Miliko’s voice whispering into his ear. “We’re all right,” she kept saying. “The tunnels will hold us all… the deep winter burrows, deep in all the hills… we’re all right.”

i

They were pulling back. Australia was veering off, Pacific and Atlantic gone off the track. Signy listened to the sigh of relief which ran the bridge as the channels gave good news instead of the disaster which had been heeling them. “Look sharp,” she snapped. “Damage control, get to it.” The bridge wavered in her vision. Alcohol, perhaps, though she doubted it. They had gone through maneuvers enough in recent minutes to sober her.

Norway was intact for the most part. Graff was still nominally at helm, but he had let it go to alterday’s Terschad for a moment, and spared a look at telemetry, his face bathed in sweat and set in a long-held grimace of concentration. G went off combat synch and weight became definite, comfortingly stable.

Signy stood up, listening to the reports of longscan, testing her reflexes. Stood steadily enough. Looked about her. Eyes glanced furtively in her direction, darted back to business. She cleared her throat and punched in general address. “This is Mallory. Looks like Australia has decided to cash it in too for the moment. They’ll all be pulling back to base and giving Mazian an assist. They’ll be taking Pell apart. That was the plan. They’ll be headed for Sol Station and Earth; and that was the plan. They’ll carry the war there. But without me. That’s the way it is. You’ve got your choice. You’ve got a choice. If you take my orders, we’re headed out our own way, going back to what we’ve always done. If you want to follow Mazian, I’m sure turning me in would pay your way back to him in style. Right now there can’t be anyone else he’d rather have his hands on. You go deal with Mazian, if enough of you want to. But for me… no. No one runs Norway but me so long as I’m in any condition to say so.”

A murmur came back over com. Channels were wide open. The murmur took on distinction… rhythm. Signy… Signy … Sig-ny… Sig-ny … It spread to the bridge: “Sig-ny!” Crew rose out of their places. She looked about her, jaw set, and determined that her composure would hold… They were hers. Norway was.

“Sit down!” she shouted at them. “You think this is a holiday?”

They were in danger. Australia might have been diversion. They were moving too fast for reliable scan now, and Atlantic’s position and Pacific’s were conjecture: anything could turn up out of the hazed comp projections of longscan, and there were riders loose.

“Rig for jump,” she said. “Lay for 58 deep. Keep us out of the way for a while.” Her own riders were still at Pell. With luck they could dodge long enough. Mazian would be too busy to bother. With sense they would lay low, trusting her, believing in her, that she would come back for them if she possibly could. She meant to. Had to. They desperately needed the protective riders. With any sense at all the riders would have scattered to the far side of everywhere when they realized Norway was running. She had never yet failed them. And Mazian knew that.

She put her mind from it and punched the med station. “How’s Di?”

“Di’s fine,” a familiar voice answered for himself. “Let me up there.”

“Not on your life.” She punched him out and pressed guard one. “Our prisoners break any bones in that?”

“All in one piece.”

“Bring them up here.”

She settled into her cushion, leaned back, watched the progress of events, mapped in her mind their position out of plane of the Pell System, moving out for safe jump, at half light speed. Damage control reported in, a compartment voided, a little portion of Norway’s gut spilled out into the cold, but not in a personnel section… nothing serious, nothing to impair jump capacity. No dead. No injured. She breathed easier.

Time to get out. For close to an hour the signals of what was going on at Pell had been flashing toward ships that would kick it on, until it ended up in Union scan. It was about to become an unhealthy region for bystanders.

A light went on her board. She powered her seat about, faced the prisoners who had come in the door aft, hands secured behind them, reasonable precaution in the tight aisles of the bridge. No one got on Norway’s bridge; no outsider… until these two. Special cases… Josh Talley and Konstantin.

“Reprieve,” she said. “Thought you’d both want to know.”

Perhaps they failed to understand. The looks they gave her were full of misgivings.

“We’ve quit the Fleet. We’re bound for the Deep, for good. You’re going to live, Konstantin.”

“Not for my sake.”

She gave a breath of a laugh. “Hardly. But you get the benefit of it, you see.”

“What’s happened to Pell?”

“Your speakers were live. You heard me. That’s what’s happening to Pell, and now Union has a choice, doesn’t it? Save Pell or chase after Mazian in hot pursuit. And we’re getting out of here so we don’t confuse the issue.”

“Help them,” Konstantin said. “For the love of God, wait. Wait and help them.”

A second time she laughed, looked sourly on Konstantin’s earnest face. “Konstantin, what could we do? Norway’s taking no refugees. Can’t. Let you off? Not under Mazian’s nose, or Union’s. They’d dust us so fast…”

But it could be done… when they went back after their riders, a pass by Pell…

“Mallory,” Josh said, coming closer to her, as close as the guards would let him. He shook at the restraint of their hands and she signed, so that they let him go. “Mallory… there is another choice. Go over. There’s a ship, you hear me? Named Hammer. You could clear yourself. You could stop this… and get amnesty.”

Something got through to Konstantin; the eyes went to Josh, to her, apprehensive.

“Does he know?” she asked Josh.

“No. Mallory — listen to me. Think, where does it go now? How far and how long?”

“Graff,” she said slowly. “Graff, we’re going back after our riders. Keep us set for jump. When Mazian clears the system, we’ll move in crosswise, maybe shoot this Konstantin fellow out where he can take his chances with Union; freighter might pick him up.”

Konstantin swallowed visibly, his lips bitten to a thin line.

“You know your friend’s Union,” she said. “Not was, you understand. Is. A Union agent. Special services. Probably knows a great deal that could be of use to us in our position. Places to avoid, what null points are known to the opposition…”

“Mallory,” Josh pleaded.

She shut her eyes. “Graff,” she said. “This Unioner is making sense to me. Am I drunk, or does it make sense?”

“They’ll kill us,” Graff said.

“So,” she said, “will Mazian. It goes on from here. To Sol. To a place where Mazian can find new pickings, gather strength. It’s not a fleet anymore. They’re looking for loot, things to keep themselves going. For the same thing we are. And all the null points we know, they know. That’s uncomfortable, Graff.”

“It is,” Graff acknowledged, “uncomfortable.”

She looked at Josh, looked again at Konstantin, whose intense face hoped, desperately hoped. She snorted disgust and looked at Graff, at helm. “That Union spotter. Lay course that way. They’ll jump out of scan when they get wind of us running. Get us contact. We’re going to borrow ourselves a Union fleet.”

“We’re going to run dead on them stumbling about here in the ’tween,” Graff muttered; and that was true. Space was wide, but there was a hazard of collision, the nearer they ran to that particular vector out of Pell, two intersecting courses relying on longscan.

“We take our chance,” she said. “Use the hail.”

She looked then at Josh Talley, at Konstantin. Smiled with all the bitterness in her. “So I play your game,” she said to Josh. “My way. Do you know their hailing codes?”

“My memory,” Josh said, “is full of holes.”

“Think of one.”

“Use my name,” Josh said. “And Gabriel’s.”

She ordered it, looked long and thoughtfully on the pair of them. “Let them go,” she said finally to the troopers who guarded them. “Let them loose.”

It was done. She half turned the cushion, averted her eyes momentarily to the screens and glanced back again, at the incredible presence of a Unioner and a stationer loose on her deck. “Find yourselves a secure spot,” she said. “We’re bending an arc in a moment… and maybe worse ahead.”

ii

The flying-feeling hit them from time to time. They huddled together, and some hisa outside in the corridor moaned in fear, but not those near Sun-her-friend. They held to her, so she should not fall, so that she at least should be safe. Even great Sun was shaken, and staggered in his course. The stars shook, in the darkness round about the white bed and the Dreamer.

“Be not ’fraid,” old Lily whispered, stroking the Dreamer’s brow. “Be not ’fraid. Dream we safe, safe.”

“Turn up the sound, Lily,” the Dreamer whispered, her eyes tranquil as ever. “Where’s Satin?”

“I here,” Satin said, easing her way through the others to Lily’s place. The sound increased, the human voices which shrieked and wailed over the com and tried to call out instructions.

“It’s central,” the Dreamer said. “Satin, Satin, all of you — listen. They’ve killed Jon… harmed central. They’re coming… the Union men, more men-with-guns, you understand?”

“Not come here,” Lily insisted, rejoining them.

“Satin,” the Dreamer said, staring at the quaking stars. “I will tell you the way… each turn, each step; and you have to remember… can you remember so long a thing?”

“I Storyteller” she declared “I ’member good, Sun-she-friend.”

The Dreamer told her, step by step; and the thing itself frightened her, but her mind was set on the remembering, each move, each turn, each small instruction.

“Go,” the Dreamer bade her.

She rose and hurried, called Bluetooth, called others, every hisa within the sound of her voice.

iii

Com sputtered; vacant longscan suddenly erupted in solid blips. Norway veered tighter into her curve. Signy caught at the console and the cushion with the taste of blood in her mouth. They red-lighted, stress alarms ringing. Josh and Konstantin were clinging desperately to a hold halfway down the aisle, lost it, slid. “Norway, Norway speaking, Unioners. Hold fire. Hold fire. You want a way in, follow me.”

There was the obligatory silence while com traveled and caught up to them.

“Say further.”

Words, not shots.

“This is Mallory of Norway. I’m going over, you hear me? Run with me a space and I’ll fill you in. Mazian’s in the process of blowing Pell and running for Sol. It’s already started. I’ve got your agent Joshua Talley and the younger Konstantin aboard. You’re going to lose yourself a station if you hold off. You don’t listen to me and you’re going to have yourself an Earth-based war.”

There was a moment of dead silence from the other side. The armscomp board was lit and tracking.

“This is Azov of Unity. What’s your proposal, Norway? And how do we trust you?”

“We ran; you’ve got that signal. I’ll lead back in. You run tail guard, Unity, the whole lot of you. Mazian won’t stand to fight here or anywhere in the neighborhood. He can’t afford it, you understand me?”

The silence was longer this time. “They’re tracking with us,” scan advised her.

“Hard as we can, Mr. Graff.”

Norway skimmed the edge of disaster, red-lighting in little flickers of stress that flesh protested, heart pounding, hands trembling in maintaining necessary control, experienced crew holding up together in sustained agony while combat synch and inertia warred. Calm and steady, hold it together on the long, long curve, keep the velocity they had gathered as much as possible, headed for Pell… They had a tail guard for certain, Union headed right at their backside all at max… to blow them as readily as they meant to blow Mazian.

“Come on,” she muttered to Graff, “keep our way, hold onto it. We need all we’ve got.”

“Scan caution,” a calm voice advised her and Graff; long-scan flickered with hazed green and gold… obstacles in their path, still in comp’s memory and shown to be right where comp remembered them, give or take a freighter’s slow progress. Short-haul freighters. They were getting their chatter, as-received, a squeal of conversation and panic that deepened as they came in on it

Graff threaded them. Norway shot through the interstices on a computer-aimed straight course and red-lighted to home again on Pell. The Unioners came after and all missed with a rush that would stop hearts on the dead-slow freighters. A deep howl of terror had reached them, vanished again.

Norway… Norway… Norway… their own comp was sending frantically, and if their riderships survived, they would rally to that summons.

Blips flashed red and solid ahead of them, too fast for freighters. Comp howled warnings. Mazian was loose. Europe, India, Atlantic, Africa, Pacific.

“Where’s Australia?” she snapped at Graff. That recognition code had not come through with the others. “’Ware of them!”

Graff must have heard. There was no time for chat. The Fleet was massed and collision-coursed for them. Their rider-ships were locked to, all home to mothers, readied for jump, that grace at least.

“Mallory,” she heard Mazian’s voice over com. Graff heard too and dropped them in a sickening maneuver that comp transferred into armscomp’s aim: they ripped a pattern of fire at Europe as fire came back at them and the hull sang. G slammed at them fighting contrary stresses, and of a sudden fire erupted aft. Union had plowed in, disregarding their safety, not savvy of their comp signals, and hungry for targets. “Out!” she ordered helm, and Norway maneuvered with all bearable angle, finding no precentage in this fight. Alarms rang. Pell and Downbelow lay ahead, minutes ahead at near-C.

They kept veering, comp calculating and recalculating that marginal curve.

A carrier blip exploded onto them, underside. Norway held to its necessary course, boards flaring red, alarms ringing, collision with a world imminent and too much speed to dump in time.

And of a sudden there were other blips, small and coming hard in a ring nose on to them.

Norway… Norway… Norway… their comp flashed.

Their own riders.

“Keep on!” she yelled at Graff over a cheer from the bridge. Comp took the maneuver as hard as the ship could bear, a move that tore at human bodies and made nightmare of half a dozen seconds. They started dumping speed hard, with Australia coming dead at them through the needle’s eye of their riders, riderless itself or with none deployed.

“Barrage,” she said, swallowing the taste of blood. The screens flashed terror: it was collision imminent fore and aft, a C-approximate ship bearing right down their tail and equally locked in escape curve from Pell. Fifty-fifty what maneuver would impact them, up, down, or straight on.

Graff dropped: topside fired and Australia whipped over as fields sent instruments into chaos. The hull moaned and the whole ship jolted.

Maneuver continued; suddenly there was breakup on scan, dust screaming over their hull. “Where are they?” Graff yelled at the scan tech. Signy bit through her lip and winced, sucked at the blood. Australia could have dumped chaff; could have blown; they kept dumping speed, her order unchanged.

“… cleared Pell,” a rider voice came to them, what their own scan was beginning to show as they cleared the danger themselves. “And lost a vane… think Edger’s lost a vane.”

There was no way they could see; Australia was on long-scan: it was the nature of the chaff they reckoned. “Form up,” she ordered her riders, feeling more secure with them about Norway like four extra arms. Edger could not risk further damage now, not if a vane was gone; not for any revenge.

“They’re going for jump,” she heard. It was a Union voice, none that she knew — a foreign accent. Suddenly there was a vast coldness in her gut, a knowledge that it was all beyond recall.

Be thorough, Mazian had taught her, teaching her most that she knew. No half-measures.

She leaned back in the cushion. All over Norway there was silence.

iv

Lily at least remained. Alicia Lukas-Konstantin let her eyes move about the walls, last of all to the small module, part of the molded white of the bed itself, two lights, one on, one off, one green, one red. Red now. They were on internal systems.

Power was threatened. Lily did not know, perhaps; she managed the machines, but what powered them was likely to be mysterious to her. And the Downer’s eyes remained calm, her hand remained gentle, stroking her hair, a remaining contact with the living.

Angelo’s gifts, the structures about her, had proven as stubborn as her own brain. The screens kept changing, the machines kept pumping life through her veins, and Lily stayed.

There was an off switch. If she asked Lily, Lily, ignorant, would push it. But that was cruel, to one who believed in her.

She did not.

v

Carefully, Damon left his place, felt his way dizzily past the banks of instruments and the techs to reach Mallory. He hurt; an arm was torn, his neck ached in its joints. There could not be a soul on Norway spared such misery, the techs, Mallory herself. She turned bleak eyes on him from her place at the main boards, powered her cushion about to look at him, nodded slightly.

“So you’ve got your wish,” she said. “Union’s in. They don’t need to track Mazian now. They know for certain where he’s gone. I’m betting they’ll find a base at Pell valuable; they’ll save your station, Mr. Konstantin, no question now. And it’s high time we got ourselves out of here.”

“You said,” he reminded her quietly, “you’d let me off.”

Her eyes darkened. “Don’t press your luck. So maybe I’ll dump you and your Unioner friend on some merchanter when it suits me. If it suits me. Ever.”

“My home,” he said. He had gathered his arguments; but his voice shook, destroying logic. “My station… I belong back there.”

“You belong nowhere now, Mr. Konstantin.”

“Let me talk to them. If I can get a truce from Union to get close enough… I know the systems. I can handle the central systems; the techs… may be dead. They are dead, aren’t they?”

She turned her face away, turned the cushion, returning to her own business. He reckoned his danger, leaned forward and set a hand on the arm of the cushion so that she could not ignore him; a trooper moved, but waited orders. “Captain. You’ve gone this far. I’m asking you… you’re a Company officer. You were. One last time… one last time, captain. Get me back to Pell. I’ll talk you out again, free. I swear I will.”

She sat still a very long moment.

“You going to run from here beaten?” he asked her, “Or leave at your own pace?”

She turned, and it was not a good thing to look into her eyes. “You looking to take a walk?”

“Take me back,” he said. “Now. While it matters. Or never. Because later won’t matter. There’ll be nothing I can do and I had as soon be dead.”

Her lips tightened. For several moments she sat dead still, staring at him. “I’ll do what I can. Up to a limit. If they make of your truce what I think I will…” She brought her hand down on the cushioned arm. “This is mine. This ship. You understand that. These people… I was Company. We all were. And Union doesn’t want me loose. You’re asking for what could turn into a firefight right next to your precious station. Union wants Norway. They want us badly… because they know what we’ll do. There’s no way I can live, stationer, because I’ve got no port I’ll dare go to. I’ll not come in. I never will. None of us will. Graff. Set us a quiet course for Pell.”

Damon drew back, reckoned that the wisest move at the moment. He listened to the one-sided com he had accessible, Norway advising the Union fleet that they were moving in. There seemed to be some dispute. Norway argued back.

A hand touched his shoulder. He looked around, found Josh there. “I’m sorry,” Josh said. He nodded, holding no grudge. Josh… had had few choices given him.

“They want you, all right,” Mallory said. “Handed over to them.”

“I’ll go.”

“Ignorant,” Mallory spat. “They’ll mindwipe you. You know that?”

He thought about it. Remembered Josh, sitting across from him at a desk and asking for the papers, end of a process Russell’s had started. Men came out of it. Josh had. “I’ll go,” he said again.

Mallory frowned at him. “It’s your mind,” she said. “Till they get their hands on you, at least.” And into com: “This is Mallory. We’ve got ourselves a standoff, captain. I don’t like your terms.”

There was a long delay. Silence from the other end.

On scan, Pell showed, with Union ships hovering about it like birds about carrion. One looked to have docked. Long-scan showed a scattering of red-dotted gold out by the mines, the short-haulers, and the lonely position of one other ship, indicated by a blinking light at the edge of the scope, offscan but in comp’s memory. Nothing moved, save for four blips very near Norway, closing into tighter formation.

They had come to a relative halt, drifting in time with everything else in the system.

“This is Azov of Unity,” a voice came to them. “Captain Mallory, you have leave to dock with your passenger to let him off. Your approach to Pell is accepted, with thanks from the people of Union for your invaluable assistance. We’re willing to accept you within the Union Fleet as you are, armed and with your present crew. Over.”

“This is Mallory. What assurances has my passenger got?”

Graff leaned closer to her. Held up a finger. Norway resounded to the clang of something against her hull, a lock closing. Damon looked distractedly at scan.

“Fighter just docked,” Josh said at his shoulder. “They’re gathering the riders in. They can run for jump — ”

“Captain Mallory,” Azov’s voice returned, “I have a Company representative aboard who will order you to take that action — ”

“Ayres can shove it,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I want for what I’ve got. Docking privileges at Union ports and clear paper. Or maybe I let my valuable passenger take a walk.”

“These matters can be discussed later in detail. We have a crisis on Pell. Lives are in jeopardy.”

“You have comp experts. Can it be you can’t figure the system?”

There was another silence. “Captain. You’ll get what you want. Kindly dock under our safeconduct if you want that paper. There’s a situation on this station regarding native workers. They’re asking for Konstantin.”

“The Downers,” Damon breathed. He had a sudden and terrible vision of Downers facing Union troops.

“You clear your ships back from that station, Captain Azov. Unity can stay docked. I’ll come in on the opposite side and you see to it your ships don’t get out of synch with your position. Anything crosses my tail I’ll fire with no questions asked.”

“Granted,” Azov answered.

“Insane,” Graff said. “Now where’s our profit? They won’t come across with that paper.”

Mallory said nothing.

i

The dockworkers were Union troops, fatigue-clad, but in green, surreal sight on Pell. Damon walked down the ramp toward the armored backs of Norway troops who held the margin and guarded the access. Far across the deserted dock other troopers stood in armor… Unioners. He passed the safe perimeter, passed through the Norway troops, headed out that lonely crossing of the wide debris-littered decking. Heard disturbance behind him, heard someone coming, and looked back.

Josh.

“Mallory sent me,” Josh said, overtaking him. “You mind?”

He shook his head, mortally glad of his company where he was going. Josh reached into his pocket and handed him a spool of tape. “Mallory sent it. Josh said. ”She set up the comp keys. Says this might help.“

He took it, stuffed it into the pocket of his brown Company fatigues. The Union escort waited for them with the troops, black-clad and silver-medaled. He started walking again, appalled as they came closer at the sameness, the beauty of them. Perfect humans, all of a size, all of a type.

“What are they?” he asked of Josh.

“My kind,” Josh said. “Less specialized.”

He swallowed heavily and kept going. The Union troops fell in about them, wordlessly escorted them along the dock. Pell citizens stood, a handful here and there, stared at them as they walked. Konstantin, he heard murmured. Konstantin. He saw hope in some eyes, and flinched from it, knowing how little there was to be had. There was chaos in some areas they passed, whole sections with the lights out, with fans dead, with the stench of fire and bodies lying. G surged a marginal amount, minor instability. No knowing what had happened in the core, in life-support. There was a time beyond which the systems began to deteriorate beyond recovery, when balances were too far gone. Mindless, with central out, Pell had gone to its local ganglia, nerve centers which were not interconnected, automatic systems that fought for its life. Without regulation and balance they would pass out of phase… like a body dying.

They walked blue nine, where other Union forces stood, entered the emergency ramp… dead here too, bodies they and their escort filed past in their ascent; a long climb, from nine upward, to an area where armored troopers operated, where they stood facing upward, shoulder to shoulder. They could go no higher; the escort leader turned aside and took them through the door into two, into the hall lined with financial offices. Another knot of troops and officers stood there. One, silvered with rejuv and bearing a great deal of rank on his chest, turned toward them. With a dull shock Damon recognized those immediately behind him. Ayres, from Earth.

And Dayin Jacoby. If he had had a gun in his hands he would have shot the man. He did not. He stopped there staring dead at him, and Jacoby’s face went a dull crimson.

“Mr. Konstantin,” the officer said.

“Captain Azov?” he surmised by the signs of rank.

Azov offered his hand. He took it, in bitterness. “Maj. Talley,” Azov said, and offered his hand to Josh. Josh accepted the greeting. “Glad to have you back.”

“Sir,” Josh murmured.

“Mallory’s information is correct? Mazian’s gone for Sol?”

Josh nodded. “No deception, sir. I think it’s true.”

“Gabriel?”

“Dead, sir. Shot by the Mazianni.”

Azov nodded, frowning, looked at Damon directly again.

“I’m giving you a chance,” he said. “You think you can get this station back in order?”

“I’ll try,” Damon said, “if you let me up there.”

“That’s the immediate problem,” Azov said. “We don’t have access up there. Natives have the doors blocked. No knowing what damage they’ve done in there or what shooting could start with them.”

Damon nodded slowly, looked back toward the door to the access ramp. “Josh comes with me,” he said. “No one else. I’ll get Pell settled for you. Your troops can follow… after it’s quiet. If shooting starts, you may lose the station, and you wouldn’t want that at this stage, would you?”

“No,” Azov agreed. “We wouldn’t want that.”

Damon nodded and started for the doors. Josh walked beside him. A loudspeaker behind them began to recall troops, who came out the doors from the ramp in obedience to the summons, passing them as they entered and walked upward. The top was clear, doors to blue one closed. Damon pushed the button; it was dead. Manual opened it.

Downers sat beyond, huddled together, a mass that filled the main hall and the side corridors. “Konstantin-man,” one exclaimed, scrambling up suddenly, hurt as many of them were hurt, and bleeding from burns. They surged to their feet, reached out hands as he walked in, to touch his hands, his body, bobbing in delight and calling, shrieking in their own tongue.

He walked through, Josh trailing in his wake through the hysterical press. There were more of them inside the control center, beyond the windows, on the floor, sitting on the counters, in every available niche. He reached the doors, rapped on the window. Hisa faces lifted, eyes stared, solemn and calm… and of a sudden brightened. Downers leaped up, danced, bounced, shrieked wild cries silenced by the glass.

“Open the door,” he called to them. It was impossible that they could hear him, but he pointed to the switch, for they had it locked from inside.

One did. He walked in among them, touched and hugged, touched them in return, and in a sudden rush, found a hand locked viselike on his, clasping it to a furry breast. “I Satin,” the hisa said to him, grinning. “Me eyes warm, warm, Konstantin-man.”

And on the other side, Bluetooth. That broad grin and shaggy coat he knew, and hugged the Downer. “You mother send,” Bluetooth said. “She all right, Konstantin-man. She say lock doors, stand here not move, make they send find Konstantin-man, make all right the Upabove.”

He caught his breath, touched furred bodies, went to the central console, with Josh behind him. Human bodies lay there on the floor. Jon Lukas was one, shot through the head. He sat down at the main board, began pushing keys, rebuilding… took out the spool of tape and hesitated.

Mallory’s gift. To Pell. To Union. The tape might contain anything — traps for Union… a final destruct trigger…

He wiped a hand across his face, finally made up his mind and fed the leader in. The machinery sucked it in, beyond recall.

Boards began to clear, lights flickering to greens. There was a stir among the hisa. He looked above him, at troops reflected in the glass, standing in the doorway with rifles leveled. At Josh, behind him, who had turned to face them.

“Hold it where you are,” Josh snapped at them. They did, and rifles lowered. Maybe it was the face, the look that was Union’s lab-born; or the voice, that expected no argument. Josh turned his back on them and stood with his hands on the back of Damon’s chair.

Damon kept at work, spared a second glance to the reflecting glass. “Need a com tech,” he said. “Someone to get on public channels and talk. Get me someone with a Pell accent. We’re all right. They knocked some of the storage out, slagged some records… but we don’t really need those, do we?”

“They won’t know one name from the other,” Josh said softly, “will they?’”

“No,” he said. The adrenalin that had gotten him this far was wearing off. He found his hands shaking; looked aside as a Unioner tech seated himself at com. “No,” he said, rose and started over to object. Troops leveled guns. “Hold off,” Josh said, and the officer in charge hesitated. Then Josh himself glanced aside and stepped back. There was another presence in the doorway. Azov and his entourage.

“Private message, Mr. Konstantin?”

“I need to get crews at their jobs,” Damon said. “They’ll move at a voice they know.”

“I’m sure they would, Mr. Konstantin. But no. Stay away from com. Let our techs handle it.”

“Sir,” Josh said quietly. “May I intervene?”

“Not in this matter,” Azov said. “Keep at non-public work, Mr. Konstantin.”

Damon drew a quiet breath, walked back to the console he had left and carefully sat down. More and more troops had come in. The hisa crowded back against the walls and onto the counters, chattering soft alarm among themselves.

“Get these creatures out of here,” Azov said. “Now.”

“Citizens,” Damon said, turning his chair to look at Azov. “Pell citizens.”

“Whatever they are.”

“Pell,” Mallory’s voice came over com. “Stand by for un-docking.”

“Sir?” the Union com tech asked.

Azov signaled for silence.

Damon leaned and tried to hit an alarm. Rifles leveled and he thought better of it. Azov himself went to com. “Mallory,” Azov said, “I’ll advise you to stay put.”

A moment’s silence. “Azov,” the voice returned softly, “somehow I thought there was no honor among thieves.”

“Captain Mallory, you are attached to the Union fleet, under Union orders. Accept them or stand in mutiny.”

Again a silence. And more silence. Azov gnawed at his lip. He reached past the com tech and keyed in his own numbers. “Captain Myes. Norway refuses orders. Move your ships out a little.”

And on Mallory’s channel: “You take our offer, Mallory, or there’s no port. You can rip loose and you can run, but you’ll be number-one priority for our ships in Union space. Or you can run join Mazian. Or you can go with us against him.”

“Under your orders?”

“Your choice, Mallory. Free pardon… or be hunted down.”

Dry laughter came back. “How long would I stay in command of Norway once I let Unioners on my deck? And how long would my officers or any of my troops live?”

“Pardon, Mallory. Take it or leave it.”

“Like your other promises.”

“Pell station,” a new voice broke in, disturbed. “This is Hammer. We’ve got a contact. Pell station, do you read? We’ve got a contact.”

And another: “Pell station: this is the merchanter fleet. This is Quen of Estelle. We’re coming in.”

Damon looked at longscan, that was rapidly compensating for new data, reckoning a signal two hours old. Elene! Alive and with the merchanters. He crossed the room to com, caught a rifle barrel in the stomach and staggered against the counter. He could get himself shot. Could do that, at this late hour. He looked at Josh. Elene would have been in reception of Pell transmissions that showed trouble four hours ago; two hours inbound. Elene would ask questions. If he gave wrong answers… if she got no response from known voices… surely, surely she would stay out.

Eyes tuned to scan, one man at first, and at that expression, others. Not one blip now, but a dusting of them, sent in as other input reached them. A mass, a swarm, an incredible horde of merchanters moving in on them. Damon looked, and leaned against the counter watching it come, a smile spreading across his face.

“They’re armed,” he said to Azov. “Captain, they’re long-haulers and they’ll be armed.”

Azov’s face was rigid. He snatched up a mike and patched it in. “This is Azov of Union flagship Unity, fleet commander. Pell is now a Union military zone. For your own safety, stay out. Ships which intrude will be met with fire.”

An alarm started blinking, a board flashing alarm across the center. Damon looked at the lights and his heart began to speed. White dock was warning of imminent undocking. Norway. He turned and hit that channel while the trooper stood paralyzed in the confusion. “Norway. Stay put. This is Konstantin. Stay put.”

“Ah, we’re just letting you know, Pell central. Warships might make quite a mess of those merchanters, armed or not. But they’ll have professional help if they want it.”

“Repeat,” Elene’s distance-delayed voice came over com. “We’re coming in for dock. We’ve been monitoring your transmissions. The merchanter’s alliance claims Pell, and we hold it to be neutral territory. We assume that you will respect this claim. We suggest immediate negotiation… or every merchanter in this fleet may well withdraw from Union territory entirely. Earthward. We don’t believe this would be the first choice of any parties involved.”

There was silence for a very long moment. Azov looked at the screens, on which blips spread like plague. The merchanter Hammer had ceased to be distinct, signal obscured by the reddening points.

“We have a basis for discussion,” Azov said.

Damon drew a long, slow breath and let it go.

ii

She came, with an escort of armed merchanters, onto the dock. She was pregnant, and walked slowly, and the merchanters about her took no chances exposing her to hazard on the wide dock. Damon stood by Josh, on the Union side, as long as he could bear, and finally risked himself and walked out, not certain whether either side would let him through to her. Rifles in merchanters’ hands leveled at him, a nervous ring of threat; and he stopped, alone in that empty space.

But she saw him, and her face lit, and merchanters moved, ordered aside left and right until their ranks drank him in and he could reach her.

Merchanter, and back with her own, and long off the solid deck of Pell. In the back of his mind had been doubt, a preparation for changes… that vanished with a look at her face. He kissed her, held onto her as she did him, afraid of hurting her she held him so tightly. He stood there with the whole horde of armed merchanters about them in a glittering haze, and inhaled the scent and the reality of her, kissed her again and knew that they had no time for talking, for questions, for anything.

“Took me quite a roundabout to get home,” she murmured.

He laughed madly, softly, looked about him and back at the Union forces, sober again. “You know what happened here?”

“Some. Most, maybe. We’ve been sitting out there… a long time. Waiting a point of no choice.” She shivered, tightened her arm about him. “Thought we’d lost it. Then Mazian did pull out, and we moved, from that moment Union’s got troubles, Damon. Union’s got to move on to Sol and they’ve got to do it with all their ships intact.”

“You can bet they do,” he said. “But don’t leave this dock. What’s got to be said, whatever talking you do with them, insist on doing here, on the dock; don’t walk into any small space where Azov can get troops between you and your ships. Don’t trust him.”

She nodded. “Understood. We’re just the edge of it, Damon; I speak for the merchanter interest. They want a neutral port the way things are going, and Pell’s it. I don’t think Pell objects.”

“No,” he said. “Pell doesn’t. Pell’s got some housecleaning to do.” He drew his first whole breath in minutes and followed her glance across the dock at Azov, at Josh standing with Union troops, expecting approach. “Bring a dozen with you and keep the rest guarding that access. Let’s see what Azov’s idea of reason encompasses.”

“The release,” Elene said firmly and softly, leaning on the table with one arm, “ — of the ship Hammer to the Olvig family; of Swan’s Eye to its proper owners; of any other merchanter ship confiscated for use by Union military. The strongest possible condemnation of the seizure and use of Genevieve. You may protest you’re not empowered to grant it; but you have the power of military decisions… on that level, sir, the release of the ships. Or embargo.”

“We do not recognize your organization.”

“That,” Damon interrupted, “rests with Union council. Pell recognizes their organization. And Pell is independent, captain, willing to afford you a port at the moment; but with means to deny it. I would hate to take that decision. We have a mutual enemy… but you would be tied up here, in long unpleasantness. And it might spread.”

There were, from the other side of the table — set up on the open dock and ringed by opposing semicircles of merchanters and troops — frowns. “It’s in our interest,” Azov admitted, “to see that this station doesn’t become a base for Mazianni operation; and that we cooperate in your protection… without which — you don’t stand great chance, for all your threats, Mr. Konstantin.”

“Mutual necessity,” Damon said levelly. “Rest assured that none of Mazian’s ships will ever be welcome at Pell. They are outlaws.”

“We have done you a service,” Elene said. “Merchanter ships have already headed for Sol far in advance of Mazian. One early enough to get there ahead of him; not much, but a little. Sol Station will be warned before he arrives.”

Azov’s face relaxed in surprise. That of the man beside him, delegate Ayres, froze, took on a sudden smile, with the glistening of tears in his eyes. “My gratitude,” Ayres said. “ — Captain Azov, I’d propose… close consultation and quick moves.”

“There seems reason for it,” Azov said. He pushed back from the table. “The station is secure. Our business is finished. Hours are valuable. If Sol is going to prepare a reception for this outlaw, we should be there to follow it up from behind.”

“Pell,” Damon said quietly, “will gladly assist your undocking. But the merchanter ships you’ve appropriated… stay.”

“We have crew aboard them. They come.”

“Take your crew. Those ships are merchanter property and they remain. So does Josh Talley. He’s a citizen of Pell.”

“No,” Azov said. “I don’t leave one of my own at your asking.”

“Josh,” Damon said, looking to the side and behind him, where Josh stood with other Union troops, at last inconspicuous among others likewise perfect. “How do you feel about it?”

Josh’s eyes slid past him, perhaps to Azov, returned to a forward stare. He said nothing.

“Take your troops and your ships,” Damon said to Azov. “If Josh stays, that’s his choice. Take Union presence off this station. You’ll be received for docking hereafter by request and by permission of the stationmaster’s office; it will be granted. But if time is of value to you, I’d suggest you take that offer and agree to it.”

Azov scowled. He signaled his troop officer, who ordered the units to form up. They walked away, headed for the upcurving horizon, for blue dock, where Unity was berthed.

And Josh was still standing there, alone. Elene got up and hugged him awkwardly and Damon clapped him on the shoulder. “Stay put here,” he said to Elene. “I’ve got a Union ship to get undocked. Josh, come on.”

“Neiharts,” Elene said to those nearest her. “See that they reach central in good order.”

They went behind the Union forces; took the niner corridor as the Unioners headed for their ship, started to run. In the corridors there were doors open, the folk of Pell standing there to observe. Some began to shout, to wave, cheers for this last, merchanters’ occupation. “They’re ours,” someone yelled. “They’re ours!”

They took the emergency ramp, came upward at a run; Downers met them in it, scampered along, bounced and bounded and chattered welcomes. The whole spiral echoed with Downer shrieks and squeals and human yells from the corridors outside as the word spread from level to level. A few Unioners passed on the way down, headed out at instructions over helmet com, likely feeling very conspicuous where they were.

They came out in blue one. Downers were back in occupation of central, and grinned welcome at them through the wide-open doors.

“You friends,” Bluetooth said. “You friends, all?”

“It’s all right,” Damon assured him, and worked his way past a crowd of anxious brown bodies to settle himself at the main board. He looked back, at Josh, at the merchanters. “Anyone here who knows this kind of comp?”

Josh settled into place by him. One of the Neiharts took com, another one settled into another comp post. Damon keyed through to com. “Norway,” he said, “you’ve got first release. I trust you’ll ease out without provocations. We don’t need complications.”

“Thank you, Pell,” Mallory’s dry voice came back. “I like your priorities.”

“Hurry it down there. Have your own troops undock you. You can come in again when we’re stable and pick them up. Agreed? They’ll be safe.”

“Pell station,” another voice cut in: Azov’s. “Agreements specified no welcome for Mazianni, This one is ours.”

Damon smiled. “No, Captain Azov. This ship is ours. We’re a world and a station, a sovereign community, and apart from the merchanters who are not residents here, we maintain a militia. Norway constitutes the fleet of Downbelow. I’ll thank you to respect our neutrality.”

“Konstantin,” Mallory’s voice warned him, on the edge of anger.

“Undock and stand off, Captain Mallory. You’ll stay put until the Union fleet has vacated our space. You’re in our traffic pattern and you take our orders.”

“Orders received,” she answered finally. “Stand by. We’re going to pull back and deploy riders. Unity, see that you lay a straight course out of here. And give my regards to Mazian.”

“Your own merchanters,” Azov said, “are going to be the ones to suffer from this decision, Pell station. You’re harboring a vessel that has to prey on shipping to live. Merchanter ships.”

“Get your tail out of here, Union,” Mallory shot back. “Trust at least that Mazian can’t double back on you. He won’t dock at Pell while I’m in the area. Go attend your own business.“

“Quiet,” Damon said. “Captain, move out.” There was a flurry of lights. Norway was loose.

iii

“You too?” Blass asked wryly.

Vittorio adjusted his hold on his meager sackful of belongings, awkwardly hand-over-handed his way in the narrow access, null G, in line with the rest of the crew which had held Hammer. It was cold down here, and dimly lit. There was a vibration, the action of a shuttle tube grappling to their lock. “Don’t see that I have much choice,” he said. “I’m not staying to talk to the merchanters. Sir.”

Blass gave a twisted smile, addressed himself to the lock, which opened to take them out a narrow tube and into the waiting warship. The dark gaped for them.

Unity moved, a steady acceleration. Ayres sat in the cushioned comfort of the Unity’s top-level main room, carpeted, severely modern, with Jacoby beside him. Screens apprised them of their course, a whole array of screens showing numbers and images. They made it clear through an avenue opened by merchanter vessels, a narrow tunnel through the surrounding horde, and finally Azov spared time to look in on them by vid link, occupying one of the screens. “All right?” Azov asked of them.

“Going home,” Ayres said softly, self-satisfied. “I’ll propose something to you, captain; that at this moment Sol and Union have more in common than not. That while you’re sending that inevitable courier back to Cyteen, you include a proposal from my side: cooperation for the duration.”

“Your side has no interest in the Beyond,” Azov said.

“Captain, I suggest to you that that interest may be on the verge of awakening. And that it would be far from Union’s advantage… for Union to be less forward in offering Earth its protection — than the merchanter’s alliance is going to be. After all, the alliance has already sent Earth its messenger. So Sol can pick and choose, can’t it? The merchanters’ alliance. Union. Or — Mazian. I suggest a discussion of the matter. A renegotiation. It seems that neither of us has the authority to cede Pell. And I hope that I can give my government favorable recommendations toward yours.”

Elene came, with a great crowd of merchanters, stood in the doorway of battle-scarred central, while Downers scampered aside in mild alarm. But Bluetooth and Satin knew her, and danced and touched her for joy. Damon rose from his place, took her hand, gave her a place to sit near him and Josh. “I don’t feel much like long climbs,” she said, breathing hard, “We’ve got to get the lift system working.” He found time simply to look at her. Looked back to the screen by his own console, at a face lying sideways on white sheets, at tranquility and dark, lively eyes. Alicia Lukas smiled, the faintest of movements.

“Call just got through,” he said to Elene. “Got word to and from Downbelow. A crippled probe appealing to Mallory for rescue out of main base… and an operator somewhere removed from base — saying Emilio and Miliko are safe. Couldn’t confirm it… things are badly torn up down there. The operator’s base is somewhere in the hills; but evidently everyone was under cover and all right. I need to get a ship of our own down there, and probably some medics.”

“Neihart,” Elene said, looking up at her companions. A big merchanter nodded. “Anything you need,” he said. “We’ll get it down there.”

i

It was a bizarre gathering, even for Pell, in the rearmost section of the concourse, in the area where separate, illusory screens afforded a little privacy to parties. Damon sat with Elene’s hand locked firmly in his and amid the table, the red eye of a portable camera, a presence in itself, for he had wanted her to be among them tonight, as she had always been with his father and with all of them on family occasions. Emilio was by him; and Miliko; and Josh on his left, and next to Miliko and Emilio a small clutch of Downers, who obviously found chairs uncomfortable and yet delighted in the chance to try them, and to sample special delicacies, fruits out of season. At the far end of the table, the merchanter Neihart and Signy Mallory, the latter with an armed escort who relaxed sociably in the shadows.

About them was music, the slow dance of stars and ships across the walls. The concourse had settled somewhat back into routine… not quite the same, but nothing was.

“I’ll be putting out again,” Mallory said. “Tonight. Staying — was a courtesy.”

“Where?” Neihart asked bluntly.

“Just do as I advise you, merchanter; designate your ships Alliance. You’re offlimits. Besides, I’ve got a full load of supplies for now.”

“You’ll not stray far,” Damon wished her. “Frankly, I don’t trust that Union won’t try something yet. I’d just as soon know you’re in the vicinity.”

She laughed humorlessly. “Take a vote on that. I don’t walk Pell corridors without a guard.”

“All the same,” he said. “We want you close.”

“Don’t ask me my course,” she said. “That’s my business. I’ve places. I’ve sat still long enough.”

“We’re going to try a run to Viking,” Neihart said, “and see what kind of reception we’ll get… in about another month.”

“Might be interesting,” Mallory conceded.

“Luck to us all,” Damon said.

ii

The hour was well into alterday, the docks nearly deserted in this non-commercial zone. Josh moved quickly, with the nervousness he always had outside someone’s protective escort on Pell, with the vulnerable feeling that the few strollers on the dockside might know him. Hisa saw him, stared solemn-eyed. The Pell dock crew by berth four surely recognized him, and the troops on guard there did: rifles angled toward him.

“Need to talk to Mallory,” he said. The officer was a man he knew: Di Janz. Janz gave an order and one of the troopers slung his rifle into carry and motioned him ahead up the access ramp, walked behind him through the tube and into the lock, past the quick traffic of troops this way and that in the noisy corridor and suiting room. They took the lift up, into the main central corridor, where crew hastened about last-minute business. Familiar noises. Familiar smells. All of it.

She was on the bridge. He started to go in and the guard inside stopped him, but Mallory looked his way from her place near the command post and curiously signaled both guards permission.

“Damon send you?” she asked when he stood before her.

He shook his head.

She frowned, set her hand consciously or unconsciously on the gun at her side. “So what brings you?”

“Thought you might need a comp tech. Someone who knows Unionside — inside and out”

She laughed outright. “Or a shot when I’m not looking?”

“I didn’t go with Union,” he said. “They’d have redone the tapes… given me a new past. Sent me out… maybe to Sol Station. I don’t know. But to stay on Pell, right now — I can’t do that. The stationers — know me. And I can’t live on a station. Not comfortably.”

“Nothing another mindwipe can’t cure.”

“I want to remember. I’ve got something. The only real thing. All that I value.”

“So you go off and leave it?”

“For a while,” he said.

“You talked to Damon about this?”

“Before coming down here. He knows. Elene does.”

She leaned back against the counter, looked him up and down thoughtfully, arms folded. “Why Norway?”

He shrugged. “No station calls, are there? Except here.”

“No.” She smiled thinly. “Just here. Sometimes.”

“Ship she go,” Lily murmured, staring at the screens, and smoothed the Dreamer’s hair. The ship pulled away from the Upabove, rolled, with a move quite unlike most ships which came and went, and shot away.

“Norway,” the Dreamer named her.

“Someday,” said the Storyteller, who had come back full of tales from the big hall, “someday we go. Konstantins give we ships. We go, carry we Sun in we eyes, not ’fraid the dark, not we. We see many, many thing. Bennett, he give we come here. Konstantin, they give we walk far, far, far. Me spring come again. I want walk far, make me nest there… I find me star and go.”

The Dreamer laughed, warm laughter.

And stared out at the wide dark, where Sun walked, and smiled.