Prologue

"They're very pretty, but I don't wear jewelry!"

This inspired another round of mirth.

"Pilot, of all the jewels and geegaws in the universe, a pilot should never be seen wearing firegems!"

Arndy Slayn was not laughing as hard as he might, Theo saw; in fact, he was blushing.

"I should apologize, Pilot," he said with a nod. "We all forget. Firegems are pretty and even attractive, but you could probably buy a double handful of these for the price of the cheapest ale on the station."

He held one out to her and the light played about so much that Hevelin leaned to look at it, too.

"But why the pouch—how did you know before you opened them?"

"Lotta crew members carry these," Bringo broke in, "and some pilots, sorry to say. They're trade, or more like bait, good for back worlds where travelers are news. And so someone in trouble or looking for some, might open a pouch like this and offer a gem in return for favors, or explain that they were going to get rich, soon, and borrow money on the contents. These things, pouches and all, sometimes with certificates of authenticity too, you find them in the cheap shops some spacers visit."

With some effort Theo rolled and sealed the firegems away in their pouch. She was about to throw it into the bag when Peltzer said, "And like vya, maybe something that can be carried if you have room and are not sure of your destination. At times a pilot must act for the ship, after all."

Theo looked at Peltzer, heard Hevelin's deep thrum . . . and tossed it back in the bag.

"Knowing choice is a better choice," Bringo said, nodding toward her. "Some solutions are better to not have in hand."

Slayn reached behind the bag—

"And finally, there are a few odds and ends of coins, and this which I cannot identify. A mechanical thing, a—"

Theo caught the object, and it was as if she felt a buzz in her ear, and a sudden distraction of thought. It felt—dirty. Reflexively, she threw it back, and the nasty feeling was gone.

"Don't want it," she said succinctly, and reached for the signing tablet to witness she'd made her choices.

At that Hevelin chuffed for attention, and images of those people he'd shown her earlier—maybe Father and those others—rose before her. There were also brief flashes of the men she'd fought, and even of Brine Batzer, but they faded. Theo ruefully admitted he had a point: the uglies were gone. This pleased her as much as him.

Getting out of Codrescu was easier than getting in. For one thing the clipping out was just that: turn off the connections, release to the acknowledgment that Cherpa's port fees were now finalized, and twitch the merest touch of gyro. The ship spun the hand's breadth required to show clear and responded to the puff of gases released by the closed connections to begin a slow backing away.

yos'Senchul, Theo thought, was brooding. He'd all but hit his head on the deck bowing to her on her return, congratulating her both on her acceptance as a Guild member and her handling of the "unfortunate incident," the while indicating that she should sign in as soon as possible to maximize her ship time.

Theo cycled the scanner to local, overemphasized a touch and ended up with general—

As before, the screen showed incoming as blue and outgoing as green, and another touch brought up orbital elements and projected destination or outbound Jumps—and there in red was the incident report tagged Shadow Ship.

"Still here," Theo remarked.

"Yes, Pilot, it is. While the range seems to have changed in the interim, we're still improbably showing identical proper motion. Noted, and logged."

Theo heard an undercurrent in his voice and asked, "You're worried about it?"

His hands waffled, signing no-and-yes, balanced.

"Before you graduate, Pilot, we will have the discussion about the other possibilities a shadow ship might represent. Perhaps an Yxtrang surveillance device, or a leftover from the great wars, or a cloak for a smuggler. All of these and more, including a ship crewed by ghosts, which has been a tale of pilots for centuries.

"But now, we return to things more solid than ekly'teriva, Pilot. We have no need to make the full orbit from here—call ahead and we shall land in time for breakfast. And you will have time to visit the armorer before your first class."

Twenty-Eight

Armorer's Forge

Anlingdin Piloting Academy

Her anticipated target moved, shaking the dump lid, but staying out of sight. She wasn't going to trust a sound shot or try a ricochet; she needed a clear view, and time . . .

The dark one she'd thought she'd already taken care of moved, standing with a lurch, arm swinging toward her, wild shot singing somewhere else. Without compunction she took him down with a three-shot volley, twisting in time to get off a shot at the other one, aiming at the gun itself in desperation—

A flash of blue filled the alleyway; she jerked back, sighed—and stood down.

"Clear on the range," she said, carefully sliding the gun into the unfamiliar holster. "Clear on the range."

"Thank you, Pilot. Clear on the range." That voice spoke into her left ear.

She removed the light goggles, blinked into the room that was really there instead of the alley and warehouse that weren't. There was the sound of a door unsealing, and a light step.

Tiffy Hasan stood about where Theo's last shot must've missed her target.

The armorer offered her the tablet with her scores on-screen, but she still had sweat in her eyes and she was breathing kind of fast, so she paid it no attention. Her muscles didn't exactly hurt, but her left hand was cramped, and she was pleased to let the tablet rest on her forearm and steady it with the fingers of her right hand.

"Four on one," Hasan said, "and that with a grip you're not comfortable with. We'll fix that; take an impression and get you something custom. Not sure how custom—you seem to be able to shoot with either hand, which isn't a bad thing at all. 'Course you don't want to change hands in the middle of things unless you have to. That last shot was a wingdinger, by the way, and a little too tricky for real shooting, 'cept if you're really desperate. You was aiming at the gun, right?"

"It was all I could see, Tiffy. Keep the head down, keep . . ."

"Yah, right. Did what you wanted; the comp counted it as a disable three since your shot would have gone through the hand and put something on the gun, too."

Theo realized she was still breathing hard, threw a hand-signed excuse this toward the woman, and danced about three breaths' worth of relaxation. Her shoulders and arms crackled with the first moves, but by the end of the sequence she was feeling a lot more sure of her footing.

"So, you don't think you want to be a gunfighter?"

Theo laughed. "Give me a ship to fly. I'll be happy if I never have to pull a gun again."

"Excellent. The ones that scare me are the ones who think doing a sim is enough like the real thing to go out looking for trouble."

"I'd go to merc school if I really wanted to be a fighter."

Tiffy grinned. "I been to merc school. Say no if you get the chance, that's what I say. But then, that's experience for you."

Before Theo could answer, the armorer held her hand out for the gun.

"So, while I was waiting for you to finish cleaning up Trantor's docks, I ran the report on your gun. What's good is that we don't have any links to it; no law enforcement or military looking for it. What's bad is the last owner of record died a dozen years ago. That don't really matter—this is a case of who has it now owns it now, and that's you. The thing is—you listen up, Theo Waitley!—is that this weapon is not going to make muster as a day-carry here on Eylot. Most places won't measure the difference, but here, this is a what they call a service weapon. See, it's derived from a LaDemeter mini, uses the same basic design, even if there's no doubt that Ianic built it. That design is why you got that shot off at the end of the sim. That design also makes it too much gun for carrying on walkabouts for fun. If you're on duty, going to duty, or coming from duty—on Eylot you can carry it. Else you gotta leave it at home. That's official, and you'll sign a paper saying that."

Tiffy sighed gently.

"Me, I'd carry it. Get yourself an on-call notation somewhere, and that ought to cover, 'cause that's a technical duty level. I hate to travel without something on me. You can't always depend on hitting someone upside the head with your hand." She nodded. "Tell you what, let's make that impression, now. If you trust to leave it, I'll have it ready for this evening."

As it turned out, between "after breakfast" and "this evening" encompassed a long day filled with petty annoyances. She had to get her class schedule filed for next year, and every required course looked to be arranged as inconveniently as possible for people who were actually trying to fill their credit-hours with real work. Both the kids she was tutoring were late for their sessions, and Kon could just as well have stayed in bed and slept it off, for all the headway he made on his board drills. In retrospect, she probably hadn't been as sharp as she should've been, either—the adrenaline taking its balance.

After her last class, she went past the armorer's, though by then she could barely keep her eyes open. Her gun with its new grip was ready. She tried it, and Tiffy pronounced her "good to go."

Back at the dorm, it was her turn to fix the midweek, in-dorm meal she shared with Asu, the last vestige of their first year together. She laid down, figuring to take a short nap, and woke up, refreshed, and behind time for starting the meal.

Annoyed, she rushed the batch of maize buttons, and almost burned them while she was getting the rest of the meal together. A taste test showed they were a touch on the dry side so she made up a nice moist icing, using the last of her prized bethberry jam, at which point Asu swung in, only a little late, ate a third of the icing before it could get on the maize buttons, and rushed off to her personal comm unit, leaving behind a cryptic, "Theo, you've got to be seen in public to stop all these rumors!"

"Dinner's almost ready!" Theo called at the blank faux wood; whatever Asu was saying, which went on for some time, was muffled beyond recognition. Maybe she was on voice comm.

Now on task, Theo set the table, brewed tea for herself and Asu's special blend of coffee for her.

Asu reappeared, dressed to go partying. Theo stepped between her and the maize buttons, coffee in hand.

"Sit. I serve. You talk about rumors. Clear?"

Asu took the proffered cup, sipped, and sat as Theo brought the meal to the table.

"You know there's been some disquiet among the local Terran population; they have some grievances that they feel aren't being addressed, and they're starting to take action. I tried to introduce you, remember, and bring you along to some of their events, so you could meet people and they could get used to you, see that you weren't a threat?"

Theo sipped. Since they'd moved out of Erkes, it was true that Asu was always trying to drag her off to parties where she promised Theo would meet "interesting people," but—

"You're always too busy. And now look! Things are going to happen—everybody says so. Even some of the instructors are dropping hints that the school's changing direction, soon—and your name keeps coming up when students talk. The local kids think I'm local since I'm not into DCCT. They want to know why I'm still rooming with you when I had a chance to change things when we moved out and got the double together."

"But," Theo began as her hands said stay course, Pilot, "there wasn't any reason to change, I mean . . ."

"See, even there! Theo, you want to go to hand-talk all the time. You double-talk, hands and words at the same time. You started off bad in math and now you're doing special labs and teaching special labs. You get extra flight time—look at yos'Senchul having you haul him up to the little port! So what happens is that with all the political things and the social stuff where you aren't hanging around with your class, but always bucking for more work and more time and . . ." Asu shook her hands—not finger-talk, but simple frustration.

"I don't think you're deliberately trying to upstage the locals, Theo. I think you're just plain not paying attention to life and to society. It shows up all the time. You miss parties because you have work to do. You don't socialize nearly as much as most of us. You miss DCCT stuff, too, I guess, because your Kara is half the time calling here to see if I can roust you from your studies."

Theo took a deep breath, and put her teacup on the table.

"Asu, I'm not here to party. I'm here to be a pilot. And the DCCT people, some of them come from ships, or they've lived their life in trade families. Look at you; you have a tradeship named after you!"

Asu sat back, blushing.

"I didn't know you knew."

Theo suppressed the hand gesture read the ship lists and said with exasperation, "Why wouldn't I know? I've been reading job postings the last two semesters, for practice. You're going to have a spot to go to when you get out. But my family doesn't have ten tradeships to rub together in one port, and I can't make a living scraping my way up the teaching wall. As a pilot, I am what I am. I can do the math or I can't. I can handle the docking or I can't. When I get out of here, I'm going to be the best pilot I can be!

"This other stuff, the rumors here—I'm only going to worry about them if they get in my way. I don't have the energy for this superiority game. If the locals want to be better than I am, or better than DCCT, then all they have to do is the work!"

Asu squinched her eyes together, hard. When she opened them they looked watery.

"Theo, I'm in a spot. I keep telling people you're really not a bad person. I tell them that. I tell them that you're just really busy. I tell them that. What am I going to tell them now—that all the rumors about my roomie being a spy and a provocateur are wrong? I tried telling them that."

Asu thunked her cup down hard.

"And they say that nobody's as good as you are. That you have to have help—outworld help. They say that you're part of a Liaden plot to take over Eylot and take over the rights of the local Terrans. And that—is crack-brained, frankly. I mean, if you're too busy to go to a class tea, when would you find the time to be an agent provocateur?" Asu shook her head. "They don't know that, though. They don't know you, and that's what makes it easy to set you up as a target."

Theo stared. "Asu—"

"I think you need to talk to the health people about your stress levels. I really do. And if you won't, you'll be looking for a new roomie for next year, because I have to live here too, and I am not superior to everyone else, and I do not live only for space, and I won't be lumped in with somebody that everybody else thinks is a threat."

Theo pushed her empty cup away.

Theo let her hands say always have a backup plan. "I see," she said quietly. "Thank you. I'll put in for space at DCCT next year."

Twenty-Nine

Anlingdin Piloting Academy

Eylot

Asu was gone.

Always have a backup plan.

Staring at the table, at the uneaten meal, Theo realized that she'd never really had a backup plan when it came to next session, or even to what she'd do over the break. She'd one plan: to graduate, and graduate as soon as she could, with the highest-graded license she could earn. She'd known that she would have a spot at Hugglelans, since she was already on their lists; she'd known she'd have Asu in the other bunk; she knew—well, but it turned out she didn't know.

Theo sat looking at the remains of the maize buttons, then rose and swept them and the rest into recycling and headed for her own room.

Plans. Choices. Somehow that reminded her of Father and the time he'd pointed out the folly of her trying to stay with him instead of moving to the Wall with Kamele.

"To what extent are you willing to fund this choice? How much sorrow are you willing to cause?"

And now, someone seemed to be asking the same kind of question again, but this time she was able to "fund" the choice.

Funding. When she was a kid she'd thought Father had simply meant how would she pay for her school supplies. But that wasn't all he meant, after all, and she knew that now. She had funded her choice through hard work. She'd come here, she'd fought her way through math courses, through red tape and through her own misconceptions. She'd fought with some people and made friends with others. She had, she thought, some allies. People who wished her well, who would help her, and whom she would help, in turn.

She was prepared to live with her decision, and if Asu couldn't live with Theo, then Asu was making a decision. Her decision. Theo hadn't come to the academy to be Asu: she'd come to be Theo.

Father's way of making choices was very advertent; and now she had to be advertent, too. If she was making people here in the main quad uncomfortable because she was more pilot than student—that seemed to be Asu's complaint, that Theo was doing too much and not being social enough—then she'd move to someplace where pilot and self-directed was more common—she'd see if there was room at DCCT. Last year Kara had mentioned the possibility, but she'd stuck with Asu, since they had come to the academy at the same time and they had managed to reach a certain comfort level. And there, did Asu really understand how much Theo'd put up with along the way? Did she?

Choice. Pilot's choice even. Stay your course, her hands counseled. Stay your course.

She danced a few moves, thought about lace, thought about Asu and her always going on about her boyfriends and her constant questions about Theo's weekends and about Win Ton. Thinking about Win Ton, what message could she send to him about this? Was it even important? He had work, work that was important to him, and needn't be concerned with the ways of students . . .

She touched Win Ton's gift, as if she would ask its advice. It felt good in her hand, and she was soothed. No, she decided. Win Ton didn't—couldn't—share with her the daily burdens of ship life and crew mates. There was no reason to write to him of this.

Advertency suggested she finish at least some of the studying in queue. There'd be time, later, to work out the details of next year's life.

She checked her pockets, which she did once or twice a day. And now, there it was, a gun. And three knives—although one would about slice maize buttons—and several disinfectant tubes and a small lace project wrapped in fine cloth and keys, and her key with pilot times on it, and the backup key, certified this morning as she and yos'Senchul passed through Ops, so it was up-to-date, and the suddenly comforting slickness of the Guild card reminding her that someone nearby did understand what she was doing, even if it was a norbear with near transparent fur, and then, the comm was in her hand, with Kara's account at the top of the list. A wave, and the comm was on; a click and it was answered.

"Hello," came Kara's voice, sounding young and a little silly, "you've reached my private backup message router at the ven'Arith residence. Your message is bouncing around the planet while it tries to find me. Please be patient because I'm probably bouncing around the planet, too."

Backup message router at her house? She'd never gotten that message before. Theo smiled. Maybe Kara was too busy with someone to answer the comm and didn't want to make promises. Not everyone had to be arguing this evening, after all.

Theo could bring no urgency to the studying she'd been trying to do. The energy she'd built up after talking with Asu was still there, still needing an outlet, and unrolling the lace had done nothing for her. She kept seeing star patterns, which reminded her that she needed to get Anlingdin Academy behind her, which meant getting organized for next year, which meant having an idea of where she was going be sleeping, which meant studying and having a plan which meant calming herself so she could . . .

She shook herself, realizing that she knew this pattern. In his best Jen-Sar-the-Professor mode, Father had pronounced this kind of thinking circular logic. His prescription for disrupting such damaging circularity was play or exercise. Theo didn't feel much like playing right now, which was why she was out on the campus in the dark, walking, walking, walking.

The academy at night was nothing new to her; she liked to be out alone, and the paths were old friends. She was used to hearing sounds from the airfield, but tonight there wasn't much going on there. Sometimes she could hear things happening at the stadium, but there wasn't much down that way tonight, either. There were people out: groups, couples, in the usual pathways, some more willing than others to be seen.

She had done the first of her usual routes, avoiding DCCT at first and skirting the field: she'd seen yos'Senchul's craft, and the shuttle being readied, and the usual evening maintenance crews on the tarmac. There were a few more people near the field; and there, a ten- or twelve-passenger airjet flowed overhead, banking into the landing pattern . . . out beyond her view momentarily and . . . it was funny the way she could visualize what the pilot had to be doing, how she must be here looking to the west and the beacon, here checking for visual hazards on the runway, here dropping the gear . . .

The breeze was stronger than she'd expected, or the pilot very casual by the way the ship crabbed in, but then, it was down and running to the end pads.

She didn't want company, wondered if there'd been some great sport victory for the school earlier in the day, because that was the usual cause for group celebrations, but there, she didn't pay a lot of attention to such social things.

"Aliens," someone on the path ahead of her was saying. "I mean, in a lot of ways they're more alien than Clutch turtles or norbears or anything nixty like that, because, I mean, because they look like us. Like—"

"Parasites. That's the word you want. Like energy thieves. They come in here and make it hard for us natives to get through school, they make the grading harder, they . . ."

Theo made a face. Must be some more of the new kids. The new kids always complained about how hard school was. She took a light left, veering onto one of the lesser paths, toward DCCT. She walked quietly now, listening, feeling like there was movement going on around her, and with the night so busy there might well be a chance couple or two leaning against trees or . . .

More people, talking low, somewhere ahead of her on the path.

"We've got be sure we let them know that this isn't just us, though. We all heard the news clips, we saw the charts, and there's been things going on for a while—this isn't, you know, personal, but we've—"

"Don't worry about. It's on the school channels, it's on the local channels. So we know something will be announced for first shift . . ."

Channels. Announcement. Now what? She hadn't caught up with the regular news, and wondered if she'd missed something urgent. She continued slowly on the path, knowing there was a cul-de-sac a little ahead. There, she could see a group in the dimness, moving in a bunch onto the path she was following.

"Anyway, they sent us the chant, so we can start it off right. And once we do, we're supposed to make noise until they come out and see the signs. We're already calling all their comms and keeping them busy."

Theo felt her energy level rise, and she could see someone in the group ahead of her waving something experimentally. They were going somewhere to make trouble, and the only thing out this way was DCCT.

The thing that was being waved suddenly burst into the brilliant actinic flare of an emergency wand. Patently something only to be used in time of dire distress, it cast tremendous shadows and Theo squinted against it, trying to see DCCT's building as something other than a mysterious blob hidden by great trees.

"Not yet!" someone yelled, too late, as other flares took fire and illuminated words glowed in the air: Natives First! Solve Now!

There was a rush from behind her, and a curse and someone saying, "They started without us!" and some cheers, and a general buzz of excitement and energy filled the land, and more of the lights flared. Theo stepped toward the now-empty side path and then a face she almost recognized ran by, paused, and yelled, "Watch out, it's Waitley!"

The buzz turned toward her then: ten, maybe a dozen, and the accusatory, "She's one of them!"

Theo started moving, toward DCCT, the dance informing her steps and energy firming her plans.

Two burly students wearing air masks and strike fatigues blocked her path, yelling, "Outsider, outsider, outsider!"

She tried to to duck around them but the crowd behind was thick. The two burly guys lunged; she caught scent of vya as she dodged again. Then there were fists and feet and she responded as best she could.

"There were too many."

Theo was battered, bruised, and tired; she ached everywhere. Her eyes were closed and the touch of hands near her lashes made her eyelids flutter.

"Yes, there were," said a soft and familiar voice. "Far too many. In fact, they got in their own way. Thank you for not killing anyone."

"I was just out for a walk. I—"

"Yes, I know. I was medico for the interrogation. You were quite clear."

"I didn't really hurt anyone, then? I can't see how I could have . . ."

"You did. You hurt several people quite professionally. I salute you."

Theo closed her eyes, realized she'd actually had them open a moment, and recognized that she was talking to the med tech. Healer el'Kemin.

"This keeps happening," she said.

"Yes. It seems that it does."

She came back to that other point, the professional thing he'd mentioned.

"Hurt them bad?"

"You are among the most proficient undergraduates I have had the honor to meet here. Had they come at you in less than waves of six or eight I suspect you could have stood your ground. The security cams will tell part of the story, I'm sure. Certainly they will bear out the fact that you did not charge the crowd to start the riot."

"I can't tell. I'm not sure I remember entirely . . ."

"You will; if you are permitted to see me in the next seven days—and if you have comfort issues about sleeping, do you see me. For the moment the drugs they gave you for questioning have addled you a bit. Be still a moment. Do you feel this?"

"Questioning. Am I under arrest? Riot?"

"Please answer the question."

"Yes, I feel it. That's where my cut is. Or was. That's not cut, too?"

"It is not. I am calibrating your responses."

She tried to say pffft or something similar, but it came out more like a sigh.

"How are my responses, then? What about my riot? Am I under arrest, really?"

Somehow the idea of having her own riot, of being her own riot, was both energizing and ridiculous. She giggled. It must be the drugs. . . .

"Pilot Waitley, you are under security guard for your own benefit. There was a riot. You were at the center of it. I don't doubt the scorecard will make the rounds; three broken arms, several broken noses, multiple concussions. And that is just among those who admit to being there."

"I'm going to be thrown out as a danger to the school!"

"Pilot, please."

She looked up, saw his face serious rather than bland and medical.

"The school, indeed the planet, will take the wrong lesson," he said softly. "Yes, I fear you have it."

She closed here eyes again, realized she was carrying threads of thought at different levels. "Why were they wearing vya? Will it take seven days for me to stop hurting?"

He laughed, which surprised her, and she opened her eyes.

"Permission, lady, to answer briefly."

She nodded.

"Vya is sometimes used medically, and sometimes as an overstimulant to create concentration or passion. Those of the broken noses were drunk on vya and other such stimulants and were therefore both unconquerable and heedless of danger. As for the seven days, the coming changes have become clear to me and I am among the first to have issued my resignation letter to the academy."

Thirty

Administrative Hearing Room One

Anlingdin Piloting Academy

"My ID is authentic!"

Theo schooled herself to calmness, thinking the dance moves rather than dancing them, remembering that she didn't need to always be ready to fight, feeling the aches that meant she'd just been in a fight.

The Anlingdin student ID wasn't the problem; that checked out. That she'd need to show any ID to get into her own hearing, accompanied by a well-known staff member, was on the far side of enough, already. But the demand had clearly been for "All academic and professional ID, please," and that had surely meant her Guild card, which she'd trumped with the Hugglelans Rotating Staff ID card. That card, too, had been accepted at face value, but the Guild card was another matter.

The guard in the unfamiliar uniform scanned the unmarred ID again, shaking his head.

"It does appear authentic. But it wasn't issued on Eylot, by the registry office here. It didn't go to the planet registry for approval. This one was processed elsewhere, so it didn't have local approval, and it's so recent that—"

"For approval?" It had taken her a moment to catch that. Theo fought hard to keep her face and eyes turned away from Veradantha, still standing silent beside her. "Local approval? The Pilots Guild is galactic."

Theo saw the guard lose concentration as he looked elsewhere for guidance and finally found it in a man in a business suit who lounged nearby. He moved forward, speaking firmly, to Theo and Verandatha as much as the guard.

"Yes, that has been the process here; any pilot with credentials and training might go to the local Guild office and join. Of late, however, an additional step has been added for those not from Eylot—they must meet piloting standards, of course, but they also must first have a job offer or a job and to get that they must be—"

The guard pointed to Theo's left hand, where the card bearing the crest of Howsenda Hugglelans was clenched firmly against her Anlingdin Academy credentials.

"Guide, the pilot does carry other, appropriate, ID."

The man in the suit nodded.

"You were correct in scanning her credentials, and correct that they are somewhat—out of the ordinary—for a student here. We shall make a note of that. As we should not start proceedings without her, you will admit her." He glanced at Veradantha, not politely.

"You will not be needed, counselor. Please return to your area."

The hearing hadn't taken long. In fact, Theo wondered why it had been called a "hearing" at all, since nobody had listened to her.

She walked—no! She strode. An eager calm infused her, dance was her being. The world went on all around her, voices and sounds, and as in a half-watched but well-known play. The theme of this play was an old one: Theo Waitley, threat and menace.

This episode was perhaps better scripted than the play as seen in her early days, when it was her hapless clumsiness that was cited. Now it was her pure potency that mattered—Theo Waitley, trained in unarmed combat, Theo Waitley, with a history of at least four violent incidents since she'd arrived on campus . . .

Four? There was her riot, of course, and then the incident of the stolen flight hours. But . . .

Somehow, for the purposes of this exercise, her infamous sailplane flight was linked to the general unrest being brought under control throughout the continent by the new policy rectifying the disadvantage and self-disadvantage Eylot had been laboring under. Then there was the recent incident, also linked to general unrest, in which a senior faculty member had intervened.

And now, of course, it was well known that this person with a history of violence was carrying a gun. True, as a pilot she might be permitted a gun, and clearly, she'd had the gun with her during the riot. That she hadn't brought it out and wounded dozens was considered by the panel to be a matter of oversight.

Commander Ronagy had not been absent at the hearing; nor had there been anyone Theo knew in the room. Evidence was read by the man in the suit—the Guide—and no discussion was allowed. She sat in her chair while the Guide spoke, telling the room that in times of unrest it was necessary and purposeful to regard the precincts of academia as central to the future of the planet, and in particular, the precincts of any place producing pilots, who are the core of commerce. Acknowledging the speeches by the Guiding Council as authorizing immediate action by Guides in place . . .

"This hearing is to announce and confirm the decision of the Guides of Purpose on the immediate suspension of academic privilege, residence, and attendance of Theo Waitley at Anlingdin Academy, on the grounds of a history of her continued association with violent activity. Given the state of unrest facing Eylot we must act to make and keep Anlingdin an orderly institution and cannot countenance the existence of an ongoing nexus of violence. This suspension is to remain in force until the student can demonstrate two years of clean, nonviolent civil behavior records, after which reinstatement to the start of the equivalent semester may be considered upon proper application through recognized channels, assuming the state of unrest and threat is resolved. Failure to leave the premises on time or in good order will be considered a violent breach of the peace."

After that, they'd read the incidents, explained that in uncertain times order was necessary, and . . .

Dance. Thoughts of bowli ball, and a vague understanding that she'd really be needing a place to sleep. Tonight. She wondered if there was some kind of a rebound from the interrogation drugs that made her feel like this.

She'd been distracted several times during the proceedings, wondering who the Guides would report this to. Certainly they should report it to Captain Cho, who had seen her enrolled—so she would need to be informed, and of course Win Ton, once she was settled, somewhere. She would have to tell Kamele—and that was something Theo wasn't looking forward to. Father had worked so hard to bring Kamele around and—Father. She couldn't start to imagine what Father would say.

But there, that was later. Father would be fine; Kamele would—she would make Kamele understand. Just like the times with her mentor and the silly problems on Delgado. She'd get through this.

She would.

For now, she walked, with a single goal: get out. There was a shuttle flight in an hour; the Guides having preempted the first two jitneys to show up after the hearing.

Before her, there were footsteps. A lot of footsteps, being not at all quiet, and now, voices.

"There she is!"

She turned, calmly, ready, feeling the weight in her pocket as well as the energy in her arms, anticipating that the first move would be—

"Kara!"

As calm as she'd been about facing potential hostiles, she was unnerved to find a half-dozen members of DCCT.

"You're all going to get in trouble!"

"We're all in trouble already," Kara said, grimly, "every one of us in DCCT. They've tagged us with association with recent violent activity, and with association with a known nexus of violence."

They were walking rapidly, away from the hearing room and in the direction of the space field and dorms.

"Nexus of—"

Theo's temper flared.

"Someone brings a riot to DCCT and it's your fault? And I'm the nexus? I am the nexus?"

She stopped suddenly, eyes closed, the pause so rapid that several of the DCCT members jostled her.

"What are you doing, Theo? Are you going to be able to walk or should we call a cab?"

Kara was right next to her, looking intensely into her face, eyes grim when Theo opened her own.

"I was remembering names, Kara. Faces and names. I swear I will not forget this!"

Kara bowed, very formally.

"Yes, we have the names as well. The whole thing was live on the admin channel, you know!"

"Double," Theo said. "Double! I have their faces. They think I'm going to want to come back to this—"

"That is much Balance, Theo. Do not take on—"

Overhead a rotary wing was sweeping by, search beam bright.

"There, they said they were going to start security sweeps on groups of three or more."

That was Bova, echoed a heartbeat later by Freck.

Theo spun—"I'll be able to do this, just go. Don't get into more trouble on my—"

Kara turned as well, hands moving purposefully: Split return careful I cover and report.

A flutter of assents, and the two of them strode on alone, the sound of the rotary thrumming in the distance. When they reached the path leading toward the field Theo veered in that direction, while Kara strode on toward the dorms until realizing with a start that Theo's path had diverged.

"Theo," she half whispered after catching up at a run, "where are you going?"

"I've got to be out of here, so the field . . ."

"But your things! In the dorm!" Kara's hands enumerated shirts jackets bags jewelry letters.

Theo stood quiet, considering, did a quick pat of her person, felt the wings on her collar, made sure the necklace was around her neck, checked on pockets, marked the gun's still unusual presence.

"I'm set. I have most of what I need on me."

Kara uncharacteristically stamped her foot.

"And you are going to give them your belongings!"

Theo swallowed against a sudden urge to tears, and shook her head.

"Hug me," she said, "and then go get the stuff. Keep it, dispose of it as you will, start a legal fund, anything!" Theo thought for a moment, recalling the signs Kara had made, shirts jackets bags jewelry letters.

Letters.

"Wait, there is something else! Letters, Kara—two letters from Win Ton yo'Vala. Send them to me care of the Pilots Guild at Codrescu. They'll hold them for me. Do that, and all will be well for me. The rest, do as you see fit!"

Kara froze a moment, and then bowed, very deeply and with flourishes.

"If you are certain, Theo Waitley, I will do this. I will be the instrument of your will."

Theo felt her smile fade, heard the sounds of the night include the shuttle's tow machine.

"Yes, Kara. I'm sure. I give you my key, and my word."

They hugged quickly, and Kara made her repeat the statement into her comm, so she had Theo's word, and tucked the key away. She hugged Theo again, then bowed one more time.

"Pilot, good lift!"

Theo nodded. "And to you," she said, "safe landing."

THIRD LEAP

Thirty-One

Hugglelans Planetary

Conglomeration of Portcalay

Eylot

Theo slept on the shuttle, content for once to have someone else do the piloting; waking groggily at touchdown. Eyes closed, she listened to the sounds of her fellow travelers—ten or twelve students including three part-timers she knew from the repair bays who had taken seats together at the front, willfully ignoring her, never once overtly looking at the single passenger in the last row in the rear. The ship also carried a double training crew of her classmates. Asu could be among them for all she knew, but Asu was not among those who inspected the interior of the craft before liftoff, nor was she among those departing the craft ahead of her on landing.

The angry energy that had seen her through her hearing and its immediate aftermath had deserted her entirely; and she considered simply going back to sleep. But no, that wouldn't do, would it? The shuttle would be returning to the academy and she was banned from the grounds. Eyes still closed, she fingered the chair's controls, sighing as it folded out of its recline.

C'mon, Theo, stand up. You've got work to do. Another sigh and she opened her eyes, saw the commanding shuttle pilot doing his end-of-flight stretch as he walked the ship.

"Time to move out, Pilot," he said mildly.

"Right." That sounded a little surly in her own ears, so she added, "Thanks," as she levered out of the chair, and moved down the aisle.

At the door she paused and looked back at him, surprising a look of sympathy on his face.

"Good lift," she said then, feeling like she owed him something for his concern.

"Safe landing," he answered quietly, as she dropped to the tarmac, waking the protest of six dozen bruises.

It wasn't a long walk to the office, but she was limping when she reached the door. There was a light on, of course; Hugglelans never closed. She set her hand against the door and pushed.

Aito glanced up from the console. He didn't look surprised to see her, even though she wasn't scheduled. On the other hand, he didn't look particularly pleased to see her, and Theo paused with her hand out, holding the door open.

"Should I go?" she asked him. "I don't want trouble."

He blinked, his professional smile snapping into place.

"Of course you don't want trouble," he said smoothly, gesturing her to come 'round the counter to the second chair. "You want a cup of tea and something to eat—and possibly an analgesic. I'll have a tray brought down from the kitchen. In the meantime, come and sit down, and tell me everything."

Splendid! she heard Father exclaim inside her head. You must tell me everything! She felt tears and a laugh rise together, coalescing in a sound something like a sneeze.

Aito raised his eyebrows.

"I'm sorry," she gasped, shaking her head. "It's just—you sounded so much like my father!"

He actually looked horrified. "That won't do at all," he managed, reaching out to flick a toggle on his board. "Come and sit down, Theo, before you fall down."

She did as she was told, settling into the old wooden chair with its short left leg. Tonight, the rocking motion was soothing and commonplace, when it was usually annoying. So she rocked, gently, and listened to Aito while he ordered food, and then called the restaurant main board, and arranged to shunt his console's business there.

"Until I take it back," he said, sharply, apparently in answer to how long this inconvenience was to go on.

Her fingers were twitching. Carefully, she folded them together on her knee. Aito hardly ever used the sharp side of his tongue; he must, she thought, be tired tonight.

"You may file a complaint with Father tomorrow if you—" He paused, maybe for an interruption, then continued with a full load of irony. "Yes. I thank you for your condescension, Seventh Daughter."

He closed the connection with a sharp move, and leaned back in his chair. Sighing, he lifted his hands and ran his fingers through his oiled hair, which didn't do anything more than make it sleeker.

"So," he said, giving her a grin that was less professional and more Aito. "What happened?"

The tray from the kitchen arrived while she was telling him everything; he poured tea for them both and shoved the plate of handwiches toward her. She took one, hardly attending what she did, and continued to talk.

When she was done, the plate was empty, a second hot pot of tea had arrived from the kitchen, and she felt—if not as energized as she had been after the hearing, then at least awake, on-task, and . . . determined.

"So, I'd like to put in my app for full time here at the yard," she finished, leaning forward, her cup cradled in both hands. "And to ask if I can claim a bed in the dorm—or rent a wayroom; I've got some money—"

Aito raised his hand, cutting her off. "One course at a time, Pilot. First, now that you are unburdened and fed—tell me how you feel. Do you require a physician? Will you have some painkillers?"

Theo considered that. Her hurts were mostly bruises and scrapes; while they nagged at her, she didn't think painkillers—no, she decided abruptly, definitely not painkillers. She needed to be alert.

It was an odd thing to think, here at Hugglelans, where she was safe, but she didn't question the rightness of her decision.

She looked to Aito and shook her head. "I'm . . . mostly all right. Healer el'Kemin said if I experienced any real trouble in the next seven days, then I should see him. If they'd let me."

Aito's eyes sharpened. "Seven days seems a peculiar figure," he noted.

Theo laughed slightly. "I said the same thing. It turns out he's put in his resignation, and he had to give academy admin seven days' notice."

"Oh," Aito said softly, and then, more loudly, "Oh." He snapped forward, fingers flickering as he entered a cal code into the board. "Your pardon, Theo," he murmured, picking up the receiver.

The comm buzzed twice, then clicked as the connection was accepted.

"Father?" his voice was brisk. "It's Aito. I apologize for the—Yes. Anlingdin Academy's Healer has tendered his resignation, it—Seven days. Yes, sir. I have Theo Waitley here in the office. She has been dismissed for—I expect they are, sir. I—Inciting a riot and being a nexus of violence. No, sir. She has had tea and food. She reports herself capable and refuses painkillers, though she would like a job and a place to sle—Certainly, not. It would be most inappropriate. Indeed, I will tell her you said so, sir. About the Healer? Shall I—Ah. Thank you, sir. Your voice, of course, carries the—Pardon? One moment, if you please, I will ask."

Aito cradled the receiver against his shoulder and looked over to Theo. "What plans has Kara ven'Arith? Does she follow you here?"

Theo shook her head. "I don't know. She—I gave her leave to gather up my things and to do with them as she sees fit. But, her family's local!"

"Yes," Aito said seriously. "Her family is indeed local." He lifted the receiver to his lips again.

"Theo does not know her friend's precise plans, which is doubtless wise. The ven'Arith has accepted the burden of Theo's will, in the matter of private possessions left behind . . . yes. Good night, Father."

He cradled the receiver and sat staring at it for a moment before he raised his eyes to Theo.

"My father thanks you for your service to Hugglelans, and for bringing the news directly. We had, of course, heard rumors and rumbles, but we had not suspected that the explosion would occur so soon."

"I don't think anybody did," Theo said. "Pilot yos'Senchul thought something was . . . imminent, but not immediate. That's—I think that's why he had me get my card at the station."

"Short Wing is longsighted," Aito said, and Theo shook her head.

"You're going to have to find another nickname," she said. "He has both arms now. The new one's mech. Top grade, too."

Aito stared. "You tell me that yos'Senchul has accepted the prosthetic? That—" He glanced toward the console, hesitated, and murmured, probably to himself, "No, it will wait."

"About a full-time job," Theo said, after a long moment had passed and Aito hadn't said anything else.

He started, looked to her and straightened in his chair.

"Ah, yes, the job," he said, and it was his professional smile he showed her, which didn't make much sense, Theo thought, though her stomach thought otherwise.

"Unfortunately, we cannot hire you here at Hugglelans Eylot," Aito said, so smoothly that the sense of his words almost slid past her.

She gasped, now realizing how much she had depended on Hugglelans—how certain she'd been that she had a place here. But, of course, she thought, painfully, they didn't want trouble. They were local, too.

"However," Aito was continuing, "it may be possible that you will qualify for an apprenticeship position with Hugglelans Galactica."

Theo stared, feeling slow and slightly stupid. "Hugglelans Galactica?" she repeated.

"In fact," Aito said briskly. "Did you think that this yard and the Howsenda was all there was? We span worlds, Theo Waitley. And, spanning worlds, we therefore have need of pilots."

"I thought you were a—service for pilots," Theo said. "The yard, the restaurant, the repair bays . . ."

"All of which we would need to maintain for our own ships! Why not extend the service and earn a fee to offset the cost of doing business?"

He stood. "We'll talk more of this after you've rested. I'm going to put you in the ready room."

Feeling not much less confused, Theo rose and followed him down the short hall to the rear.

"What about the pilot on call?" she asked, as Aito opened the door onto a room just big enough to hold a cot.

"The pilot on call this evening prefers to sleep other than in the ready room. As he's never missed a call and his partner is understanding of these things, Father accepts the arrangement." He pointed to the right. "Sanitary facilities at the end of the hall. You'll sleep safe tonight, Theo," he said, turning to look earnestly into her eyes. "Father is grateful for your service. After you've waked and broken your fast, ask whoever is out front to call me."

"Why?" Theo asked.

Aito smiled. "So that I can get you started on that application for full-time work you wanted." He inclined his head—half bow and half nod.

"Good night, sleep well."

"Good night, Aito," she answered, and stood in the doorway until he reached the top of the short hall, and the door closed behind him.

Please insert Howsenda Hugglelans employee card in the red slot, the instructions ran across the screen in rapid yellow letters. Theo complied.

Please insert Guild or other professional identification in the blue slot.

She slid the Guild card into the blue slot, feeling a pang as the machine accepted it. You'll get it back, she told herself sternly. They just need to download your data.

Please wait, the screen instructed her, the letters flowing into the Howsenda Hugglelans logo. The logo expanded, twinkling, against a black background, morphing into a blanket of stars spreading prettily, if not very realistically, into infinity.

Theo closed her eyes and counted to twenty-four. When she opened them, the graphic had faded, replaced by dignified blue-limned letters.

Welcome, Theo Waitley, Pilot Second Class. Your Guild license is active and cross-matches with your Howsenda Hugglelans employee identification. Following is the general piloting application for Hugglelans Galactica. Data gathered by this application resides, encrypted, in the Howsenda Hugglelans corporate database. Job applicants have the right to refuse three offered jobs before they are removed from the active database. Ready to proceed? Yes/No.

Theo thumbed Yes.

The questions were interesting, not all of them having to do with piloting, but a good number asking about her hobbies, whether she liked to be in a crowd or by herself, if she had any pets, if she'd taken self-defense. The "yes" on that question opened up a cluster of sub-questions: When? Which type? Was she proficient? Had she taught?

After that, there were more general questions, then the application program wanted to know if there were any planets she preferred not to travel to, if she had any outstanding local "rule violations," if so, what and where.

Finally, the screen flickered and one last question rose to its surface:

Are you qualified to carry a weapon?

Theo punched "yes" a little harder than was strictly necessary, and waited for a series of questions about her gun, her training with it, and her years of ownership.

Instead, the application program thanked her for her input and promised that a representative of Hugglelans Galactica would be contacting her with a job offer very soon.

It was, in fact, three days before she was contacted by a representative of Hugglelans Galactica, and that by proxy, in the person of Aito himself, who shook her awake on her cot in the on-call room, where she'd spent her time sleeping and working nav problems with her needles.

"Theo! Your ship is here!"

"What!" She was awake all at once, on her feet and stamping into her boots, her hands flew down her body, touching pockets, doing inventory. She grabbed her sweater off the hook and hauled it on as she followed Aito up the hall.

"I thought I got three refusals!" she said, as they came into the office.

He gave her a peculiar look over his shoulder. "Do you want to leave this planet?" he asked.

"Yes," she admitted.

"Do you," he asked, slotting a data card, glancing at the readout and nodding, "want to work as a pilot?"

"Yes!"

"Do you want to put your friends in peril?"

"What? No!"

"Good. Then you'll take this—" He flipped the card to her; she snatched it out of the air and stood holding it, watching him.

"That's your accumulated pay for unused vacation time, shift bonuses, and an override for a wayroom and a meal at any Hugglelans facility."

"Vacation time!" she exclaimed. "Bonuses? What—"

"Father," Aito interrupted, "is grateful for your service. I believe he said so previously." He tossed her another card, which she caught like the first.

"I am also grateful," he said quietly. "Listen, now, Theo. Cameron's on Number Two Hot, lifting in five minutes. The pilots are willing to have you sit Jump seat 'til Malta, where you'll disembark and report to the yard office. They'll have your papers, updated ID, all of it. You'll be 'prenticing to Pilot Rig Tranza—one of Hugglelans' long-time employees. You'll learn a lot from him."

"But, wait!" Theo cried. "What kind of ship? What kind of space? What—"

The board rang, and a man's voice rang out cheerily. "Our packet ready there, boss? We're coming up on a mark."

"Heading out now!" Aito said. He jerked his head toward the door.

Theo took a breath, held back the words in favor of a nod and a flashed good lift! and ran for the hotpad.

Thirty-Two

Number Twelve Leafydale Place

Greensward-by-Efraim

Delgado

It had long become the custom to share in the news from Theo when it arrived, and to make it as festive an occasion as possible. The joint revelation of their offspring's latest adventures being such a habit, not even this evening's committee meeting in support of Chair Ella ben Suzan's important work reconfirming the department's accreditation would do more than put it off, despite Jen Sar's protestation that a letter marked for Kamele Waitley should be enjoyed by Kamele Waitley as soon as possible.

Kamele's not unexpected insistence meant that Jen Sar worked late in the fall garden, regretting his favorite jacket's location in a spaceship storage locker where it protected him from no wind at all. After, he showered, prepared in advance what he could of a simple repast, and graded student papers, enjoying the company of several cats and the scan of near-orbit action in space until his still-keen ears discerned Kamele's steps on the walk.

She's very tired. Aelliana stirred, concern tinging her thought.

Indeed, he answered, I'm glad she's home, and with something to be pleased about!

Kamele's face lit when she saw Jen Sar, but the first thing she said was, "I'm sorry."

He raised quizzical eyebrows. "Sorry?"

She stowed several bags through the simple expedient of dropping them in front of the chair Coyster occupied, and then accepted Jen Sar's hug with warmth.

"Sorry I had yet another meeting, sorry the meeting went long again, sorry Ella's been quite so much in the midst of this, sorry Theo's letter arrived after you were gone for the day."

He hugged her again, which she accepted, just as she accepted their slow spin which brought them to the counter where the glasses were set and the bottle properly breathing.

"Ella is lucky to have you," he murmured, "and so is the Wall. Next year should see honest education out of all of you, with only a double dose of meetings instead of triple. Soon, all will return to normal!"

Kamele laughed softly. "Yes, a double dose of meetings does sound wonderful. It is really hard to remember sometimes that these people are all on our side!"

Soon they touched glasses and sipped, with Jen Sar all admiration of Kamele's attention to the glass.

Good, Aelliana observed, she'll sleep well tonight.

Distraction being the plan, Jen Sar tipped his head in Kamele's direction.

"Shall you read to me now, or shall we wait until after salad?"

"Let's see first if it is something to read or something to watch! Oh, and remind me to send on that clip we have from Bek; I'm sure she'll enjoy it!"

Kamele returned to her bags to retrieve the letter, while Jen Sar watched her.

"Well," he commented, "she's long put soarplanes behind her, so I think we don't need to worry on that score." After a pause, he added, "And really, as pretty a couple as they may have made for her gigneri, I doubt we can expect them to be much of a pair now, with him flying off stages and being an important artist, while she's going to settle on being a mere space pilot."

Kamele looked up from her rummaging to wrinkle her nose at him, and he smiled.

They had, he admitted made a pretty couple, and the gigneri pairing had confirmed both Theo's independence, and her willingness to fly off on her own in pursuit of her own choices.

The letter discovered, Kamele settled on to a stool to peel the plastiskin cover open.

Aelliana's eyesight was no better than his these days, but she dealt with far less distractions; she caught the return routing address as Kamele set the envelope aside.

I haven't thought about that place in years, copilot—Staederport!

"A letter only," Kamele said, squeezing carefully to be sure there were no flatpics or mediachips enclosed. "We can trade reading paragraphs!"

Not quite idly, Jen Sar insisted, "No, no, please go ahead as you will. I'll just see where the letter's been—"

He snagged the envelope, a frisson of concern raising the hair on the back of his neck.

The envelope was franked at the Guild Hall on Staederport, for Pilot 2 Theo Waitley, c/o Hugglelans Galactica/Light Courier Primadonna.

Do you suppose it is still the same storefront, Pilot?

"Dear Kamele," she began, the thin page rustling between her fingers. "I'm sorry to have to tell you that there has been a riot at school, and I've been declared—"

Aelliana had been a courier pilot, as well, and they both read the words and the visible codes with no problem, she computing ahead of him to inform—

Second seat on a working courier, with a box on Staederport! She's—

". . . a nexus of violence!"

Jen Sar was already at Kamele's side, who sat, white-faced, letter crumpled in hand.

"By the mothers, they've destroyed her!"

"Surely not," he said, easing her hand open to rescue the precious paper.

He wasn't certain how long it took, or whether it was his gentle insistence or Aelliana's firmer explanations that finally brought the rage to anger, the anger to acceptance. The wine sat forgotten for a while, and when recalled, was aimed at relaxing a mother's unrequited fury.

"Kamele," Jen Sar said, finally, "I swear to you this is true. The barbarians have not won. Theo may lack her degree, but she holds what she wants. She has her wings."

Thirty-Three

Primadonna

Alanzia Port

Tranza was off on another binge, Theo realized darkly; she'd be lucky if she saw more than a passing wave of the hand acknowledging her dinner arrangements or that he'd be prepared any time soon to "study on" her proposed course and timelines. This time, besides laying out the course and schedule, she'd already had to balance the official delivery loads in their outboard minipods and fine-tune the more sensitive high-value stuff in the pressure pallets. Was that enough? No, then came the rebalance because the local office was shipping "internal matter" set to arrive after they were moved to hotpad, which meant it would have to find space in the tiny passenger cabin.

The last time they'd had "cabin goods," as Tranza would have them, it had been a load of fron, a spice so rare and potent that an amount matching Theo's own mass was sufficient to sustain the Howsenda's needs—the final destination—for a period of years. Whatever it was, it was probably the one thing that had gotten her outdoors—

That was another thing. When the trip came across the board originally it was a straight orbital pick-up from the outermost of the four transfer stations. So, she'd calculated for that on the Jump, getting nothing but an "I can get by with this, I guess" from Tranza. Then, he'd told her to push Jump and she brought them through a day later, within hailing distance and all he had to say while they normalized the orbit was, "Hey, if we can get down there's usually some good play"—and he'd gone off to make a crew-rest request.

Crew rest was a joke; that meant Tranza got to visit friends and influence people while she tended the ship. If she was lucky, he'd bring back a new language module, and they could practice against each other.

If she wasn't lucky, he'd haul in a new set of silhouette training vids, not that she couldn't already identify forty-seven major ship styles and thirty-six uniques, including the top ten trade ships. Diamon Lines Chanticleer City? No problem. Korval's Dutiful Passage? She knew it from six directions, even though she'd never really seen it, either. Scout ships? She had them down by the dozen. Fah! That's what came of telling Tranza she'd caught a ghost ship in the screens when he was off-board and asleep. He wasn't going to let up until they found it all legal and ID'd in a sanctioned pack, since he'd taken polite leave to doubt the lacework sketch she'd provided.

Well, at least she hadn't had any repeat sightings in—well, in a good long while.

Once they'd dropped off their initial minipods they got that rest order, so on short notice she'd managed to cut to an inner orbit, and from there to the ground, with Theo getting a grand total of a walk to the local crew store and cafeteria and a visit to the pet library where she got to talk to a norbear for a few minutes between crowds of littlies on a field trip. That'd made her wonder why she'd never seen a norbear on Delgado but it was probably rules made up by the Safties.

The other good thing was that, after she visited the norbear, she'd gotten to see the birds, flying free, something that made her startlingly happy. Birds were oddities on Delgado, and the ones on Eylot were all tiny and stupid, but here on . . . wherever they were—Alanzia it must be. Here on Alanzia birds were protected as treasures, with even ship landings following paths strictly set to avoid nesting areas. Many of them had amazing wingspans and soaring habits that made them look like undergrown sailwings. Only good hearing had prevented her from being run down on the pathways, since she so often just stopped to take in the sight.

And then it was back to the ship, and now she could name Alanzia as planet number twenty-two that she'd set foot on, and likely number fourteen that she'd sat board for liftoff. Somewhere in her personal log she had a complete list of the ports, orbiting or not, and her time at the board and all that—but mostly she was keeping busy.

As for Tranza's binge, who could tell what it would be this time around? No doubt, it was something he'd picked up on Alanzia. He'd rushed back with several packages, asking after messages and delays, offering up advice to pull trip info on half a dozen potentials assuming a run to Volmer, of all places.

No, maybe she could guess. Her first trip out he'd mentioned music archives on half a dozen planets, Alanzia among them, since he'd just bought a run of a hundred different songs without instruments. He'd spent the first twelve-day with her breaking into what he assumed was singing at the oddest moments, and then he'd shown up for dinner with a tablet drum and some chimes so they could play music together, in between bouts of her learning, of course.

And that's the way it had been, him insisting that a pilot who wasn't learning was wasting what the universe was about, and periodically going off on tears of this or that amusement or pastime, in between bouts of sim flying, math games, and the like. He'd insisted that she keep up the ship-spotting regimen, saying that sometimes you needed to know without waiting for a computer to tell you, exactly what ship it was you'd got on the screen, or in your cross hairs. Some trips he'd spend all his time behind her shoulders, watching every move, and others he turned off the outer world and binged on drawing, or playing the flute. He'd tried to emulate her needle-play, but as good as he was at it, he didn't find it engaging. In fact they didn't agree on much in the way of music or art or theater or restful pastimes.

"Oh no," he told her the one time she dragged out a bowli ball, "not even a little bit, not on board Primadonna. We get to some place with room, I might play, but you come with a reputation, so maybe not. That goes away and I don't see it."

If Tranza was anything, it was protective of his ship.

"This vessel was first put in service the very day I got my jacket," he'd told her before she sat second board for the first time, "and I intend to see it in service the day I die. The company put me in here fifteen years ago and I won't have anyone at the controls who hasn't got a sense of proportion, control, and respect!"

The conversation had gotten a little odd after that, with him going on about her coming highly recommended, and asking why it was that they'd delivered her mid-session if she'd been at the academy.

"I'm suspended," she'd told him bleakly, knowing that someone should have given him a clue that she wasn't a top-scholar type of pilot, "and the folks at Hugglelans helped me get off-planet before I got in more trouble."

"Suspended? What did you do? Cheat on exams or—"

"Pilot, didn't anyone tell you? They say I started a riot!"

He'd sat back then, looking extremely solemn, and half-nodded.

"Started a riot. At Anlingdin Academy, was it?"

She'd flashed a hand-sign, confirm.

"Right. Well, here's the deal, Pilot Theo. You riot on your time, not on mine. If we're in port and you're a hellcat or a head-banging drunk, that's your problem until you get arrested and kept, or until you can't find the ship and be ready to fly it when the ship needs you. Portside I give you a comm, and you always have one ear for the ship: there's no such thing as unlimited liberty unless you're between runs, you got it? You and a choir can have plans for a Hundred Hours but if I call and say Primadonna needs you, you'll leave 'em all aching if that's where they are, because the ship's the thing. Right."

He tended to nod when he said right, and he looked at her, as if "right" was a command or a given and not a question.

With trepidation, knowing she was already too far away from everywhere and everybody she knew to say no, she'd agreed with a solemn nod and, "Right!"

Then he turned, pointed to the second seat, and said, "Sit. Get the seat adjusted. While you do that, I'll tell you about my first riot. I never did riot at school though, so you got me beat to start."

True to form, Tranza was humming as the ship moved to the pad, humming, breaking into bits of syncopated bops and boops, and doing something he rarely did, which was—dusting the bridge. He did like the ship to be clean, but now, in the reverie no doubt inspired by whatever music file he'd programmed into his ear buds he was actively dusting and shining things. He liked to be busy, but this—maybe he'd returned with something stronger than just music.

The trip info request that most got her interest was the run, here to Volmer to Clarion to Delgado to Vratha, though there was another one, starting from Volmer to Granby to Hellsport to Eylot that also caught her attention. She'd been kept away from Eylot these last two years and really didn't care to change that if she could avoid it. Kara's last bit of news from there indicated she'd gotten her second class rating and a temp job at Codrescu working as troubleshooter in the nearspace yard had been good, but seeing the new "block of 'crete" security building where DCCT had been was not in her plans.

The timeline was pretty short here, so as soon as she felt the ship halt, Theo flung herself into the seat, mindful of Tranza's earlier, "just sit First, I'll be busy during lift . . ." as he'd peered into a bag full of music chips.

She began before Tower did: It was time to get out of here as far as she was concerned.

"Theo Waitley, first seat Primadonna, acknowledging all connections lit, all connections good, all signal strength nominal, all ranging information green, sync green, we're on a rolling billable hold waiting a delivery."

Tranza was really going at the cleaning bit now, even wiping down the brightwork beneath the third and fourth seats in the back of the cabin, swiping down the seat tops—

"Heard here, Pilot Waitley is the contact, Primadonna is go except for paper hold billed by the second to Hugglelans Galactica. Your lift is approved to a 99-minute initial for the next two tenths . . . after that I'm afraid you'll be looking at an admin wait. . . ."

The viewscreeens showed the port from five angles, and the close ramp was still docked to—

There!

Someone was hurrying, a pilot by the motion, wearing a hat and a backpack and pulling a small bright red-and-blue striped bag behind, the green jacket looking like a Hugglelans crew coat from any of two dozen worlds. The overemphasized hand-signal from the figure was clear enough, and the port call came through—

"Internal delivery from Hugglelans on the way, is this your package?"

Tranza was suddenly behind her shoulders, nodding, muttering, "Striped bag it is, that'd be good; clear access, tell them clear access and ask for a three-hundred count and lift if it's available."

"Clear access," Theo repeated to Tower. "I'm opening for package, please give us a three-hundred count if you've got one."

Elsewhere in the screens there was motion as a ship lifted, and then the view of another landing, and the reply:

"You've got a three-twenty-five count on my mark. Three-twenty-five coming up—"

"Three-twenty-five, yes," Theo repeated, and she saw Tranza touch the stud to open the lower door, counting in her head that he ought to be down there if they were going to clear in time for the delivery person to get clear.

"Mark in five, please give full check, Primadonna."

The mark came in the middle of the check, actually, and she could hear Tranza's voice boom, "Damned striped bag still traveling, is it?"

The count went on, Theo now immersed in pointing the ship to a slot in a crowded sky, to a slot in a crowded orbit, to a run to a slightly less crowded Jump-safe zone.

The noises below subsided, Tranza yelled, "Commit."

One hundred and ten.

"We have commit," Theo said.

"Repeat, Pilot."

"We have commit."

There was sound in the cabin, the noise of feet, of a rolling bag, and Theo said "Tranza, strap in, Pilot."

There followed an unexpected melodious laugh, and another, and Theo's eyes left the board long enough to take in the sight of a woman with long fine black hair throwing her hat to the third seat, tying her bags there and flinging herself to the fourth, and Tranza, aglow, dropping into second seat.

"Ninety-two."

The woman leaned in Theo's direction, "Pilot, thank you for waiting. I am, in case you have not been informed, Master Pilot Mayko Ikari, Second Son of House Hugglelans."

Ground demanded attention then, and so did the ship as she did a fine rebalance for the new mass, and she glared at Tranza, to the amusement of their passenger.

"He's like this all the time, isn't he?" said Mayko Ikari from behind her. "But it will be fine, for I have discovered a master trove of music, and he will be singing in strange tongues for the next year, too busy to notice that you are rightly peeved!"

Theo formed a quick hand-sign of welcome, and another, aimed toward Tranza that translated roughly into goat-furred ground-hugger.

"Glad to meet you, Second Son. I am acquainted with Aito, and—"

"Yes, I know, and that's why I hope to rescue you from Tranza's care. But we can speak later, Pilot. I'd not want to distract your liftoff."

The autocount went on, and Tranza's voice, low, asked—

"What do you have? Dances? Choir? Quartets or trios? I could use some—"

"Belt please, Tranza!" Theo demanded as his seat light was still orange.

The master pilot giggled, Tranza snapped his webbing, and Primadonna lifted.

Thirty-Four

Primadonna

Out from Alanzia

" 'Pilot,' please, Pilot, or even 'Mayko,' if you may be Theo."

The master pilot sat second board while Tranza was off coaxing what he called a "quick picnic" from the small galley. The sounds—especially Tranza's complaints of the limitations of Primadonna's oven and breadmaker—made it sound like he expected a dozen guests arriving to stay for a week of major merrymaking.

Theo, in the midst of calculating the newest suggestion from the woman because of what Theo considered avoidable congestion in the primary orbit, fluttered a good plan and then wrinkled her nose.

"I can't see why those ships are all over the place . . ." The chatter from those ships was live on all the hailing bands and seemed not to make much sense; lots of ships announcing they had pods and partial pods free, offering to broker, offering to subcontract, and Alanzia control all but throwing up their hands at making the flow of noise and ships work, other than multiple requests to tone down shields and please be sure weapons were offline.

"Many ships are arriving here, which is why we depart posthaste," Mayko said. "We will be much better positioned than they!"

"Positioned where?" Theo wondered aloud, "Is this the point you were suggesting?" she added, shuttling some figures over to the second screen. "I mean, if we need to be out soonest we can just request a release and cut away from the ecliptic; we can avoid the incoming rush and the ship's got the power to make that Jump as soon as we're out of range of anyone else." She sent a second set of figures: "Like this. It's expensive in power, but if time is of the essence . . ."

"Very good idea, Theo; that would work, too, and—well, what we would like is to be in someplace where we can get an advantage on the upwelling of new routes. You're the pilot, after all, so we should be clear what our goals are."

"New routes?"

"Yes, I suppose you are some behind on the news. What we have here are politics going on . . . extensively. The Yxtrang, some time ago they were beaten back from Lytaxin; it was a sudden attack and they were surprised by forces on-world. A mercenary unit was there, and of course Lytaxin is an ally of Korval. It was ill-advised of the Yxtrang, surely, to take on such. Dutiful Passage herself was called from shipping duty to become a battleship, and this . . . unbalanced other routes and schedules. Korval has recalled many ships from their usual routes. No one is quite sure where this is going, but everyone wishes to realize what profit they may!"

"Hah," Theo said softly, almost turning it into a sigh. "So the allies on Lytaxin took their problem to the Delm of Korval!"

"Well, yes," the pilot admitted after a pause, "or to the First Speaker; I gather there is much confusion in the ether about the situation with Delm Korval, but allies are allies, after all. Surely if Korval is arming ships and Liad is in turmoil because of it, there is money to be made in shipping!"

Armed ships were something they'd avoided talking about at the academy, and though she'd twice effectively fired the short range beams Primadonna carried, the pair of victims had been unsuspecting space junk in an asteroid belt, the better to demonstrate Primadonna's meteor shields as well as its weapons.

Very early in her introduction to the ship Tranza had been really clear that Primadonna was built for agility and speed. "Run, right? Run is the advice I mostly have for you if you get in a spot where people are shooting at you in space. And if someone's running shields, there's no harm in having what shields you have on as well. See here, though, Primadonna's not a warhorse, and we're not training for combat. We're just checking out the equipment, so you're up on it. No good reason to go shooting asteroids, too; some of them are pocked with gas and dust and can whump up a hell of a geyser on you if you aren't lucky. Best bet is to leave the weapons switches set to off/off/disarmed unless things are dicey."

Tranza ducked his head into view from the galley, waving what might have been a ball of dough.

"If pilots on the board would be so kind, I'd like to have an idea of likely meal schedules this shift. We have a lot to catch up on and I'd like the cooking to be done on time."

Tranza's schedule matched Theo's perfectly; they put the ship on auto, with a master pilot, a first class pilot, and a second class pilot all within quick reach of the boards and nothing but a half-shift's worth of just under one g acceleration on the agenda. The ship was full of the smell of bread, and the picnic was introduced with, "Right, we have two breads and dessert, and since we're just away from the gardens of Alanzia, we're full of fresh salad! I have to say this is a lot better lunch than I got my last shift with Mayko."

His hands were busy with hand-talk between handing over the vittles; Theo picked up something about silly packing errors and always check invoice against items.

Mayko laughed, which she did a lot, though she put her hand in front of her face when she did as if she was hiding.

"Rig put up with a lot with me, you know," she said, waving the roll he'd handed her at Theo as if it were evidence. "He had my training, as he has had yours, and toward the end I was doing all of the ship's ordering. I'm afraid I let my experience at the Howsenda overtake my mind and I ordered by number, from memory . . . we ended up with a five-day of young children's meals for the end of the run."

"Strained fruits and strained imitation meats with imitation sauce and imitation . . ."

She laughed again.

"No, Rig, say true. They were Howsenda meals, so they were all real. And for what they were, they were good."

"Right. They were real good and strained. And not much of them, either."

They bantered their way through two courses, with a remove of coffee for Rig and the master pilot, and tea for Theo. During the meal, Theo several times rose to manually check the instruments and did the same before dessert. It was with dessert that Mayko went from sudden passenger to official business, a flash of hand-talk becoming mission Information follows.

"First, yes, first comes the Hugglelans business. I have brought with me, Theo, a lot of information that will be going out to all working pilots on routes. You will both get complete copies, of course, and I will expect you to know the information since your life may depend on it. In addition, route managers and lead pilots get an overview I expect you both to read, and I will of course expect both of you to be fully up-to-date on these by the time our trip is over.

"The short form is that there are, as I mentioned, major opportunities for shippers at the moment, and for pilots. We at Hugglelans are at a point that we hope to add an extra full-scale planetary base or two within the next decade, and certainly to add capacity and personnel to match. The alteration on the Liaden side of things makes this an excellent time for us to push forward. I have brought updated contracts for you, assuming you wish to continue employment with Hugglelans under these new circumstances, which we will have confirmed by the end of the trip. Rest assured that we value your service and wish you to be a part of the expansion program."

"New contract, huh? You got yourself a Liaden writing those things now?"

Mayko scolded Rig with severe fingers: serious talk no joke read close consider.

Nodding to Theo and then to Tranza, she said, "I think you'll both enjoy the new compensation package we are offering pilots with in-house experience, which of course you'll both qualify for. We do also expect to be hiring from outside, naturally.

"As to the rest of the business, Second Class Pilot Theo Waitley, in my capacity as a master pilot, I am here on the very ship where I earned my own first class card to test you for first class. I have flown several of your trips from log records . . ."

Theo felt a strange feeling in her stomach, like she'd just found a gravity vary while walking a gangway. First class! She glanced over to Tranza, who was looking elsewhere, and then grinned.

"In my contract, see," he said. "I assumed you'd earned a first class a few trips ago, but it pays to have someone fresh take a look, to be sure. You've seen my basic evals, Theo."

Well, and she had. Adequate and alert ship handling planetary. Adequate and alert ship handling docking. Adequate and alert ship maintenance procedures. Adequate . . .

"Adequate. That's what you said on the last three reports I saw. Adequate! Nothing about me being ready for . . ."

True course, he signed. "Right. Right. And if you looked you may have noticed 'conservative piloting for a pilot at this stage of career and training.' You weren't pushing so I wasn't going to push you."

"I thought that meant I needed work."

Her voice was low, and she felt the dance start to move, which brought Tranza immediately to attention.

"No, the alert part, and the conservative part, they're both good. The last three trips have you on command more than me and the trips would have been fine without me at all. Haven't you noticed how often you've signed for us?"

She nodded vigorously.

"I did. I thought that just meant I was doing my job."

A wave of hands from Mayko communicate communicate good, and she continued as she finished her coffee.

"So, time has not been adequate even if your piloting may be; these circumstances have kept the whole of my staff very busy. Theo, understand my time on this trip will be spent observing you more than testing; the real test for you has been putting up with the lessons and the cooking of Rig Tranza. And understand that 'adequate' from Rig is a rare and considered thing when it comes to young pilots. Didn't he work you scrubbing the deck and counting spares?"

Theo laughed despite herself. "And double-checking the food lockers for both catalog number and actual count."

"See, always check invoice against items! We share a lesson."

Mayko's hands moved to say finish this session and she leaned forward.

"So, the rest of this run is yours. Rig will have a holiday of sorts—he has new music, and he has been some time without vacation or proper leave. I am available to sit second at any moment, and at any moment I may ask for analysis of decision points. Calculations, your choice of beverage—anything. Do you understand?"

Something tickled the back of her mind. She nodded so gravely that it was almost a bow.

"Yes," she said, "I understand. The usual rules apply."

Thirty-Five

Primadonna

In Transit

Theo's hands were damp with sweat and her main computer was at least four screens deep on each of nine viewtops. She knew where things were but her astrogation instructor would have disowned her. Tranza was sitting back with his music, smiling.

She looked again at the screens, saw the solution, and began archiving like mad.

Let him laugh, Theo thought, he's got his jacket.

They'd got to Jump distance with no problems, a comfortable meal in their stomachs and her pair of companions only breaking into song three times in response to conversational cues Theo hadn't known were cues at all.

The thing was that after dinner, Theo began a mild stretching routine, letting it ratchet up to a little more of a workout so that she'd be done before they needed to get to actual work, like to a spot where Theo ought to soon be setting up for a Jump run or determining Primadonna's long term orbit.

In the midst of that exercise, Mayko handed over the ship's run. Well, not exactly. What she did was hand over a list of places she needed to be within a more-or-less set time frame, with a bonus load of interdependent priorities, and a request that sooner would be better in all cases. All of the prefiled destinations were included, and a couple more.

"Pilot Theo, these are the needs of the company," Mayko had said innocuously. "As the board is yours, this is clearly a pilot's choice situation. I think it best that we be outsystem in the next quarter shift."

Which would not have been Theo's usual choice with such a multiplicity of routes available, but if the ship was hers for the duration of the run—well, that clarified things immensely. Part of this was to push her, she knew. Part was real need. Mayko had said that Hugglelans needed to move in a hurry, while trade was still confused.

But there, the information was already gathered, the decision point just lacked confirmation.

"Mix and match?" she asked. "All of the destinations in the same run, priority fast and efficient?"

"Indeed, that would be best," Mayko allowed.

Theo nodded, raised her voice.

"First Board declares Jump check. Tranza, please secure the galley and confirm tie-downs, locks, goods and staterooms. The count to start our runout is two hundred, starting in seven."

"Right," he said and moved.

Next to her Mayko raised an eyebrow, began to speak, was overridden by Theo.

"Second, your main screen should match mine. Confirm Volmer coordinates, confirm ship safety, confirm scans."

Theo glanced toward the seat Tranza left empty in his rush; then toward Mayko, hands deftly touching the manual confirms on the automatics, readouts being echoed.

"Our route?" Mayko inquired, laughing as Tranza burst into song while he made some final seal in the galley, and dashed onto the flight deck.

"Volmer," Theo stated succinctly. "The coordinates are in, the ship is rigged, and there's eight flight plans ready to go once we get there. Volmer's closest in transit time, Volmer's in the priority loop, and Volmer it is."

Mayko opened her mouth again, but was cut off by Tranza's, "Confirming secure, Pilot Theo."

"Confirmed."

"But the route?" Mayko insisted.

Theo sighed.

"Unless this is a touch-and-go when we get to Volmer, we'd best calculate fresh when we have fresh news. I'll set two probables into the go-stack in case we need to move in a hurry, but we're set. We have a count of one hundred; I'll start the Jump on count."

"But my plans?"

"Your plans are to get there as quick as you can. We'll do that. Can't make the second Jump first though. Confirmation please, Second."

Tranza began to whistle a tune, and Mayko, studying the second board, joined in.

"Confirmed, Pilot Theo."

At this rate, they'd be out of the system in a tenth shift instead of a quarter, Theo thought, and that would do.

Theo lounged in the galley, eyes closed. On bridge, Tranza sat in the vacated First Chair, while Mayko retained Second.

"Pilot," came Mayko's call from the flight deck, "have you signed the contract yet? It would be good to—"

"I haven't," Theo admitted, "opened the file yet. Contracts are much harder for me than doing Jump equations in my head. I'll get six hours real downtime—at least—when we reach Volmer and look it over then."

"Pilot, when we reach Volmer we may want that done already in order to confirm—"

Somebody was pushing, Theo thought, around a spike of irritation. Did Mayko think she was going to lose the contract, or something?

"Sorry, Second," she said, "I'm on break unless there's a ship problem." She paused, counted to twelve, and asked, "Is there a ship problem?"

There was muttering in the background, Theo thought, and then realized it was Tranza singing one of his silly song snippets, something about "the ship Jonny B."

"Rig, you're not helping!"

Theo waited a beat, then repeated her question.

"Is there a ship problem, flight deck?"

Again she could hear Tranza, this time singing something that sounded like "We had enough cooks for an army, and only one can of . . ."

"No, Pilot," came the reluctant reply, "there is not a ship problem."

"Right, Theo," Tranza confirmed. "None."

* * *

"Primadonna, we've got all green for you, welcome. Please inspect your tie-down and sign for it at the gate; we're showing this a field stop charged to Hugglelans Galactic. You've got a cart on the way and a hot pad available for a turnaround tomorrow at this time."

"Thanks for the welcome—and for the cart."

"Cart comes gratis. Can we get our updates here on channels seven and nine?"

Theo keyed in the channels and the updates went through, showing Pilot in Command as Theo Waitley and dual seconds of Rig Tranza, Captain, and Master Pilot Mayko Ikari.

"Hey there, Primadonna," came another voice, this one full of energy. "We're holding high priority mail we can squirt through as soon as we get the certificates to talk to each other. One's a problem 'cause it's a special, may take a little time for that to finish up."

Problem mail?

Theo shrugged; she wasn't in a particular hurry to look at chained landing gear.

The trip to Volmer had gone without a ship problem, though Mayko managed to dredge up a fire alarm, two false positives on engine issues, a technical question on ship's financials, assorted runs of "what would you do if" and a really silly multilanguage drinking song that Tranza wouldn't stop humming once Mayko sang the first three verses.

Other than that—

The incoming screen lit, showing the Pilots Guild emblem.

"We have a private and confidential file for Pilot Theo Waitley, transcription through Pilots Guild encryption format. You'll need your card and certificate for this, and receive in person in the comm office."

"Theo," Mayko was saying, "we need to talk about the contract . . ."

"Right, you do," said Tranza, then saw the symbol on the screen.

"I'll do tie-down, Theo" he said, suddenly all business. "Go!"

She went.

Finding the comm office was easy once she parked the cart and entered the Guild port area; what was hard was keeping herself calm as the rest of the process unfolded. A pinbeam message? For her? She'd never sent a pinbeam in her life and couldn't think of anyone she knew who'd send one, especially to her. Could something have happened to Father or to Kamele? Had Captain Cho and the Scouts decided to bill her for her failed education?

The Guild staffer checked her card, checked her against her card, checked her against the ship schedule, checked—she didn't know what they checked.

"RSVP," said the clerk neutrally. "That's free, well—prepaid. There's a return receipt that'll go as soon as you open it. You can take it in booth four; please record because we erase as it streams. You can send your reply any time within seventy-two Terran hours of receipt."

In the booth she inserted her card one more time, tagged her key to the connecting port, saw a series of letters go by and a warning that reading the following message without authorization was a breach of pilot ethics and . . .

Sweet Mystery, began the text, you are an amazement beyond measure. Kara ven'Arith supplies me with the start of my search and a history worthy of a dancer such as yourself. I commend you. The Pilots Guild supplies me with the filed plans of the good ship Primadonna, and thus you are found.

She took a breath, finally realizing she'd been holding it. Win Ton. Win Ton! Oh, what could be—

It is of utmost importance, my favorite dancer, that we meet together in person in the shortest possible time. I am prepared to meet you at any location you name, at Volmer if you like, to rendezvous on planet or station, to provide tickets for transportation from your current location to mine. Only tell me as soon as you may, I humbly beg of you, that you have received this message in good order and that you intend to be in touch with me in person, who gave you your first bowli ball. As friend and as pilot I swear that this is a necessary interruption of your life, and one that will not be forgotten.

There were so many hooks here, so many memories for someone she'd only spent a few days with, and a night.

I am and remain your friend and servant,

Win Ton yo'Vala

There followed a series of addresses she might reply to, starting with the autoreply and progressing four deep into what looked like port drop boxes in places he might expect to get to, including Solcintra, Liad.

She reread the message, from her own key, once it disappeared from the screen, and recalled that she still had copies of every message he'd ever sent.

She sighed, stood, stared at the empty screen. Maybe she could arrange to meet him at their next port, or something. She should answer him, quickly. Soon.

Yes, she should.

She danced a step to unkink her shoulder, and thoughtfully returned to Primadonna.

She felt that her arrival on-board had interrupted something. Tranza and Mayko lounged in the galley, hands moving energetically. She was good, but these two threw hand-signs fast as Jump, partial thoughts flying and being cut off by others, shared experience telling in the jabs and spikes of the motions, in the words left out.

Prominent in the first sighting had been Theo and also pilot today now; but as soon as she was evident Tranza folded his hands and lapsed into a sweetly sung song of conquest and pillage.

Mayko glared at him, and nodded to her.

"The pilot returns to us, sooner rather than later, which is always good in a pilot on port. As you are present, we shall move on to topics left off in midflight."

Theo nodded, pleased that Mayko hadn't asked about her message, and grabbed one of the trayful of landing-pastries on the table.

"We were discussing, right," Tranza broke in, "we were discussing the flight. A fine flight."

Mayko sniffed. She stood, smooth and graceful, deliberately turning away from Tranza, and giving Theo an easy nod.

"As Rig says, we were discussing the flight. It appears that Aito was correct, and despite your run-ins with academic authority in the past, you are exactly the kind of pilot that Hugglelans—especially Hugglelans Galactic—wishes to employ. I would like to insure that we are of a mind on this, and so I ask if you might, now that we are at Volmer, open your contract and sign it."

Win Ton. Somehow Theo kept seeing Win Ton's name on the screen and recalled his name as written on the card she'd gotten on Vashtara.

"I haven't read it yet," she said. "If I might have a few moments to look it over?"

Mayko smiled prettily. "It's our standard. We can sign it right now, then move on to—"

"No. Right? No."

Tranza stood, making himself the third point in the triangle of pilots.

"I beg your pardon," began Mayko.

"Beg Theo's, right? You're doing it again. Trying to make the second Jump before the first."

Mayko straightened, mouth firming.

"All we need to do is settle the issue of a contract," she said, with what Theo thought was strained patience. "Once that is taken care of, we can . . ."

"Wait, right? Just wait."

Tranza broke from the triangle and dashed to his quarters. He slapped the door open, exclaiming, "Right, just wait!"

Mayko appeared as startled as Theo felt, especially when he backed out of the room a moment later, his pilot's jacket in his hand, gripped at the collar like he had an invisible pilot hard around the throat.

He shook the jacket at his boss, a hand flourish saying now now now first.

"This is what we're discussing first, Mayko. Her jacket."

Theo cast glances between the two.

"Rig, that's your jacket," Mayko said finally, with a sigh.

Tranza stared at her for a moment, began to sign, realized he needed two hands for what he wanted to say, and handed the jacket to Theo in a rush.

"Hold this," he said, and his hands flew into a rage of strenuous argument, reminding Theo forcefully of Captain Cho's assertion that hand-talk was good for many things, even philosophy.

Tranza's jacket, beat-up as it was, felt remarkably good in her hands, and heavier than she'd expected—but then he was a much larger person than she was.

The hand-signs were even faster than they had been when she walked in, and now punctuated in a way only hand-talk allowed. Sneak. Steal. Hide. Wrong. My ship. My students. Know better.

Tranza turned to Theo as if she had no inkling of what he'd just said.

"While you were away, me and Mayko were discussing that in fact without additional review, right, with no more testing needed, right, that you have been seen by this master pilot here, this Mayko Ikari, who I taught, to fly at first class level, which fact I have seen with my own eyes lo these months, right?"

It came to her that Tranza was angry. Theo raised her hands, fingers wide, and nodded, not sure what to say.

"I have my contracts to think of, Rig," Mayko said sternly.

"You want Hugglelans to have all the best pilots tied to you since Korval's got trouble. Business is business. Right. I see that. But you're a Master. You got duty on both screens. And you can't keep information away from her!"

He raised his hands toward the ship's ceiling, fluttered this thought is mine and started speaking, low and earnest.

"I have a contract, Mayko, and mine don't need to be signed. If you want Theo Waitley to sign a first class contract, give her what she's earned. A jacket. The raise. The respect."

Mayko sighed, loudly.

"Rig, we're renegotiating all the contracts. Galactic needs—"

"Will you," he interrupted, forcefully. "Will you tell Theo Waitley she's made first class and earned a jacket? Will you tell her that, Master Ikari?"

"When she signs the contract she'll be able to requisition a jacket, just like any first class . . ."

Tranza went suddenly and completely quiet. Theo looked at him worriedly. He stood entirely still for two long heartbeats, then extended his hand. She realized with a start that he was asking for the jacket, and handed it over. He stretched it in front of himself, shook it, opened it, did a dance move—

And hung the jacket around Theo's shoulders, firmly, like it was a cape. The inside was cool, the jacket long on her.

"The jacket fits, Pilot. Welcome."

He squeezed her shoulder and stepped back, hands enjoining her to wear healthy long proud.

Mayko's fingers were against her lips, a look of what might be horror on her face.

"Rig, you can't just give your jacket away!"

He turned on her with startling swiftness.

"I precertified your jacket, Mayko, and you still wear it. A pilot can give his jacket to a pilot. Theo's a pilot. She's got a jacket."

"Tranza, calm please," Theo said, genuinely alarmed. "I can't—"

"Yours," he interrupted. "I swear and witness it. And Mayko should know better than to pull this stuff!"

"But your jacket!" Mayko insisted.

"I'll requisition one, right?" He gave her a flat stare. "Just like any first class pilot. Right."

Mayko stilled her hands in mid-sign, mouth tight.

Theo cleared her throat. "I can't keep it, Tranza."

He laughed, suddenly empty of tension.

"You, Pilot, better call me Rig."

"But I don't have a card!"

There was silence.

Rig turned to Mayko, fingers terse.

Card.

Mayko put hand to forehead, then reached into her side pouch and extracted something.

"Pilot," she said, extending it, "may this bring you joy."

This was a pilot's license, handed to her own hand. Endorsed all the way around, and registered already according to the seal. Theo Waitley, Pilot First Class.

The words got kind of watery, and Theo blinked, looking aside.

Nothing to cry about, she told herself.

"Right," said Rig Tranza. "I owe us all a drink. We can read contracts later."

Thirty-Six

Primadonna

Volmer

They'd had their drinks—one glass of wine for each of them, rather than the kynak Rig suggested—and then Theo called it a shift. She'd been long-shifting the whole trip and between the piloting, the argument surrounding the receipt of her first class ticket, and Win Ton's letter she was exhausted.

Retiring, she realized that on so-called solid ground the ship vibrated in ways it didn't in space, or docked to a station. While station docking often included swings and sways and even bounces, which the planet did not, the noises and vibrations emanating from the connect points as temperatures strove to balance in space were familiar.

On-planet noise snuck in from everywhere. The landing gear transmitted vibrations, the atmosphere vibrated against the ship's skin in the form of breeze and wind, and sounds traveled along and through the hull to fool the ear and excite sensors. Gauges flickered as air pressure changed; the ship's cooling from reentry generated creaks; on larger ships it was known to cause groans and crackles.

Theo's eyes were closed, which meant the sounds were all the more compelling. She wrinkled her nose against the distraction, and brought the question around to first things first, which ought to be sleep. She'd pointed out that regs were clear: she ought to be taking rest now, no matter what planetary time it was, and no matter Mayko's urgencies.

If she couldn't sleep, and Theo'd about given up on that, thinking of first things first meant rereading Win Ton's message with a little less surprise and a little more advertency. What might require a face-to-face meeting? An apology? If so for what? A proposal? Again, for what? Lust?

It was hard to believe that an accomplished pilot would be so bereft of company as to pine for her above all others.

So, she opened her eyes and sat up on the bunk. She yanked the reader onto her lap, and slapped the datakey home.

It is of utmost importance, my favorite dancer, that we meet together in person in the shortest possible time. I am prepared to meet you at any location you name, at Volmer if you like . . .

Theo blinked against the words and the desire. What better way to celebrate achieving her jacket than to see Win Ton? Win Ton had known her for a pilot before anyone else, perhaps, if she overlooked Father, who must also have known. Win Ton had recognized many things in her.

Her next breath was deep then, as she let the reader rest on the mattress. She closed her eyes, mentally stepping into a relaxation exercise as she sat with bare toes on an unstill floor, leaving the reader on so that she might look again at the mysteries it proposed.

She stood, eyes closed, the backs of her legs anchoring her to the ship and its minute vibrations while the darkness and the exercise fended off the need for immediate action. Her thoughts swept on despite the relaxation, bouncing between wariness and a growing awareness of her accomplishments.

Her time on Melchiza had first pointed up the necessity that had kept her not quite in tune with her compatriots and age-mates ever since: to be most responsible to the most number of people she had first to accept herself as potent and then to manage and expand that potency.

There'd been no good way to express that to Asu, nor to the team builders with their faith in doing well enough to get by in a group.

She considered Father, with his cars, his flowers, his garden—his work. As calm and reserved as he seemed, there was no sense that his first order of business was to please some ordinary standard. That must have been what brought him to Kamele, who also strove beyond the ordinary, finding time to sing in the choir while managing a child, and her career and an odd-world onagrata.

Dancer, Win Ton named her. Pilot.

She was both of those things. Also, she was Win Ton's friend, though she'd fallen out of the habit of writing to him. Right after she'd been expelled, she'd been too busy. And then—she'd been too busy. She might assume the same of him, who hadn't written again, after the letter bestowing the gift that she still wore 'round her neck.

Did you feel a connection to him? she asked herself, and answered: Yes. Yes, I do.

She opened her eyes.

It is of utmost importance, my favorite dancer, that we meet together . . .

That was true that she didn't know what he wanted from her. It was equally true that she would never know, unless she answered him. If he only wished to return a forgotten hair clip, like a proper onagrata out of a silly girl-book, so be it. If there was something more—there was an urgency, to both the letter, and its delivery. Pinbeams were expensive. Expense, in Theo's mind, suggested trouble.

She would answer him; a friend in trouble had that right. But she would answer him when she was rested, and clear in her mind.

That decided, she sighed, and stood in the darkness. Carefully, she did a small dance before stretching on the bed again, letting the words fade, dancing relaxation in her mind until she slept in truth.

"Rig," she said experimentally. "I—need to—"

He turned away from a screen full of legal-looking language, startled, already moving to balance and center and—

"Theo," he laughed, "what have you done now? I can't believe you could sneak up on me on Primadonna!"

She smiled, realized that she had been moving quietly, not wanting to rouse Mayko if she could help it.

"I'm awake and need to go back to the comm office before shift. But we didn't really settle what shifts we'd run today—"

"By all rights, you ought to be off-shift for a ten-day, I'd say. You haven't had a real break since we started flying together."

She smiled, raising her hands.

"Haven't got that far ahead," she admitted. "I need to go down to the comm office and . . ." She hesitated, and he signed a quick your call, your flight.

"Personal is personal. Get your comm work done, take a walk, and we'll see about shifts after that. Mayko's already out so this shift is mine, and it's about time I run one, huh?" He pointed toward the lock, eloquent hands saying go, go—and, abruptly—wait.

He touched his forehead, the gesture meaning my empty head, or sometimes, I forgot.

"If you need a comm room—let me call ahead to tell them you're coming, tell them to reserve one for you, right? And I'll call you a cart since Mayko's already got ours out on the port somewhere."

Theo nodded. "Thank you, I should have thought . . ."

"No. You've been running first board, so this is my job, right?"

She hand-flashed work work work at him but he was already singing as she moved—and he stopped suddenly, pointing back toward her berth.

"Pilot, your jacket. You earned it. You're on port. Wear it!"

Theo opened her mouth to rebut and found his hands were already replying with:

Order from shift captain!

She mocked a bow then, and went back to get her jacket.

The distance to the comm office was no shorter, but in the way that even minor familiarity with a place will change perception, it felt closer to the Primadonna this time. True, the cart attendant, a young girl who drove a lot like Father, took her directly to the Pilots Guild gate, and this time when Theo entered with card in hand she was waved by as if they all knew who she was.

"Captain Tranza was to make . . ."

The clerk looked up from a desk full of screens.

"Yes, Pilot Waitley. With all the confusion going on I'm afraid there'll be a wait; if you like, you can catch up on the news at the café and we'll send someone, or listen for your call."

There was a lot of activity, and the tiny café was full of screens and talk. There was a flutter of hands and nods when she entered, and quick glances from those hoping to see a familiar face. In fact, Theo did recognize several of the gathered pilots as having been on route or in a bar or on port here at the same time in the last year. If anybody thought her jacket too big, none said, and none challenged her when she grabbed a table with a multiscreen already scrolling streams.

Korval attacks Liad one stream was marked, and another screamed out Scouts Repulse Armed Invasion at Nev'lorn. The large JONBA AGENCY First Class Pilots Wanted NOW Top Money Top Guarantee ad bounced at the top of one screen while from the bottom a pulsing blue announced Mercenaries. We Make Worlds Safe. Join Us. Your Bonus is Waiting.

At the table to her right, a large woman was talking a little too loud, as if her coffee was boosted.

"Tell you true, I have this from clean source. Aelliana Caylon is back. They say she came busting in from Galaxy Nowhere with guns blazing and blew apart battleships with her little courier ship. These are great times we live in, friend, great times!"

One of her table mates was chuckling: "So when do we expect Bopper to show up, or the Second Terran Fleet?"

Theo touched the order board for the morning tea special, and leaned back. She could have read all this on Primadonna if she'd have known the comms were backed up.

"Punch up the register, sandfoot," the woman at the right-side table told her mate. "No? Then I will. I met the Caylon once myself, I did, her and her other. Ride the Luck. She was a pick-up pilot, you know—just like us. Never missed a delivery, too!"

"She's been dead a long time, Casey. No matter how pretty she was, she's dead."

That voice was sad, and Theo glanced over to the table, where the louder woman—in Jump leather—was crowing, and the sad person craning her neck to see—

"Hah! Lookithere. Ride the Luck, Solcintra, Liad, Aelliana Caylon Pilot and Captain, Dock Sixteen-A Binjali Repair, Solcintra. Not Accepting.

"Tell me you see it! Right there in the register. Register don't carry ghosts, Tervot. And just like a Liaden to keep a working ship working, ain't it? Here, let's look for the big one! See it, see it? Dutiful Passage, Solcintra, Liad, Priscilla Mendoza Pilot and Captain, Orbit Seventeen Liad, Not Accepting."

There was a stunned silence, spreading over several adjacent tables.

"Mendoza's captain?" someone asked, somberly. "Where's Shan?"

"That's right," the loud woman said, not so loud, now. "yos'Galan was master—for how many years? Damn! They had all that fighting. You don't think—?"

There was a rustle two tables away and a plump man lurched to his feet. "I gotta get me a message out . . ."

"Queue's long on that," the sad-voiced person said, but the guy was already gone. She pulled the screen to her and threw in her own request. "Now look, Vitale, here's the news archive for when the Caylon got killed—"

The third occupant of the table laughed. "Won't take true for an answer," he said, as the conversations around started to pick up again.

The large woman shook her head.

"Hey, that's Korval-kin you're talking about. Korval is the most Liaden you can get, and if the registry says Aelliana Caylon's parked her ship at Binjali's, well I believe it, cause that's where she always flew from. You know better'n to trust news archives, Tervot!"

Theo sighed. Maybe she should go back to Primadonna, if the comm lines were that long. Or she could ask Tranza to authorize use of ship's comm; she trusted him not to snoop in her private messages.

Unfortunately, she didn't precisely trust Mayko to do the same.

Thinking of Mayko brought to mind that list of destinations, Delgado among them. Maybe she could get some crew rest herself—visit Father and Kamele. Coyster—Coyster was an elder cat now, looking like dignity itself in the last pics from—

"Vitale, shut your face!" came a vehement whisper from the table on her right.

She looked up in time to see the large woman blush, then push purposefully to her feet.

She nodded to Theo, hands asking permission to approach.

Theo granted it, warily sitting a little straighter though without resorting to dance.

The woman stepped closer, and attempted a bow.

"I'd like to let you know, Pilot, I wasn't talking personal. I'm just so glad to see The Caylon back that—well, I betcha most Liadens are glad that she's back, isn't that so? And if they managed to keep her hid so she could come back, why that's fine. I wasn't trying to, you know, impugn your melant'i or—"

Hold course hold course Theo signed, aware that everyone at the woman's table was watching with trepidation.

"I'm not a Liaden, Pilot. Please relax. I'm fine."

"Pilot, your tea, and handwich." The advertised items landed on the table before Theo, and the waiter was gone that quickly. The big woman nodded, glancing particularly at the tea.

"Yah, First, I see," she said, almost whispering. "Lots of folks are traveling quiet. Look, I'm Casey Vitale. Fly with Chenowith and Gladder. Right now I've got Aldershot on a coldpad until they get me new orders."

She handed over a card, and bowed again. "At your service. I get a little het up sometimes when I'm grounded, and right now, what with all the sudden traffic through here, I'm waiting for a beam."

Theo inclined her head, which was the proper answer to the bow—and exactly what a Liaden would have done. She sighed, reached into her pocket and returned the favor.

"Theo Waitley," she said.

Her card simply said: Primadonna, Theo Waitley, Hugglelans Galactic.

Casey Vitale grinned. "Hey, that's a good outfit. Good outfit. I—"

"Scouts!" came the call from somewhere near the door. "Crew of 'em! Weapons on display!"

That was enough to startle Theo, who looked away from Casey Vitale, trying to imagine a crew of Scouts so bold as to . . .

There was a crew of them, uniformed, and weapons in plain sight on their belts, a taller one in front pointing toward the single free table in the back corner, one with a view of the exit.

Hands fluttered all around, and nods, and murmurs as the café patrons took in the sight, and the silent march of the Scouts, as one wearing a half-plex goggle over his eyes and upper face made a large, shapeless motion with his hand. His wrists were encumbered with wraparound healing bracelets or supports, and his face mottled with fresh-grown skin still not toned. His signal, sloppy as it had been, halted the rest in mid-march.

The goggled one said something deep and quiet in Liaden, and threaded carefully through the close-set tables. Her attention on the approaching Scout, Theo felt, rather than saw, Casey Vitale step back to her own table.

He paused at her table, removed the goggle and bowed, deep and wondrously slow, almost, Theo thought, as if it pained him to move.

"Pilot Waitley," he said in a hoarse, strained voice. He bowed again, not as deep, and corrected himself: "First Class Jump Pilot Waitley. Sweet Mystery. Words fail."

His eyes were brown, and strained, with wrinkles that stopped abruptly at the new skin; his upper lip had strange color where it, too, had been resurfaced. She searched his face and found him, behind the strain, and the patchwork.

Rising, she resisted the urge to throw herself on him, to touch him.

"Win Ton! Win Ton, what has happened?"

His grin was fleeting, and his voice even more of a croak.

"What has not happened?" he replied, and for that instant, he was Win Ton as she had first met him. Then he bowed, for yet a third time.

"Theo, I overstepped."

He glanced down at his wrists, and added, seriously. "I took damage. May I sit?"

Without waiting for permission—in fact, as if he must sit—he nearly fell into the chair beside her. She sank into her own chair, and put her hand over his, where it lay on the table.

He leaned toward her conspiratorially, his voice weaker even than his grin.

"We need to talk, pilot and friend. We need to talk."

Thirty-Seven

Conrad Café

Pilots Guild Hall

Volmer

"Primadonna isn't exactly neutral territory," Win Ton allowed. "Nor would our Scout rooms be, I gather," he said cautiously, glancing down-room to the table his companions had commandeered. "Certainly it is too public, here."

There was a dance or a game going on, beneath his words. Theo sensed it without understanding the rules. She agreed, though, that if she was going to be with him for the first time in, well, years, she'd rather it be somewhere other than a crowded café.

"Are we in competition?" she asked blandly, taking her hand off of his.

Win Ton, this apparition of a Win Ton, sighed lightly, eye wrinkles tightening as he leaned toward her, speaking as low as might be heard in the cramped room.

"We are not in competition." His shoulders moved in what might be a shrug as he weighed his words with care. "We are, however, working on multiple balances and necessities, which might put us at odds, and so should not be dealt with in a place as distracting as this one, nor in a place—"

"First, you said you wanted some place quieter."

He didn't argue, his left hand making an exaggerated and unformed attempt at acknowledged.

"We can use a comm booth then, or a conference room." The thought that had been niggling at her back brain surfaced and spoke itself: "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Speaking with one of my favorite people."

Theo frowned.

"This is complex." He pursed his lips. "I am willing to have you choose a location, Theo, but really, no more, here, if I may be so bold. I'll order another tray of tea and—"

Theo motioned, not at Win Ton but at the waiter.

"Guild conference room? Is one available?"

The waiter looked at Win Ton, in uniform, and at the other Scouts, again at Theo in her leather, and hitched his neck in an odd motion, using his head to point.

"Upper left quad of the display. Looks like there's two available—the blue lights. One's clear until next shift, the other's got . . . a while, that's the numbers on the right column. Other four are solid. Show your card at the desk."

"So, yes, it is complex. I am at fault in some things, for which I will plead necessity and also admit that I have overstepped, and offer to hear your balance on the issues as time permits."

They were seated, just the two of them, across the table of the conference room. There'd been an awkward moment when the door closed, leaving the Scouts with their weapons and awareness behind, and Theo'd wanted to fling herself into his arms, a moment made more awkward by his apparent realization and careful half turn offering her the choice of seats, and the fact that she carried the tray with the tea and snacks.

"I, who, why . . ." she began, and sputtered out; the look of intense concentration on Win Ton's patched face silencing her.

"I honor you, Theo Waitley, I honor you immensely. You quite properly have many questions, and I will attempt to answer them as quickly as I may, in as clear a fashion as I may. I request your patience. Please believe me in all ways eager to explain a situation that is as complex as it is nearly inexplicable."

Theo danced in her mind, calling on the routine she called inner calm. She hadn't realized before how many cues about Win Ton she took from his hands and shoulders. Now, with his hands—not fully operational . . .

There on the chair, she centered herself, and looked to his face, with patience.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked.

He inclined his head. "I would very much like some tea. Thank you."

She poured for both of them, and sat back, cup held in one hand.

"I'm ready when you are," she said.

He smiled weakly, though to Theo's eye, with honest intent, and sipped his tea, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders.

"The easiest questions may be your most recent. The Scouts I travel with are, as a unit, security and support. One is a med tech, each is a specialist. Consider them for argument sake, if you will permit yourself a moment of absurdity, my bodyguards."

Theo thought about that; sighed and acknowledged, accept.

"Excellent. I am here, we are here, because it was likely that in fact you would be here or within hailing distance, and because the task I am set to by the Scouts has a thread which runs through Volmer. As a haven for Juntavas in the past it has been a place where Scouts and the even less reputable might from time to time have discourse on many subjects.

"So, that is the immediate why of here and who."

He paused, and surprised her by reaching inside the collar of his shirt and pulling out a necklace matching her own. Made clumsy by the wrist shields, he pulled the chain over his head and placed it on the table between them, one finger on the pendant cylinder. He looked into her eyes.

"This, my friend, and the one you wear, are the start of all of it, as well as I can manage the story. I will tell it to you, requesting you share the information only on a true need-to-know basis."

She nodded, but he was already moving on, seeming to look at her and through her at the same time.

"In my travels immediately after my contract wedding, I was started as a courier to deliver a ship, before my long-term assignment was to begin. I had cause to visit a—let me call it a site—requiring periodic maintenance of various reporting equipment. This site is one where, in the distant past, various objects and devices of doubtful source and design were sequestered from polite commerce, and in that distant past the planetary site was manned. My duties were simple: to be assured that the airlocks still functioned, that the holds still held, and that the sovereignty of our organization over it was not in doubt. This particular assignment was one of what they call the 'garbage runs' that Scouts must make from time to time, personal observations being important, and besides, Scouts need to be kept busy and in training, even between long-term assignments."

Theo tried to concentrate on Win Ton's words and not on his face. There was something there she wasn't used to seeing in him, a reserve beyond simple attention to his own story, or a distraction.

Impulsively she asked, "Are you in pain?"

Win Ton bowed slightly to her.

"Another question we shall arrive at in good time. Suffice it to say that at the moment I feel no pain. And that so, we continue."

Theo felt the hair on the back of her neck tingle and involuntarily looked behind her, perhaps to the very spot Win Ton looked, for again he was not looking directly at her. If there was anything there, it was invisible to her eyes, and she returned her attention to his face.

"While I arrived at the happy news that most of the items on my checklist and inventory were in fine order, I discovered much to my surprise that there was, among the expected items, one that was listed on no manifest. It being anomalous, I explored.

"I am not quite the aficionado of ancient technology that Captain sig'Radia is, but what I found in plain sight appeared to be an antique ship."

He smiled, as if there was an amusing secret to be revealed.

"When I say antique I mean one in which the mount points for add-ons are all of what we now think of as 'legacy' and inadequate; but still the lines were attractive and it sat close enough to the rest of the assemblage that I considered its location not an accident. There were no signs of egress or return, and conditions were such that when I approached, I left footprints in the surface dust."

He smiled again. "Indeed, I was pleased to leave footprints, to and fro. In any case, in size my mystery was no battleship or trade monster, let us say just large enough to carry Torvin in the main hold."

The mention of Torvin made her smile, and gave her useful scale. Not a tiny ship, just sitting—

"No pad, no guidance markers, no—?"

He waved his hands lightly. "No, no . . . not a place outwardly inviting landing, I think. Certainly there are no current incoming guidance or landing markers which might be regarded as invitation . . .

"Standard hailing having failed, despite the signs of the ship being on low power, and finding no signs of human life on the various scans available to me, I approached, with imaging on. And arriving at an available airlock, I pressed cycle, fully expecting the works to fail."

He glanced toward the ceiling, then gave her a strained grin.

"My expectations were dashed. The ship opened to me. As it did I could feel systems working within, and thus welcomed, I toured it.

"The crew quarters were fit for six or eight, with a separate family suite. In addition, there was a small passenger section which might hold perhaps six more. There was one large hold, as I said, and several smaller. There was a medical tech room with a quite amazing array of equipment—and I was dutifully amazed by it. The bridge itself was for the most part dark when I entered, and more crowded than we are used to, but lights came up and I . . . overstepped."

Theo raised an eyebrow. "You sat at the captain's console, and the defenses nearly killed you?"

He blew air through his lips lightly, a long sigh.

"No," he said slowly. "No. Your story would be happier than mine, I fear. True, I did sit, and I thought I sat in the captain's chair, at the front, with the copilot's seat to the left and a worktable with odds and ends upon it between. As I settled, the screens before me lit.

"Antique Terran ships have not, until now, been my specialty, Theo. I saw the letter approximating B on screen and discovered that I taken the copilot's place, as Terrans and Liadens oft mirror-image things. The screen politely requested that the copilot insert a command key. On the table between there were two chains with keys, each in their own depressions, and several cups in cup tunnels, and I grabbed up the key closest to me, which was the one I could reach, and I held it in my hands for some moments, considering that I should not, perhaps—and then considering that I must, after all, make a report and a fuller report would be better than none.

"So, grasping the key, I inserted it, firmly, and turned it to the right."

He paused to attend to his tea, raising the cup in two hands and sipping uncertainly.

Theo sighed. "It did occur to you that this wasn't smart, but you did it anyway."

He lowered his cup to the tabletop and looked into her eyes. "I cannot help myself, Theo. The curiosity overrules sense, which is ridiculous."

She nodded. "Then what?"

"Then, the ship asked for my palm on an outlined reader surface. I did as it asked, and felt several tingles of low-dose static, and then the screen turned several colors under my palm. I was even sampled for blood, I believe, as I got nicked! A light went on, and a nice musical note sounded.

"I raised my hand and the ship truly woke. The screen displayed a new message: 'Bechimo welcomes our copilot. Registry in progress.' Then, it proceeded to detail to me the state of the vessel, which considered itself fully fueled and at one hundred and thirty-seven percent of rated power. It showed condition of airlocks, of scan cameras and radar and vision checks, rated the meteor shields and defense screens, and proceeded to offer six different weapons systems.

"At that point, I thought it best to call in the experts. The tech which the Scouts had stored at this site was all Old Tech, and I had no reason to consider this ship anything but more of the same, despite it telling me that it was willing to fly; despite that it was suggesting courses, despite that it was updating star charts and energy field information to match current observations.

"Cautious too late, I turned the interlock, and turned the key to off."

He demonstrated at the nonexistent console in front of him.

"The ship noted this, and requested that I remove my key."

He waved his hand at the screen that was not there.

"This, I did." He shook his head, slowly.

"Registry complete, is what it told me, Theo, registry complete."

She shrugged. The ship would have had to acknowledge, after all . . .

"Ah, but you see, the ship continued with its work. Star chart systems continued to function. Air gauges proved the ship habitable. Defense systems were now on."

That was wrong. Theo opened her mouth to say so, then simply shook her head.

"Yes," he said wearily, "overstepped, and an idiot besides. And now, rather than having only my single ship to worry about I had two live ships on the surface, and one of them I knew nothing about. Surely the systems were close enough that I might fly Bechimo, if I dared, but what then of the remainder of my assignment?

"Thus I hit on the plan of removing the keys, both copilot and captain, locking the ship behind me, and continuing my rounds."

Theo touched the chain around her neck.

"This? You sent me a ship's key to an antique ship sitting on a planet in the middle of nowhere? Why?"

He lifted his hands limply.

"Because I had realized—not my error; that came later—say that I realized I had awoken something best left drowsing and sought to be certain that no one else found it aware. However it was, I took possession of those keys, the B key and the A key, and I sent in my reports, with images, as I continued my run, expecting at every turn to be asked to bring the keys in, or to take them to someone, or to leave them somewhere.

"No one got back to me, and I was near the end of my interim mission, arriving on what would be a long mission. So I sent you the captain's key, knowing you would keep it safe. And I kept my own key, knowing that I would keep it safe."

Theo stared at him, hard.

"This is true? All of it?" Her hand-signs alternated between full power and one hundred percent.

"One hundred percent," he said, and again lifted his cup in two hands.

"So that's the problem?" she asked. "That you acted hastily? That no one cared about your work?"

"Eventually someone at Scout Headquarters did read the report," he said, looking at her over the rim of his cup. "It had been misfiled . . . perhaps even purposefully hidden—altered. I refiled the complete report, at the direction of Headquarters."

He drank the last of the tea, sloppily, and lowered the cup to the table.

"Theo, there are people after what I carry—what we carry. They want the keys to that ship."

Theo took a very deep breath.

"If it belongs to them, then we should—"

Win Ton raised his voice, or tried to: "It does not belong to them."

He paused, his eyes downcast, then looked into her face.

"There are rogues, rogues working from Liad, and even from within the Scouts. They want that ship because it is a hybrid of Old Tech and more current technology, and because that ship has already cost them dozens of agents. Dozens."

"I don't understand this, Win Ton. You've lost me here."

He sighed, looking exhausted and frail behind his scars.

"Yes, because I have not told it all. Your pardon, Pilot." He took a moment to recruit himself, again daring to look into her face. "To continue, Headquarters is very concerned about that ship. Bechimo was built at a period when the Terran trading families were trying to reassert their trade routes; it used Old tech, stolen, perhaps dangerous tech. The ship owners and the ship builders hid it because they were under pressure and then they were . . . suppressed."

"Suppressed?" She shuddered, remembering some of the histories she'd read at the academy.

"The regional Terran trade cartels had them hounded, drove some into bankruptcy, them and their families, some perhaps were forcefully removed and blackmailed.

"This was several centuries ago, you see, and the Bechimo was never flown beyond proof flights; never in actual service. According to the stories, the crew meant for Bechimo was raided and arrested, and a lien put on the ship. Whereupon, the ship disappeared. Rumor said it could fly rings around other tradeships of like capacity. It was all that was better—and more dangerous because its builders dared to use some of the Old Tech that went into the original Terran fleets, that destroyed each other in the big war, and things even older and more dangerous.

"My research says that Bechimo has an onboard AI. More likely, it is an AI. Bechimo the ship—it can fly itself."

"Well, there are ships now that—"

"No. Well, yes. I can program a ship to take me somewhere, and if I fall over dead with poison it will still get there, in some case even over multiple Jumps. Lacking a pilot, Bechimo will itself decide where to go, and what to do when it arrives. With owners dead, perhaps it owns itself!"

"What was it doing at the Scout site?" Theo asked. "Looking for a party?"

He smiled, palely.

"Very close to that, I think. I gather that what it was doing there was that an agent from the Department—one of the rogues—had been last on the garbage run before me—several Standards before me, in fact. Given leave to look about, that agent investigated the cache of old equipment. They were testing and trying things, copying things, copying records. Inadvertently or not, they had activated the call signal, and did not know that it had finally been answered. I was first on the scene, after it had waited . . . and it imprinted on me."

Theo thought back to school, wagged her body from side to side in the chair and said, "Quack, quack, quack, gooselets on parade?"

Win Ton gave a bow so light it was barely a nod.

"Indeed. But then the rogues saw the report, hid it, shared the information among themselves, and went back for the ship."

"Which didn't acknowledge them?" Theo said helpfully.

"In a manner of speaking."

Win Ton paused, poured himself more tea from the pot, appearing somewhat steadier.

"Bechimo did not allow them aboard. When they attempted to force entry, it resisted, inflicting minor injuries as a warning. When they tried something more forceful, it wiped out the boarding party."

Theo blinked.

"Had you programmed the defenses?"

"Until now, recall, I have not had the study of antique Terran ships close to my heart."

"But how do you know this, about the landing party?"

"The survivors decided that what had worked once, would do so again. They came looking for me, Theo—and they found me."

Theo looked to the hall in horror. Win Ton raised his hands and signed heavily—not those, wincing as he did.

"I escaped, but they know that there were two keys. They believe that the second is still with the ship." He paused. "I believe I convinced them of that."

She sipped her tea, which was cold; sipped again and put the empty cup on the table.

"Thank you," she said, because she felt she had to acknowledge his last statement. She took a breath. "How do you have your key with you, if you were captured?"

He sighed. "It is Old Tech, and it is imprinted on me. It returned itself to me as it was able." He used his chin to point at it, there on the table between them. "There, take it up."

She picked it up, feeling a sense of relaxation, of welcome—and something more. Her key warmed agreeably between her breasts, and she heard a buzz, as if the captain's key was . . . acknowledging the copilot's.

"I feel it," she murmured, hardly aware that she spoke aloud.

"No difficulty?" Win Ton asked. "No headache?"

She shook her head, and put his key back on the table, not really wanting to. Her fingers moved gently—all fine better good.

He sighed, quite loudly. "May I hold yours?"

Reluctantly she drew the necklace, and handed to him.

He held it in his fist a moment, then returned it across his open palm, face gone Liaden bland.

"What's wrong?" she asked, holding the chain in her hand.

"Yes, Pilot, that is the question. The answer is like the birds you mentioned, Theo, the gooselets. That key, it has imprinted on you. I did not think—but there, that is given, is it not?" He moved his head, maybe he meant to shake it. "You not only hold the captain's key, Theo, but the key has also been imprinted. Bechimo accepts you as her captain."

Thirty-Eight

Conference Room Able

Pilots Guildhall

Volmer

"Theo?"

The chain was bright, the odd-shaped pendant familiar and comforting. In fact, so comforting that she was inclined to accept Win Ton's tale of Old Tech imprinting; the key almost radiated comfort . . . which was enough to set her teeth on edge when she thought about it. Theo glanced between her chain and his, seeing not much visible to set them apart. What would happen, she wondered, if they switched keys or got them mixed up by accident?

Win Ton's voice was more insistent this time, a little stronger. That was better—he almost sounded like his old self for a moment.

"Theo?"

She looked up into his face across the scarred table, feeling the smile trying to twitch at the corners of her mouth despite the annoyance that informed her shoulders.

"What am I supposed to do, Win Ton? You're not looking up to sitting a board and I—I don't know where this ship is, I haven't the first clue where to find it. You knew where it was, and now you don't; now you know who the pilot is but not where she can board it! What a pair of First and Second we'd make for Bechimo, eh? A pilot who wouldn't recognize her ship and a Second—well, if I'm the captain, what am I supposed to do with you?"

"Theo, I am a Scout. A Scout on duty . . ."

"How can you be on duty, Win Ton? Look at you!"

That hit him like a blow; if he'd been feeling stronger she was afraid she'd taken it all back from him with an ill-timed word.

He bowed one of his consequential bows, and spoke with eyes down, voice low.

"Pilot, I doubt anyone is more aware than I of my state."

"Then surely you know you need more than a pilot for a missing ship!"

"Theo, I am here to meet with a . . ." He hesitated, the pause stretching; and Theo couldn't tell if it was his vocabulary or his attention that was failing him. He raised his hands, fingers stuttering through something she couldn't catch. He drew a hard breath and lowered his hands, pressing palms flat.

"My team is here to meet with a person of special knowledge, one of those fringe type who exist, but who are rarely mentioned in reports or acknowledged in public. This one fell heir to a title belonging to one who aided in the building of Bechimo. An owner—this we think not. Yet there are features on the Bechimo . . . that this one has particular knowledge of. Features which speak to my thriving again, Theo. Which speak to my survival."

Dread flooded her and she dared to lean toward him, reaching toward his hands pressed against the table.

"Survival?"

"My captors insisted on my assistance, Theo. They assumed they could compel it quickly enough that I would be in their thrall when they recovered the ship."

"I don't understand, Win Ton."

He nodded a firm Terran yes. "No, you do not. May I have some tea, please? It is well chosen."

"Thank you."

She poured again for them both, hands flippantly presenting continue at will as soon as they had each sipped from their fresh cup.

Win Ton allowed his mouth to curl into the veriest ghost of a smile.

"This is not easy for any of us. The crew that travels with me does so to keep me alive insofar as they may, because of the problems I have caused, and the solution only I may effect. If I die, well then, Bechimo would be free in the galaxy with no guidance at all from a Scout, and with the danger that it may take some other group of people—these not attempting a forced entry—into dislike and eliminate them. Only my key, and yours, stand between this ghost ship becoming released to do whatever bidding it gives to itself."

"My key—" she began.

He shook his head. "Your key—is not widely known. It is in fact, underreported."

"I still am missing pieces of this . . . why can you not be cured? Why am I so bound up in this?"

"The melant'i of the situation is complex. We have sat at the same board, and because of my overstep, we sit at a new and strange board in absentia. Worse, and more complex, is the mix of the Old Tech in this, which inspires Headquarters to lend energy to a scheme depending on the trustworthiness of scoundrels and the very technology the Scouts wish to dispense with entirely."

The tea was having a bracing effect; his voice was clearer now.

"After my report reached a dishonest agent within Headquarters and was noted, waves happened. While the actual administrator was attempting to route me to a safe place to be questioned, this group, this Department, captured me and inflicted torture in the hope that I could, and would, give them Bechimo. They used Old Technology and new in service of their goal, but I was truly ignorant. Alas, the Old Tech they wished to embrace did as Old Tech so often does; it moved to its own whim, or to a design so grand it is beyond us all.

"In the course of this . . . questioning, I was injected, on purpose, with a slow-growing set of nanobugs. They—the rogues—had a controller, and could make me sicker, and better, or so they thought, and they used them to change functions, and even to hide and replace certain DNA, they claimed."

Theo kept the tone even, and only succeeded in making herself tenser as she heard her own words. "They were wrong? If you're sick to being in danger of your life . . ."

"The Old Tech, Theo, it—interacts with other devices of its kind, and not always at direction. The key—our keys—they are aware of our presence, or even our distance; in some fashion I do not understand. They interact with each other and they draw on the power and ability of other Old Tech. How else would the key forcibly taken from me keep returning to my cell? And when it returned the final time, why, the hand of the man who sought to reclaim it was burned as if he grabbed a live torch, while the necklace was cool and comforting to me."

"Is the key keeping you alive?"

"I do not know that. Neither do the techs, nor the Scouts who specialize in the study of Old Tech. But the ship on which I was captive—it orbited a world that held Old Tech in abundance, and my keepers told me they would unleash these devices they had collected to destroy Liad. They promised—as if it were a chernubia!—to allow me to help. All I need do was give them Bechimo and my future would be returned to me.

They would fix me, cure me, make me whole. And that ship that these rogues held me upon, it suffered when I suffered; the Old Tech systems were changed while I was there. It would whisper to me, in Terran sometimes, or else dementia from the nanobugs did, but it mentioned names and repeated words."

"Words?"

" 'There are secrets in all families,' it said to me, and whenever it did, there was a change. The first time it told me was when the food robot brought me dinner with my key buried in the food. The next time was just before the air-leak alarms went off. I am not certain of the next time—but they left that planet when a ship without call signs kept appearing at the limits of scans, appearing and then moving elsewhere. I suspect it was Bechimo. But I was kept well away from any comm devices or viewers.

"We grounded at Caratunk, for emergency repairs. The ship let me out, Theo, the ship and the food robot conspired and let me out."

He paused there, watching her. Not trusting her voice, Theo let her fingers reply: continue information I copy.

She could see his eyes follow her hands, but it was as if he needed to translate what she said, instead of just absorbing it, and when he looked into her face before going on she knew that it was so.

His words came, slowly.

"I ran, as well as I could. The observatory staff hid me and eventually Scouts came, and they failed to believe my story. They thought me an agent or an enemy, and then they took me for debriefing to Nev'lorn, the reserve headquarters, under guard. The agents of the Department came there, and my key whispered to me, and we had fighting . . ."

"Then Ride the Luck arrived, and turned the battle," Theo suggested, remembering Casey Vitale's excitement.

Win Ton sighed.

"Perhaps it did; for my part, I was involved in the fighting on station. I robbed the dead of their weapons. There were injured and wounded all around. I defended a hallway leading to the administrators who were holding me as prisoner, because the attackers were this same Department that had tortured me.

"Of course, the important news to the universe was that the Caylon's ship broke the back of the enemy, and that there is a missing yos'Phelium returned to Korval." There was real annoyance in his voice; he gave a half laugh, and a shrug.

"Far more important to me was the understanding that the catastrophic healing units were first for the casualties of the battle. Understand, Theo, that meant for the people they knew might benefit. But these things I've been infected with—the ordinary units, even the catastrophe units, they are not adequate."

"The healing units don't work?" Theo barely heard her own whisper.

"They stall matters for a while, it seems. Every time a fresh series begins, there's something new, as if the bugs learn the unit's cure, and so have restructured themselves. The techs therefore have held me free of autodocs and the like, afraid the bugs might learn all that the unit might do."

"And this place—Volmer. There's someone here with a cure?"

Win Ton sighed. "Not, I think, a cure. A lead, a chance. Headquarters cannot afford to have me take up healing space that is needed for others, and they do not want the Department to control Bechimo. They want no one to control Bechimo. And thus they mean to find it, and kill it—which they consider me too ill or too stupid to have deduced. So we come here; which intercepted your course—a bonus for me."

Theo touched her necklace, the familiar weight of it calming, soothing—active.

"Do they expect me to hand this over to them, then?"

Win Ton looked startled.

"Who? The crew with me? As I said, it is . . . not well known that there is a second key. Those who travel with me are doing a favor for a comrade who may not have much time left, by allowing me to meet with you for whatever we might bring to such a meeting. Call it a casting of Balances, and celebration of my life."

Theo reached for his hand then, barely covering his right hand with the strange scarring. His skin felt cool to her, even cold.

"And you, do you expect this to be our last meeting?"

That sounded hollow to her, but she didn't want to say . . .

"Do I expect to die? Yes—we all do, and pilots often earlier than others, it seems. I am not . . . advocating my death now, and I have an account I would prefer to Balance."

"Then this meeting delays you? You must get to your contact, Win Ton, because I'm not advocating your death, either. I'd rather settle accounts, if we have them, in proper time, than rattle off some unthoughtful words just to . . ." She stopped.

"Just to settle a dying man's mind?" Oddly, he smiled. "Sweet Mystery, yes, this heartens me. We will come into Balance, I have no doubt. And I cannot meet with this person, until they announce their presence to us—my crew is waiting for news now."

Barely were these words spoken when a knock came at the door, and a respectful two heartbeats after, one of the Scouts stepped in, with a Guild staffer.

Theo thought they'd overstayed their time, and rose to leave.

"Forgive us, Pilots. There is a message, the Guild holds a message, for Pilot Waitley."

The staffer showed the memory pad he held, and spoke with animation.

"Pilot, I can't believe this—someone has sent you a message marked urgent, but it's not pinbeamed and it isn't properly addressed! It goes by relay to the whole route of your ship, I gather. But you are here, I knew, and rather than send it on to the ship, or wait until I saw you again, I thought to gain what speed I could by bringing it now, here."

He handed the pad to Theo.

"Wipe and return before you leave, or if you must, take it and we'll deduct it from your credits."

Theo received the pad, staring at it like she'd never seen one before. A route-following message for her? But—if it was so important it couldn't be sent to her mail drop, why not a pinbeam?

The Scout and the staffer left. Win Ton was making a painful motion with his hand, and this time she could read the signs: privacy query.

She shook her head, tucked the pad against her side so she could sign—a moment only—and touched hand to key plate.

URGENT for Pilot THEO WAITLEY Hugglelans Lines from KAMELE WAITLEY.

She sat, heavily, waiting for the rest of the message to resolve. From across the table, she heard heavy breathing.

The message was short and wrenching, with the unsaid as unsettling as the said.

Daughter Theo, I am sending this to Hugglelans and to your Guild, and apologize if multiple messages reach you, or if the cost seems exorbitant. I act as your mother in this, and not as an accountant.

Jen Sar has disappeared in midsemester, without notice to me or to the Administration, on his off day before mid-tests. The only clue I can gather is of a small and dilapidated spaceship long unflown, departing Delgado the same day, from an airfield within easy drive, flown by one of his description. His car, keys on seat, fishing gear in place, sat in an assigned spot there. The spaceship, so station informs me, is not in Delgado space.

Within a day of his departure, I discovered that the house on Leafydale Place, all possessions, and especially the cats, are gifts to me. I continue the tea run, with fading hopes. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

Kamele

Theo banged the pad on the table as if the message might be shaken into something other, and then grabbed it up again and reread it, the sense of it the same, the whole of it senseless. Father wouldn't just leave!

"Theo?"

Win Ton was standing quite near; she'd been so concentrated on Kamele's letter that she hadn't heard him move. He was doing his best not to look at the memo screen, so much so that she struggled against a laugh and lost to a resulting snarfing giggle.

"Theo, is there . . . a problem?"

He stood with a steadying hand on table, and she managed to strangle the giggle into words.

"Win Ton, my father's gone."

His mottled face showed a change from intent interest to blandness back to some emotion she couldn't name, as if his illness betrayed his training.

Hand still braced against the table, he bowed a special bow, indicating respect for the elders, and said something in Liaden which she understood part of, and something else in Liaden, which got by her ear entirely. Within a heartbeat, he bowed again, murmuring in Terran, what must have been the translation: "May you have all joy in the memory of your loved one."

"No," she burst out. "He's not dead! He's gone. Missing! Run away from his classes in a beat-up spaceship and—his classes!"

Win Ton went through another set of changes, relief perhaps coming into his shoulders, while his eyebrows drew painfully together.

"And has he never before—"

"No, not ever not ever!"

Theo realized that she'd banged the memo pad onto the table again.

"Sorry," she said, very low, and then took it to Liaden, with proper gravity, "Forgive me if I offend in this moment of uncertainty."

"No offense," he murmured, inclining his head.

Theo closed her eyes momentarily. Inner calm, she told herself, deliberately relaxing tight muscles. She opened her eyes. Win Ton was still standing, braced against the table, his arm trembling with strain.

"Please," she said, alarmed, "sit. This—this is not your problem. I'm not sure it's my problem, except—"

Win Ton stood away from the table carefully, a soothing hand barely touching hers before he moved back to his chair.

"Your father, this is the Jen Sar Kiladi you spoke of?"

Theo nodded, staring again at the screen and Kamele's last, accusatory sentence. I felt that you must be told, and can only hope your connections with your father are not as fully disrupted as my own.

"Kamele thinks I must have known," she said. "He had a spaceship on world, and he never mentioned it."

Win Ton's hands now soothed her from a distance, his fingers moved, maybe trying to form words. After a moment, he folded them together on the table.

She looked down at the pad again, trying to think clearly. What could she do, after all? Go to Delgado and stare at a car full of fishing poles? Witness an empty spot in a ship park she'd never known of?

"I repeat, Sweet Mystery." The irony in his hoarse voice penetrated and brought her eyes to Win Ton's face.

"By all understanding your father is Liaden, whether he properly wears a clan name out of history, or not. It is obvious that his clan has called him home. The delm has the right to demand, and the clan member has the duty to return."

"No," she said. "He wouldn't—"

She stopped, hearing Kara's voice, speaking very seriously, warning her—warning her about Liadens.

Everything—promises, partnerships and plans—must be set aside, should the clan call one to duty. Remember that, about Liadens, Theo. It's just—it might help. Later.

She closed her eyes, trying to accommodate a universe in which Father could be commanded—compelled. Father had always been a force unto himself—like a law of nature, Kamele used to say.

"Theo?"

Her hand moved of itself, fingers forming pause.

Contract, she thought. Win Ton. Father. Bechimo. Four problems, pulling in different directions, and no clear solution to any of them. She needed—

She needed time. Focus.

Theo rose, memo pad in hand, sparing Win Ton a nod that was far more curt than she intended.

"And by this you mean?" he asked with some perspicacity.

She took a breath.

"I mean that I need time to think. I'm missing a father. There's a ghost ship looking for me. I have a friend who is dying. I have a contract to read and a future to decide. Right?"

She stared at the cuff of Rig's jacket—her jacket—and looked back at him.

He rose, shaky, but determined.

"Be as well as you can, my friend," she said, softly. "We will sit board together again. I want that. If there's anything I can do to make that happen, be sure I'll do it."

He bowed then, perhaps with a bit of energy.

"You have my direction, Theo. I will contact you as soon as I may, if you cannot contact me."

Theo sighed, and gave him the pilot's salute she'd learned on Melchiza.

"I'm due back on Primadonna," she said. Chaos! Tranza would think she'd been taken by slavers!

"If you do not return or reply, Sweet Mystery, what shall I assume? That you have decided that my plight is beyond your care?"

She took the question, looked at it advertently, felt the terrors around the edge of it. Carefully, she extended her hand, and took his cold, weak one. He did not withdraw.

"Win Ton. Pilot yo'Vala. Friend. I will reply as soon as I may. If I do not reply it is because the solution is one beyond me, and I've gone—gone for help. Is that acceptable?"

His eyes widened very briefly, and he bowed a stately bow on unsteady legs.

"Pilot's choice, Theo. As I sit your second, it must be acceptable."

Thirty-Nine

Primadonna

Volmer

"Right."

Rig stood with arms crossing his chest, noting the board feed Theo was taking from Volmer's orbiting station. She could see him reflected in the screens—a not-unusual thing for her this past year.

"It makes sense to see what they're looking for there, but, Theo, the real action's right there in the bar, right? They got the same feed you got from station and they got bidders and askers looking for work right now. The usual applies, of course—makes sense to get a checkup on the ship if you can, and know the crew if there is one—but here you can find something you can check before lunch and sign before dinner if you need to, and you don't have to pay a fare or pull a favor to get there, and you're not paying for your own air while you wait. Right. Station-waiting can be a big drain on the accounts!"

That made good pilot sense, even if her mood now was to get off-planet as soon as she could. With no need to go to Delgado, no real need to be anywhere except at the board of a ship . . . and coming up with a plan to find her father, of course. And figure out a way to help Win Ton, and Bechimo, if it existed, and for which, she had realized on her ride back to Primadonna, she only had the word of a very ill and perhaps unstable man.

"Guild member to Guild member, Rig, am I reading this right?" She flicked to the screen displaying the new Hugglelans contract.

"Right. See, historically, the whole trip run gets credited to whoever runs the board, with time as PIC. This contract, I think they want to make it so they can keep running to places like Eylot and Tourmalin and—well, these places that want to look at the ship's log for the last ten years and see if you've ever been anywhere they don't like. So see, they'd not mention that you was even on board here at Volmer if they wanted you to be PIC when we got to, say, Tourmalin, who don't hold with trading someplace where the Juntavas is quite so thick on the ground. Thing is, by this contract they could hide that, and once you hide that on the ship records, then it gets pretty easy to hide or steal flight time from pilots, or release it only under seal to the Guild and such."

"That's what I thought I was seeing, like here—" Theo pulled a second screen live, several sections highlighted in the ugliest pink she could find. "Which, it looks to me, means they could cut my pay if I'm aboard a ship going to Eylot, by cutting me out of the in-and-out loop there so Eylot Admin wouldn't see my name and number; they wouldn't need to give me full time-in-grade points and—"

Rig tapped his ear, which meant his volume must be wrong or—no, the sound of footsteps in the corridor reached her.

"Pilot Tranza, I believe you are duty pilot, are you not? Would you care to share with me the status of the ship? This chitchat—"

"Pilot Mayko," he replied without turning, "a Guild member has asked my advice on a matter of current interest to both of us, and one which affects this ship intimately. As you are returned I assume that our immediate mission here is done and we can begin implementing the routes and procedures outlined for this vessel by Pilot Waitley. Shift sequence alone requires the PIC—that's me—to be aware of staffing availability."

"Pilot," Mayko began, and now Theo could see her approaching reflection, "you seem to be counseling a crew member to seek work elsewhere. That could be—"

"Oh hush, right, Mayko?"

Rig turned to her smoothly, arms still crossed over his chest as he leaned in her direction. Mayko took a half step back, and he leaned even more in her direction.

"The contract she's working under gives Theo a trip to the nearest employment center following the end of her employment. That means Primadonna is liable right now, if Theo Waitley wishes, to take her to orbit. If she finds something here, well then, she can walk out under her own power and precious Hugglelans Galactic don't have to feed her for the next day. But this is still the contract offer period, boss, and you offered her a contract. She's got the right to consider, to get advice, to look for competing offers. Right. Let her look. She'll likely find there's nothing out there near as cushy as a job hooked up to the Howsenda . . . and then your problem is finding her a ship!"

He turned his back on Mayko.

"Now, Pilot," he said to Theo, "if you want an actual legal analysis of that contract you could always take it to the Guild office proper and pay that fee—"

Mayko gasped. "You wouldn't!" she said. "You singsong—"

Rig's face broke up into a laugh.

"You never were all that good in cussing battle with me, Mayko. Let's fix us something to eat and let the girl take her jacket to the bar. The ship can fly as soon as we get topped off foodwise, elsewise, since you asked."

Mayko looked around him, to wave a come-on motion to Theo.

"Pilot, if you hurry you can probably catch the cart before it goes back . . . the girl was checking on the steering when I left."

The "girl" was of indeterminate age, as far as Theo could tell, but certainly older than her, and she had one of the front panels on the cart open and an instrument Theo didn't recognize in her hand while she swept the interior with a scan wand. The breeze made the driver's extra-dark hair swirl so she had to shake her head to see around it, and if the earrings she wore were real she'd need a guard for them on a couple ports Theo knew.

The driver reached into the panel and Theo grimaced, wondering how many more things could go off in the wrong direction—she'd nearly forgotten to bring her crew kit, and then . . .

"Bad jets?" she asked. "Down for repairs? Are you the driver?"

The breeze, or concentration and the normal noise of a port in action, must have swallowed the words since the driver didn't react, and Theo repeated herself.

The woman, for now Theo was sure she was older than any mere girl, swept around elegantly as if surprised to discover anyone near. Wand held before her, still watching the instrument, she had a gentle smile on her face.

Theo relaxed. The woman was showing no signs of concern and her calm made Theo feel better.

"Yes, Pilot. I can drive you. Indeed not on the repairs; the sensor was getting an anomalous reading, but with so many extra ships on port these days, and so many security scans, unexpected readings will occur. Please, strap in and I will seal this instantly. You may call me Dulsey."

Theo sat in the passenger seat, strapped in, and watched the special elegance of this person who . . . was a pilot, and a dancer. Why then was she driving pilots about the port? She answered her own question—after all did not Aito wait tables at the Howsenda? Clearly though, this was no mere dayworker.

"May I drive you to the hiring hall, Pilot?"

Theo looked into the woman's face, but she was intent on starting, making sure the driving line was clear.

"Do I look like I'm leaving home?"

The driver glanced at her, still with that smile on her face.

"The hiring hall is a very popular destination, Pilot, especially today, and your shipmate came from there most recently, as I may be permitted to recall."

Mayko had been to the hiring hall? Of course, one way or another, Theo's spot on Primadonna would need filling.

"I understand there are several—but, yes, take me to a hiring hall."

The driver moved a hand used to work over the controls and the cart shot forward. Clearly the steering had no troubles, and after several sharp turns and dashes around other carts Theo began to assume that it was the brakes that needed looking into.

A few moments into the trip, after a sudden winding turn into a ramp new to her, Theo asked, "What hall are we going to? I thought they were mostly—"

The inner workings of the port came into view and flashed by: cables and pipes, ramps and people, warning signs and strange markings meant only for those who worked there.

"Ah, Pilot, since you come from the ship of the Hugglelans I thought it perhaps not best to travel to the hall where they hire now. Instead, I know a private party interested in hiring a pilot of special caliber such as yourself."

Theo held on as the cart lost altitude, taking a turn into a tunnel off of the ramp, tires' noise rising as the speed increased yet again. "Is this private party known onworld, and at the Guild hall? May I get a name?"

"Surely known on-world, Pilot. Why just a few hours ago, I drove there some Scouts."

Before the last word was fully annunciated, Theo gently moved her hand toward her pocket, saying, "I'm not sure that I'm interested in visiting this place, having recently taken leave of a Scout. Please take me elsewhere."

"Alas, Pilot Waitley, I believe you are committed now," said Dulsey, as the cart came to a squealing halt beneath the open bay door of a ship type Theo, despite her intensive study of silhouettes, couldn't identify.

"We have already copies of your records, and it behooves you to at least listen to our offer, which I assure you is far more interesting than the ordinary low-grade smuggler's contract offered in the halls here."

The driver used calming motions in Terran, then in Liaden, and then in Trade.

"You will not need your weapon here, Theo Waitley, only your wits. Uncle is waiting and there is much to be done."

Theo felt a thrumming, and wondered briefly if it was her own heartbeat. But no. It was the key around her neck, singing low. She danced a move to calm herself, knowing that she did not face thieves or ordinary brigands, for such would hardly bother to learn her name, nor would they likely speak of the Scouts.

Well. She still had her comm for Primadonna, and the ship's key. It was unlikely Rig Tranza would abandon her, though she wasn't so sure about Mayko.

Theo nodded to Dulsey who waited with patience as well as an impatient person might.

"I will listen to bona fide offers, Dulsey. If I have none, you will take me back to my ship."

Dulsey inclined her head.

"As you say, Pilot; it will be as you say."

Amazed, Theo stared around at what looked a museum more than a ship. There were carpets, deep rugs, and furs on the deck; there were ornate pieces of sculptural art, and there was wood. Wood! Desks made of wood and chairs made of wood and inlaid deck portions of wood. There were hangings on the walls and soft music in the air. The air carried with it the scent of the growing things which were evident in such profusion. These weren't mundane plants grown for morale and oxygen, these were bushes and extravagances as well as pots of simpler things like Father might grow at home at Leafydale Place. She almost expected to find a norbear in the forest by the time she'd turned around once.

"Uncle will arrive shortly, Theo Waitley. Please, if you like, it is the custom of many to go barefoot here, for the ship is comfortable. Make yourself at ease in our atrium."

Dulsey was gone, she herself barefoot, her shoes left on a mat by the door. Theo had heard of such customs on worlds, and on old-style family ships from the years of the Terran loop traders. She, however, might want to leave fast, and having to put on her shoes would surely slow her down.

There must be cameras and sensors here, she realized, there must be ways to keep the curious from feeling the surfaces of the art.

Alone in this atrium, Theo kept her shoes on, despite temptation. Still she wandered among the nooks and crannies that made the careful planning of a great cruise ship look like amateur design. There were myriads of things to look at, and none of them by accident, she was sure.

From her left, a sound, and a man with carefully trimmed hair and a sketch of a beard stood at the mouth of the corridor Dulsey had disappeared into. Like Dulsey, he was neither old nor young, and he was dressed simply, not in imitation of a Guild driver, but in something that looked like it might be dance class clothes. He had deliberately made the sound that alerted her, for he walked, silent and barefoot, over the rugs and furs. A pilot, yes, but not a strong pilot; a dancer, perhaps, but not strong at that either, she gauged. Dulsey had perhaps walked and moved better, yet here was someone before whom Mayko might shrink.

Theo turned carefully to face this person. He smiled and gave a half bow that was neither Liaden nor yet simply Terran.

"I see your relatives in you, Theo Waitley," he said, his bare toenails showing glossy, as if they were waxed. "Your face is more comely than most of them, but you carry yourself every bit as dangerous, which is fine news indeed. I am Uncle, and I am very pleased to meet you."

Forty

Volmer

Underport

Theo's hands wanted to to ask how Uncle might know her family, but she held them firmly around the excellent cup of tea Dulsey had brought, sipping with appreciation while Uncle sat across from her, comfortable amusement on his face.

Beside her was a key and the contract he'd offered her; she'd not looked at either yet.

"Really, it was more than chance that brought you to this interview, and so we were prepared to make an offer for your services long before you were committed to making a change. The truth is that we've been on the lookout for you, or someone very much like you, for some time. We knew that Hugglelans was moving a pilot up—I can't tell you how, sorry—and we knew that there was a good chance Mayko Ikari would make that move here."

Theo sat forward, used a gesture of inquiry she'd learned from yos'Senchul to lead into her next question.

"There are a lot of pilots, and even a lot of Jump pilots—why would you be so sure that I'd be along? Aren't there more usual ways of finding pilots then hoping one walks off a ship looking for work?"

He laughed, very gently, and gave her another of his half bows, seated though he was.

Theo offered a nod to the half bow, polite interest to the smile, and permitted him the moment to continue.

"The first thing is that we've been wanting for some time to have a ship moved as quietly as possible, which means we needed someone to fly solo, and many pilots will not fly solo. We needed someone who might have special need or tendency of their own to privacy, for while our organization is not unknown, it is one that we try to keep as low profile as possible. We need, if you will forgive me, someone who is competent—even dangerous. Of those pilots coming to Volmer for Hugglelans, the profile fit—you."

Trim as it was, Uncle fiddled with his dark hair, as if he missed something he was used to at his ear or on his head, perhaps a turban, or an earring. He held a cup of tea served from the same pot in his other hand, moving it in careful emphasis as he went on.

"Understand, I find advertising such a plebeian approach to the problem that I never seriously considered it, and while I find sorting the dregs of on-file job hunters interesting for the information it brings me, information by itself is so much fog in the viewport. But here, now, I have been accumulating news, which is information in action, and I have been long in the habit of making things happen rather than waiting for them to occur. And so, records in hand, so to speak, I did even more research spurred on by event. You are a very good match for this job."

Theo sighed to herself; fascinated by the Uncle and his approach to hiring, concerned about what he seemed to know about her.

"I think no one considers my mother dangerous, Uncle, nor my grandmother, nor ever did! My family is very well documented, and very respectable—my mother and her mother and her mother before her are all scholars! Cite and location, date and degree, it's all there and all public, after all. No pilots among them, no tendency toward violence . . ."

It was his turn to lean forward, using his cup to point to her before he spoke.

"Ah, I forget, you were very much raised as a child of Delgado, as ill as it suited you. Of your maternal side I know only that it was sufficient to the task of birthing you. But no, I look to the paternal side here, Pilot."

The slight to her mother was almost lost in the twist of pain associated with Father.

"Jen Sar Kiladi," she said coolly, "is also a scholar, Uncle, and a retired pilot." She took a careful breath. "Do you know my father?"

"Know your father? No, not your father, if you mean to ask if we have met in person. However, your gene lines are hardly so short that your sire marks the length of the shadow, and I have met others in the line . . . some years before you were born, I daresay. As is illustrated by your own performance, the line is one prone to survival. Guild records indicate you carry at least one weapon you took barehanded from the care of a previous owner."

Theo started to speak, held it back—at least he hadn't mentioned her riot!

"But you see, your records are just updated, and trustworthy Jump pilots being at a premium, there are ways to achieve as much assurance ahead of time as possible. As an employer willing to trust into your care a vessel of both monetary and sentimental value, I feel that such records ought to be available. It helped, of course, that the Scouts were willing to assist."

"Scouts? What Scouts?"

Uncle smiled, precisely as if he saw through her, but was willing to give her points for trying to play the game.

"Your Win Ton, for one. He sleeps just beyond your view at the end of the hall, guarded by the chief of his medical team."

Theo's glance was unsubtle.

"I'd not be so cruel as to say so, and not prove it, Pilot Waitley." He motioned, giving her permission to investigate, just as Dulsey appeared at the end of the way.

Theo nodded to Uncle, rose not as steadily as she might like, saw Dulsey's face go bland as they passed each other in the lushly carpeted hall.

Around that corner the hall turned utilitarian, with beige walls and floor; bulkheads and pressure doors obvious. Sitting neatly cross-legged athwart the first double-wide door Theo came to was the same Scout who'd disturbed her and Win Ton with the news of a message.

The Scout rose languidly and bowed in recognition to Theo.

"Pilot, I see you. Alas, Scout yo'Vala is not receiving visitors."

Dulsey spoke from behind Theo's shoulder.

"The Uncle decides, Scout. You may permit entry."

Theo glanced aside. In fact both Dulsey and Uncle were behind her, bare feet on the plain decking, the Uncle gesturing a clipped open.

* * *

Theo read rapidly, finding the usages no stranger than contracts she'd read in class, and certainly better paid than Hugglelans' newest offer. The confidentiality agreement carried with it an extra payment, but—

"And so," Uncle went on, "we both have more information than we did before. The Scouts have entrusted me with some news, of course, but they cannot hide from me, as much as they might wish to do so, the identity of the pilot to whom your Win Ton has given the second key—actually, the first key—because the keys speak to this ship, which was built at the same yard as Bechimo."

Theo glanced up, seeing no joy of surprise in the man's face, but rather serious intent.

"They speak?" Win Ton had said that, hadn't he? That his key had talked to and manipulated the Old Tech devices on his prison ship?

"Yes. I understand, from the man himself, that he entrusted you with one of the phrases, and I find it compelling."

His hands motioned a repeat please.

There was no reason she knew of not to. Theo shrugged. " 'There are secrets in all families.' "

"Wonderful. A phrase so old it is new again. So, we soon come to the truths we share and the truths you need to know. First though, is the contract reasonable?"

"A cantra for going to Liad?"

"Liad is a war zone, Pilot. I cannot say it will be without risk."

He sipped his tea.

"The rest meets with your approval? In short: I provide a ship, a destination for the ship, and a list of items or documents to be delivered or picked up. At each port you will have a public pickup or delivery; which permits you to claim time, ports, from the Guild; as well as a reason to be in system. From time to time I may provide a 'wait for' order as items must reach your location, at times I may issue a 'skip run' and you will then not follow the previous route but move beyond, or rendezvous as is pertinent. You provide piloting, care of my ship, and act as delivery or receiving agent. You will be issued three pinbeam codes for use as required in emergencies or other exigencies, which you will use with care."

"What will I be carrying, Uncle?"

He smiled, and raised his hand like a lecturer looking for attention from a class.

"To the best of your knowledge you will be carrying rare books, special or unique reference items, and the occasional replacement part. Some of these are antiques, some are reproductions, some are both. You will not be carrying drugs, jewels, or other material generally considered illicit."

"This is good pay."

"A good pilot is worth good pay."

"What about Win Ton?"

He raised both hands as if weighing an invisible cat.

"Yes, you see, these things are all run together. Win Ton has saved the Scouts, and myself, some difficulty by acting with haste. His actions have brought to him the problems he discussed with you—but see, I tell you that he is not giving away confidences, but rather was subject to an interview after he was given a drug to relax him into the device in which he now sleeps. It is not a mere med unit like the best ships and hospitals have, it is a med unit of the type the Scouts have long abjured and fought against, in that it uses forbidden, even secret, technology."

He paused, seeing her concentrate, spun the comment query off of his fingers in that clipped accent of his.

"How can you forbid technology?" Theo asked. "How can you keep it secret? If someone can make something, so can someone else, eventually."

Uncle nodded slightly.

"That would be my understanding, as well, Theo Waitley. The med unit operating on your Win Ton is something more than a standard autodoc unit in that, if required, it can replace tissue to the point of . . . let us say near to the point of creating a clone. Our med unit onboard, as it stands, is Win Ton's best chance to survive the next two Standards or so."

Theo eyes widen, hope quickening. "It will cure him?"

"It will not cure him!"

At this Uncle rose, and began to pace, hands making rhythmic motions as if he posted to a keyboard, or struck a small drum set.

"If I had been permitted to work with and collect this technology several hundred years ago when I wished to, we might again be at that point. But I was not and in any case—at hand what we have is a machine which is far more powerful than the Scout catastrophe units; if you have a brain to hand, almost any other injury you might name can be healed over time; if you have time, even aging can be reduced considerably. But to do that, we need a very complete sample, a very secure sample."

He paced, and Theo's hands won the race with her mouth, confirm data several hundred years outpacing her spoken, "Sample?"

He pause, and smiled slowly.

"In fact, a secure sample: what we have now of your Win Ton is contaminated; his blood and his cells carry within them the very things of which we need to cure him. The Win Ton you saw in the viewport of the machine, that Win Ton, the biologic system, has been altered to hide what is new among what is old, to make all of him somewhat other than the Win Ton you knew previously."

Theo shuddered, wondering, saw data confirmed go past as she considered—

"Clones, people clones, aren't legal, are they?"

He waved his hand with no meaning other than frustration, walking a few steps away and back as he thought.

"Fashion," he said finally. "It is a matter of fashion to make these rules. Cloning has been legal, it has been illegal. Good people have died a final death because they might not be cloned, my relatives among them—and for that matter, yours. Progress has been held back until the point that these Liaden fools Win Ton has been tangled with can threaten everything out of ignorance!"

"The Scouts?"

He sat suddenly, anger leached into an earnest and almost beseeching tone.

"The dissidents, the Department of the Interior. The fools who have collected good and bad Old Tech without discrimination and use it without understanding. The Scouts, the old Scouts, made it easy for them by putting these devices in safe places where they thought no one would find them, not knowing that technology cannot be suppressed over time. Banned, perhaps, outlawed certainly, but that's a passing thing waiting for the right person or group to write new rules.

"What may cure your Win Ton is what the Scouts are afraid of. Bechimo has a med unit that far surpasses even the unit on this ship, upon which both Dulsey and I depend. More! Bechimo certified Win Ton yo'Vala as copilot. It holds a sample—a secure sample—enough to rebuild him completely, properly, and without contamination."

Theo took a breath.

"You believe in this Bechimo then? It isn't just a coping—an artifact of his wanting to survive?"

Uncle leaned forward, his old-young face earnest.

"Please, listen and hear, Theo Waitley. The keys, both of them together, are Old Technology, good technology, and they speak to some of the devices in this ship which are also Old Technology. Bechimo is the next step; it was a hybrid built of the Old Tech that was fading of age and very advanced current tech of its time. And that is its danger to the Scouts, and to these dissidents, that what we built really was, and is, better than what they have and treasure."

Uncle's hands tussled with words or ideas she couldn't read.

"We?" she ventured, at last.

He sighed, gently.

"Call it we, if you like, Pilot. I believe in the Bechimo because I stood on her deck as she was being finished, so I know she exists. We can discuss the philosophy of these things called existence and self over a drink sometime, or a pot of tea, if you like. In the meantime, there is an issue of time, on several accounts.

"Win Ton yo'Vala's prognosis if I turn him back to the Scouts is not good: perhaps two hundred or three hundred Standard days, maybe four hundred if they are content to allow him to stay in the machine until he dies, useless and helpless, inside a cocoon. My machine—well, the machine calculates that at the current rate Win Ton will have a series of dozens of good days, and then of tens, and then of fours or threes, all interspersed with more and longer time within the med unit. With good food, diet, exercise, care, he may well have a thousand days or more of interrupted, painful survival.

"If we can get him to Bechimo, the ship should be able to restore him. It may well improve him. Then he may have centuries, as you should."

Theo bit her lip.

"Win Ton said Bechimo was looking for me."

"Yes, that's true. And with both of you together here it may well find you—and quickly! Which we can by no means allow!"

"Whyever not? If Win Ton needs the ship, then let it come here. I'll open it, we'll get him into this super-rated autodoc, and—"

"Think, Pilot. What happens here or anywhere public when a self-controlled ship comes to port demanding a space, or just taking a space? If someone warns it away, and it assumes you, or Win Ton, is in danger, it may attack—surely if someone tries to board it without your permission, it will repel boarders again!" He tapped the table for emphasis. "If you do not know this, know it now. Bechimo is self-aware. It is also ignorant, having been reft of an association which would have taught manners and something of human interaction."

"Win Ton said it was an AI," she admitted, and sighed. Uncle was right. Better to let the ship find her in . . . less crowded conditions.

"How will I know it?" she asked. "Bechimo."

"We can provide a matching program," Uncle said, and reached further, to tap the contract at her elbow.

"What I want you to do, Theo Waitley, is to accept my contract. There is a ship in orbit, an old ship but serviceable and proud. The port records are open to you ahead of time and you may check it thoroughly. It is built on an old Terran commissioner's ship plan, and is mostly standard, aside it has had several power upgrades. Accept the contract, and go. Bechimo will find you, I make no doubt. Be canny and choose your time and location. Once you have it in hand, then the choice of what you will do is, as every choice a pilot makes, your own."

He paused, regarded his hand a moment, then looked at Theo with no sign of anything but seriousness.

"In the meantime, it is best, I believe, for all of us, that you accept my contract."

Theo looked down at the contract, the phrase Solcintra, Liad coming into sharp focus. Clan Korval was based in Solcintra, Liad, as she knew from the news reports. Delm Korval—who was delm to pilotkind, wasn't that what Kara had said? Her father, Win Ton—pilots both. Would it be possible—?

And what could it hurt, she thought suddenly, to ask? Neither Father's disappearance nor Win Ton's circumstance was something that Sam Tim could solve on his own!

"I'll do it," she said.

Uncle inclined his head, and offered her a pen.

"Your signature, please." He produced a pouch from somewhere, and dumped its contents on the table before her: five cantra pieces, a ship's key, and what looked like a clay game piece.

"The ship I wish you to pilot is Arin's Toss, Pilot. Dulsey, please bring a screen, so that the pilot may review the records."

Theo looked at the small fortune sitting beside her, idly reaching out and touching the mint-fresh coins with the stern face on it, and then the key . . . and then the clay piece, which felt oddly fuzzy for something so hard, which felt comforting, the way the key round her neck had felt when she'd looked at Win Ton, who would be her copilot if he could . . .

Now that she had decided, now that all of her problems seemed to be pointing in the same direction, she wanted to lift, to fly, to be doing something.

She stood.

"Just a moment, Pilot; Dulsey will be here—"

"That's fine," she interrupted. "If the ship will fly, I'll fly it."

She picked up the game piece, and flipped it. It snugged into her hand like a norbear.

"The usual rules apply," she said. "Let's go."

SALTATION

Forty-ONE

Arin's Toss

Volmer

The Book of Ships worknet description of Arin's Toss, out of Bluestone, Waymart, called it

an excellent example of the early trade-merge ship, with the courier-weight vessel built on Terran proportions, denominated and calibrated with Terran mensuration, and reminiscent of the family-vessel forbears it descended from. The ship has been surveyed as recently as Standard Year 1389, when its single classic Class Three mount point was replaced with a more modern Class Two mount during refitting that included installation of a dual core drive to replace what was claimed to be an original Terran Sentry-Overbrook.

Reading about it, though, was nothing like being there. Theo had in hand already the hard-copy printout and three reader versions of the ship's details, down to replacement part numbers, lists of shops that had worked on it in the last century, and the promised pinbeam info as well.

They'd toured the ship first, inspecting it externally on the way in as Dulsey piloted the minishuttle belonging to Crystal Energy Consultants.

For the initial runthrough, Theo sat second seat, Dulsey demonstrating the few nonstandard board-set items the antique retained with the ship quiet. Some of the surfaces were polished metal, some were clearly refits, but the entirety made the ships she trained on at the academy look old and grubby, and Primadonna just a little . . . dowdy.

Theo frowned, the memory of her last visit to Primadonna was still uncomfortable. Rig had taken her comm, her key and her news of a ship with a wide grin, and the advice to "fly her like she's part of you, Pilot Theo, because that's what she'll be, so soon it'll make your head spin!"

Mayko . . . had not been pleased. She demanded to know who had hired her, and how she felt, after Hugglelans had taken her aboard and trained her, to be signing with another company. Until Rig told her to put it in a can, that was, and Theo was left to pack in peace.

Arin's Toss, though—They did a full run to Jump sequence with the board on neutral and Theo sitting second; then brought it down to quiet again. Theo took over, reset the board to zero and did the entire sequence again, adjusting toggle strengths and seating and light angles and straps to things that would be comfortable to her.

The intro time flew by; and on the morrow Theo would—

GAWGAWGAW.

Theo snatched for the comm—but it wasn't lit! She looked to Dulsey, who pointed.

Right, she thought. Pinbeam.

"Test message?"

Dulsey's hands were eloquent: Live message get.

Theo signed accept and pressed the read now button, glad to see open text in Terran.

++Request/require immediate shipment pallet fifteen++new local conditions++arrive shields up++doubled terms arrive on-before Day 201 Standard 1393++haste++purple44+arrival Day 203 Standard 1393/later unacceptable++listening++

Theo glanced to the other pilot, surprised to see reaction on that normally serene face. Dulsey brought the second board live just in time to catch an incoming comm call which she flashed to the open speaker. Uncle's voice was clear.

"Hello, Arin's Toss. We'll have to rendezvous for a transfer; are systems good there?"

Dulsey looked to Theo, answered, "We have done first sequencing and introduction. There should be a dozen more hours or longer—"

"You can do the math; we are attempting a very finite deadline on a unique item."

"Waitley, can you get the Toss to—that would be Solcintra, Liad, planetside port by darkest night, day two-oh-one, if we can get Toss loaded?"

For a moment Theo flashed on stuffing the Slipper on the plateau; her hands running the board for fine coordinates.

"There's some leeway," Uncle continued. "Darkest quarter of the morning before dawn is client preference."

"Yes," Theo said, absolutely certain. "Yes, if the ship's up to spec and we can load within the next two orbits, I can make delivery. If there's food on board. But it'll have to be five Jumps."