Praxis

TWO

Operations Command wasn’t in the Terran wing of the Commandery, but Terrans were on duty at this hour, none aware of any emergency until Martinez burst through the door. The duty officer, Lieutenant Ari Abacha, lounged with his feet on his console, a perfect corkscrew apple peel falling from his paring knife onto the napkin spread over his lap, while the three duty techs dozed over the screens that helped them supervise the automated systems that routed routine traffic.

Martinez batted Abacha’s legs out of the way as he rushed for an unoccupied console. The screw of apple peel spilled to the floor, and Abacha bent to pick it up. Footballers careened over a brightly lit field in one of his displays-he was a big Andiron supporter, Martinez recalled.

“What’s the problem, Gare?” Abacha said from somewhere near the floor.

“Vandrith Challenge race. Yacht’s out of control.” Martinez dropped onto a seat that had been designed for a Laiown and called up displays.

“Yeah?” Abacha said. “Whose?”

“Blitsharts.”

Abacha’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he said, and leaped from his seat to look over Martinez’s shoulder.

Telemetry fromMidnight Runner had been lost, so Martinez had to locate the yacht by using the passive detectors on Zanshaa’s accelerator ring. Blitsharts’s yacht had cut its main engine and started tumbling. From the erratic way the boat lurched, it appeared that maneuvering thrusters were still being fired. It was possible that Blitsharts was trying to regain control, but if so, he was failing. Any input from the thrusters just seemed to add to the chaos.

And all this, Martinez reminded himself, had happened over twenty-four minutes ago, with the time-lag increasing asMidnight Runner raced toward galactic south.

Martinez asked the computer to calculate how many gees the acceleration had inflicted on Blitsharts’s body. A maximum of 7.4, he found, deeply uncomfortable but survivable, especially for a yacht racer in peak condition. Blitsharts might still be alive.

A communicator buzzed on Abacha’s console. He stepped toward it and linked it to the display on his uniform sleeve. “Operations. Lieutenant Abacha.”

The voice came out of Abacha’s sleeve. “My lord, this is Panjit Sesse of Zanshaa All-Sports Networks. Are you aware that Captain Blitsharts’s yacht Midnight Runner is tumbling out of control?”

“We’re working on that, yes.”

Martinez was only vaguely aware of this dialogue. He told the computers to guess whereMidnight Runner would be in half an hour or so and to paint the area with low-energy ranging lasers aimed from the ring. That might make it easier for rescuers to track the boat.

The reporter’s voice went on. “Whois working on it, my lord?”

Abacha looked over Martinez’s shoulder at the displays again. “Right now we’ve got Lieutenant Martinez.”

“Only a lieutenant, lord?”

“He’s aide to Senior Fleet Commander Enderby.” Abacha’s tone showed impatience. A pair of Peers were dealing with the situation. That should be enough for anybody.

Martinez called up a list of every ship within three light-hours of Vandrith. The closest to Blitsharts were the yacht racers, but they were still engaged in their race, and none of them were suitable as a rescue vehicle. While they’d almost certainly noted Blitsharts’s exit, they probably were too busy to analyze the meaning of his trajectory, beyond being pleased to have one less competitor. The large tender that had brought the yachts to Vandrith would need to recover the other yachts before it did anything, and it was built more for comfort than for maneuver and heavy accelerations. And it would take twenty-four minutes for Martinez’s request to reach them, during which time Blitsharts would continue south.

Martinez scanned the display and found what he was looking for: Senior Captain Kandinski in theBombardment of Los Angeles, one of the big bombardment-class heavy cruisers. It had just finished a refit on the ring dockyards and was now accelerating at a steady 1.3 gravities toward the Zanshaa 5 wormhole gate, heading for the Third Fleet base at Felarus. For the next 4.2 standard hours a rescue boat launched from theLos Angeles could take advantage of at least some of the cruiser’s speed in its acceleration towardMidnight Runner. Not an ideal position for a rescue launch, but it would have to do.

Kandinski was something of a yachtsman himself-Los Angeleswas a well-polished ship, shiny inside and out, with a white and powder blue paint job Kandinski had paid for out of his own deep pockets. Even the cruiser’s pinnaces and missiles had the same glossy light blue finish. Maybe he would feel an affinity for Blitsharts and his shiny yacht.

Martinez reached for the communications console, linked it to his sleeve display. “Transmission to Los Angeles, ” he instructed. “Code status: clear. Priority: extremely urgent, personal to the captain.”

“Identify?” the automated comm system wanted to know.

“Gareth Martinez, lieutenant, aide to Lord Commander Enderby.”

A brief moment’s pause, then, “Approved.”

“Can you tell me what steps are being taken?” Sesse’s voice nattered in Martinez’s ear from Abacha’s sleeve display. Martinez ignored it.

Another chime from the communicator; someone else needing to talk. “We’re very busy right now,” Abacha said. “Good-bye.”

“Can you just let uslisten? ” Sesse said frantically.

Martinez took a moment to run fingers through his dark hair, then twitched his collar to make certain it was in place. “Transmit, video and audio,” he said.

He waited for the flashing orange cue in his sleeve display to let him know that transmission had started, then looked at the sleeve button camera and spoke.

“Captain Kandinski, this is Lieutenant Gareth Martinez on Lord Commander Enderby’s staff. The yacht Midnight Runner with its captain, Ehrler Blitsharts, is tumbling out of control, heading southward from Vandrith. There is no telemetry, and there has been no communication from Captain Blitsharts since before the situation started. He may still be alive but unable to recover command of his boat. If your situation permits, I should like to request that you launch one or more pinnaces on a rescue mission. I will send you the latest course data. Please advise Command your course of action as soon as possible. Data follows.”

The message, Martinez knew, was already being pulsed toward Los Angeles by powerful military communications lasers, but it would still be over twenty-four minutes before the red-shifted signal reached the cruiser, and at least that much time again before he would know Kandinski’s decision.

Martinez added Blitsharts’s real and projected course to the end of the message and closed the transmission. He tried to lean back, then swayed as he almost toppled from the Laiown chair. Abacha was talking to yet another questioner whom he cut off in mid-sentence. “Receive military communications only,” Abacha told his console. “Log others for reply later.”

Abacha turned to Martinez. “What now?”

Martinez rose from the chair and kicked it away. “We wait an hour or more for a reply, while you field calls from every Blitsharts fan on the planet.” Then a thought struck him. “Oh,” Martinez added. “I suppose we should inform Lord Commander Enderby.”

Martinez was busy trying to analyze the way Blitsharts’s boat was tumbling so that any rescue mission might better know how to dock with it when Enderby arrived at Command. The ring’s optical trackers caught only reflections of Zanshaa’s sun flashing on the glossy black surface of the yacht, hardly ideal data for an analysis. Even the 3D displays at Operations would be too small for the kind of detail he needed of a small vessel that far away, so Martinez got a headset out of storage and projected a virtual environment onto the visual centers of his brain. His mind flooded with an infinite, empty darkness that seemed to extend light-years beyond the limits of his skull, and he built a simulation with a picture and specifications of the craft he’d snagged, using Enderby’s priority code, from the files of Vehicle Registration. Once he had the model ofMidnight Runner, he created a virtual sun at the appropriate angle and of the appropriate intensity, then sent the model tumbling over and over again in a lengthy series of simulations until it began to resemble the flashing visual he was getting from the ring’s optical detectors. It could be refined later, after he began getting reflections back from the ranging lasers he’d pulsed out along Blitsharts’s presumed track.

Under normal circumstances, a Fleet pinnace should be able to rendezvous with a yacht likeMidnight Runner with little trouble. The boats were approximately the same size, and were built for nearly the same purpose: carrying a single passenger very fast, through abrupt accelerations and decelerations and changes of course. In Blitsharts’s case, this was to enable his boat to make the changes in vector necessary to win a yacht race; in the case of the Fleet boat, it was to avoid destruction long enough to accomplish its mission.

It occurred to Martinez that no one had ever performed a rendezvous like this. The yacht’s rolling was wildly complex, as if designed on purpose to baffle anyone attempting to dock with it, and he couldn’t imagine that Blitsharts could remain in that tumbling craft for long and remain conscious. There was only one hatch onMidnight Runner, and it was rolling over and over in a chaotic series of gyrations. It was forward of the center of gravity about which the yacht was tumbling, and there was no way a rescue craft could dock to it. It would be like docking with the end of a stick being waved in the air by an erratic child.

Martinez worried at the problem, his mind spinning as frantically as the tumbling yacht. He built a model of a standard Fleet pinnace and tried to maneuver it near the yacht, only to see it batted away again and again, one potentially crippling collision after another.

It seemed that if he worked really hard, he could help killtwo pilots, Blitsharts and his rescuer both.

It was the scent of a bruised apple that brought him out of the depths of his study-Abacha’s apple, or perhaps just the peel, lying somewhere nearby and reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since his noon meal, over half a day ago.

He saved his simulation and pulled off the headset. “Ari,” he said, turning toward Abacha’s console. “Got any of that apple left? Or any food at all?”

It was then he realized that the person he’d sensed standing behind him had far too much braid on his uniform to be a mere lieutenant.

“My lord!” He leaped to his feet, his chin snapping back. Agonizing pain clamped on his crotch, which had been perched on an alien chair for over an hour.

Fleet Commander Enderby gazed at him with mild eyes. “Carry on, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Yes, my lord.”

Enderby looked at the displays, which had been showing Martinez’s solution. “A difficult problem, is it not?”

“I’m afraid so, my lord.” Martinez clenched his teeth against the pain. Whatever passion had seized Enderby during their last interview had passed: the Fleet Commander was his usual self again, keeping himself informed of what was occurring in his command, but content to let lesser beings work out the details. Martinez had never quite made up his mind whether this was a result of Enderby being profoundly stupid or profoundly wise.

“I fear Blitsharts has run his last race,” Enderby said. “I’m certainly not permitting a Fleet vessel to batter itself to pieces attempting a hopeless rescue.” Distant regret tracked across Enderby’s features, then he looked at Martinez again. “Call the commissary and order something, if you want. Use my authority.”

“Yes, my lord.” He reached for his sleeve display, then hesitated. “Will you have anything, my lord?”

“No. I have dined. Thank you.”

Martinez realized he was ragingly hungry. He ordered soup, a salad, some sandwiches, and a pot of coffee. Trying not to hobble, he removed the Lai-own chair and replaced it with one designed for humans. Gingerly, he sat down and looked again at the simulation frozen in the displays.

His nostrils twitched to the scent of apple, and he turned toward where Abacha sat at his own console, looking at his own displays. The stiffness of Abacha’s spine and neck, and the ostentatious way he went about his business, showed his awareness that the commander of the Home Fleet was standing behind him.

Abacha’s handkerchief sat on the long console between them, the screw of apple peel lying discarded on it. Without thinking, Martinez reached for it-it was a reflex action for him to keep the Fleet commander’s vicinity tidy-and he looked for someplace to throw it.

His eyes alighted on the handkerchief, the perfect corkscrew peel lying coiled on the white surface, and he froze.

“Lord commander,” he said slowly, “I think I know how this can work.”

The woman called Caroline Sula fought her way back from nightmare, from a sensation of being smothered with a pillow, the soft pressure filling her nose, her mouth, the screaming pressure in her chest building as she tried to bring in air…

She came awake with a cry, hands flailing at an invisible attacker. Then she realized where she was, strapped into the command seat of her pinnace, and fought the darkness more rationally, clenching her jaw and neck muscles to force oxygenated blood to her brain. The darkness that swathed her vision retreated just enough so she could see the cockpit displays directly in front of her. A total stranger looked at her and said, “You’re going to have toscrew it in,” and then the main engine fired again, the boat groaned in response, and panic flared in her as darkness once more flooded her mind.

An unknown amount of time later she woke gasping for breath, fighting the ton of lead that pressed on her rib cage. Sensors in her pressure suit monitored her condition: the computers on her pinnace were instructed to keep heralive, but the programming said nothing aboutcomfortable.

In the blackness of her vision there was a hole through which a little light came. Sula focused the hole over the engine display and found that the pinnace was accelerating at a steady 6.5 gravities, which the computer had apparently decided was the optimum both for keeping her alive and getting her to where she was going.

The darkness retreated a little from her vision. Sula panted for breath. She badly wanted to pee.

She wrenched her gaze to the speed indicator. It felt as if she had to crowbar her eyeballs around their sockets. She discovered she was traveling.076c.

Too bad. It meant that this wouldn’t end anytime soon.

The brutal deceleration finally came to an end. The pressure exerted by Sula’s suit, soft as foam but firm as steel, withdrew from her arms and legs, bringing them tingling back to life as the blood surged to the muscles. The tingling on her back, caused by the miniwaves pulsed through the acceleration couch-to prevent blood pooling and to prevent bedsores-faded as she floated free in her harness. The soft darkness retreated from her perceptions, and she could fill her lungs with air.

She checked her own vital signs, found elevated heart rate and blood pressure, but not in the critical ranges. She hadn’t stroked out during the acceleration-which sometimes happened even to the fittest young cadets-nor had she given herself some kind of weird heart murmur or arrhythmia.

The composite organics of the ship’s hull cracked and snapped as they reacted to the end of the relentless acceleration. Sula scanned the displays, then raised a hand to send a message both to theLos Angeles and to Operations on Zanshaa.

“Cadet Sula reporting. Diagnostics report optimal conditions following deceleration.”Thanks for not killing me, she added mentally.

She stretched in her acceleration couch, forcing sluggish blood to her reluctant muscles. The cockpit of the pinnace was tiny, with Sula in her pressure suit taking up most of the available volume. There was even less room than normal, because she was flying a two-seated trainer in case she had to take Blitsharts aboard.

Funny. She’d volunteered for pinnace duty in part because it meant getting time to herself, away from ship quarters where the cadets were crammed together, each living in the other’s armpit. What she discovered was that even here, alone in the infinity of space, there wasn’t room enough to so much as stretch her arms above her head.

A light glowed on her communications board, the signal that messages had been recorded for her. She’d noted the light since deceleration ceased, but hadn’t felt up to interacting with the command structure till now. She triggered the display and discovered a continuous stream of tracking data from Zanshaa’s ring sensors showing Blitsharts’s tumbling craft. Another was a communication from Operations Command, a message the pinnace had received directly, followed by a copy of the same message forwarded by the communications officer aboardLos Angeles.

Sula played the recorded message. A dark-browed, lantern-jawed young man looked out of the display. There were staff tabs on his collar, the sign of a lord commander’s pet, and Sula found herself loathing him on sight.

The lieutenant spoke. “Lieutenant Martinez at Operations to any rescue pilot. I have analyzed the way in which the target boat is tumbling, and the results don’t look very promising.” A simulation ofMidnight Runner filled the display, and Sula leaned forward, studying the fix Captain Blitsharts had got himself into.

The voice went on. “I can’t see any way to dock with the boat’s hatch, which is too far forward. At best you’d get knocked around badly; at worst you’d kill yourself, Blitsharts,and his dog Orange.”

Har har, Sula thought. The lord commander’s pet had a sense of humor. Wonderful.

“I’ve worked out a way you can dock with the yacht, if not with the hatch,” Martinez went on. “You’ll have to exactly duplicate with your own boat the precise fashion in which Blitsharts is tumbling, then slip inside his rolling motion to dock.” A pinnace appeared in the simulation, rolling and pitching just as Blitsharts’s boat was doing, and then the two moved together to mate, the pinnace fitting carefully into a whirlwind corkscrew cone formed byMidnight Runner’s off-center spinning nose.

“You’re going to have toscrew it in,” Martinez said, and Sula felt a surge of memory. She’d heard the message, live, as she received it-only she’d been unconscious through most of it.

“You can’t access the hatch from this position,” Martinez continued, “but once you’re clamped onto him, you can use your own maneuvering thrusters to damp down the movements of Blitsharts’s boat. When you’ve got his boat under control, you can shift your own boat forward to mate with Blitsharts’s hatch.”

Sula frowned at the simulation, which showed exactly that. It looked possible, but experience had shown her that a simulation was not necessarily cognate with reality.

The picture cut to Martinez.

“There are two problems,” he said. “The first is thatMidnight Runner’s thrusters still occasionally fire, which may make the tumbling more chaotic by the time you arrive.”

Oh great, Sula thought. She could do everything perfectly, and then Blitsharts’s thrusters could cut in and cause a collision.

“The second problem-” Martinez took a breath, “-will be staying conscious. If you attempt to match the movements of Blitsharts’s boat, you’ll be subjecting yourself to an unforgiving pattern of accelerations, followed by a chaotic combination of roll, pitch, and yaw. You will be in severe danger of blacking out.”

“Oh. Great.” Sula closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against her helmet pads.

Martinez’s closing words echoed in her helmet earphones. “You are the pilot on the scene. It will be entirely up to you whether you attempt this maneuver. I am to tell you from the lord commander of the Home Fleet that no blame will attach to you if you decide the rescue is too risky.”

Sula opened her eyes.Lord commander of the Home Fleet…

It wasn’t like there was any pressure or anything. She’d only be performing-or demonstrating cowardice or killing herself or fucking up beyond all possible redemption-in front of the individual who commanded the largest division of the Fleet, the defenses of the capital, and of course her own personal future.

Thanks a lot.

Martinez’s image gazed steadily at her from the displays. “I’ll keep sending updates from our sensors here, though of course anything you’ll receive fromme will be an hour out of date. I’m afraid there is very little assistance I can offer. You’re truly on your own. Good luck.”

The image faded, replaced by the orangeEnd Transmission symbol.

Sula’s fist hovered over the transmit button. “Thank you for sending me on a mission that gives me the choice of suicide or disgrace. Why don’t you come and do it yourself if you’re so smart?”

She held the fist there for a long moment, hit the transmit button and said, “Cadet Caroline Sula to Lieutenant Martinez, Operations Command. Your message received. Thank you.”

She hadn’t got as far as she had by being stupid.

Sula managed to stay conscious through the next long deceleration burn, as her pinnace swooped over Vandrith’s north pole to fire her south, directly on Blitsharts’s trail. Her jaws ached from keeping her teeth clamped.

She started getting data from the ranging lasers trackingMidnight Runner, and she was able to update Martinez’s simulation of the tumbling craft. There was an extra wobble in its roll-sure enough, the yacht’s maneuvering thrusters must have fired and added an extra little complexity to the acrobatics.

She wondered what could be causing them to fire at random that way. It didn’t make any sense. If an automated pitch-and-yaw program had been initiated to stabilize the craft, the thrusters would be firing more regularly and deliberately, which would have dampened the oscillations, not increased them.

Could Blitsharts be making brief attempts to solve his problem? Coming out of unconsciousness briefly to fire a thruster, but so disoriented he only made his situation worse?

That didn’t precisely make sense either, but it was the best guess she could make.

She studied the simulation. She ate some ration bars. She took a brief nap. And, because she finally couldn’t stand the pressure in her bladder any longer, she urinated into her suit.

Elimination was the thing she hated most when living in a vac suit. She knew that the crotch of her suit was packed full of absorbent material chock-full of hydrostatic screens and mindlessly happy bacteria that would process the urine into demineralized water and harmless salts; that it would clean her up and leave her “fresher than before,” which were the words actually used in the suit manual.

Beforewhat? she wanted to snarl. Before she was crammed into this giant, unwieldy, vacuum-resistantdiaper? But if the service could only provide her with an honest-to-godtoilet, she would have much preferred to handle the freshening business herself, thank you very much.

Just before the pinnace oriented for the next deceleration, Sula triggered the boat’s radars to give her a better view of her tumbling target. Then the pinnace swung around, aligned its engines very precisely, and began the deceleration burn.

Again she felt the suit gently closing around her arms and legs, forcing the blood to her brain. Again the weight of many gravities compressed her chest. Again she felt the darkness gathering around her vision, the light narrowing to a tiny tunnel bearing only straightforward.

Again she felt the pillow pressing down on her face, throttling her half-formed scream.

Blitsharts,she thought,you’d better fucking well be alive.

Enderby had gone to bed hours ago. With dawn, a new shift arrived-not humans but Lai-owns, members of a flightless avian species. They were taller than humans, covered with gray featherlike hair mottled with black, and with vicious peg teeth in an elongated muzzle.

The Lai-owns had provided the Fleet with the only space battles in its long history. Every other species in the dominion of the Shaa had been bombarded into submission by overwhelming forces operating from the safety of space. Even those who managed to develop sufficient technology to get into space, like the primitive human tribe-nations on Earth, did not possess an armed presence sufficient to halt the Shaa for even a few seconds.

But to the flightless Lai-owns, space was just an extension of their natural environment, the airy realms where their ancestors had flown. They had spread throughout their home star system, and possessed the fleets to protect their settlements. Had they been able to discover and develop the wormholes that orbited their star, they might have been the first to contact the Shaa, not the other way around.

As it was, the Lai-owns gave the Shaa squadrons a bloody nose when the conquerors poured in through the system’s wormhole. They were natural tacticians, their avian brains adapted to operating in a three-dimensional environment. And the wars they had fought among themselves gave them a tactical doctrine based on experience. Their only disadvantage was the light, hollow bones that permitted their ancestors to fly but wouldn’t stand the ferocious accelerations of space combat.

The Shaa calculated on destroying resistance in a matter of hours. Instead it took six days to obliterate the last Laiown warship and issue a demand for surrender. One of the Lai-own innovations that had surprised the Fleet was the use of the pinnace, a small vessel that would shepherd attacking missiles toward the target and update their instructions faster than could the larger ships, which might be lurking back light-minutes out of contact.

The pinnaces were valuable tactically, but few had survived actual combat. In the years since the Lai-own war, however, cadets had begun to compete for the right to wear the silver flashes of the pinnace pilot, and it became both a status symbol and an entree to the fashionable and glamorous world of yachting.

It was a matter for debate how many of these cadets would have competed so eagerly to be pinnace pilots if there had actually been a war going on. Martinez suspected there would be relatively few.

As he sat with the avians in Operations, he found himself wishing that it had been the Lai-owns who crewed theLos Angeles, and not humans. A Lai-own would be able to use his complex plan for rescuingMidnight Runner with little problem, and with no chance of rendering himself unconscious.

Instead, an unknown human would do the job, almost certainly an inexperienced cadet. Martinez almost regretted having worked out a plan-if he hadn’t, the rescue pilot wouldn’t be in jeopardy.

During his long wait, he received two messages. The first was fromLos Angeles, announcing that, per the lord commander’s request, a pinnace had been launched on a rescue mission. The second was from the pinnace itself, a brief announcement, audio only, that his message had been received.

Cadet Caroline Sula.Martinez had heard the name Sula but couldn’t recall where. He had seen a Sula Palace in the High City, which meant the Sulas were an old family, Peers of the highest rank. But he hadn’t heard about any members of the family, either in government, civil service, or the military, unusual for a family ranked that high. He wondered if this cadet was the last of them.

He hesitated a moment, then used Fleet Commander Enderby’s code key to call for her file. Enderby might want a report on the pilot.

Oh my.Martinez, slumped with weariness in his chair, straightened to get a better view of Caroline Sula’s face as it materialized on the display. It was extraordinary-pale, nearly translucent skin, emerald-green eyes, white-gold hair worn collar-length. The picture had caught her with a quirk of humor at the corners of her lips, as if she were about to make an ironic remark to the cameraman. And the camera clearly adored her-Martinez threw the picture into 3D and rotated it, and Sula didn’t have a single bad angle.

Hope she’s not married,was his first thought. His second was that he didn’t much care if she were.

And then he noted the title that graced her official records. Caroline,Lady Sula. Why hadn’t he heard of her?

He paged through her service records. Unmarried-well, good. Her birth as a Peer had guaranteed her a slot in a military academy, and her record there was mixed-low grades the first year, better the second, top marks the third. After graduation she’d received good reports from her superiors-the words “intelligent” and “efficient” showed up a lot-though there were two comments regarding her “inappropriate sense of humor.” She had volunteered for pinnace training after her first year, and again won top marks as a pilot-her marks for high-gee and disorienting environments were good, and made Martinez feel more easy about sending her on this mission.

It seemed she was trying very hard to be a good, even outstanding, officer. But Martinez had to wonder why. The higher ranks of Peers considered it bad form to work this hard at anything. Someone with a palace in the High City should rise through the ranks without effort.

He thought to check Sula’s family, and there found his answer.

Both of Caroline Sula’s parents, high officials in the Ministry of Works, had been found guilty of conspiring to steal millions from government contractors. Nine years ago they and their associates had been publicly flayed and dismembered at the public execution ground in the Lower City. Their property was confiscated, and the remaining family banished from Zanshaa.

Martinez gave a slow, silent whistle. Sula Palace didn’t belong to the Sula family anymore.

Maybe nothing did.

Cadet Caroline Sula watched Captain Blitsharts’s yacht roll and tumble against the cold velvet darkness. She illuminated it with floodlights, and watched it carefully as it yawed and spun. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong withMidnight Runner, no obvious damage, no clue as to why it had run out of control. Not even a nick on its shiny paint.

Whatever was wrong was on the inside. Damn it.

She nudged her pinnace to a position on the axis of theRunner’s spin, the line along which she would have to creep in order to mate with the runaway craft. Proximity alarms blared, and Sula cut them off.

Maybe the alarms were right. The view didn’t look encouraging from here, with the yacht’s spinning bow lunging toward her with every beat of her heart.

She decided not to be stupid and to take some meds to inhibit motion sickness. She’d be sleepy after the adrenaline wore off, but that was better than being sick.

Or dead.

She charged a med injector with the Fleet’s standard antinausea drug and placed the injector to her neck, over the carotid artery. And hesitated.

Seconds passed. When she took the injector away, her hand was trembling.

Not like this.

She put the injector back in the med kit and took out a pair of med patches. She took off her helmet, peeled away the clear polymer backing of the patches, and placed one behind each ear. It would take longer for the patches to work, but at least she wouldn’t have nightmares afterward.

Her mouth had gone dry. She took a drink of water from the tube built into her seat back, donned and closed her helmet, and reached toward the comm board so she could transmit her decisions to Operations Command.

Then she thought better of it. She was alone. They hadsent her out here alone. It would take half an hour for her signal to reach Operations at the speed of light, hours for a reply to return. They couldn’t help her do her job any more than they already had.

You’ve got toscrewit in. The words floated into Sula’s mind, and she laughed.

Right, Lieutenant Martinez, whoever you are. This is for you.

She touched Transmit, sending audio and video both. “Cadet Sula to Lieutenant Martinez, Operations Command. I am about to attempt rendezvous withMidnight Runner. I will send telemetry throughout the maneuver.” She hesitated, then twitched her eyebrows toward the camera. “Please bear in mind that I haven’t ever screwed in quite this way before.”

She ended the transmission, arranged to send a continuous broadcast of vehicle telemetry and radar data to Zanshaa’s ring, and pointedly avoided sending any data from inside the pinnace-visuals or vital signs from the monitors in her suit. If she passed out, said or did something stupid, shit her pants, or abandoned herself to a fit of screaming terror, at least Lord Commander Enderby wouldn’t be watching.

Sula took a deep breath of the canned air in her vacuum suit. Her mouth was dry again.

She decided to go virtual for a better view of the outside environment. The close confines of the cabin vanished from her visual receptors, replaced by the crisp visuals of the outside monitors, with heads-up displays of critical ship systems and controls superimposed on the outside view. At once she thought she’d made a mistake. The view ofMidnight Runner, through the hyperreality of the virtual world-the sense that all this was happeninginside her skull — was more frightening than if she’d been peering out a window at the same sight. She couldsense the mass of that prow coming around like a bludgeon every heartbeat, and feel pure malevolence in the way it seemed toreach for her…

Get a grip,she told herself. She fought the fear that pulsed through her veins, took deliberate breaths to lower the triphammer beating of her heart. Reached for the maneuvering controls on the arms of her chair. Tried to time the swing ofMidnight Runner’s bow. And triggered her thrusters.

One plane at a time.Maneuvers were calibrated in roll, pitch, and yaw. She started with roll, nudged the control in her left fist. Vertigo shimmered through her inner ear as it sensed her craft starting to tumble, but she mastered it.Midnight Runner ‘s motion shifted relative to her own, began to seem less eccentric. She kept her attention focused not on the runaway yacht, but on the heads-up display and the roll indicator. She kept nudging the boat’s roll higher till she saw it match the number that the simulation had predicted for Blitsharts’s yacht.

Good. But that was the easy part. Her inner ear could adapt well enough to spinning on one axis, but when she began to alter pitch and yaw, the cockpit-which was well forward in the boat, like that of Blitsharts’s-would swoop and spin through a series of freakish arcs, as if stuck on the end of an erratic pendulum.

Sula began to nudge the pitch control in her right hand. At first the sensation was barely distinguishable, but as pitch increased and the bow of the pinnace swooped in larger and larger circles, the vertigo built. Fear shivered through her mind. She might not be able to do this for long, possibly not for the length of time it would take to gradually increase her pitch and yaw.

Do it all at once,she thought. She added yaw to her movements, both hands working now. She kept her gaze focused fiercely on theRunner, trying to ignore the wildly spinning stars in the background. The yacht’s complex motions began to moderate relative to her pinnace, untilMidnight Runner finally stood still in her vision, the bow no longer lunging at her but simply hanging there against the pirouetting star field.

Vertigo swam through Sula’s mind in a series of surges, like an inexorable flood tide. Her suit clamped gently on her arms and legs, forcing blood out of her extremities. Her vision was beginning to narrow. She knew it was time to get this over with.

She nudged the controls to back her boat, stern first, toward the yacht. It felt as if her bowels were trying to climb up through her throat-Sula swallowed hard and shook sudden tears from her eyes. She was only a few seconds from grappling, and then she could wrestle both boats to a standstill.

And then Sula saw whiteness blossom in the spotlights that illuminated the scene, and sudden horror surged through her veins. Maneuvering thrusters had just fired-Blitsharts’sthrusters. The yacht’s bow began to swing. In terror, Sula shoved both controls forward, trying to get clear-and then there was a sudden massive lunge as tons of yacht shouldered into her pinnace, followed by a horrid rumble and a hideous scraping sound that shivered along the hull. A howling alarm jolted her nerves. For several terrible seconds she felt the prolonged contact in her bones, and then she was free, away fromRunner’s embrace.

Her vision had contracted almost to nothing. She fought the ship’s pendulum motion by feel alone, battling the vertigo that swam her mind. She was only certain she had stabilized the ship’s motion when the blackness began to retreat from her vision and she saw the virtual world again with its displays.

Bile stung her sinus. She shut off the collision alarm, turned off the virtual displays to bring her cockpit back in her vision again, then lay in her acceleration couch and drew one shuddering breath after another while she tried hard not to throw up. Probably the only thing that stopped her was the thought that her suit was much less efficient at coping with vomit than with urine.

Eventually the urge to vomit faded, as did the thunderous crash of her heart. Sula opened her helmet and wiped sweat from her face, and only then remembered that she should have checked hull integrity before opening her suit to the environment.

She went over the displays, triggered her pinnace’s diagnostics and found no sign of damage. Then she checked the exterior displays and found the long scratch on the pinnace’s hull where Blitsharts’s boat had contacted her own, the light blue paint that had been Kandinski’s pride scraped down to the pale resinous hull.

Sula mopped her face again. She shifted the exterior displays toMidnight Runner, which was slowly drifting away while still tumbling. The yacht’s motion was different now: the collision, plus Blitsharts’s thrusters, had added more complexity toRunner’s movement.

Damn. She mopped her face again and hoped she was presentable for video, that her next message wouldn’t show Enderby a wild-eyed, panicked junior.

She triggered the comm board and tucked in her chin to keep her jaw, and her voice, from trembling. “Cadet Sula to Operations Command. The rendezvous failed, due to Blitsharts firing thrusters during the maneuver. There was a collision, but hull integrity is uncompromised and ship systems undamaged. I will evaluateMidnight Runner’s current motion and try to discover whether it is possible to attempt another rendezvous.”

Sula ceased transmission, watchedRunner spin away through the void, and slowly came to the realization that she was now off the hook. The vehicle telemetry she’d sent to Operations would show Blitsharts’s thrusters firing and ruining the rendezvous. She could hardly be blamed for not attempting rendezvous again, not with a target that was tumbling in a more dangerous pattern.

The mission had failed, and it wasn’t her fault. All she had to do was take a close look atMidnight Runner’s new, more complex tumbling pattern, then decide it was too dangerous to attempt.

And the failure would beBlitsharts’s fault.No blame will attach …For once, perhaps for the only time in her service career, that statement would actually be true.

She was free to abandon the mission.

For a long moment Sula listened to the air circulate through the cockpit and wondered why she didn’t feel like celebrating.

She nudged the controls and sent her pinnace afterMidnight Runner. She parked again along the axis of theRunner’s spin, and slowly eyeballed the yacht as it tumbled. Yes, the movement was more complex. More dangerous.

If she went in for the rendezvous again, she’d have to do it faster, finish it before she passed out.

What do you meanif? she demanded of herself. Surely she wasn’t going through with this.

“Display: go virtual,” she commanded.

Space expanded in her skull as her view of the cockpit faded. The yacht rolled in the void of stars.

“Display: show only images within one light-second.”

The stars, and the brighter star that was Vandrith, winked out. When the pinnace was tumbling, the frenzied dance of the stars were both a distraction and a temptation to motion sickness.

“Display: freeze motion. Display: link pointer to hand controls. Display: pointer is now at target. Display: attach artificial horizon to target at pointer. Display: resume motion. Display: link hand controls to maneuvering thrusters.”

With these commands, Sula used her attitude controls to manipulate a virtual “pointer” in the display, attaching an artificial horizon-a flat open gridiron colored a highly artificial fluorescent orange-to the skin of Blitsharts’s boat. This now rolled and pirouetted along with the yacht’s motion, a flat plane that danced in a frenzied circle around her.

With further commands, she narrowed the artificial horizon until it was only a strip, an orange carpet that led right to the point onMidnight Runner where she could successfully grapple.

“Display,” she commanded, “reverse angle.”

Instantly, her perspective faced directly away from the yacht, and she saw only the artificial horizon in its frenetic dance around her. There were no distractions in the display, no massive prow coming around to threaten her. All she would have to do was match her own boat’s motion to the artificial horizon, then back up along the orange carpet till she met theRunner.

And of course do it without getting killed. That being the sticky part.

She realized then that she had decided to make the attempt, and wondered when that decision had come. She had every justification in the world to back off-she had no reason to think that Captain Blitsharts was alive-and had every cause to fear the outcome.

But still,she thought.But still…

Maybe she was just stubborn.

She closed her helmet and triggered the comm unit. “Cadet Sula to Operations Control. I’m going to try once again.”

As soon as she ended the transmission, her hands went to the maneuvering controls and-before she could change her mind-she began triggering jets. She wasn’t going slowly this time, no cautious addition of yaw to roll to pitch, but moving in all three planes at once.Don’t think about it, she told herself,just do it.

Vertigo surfed through Sula’s skull. She felt gravity tug at her lips and cheek, felt her suit clamp down on her arms and legs. She kept her eyes focused on the strip of dancing bright orange, on making the dancing orange carpet stand still.

The orange horizon moved only in two planes now. Stinging acid rose to her throat, and she fought it back down, clamping her jaw and neck muscles to send blood to the brain. Now the horizon moved only in one plane, bobbing up and down like the bow of a rowboat, until she stilled that movement as well. Her stomach took a sudden lunge into her throat, and she battled it back down.

“Display: reverse angle.” The words fell from her lips like a faint prayer. Suddenly the angle was reversed, and she sawMidnight Runner standing still in the blackness, the bright orange carpet fixed to its back. She nudged both controls, and the yacht crept closer. She could feel tears whipping across her face as the boat’s frenzied gravities tore them from her eyes, and was thankful that tears could not blur the virtual display burning in her mind.

But gravities would. The orange carpet was not as bright as once it had been. Her vision was going black. She could barely see theRunner’s shiny black prow as it slid under her. She braked, hoping she had slowed her boat’s movement to a crawl, and as her vision darkened she cried out, “Grapples: engage!”

Both the yacht and the Fleet pinnace were made of layers of resinous polymer stiffened by longitudinal polycarbon beams-nothing a magnetic grapple would adhere to. But ferrous degaussing strips ran the length of the hull, charged to repel radiation, and these provided a lodging for the grapples.

There was a shuddering boom as the two hulls came together, followed by a tone in Sula’s headset that told her the grapples had successfully adhered. And then she was working the thruster controls again, fighting the two boats’ mad tumble through emptiness.

“Display: kill the artificial horizon! Display: show the plane of the ecliptic!” The words came from her in a choked scream. Two boats were heavier than the pinnace alone, and sluggish to respond to the controls. She could barely see the plane of the ecliptic even as it was projected onto her visual centers, a green gridiron that flashed over and around and across…

She battled the swinging weight of the locked boats, and then a new jolt of terror shrieked through her nerves as she felt somethingelse resisting her-Runner’s thrusters were firing again. Blitsharts was fighting her. Fury at this treachery raged in her heart. She battled on, struggling against the chaotic movement, battling to remain conscious as her vision darkened…A wail rose to her throat, a bubbling cry of frustration and anger.

The boat juddered and moaned as gravities warred within its frame. Then Sula gave a shout of triumph as she realized her vision was returning. She saw the plane of the ecliptic rolling around her in a simple pattern…she applied thrust, damping the ship’s oscillations, then felt a surge of weary triumph as the gridiron plane stilled, stretched like a carpet beneath her feet from one horizon to the other.

Blitsharts’s boat gave a single blast from its thrusters, and Sula corrected easily, feeling little but irritation at this last rebellion.

She discontinued the virtual display, then had to shake tears and sweat from her eyes before she could see at her cockpit. Wearily, gasping for breath and fighting the rebellious stomach that still pitched and rolled inside her, she called up ship diagnostics. No damage, no hull punctures, antimatter safely contained.

She opened her faceplate and wiped her face. Acid burned in her throat, on her tongue, and she took a long drink of water. Maybe it would settle her stomach.

She wiped her face again, reached for the comm board, and began to transmit.

“Cadet Sula to Operations Control. Rendezvous completed. Both craft now stabilized. In a moment I will grapple toMidnight Runner’s hatch and then try to enter.”

Once the transmission was over, she took her time before moving, waiting for the vertigo to stop swooping through her head and her stomach to stop trying to climb out her throat. Then she ungrappled, rolled her boat over onto its back, and slipped it forward alongMidnight Runner’s hull until the two dorsal hatches could mate.

She closed her faceplate again and touched the transmit button. “Cadet Sula again. I have successfully grappled hatch-to-hatch withMidnight Runner. I am going on board.”

She switched on her helmet camera to give everyone at Operations the same view she had herself, unstrapped from her acceleration couch and floated out into the weightless cockpit. Careful not to let her useless legs hit any controls, she rolled over, rolled away the plug of radiation shielding that blocked the exit at the back of the cockpit, then ghosted down the tunnel that connected the cockpit to the pinnace’s small airlock. Once there, she sealed the tunnel behind her, triggered her helmet lamp, and ordered the outside hatch to open.

The hatch obediently rolled back, presenting her with a view of Blitsharts’s own glossy black dorsal hatch. She floated to the hatch, looked at the controls, and told the hatch to open.

It did so in silence. Sula pulled herself head first intoRunner’s tiny airlock, braced her feet against the sides and wrenched the lever that should open the airlock to the interior. It refused. The controls made an annoying meeping sound. She looked at the airlock control display and surprise rang along her nerves.

“This may take a while, Control,” she said. “There’s hard vacuum in there.”