Starrise at Corrivale

Chapter Twelve

NOW THAT TIME," Gabriel said when they were safely back into space a couple of hours later, "that time they were definitely after me." "A condition that did not last." "That was only because you mixed in."

Enda sat down in the number two seat and looked at Gabriel like a grandmother about to explain something to a favorite but half-witted grandchild. "Why would I not 'mix in'? I did not get to be three hundred years old by avoiding fights when they came my way."

"From your technique, I wouldn't argue," Gabriel said, "but there are people who might suggest that if you want to see four hundred, you should hang back a little bit! I was doing just fine." "So you were. But, Gabriel, you need to be clear on one concept. Just because a fight starts with only you does not mean that you can keep it that way by encouraging your friends to stay away. It is entirely possible that whoever is targeting you at the moment is equally intent on whoever might be seen with you, which, at the moment, means me."

That thought made him go rather cold. When they went back to work in the Inner Belt, Gabriel decided to let some of his more aggressive Grid searching, especially for information on Jacob Ricel, go by the boards for a while. He found himself wondering whether his searches were themselves triggering increased interest in him. For his own sake, he wouldn't have been bothered by that, but there was Enda to think of.

Two standard weeks went by while they built up a new load of nickel-iron. They had hit one of those "sparse" patches that only the Belt professionals know about, the ones you rarely hear about otherwise, since the only thing one gladly discusses are the good weeks and the big hits. After two weeks and a bit they were full, and they headed back to Grith to do their assay and dump. They made six percent profit on the run, not exactly munificent but adequate. After they had given the ship a thorough and much- needed cleaning Enda went out for more groceries, it being her turn.

It was odd, but when the marines suddenly showed up outside Sunshine's hatch, Gabriel found it almost impossible to look at them with anything like concern. He had half suspected that something like this might happen, for he had heard via the news on the Grid that there was a Concord Administrator in the system. Such men and women did not turn up without reason. They tended to appear suddenly in places where justice was reported to be breaking down, and they reinstated it with vigor-sometimes with violence, when necessary. They were walking examples of the old phrase "a law unto himself," except that the law in question was that of the Concord, enforced impartially, in places from the highest to the lowest. They were the modern equivalent of the ancient traveling 'circuit judges,' troubleshooters par excellence who often shot the trouble themselves.

The marines had a little gig waiting nearby, a mini-shuttle mercifully unlike the ones in which Gabriel had spent most of his last day of active service. They helped him into it courteously enough and sat opposite him as it took off, not glowering at him as Gabriel would have half expected. Maybe they don't know who I am, he thought, though that seemed fairly unlikely.

He could only wait, considering what might be likely to happen to him. Concord Administrators were people of tremendous power. Just the presence of one in the system would make all the powers moving there pause for a moment and wonder just what it meant. He might be here to try me and have me shot, Gabriel thought. I guess some of the higher-ups in Star Force and the marines might have insisted on something like this, since the trial on Phorcys didn't go the way they wanted. But the more he considered this, the less likely it seemed. By and large, one of the things the Concord did not do was waste energy, and sending a Concord Administrator after him would be like hitting a bug with a sledgehammer. So what is he doing here? Gabriel thought. If I'm an afterthought-or perhaps a minor distraction-what brings him to these parts all of a sudden?

The gig came to ground with a slight thump, and the marines got up and escorted Gabriel to the door that opened for them. He stepped down and saw that they were in the shuttle bay of a ship, enough like Falada 's to be one of her twins. Right. Schmetterling, then, he thought as the Marines escorted him down through the clean (and surprisingly empty) white halls.

They turned right suddenly into a doorway that opened for them, and Gabriel found himself looking into a small meeting room. It was a very plain place, table and chairs and nothing else but a window on the stars and a man looking out of it. The man turned as Gabriel stepped in and the doors shut behind him. The man standing before the window was not very tall, bald on top, a little thickset, dressed in a plain dark tunic and breeches, standard business wear on many worlds where humans worked. But the strongest of the first impressions was of the eyes. They were close set and small. They were very lively, very acute, and rather chill. The mind living behind them was not a kindly one, Gabriel thought, but neither was it cruel, just pitiless when it knew what it wanted and saw it in sight. The face was one with a lot of smile lines, but any smile appearing there would be subordinate to those eyes and the thought they held.

Right now they were looking at Gabriel with bright interest. The interest shocked him a little. Certainly this man knew who he was, what he had been accused of.

"Gabriel Connor," the man said. It was not a question.

"Obviously," Gabriel said, "and you are?"

"Lorand Kharls."

They looked at each other for a moment "So you're 'the big man,' " said Gabriel then.

Kharls looked at him. "Some nicknames just seem to stick," he said. "Will you sit down, sir, or shall we conduct this entire interview standing?"

" 'Interview'?" Gabriel asked. "Am I applying for a position? I don't recall filling out any forms." He stepped to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

Kharls moved to sit down opposite him. "You didn't," answered Kharls. "Do you have any idea why I asked to see you?"

"My first thought was that you were going to take me back to Concord space for trial," Gabriel said, "or possibly try me now, since as a Concord Administrator where you are is justice."

Kharls looked at him with an expression that was more than usually unsettling, mostly because Gabriel couldn't make anything of it at all. "And how would you feel about that?" Kharls asked.

Gabriel opened his mouth and closed it, then said, "I'm not ready yet."

"'Yet'?" Kharls said.

"I don't have any of the evidence I need to clear my name," said Gabriel.

"Ah," Kharls said. "Your claim during your trial that you didn't know what the chip was for."

"I thought I did," Gabriel said, "but I was wrong. I had no idea that it would trigger explosives that would cost my shipmates' lives."

Kharls looked thoughtful for a moment. "Even if that were true," he said, "you would still be guilty as an accessory to manslaughter."

"An unwitting accessory," Gabriel replied, "yes. Certainly not knowing what you were doing counts for something in a court of law." He swallowed and said, "Believe me, I grieve for my shipmates. I'm willing to stand trial-but not before I have enough evidence to give me a fighting chance at acquittal and to find out who the real murderer is."

"You might never collect that much evidence," Kharls said.

"Maybe. 'Never' is quite a while," Gabriel returned. "I'll do what I have to do."

Kharls gazed at the floor for a couple of moments, then said, "What if I were to suggest to you that, under certain circumstances, that evidence might be made available to you?"

Gabriel's heart leaped inside him. He worked desperately to keep anything from showing in his face.

"What kind of circumstances?"

"Your knowledge of the Thalaassa system's situation," Kharls said after a moment, "was unusually complete according to Ambassador Delvecchio, and your analyses were unusually sharp for someone brought new to the problem."

Her notes, Gabriel thought, and a great rush of hope welled up in him. "Did they find her notes? Did she-"

Kharls held up a finger. Gabriel fell silent. "There are forces moving in the outer reaches of the Thalaassa system that the Concord doesn't understand," Kharls said, "and that it must understand for the security of the surrounding systems."

"You need intelligence," Gabriel said softly. The images of the little ships that had attacked Sunshine, and of the big ship that came up out of drivespace and looked at them before vanishing again, were vivid in his mind.

"Yes," Kharls said. "I'm asking you to serve the Concord with something besides a gun." The phrasing went right through Gabriel with the same heat and pain that a plasma beam might have. "You want me," Gabriel said slowly, "to do the same kind of thing that got me cashiered? And you're offering-what?"

"A shortened sentence," Kharls said. "Manslaughter, even with extenuating circumstances, requires some punishment, and a limited pardon afterwards." " 'Limited'? You think that I-"

"Reinstatement of certain privileges," said Kharls. "Your pension rights and so forth. Limited-" "No."

"Don't you even want to know what you would be doing?" Kbarls asked.

"No, because already you're not offering enough," Gabriel answered, glaring at the man. "If you have this evidence you claim to have, justice requires that you produce it at my trial. Justice is supposed to be your whole duty as a Concord Administrator-"

" 'Our duty is peace,' " Kharls said. "Justice is never forgotten, but sometimes it may have to wait in line."

"Oh, so you can dangle it over my head and make me jump?" Gabriel said, bitter. "Maybe Elinke's opinion of you was right after all."

Kharls's eyebrows went up at that. "You've seen Captain Dareyev recently?"

"Your intelligence-gathering does need help," Gabriel remarked softly. "Just what is it I'm supposed to be finding out for you?"

"I'm not sure that's a discussion we should have until we have an agreement in place," Kharls said.

"Oh. So I'm to do a job I won't be told about until I've already agreed to payment that may be wildly inadequate for the service rendered?" Gabriel said and laughed out loud. "Do you just think I'm unusually stupid or just a glutton for punishment? Sorry, Administrator. Find another fool. This one's busy at the moment."

Gabriel got up and was turning to go.

"Connor," the Concord Administrator said.

There was something odd about the note in his voice. Not quite entreaty-Gabriel suspected that such a thing would come very hard to this man. Gabriel turned.

"You may not be a marine any more," Kharls said, "but when you enlisted, you took certain oaths. 'To protect the Concord and the peace of her peoples against all threats overt and covert, public and private.'" "As you say," Gabriel said, "I'm not a marine any more."

"The Concord may have the power to kick you out of the Service," Kharls said, "but it has no power to absolve you of the oaths you swore. Only the Power to which you swore them has that authority." He put his eyebrows up. "Heard anything from that quarter lately?"

Gabriel could only stare at the man's sheer effrontery. "When I do," he said at last, "you'll be the second to know. Is there anything else?"

They looked at each other for a long moment. Gabriel watched the man studying his face and very much wondered what he was looking for. "No," Kharls said, "no, that will be all."

Gabriel went out, hardly glancing at the marines on either side of the door to see if they followed him. Half an hour later, he was sitting in Sunshine again, staring out the cockpit windows and thinking. To whom did I swear?

He found it hard to express to Enda when she finally got home with the shopping exactly what had passed between him and Kharls or why he was so upset about it. "Upset isn't really the word," Gabriel said, somewhere in the middle of his third attempt to explain, while Enda went on with quietly racking the bulk supplies into their storage shelves. "But I feel like he did something underhanded." "So that you now feel there is something you must do?" Enda asked. Gabriel looked at her sharply. "Like what?"

She closed one of the bulk cabinets and opened another, boosting a big bag of freeze-dried starchroot up onto a high shelf. "I was not making a suggestion," she said, "but I can feel the change in the air." She turned a little and gave him a thoughtful sidelong look. "Ahhrihei, we would call it at home: a shift of wind, the mind's wind, though. What will you do?"

"Almost anything but what he wants," Gabriel growled, "would be my first response." Enda tsked. "But then you are simply acting according to his wishes regardless. Do the opposite of what a person wants just tor the sake of foiling him, and he still runs your behavior. What does the shift in your own mind say to you?"

Gabriel sat in the pilot's chair with his feet up and tried to think about that. "I think," he said, "we might go back to Thalaassa."

"Your hunch suggests this?" Enda questioned, closing the cabinet and coming forward to sit in the number two chair.

Gabriel thrust his hands in his pockets and played with the luckstone and his credit chip. "I don't know. It doesn't seem to think much of staying here any longer, though."

"Are you sure that is not simply because of our uncomfortable meeting with the captain of Schmetterling?"

"I don't think so," Gabriel replied. He thought about it for a second more, then said with more certainty, "No. It's just..." He stopped again, then continued, "The ambassador's question still has no answer." "About why Phorcys and Ino stopped fighting?"

"Yes. I was involved marginally in her finding the answer to the question. She didn't find it, and she's dead. I still don't know any more about the answer to it, but someone seems to be trying hard enough to kill me as well. It's as if someone thinks that I might have some part of the answer that I don't even know about." He looked at Enda, but she only shook her head. "But I keep thinking that if we can find out the reason for these attacks on us, we may be able to find out something about the reason for the sudden peace."

"It is a stretch," Enda said, "but truly I cannot think of any other angle from which we might profitably attack. So then. Thalaassa. What will we do there?' "We could do what we did before, if we had to."

"Though not at Eraklion. Well, let us depart tomorrow, then. Though we must make one stop first. Our medical supplies are not what they should be. The prices here are bad at the moment, but they were much better at the Collective's supply station on Iphus. We should stop there tomorrow and pick up new supplies for the phymech."

This was the automated emergency medical system that was installed at the back of the living quarters nearest the cargo bay. It had a fairly sophisticated AI system in it, the rationale being that your partner might not necessarily be able to get to you in time if you had an accident; but if the "medicine cabinet" itself had a brain and manipulators guided by it, your chances of surviving an accident in space might be much higher. The system required fairly specialized medical supplies-skinfilms, bandages, antiseptics, painkillers, and so forth-and while a basic supply came with the system when it was installed, even Gabriel had to admit that that basic supply was rather bare.

He nodded and turned to speak briefly to the ship's computer regarding the prospective flight plan, then stopped. Enda was eyeing him. "Yes?" he asked.

"Nothing at all," Enda said. "Where did you leave my water bottle?"

"It's sitting right next to your bulb. When is that thing going to do something?" Gabriel said as Enda headed out.

"It can be so difficult to predict outcomes." Enda's voice floated back to him.

Gabriel turned to the computer again and decided not to input either a flight plan or a starfall plan. Let's see who finds us this time, he thought.

Iphus was unusually busy when they got there. The VoidCorp-based facilities there appeared to be undergoing some fairly large-scale personnel transfers. Big ships were coming in and out of orbit around the system almost on an hourly basis, and the sky around the planet was alive with starfalls and starrises. "Bloody nuisance," Gabriel said to himself as he piloted Sunshine in toward the main transit docks of the Iphus Collective, the main mining facility of the planet and one of the few not completely owned by VoidCorp. The big dark VoidCorp ships, huge stylized spheres and teardrops, were all over the place, lounging around local space with the kind of quietly threatening insouciance one would expect of a small neighborhood's resident thugs. Traffic at the Collective itself was light, as if people were purposely avoiding the area. Gabriel had no trouble docking at the most central ring, and after finishing the docking and refueling formalities, he and Enda headed for the main trading dome. "It's like a desert in here," Gabriel said as they walked through the empty corridors. "So empty." Enda was looking around her with that pursed-lipped expression Gabriel had learned usually concealed some measure of concern behind it. There were very few people other than themselves in the corridors of what was normally the access to a busy shopping and entertainment area. They saw a few fraal and some humans who looked as if they were on their way to somewhere else as quickly as they could get there. The emptiness of the place accentuated something Gabriel had not really noticed there before-a kind of "hard up" look to facilities and fittings, a suggestion that the place was beginning to fall on hard times. Until now, the vitality of the place had distracted Gabriel from picking up on this. The slight shabbiness had looked like "atmosphere." Now it simply looked run down.

The fraal running the information desk at the center of the main dome shook his head. "Explanations are many, but certainty is scarce," he said to Enda and Gabriel when, after getting directions to the medical facility, they asked casually about the presence of all the VoidCorp vessels in the area. "I have heard it said that VoidCorp is in the midst of a mighty corporate purge, but who from the Company would come here-" he gestured at the dome above them- "to tell us the truth of the story or give it the lie? This place is abomination to them, and outside the Company, who could truly say? They are no lovers of letting their secrets out where others may perceive them. There has been nothing in the news to shed light on the matter, but what would make us think there would be?"

Gabriel and Enda thanked him and walked away. Enda's lips were looking more pursed than ever. "Not a lot of help," Gabriel said.

"More than one might suspect," Enda said. "Corporate purges at VoidCorp have produced turmoil enough in the past. Wars have been fought over them-or as a result of them, but I would not willingly say more about it just now."

They made their way across the space under the echoing main dome and down into one of the many tributary corridors on the other side. That sense of general emptiness and desertion, lost briefly under the dome, returned here in force. Any spaceport that has vacuum or an inimical atmosphere on the outside may acquire a scruffy feel after much use. No amount of maintenance will ever restore that just-new feeling. This place, though, had plainly been missing out on even fairly basic maintenance for a while.

The hallways were dusty, walls and panels were smudged, and here and there were sooty smoke trails stretching upwards from where wiring or other components buried inside the panels had combusted themselves.

"It's a mess," Gabriel said softly. It was the kind of appearance that led you to wonder how tight the facility was as regarded its atmosphere. "Maybe we should bring breather packs with us when we come back."

Enda merely pursed her lips again and headed down the corridor, looking for the medical facility. There were two of them at the Collective, but the other was closed at the moment, its medical practitioner apparently away on leave. This one they had not visited before, and Enda raised her eyebrows in satisfaction when they came around a curve in the corridor and saw the frosted glass doors with the numerous species-specific insignia of the medical profession emblazoned on them. The doors slid aside for them as they approached, and Gabriel and Enda walked into a wide white space that contained nothing except a diagnostic chair in the middle of the floor. They paused. "Hello?" Gabriel called.

"Nonspecific greeting," said a computer voice out of the middle of the air. "One moment, please." Gabriel blinked then as everything changed around him. Suddenly they were standing in a forest at morning. Beams of dusty sunlight stabbed down all around them through the trees, and birds sang high up somewhere in the canopy of green. The ground underfoot was covered with a carpet of fine brown needles. The diagnostic chair remained where it was though, amusingly incongruous among the pine needles. A small brown bird dropped down from a branch somewhere above, lit on the back of the chair, eyed Gabriel and Enda, and began to sing at them with great sweetness and (Gabriel thought) a fair amount of territorial aggression.

From behind one of the trees, then, slipped a mechalus. Gabriel looked her with interest. The mechalus was about two meters tall and had precise muscle tone as was usual for that people. She wore the typical rlin noch'i, the utilitarian everyday garment that mechalus favored, little more than a simple soft-booted bodysuit covering the body to the neck. The skin of her hands and face was very dark, almost olive hued, and had small veins of circuitry complementing the smoothness of her complexion. "Introduction: Doctor," the mechalus said, looking at them out of large, dark eyes that had a slight epicanthic fold. She bowed slightly to both of them. "Gender female, in case of treatment matter in which gender affects result or cultural stance. Assistance?" "Not with a treatment matter," Gabriel said, nodding to her. "Gabriel Connor." "Enda," the fraal said and bowed slightly as well. "A pleasure, honored one."

"Delde Sola," said the doctor. She was extremely handsome, even by mechalus standards. The genetic engineering the mechalus had done on themselves over many centuries seemed to have selected for what humans considered good looks-high cheekbones, dramatic faces with prominent noses, high foreheads, and large eyes. This mechalus wore her long hair back in a kind of shaggy mane that began to be braided below shoulder level. The neural-net fibers and hair wound together in an elaborate pattern that Gabriel realized, when he got a closer look, somewhat reflected the pattern of the Sealed Knot, the mechalus version of the lifestar or squared cross which many human medical practitioners wore. Many other implants and mechanical augmentations were doubtless woven into and through the doctor's body, engineered there at the molecular level by her ancestors and born with her as part of her normal heredity. Many mechalus even had further augmentations later in life by choice and design, but what these might be there was no telling at first glance.

The doctor came toward them, glancing around her as she paused by the diagnostic chair. "Species- specific comfort system selection is idiosyncratic," she said as the small bird on the chair stared at her and began to sing even more piercingly. "Query: this environment comforting / relaxing / providing relief from stress of visiting medical practitioner?"

"The forest is very beautiful," said Enda, "but I would think this small creature would raise my stress level somewhat if I had to listen to it for very long."

Delde Sola made a slightly annoyed face and waved one graceful hand. The forest disappeared, though a faint echo of the small bird's voice lay on the air for a few seconds after the trees were gone. "Garbage software," she said, "debug process requires millennia, not worth the medium in which produced. Warning: value judgment. Query: nature of assistance required?" "Phymech supplies," Gabriel said. "Better than the basic pack. Anything you have." "Query: anything?" Doctor Delde Sola said, with a look in those big dark eyes that was suddenly rather mischievous. "Whole-body transplant kit? Special this week. Eight hundred thousand Concord dollars." Gabriel swallowed. That was maybe a tenth of Sunshine's entire cash value, if such a thing as a whole- body transplant kit actually existed. "Uh, no thank you."

"Just the usual second-level augmentation package, I would think," Enda said mildly. "Traumatic amputation, crushing wound, extremity suite, pneumothorax, and explosive decompression intervention package."

"Query: take original basic package in trade for reconditioning / resale?" Doctor Delde Sola asked. Gabriel raised his eyebrows at that. "How much would we get in trade?" The mechalus considered. "One thousand Concord." "Oh, come on," Gabriel said. "Two at least."

Doctor Delde Sola looked at him with a wry expression. "Statement: this facility medical intervention, break even plus five percent, not charity. Subsidies zero. One thousand two."

"One thousand seven."

"In new condition?"

"Seals unbroken," Gabriel said.

"One thousand five."

"Done," Gabriel said and reached out a hand. The braid came up from behind Doctor Delde Sola's back and wrapped itself around his wrist in agreement, then let go rather quickly. Delde Sola looked at him curiously.

"Unusual 'personal magnetism,' " the doctor said. "Query: planet of origin?" "Bluefall," Gabriel said, wondering just what her sensors had noticed.

Delde Sola shrugged. "Statement: electrolyte balance may need adjustment. Dietary intervention possibly useful."

"Yes," Enda said, "he does eat like a... well, never mind that. Do you have the replacement packs in stock, or will you need to reorder?"

"Statement: all equipment in stock, inventory software fortunately less than garbage," Doctor Delde Sola said and gestured. A panel of the white wall slipped aside. "Conditional query: alternatives: cash and carry; or make purchase, arrange transport and installation?"

"Purchase and have transported and installed, please," Enda said as they followed the doctor into a surprisingly large storage area full of shelving and "secure" cabinetry, impervious to rifling except by the person whose hand prints, or even brain wave patterns, were programmed into the protective circuitry.

"You sure we couldn't save a little money by taking 'cash and carry'?" Gabriel said to Enda.

Doctor Delde Sola gave him that slightly wicked look again. "Statement: savings plus minus ten percent, installation extra, certainty of success of self-installation plus minus forty percent."

Gabriel swallowed again, not much liking the image of sticking a broken arm or half-amputated leg into the phymech and getting a response along the lines of "Installation error, cannot find programming module A458, terminating run."

"No," he said hurriedly, "you go ahead and have the usual installer do the job." The doctor whistled. A floater pallet came from down behind one of the long racks of shelves and levitated up to where it was wanted. The doctor's braid reached up to touch the pallet and instruct its onboard computer which film-wrapped component packs to select. Manipulating arms whipped out of the pallet and started plucking packs out of the shelving.

"How long will we have to wait for installation?" Enda asked, reaching into her satchel for her credit chip.

"Reply: installation immediate, this module will perform," said Delde Sola, patting the floater pallet with one hand while it finished loading itself. "Self-trained AI with direct oversight, most reliable." "You don't seem overly busy here," Gabriel remarked after a moment, as the pallet finished its packing. Doctor Delde Sola gave him a slightly peculiar look. "Meaning of query?"

"Uh," Gabriel hesitated, since he wasn't sure himself exactly what response he had intended to elicit. "I mean, there doesn't seem to be the usual number of people around today."

Delde Sola nodded. "Speculation," she said, "politics, local disruption, possible intervention of outside powers. Instability. Bad for business."

"Outside powers as in the stellar nations?" said Enda. "There has been no indication of such in the news services."

The doctor waved her hands in a gesture that Gabriel thought might have been a shrug. "Statement: nonspecialist, politics; specialist, medicine. Speculation: disruption periodic, especially of powers normally present in this system." "The Concord," said Enda softly, "and VoidCorp."

Doctor Delde Sola turned away from the pallet, now done loading and levitating down to floor level again. She reached out to take the chip that Enda offered her. "Payment received, thank you," she said as her braid's cyberfilaments brushed briefly over the chip's surface. She handed the chip back, adding, "Statement: VoidCorp traffic in vicinity much increased. Speculation: major disruption. Speculation/ analysis: other neighboring star systems very pleasant this time of year." Gabriel grinned a little. "Noted," he said.

The doctor walked them out to the entrance again. "Instruction: locate ship, open/release phymech module and computer controls. Carrier will implement installation routine. Estimated time for completion one hundred sixty minutes plus-minus ten minutes."

"Thank you very much," Enda said and bowed slightly to the doctor. "May your healing go well." "Request: ultimate principle probability response your sentiment greater than fifty percent," said the Doctor. She smiled and showed them out. As they went, Gabriel turned to raise a hand to her in farewell and caught, he thought, just the hint of a look at him of-interest? Curiosity? But the doors slid shut on the expression, and Gabriel shrugged at his own sensitivity. I'm beginning to see hidden motivations in everything, he thought. A few days' quiet between starfall and starrise will do me good and stop me from thinking the whole universe is plotting against me.

They got back to Sunshine and spent not a hundred and sixty minutes with the phymech installation, but nearly two hundred and twenty. The installer found a fault in the phymech hardware, one that was reparable with spare parts the installer had handy.

Gabriel got the shivers at the thought of what might have happened had they activated the phymech in a moment of need. There was no telling what kind of chaos the machine could have caused. "After this," Enda said while putting away some of the other phymech spare supplies in a nearby cupboard, "you will not think quite so hard about saving money." "You always do."

"Not at the cost of life," Enda said.

She lifted the last few packages of the "basic" phymech supplies onto the pallet that was just retracting its arms after having run one last set of diagnostics on the phymech. She made sure that the supplies were secured in place under the flexible lid that covered the upper portion of the machine, then patted the machine in a friendly manner on one side. She was vaguely astonished when it put out a tentacle and patted her back.

Gabriel chuckled as the pallet made its way down in the lift to the docking bay floor. "Some AI program," he said. " 'Direct oversight' indeed."

Enda too looked after the pallet with amusement. "It might be more direct than we suspect. After so many centuries and generations of being one with machines, the mechalus most likely have modes of consciousness regarding them that we can barely understand. There are mechalus who have so mastered that oneness that they need not even touch a machine to interface with it. Some of them can even meld directly into the Grid without direct or 'mechanical' access."

"It sounds like magic," Gabriel said as he called the lift back up and locked the outer door seals in place. Enda shrugged. "Doubtless mindwalking in some of its aspects seems like magic to them. To each species its own mysteries. They are what make our lives of interest to one another. Meanwhile, are we ready? Is the computer programmed?" "We're as ready as we're going to be."

"Then let us leave," Enda said, "not with undue haste. Moving too quickly can attract attention. This many VoidCorp ships in the vicinity make me nervous, and I would as soon be away from here with five days' starfall time between them and me."

"No problem with that," Gabriel said. "We'll head for the Outer Belt and do our starfall there. No point in making our whereabouts too obvious."

They headed outward at a seemly speed. Gabriel twitched somewhat as he lifted Sunshine up out of the Iphus Collective's docking ring. As they cleared the atmosphere a few moments later, they saw no less than four of the big VoidCorp cruisers hanging there, overshadowing the planet and matching its rotation exactly to stay perfectly in place. It was intimidation of the plainest kind. We're here. We could roll in right now and take you over if we wanted. Maybe we'll do it tomorrow, or the day after, but meanwhile, it's fun to watch you just lie there and be afraid.

Gabriel frowned and kicked in the system drive, aiming for an area of space about forty thousand kilometers past the Outer Belt. There would be very few watching eyes out there. The Concord's Omega Station was there, to be sure, but its eyes, Gabriel was certain, would be turned to the sudden presence of all the VoidCorp cruisers at Iphus. Outbound traffic, especially a small mining vessel, would attract no attention at all.

Enda was busying herself about the cargo storage area again, rearranging things to her liking. This was a job that Gabriel had long learned to leave to her. Enda's grasp of spatial relationships was extraordinary, and she could find ways to fit things into other things that would have seemed impossible at first glance. "It is simply a survival trait when you live in space," she had said once or twice, "whether you will control your environment or allow your environment to control you."

Gabriel stretched in the pilot's seat and told the computer to mind the store for a while. There was no need for his attention for another ten minutes or so, until they finished transiting the Belt and came out the other side. At first he had been nervous about such transits, imagining a storm of stones, every one of which was intent on smashing Sunshine to pieces. Now he knew that even the Inner Belt was more like a sea full of widely dispersed islands that you had to go out of your way to hit. The Outer Belt was more sparsely populated yet-or rather, it had about the same number of asteroids as the Inner Belt, but they were spread through a cubic volume of space perhaps a hundred times greater. There was little danger of anything happening that the ship's collision system couldn't handle, swerving it around or over the obstacle even as it was letting you know about it.

He got up and wandered back to see what Enda was doing. "Why are you repacking that again?" he asked. "You just did that storage the other day."

"True, but the new phymech supplies take up less space, and some of the spares can now go in the dedicated cabinet rather than in with general stores," Enda replied, shutting one storage unit and opening another. "You might as well ask why you scrubbed the ship three times from stem to stern during that last starfall."

"It needed it."

"It," Enda asked, "or you?"

He knew the bantering tone well enough now to snicker a little when he heard it. "Well, let's just say that I wouldn't-"

They both jumped as the proximity alarm started to howl. "Some damned rock," said Gabriel, annoyed, turning back toward the cockpit. "I swear I'm going to reduce the sensitivity on that-" -thing, he was about to say, but never had a chance to, as the line of laser light stitched itself across the cockpit windows, half blinding him.

Gabriel swore and threw himself into the pilot's seat, slamming down on the controls that took the ship out of auto. An instant later he punched the second set that would start up the JustWadeln software. It took too long, it always took too long-

Another flash of laser light, this one not so blinding. The ship was in passive response mode while the weapons came up, and the cockpit windows knew that laser light was bad for its pilots and was blocking anything cohesive. Small blessings, Gabriel thought, as the interactive field fitted itself down over him again. Enda threw herself into the seat beside him, not even bothering to go for their e-suits this time. It was the same little ships again, the greenish colored bullets. There were more of them, though. Five, Gabriel counted, or thought he counted, as they peeled away from him and around again, already having made one pass. Why didn't they use something deadlier first? he thought as he reached down and drew his "sidearms," felt them heating in his hands. If they'd hit us with a plasma cannon first, they would have-

Wham! He went blind as the first jolt of plasma hit him. Ranging, the first one was just ranging, Gabriel thought, staggered, staring around him sightlessly as he tried to get some kind of reference from the program. While he asked for diagnostics from it, Gabriel fired around him blindly with his own plasma cartridges, just two or three times. "Better not to feel helpless even when you are," his weapons instructor had told him. But he did not have unlimited armaments. Enda! I cannot see-

Gabriel's own "vision" was clearing a little. Tactical at least was coming back, showing him the widely divided shapes arcing around to have another pass. Diagnostics were showing some hull damage- microcracks and stress fractures in the hull shielding, but mostly in the aft section. Fortunately atmosphere was not leaking out-yet, anyway-though through the JustWadeln software, the hull was moaning like a beaten animal.

Show me which one hit us with that big blast, Gabriel said, and the computer obligingly highlighted that ship. It was another ball-bearing shape, a tumbling sphere, the farthest one away from Sunshine at the moment. It seemed to be slightly larger than its companions. Watching its almost erratic tumbling, Gabriel thought that perhaps its weapon left the craft with a bigger energy consumption curve than the pilot might have wished. That's something to play with. Concentrate on that one, Gabriel told the computer. Work out its trajectory. I want plenty of warning before the next pass. Enda?

It is better, she said and then paused. Ah!

WHAMl Another huge impact. A few seconds later something bounced hard off the cockpit windows and left a white smear that froze instantly to opaque ice. What the heck was that? Gabriel wondered. Ah-ha, Enda said, and there was another WHAMl-but no impacts this time. Tactical showed them two of the ships gone with various large fragments left spinning about.

Interesting, Enda said, sounding very satisfied indeed. / did not notice that this software had a specifically fraal-oriented implementation.

Didn't read the manual before this? Gabriel said. Shame. Look out, here they come again. And here comes that big one. I don't want to take another hit from that. He felt behind him briefly for the "shotgun." He would not power it up just yet, preferring to save it as his ace in the hole. Here came the larger ship again, finishing its big slow swing away and starting to slide back toward them. Recharging, I would say, Enda said. Let us see what it has in the way of passive defense. He got a sense of Enda stitching down the length of it with her own plasma cartridge weapons, but Gabriel had his own problems and could not spare her much attention. Another of the little ships was diving in close, and his own plasma cartridges shot out toward it-and missed as it jumped abruptly sideways. What the- It was not specifically a nonrelativistic type of movement, but it was not one likely to be produced by any drive Gabriel had ever heard of. Jump!-and it went sideways again, missing another cartridge. Analyze that, Gabriel said hurriedly to the computer. Give me a hint on how to do "windage" for that kind of motion.

The computer signaled acquiescence, but Gabriel began to wonder whether it was going to come up with an answer in time to do him any good. He began firing slightly scattershot, thinking, No use conserving ammunition if we're going to be too dead to use the leftovers next time. The ship arrowing in toward him jumped again sideways, and Gabriel suddenly thought, The other way!-and fired to one side of it. The ship jumped, bloomed into sudden fire, then sudden darkness as air and liquid sprayed away, spattering Sunshine's cockpit windows as the wreckage plunged by. "Now," Enda said.

WHAM!

Sunshine rocked and wallowed, and both of them were blind again, virtually and tactically. Desperate, Gabriel felt around behind him for the "shotgun," determined not to go down without one last shot. But he felt someone pull it out of his hands, taking control of the system, and then he felt something he could not understand, a great peculiar roar, like blood in the body shouting defiance before spilling itself or being spilled. And a faint echo of that cry from somewhere else, he could not tell where, but it froze him with a sense of great age and fear--and after that came a strange sudden silence in the software, as if the computer had come up against some response it had not been expecting.

Slowly their vision cleared. Gabriel looked around hurriedly to determine the location of the remaining craft and caught sight of nothing but one hasty starfall off in the distance, red-golden fire sheeting over the surface of another of the little ball-bearing craft. Then it was gone.

"I really must send a nice note to Insight about that software," Gabriel said softly.

"You might want to wait," Enda said, rubbing her eyes. "Void-Corp has been known to monitor drivespace comm relays before this, and they routinely scan for mail that is intended for their enemies."

"So it can wait. How many hostiles was that?" Gabriel asked the computer.

Six, the computer replied.

Gabriel swallowed hard. "Did you count six?" he said to Enda. "I thought there were five." She told the computer's virtuality field to lift from around her, and she sat back in her seat, tilting her head from side to side. Not, Gabriel thought, as a gesture of negation, but because she was wondering whether she might hear the brains slosh when she did so. His own certainly felt wobbly enough, and there were other parts of him that might need drying off as well.

"Five, I thought," Enda said. "Obviously we both missed something in the heat of the moment." Gabriel rubbed his face and looked again at the computer's diagnostics. "You're not going to like this," he said, "but I think the cargo bay may have taken another hit. Look at the stress schematic back there." Enda glanced at it and made an annoyed face. "One more problem," she noted, "but there is another that interests me more. Our shooting was better this time." "Just barely," Gabriel said. "Yours was what saved us."

"Leaving that aside," Enda said, but Gabriel noticed that she did not contradict him, "look out there. Bodies."

They both bent closer to the computer tank, looking at the slowly spinning outline. "Body, anyway," Gabriel corrected. "At least I don't see more than one. And it looks more or less intact. Human?" "So it would seem, but you were the one who suggested you wanted to see who or what had been shooting at you."

"So let's go get it and take a look."

Gabriel brought the system drive back up from standby and nudged Sunshine toward the floating shape. "Probably won't be recognizable," he said, "after explosive decompression."

"Are you expecting to see anyone you recognize?" Enda asked, getting up to go aft and check the seals between the main section and the cargo bay.

"Hard to say at this point, but no one knew we were going to be here. Or at least no one should have known."

A brief silence. "You did not file a starfall plan, then? Or an insystem flight plan?"

"No," Gabriel said as he inched Sunshine closer to the spinning, tumbling form. As they got closer, the tactical display in the tank was better able to show a shape. Definitely humanoid, Gabriel thought. There was something odd about the head though. Even an e-suit helmet would not be quite that big, as a rule. Enda looked out into the darkness. "Well, we knew there was surveillance of some kind going on, did we not? Now we know that it is not merely random or casual. Something quite sophisticated is being used on us."

"My money says we're carrying some kind of tag or tracer," Gabriel said as they glided very close to the body. He eased back on the throttles and brought up the external spotlights, instructing the ship to train them on the body as they got close enough for them to do any good. "I really love the prospect of tearing this ship apart piece by piece to find out where the tracer is when we don't know what it looks like or where it's been put or even when . . ."

Five hundred meters away, they could now see, just as a speck, the faint reflection from the spotlights on a spread-eagled humanoid form. Gabriel nudged the ship ever so slowly closer to it.

"Who would have put such a thing on us?" Enda asked. "And why?"

"Someone who wants to see us dead of an 'accident' in far system space," Gabriel answered.

"Or in a street on Grith, late at night," Enda said.

Gabriel thought about that for a moment and shook his head. "On-ship surveillance wouldn't help anyone who wanted to do that. The people with the knives and the guns-that's some other kind of surveillance working, I'd say."

"So there might be two different parties tracking us," Enda said.

Two hundred fifty meters now. Gabriel sighed, "I was kind of hoping to avoid that particular conclusion."

"But you have not been able to?"

Gabriel shook his head. Two hundred meters.

"On the other hand," he said, "it's possible that if we removed whatever surveillance device was presently on the ship-"

"-assuming that we could find it in the first place-" Gabriel nodded. "-that its removal would alert whoever had put it there, and they would get even more annoyed with us than they are."

"I would suggest by present indications that they are already fairly annoyed," Enda said, looking over the computer's diagnostics again and sighing. "More hull repairs for the cargo bay, I fear, and the damage may possibly be well up into the superstructure as well. Well, riches are a burden, they say." "I thought you said you weren't rich." One hundred meters. The shape was slowing, losing its spin. Gabriel thought he could see something like tubes curving out stiff from the body as if frozen that way. A very big dark head section.

"I was speaking figuratively," Enda said. Together she and Gabriel peered out the cockpit windows as they came up to about fifty meters. Gabriel slowed Sunshine down to the merest crawl.

"Have you ever seen an e-suit with a headpiece like that?" Gabriel asked. It looked like solid metal, though the light was poor and certainly there were enough metallic coatings for visors, gold and platinum for example, that could fool you into thinking the whole helmet was polished metal. The shape was peculiar, too, oddly elongated toward the sides.

"Someone with very large ears?" Enda inquired.

"That large?" said Gabriel, and shook his head. "If it's a new species and that is for their ears, they're going to have to put up with a lot of teasing."

He reached into the computer's tank and told it to bring up the exterior handling software that controlled the grapples and configurable cables. Gabriel continued to nudge the ship's nose a little to one side of the body to bring the lift access close to it.

The ship inched around and came to rest relative to the body, which was simply drifting now, no longer spinning. Gabriel let the ark's manipulation field snug in around his hand as the grapples extruded themselves from Sunshine's side and snaked out gently toward the body. The grapples were "negative feedback" waldo-bands with sensor-augmented faked sensation so that your hand could "feel" what the grapples felt through the software as they engaged with a solid object. Gabriel felt his way toward the body, opened the fingers of the grapples, and closed them carefully around it. The sensation was peculiar, slightly squishy.

Slowly he pulled the body closer and flicked one thumb to open the lift access, then he pushed the body carefully into it and closed the access again. Gabriel put on light gravity in the lift and instructed it to come up to ship level while filling with parasitic air siphoned out of the main cabin. The lift clunked into place. Gabriel watched the lift's pressure gauge in the tank until it matched exactly with that of the cabin. Finally he was satisfied of a perfect match and touched the control to open the lift door. Enda was already up out of her seat, heading aft. He went after her.

They stood and looked down at the body on the floor of the lift. Despite its short time out in space, it seemed already well frozen, the arms flung out forwards, one of the legs oddly bent. There was the large glossy headpiece, cracked but otherwise intact, glazed inside with a silvery metallic compound. The e- suit covering the body, though, was most peculiar. It looked like greenish plastic-but the green of the plastic was not even. It looked lighter in some areas, darker in others. Enda knelt down beside it, reached out a hand toward one of the slits that the explosion had apparently torn in the e-suit, then took the hand back again, glancing up at Gabriel.

He put one booted toe out and nudged the body slightly. Over the greenish e-suit were shoulder pads and shin coverings and a breastplate of what might have been some kind of dark armor. It was faintly ribbed and looked less metallic than chitinous, as if it had been wrought from the wing casing of some large beetle. The armor was by no means complete, though, and much of the body was left uncovered. It appeared to have been partially blown away from the lower left leg, and splintered bone was visible. There was little blood, even clotted blood, but from underneath the plastic material of the e-suit where it had been torn, something pallidly green was oozing.

"The suit's filled with something," Gabriel said. "Not air, either." He too put a hand out as if to touch that strange e-suit, then thought better of it and withdrew it.

"I confess to having been eager to see who pursued us," Enda said, pursing her lips, "but now I am less eager. I do not like the thought of investigating this being much further without specialized protective gear, which, alas, we do not have."

Gabriel thought about that for a moment. "I bet I know who does have some, though," he said. "Oh?"

"Doctor Delde Sota."

Enda blinked at that. "You are considering taking this body back to her for autopsy?" Gabriel shrugged. "Spacefarers going about their lawful occasions are supposed to assist the authorities in investigating unusual occurrences, especially in system space, where the occurrences could cause danger to life or limb." He glanced back toward the cargo bay. "Our limbs were pretty well endangered, if you ask me. Legally, Doctor Sota would have to assist us. This is a 'public health' matter. And anyway, what is this creature, Enda? A new alien species of some kind? If it is, people should know about it, and that it's fairly aggressive when it gets you alone out in the dark."

"I would find it hard to argue with that." Enda stood up. "Well, we should wrap it up and keep it as intact as we can." She stood up, thinking for a moment-then turned to the nearby cabinet that contained the phymech and stroked its front panel. The panel lit up and displayed available settings. "I thought so," Enda said. "Here. 'Corpse wrapping.' "

"That's going to use up all the disinfectant film," Gabriel said, looking up past her as the machine displayed its materials requirements.

"Yes, well," Enda said, "what would you recommend we use instead?"

Gabriel sniffed the air. It was already becoming sharply rank with the scent of the green gel that was dripping out of various punctures and rips in the creature's protective suit as the air warmed it and the once-frozen liquids began to melt.

"Never mind," he said hurriedly, "I think you're right; we'd better just do it."

Enda told the phymech to put down its handling arms. It extruded them, wrapped them around the strange body and lifted it, preparatory to wrapping.

"When it's finished," Gabriel said, "I think we'd better put it in the cargo bay and vent the hold." Enda made a little sniff of laughter. "If the hold is not already well enough vented. But, yes, that should successfully stabilize it. At least, we will hope so."

The phymech got on with its wrapping. Soon there was nothing left but an opaque, silvery-sheened, ungainly, and not very human-looking bundle, for neither Gabriel or Enda wanted the body forced into an unnatural shape that might destroy some useful piece of equipment or other evidence. The shape was awkward. They had some difficulty getting it into the airlock between the forward area and the cargo bay, but it fitted at last after some tugging and pushing. When the airlock was closed again, Gabriel activated the secondary grapples mounted inside the cargo bay, the ones used for handling rocks inside the bay, and carefully opened the other airlock door.

"There remains the problem of exactly how we handle this body when we get to Iphus," Enda said. Gabriel finished up with the grapples and closed the airlock door again, pausing to look at the inert lump lying there in the light gravity he had left turned on. "Probably," he said, "it wouldn't be a great idea to haul it through the corridors."

"No. I would think we might be able to get the doctor to make a house call, though, especially if there was an illness aboard ship."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I was just thinking how unwell you look, Gabriel." "What?"

"Oh, most unwell. I think you have eaten something bad. Contaminated stores, perhaps." Gabriel blinked at her, then made a few experimental retching noises. "Maybe there was something wrong with that last batch of meat rolls?" he suggested.

"Certainly there was," Enda said. "I cannot believe the amount of hot spice with which you ordered them made. They are nearly inedible, but perhaps there was some bacterial contamination as well." "Something that the phymech can't handle."

"Well, it has never been as strong on nontraumatic problems or simple systemic infections as it is on trauma. Perhaps there might be something wrong with the phymech as well. Yes, some kind of error in installation-or better still, another software problem that the installer missed even though it caught the other one."

Gabriel shook his head and turned to make his way back up to the pilot's seat. "I begin to see why fraal are such a long-lived species," he said.

Enda looked after him with some concern. "Why would that be?"

"Sneakiness," Gabriel said. "Come on. I'm going to go sound sick on the comm back to Iphus." Smiling very slightly, Enda came after him.