Downbelow Station

i

The station was calmer. Queries to Legal Affairs had begun, and that was a good indication that the tension on the station was easing. The input file was full of queries about military actions, threatened lawsuits, indignant protests from merchants on-station who felt damages were due them for the continued curfew on the docks. There were protests from the merchanter ship Finity’s End regarding a missing youth, the object of much anxiety, in the theory that one of the military crews could have swept him up in impressment. In fact the youth was probably in some station sleepover with a current infatuation from some other ship. Comp was quietly carrying out a card-use search, not an easy matter, for merchanter passes were not in such frequent use as stationer cards.

Damon entertained hopes of finding him safe, refused to take alarm until the records search had come in; he had seen too many of these come across his desk only to discover a young merchanter who had had a falling out with his family or drunk too much to listen to vid. The whole thing was more security’s problem at this level, but security had its hands full, its men and women standing guard duty with haggard eyes and short tempers. LA could at least punch comp buttons and take up some of the clerical work. Another killing in Q. It was depressing, and there was absolutely nothing they could do but note the fact. There was a report of a guard under suspension, accused of smuggling a case of Downer wine into Q. Some officer had decided the problem should not wait, when it was likely there was petty smuggling going on everywhere among the merchanters out there. The man was being made an example.

He had three postponed hearings in the afternoon. They were likely to be postponed again, because the council was meeting and the board of justices was involved in that. He decided to agree with the defender to that effect, and put the message through, reserving the afternoon instead for the disposal of more queries that the lower levels of the office could not handle.

And having disposed of that, he swung his chair about and looked back at Josh, who sat dutifully reading a book on the auxiliary unit and trying not to look as bored as he ought to be. “Hey,” Damon said. Josh looked at him. “Lunch? We can take a long one and work out at the gym.”

“We can go there?”

“It’s open.”

Josh turned the machine off.

Damon rose, leaving everything on hold, walked over and gathered up his jacket, felt after cards and papers to be absolutely sure. Mazian’s troops still stood guard here and there as unreasonable as they ever had been.

Josh likewise put on a jacket… they were about the same size, and it was borrowed. Lending, Josh would accept, if not giving, augmenting his small wardrobe so that he could come and go in the offices without undue attention. Damon held the door button, instructed the office outside to delay calls for two hours.

“Back at one,” the secretary acknowledged, and turned to take an incoming call. Damon motioned Josh on through into the outer corridor.

“A half an hour at the gym,” Damon said, “then a sandwich at the concourse. I’m hungry.”

“Fine,” Josh said. He looked nervously about him. Damon looked too, and felt uneasy. The corridors had very little traffic even yet. People were just not trusting of the situation. : Some troops stood, distantly visible.

“The troops should all be pulled back,” he said to Josh, “by the end of this week. Our own security is taking over entirely in white; green maybe in two days. Have patience. We’re working on it.”

“They’ll still do what they want,” Josh said somberly.

“Huh. Did Mallory, after all?”

A shadow came on Josh’s face. “I don’t know. When I think about it, I still don’t know.”

“Believe me.” They had reached the lift, alone. A trooper stood at the corner of another corridor, a fact in the tail of the eye, nothing remarkable. He pushed the code for the core. “Had a bit of good news come in this morning. My brother called up, said things are smoothing out down there.”

“I’m glad,” Josh murmured.

The trooper moved suddenly. Came toward them. Damon looked. Others further down the hall started moving, all of them, at a near run. “Abort that,” the first trooper snapped, reaching them. She reached for the panel herself. “We’re on a call.”

“I can get you a priority,” Damon said — to be rid of them. The move indicated trouble; he thought of them shoving stationers around on other levels.

“Do it.”

He took his card from his pocket, thrust it into the slot and coded his priority; the lights went red. The rest of the troopers arrived as the car did, and armored shoulders pushed them aside as the troops all crowded in, leaving them there. The car whisked away, nonstop for whatever destination they had coded from inside. There was not a trooper left in the corridor. Damon looked at Josh, whose face was pale and set.

“We take the next car,” Damon said with a shrug. He was himself disturbed, and quietly coded in blue nine.

“Elene?” Josh asked.

“Want to get down there,” he said. “You come with me. If there’s trouble, it’s likely to end up on the dockside. I want to get down there.”

The car delayed in coming. He waited several moments and finally used his card a second time, a second priority; the lights went red, signifying a car on priority call, then blinked, signifying nothing available. He slammed his fist against the wall, cast a second look at Josh. It was far to walk; easier to wait for a car to free itself… quicker in the long run.

He walked over to the nearest com unit, keyed in on priority, while Josh stood waiting by the lift doors. “Hold the car if it comes,” he said to Josh, punched the call in. “Com Central, this is Damon Konstantin on emergency. We’re seeing troops pulling out on the run. What’s going on?”

There was a long delay. “Mr. Konstantin,” a voice came back, “this is a public com unit.”

“Not at the moment, central. What’s going on?”

“General alert. Emergency posts, please.”

“What’s going on?”

Com had cut itself off. A measured siren began to sound. Red lights began to pulse in the overheads. People came out of the offices, looked at one another as if hoping it was drill, or mistaken. His own secretary was outside, far down the hall.

“Get back inside,” he shouted. “Get those doors shut.” People moved backward, retreated into offices. The red light by Josh’s shoulder was still blinking, indicating no car available: every car in the system must have jammed up down at the docks.

“Come on,” he said to Josh, motioned toward the end of the hall. Josh looked confused and he strode over, caught Josh by the arm. “Come on.”

There were others in the hall, farther on. He snapped an order at them, cleared them out, not blaming them… there were others besides Konstantins who had loved ones scattered about the station, children in school and nurseries, people in hospital. Some ran ahead of them, refusing orders. A station security agent shouted out another order to halt; ignored, laid a hand on his pistol.

“Let them go,” Damon snapped. “Let be.”

“Sir.” The policeman’s face relaxed from a grimace of panic. “Sir, I’m not getting anything over com.”

“Keep that gun holstered. You learn those reflexes from the troops? Stand your post. Calm people down. Help them where you can. There’s a scramble going on. Could even be drill. Ease up.”

“Sir.”

They walked on, toward the emergency ramp, in the quiet hall… not running; a Konstantin could not run, spread panic. He walked, trying to hold off panic in himself. “No time,” Josh said under his breath. “By the time the alert gets here, the ships are on us. If Mazian’s been caught at dock…”

“Got militia and two carriers out from station,” Damon said, and remembered all at once who Josh was. He caught his breath, gave him a desperate look, met a face as worried as his own. “Come on,” he said.

They reached the emergency ramp, heard shouting, loud as they opened the doors. Runners were headed in down it from other levels. “Slow down!” Damon yelled at those who passed him, and they did, several turns, but a few became many, and suddenly there were more coming up, the noise increasing, more running… the transport system jammed everywhere and all the levels pouring into the spiral well. “Take it easy,” Damon shouted, grabbed shoulders physically and tried to slow it, but the rush accelerated, bodies jamming in, men, women, and children, impossible now even to get out of it. The doors were full of people trying to go down.

“The docks!” he heard shouted. It spread like fire, with the red light of alarm burning in the overhead, the assumption that had been seething in Pell since the troops came — that someday it would come, that the station was under attack, that evacuation was underway. The mass pressed down, and there was no stopping it.

ii

cfx/knight/189-8989-6877 easyeasyeasy/scorpiontwelve/zerozerozero/ endit

Signy keyed back acknowledgment and turned to Graff with a wide sweep of her hand. “Hit it!” Graff relayed, and go sounded throughout the ship. Warnings flared, spreading to dockside. Troops outside finished stripping the umbilicals. “We can’t take them,” Signy said when Di Janz fretted in com. It sat ill with her to abandon men. “They’re all right.”

“Umbilicals clear,” Graff shouted across, off com. It was a go-when-ready from Europe, which had left its troops, already moving out. Pacific was moving. Tibet’s rider was still heading in behind the wave of the original message, signaling with its presence what Tibet had already sent; and what was happening on the fringes of Pell System was as old as the light-bound signal that came reporting it, ships inbound, more than an hour ago. The lights on Norway’s main board flicked green, a steady ripple of them, and Signy released clamp and set Norway free, with the troops who had made it aboard still hastening for security. Norway moved null for a moment under the gentle puffs of directionals and undocking vents, continued the roll of her frame and cut in main thrust with a margin that skimmed Australia’s clearance and probably set off alarms all over Pell. They acquired hard G, the inner cylinder under combat synch, rolling to compensate stresses: weight bore down, eased, slammed down again.

They came to heading, with a clutter of merchanters in lower plane; Europe and Pacific ahead of them, Australia breaking clear behind. Atlantic would be moving any second; India’s Keu was on-station and headed for his ship; Africa’s Porey was downworld. Africa would move out under its lieutenant’s command and rendezvous with Porey shuttling up from Downbelow, running tailguard at best.

The inevitable was on them. That rider was some minutes behind Tibet’s message, insurance. Its message was reaching them now; and a chatter of further transmission from Tibet itself, and North Pole’s voice added itself, along with the alarm of militia ships helplessly in the path of the strike. Tibet was engaged, trying to make the incoming fleet dump speed to deal with them. North Pole was moving. Merchanter vessels serving as militia were altering course, slow ships, short-haulers, at a standstill compared to the speed of the incoming fleet. They could slow it if they had the nerve. If.

“Rider’s turned,” scan op said in her ear. She saw it onscreen. The rider had gotten their acknowledgment minutes ago, had put about; that scan image was meeting them now. Longscan comp had put the rest of the arc together and the comp tech had reasoned the rest by human intent… the yellow fuzz going off from the red approach line was long-scan’s new estimate of the ridership’s position; the old estimate faded to faint blue, mere warning to watch that line of approach in case. They were headed right down it in outgoing plane, while the incoming rider was obliged to go nadir. And they were all streaming out together, right down the line.

Signy gnawed her lip, cautioned scan and com monitor to keep up with events all around the sphere, fretting that Mazian had hauled them out in one vector only. Come on, she thought with the taste of one disaster in her mouth, no more like Viking. Give us a few options, man.

cfx / knight / 189-9090-687 / ninerninerniner / sphinx / twotwotwo triplet / doublet / quartet / wisp / endit.

New orders. The late ships were given the other vectors. Pacific and Atlantic and Australia moved onto new courses, slow motion flowering of the pattern to shield the system.

iii

merchanter hammer to ecs in vicinity/maydaymaydaymayday/union carriers moving/twelve carriers our vicinity/going for jump/maydaymaydaymayday…

swan’s eye to all ships/runrunrunrun…

ecs tibet to all ships/relay/…

Over an hour old, proliferating through the system in relay through the com of every ship receiving and still going, like an echo in a madhouse. Angelo leaned to the comp console and keyed through to dockside, where the shock of a massive pullout still had crews spilling out on emergency call: military crews had handled it, their own way, undocked without interval. Central was in chaos, with a pending G crisis if the systems could not adjust to the massive kickoff. There were palpable instabilities. Com was jammed. And for nearly two hours the situation on the rim of the solar system had been in progress, while the message flashed its lightbound way toward them.

Troops were left on the dock. Most had been aboard already, barracked onship; some had not made it, and military channels on-station echoed with incomprehensible messages, angry voices. Why they had pulled the troops, why they had delayed to board those they could with attack incoming… the implication of that was the liberty of the Fleet to run out on them. Mazian’s order…

Emilio, he thought distractedly. The schematic of Downbelow on the left wall-screen flickered with a dot that was Porey’s shuttle. He could not call; no one could — Mazian’s orders… com silence. Hold pattern, traffic control was broadcasting to merchanters in orbit; it was all they could say. Com queries flowed from merchanters at dock, faster than operators could answer them with pleas for quiet.

Union was bound to have done this. Anticipated, Mazian had flashed him, in what direct communication he had gotten. For days the captains had stayed near the ships — troops jammed aboard in discomfort — not in courtesy to station; not in response to their requests to have the troops out of the halls.

Prepared for pullout. Despite all promises, prepared for pullout.

He reached for the com button, to call Alicia, who might be following this on her screens…

“Sir.” His secretary Mills came on com. “Security requests you come to com central. There’s a situation down in green.”

“What situation?”

“Crowds, sir.”

He thrust himself from his desk, grabbed his coat.

“Sir — ”

He turned. His office door opened unasked, Mills there protesting the intrusion of Jon Lukas and a companion. “Sir,” Mills said. “I’m sorry. Mr. Lukas insisted… I told him…”

Angelo frowned, vexed at the intrusion and at once hoping for assistance. Jon was able, if self-interested. “I need some help,” he said, and his eyes flicked in alarm at the small movement of the other man’s hand to his coat, the sudden flash of steel. Mills failed to see it… Angelo cried aloud as the man slashed Mills, scrambled back as the man flung himself at him. Hale: he recognized the face suddenly.

Mills shrieked, bleeding, sinking against the open doorway; there were screams from the outer office; the blow struck, a numbing shock. Angelo reached for the driving hand and met the weapon protruding from his chest, stared disbelievingly at Jon… at hate. There were others in the doorway.

Shock welled up in him, with the blood.

iv

“Vassily,” the voice said over com. “Vassily, do you hear me?”

Kressich, at his desk, sat paralyzed. It was Coledy, of those who sat about him, hunched and waiting, who reached past him and punched the respond button. “I hear,” Kressich said past the knot in his throat. He looked at Coledy. In his ears was the buzz of voices out on the docks, people already frightened, already threatening riot.

“Keep him safe,” Coledy said to James, who was over the five others who waited outside. “Keep him very safe.”

And Coledy went. They had waited, had hovered about com, one of them always near it, gathered here in the confusion. It was on them now. After a moment there was a rise in the noise of the mob outside, a dull, bestial sound which shook the walls.

Kressich bowed his face into his hands, stayed so for a long time, not wishing to know.

“The doors,” he heard finally, a shout from outside. “The doors are open!”

v

They ran, stumbling and breathless, jostling others in the corridor, a sea of panicked people, red-dyed in alarm lights. A siren still went; there was a queasiness of G as station systems struggled to keep themselves stable. “It’s the docks,” Damon breathed, his vision blurring. A runner hit him and he fended the body off, pushed his way, with Josh in his wake, where the ramp opened onto nine. “Mazian’s peeled off.” It was all that made sense.

Shrieks broke out and there was a massive backflow in the crowd that brought all the press to a stop. Of a sudden traffic began to go the other way, people retreating from something. There were frantic screams, bodies jammed against them.

“Damon!” Josh yelled from behind him. It was no good. They were pushed back, all of them, against the crush of bodies behind. Shots streaked overhead, and the whole jammed mass quivered and rang with screams. Damon got his arms in front of him for leverage, to keep from being suffocated… ribs were compressed.

Then the rear of the press turned, running in panic down some route of escape; and the crush became a battering flood. He tried to stand in it, having his own direction. A hand caught his arm, and Josh caught up with him, staggered as the mob shoved and stampeded and they tried to fight the current

More shots. A man went down; more than one — hit. The fire was going into the crowd.

“Stop shooting!” Damon shouted, still with a wall of people in front of him, a wall diminishing as if a scythe were hitting it. “Cease fire!”

Someone grabbed him from the back, pulled him as fire came through. He got the edge of one and jerked in pain, scrambling for balance in the rout, running now — it was Josh with him, pulling him along in their retreat. A man’s back exploded an arm’s length ahead of them, and the man fell under the others.

“This way!” Josh yelled, jerked him left, down a side corridor where part of the rout was going. He went, that direction as good as the other… saw a way to double back through, redoubled his effort, to get to the docks, running through the maze of secondary corridors back again to nine.

They made it as far as three intersections, frantic people scattering everywhere, at every intersection of the corridors, staggering in the flux of G. And then screams broke out in the halls ahead.

“Look out!” Josh yelled, catching at him. He gasped air and turned, ran where the curving inner hall rose up and up into what was going to turn into a blank wall, the sector division.

Not blank. There was a way. Josh yelled and tried to drag him back when he saw the cul de sac; “Come on,” he snapped and caught Josh’s sleeve, kept running as the wall came down off the horizon at them, became level, a blank wall with a painted mural, and at the right, the heavy door of a Downer hatchway.

He leaned up against the wall, fumbled his card out, jammed it in the slot. The hatch opened with a gust of tainted air, and he dragged Josh into it, into virtual dark, numbing cold.

The door sealed. Air exchange started and Josh looked about in panic; Damon reached for the masks in the recess, thrust one at Josh, got one over his own face and sucked a restricted breath, trembling so that he could hardly get the band adjusted.

“Where are we going?” Josh asked, voice changed by the mask. “Now what?”

There was a lamp in the recess. He took it, thumbed the light on. He reached for the inner-door switch, opened it, a sound that echoed up and up. A slant of the beam picked out catwalks. They were on a grid, and a ladder went down farther still, into a round tube. G diminished, dizzyingly. He caught at the rail.

Elene… Elene would be in the worst of it; she would go to cover, get those office doors locked — had to. He was not able to get through out there; had to get to help, reach a point where he could get security forces moving in a front that could stop it. Up. Get up to the high levels; that was white sector on the other side of that partition. He tried to find an access to it, but the beam showed no way. There was no direct connection, section to section, except the docks, except on number one level, he remembered that — complicated lock systems… Downers knew where — he did not. Get to central, he thought; get to an upper hall and get to com. Everything was amiss, G out of balance — the Fleet had gone; maybe merchanters too, throwing them out of stability, and central was not correcting it. Something was massively wrong up there.

He turned, staggered as G surged sickeningly, grabbed an upslanted rail, and started climbing.

Josh followed.

vi

There was no response from central; the handcom kept giving back the standby, interspersed with static. Elene thumbed it off and cast a frantic look back at the lines of troops that held green nine entry. “Runner,” she called. A youth came up to her on the double. They were reduced to this, with com blacked out. “Get to all the ships round the rim, one to the next as far as you can run, and tell them to pass the word on their own com if they can. Hold where you are, tell them. Tell them… you know what to say. Tell them there’s trouble out there and they’ll run headon into it if they bolt. Go!”

Scan might be out. She had reckoned the blackout the Fleet’s doing; but India and Africa had gone, leaving troops to hold the dock, troops they had no room to take; and the signal was still being interrupted. No knowing what information the merchanters were getting, or what messages the troops might have gotten over their own com. No knowing who was in charge of the deserted troops, whether some high officer or some desperate and confused noncom. There was a wall of them at the niner entries of blue and green docks — a wall of troops facing up the curving horizons sealing off those same docks from either side, rifles braced and ready, the sealing of their square. She feared them no less than the enemy incoming. They had fired, turned one mob, killed people; there were still sporadic shots. She had twelve staff members and six of them were missing… cut off by the com blackout. The others were directing dock crew efforts to check the dumped umbilicals against a fatal seal breach; the whole section should be under precautionary seal — if her people up in blue control could get it straightened out: they had dead switches, the whole system jammed by an override. G flux still hit them at intervals; fluid mass in the tanks had to be shunted as fast as the lines could jet it their way, everything in tanks anywhere, to compensate; station had attitude controls; they might be using them. It was terrifying in a huge space like the docks, the up and down of weight, unsettling premonition that at any moment they might get a flux of more than a kilo or two.

“Ms. Quen!”

She turned. The runner had not gotten through: some ass in the line of troops must have turned him back. She started toward him in haste, toward the line that suddenly, inexplicably, was wavering, facing about toward them, rifles leveled.

A shout roared out at her back. She looked, to the upcurving horizon, saw an indistinct wavefront of runners coming down that apparent wall toward them, beyond the curtaining section arch. Riot.

“The seal!” she shouted into the useless handcom, dead as it had been. The troops were moving; she was between them and targets. She ran for the far side, the tangle of gantries, heart pounding, looked back again as the line of troops advanced, narrowing their perimeter, passing her by, some of them taking positions in the cover of the gantries. She thumbed the handcom and desperately tried her office: “Shut it down!” — but the mob was past blue control, might be in it. The noise of the mob swelled, a tide pouring toward them while others were still coming down off the horizon, an endless mass. She realized suddenly the aspect of the distant faces, behavior not panic, but hate; and weapons — pipes, clubs -

The troops fired. There were screams as the first rank went down. She stood paralyzed, not twenty meters from the troops’ rear, seeing more and more of the mob pouring toward them over their own dead.

Q. Q was loose. They came waving weapons and shrieking, a sound which grew from distant roar to deafening, with no end to their numbers.

She turned, ran, staggering in the flux, in the wake of her own fleeing dock crews, of scattered Downers who saw man-trouble and sought shelter.

The noise grew behind her.

She doubled her pace, a hand to her belly, trying to cushion the shock in her stride. There were screams behind her, almost drowned in the roar. They would overrun these troops too, gain the rifles… coming on by the sheer weight of numbers. She looked back… saw green nine vomiting forth scattered runners, getting past the troops. Panic showed in their faces. She gasped for air and kept going, despite the dull ache in her pelvic arch, dog-trotting when she must, reeling in the G surges. Runners began to pass her, a scattered few at first, then others, a buffeting flood as she passed white section arch; and on the horizon ahead a tide breaking crossways from niner entries, thousands upon thousands up the sweep of the horizon, running for the merchanter ships at dock, screaming that merged with the cries behind, men and women screaming and pushing each other.

Men passed her in greater and greater numbers… bloody, reeking, waving weapons, shrieking. A shock hit her back, threw her to a knee and the man kept running. Another hit her… stumbled, kept going. She staggered up, arm numb, tried for the gantries, the shelter of supports and lines… shots burst out ahead of her from a ship’s access.

“Quen!” someone yelled. She could not tell the source, looked about, tried to fight the human tide, and stumbled in the press.

“Quen!” She looked about; a hand caught her arm and pulled her, and a gun fired past her head. Two others grabbed her, hauled her through the press… a blow grazed her head and she staggered, flung her weight then with the men who were trying to pull her through, amid the web of lines and gantries. There were screams and shots; others reached out to seize them and she tensed to fight, thinking them the mob, but a wall of bodies absorbed her and the men with her, merchanter types. “Fall back,” someone was yelling. “Fall back. They’re through!” They were headed up a ramp, to an open hatchway, a cold ribbed tube, glowing yellow white, a ship’s access.

“I’m not boarding!” she cried in protest, but she had no wind left to protest anything, and there was nowhere but the mobs. They dragged her up the tube and those who had held the entry came crowding after as they hit the lock, hurtling in. They jammed up in a crushing press as the last desperate runners surged in. The door hissed and clanged shut, and she flinched… by some miracle the door had taken no limbs.

The inner hatch spilled them into a lift corridor. A pair of big men pushed the others through and steadied her on her feet while a voice thundered orders over com. Her belly hurt; her thighs ached; she sank against the wall and rested there until one of them touched her shoulder, a huge man, gentle-handed.

“All right,” she said. “I’m all right.”

It was easing, the strain of the run… she pushed her hair back, looked at the men, these two who had been out there with her, heaved through the crowd, shoving rioters out of the way; knew them, and the patch they wore, black, without device: Finity’s End. The ship that had lost a son on the station; the men she had dealt with that morning. Going for their ship, perhaps… and they had gone aside after one of their own, to pull a Quen out of that mob. “Thank you,” she breathed. “The captain — please, I’ve got to talk to him… fast.”

No objections. The big man… Tom — she recalled the name — got his arm about her, helped her walk. His cousin opened the lift door and hit the button inside. They walked out again into a fair-sided center, crowded at the moment by the lack of rotation. Main room and bridge were downmost, bridge forward, and the two brought her that way… better now, much better. She walked on her own, into the bridge, amid the rows of equipment and the gathered crew. Neihart. Neihart was the ship’s family; Viking-based. The seniors were on the bridge; some of the younger crew… children would be snugged away topside, out of this. She recognized Wes Neihart, captain of the family, seamed and silver-haired, sad of face.

“Quen,” he said.

“Sir.” She met the offered hand, declined the seat they offered, leaned against the back of it to face him. “Q’s loose; com’s out. Please… contact the other ships… pass word… don’t know what’s wrong in central, but Pell’s in dire trouble.”

“We’re not taking on passengers,” Neihart said. “We’ve seen the result of that. So have you. Don’t ask it.”

“Listen to me. Union’s out there. We’re a shell… around this station. Got to stay put. Will you give me com?”

She spoke for Pell, had done so, to this captain, to all the others; but this was his deck, not Pell, and she was a beggar without a ship.

“Dockmaster’s privilege,” he allowed suddenly, swept a hand toward the boards. “Com’s yours.”

She nodded gratitude, let them show her to the nearest board, sank into the cushion with a cramp in her lower belly — she put her hand there — not the baby, she prayed. She had a numbness in that arm, her back, where she had been hit. Instruments blurred as she reached for the earpiece, and she blinked the board into focus, trying to focus her mind as well as her vision. She punched in the ship-to-ship. “All ships, record and relay: this is Pell dock control, Pell liaison Elene Quen aboard Neihart’s Finity’s End, white dock. Request that all docked merchanters seal locks and do not, repeat, negative, admit any stationers to your ships. Pell is not evacuating. Get this much on outside broadcast if you can make it heard on loudspeakers; station com is blacked out. Those ships in dock, if you can safely release dock from inside shutdown, do so; but do not undock. Those ships in pattern, hold your pattern; do not leave pattern. Station will compensate and regain stability. Repeat, Pell is not being evacuated. A military action is in progress in the system. Nothing will be served by evacuating the station. Please play the following section for outside broadcast where possible: Attention. By dockmaster’s authority, all station law enforcers are requested to do their utmost to establish order in whatever areas they are. Do not attempt to go to central. Stay where you are. Citizens of Pell: you are in serious danger from riot. Establish barricades at all niner entries and all section lines and prepare to defend them to prevent the movement of destructive mobs. Quarantine has been breached. If you scatter in panic you will contribute to riot and endanger your own lives. Defend the barricades. You will be able to hold the station area by area. Station com is blacked out due to military intervention, and the G flux is due to unauthorized undock of military ships. Stability will be restored as quickly as possible. To any refugee out of quarantine: I appeal to you to contribute your efforts to the establishment of defense lines and barricades along with Pell citizens. Station will negotiate with you regarding your situation; your cooperation in this crisis will make a profound impression on Pell’s gratitude, and you may be assured of favorable consideration as this situation is stabilized. Please remain where you are, defend your areas, and remember that this station supports your lives too. All merchanters: please cooperate with me in this emergency. If you have information, pass it to me on Finity’s End. This ship will serve as dock headquarters during the emergency. Please play ship to ship and broadcast appropriate sections over exterior systems. I am standing by for your contact.”

Messages flashed back, frantic queries after more information, harsh demands, threats of bolting dock at once. All about her the folk of Finity’s End were making their own preparations for flight

At any moment, she hoped, at any moment com might clear, station central might come through bright and sane, bringing contact with command — with Damon, who might be in central and might not. Not, she hoped, in those corridors with Q run amok. Mainday noon — the worst of all times — with most of Pell out away from jobs and shops, in the corridors…

Blue dock was his emergency assignment. He might have tried to come there; would have tried. She knew him. Tears blurred her eyes. She clenched her fist on the arm of the chair, tried to think away the diminishing ache in her belly.

“White section seal just activated.” Word came to them from Sita, which had a vantage. Other ships echoed reports of other seals in function; Pell had segmented itself in defense, the first sign that it had defensive reactions left in it.

“Scan’s got something,” came panicked word from a crew member behind her. “Could be a merchanter out of pattern. Can’t tell.”

She wiped her face and tried to concentrate on all the threads in her hands. “Just stay put,” she said. “If we breach those umbilicals we’ve got dead in the thousands out there. Do manual seal. Don’t break, don’t break those connections.”

“Takes time,” someone said. “We may not have it.”

“So start doing it,” she wished them.

vii

The red lights which had flared across the boards had diminished in number. Jon Lukas paced from one to the other post and watched techs’ hands, watching scan, watching the activity everywhere they still had monitor. Hale stood guard beyond the windows, in central com, with Daniels; Clay was here, at one side of the room, Lee Quale on the other, and others of Lukas Company security, none of the station’s own. The techs and directors questioned nothing, working feverishly at the emergencies which occupied them.

There was fear in the room, more than fear of the attack outside. The presence of guns, the lasting blackout… they knew, Jon reckoned, they well knew that something was amiss in Angelo Konstantin’s silence, in the failure of any of the Konstantins or their lieutenants to reach this place.

A tech handed him a message and fled back to his seat without meeting his eyes. It was a repeated query from Downbelow main base. That was a problem they could defer. For now they held central, and the offices, and he did not intend to answer the query. Let Emilio figure it a military order which silenced station central.

On the screens the scan showed ominous lack of activity. They were sitting out there. Waiting. He paced the circuit of the room again, looked up abruptly as the door opened. Every tech in the room froze, duties forgotten, hands in mid-motion at the sight of the group which appeared there, civilian, with rifles leveled, with others at their backs.

Jessad, two of Kale’s men, and a bloodied security agent, one of their own.

“Area’s secure,” Jessad reported.

“Sir.” A director rose from his post. “Councillor Lukas — what’s happening?”

“Set that man down,” Jessad snapped, and the director gripped the back of his chair and cast Jon a look of diminishing hope.

“Angelo Konstantin is dead,” Jon said, scanning all the frightened faces. “Killed in the rioting, with all his staff. Assassins hit the offices. Get to your work. We’re not clear of this yet.”

Faces turned, backs turned, techs trying to make themselves invisible by their efficiency. No one spoke. He was heartened by this obedience. He paced the room another circuit, stopped in the middle of it.

“Keep working and listen to me,” he said in a loud voice. “Lukas Company personnel are holding this sector secure. Elsewhere we have the kind of situation you see on the screens. We’re going to restore com, for announcement from this center only, and only announcements I clear. There is no authority on this station at the moment but Lukas Company, and to save this station from damage I will shoot those I have to. I have men under my command who will do that without hesitation. Is that clear?”

There were no comments, not so much as the turning of a head. It was perhaps something with which they were in temporary agreement, with Pell’s systems in precarious balance and Q rioting on the docks.

He drew a calmer breath and looked at Jessad, who nodded a reassuring satisfaction.

viii

The webbery of ladders stretched before and behind, a maze of tubes across the overhead, and it was bitterly cold. Damon shone the beam one way and the other, reached for a railing, sank down on the gridwork as Josh sank down by him, the breather-sounds loud, strained. His head pounded. Not enough air, not fast enough for exertion; and the maze they were in… branched. There was logic to it: the angles were precise; it was a matter of counting. He tried to keep track.

“Are we lost?” Josh asked between gasps.

He shook his head, angled the beam up, the way they should go. Mad to have tried this, but they were alive, in one piece. “Next level,” he said, “ought to be two. I figure… we go out… take a look, how things are out there…”

Josh nodded. G flux had stopped. They still heard noise, unsure in this maze where it came from. Distant shouts. Once a booming shock he thought might be the great seals. It seemed better; he hoped… moved, with a clattering ringing of the metal, reached for the rail again and started to climb, the last climb. He was overwhelmingly anxious, for Elene, for everything he had cut himself off from in coming this way… No matter the hazard, he had to get out.

There was a static sputter. It boomed through the tunnels and echoed.

“Com,” he said. It was coming back together, all of it.

“This is a general announcement. We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens keep to their present areas and do not attempt to cross section lines. There is still no word from the Fleet, and none is expected yet. Scan remains clear. We do not anticipate military action in the vicinity of this station… It is with extreme sorrow that we report the death of Angelo Konstantin at the hand of rioters and the disappearance in violence of other members of the family. If any have reached safety, please contract station central as soon as possible, any Konstantin relative, or any knowing their whereabouts, please contact station central immediately. Councillor Jon Lukas remains acting stationmaster in this crisis. Please give full cooperation to Lukas Company personnel who are fulfilling security duties in this emergency.”

Damon sank down on the steps. A cold deeper than the chill of the metal settled into him. He could not breathe. He became aware that he was crying, tears blurring the light and choking his breath.

“… announcement,” the com began to repeat “We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens…”

A hand settled on his shoulder, pulled him about “Damon?” Josh said through the noise.

He was numb. Nothing made sense. “Dead,” he said, and shuddered. “O God -

Josh stared at him, took the lamp from his hand. Damon thrust himself for his feet, for the last climb, for the access he knew was up there.

Josh pulled him hard, turned him around against the solid wall. “Don’t go,” Josh pleaded with him. “Damon, don’t go out there now.”

Josh’s paranoid nightmares. It was that look on his face. Damon leaned there, his mind going in all directions, and no clear direction. Elene. “My father… my mother… that’s blue one. Our guards were in blue one. Our own guards.”

Josh said nothing.

He tried to think. It kept coming up wrong. Troops had moved; the Fleet had pulled out. Murders instant… in Pell’s heaviest security…

He turned the other way, the way they had just come, his hands shaking so he could hardly grip the railing. Josh shone the light for him, caught his elbow to stop him. He turned on the steps, looked up into Josh’s masked, light-distorted face.

“Where?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know who’s in control up there. They say it’s my uncle. I don’t know.” He reached for the lamp, to take it. Josh surrendered it reluctantly and he turned, started down the ladders as quickly as he could slide down the steps, Josh following desperately after.

Get down again. Down was easy. He hurried at the limit of breath and balance, until he was dizzy and the lamp’s beam swung madly about the framework and the tunnels. He slipped, recovered, kept descending.

“Damon,” Josh protested.

He had no breath for arguing. He kept going until his sight was fading from want of air, sank down on the steps trying to pull air enough through the breather to keep from fainting. He felt Josh leaning by him, heard him panting, no better off. “Docks,” Damon said. “Get down there… get to ships. Elene would go there.”

“Can’t get through.”

He looked at Josh, realized he was dragging another life into this. He had no choices either. He got up, started down again, felt the vibrations of Josh’s steps still behind him.

The ships would be sealed. Elene would be there or locked in the offices. Or dead. If the troops had hit him… if for some mad reason… the station was being disabled in advance of a Union takeover…

But Jon Lukas was supposed to be up there in central.

Had some action failed? Had Jon somehow prevented them from hitting central itself?

He lost count of the stops for breath, of the levels they passed. Down. He hit bottom finally, a gridwork suddenly wider, did not realize what it was until he searched with the light and stopped finding downward ladders. He walked along the grid, saw the faint glimmer of a blue light, that over an access door. He reached it, pushed the switch; the door slid back with a hiss and Josh followed him into the lock’s brighter light. The door closed and air exchange started. He tugged down the mask and got a full breath of air, chill and only slightly tainted. His head was pounding. He focused hazily on Josh’s sweating face, marked with the mask, distraught “Stay here,” he said in pity. “Stay here. If I get this cleared up, I’ll come back; if I don’t — decide for yourself what to do.”

Josh leaned there, eyes glazed.

Damon turned his attention to the door, got his breathing back to normal, rubbed his eyes to clear them, finally pushed the button and put the door in function. Light blinded him; there was shouting out there, screaming, the smell of smoke. Life-support, he thought with a chill… it opened on one of the minor halls, and he headed out, started running, heard running footfalls behind him and looked back.

“Get back,” he wished Josh, “get back in there”

He had no time to argue with him. He ran, down the hall… had to be in green sector; it had to be nine in this direction… all the signs were gone. He saw riot ahead of him, people running scattered through the halls; and some had lengths of pipe and there was a body in the hall… he dodged it and kept going. The rioters he saw did not look like Pell… unshaven, unkempt… he knew suddenly what they were, and flung everything into his running, pelted down the hall and up a turn, headed as close to the docks as he could get without going into the main corridor. He had to break into it finally, dodged a runner among other runners.

There were more bodies on the floor, and looters ran rampant. He shouldered past men who clutched pipes and knives and, some of them, guns…

The entry to the dock was closed, sealed. He saw that, staggered aside as a looter came swinging a pipe at him, for no reason more than that he was in the way.

The attacker kept going, a half-circle that pulled him about and ended against the wall, with Josh, who slammed his head into the wall and came up with the pipe in his hand.

Damon whirled and ran, for the sealed doors… reached for his pocket, for the card, to override the lock.

“Konstantin!” someone shouted behind him.

He turned, stared at a man, at a gun leveled at him. A length of pipe hurtled out of nowhere and hit the man, and looters scrabbled for the gun, a surging mob. In panic he whirled, thrust the card for the slot; the door whipped back, with the vast dockside beyond, and other looters. He ran, sucking in the cold air, down the dock toward white sector, where he saw other great seals in place, the dock seals, two levels tall and airtight. He stumbled from exhaustion and caught himself, pelted up the curve toward them, hearing someone close behind him and hoping it was Josh. The stitch that had started in his side unnoticed grew to a lancing pain… Past looted shops with dark, open doors, he reached the wall beside the huge seals, fetched up against the closed door of the small personnel lock, thrust his card into the slot.

It was dead. No response. He pushed it harder, thinking it might have failed contact, inserted it a second time. It was cut off. It should at least have lighted the buttons, given him a chance to put through a priority code, or flashed the hazard signal.

“Damon!” Josh reached the door beside him, caught at his shoulder, pulled him around. There were people moving behind them, thirty, half a hundred, from all across the docks… from green nine, in greater and greater number.

“They know you got a door open,” Josh said. “They know you’ve got that kind of access.”

He stared at them. Snatched his card from the slot. Useless, blanked; control had blanked his card.

“Damon.”

He grabbed at Josh and ran, and the crowd started forward with a howl. He raced for the open doors, for the shops… into the dark doorway of the nearest. He whirled inside, pushed the button to seal the door. That at least worked.

The first of the mob hit the door, hammered at it. Panicked faces pressed close to the plastic, lengths of pipe hammered at it, scarring it: it was a security seal, like all the dock-front stores… pressure-tight, windowless, but for that double-thick circle.

“It’s going to hold,” Josh said.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that we can get out again. I don’t think we can get out of here until they come to get us.”

Josh looked at him across the space of the window, from the other side of the door, pale in the light that came through it.

“They blanked my card,” Damon said. “It stopped working. Whoever’s in station central just cut off my card use.” He looked toward the plastic, on which the gouges were deepening. “I think we just trapped ourselves.”

The hammering continued. Madness raged outside, not assassins, not any sane impulse toward hostage-taking, only desperate people with a focus for their desperation. Q residents with a pair of stationers within reach. The scars deepened on the plastic, almost obscuring the faces and hands and weapons. It was remotely possible they could get through it.

And if that happened there was no need of assassins.

i

It was a waiting game now, probe and vanish. Ghosts. But solid enough out there, somewhere beyond system limits. Tibet and North Pole had lost contact with the incoming enemy; Union had about-faced, at the cost of one of Tibet’s riders… at the cost of one of Union’s. But it was far from over. The com flow kept up, calm and quiet out of both carriers. Signy gnawed her lip and stared at the screens before her, while Graff tended op. Norway held position along with the rest of the Fleet — having dumped speed, drifted, still not too remote from the mass of Pell IV and III and the star itself. Dead-stopped. They had refused to be drawn out. Had now to use mass to shelter them from an arrival close at hand. It was not likely that Union would be reckless enough to use jump for entry — not their style — but they took the precaution… sitting targets as they were. Wait long enough and even conservative Union commanders could circle their scan range to find new lines of attack, having probed things; wolves round the firelight, and themselves trying to sit within it, visible and dead still and vulnerable. Union had room out there, could get a good run started, too fast for them to handle.

And for some time there had been bad news coming out of Pell, silence broken, rumblings of serious disorder.

From Mazian… persistent silence, and one of them dared breach it with a communication to question. Come on, she wished Mazian, turn some of us loose to hunt. The riders hung off from Norway in widest deployment, like those of the other ships, twenty-seven riderships, seven carriers; and thirty-two militia ships trying to fill up their pattern — indistinguishable on longscan, some of them, from riderships; two of them from carriers. As long as the Fleet sat still, not betraying themselves by tight moves and speed, whoever looked at scan had to wonder if some of those slow, steady ships might not be warships disguising their moves. Tibet’s rider had gotten back to mother; and Tibet and North Pole had seven riders and eleven militia in their area, short-haulers incapable of running, turned brave by necessity: they could not get out of the way… so they made part of the screen. As if they could depend on attack coming from that direction. Union had felt at them. Pricked at the organism and vanished out of range. It was probably Azov out there. One of Union’s oldest; one of the best. Feathertouch and feint. He had sucked in more than one commander too good to die that way.

Nerves crawled. The techs on the bridge looked at her from time to time. Silence existed inside as well as among the ships, contagious unease.

A comtech turned at his station, looked at her. “Pell situation worsening,” he said off com. There was a murmur from other stations.

“Minds on your business,” she snapped, on general address. “It’s likely to come from any side of us. Forget Pell or we get it in our faces, hear me? I’ll vent the crewman who woolgathers.”

And to Graff: “Ready status.”

The blue light went on in the overhead. That would wake them up. A light flashed on her board, indicating the armscomp board lit, the armscomper and his aides fully prepared.

She reached to the comp board, punched a code for a recorded instruction. Norway’s sighting eye began to rove toward the reference star in question, to perform identifications and to lock in. In case. In case there was something going on unaccounted for in their plans, and Mazian, likewise receiving that Pell chatter, was thinking of running: their direct beam pickup was trained on Europe, and Europe still had nothing to say. Mazian was thinking; or had made up his mind, and trusted his captains to take precautions. She tapped a signal to the jump tech’s board, as he had already to have noted the other move. The board went live, a stepped up power flow to the generation vane monitors, that gave them options other than realspace. If the Fleet broke from Pell, chances were they would not all arrive where they were instructed, at the nearest null point. That there would never again be a Fleet, nothing between Union and Sol.

The com flow from Pell became grim indeed.

ii

Men-with-guns. Keen ears could still pick up the shouts outside, the terrible fighting. Satin shivered at a crash against the wall, trembled, finding no reason for this thing that happened… but that Lukases had done this; and Lukases gave orders, in power in the Upabove. Bluetooth hugged her, whispered to her, urged her, and she came, as silently as the others. The whispers of bare hisa feet passed above them, below. They moved in dark, a steady flow. They dared no lights, which might guide men to find them.

Some were ahead of them, some behind. Old One himself led, the strange hisa, who had come down from the high places, and commanded them without telling them why. Some had lingered, fearing the strange ones; but there were guns behind, and mad humans, and they would come in haste very soon.

A human voice rang out far below in the tunnels, echoing up. Bluetooth hissed and pushed, moved faster in his climbing, and Satin scampered along with all her might, heated by this exertion, her fur damp and her hands sliding on the rails where others had grasped them.

“Hurry,” a hisa voice whispered at one of the levels, high, high in the Upabove’s dark places, and hands urged them up still another climb, where a dim light shone, making a silhouette of a hisa who waited there. A lock. Satin tugged her mask into place and scrambled up to the doors, caught Bluetooth’s hand, for fear of losing him where Old One should lead.

The lock received them. They jammed in with others, and the inner seal gave way on a mass of brown hisa bodies, hands which reached and drew them out in haste, other hisa, who stood facing outward, shielding them from what lay beyond.

They had weapons, lengths of pipe, like the men carried. Satin was stunned, felt backward after Bluetooth, to be sure of his presence in this milling angry throng, in the white lights of humans. There were only hisa in this hall. They filled the corridor as far as the closed doors at the end. Blood smeared one of the walls, a scent which did not reach them through the masks. Satin rolled a distraught glance in the direction the press was sweeping them, felt a soft hand which was not Bluetooth’s close upon her arm and lead her. They passed a door into a human place, vast and dim, and the door closed, bringing quiet.

“Hush,” their guides said. She looked about in panic to see if Bluetooth was still with her and he reached out to her, caught her hand. They walked nervously in the company of their elder guides, through this spacious man-place, oh, so carefully, for fear, and for respect to the weapons and the anger outside. Others, Old Ones, rose from the shadows and met them. “Storyteller,” an Old One addressed her, touching her in welcome. Arms embraced her; others came from beyond a bright, bright doorway and embraced her and Bluetooth, and she was dazed by the honor they gave. “Come,” they said, leading her, and they came into that bright place, a room without limits, with a white bed, a sleeping human, and a very old hisa who crouched by it. Dark and stars were all about, walls which were and were not, and of a sudden, great Sun peering into the room, upon them and on the Dreamer.

“Ah,” Satin breathed, dismayed, but the old hisa rose up and held out hands in welcome. “The Storyteller,” Old One was saying, and the oldest of all left the Dreamer a moment to embrace her. “Good, good,” the Oldest said tenderly.

“Lily,” the Dreamer said, and the Oldest turned, knelt by the bed to tend her, stroked her grayed head. Marvelous eyes turned on them, alive in a face white and still, her body shrouded in white, everything white, but the hisa named Lily and the blackness which expanded all about them, dusted with stars. Sun had vanished. There was only themselves.

“Lily,” the Dreamer said again, “who are they?”

At her the Dreamer looked, at her, and Lily beckoned. Satin knelt down, and Bluetooth beside her, gazed with reverence into the warmth of the Dreamer’s eyes, the Dreamer of the Upabove, the mate of great Sun, who danced upon her walls. “Love you,” Satin whispered. “Love you, Sun-she-friend.”

“Love you,” the Dreamer whispered in her turn. “How is it outside? Is there danger?”

“We make safe,” Old One said firmly. “All, all the hisa make safe this place. Men-with-guns stay away.”

“They’re dead.” The wonderful eyes filmed with tears, and sought toward Lily. “Jon’s doing. Angelo — Damon — Emilio, maybe — but not me, not yet. Lily, don’t leave me.”

Lily so, so carefully put her arm about the Dreamer, laid her graying cheek against the Dreamer’s graying hair. “No,” Lily said. “Love you, no time leave, no, no, no. Dream they leave, men-with-guns. Downers all stand you place. Dream to great Sun. We you hands and feet, we many, we strong, we quick.”

The walls had changed. They looked now upon violence, upon men fighting men, and all of them shrank closer together in dread. It passed, and only the Dreamer remained tranquil.

“Lily. The Upabove is in danger of dying. It will need the hisa, when the fighting is done, need you, you understand? Be strong. Hold this place. Stay with me.”

“We fight, fight mans come here.”

“Live. They daren’t kill you, you understand. Men need the hisa. They don’t won’t come in here.” The bright eyes grew dark with passion and gentle again. Sun was back, his awesome face filling all the wall, silencing angers. He reflected in the Dreamer’s eyes, touched the whiteness with his color.

“Ah,” Satin breathed, and swayed from side to side. Others did, one with her, making a soft moan of awe.

“She is Satin,” Old One said to the Dreamer. “Bluetooth her friend. Friend of Bennett-man, see he die.”

“From Downbelow,” the Dreamer said. “Emilio sent you to the Upabove.”

“Konstantin-man you friend? Love he, all, all Downers. Bennett-man he friend.”

“Yes. He was.”

“She say,” Old One said, and in the language of hisa… “Storyteller, Sky-sees-her, make the story for the Dreamer, make bright her eyes and warm her dreams; sing it into the Dream.”

Heat rose to her face and her throat grew taut for fear, for a great one she was not, only a maker of little songs, and to tell a tale in human words… in the presence of the Dreamer, and of great Sun, with all the stars about, to become part of the Dream…

“Do it,” Bluetooth urged her. His faith warmed her heart.

“I Sky-see-she,” she began, “come from Downbelow, tell you Bennett-man, tell you Konstantin, sing you hisa things. Dream hisa things, Sun-she-friend, like Bennett make dream. Make he live, make he walk with hisa, ah! Love you, love he. Sun smile look at he. Long, long time we dream hisa dreams. Bennett make we see human dream, show we true things, tell we Sun he hold all Upabove, hold all Downbelow in he arms, and Upabove she make wide she arms to Sun, tell we ships come and go, big, big, come and go, bring mans from the faraway dark. Make wide we eyes, make wide we dream, make we dream same as humans, Sun-she-friend. This thing Bennett give we; and he give he life. He tell we good things in Upabove, make warm we eyes with want for these good things. We come. We see. So wide, so big dark, we see Sun smile in the dark, make the dream for Downbelow, the blue sky. Bennett make we see, make we come, make we new dreams.

“Ah! I Satin, I tell you time humans come. Before humans, no time, only dream. We wait and not know we wait. We see humans and we come to Upabove. Ah! time Bennett come cold time, and old river she quiet…”

The dark, lovely eyes were set upon her, interested, intent upon her words as if she had skill like the old singers. She wove the truth as best she could, making this true, and not the terrible things which were Happening elsewhere, making it truer and truer, that the Dreamer might make it truth, that in the turning cycles, this truth might come round again as the flowers did, and the rains and all lasting things.

iii

The boards had stabilized. Station central had adjusted to panic as a perpetual condition, apparent in the fevered attention to details, the refusal of techs to acknowledge the increasing coming and going of armed men in the command center.

Jon patrolled the aisles, scowling, disapproving of any move beyond necessity. “Another call from the merchanter Finity’s End,” a tech told him. “Elene Quen speaking, demands information.”

“Denied.”

“Sir — ”

“Denied. Tell them to sit and wait it out. Make no more unauthorized calls. Do you expect us to broadcast information that could aid the enemy?”

The tech turned to her work, visibly trying not to see the guns.

Quen. Young Damon’s wife, with the merchanters, already trouble, making demands, refusing to come out. The information had already proliferated, and the Fleet had to be picking it up by now from the merchanters in pattern about the station. Mazian knew by now what had happened. Quen with the merchanters and Damon on green section dock; Downers knotted about Alicia’s bedside, blocking number four crosshall in that area. Let her keep her Downer guard: the section door was shut. He folded his hands behind him and tried to look calm.

A movement caught his eyes, near the door. Jessad was back after brief absence, stood there, a silent summons. Jon walked in that direction, misliking Jessad’s grim sobriety.

“Any progress?” he asked Jessad, stepping outside.

“Located Mr. Kressich,” Jessad said. “He’s here with an escort; wants a conference.”

Jon scowled, glanced down the hall where Kressich waited with a cluster of guards about him, and an equal number of their own security.

“Situation as it was with blue one four,” Jessad said. “Downers still have it blocked. We’ve got the door; we could decompress.”

“We need them,” Jon said tautly. “Let it be.”

“For her sake? Half-measures, Mr. Lukas…”

“We need the Downers; she’s got them. Let be, I said. It’s Damon and Quen who’re trouble. What are you doing in that regard?”

“Can’t get anyone on that ship; she’s not coming out and they’re not opening. As for him, we know where he is. We’re working on it.”

“What do you mean you’re working on it?”

“Kressich’s people,” Jessad hissed. “We need to get through out there, you understand me? Pull yourself together and talk to him; promise him anything. He’s got the mobs in his hand. He can pull the strings. Do it.”

Jon looked at the group in the hall, his thoughts scattering, Kressich, Mazian, the merchanter situation… Union. The Union fleet had to move soon, had to. “What do you mean, need to get through out there? Do you know where he is or don’t you?”

“Not beyond doubt,” Jessad admitted. “We turn that mob loose on him and there won’t be enough to identify. And we need to know. Believe me. Talk to Kressich. And hurry about it, Mr. Lukas.”

He looked, caught Kressich’s eyes, nodded, and the party came closer… Kressich, as gray and wretched-looking as ever. But those about him were another matter: young, arrogant, cocky in their bearing.

“The councillor wants a share of this,” one said, small, dark-haired man with a scar on his face.

“You speak for him?”

“Mr. Nino Coledy,” Kressich identified him, surprising him with a direct answer and a harder look than Kressich had ever mustered in council. “I advise you to listen to him. Mr. Lukas, Mr. Jessad. Mr. Coledy heads Q security. We have our own forces, and we can get order when we ask for it. Are you ready to have it?”

Jon turned a disturbed look on Jessad, obtained nothing; Jessad was blank of comment. “If you can stop the mobs — do it.”

“Yes,” said Jessad quietly. “Quiet at this stage would serve us. Welcome to our council, Mr. Kressich, Mr. Coledy.”

“Give me com,” Coledy said. “General address.”

“Give it to him,” Jessad said.

Jon drew a deep breath, suddenly with questions trembling on his lips, what kind of game Jessad was playing with him, pushing these two into the inner circle; Jessad’s own, as Hale was his? He swallowed the questions, swallowed anger, remembering what was out there, how fragile it all was. “Come with me,” he said, led the way inside, took Coledy to the nearest com board. Scan was visible from there, Mazian still holding steady. It was too much to hope that Mazian would be easily disposed of. Far too much, that it would be easy. The Fleet had the area pocketed… Mazian’s ships, dotted here and there about the multi-level halo that was the merchanters’ orbit about Pell.

“Move,” he said to a tech, dislodged him, put Coledy in that place and himself punched through to com central. Bran Hale’s face lit up the screen. “Got a call for you to send out,” he told Hale. “This one goes on general override.”

“Right,” Hale said.

“Mr. Lukas,” someone called, breaking the general hush in central. He looked about. Scan screens were flashing intersect alert.

“Where is it?” he exclaimed. Scan had nothing definite. A peppering of yellow haze warned of something incoming, fast. Comp began to siren alarms. There were soft outcries, curses, techs reaching for boards.

“Mr. Lukas!” someone cried, frantic appeal.

iv

“Scan,” the alarm rang out. Elene saw the flicker and cast a frantic look at Neihart.

“Break us loose,” Neihart said, avoiding her eyes. “Go”!

The word flashed ship to ship. Elene gathered herself against the parting jolt… too late to run for the dock, far too late; umbilicals were long since shut off, ships grappled-to only.

A second jolt. They were free, peeling away from station as the whole row of still-docked merchanters followed, counterclockwise round the rim; as any mistake in inside shutdown might mean a ruptured umbilical, as whole sections of dock might decompress. She sat still, feeling the familiar sensations she had thought she might never feel again, free, loose, like the ship, outward bound from what was coming at them; and feeling as if part of her were torn away.

A second invader passed… came zenith and disrupted scan, triggered alarms… was gone, on its way toward the Fleet. They were alive, drifting loose at their helpless slow motion rate, coming out on an agreed course, a general drift of all those undocking. She folded her arm across her belly and watched the screens before her in Finity’s command center, thinking on Damon, on all that was back there.

Dead, maybe; they said Angelo was dead; maybe Alicia was; maybe Damon — maybe… she hurled the thought at herself, trying to accept it sanely, if it had to be accepted, if there was revenge to be gotten for it. She drew deep breaths, thinking on Estelle, on all her kin. A second time spared, then. A talent for leaving disasters. She had a life in her that was Quen and Konstantin at once, names that meant something in the Beyond; names which Union would not find comfortable for them in future, that she would give them cause to remember.

“Get us out of here,” she said to Neihart, cold and furious; and when he looked at her, seeming amazed by this shift of mind: “Get us out. Run for jump. Pass the word. Matteo’s Point. Flash the word system-wide. We’re leaving, right through the Fleet.”

She was Quen, and Konstantin, and Neihart moved. Finity’s End overshot the station and kept going, broadcasting instruction to every merchanter near and far in the system. Mazian, Union, Pell — none of them could stop it.

Instruments blurred before her eyes, cleared again with a blink. “After Matteo’s,” she said to Neihart, “we jump again. There’ll be others… in deep. Folk who’ve had enough, who wouldn’t come to Pell. We’ll find them.”

“No hope of your own there, Quen.”

“No,” she agreed with a shake of her head. “None of mine. They’re gone. But I know coordinates. So do we all. I helped you, kept your holds full and never questioned your manifests.”

“Merchanters know it.”

“So will the Fleet know these places. So we hang together, captain. We move together.”

Neihart frowned. It was not characteristic of merchanters… to be together on anything but a dock-front brawl.

“Got a boy on one of Mazian’s ships,” he said.

“I’ve got a husband on Pell,” she said. “What’s left now but to settle accounts for this?”

Neihart considered it a moment, finally nodded. “The Neiharts will stand by your word.”

She leaned back, stared at the screen before her. They had scan image, Union insystem, ghosts ripping across scan. It was nightmare. Like Mariner, where Estelle and all the other Quens had died, holding to a doomed station too late… where the Fleet had let something through or something had gotten them from within. It was the same thing… only this time merchanters were not sitting still for it.

She watched, resolved to watch scan until the last, to see everything until the station died or they reached jump-point, whichever might happen first.

Damon, she thought, and cursed Mazian, Mazian more than Union, who had brought this on them.

v

A second time G surged out of balance. Damon made a startled grab for the wall and Josh for him, but it was a minor flux, for all the panicked screams outside the scarred door. Damon turned his back against the wall and rolled a weary shake of his head.

Josh asked no questions. None were necessary. Ships had peeled away on the rest of the rim. Even here they could hear the sirens… breach, it was possible. It was encouraging that they could hear sirens. There was still air out there on the dock.

“They’re going,” Damon said hoarsely. Elene was away, with those ships; he wanted to believe so. It was the sensible thing. Elene would have been sensible; had friends, people who knew her, who would help her, when he could not. She was gone… to come back, maybe, when things settled — if they settled. If he was alive. He did not think he was going to be alive. Maybe Downbelow was all right; maybe Elene — on those ships. His hope went with them. If he was wrong… he never wanted to know.

Gravity fluxed again. The screams and the hammering at the door had stopped. The wide dock was no place to be in a G crisis. Anyone sane had run for smaller spaces.

“If the merchanters have bolted,” Josh said faintly, “they saw something… knew something. I think Mazian must have his hands full.”

Damon looked at him, thinking of Union ships, of Josh… one of them. “What’s going on out there? Can you reckon?”

Josh’s face was drenched with sweat, glistening in the light from the scarred door. He leaned against the wall, lifted a glance at the overhead. “Mazian’s liable to do anything; can’t predict. No percentage for Union in destroying this station. It’s the stray shot we have to worry about.”

“We can absorb a lot of shots. We may lose sections, but while we have motive power and the hub intact, we can handle damage.”

“With Q loose?” Josh asked hoarsely.

Another flux hit them, stomach-wrenching. Damon swallowed, beginning to experience nausea. “While that goes on we don’t have Q to worry about. We’ve got to chance it, try to get out of this pocket.”

“Go where? Do what?”

He made a sound deep in his throat, numb, simply numb. He waited for the next G flux; it failed to strike with its former force. They had begun to get it in balance again. The abused pumps had held, the engines worked. He caught his breath. “One comfort. We’re out of ships to do it to us again. I don’t know how many of those we can take.”

“They could be waiting out there,” Josh said.

He reckoned that. He reached a hand up, pushed the switch. Nothing happened. Closed, the door had locked itself. He took his card from his pocket, hesitated, pushed it in the slot and the buttons stayed dead. If anyone in central had any desire to know where he was, he had just given the information to them. He knew that.

“Looks like we’re staying,” Josh said.

The sirens had stopped. Damon edged over, chanced a look out the scarred window, trying to see through the opaque slashes and the light diffraction. Something stirred, far across the docks, one furtive figure, another. The com overhead gave out a burst of static as if it were trying to come on and went silent again.

vi

Militia freighters scattered, stationary nightmare. One of them blew like a tiny sun, flared on vid and died while com pickup sputtered static. The hail of particles incandesced in Norway’s path and some of the bigger ones rang against the hull, a scream of passing matter.

No fancy turns: dead-on targets and armscomp lacing into them. A Union rider went out the way the merchanter had, and Norway’s four riders rolled, whipped out on a vector concerted with Norway and pulled fire, a steady barrage that pocked a Union carrier paralleling them for one visible instant.

“Get him!” Signy yelled at her armscomper when the fire paused; it erupted over her words and pasted into the spot the running carrier turned out to occupy. They forced Union to maneuver, to dump G to survive it. A howl of delight went up and sirens drowned it as helm jerked control away and sent their own mass into a sudden turn, comp reacting to comp faster than human brains could at such speeds… she hauled it back and paralleled the quarry. Armscomp ripped off another barrage right down the belly array and whatever came of it, scan started to show a field peppered with haze.

“Good!” the belly spotter shouted into com general. “Solid hit…”

There were wails as Norway half-rolled and swung into a new zig. Merchanters leaked past them, headed out as if they were a tableau frozen in space: They were doing the moving, whipped through the interstices of that still-standing race and went after the Union ships, keeping them zigging, keeping them from gathering room for a run.

Feint and strike: like their entry… a ship to draw them, attack from another vector. Tibet and North Pole were headed in to intercept, had been coming from the first moment scan image had reached them: longscan had just revised their position, set them as much closer, reckoning they would go at max.

Union moved. That scan had reached them in the same instant; shifted vector right into the fire they were laying down, Norway, Atlantic, Australia… Union lost riders, took damage, going rimward in spite of fire, going at Tibet and North Pole. There was a ringing oath over com, Mazian’s voice pouring out a stream of obscenity. Twelve carriers left of the fourteen that had come in, a cloud of riderships and dart-ships, bore away from station and into their two outrunners that were distance-blind and alone out there.

“Hit their heels!” Porey’s deep voice came through.

“Negative, negative,” Mazian snapped back. “Hold your positions.” Comp still had them in synch; Europe’s command signal drew them unwillingly with Mazian. They watched the Union fleet pass their zone of fire, heading for Tibet and North Pole. Behind them, a flare of energy reached them: static that cleared… “Got him!” com echoed. Pacific must have taken out that crippled Union carrier some minutes back. There were other things possible across the system, that they could lose track of. Could lose Pell. One strike could take it out, if that was Union’s intent.

Signy flexed a hand, wiped her face, keyed to Graff, and he took up controls on the instant — they were dumping velocity again, pulling maneuvers in concert with Mazian. Protests garbled over com. “Negative,” Mazian repeated. There was a hush throughout Norway.

“They haven’t a chance,” Graff muttered too audibly. “They should have come in sooner… should have come in — ”

“Hindsight, Mr. Graff. Take it as it falls.” Signy dialed up general com. “Can’t move out of here. If it’s a feint, one ship could come in and wipe Pell. We can’t help them… can’t risk any more of us than we’re already about to lose. They’ve got an option… they’ve still got room to run.”

Might, she was thinking, might, the instant their scan narrowed on them, and longscan started showing what they were into… veer off and jump. If scan techs on Tibet and North Pole fed the right data into longscan, if the picture on their scopes did not show Mazian and help coming right on Union’s tail, misinterpreting their maneuver as one of following…

The Fleet slowed further. Scan showed a fade-out among the merchanters, that slow-motion flight having reached jump limit. They bled away, Pell’s life, drifting off into the deep.

She dead-reckoned time factors, Union’s speed, proliferation of their image, Tibet’s and North Pole’s velocity incoming. About now, about now, Tibet should be figuring it out, realizing Union was on them. If their scan was telling them truth…

Their own scan kept showing history for a moment, then locked up, stationary, longscan having run out of speculations. Head to head, yellow haze, while red lines tracked through that haze, the real scan they were getting.

Closer. The red line reached decision-critical — kept going. Head on. Signy sat and watched, as all of them had to watch. Her fist was clenched and she restrained herself from hitting something, the board, the cushion, something.

It happened; they watched it happen, what had happened already, the futile defense, the overwhelming assault. Two carriers. Seven riders, to a man. In forty and more years the Fleet had never lost ships so wretchedly.

Tibet rammed… Kant hurled his carrier into jump near the mass of his enemies and took his own riders and a Union carrier into oblivion… there was a sudden gap in scan… a grim cheer at that; and again when North Pole and her riders hurtled through the midst of the Unioners…

They almost made it through Kant’s hole. Then that image became a scatter of images. North Pole’s comp signal that had begun a sending… ceased abruptly.

Signy had not cheered, only nodded slowly each time to no one in particular, remembering the men and women aboard, names known… despising the situation they were handed. Longscan resolved itself, question answered. The surviving images that were Union kept on running, hit jump, vanished from the screens. The Unioners would be back, reinforced, eventually, simply calling in more ships. The Fleet had won, had held on, but now they were seven; seven ships.

And the next time and the next it would happen. Union could sacrifice ships. Union ships prowled the fringes of the system and they dared not go out hunting them. We’ve lost, she addressed Mazian silently. Do you know that? We’ve lost.

“Pell,” Mazian’s voice came quietly over com, “is under riot conditions. We do not know the situation there. We are faced with disorder. Hold pattern. We cannot rule out another strike.”

But suddenly lights flashed on Norway’s boards; a whole sector sprang to renewed independence. Norway was loosed from comp synch. Orders flashed to the screen, comp-sent.

… secure base.

She was loosed. Africa was. Two ships, to go back and take a disordered station while the rest kept to their perimeter and room to maneuver.

She punched general com. “Di, arm and suit. We’ve got to take ourselves a berth, every trooper we’ve got on the line. Suit alterday crew to guard the docks. We’re going in after the troops we had to leave.”

A shout erupted from that link, many-voiced, angry, frustrated troops suddenly needed again, in something they were hot to do.

“Graff,” she said.

They red-lighted despite the troops in prep below, pulled stress in coming about and headed deadon for the station. Porey’s Africa pulled out of pattern in her wake.

vii

“…Give us docking access,” Mallory’s voice came over com, “and open doors to central, or we start taking out sections of this station.”

Collision, the screens flashed. White-faced techs sat at their posts, and Jon gripped the back of the chair at com, paralyzed in the realization of carriers hurtling dead at Pell’s midline.

“Sir!” someone screamed.

Vid had them, shining masses filling all the screen, monsters bearing down on them, a wall of dark finally that split apart and passed the cameras above and below station. Boards erupted in static and sirens wailed as the carriers skimmed their surface. One vid went out, and a damage alarm went off, a wail of depressurization alert.

Jon spun about, sought Jessad, who had been near the door. There was only Kressich, mouth agape in the wail of sirens.

“We’re waiting for an answer,” another, deeper voice said out of com.

Jessad, gone. Jessad or someone had failed at Mariner and the station had died. “Find Jessad!” Jon shouted at one of Hale’s men. “Get him! Take him out!”

“They’re coming in again!” a tech cried.

Jon whirled, stared at the screens, tried to talk and gestured wildly. “Com link,” he shouted, and the tech passed him a mike. He swallowed, staring at the oncoming behemoths on vid. “You have access,” he shouted into the mike, as he tried to control his voice. “Repeat: this is Pell station-master Lukas. You have access.”

“Say again,” Mallory’s voice returned to him. “Who are you?”

“Jon Lukas, acting stationmaster. Angelo Konstantin is dead. Please help us.”

There was silence from the other side. Scan began to alter, the big ships diverting from near-collision course, dumping velocity perceptibly.

“Our riders will dock first,” Mallory’s voice declared. “Do you copy, Pell station? Riders will dock in advance to serve as carrier dock crews. You give them an assist in and then clear out of their way or face fire. For every trouble we meet, we blow a hole in you.”

“We have riot conditions aboard,” Jon pleaded. “Q has broken confinement.”

“Do you copy my instructions, Mr. Lukas?”

“Pell copies clearly. Do you understand our problem? We can’t guarantee there’ll be no trouble. Some of our docks are sealed off. We accept your troops in assistance. We are devastated by riot. You will have our cooperation.”

There was long hesitation. Other blips had come into scan, the riders which attended the carriers. “We copy,” Mallory said. “We will board with troops. Get my number-one rider safely docked with your cooperation or we will blow ourselves an access for troops and blow section by section, no survivors. That is your clear choice.”

“We copy.” Jon wiped at his face. The sirens had died. There was a deathly hush in the command center. “Give me time to get what security I can muster to the most secure docks. Over.”

“You have half an hour, Mr. Lukas.”

He turned from com, waved a summons to one of his security guards, by the door. “Pell copies. Half an hour. We’ll get you a dock clear.”

“Blue and green, Mr. Lukas. You see to it.”

“Blue and green docks,” he repeated hoarsely. “We’ll do our best.”

Mallory signed off. He pushed past com to key in the main com center. “Hale,” he exclaimed. “Hale.”

Hale’s face appeared.

“General broadcast. All security to docks. Get blue and green docks clear for operation.”

“Got it,” Hale said, and keyed out.

Jon strode across the room to the doorway where Kressich still stood. “Get back on com. Get on and tell those people you claim to control to stay quiet. Hear?”

Kressich nodded. There was a distractedness in his eyes, a not quite sanity. Jon seized him by the arm and dragged him to the com board, as the tech scrambled out of the way. He set Kressich down, gave him the mike, stood listening as Kressich addressed his lieutenants by name, calling on them to clear the affected docks. Panic persisted in the corridors where they still had cameras to see. Green nine showed milling throngs and smoke; and whatever they cleared panicked mobs would pour into like air into vacuum.

“General alert,” Jon said to the chief at station one. “Sound the null G warning.”

The woman turned, opened the security casing, punched the button beneath. A buzzer began to sound, different and more urgent than all other warnings which had wailed through Pell’s corridors. “Seek a secure place,” a voice interrupted it at intervals. “Avoid large open areas. Go to the nearest compartment and seek an emergency hold. Should extreme gravity loss occur, remember the orientation arrows and observe them as station stabilizes… Seek a secure place…”

Panic in the halls became headlong flight, battering at doors, screaming.

“Throw G off,” Jon sent to the op coordinator. “Give us a variation they can feel out there.”

Orders flashed. A third time the station destabilized. Green nine corridor began to show clear as people raced for smaller spaces, even smaller corridors. Jon punched through to Hale again. “Get forces out there. Get those docks clear; I’ve given you your chance, confound you.”

“Sir,” Hale said, and winked out again. Jon turned full circle, looked distractedly at the techs, at Lee Quale, who clung to a handhold by the door. He signaled Quale, caught his sleeve and hauled him close when he came. “The unfinished business,” he said, “down on green dock. Get down there and finish it, understand? Finish it.”

“Yes, sir,” Quale breathed, and fled… with sense enough to know, surely, that their lives rested on it.

Union might win. Until then they claimed station neutrality, held onto what they could. Jon paced the aisle, catching at chairs and counters in the occasional strong flux, trying to keep the whole center from panic. He had Pell. He had already what Union had promised him, and would have it under Mazian and under Union too, if he was careful; and he had been, far more than Jessad had ordered him to be. There were no witnesses left alive in Angelo’s office, none in Legal Affairs, abortive as that raid had been. Only Alicia… who knew nothing, who harmed no one, who had no voice, and her sons…

Damon was the danger. Damon and his wife. Over Quen he had no control… but if young Damon started making charges -

He cast a look over his shoulder, suddenly missed Kressich, Kressich and two who were supposed to be watching him.

The desertion of his own enraged him, of Kressich — he was relieved. Kressich would vanish back into the hordes of Q, frightened and unreachable.

Only Jessad… if they had not gotten him, if he was loose, near something vital -

On scan the riders were moving closer. Pell had yet a little time, before Mazian’s troops hit. A tech handed him positive id on the ships that waited out there; Mallory and Porey, Mazian’s two executioners. They had a name, the one for ruthlessness and the other for enjoying it. Porey was the other one, then. That was no good news.

He stood and sweated, waiting.

viii

Something was going on outside. Damon walked over the littered floor of the dark shop and leaned there, trying again to see out the scarred window, jerked as the red explosion of a shot distorted in the scratches. There was screaming mingled with the grinding of machinery in operation.

“Whoever’s out there now, they’re moving this way and they’ve got guns.” He edged back from the door, moving carefully in the lessened G. Josh stooped, gathered up one of the rods that had been part of a ruined display, offered it. Damon took it and Josh got another for himself. He moved up near the doorway, and Josh went to the other side of it, back to the wall. There was no sound near them outside, a lot of shouting far away. Damon risked a look, the light coming from the other way, jerked back again at the sight of human shadows near the scarred window.

The door whipped open, carded from outside, someone with priority. Two men dashed in, guns drawn. Damon slammed the steel rod down on a head, eyes unfocusing for horror of it, and Josh hit from the other side. The men fell strangely in the low G, and a gun skittered loose. Josh scooped it up, fired twice to be sure, and one jerked, dying. “Get the gun,” Josh snapped, and Damon bent and pushed fastidiously at the body, found the unfamiliar plastic of the gun butt in a dead hand. Josh was on his knees, rolled the other body, began to strip it. “Clothes,” Josh said. “Cards. id’s that work.”

Damon laid the gun aside and swallowed his distaste, stripped the limp body, took off his own suit, struggled into the bloody coveralls… there would be men aplenty in the corridors with bloodstains on them. He searched the pockets for a card, found the papers there, found the card lying where the body’s left hand had dropped it. He canted the id folder to the light. Lee Anton Quale… Lukas Company…

Quale. Quale, from the Downbelow mutiny… and Jon Lukas’s employ; in Jon’s employ, and Jon had comp in his control — when Q happened to get the doors open, when Konstantins happened to have been murdered in Pell’s tightest security… when his card stopped working and murderers knew how to locate him — it was Jon up there.

A hand closed on his shoulder. “Come on, Damon.”

He rose, flinched as Josh used his gun to burn Quale’s face beyond recognition, the other corpse afterward. Josh’s own face was sweat-slicked in the light from the door, rigid with horror, but the reactions were right, a man whose instincts knew what they were doing. He headed for the dock and Damon ran with him, out into the light, slowed at once, for the docks were virtually bare. White dock seal was in place; the seal of green dock was hidden up the horizon. They walked gingerly across the front of the huge seal of white, got in among the gantries across the dock, walked along within that cover, while the horizon unfolded downward, showing them a group of men working at the docking machinery, moving slowly and carefully in reduced G. Corpses and papers and debris lay scattered all across the docks, out in open spaces which would be difficult to reach without being seen. “Enough cards lying out there,” Josh said, “to give us plenty of names.”

“For any lock not voice-keyed,” Damon murmured. He kept his eye to the men at work and those standing guard down by the green niner entry, visible at this range — walked out carefully to the nearest corpse, hoping it was a corpse, and not someone dazed or shamming. He knelt, still watching the workers, felt through the pockets and came up with a card and additional papers. He pocketed them and went to the next, while Josh plundered others. Then nerves sent him scurrying back to cover, and Josh joined him at once. They moved further up the dock.

“Blue seal is open,” he said, as that arch came down off horizon. He entertained a wild, momentary hope of hiding, getting to blue sector when the traffic in the corridors returned to normal, getting up to blue one and asking questions at gunpoint. It was fantasy. They were not going to live that long. He did not reckon they would.

“Damon.”

He looked, followed the direction Josh indicated, up through the gantry lines to the first berth in green: green light. A ship was in approach, whether Mazian’s or Union’s there was no telling. Com thundered out, echoing instructions in the emptiness. The ship was closing with the docking cone, coming in fast. “Come on,” Josh hissed at him, pulling at his arm, insisting on a break for green nine.

“The G isn’t going,” he murmured, resisting Josh’s urging. “Don’t you see it’s a trick? Central’s got the corridors cleared for their own forces to move in them. Those ships wouldn’t dock with G completely unstable; no way they’d risk that with a big ship. Just a little flux to quell the riot. And it won’t stay cleared. If we run into those corridors we’ll be in the middle of it. No. Stay put.”

“ECS501,” he heard over the loudspeaker then, and his heart lifted.

“One of Mallory’s riders,” Josh muttered at his side. “Mallory. Union’s retreated.”

He looked at Josh, at the hate which burned in the angel’s haggard face… hope cancelled.

The minutes passed. The ship snugged in. The dock crew ran to secure the umbilicals, thrust the connections in. The access slammed into seal with a hiss audible across the empty distance. Machinery whined and slammed beyond it, the lock in function, and the dock-side crew started running.

A handful of men poured out of the obscuring periphery of the gantries, unarmored… two running across to the far side, to take up position with rifles leveled. There was the sound of others running, and com was on again, warning of Norway itself inbound.

“Get your head down,” Josh hissed, and Damon moved slowly, knelt by the brace of one of the movable tanks where Josh had taken closer cover, tried to see what was happening farther up, but there was a skein of umbilicals in the way. Mallory was using her own men for dock crews; but Jon Lukas must still be in command up in central, cooperating with Mazian, and in the pressure of Union attack, Mazian would choose efficiency over justice. Go out there, approach armed and nervous Company troops, raise a charge of murder and conspiracy while Jon Lukas physically held central and station, and Mazian had Union on his mind?

“I could go out there,” he said, unsure of his conclusions.

“They’d swallow you alive,” Josh said. “You’ve nothing to offer them.”

He looked at Josh’s face. Of the gentle man Adjustment had turned out… there was nothing left, but perhaps the pain. Set him at a comp board, Josh had said once, and he might remember comp; set him into war and he had other instincts. Josh’s thin hands clutched the gun between his knees, and his eyes were set on the arch of the dock, where Norway was moving in to dock. Hate. His face was pale and intense. He might do anything. Damon felt the butt of the pistol in his own right hand, shifted his grip on it, moved his forefinger onto the trigger. An Adjusted Unioner… whose Adjustment was coming undone, who hated, who might go on coming apart. It was a day for murders, when the dead out there were too many to count, when there were no rules left, no kinships, no friendships. War had come to Pell, and he had lived naive all his life. Josh was dangerous — had been trained to be dangerous — and nothing they had done to his mind had changed that.

Com announced arrival; there was the boom of contact. Josh swallowed visibly, eyes fixed. Damon reached with his left hand, caught Josh’s arm. “Don’t. Don’t do anything, hear me? You can’t reach her.”

“Don’t intend to,” Josh said without looking at him. “Only so you have as good sense.”

He let the gun to his side, finger slowly removed from the trigger, the taste of bile in his mouth. Norway was in solidly now, a second crashing of locks and joinings, a seal hissing into union.

Troops boiled out onto the dock, formed up, with shouts of orders, took up positions relieving the rifle-bearing crewmen, armored figures, alike and implacable. And of a sudden there was another figure from high up the curve, a shout, and other troops came from the recess of the shops and offices along that stretch, from the bars and sleepovers, troops left behind, rejoining their comrades of the Fleet, carrying their wounded or dead with them. There was reunion, a wavering in the disciplined lines that took them in, embracings and cheers raised. Damon pressed as close to the concealing machinery as he could, and Josh shrank down beside him.

An officer bellowed orders and the troops started to move in order, from the docks toward the green nine entry, and while some held it with leveled rifles, some advanced within it.

Damon shifted back, farther and farther within the shadows, and Josh moved with him. Shouts reached them, the echoing bellow of a loudspeaker: Clear the corridor. Suddenly there were shouts and screams and firing. Damon leaned his head against the machinery and listened, eyes shut, once and twice felt Josh flinch at the now-familiar sounds and did not know whether he did also.

It’s dying, he thought with exhausted calm, felt tears leak from his eyes. He shivered finally. Call it what they would, Mazian had not won; there was no possibility that the outnumbered Company ships had beaten off Union for good. It was only a skirmish, decision postponed. There would be more such, until there was no more Fleet and no more Company, and what became of Pell would be in other hands. Jump had outmoded the great star stations. There were worlds now, and the order and priority of things had changed. The military had seen it. Only the Konstantins had not. His father had not, who had believed in a way neither Company nor Union, but Pell’s — that kept the world it circled in trust, that disdained precautions within itself, that valued trust above security, that tried to lie to itself and believe that Pell’s values could survive in such times.

There were those who could shift from side to side, play any politics going. Jon Lukas could do so; evidently had. If Mazian had sense to judge men, he would surely see what Jon Lukas was and reward him as he deserved. But Mazian did not need honest men, only men who would obey him, and impose Mazian’s kind of law.

And Jon would come out a survivor, on either side. It was his own mother’s stubbornness, that refusal to die; his own, maybe, that did not seek approach to his uncle, whatever he had done. Maybe Pell needed a governor in these latter days who could shift and survive, trading what had to be traded.

Only he could not. If he had Jon in front of him now — hate… hate of this measure was a new experience. A helpless hate… like Josh’s… but there was revenge, if he lived. Not to harm Pell. But to make Jon Lukas’s sleep less than easy. While a single Konstantin was loose, any holder of Pell had to feel less secure. Mazian, Union, Jon Lukas — none of them would own Pell until they had gotten him; and that he could make difficult for them, for as long as possible.

i

Fire hit the wall. Damon flinched tighter into the corner they occupied, resisted half a heartbeat as Josh seized him and sprang up to run, followed them, dodged among the panicked and screaming crowds which back-washed out of green nine onto the docks. Someone did get shot, rolled on the decking at their feet, and they jumped that body and kept going, in the direction the troops meant to drive them.

Station residents, Q escapees… there was no difference made. They ran with fire peppering the supports and the storefronts, silent explosions in the chaos of screams, shots aimed at structures and not the vulnerable station shell itself. Shots went over their heads now that the crowd was moving, and they ran until the weakest faltered. Damon slowed as Josh did, found himself in white dock, the two of them weaving through the scattered number still running in panic, the last few who in their terror seemed to think the shots were still coming. He saw shelter among the shops by the inner wall, went that way and Josh followed him, to the recessed doorway of a bar which had been sealed against rioters, a place to sit quietly, out of the way of chance shots.

Several bodies lay out on the dock before them, new or old was not certain. It had become an ordinary sight in recent hours. There were occasional acts of violence while they sat there against the doorway… fights among stationers and what might be Q residents. Mostly people wandered, sometimes calling out names, parents hunting children, friends or mates hunting each other. Sometimes there were relieved meetings… and once, once, a man identified one of the dead, and screamed and sobbed. Damon bowed his face against his arms. Eventually some men helped the relative away.

And eventually the military sent detachments of armored troops into the area, to round up work crews, ordering them to gather up the dead and vent them. Damon and Josh slunk deeper into the doorway and evaded that duty; it was the active and restless the troops picked.

Last of all Downers came out of hiding, timidly, with soft steps and fearful looks about. They took it on themselves to clean the docks, scrubbing away the signs of death, faithful to their ordinary duties of cleanliness and order. Damon looked at them with a slight stirring of hope, the first good thing he had seen in all these hours, that the gentle Downers returned to the service of Pell.

He slept a little, as others did who sat over in the docking areas, as Josh did beside him, curled up against the door frame. From time to time he roused to general com announcements of restored schedules, or the promise that food would be forthcoming in all areas.

Food. The thought began to obsess him. He said nothing of it, his knees tucked up within his arms and his limbs feeling weak with hunger; weakness, he thought it, regretting a neglected breakfast, no lunch, no supper… he was not accustomed to hunger. It was, as he had ever felt it, a missed meal on a day of heavy work. An inconvenience. A discomfort. It began to be something else. It put a whole new complexion on resistance to anything; played games with his mind; forecast whole new dimensions of misery. If they were to be caught and recognized it was likely to be in some food line; but they had to come out for that, or starve. Their very remaining still grew obvious as the aroma of food swept the docks and others moved, as carts trundled along, pushed by Downers. People mobbed the carts, started snatching and shouting; but the troops escorted each then, and it calmed down quickly. The food carts, stores diminished, came closer. They stood up, leaned there in the recess.

“I’m going out there,” Josh said finally. “Stay back. I’ll say you’re hurt. I’ll get enough for both of us.”

Damon shook his head. It was perverse courage, to test his survival, sweaty, uncombed, in dirty, bloody coveralls. If he could not cross the dock for fear of an assassin’s gun or a trooper recognizing him, he was going to go mad. At least they did not look to be asking for id cards for the meals. He had three of them, and his own, which he dared not use; Josh had two and his own, but they did not match the pictures.

A simple act, to walk out with a guard watching, to take a cold sandwich and a carton of lukewarm fruit drink, and to retreat; but he retired to the sheltering storefront with a sense of triumph in his prize, crouched there to eat as Josh joined him… ate and drank, feeling in that mundane act as though a great deal of the nightmare were past, and he was caught in some strange new reality, where human feelings were not required, only an animal wariness.

And then a shrill ripple of Downer language, the one with the food cart speaking out across the dock to others of his kind. Damon was startled; Downers were generally shy when things were quiet around them; it startled the escorting trooper, who lowered his rifle and looked all about. But there was nothing, only quiet, frightened people and solemn round-eyed Downers, who had stopped and now went about their business. Damon finished his sandwich as the cart passed on along the upward curve of the dock toward green.

A Downer came near them, dragging a box into which he was collecting the plastic containers. Josh looked anxious as the Downer held out his hand, surrendered the wrappers; Damon tossed his in the box, looked up in fright as the Downer rested a gentle hand on his arm. “You Konstantin-man.”

“Go away,” he whispered hoarsely. “Downer, don’t say my name. They’ll kill me if they see me. Be quiet and go away quick.”

“I Bluetooth. Bluetooth, Konstantin-man.”

“Bluetooth.” He remembered. The tunnels, the Downer who had been shot. The strong Downer fingers closed tighter.

“Downer name Lily send from Sun-she-friend, you name ’Licia. She send we, make Lukases quiet, not come in she place. Love you, Konstantin-man. ’Licia she safe, Downers all round she, keep she safe. We bring you, you want?”

He could not breathe for the moment “Alive? She’s alive?”

“’Licia she safe. Send you come, make you safe with she.”

He tried to think, clung to the furred hand and stared into the round brown eyes, wanting far more than Downer patois could say. He shook his head. “No. No. It’s danger to her if I come there. Men-with-guns, you understand, Bluetooth? Men hunt me. Tell her — tell her I’m safe. Tell her I hide all right, tell her Elene got away with the ships. We’re all right. Does she need me, Bluetooth? She needs?”

“Safe in she place. Downers sit with she, all Downers in Upabove. Lily with she. Satin with she. All. All.”

“Tell her — tell her I love her. Tell her I’m all right and Elene is. Love you, Bluetooth.”

Brown arms hugged him. He embraced the Downer fervently and the Downer left him and slipped away like a shadow, quickly occupied himself with picking up debris not far away, wandered off. Damon looked about him, fearful that they might have been observed, met nothing but Josh’s curious gaze. He glanced away, wiped his eyes on the arm which rested across his knee. The numbness diminished; he began to be afraid again, had something to be afraid for, someone who could still be hurt.

“Your mother,” Josh said. “Is that what he was talking about?”

He nodded, without comment.

“I’m glad,” Josh offered earnestly.

He nodded a second time. Blinked, tried to think, feeling his brain subjected to jolt after jolt until there was no sense in it

“Damon.”

He looked up, followed the direction of Josh’s stare. Squads of troops were coming off the horizon, out of green dock, formed up and meaning business. Quietly, nonchalantly, he rose, dusted his clothing, turned his back to the dock to give Josh cover while he got up. Very casually they began to move along in the other direction.

“Sounds like they’re about to get organized out there,” Josh said.

“We’re all right,” he insisted. They were not the only ones moving. The niner hall of white was not that far. They drifted with others who seemed to have the same motive, found a public restroom next to one of the bars that sat at the corner of white nine; Josh turned in there and he walked in after. They both made use of it and walked out again, taking a normal pace. Guards had been posted at the intersections of the corridor with the dock, but they were not doing anything, only watching. He walked further down nine, stopped at a public call unit.

“Screen me,” he said, and Josh obligingly leaned against the wall between them and the opening of nine where the guards stood. “Going to see what cards we have, how many credits, where the original owners belonged. I don’t need my own priority to do that, just a records number.”

“I know one thing,” Josh said in a low voice. “I don’t look like a Pell citizen. And your face…”

“No one wants to be noticed; no one can turn us in without being noticed himself. That’s the best hope we’ve got; no one wants to be conspicuous.” He thrust in the first card and keyed the override. Altener, Leslie: 789.90 credits in comp; married, a child. Clerk, clothing concession. He put that one in his left pocket, not to use, not wanting to steal from the survivors. Lee Anton Quale, single man, staff card with Lukas Company, restricted clearance, 8967.89 credits… an amazing amount for such a man. William Teal, married man, no children, loading boss, 4567.67 credits, warehouse clearances.

“Let’s see yours,” he said to Josh. Josh handed his over together, and he shoved the first in, hastening feverishly, wondering whether so many inquiries in a row off a public terminal might not set comp central off. Cecil Sazony, single man, 456.78 credits, machinist and sometime loader, barracks privileges; Louis Diban, five-year marriage terminated, no dependents, 3421.56, dock crew foreman. He pocketed the cards and started walking as Josh followed and caught up with him, around the corner into a crosshall, and around the next corner to the right. There was a storeroom there; all the docks were mirror image one of the other when it came to the central corridors, and there was inevitably a storage room for maintenance hereabouts. He found the appropriate, unmarked door, used the foreman’s card to open it, and turned on the lights. There was ventilation, a store of paper and cleaning supplies and tools. He stepped in with Josh behind him and punched the door closed. “A hole to hide in,” he said, and pocketed the card he had used, reckoning it the best key they had. “We sit it out, go on alterday shift a day or so. Two of our cards were alterday people, single, with dock clearance. Sit down. Lights will go out in here in a moment. Can’t keep them on… comp will find a storeroom light on and turn it out on us, very economical.”

“Are we safe here?”

He laughed bitterly, sank down against the wall, legs tucked up in the cramped space to afford Josh room to sit down opposite him. He felt of the gun still in his pocket, to be sure it was there. Drew a breath. “Nowhere is safe.” Tired, the angel’s face, grease-smudged, hair stringy. Josh looked terrified, though it had been Josh’s instincts that had saved them under fire. Between the two of them, one knowing the accesses and one with the right reflexes, they made a tough problem for Mazian. “You’ve been shot at before,” he said. “Not just in a ship… close up. You know that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Don’t you?”

“I said I don’t.”

“I know the station. Every hole, every passage; and if shuttles start moving again, if any ships start going and coming from the mines, we just use the cards to get close enough to the docks, join a loading crew, walk onto a ship…”

“Go where, then?”

“Downbelow. Or outworld mines. No questions asked in either place.” It was a dream. He fabricated it to comfort them both. “Or maybe Mazian will decide he can’t go on holding here. Maybe he’ll just pull out.”

“He’ll blow it if he does. Blow the station, the installations on Downbelow with it. Would he want to leave Union a base to use against him when he falls back?”

Damon frowned at truth he already knew. “You have a better suggestion what we should do?”

“No.”

“I could turn myself in, negotiate to get back in control, evacuate the station…”

“You believe that?”

“No,” he said. That account too he had already added up. “No.”

The lights went out. Comp had shut them down. Only the ventilation continued.

ii

“But there’s no need,” Porey said softly, his dark, scarred face implacable, “there’s no further need for your presence, Mr. Lukas. You’ve done your civic duty. Now go back to your quarters. One of my people will be sure you get there safely.”

Jon looked about at the control center, at the several troopers who stood there, with the safeties off the rifles, with eyes constantly on the fresh shift of techs who managed the controls, the others under guard for the night. He gathered himself to pass orders to the comp chief, stopped cold as a trooper made a precise move, a hollow scrape of armor, a lowered rifle. “Mr. Lukas,” Porey said, “people are shot for ignoring orders.”

“I’m tired,” he said nervously. “I’m glad to go, sir. I don’t need the escort.”

Porey motioned. One of the troopers by the door stood smartly aside, waiting for him. Jon walked out, the trooper treading behind him at first and then beside him, an unwanted companion. They passed other troops back on guard in quiet, riot-scarred blue one.

More of the Fleet was docking. They had drawn in to a tighter perimeter, decided finally to dock, which seemed to him military insanity, a risk he did not understand. Mazian’s risk. His now. Pell’s, because Mazian was back.

Perhaps — he found it hard to think — Union had been beaten badly. Perhaps there were things kept secret. Perhaps there would be delay in the Union takeover. It worried him, the thought that Mazian’s rule might be long.

Suddenly troops exited the lift ahead into blue one, troops bearing a different insigna. They intercepted him, presented his escort with a slip of paper.

“Come with us,” one ordered.

“I was instructed by captain Porey — ” he objected, but another nudged him with a gun barrel and moved him toward the lift. Europe, their badges said. Europe troops. Mazian had come in.

“Where are we going?” he asked in panic. They had left the Africa trooper behind. “Where are we going?”

There was no answer. It was deliberate bullying. He knew where they were going… had his suspicions confirmed when, after descent in the lift, he was walked down the blue niner corridor, out onto the docks, toward the glowing access tube of a docked ship.

He had never been aboard a warship. It was cramped as a freighter for all its exterior size. It made him claustrophobic. The rifles in the hands of the troopers at his back gave him no more comfort, and whenever he would hesitate, turning left, entering the lift, they would push him with the rifle barrels. He was sick with fear.

They knew, he kept thinking. He kept trying to persuade himself it was military courtesy, that Mazian chose to meet him as new stationmaster, that Mazian wished to bluff or bully. But from this place they could do what they pleased. Could vent him out a waste chute and he would be indistinguishable from the hundreds of other bodies which now drifted, frozen, a nuisance in the station’s vicinity for the skimmers to freeze together and boost off. No difference at all. He tried to pull his wits together, reckoning that he survived by them now or not at all.

They showed him off the lift into a corridor with troops standing guard in it, into a room wider than most, with a vacant round table. Made him sit down in one of the chairs there. Stood waiting with the rifles over their arms.

Mazian came in, in plain and somber blue, haggard of face. Jon rose to his feet in respect; Conrad Mazian gestured him to sit down again. Others filed in to take their places at the table, Europe officers, none of the captains. Jon darted glances from one to the next

“Acting stationmaster,” Mazian said quietly. “Mr. Lukas, what happened to Angelo Konstantin?”

“Dead,” Jon said, trying to suppress all but innocent reactions. “Rioters broke into station offices. Killed him and and his staff.”

Mazian only stared at him, utterly unmoved. He sweated.

“We think,” Jon said further, guessing at the captain’s thoughts, “that there may have been conspiracy — the strike at other offices, the opening of the door into Q, the timing of it all. We are investigating.”

“What have you found?”

“Nothing as yet. We suspect the presence of Union agents passed somehow into station during the processing of refugees. Some were let through, may have had friends or relatives left back in Q. We’re puzzled as yet how contacts were passed. We suspect connivance of the barrier guards… black market connections.”

“But you haven’t found anything.”

“Not yet.”

“And won’t very quickly, will you, Mr. Lukas?”

His heart began beating very fast. He kept panic from his face; he hoped he succeeded at it. “I apologize for the situation, captain, but we’ve been kept rather busy, coping with riot, with the damage to station… lately working at the orders of your captains Mallory and…”

“Yes. Bright move, the means you used to clear the halls of riot; but then it had quieted a little by then, hadn’t it? I understand there were Q residents let into central.”

Jon found breathing difficult. There was a prolonged silence. He could not think of words. Mazian passed a signal to one of the guards at the door.

“We were in crisis,” Jon said, anything to fill that terrible silence. “I may have acted high-handedly, but we were presented a chance to get control of a dangerous situation. Yes, I dealt with the councillor from that area, not, I think, involved in the situation, but a calming voice… there was no one else at the — ”

“Where is your son, Mr. Lukas?”

He stared.

“Where is your son?”

“Out at the mines. I sent him out on a shorthauler on a tour of the mines. Is he all right? Have you had word of him?”

“Why did you send him, Mr. Lukas?”

“Frankly, to get him off the station.”

“Why?”

“Because he had lately been in control over the station offices while I was stationed on Downbelow. After three years there was some question of loyalties and authorities and channels of communication within the company offices here. I thought a brief absence might straighten things out, and I wanted someone out there in the mine offices who could take over if communications were interrupted. A policy move. For internal reasons and for security.”

“It wasn’t to balance the presence on-station of a man named Jessad?”

His heart came close to stopping. He shook his head calmly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain Mazian. If you’d be so good as to tell me the source of your information — ”

Mazian gestured and someone entered the room. Jon looked and saw Bran Hale, who evaded his eyes.

“Do you know each other?” Mazian asked.

“This man,” Jon said, “was discharged on Downbelow for mismanagement and mutiny. I considered a previous record and hired him. I’m afraid my confidence may have been misplaced.”

“Mr. Hale approached Africa with some thought of enlistment… claimed to have certain information. But you flatly deny knowing a man named Jessad.”

“Let Mr. Hale speak for his own acquaintances. This is a fabrication.”

“And one Kressich, councillor of Q?”

“Mr. Kressich was, as I explained, in the control center.”

“So was this Jessad.”

“He might have been one of Kressich’s guards. I didn’t ask their names.”

“Mr. Hale?”

Bran Hale put on a grim face. “I stand by my story, sir.”

Mazian nodded slowly, carefully drew his pistol. Jon thrust back from the table, and the men behind him slammed him back into the chair. He stared at the pistol, paralyzed.

“Where is Jessad? How did you make contact with him? Where would he have gone?”

“This fiction of Hale’s — ”

The safety went off the pistol audibly.

“I was threatened,” Jon breathed. “Threatened into cooperation. They’ve seized a member of my family.”

“So you gave them your son.”

“I had no choice.”

“Hale,” Mazian said, “you and your companions and Mr. Lukas may go into the next compartment. And we’ll record the proceedings. We’ll let you and Mr. Lukas settle your argument in private, and when you’ve resolved it, bring him back again.”

“No,” Jon said. “No. I’ll give you the information, all that I know.”

Mazian waved his hand in dismissal, Jon tried to hold to the table. The men behind him hauled him to his feet. He resisted, but they brought him along, out the door, into the corridor. Hale’s whole crew was out there.

“They’ll serve you as well,” Jon shouted back into the room where the officers of Europe still sat. “Take him in and he’ll serve you the same way. He’s lying!”

Hale grasped his arm, propelled him into the room which waited for them. The others crowded after. The door closed.

“You’re crazy,” Jon said. “You’re crazy, Hale.”

“You’ve lost,” Hale said.

iii

The wink of lights, the noise of ventilators, the sometime sputter of com from other ships — all of this had a dreamlike familiarity, as if Pell had never existed, as if it were Estelle again and the folk about her might turn and show familiar faces, known from childhood. Elene worked her way through the busy control center of Finity’s End and pressed herself into the nook of an overhanging console to obtain a view of scan. Her senses were still muzzy with drugs. She pressed her hand to her belly, feeling unaccustomed nausea. Jump had not hurt the child… would not. Merchanters had proven that time and again, merchanter women with strong constitutions and lifelong habituation to the stresses; it was nine-tenths nerves, and the drugs were not that heavy. She would not lose it, would not even think of it. In time her pulse settled again from the short walk from main room, the waves of sickness receded. She watched scan acquire another blip. Merchanters were coming into the null point by drift, the way they had left Pell, frantically gathering all the realspace speed they could on entry to keep ahead of the incomers who were rolling in like a tide on a beach. All it needed was someone overshooting minimum, some over hasty ass coming into realspace too close to the point, and they and the newcomer would cease to exist in any rational sense, shredded here and there. She had always thought it a peculiarly nasty fate. They would ride for the next few minutes still with that end a very real possibility.

But they were coming in greater and greater numbers now, finding their way into this refuge in reasonable order. They might have lost a few passing through the battle zone; she could not tell.

Nausea hit again. It came and went. She swallowed several times in calm determination to ignore it, turned a jaundiced eye on Neihart, who had left the controls of the ship to his son and came to see to her.

“Got a proposition,” she said between swallows. “You let me have com again. No running from here. Take a look at what’s following us, captain. Most of the merchanters that ever ran freight for Company stations. That’s a lot of us, isn’t it? And if we want to, we can reach further than that.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“That we stand up and safeguard our own interests. That we start asking ourselves hard questions before we scatter out of here. We’ve lost the stations we served. So do we let Union swallow us up, dictate to us… because we become outmoded next to their clean new state-run ships? And they could take that idea into their heads if we come to them begging license to serve their stations. But while things are uncertain, we’ve got a vote and a voice, and I’m betting some of the so-named Union merchanters can see what’s ahead too, clear as we can. We can stop trade — all worlds, all stations — we can shut them down. Half a century of being pushed around, Neihart, half a century of being mark for any warship not in the mood to regard our neutrality. And what do we get when the military has it all? You want to give me com access?”

Neihart considered a long moment. “When it goes sour, Quen, word will spread far and wide what ship spoke out for it. It’s trouble for us.”

“I know that,” Elene said hoarsely. “But I’m still asking it.”

“You’ve got com if you want it.”

iv

Signy turned restlessly and came up against a sleeping body, a shoulder, an inert arm. Who it was she did not remember for a moment, in her half-asleep confusion. Graff, she decided finally, Graff. She settled comfortably again, against him. They had come offshift together. She kept her eyes open on the dark wall for a moment, the row of lockers, in the starlight glow of the light overhead — not liking the images she saw against her lids, the remembered reek of dying in her nostrils, that she could not bathe away.

They held Pell. Atlantic and Pacific made their lonely patrol with all the riders in the fleet, so that they dared sleep. She earnestly wished it were Norway on patrol. Poor Di Janz was in command over the docks, sleeping in the forward access when he got sleep at all. Her troops were scattered throughout the docks, in a dark mood. Seventeen wounded and nine killed in the Q outbreak did not improve their attitude. They would stand watch one shift on and the other off and keep on doing it. Beyond that, she made no plans. When the Union ships came in, they would come, and the Fleet would react as they had been doing in places of odds as bad as this… fire at the reachable targets and keep the remaining options open as long as possible. Mazian’s decision, not hers.

She closed her eyes finally, drew a deliberately peaceful breath. Graff stirred against her, settled again, a friendly presence in the dark.

v

“She sleep,” Lily said. Satin drew in a breath and settled her arms about her knees. They had pleased Sun-her-friend; the Dreamer had wept for joy to hear the news that Bluetooth had brought, the Konstantin-man and his friend safe… so, so awesome the sight of tears on that tranquil face. All the hisa’s hearts had hurt within them until they understood it was happiness… and a warmth had sat within the dark and lively eyes, that they had crowded close to see. Love you, the Dreamer had whispered, love you every one. And: Keep him safe.

Then at last she smiled, and closed her eyes.

“Sun-shining-through-clouds.” Satin nudged Bluetooth and he who had been zealously grooming himself — trying vainly to bring order to his coat, for respect of this place — looked toward her. “You go back, go and set your own eyes on this young Konstantin-man. Upabove hisa are one thing; but you are very quick, very clever Downbelow hunter. You watch him, come and go.”

Bluetooth cast an uncertain look at Old One and at Lily.

“Good,” Lily agreed. “Good, strong hands. Go.”

He preened diffidently, a young male, but others gave him place; Satin regarded him with pride, that even the old strange ones saw worth in him. And truth: there was keen good sense in her friend. He touched the Old Ones and touched her, quietly excused himself toward the outside of the gathering.

And the Dreamer slept, safe in their midst, although a second time humans had fought humans and the secure world of the Upabove had rocked like a leaf on the breast of river. Sun watched over her, and the stars still burned about them.