The Gripping Hand

PART 4 - THE CRAZY EDDIE WORM

Take up the White Man's burden-

Send forth the best ye breed-

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need:

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go make them with your living,

And mark them with your dead!

Rudyard Kipling "The White Man's Burden"

"The United States and the Philippine Islands, 1899"

1 The Tartars

Knowledge is valuable when charity informs it.

St. Augustine, City of God

Through the windows they could see the beheaded corpse of Hecate.

A scar gaped along half its length: the gap where Hecate's cabin had been. The rest of the hull had been mounted alongside a silver sausage, one of their captors' ships. It flew three hundred meters distant, keeping pace with their own captor. A slender spine projected aft. The drive flame was a faint violet-white glow running along the spine.

Hecate's severed cabin rode the flank of another such sausage. From inside they could see almost nothing of that: just a silver membrane bulging with fluid, centimeters away, and a rigid cabin forward.

But they saw Hecate's host ship well enough. Freddy had set their remaining telescope to following it. The sausage was banded with color-coded lines and chains of handholds and catwalks, and Moties. The maze ran round Hecate, too. Moties in pressure suits moved over the hull like lice

They found the lightsail, Freddy's spinnaker. In minutes they had spread several acres of silver film to inflate ahead of the nose.

"That won't add much to the thrust," Jennifer said. "Why..."

"Why not? It's there," Terry Kakumi said. "Blink and it's a signal device, blink again and it's heat shielding. They do love to fiddle."

"It'll heat their cabin some," Freddy said.

Hecate rotted before their eyes. Engineers and tiny Watchmakers stripped away sections of hull and plated them over their own ship. They found automated cameras at nose and tail and amidships, an officially approved model, all identical, which the Moties seemed to find confusing. Hecate's fuel tank they studied and then left intact. They worked inside the cut end until the Engineer was able to pull loose a glass tank festooned with tubing- "Dammit. That's our sewage recycling system," Freddy said.

"We'll starve."

"We have the goodies locker," Jennifer said. "A week's supplies, maybe."

"It's a double time limit. Will the sewage crowd us out before we starve for lack of basic protocarb? Stay tuned."

The men were edgy, talking to distract themselves. But Jennifer was calm, even happy, cradling a six-kilogram alien who clung to her with three arms, watching her face intently, sometimes trying to imitate the sounds she made. And Glenda Ruth... was frightened when she thought about it, and frustrated, and uncomfortable; and alive as never before, playing a game she'd begun learning in the cradle.

She worked on Freddy's back, running her thumbs along basic shoulder muscles, probing deep. Freddy subsided with a grunt of unwilling satisfaction. He asked, "Do you suppose they'll keep the data cubes? I've got some good recordings of the battle."

Hecate dwindled. They took half the hull to make a curved mirror to relay light from the light-sail. Kilometers of wiring went into the nose of the captor craft. A small craft arrived from somewhere else; some of the wiring, four cameras, and all of Hecate's little attitude jets went aboard; the Engineer pilot traded places with a replacement, and away it went.

The Moties exposed Hecate's drive; moved it aft; set it to firing.

Then they were all over it, tuning, testing. Presently their own drive went off, leaving Hecote's running.

"Something of a compliment," Glenda Ruth said. Freddy nodded.

Jennifer asked, "Does it bother you? Hecate..."

Freddy's shoulders set hard. He said, "Not all that much. A racing yacht, we change anything at the slightest excuse. The idea's to win. It's not like"-to Glenda Ruth-"not like your dad losing his battleship, his first command."

"He still flinches if you mention MacArthur." Glenda Ruth resumed trying to soften the knots in Freddy's shoulders.

They could hear the rustling. Engineers and Watchmakers were moving over the surface of their own life bubble. What was happening out there?

"Then again, Hecate is where you and I got together. I do hate-"

"The bed's quite safe."

His tension softened. "We get it back from Balasingham, we can build a ship around it."

The Mediator pup looked into Jennifer's eyes and said, distinctly. "Go eat." Jennifer let go, and the pup pushed off from Jennifer's chest, setting her rotating, sailing unerringly to impact the Engineer.

The cabin was aswarm with Moties. The Warrior would remain in place for minutes at a time, then bound about the cabin like a spider on amphetamines, and presently come to rest again. The Engineer and three skinny half-meter Watchmakers, and a slender creature with a harelip and long, delicate fingers and toes, had reshaped the hole in the cabin wall into an oval airlock. The Engineer had found the safe near the cabin's forward cone, tapped at the code readout, then left it alone. Now the Moties had peeled the cabin walls away and were going through the air and water regeneration systems. From time to time there came a whiff of chemical strangeness.

"Too many of them. They'll strain the air changers," Freddy said.

"I think that one's a doctor," Jennifer said. "Look at the fingers. And the Motie nose is in the roof of the mouth. That thing's got enhanced smell and surgeon's fingers. There was a Doctor caste on Mote Prime."

"Maybe several."

"Right. And between them, the Doctor and the Engineer are going to decide how to keep us alive. I've got to say I don't like that."

Now the three Watchmakers were moving about the cabin drawing green lines. They squeezed the stuff out of what the Navy would have called ration tubes. The patterns weren't complex enough to be writing. The Watchmakers covered the walls with lines and curves, and presently converged where the sewage recycling system had been.

Freddy asked, "Why not, Jennifer? The way you and Glenda Ruth talk, these Moties can do anything, including keep humans healthy."

"But it's all very basic, isn't it? Nothing like the castle they built for us on Mote Prime."

"It's a battle fleet, not a city," Glenda Ruth said.

Terry Kakumi snapped, "It's a poor little pathetic battle fleet. Look at them, Jennie. Tiny little ships, mostly tank, big cabins because there are too many of the buggers, motors that do a meter per sec squared at best. What's left for weapons? Are they supposed to make them on the spot?

"What would a real fleet be like, Jennie? Rape my lizard, what couldn't we build with Motie Engineers at the Yards? They're church-rat poor. We've been captured by BuReloc transportees! They're stripping our car and fixing our life support with borrowed chewing gum and string!"

Jennifer giggled. "Bag ladies with borrowed chewing gum. I love it!"

Glenda Ruth felt herself bristling, as if these were her Moties. But she could feel it: Terry was right. "What can we do?"

"Talk to them, Glenda Ruth. Tell them we're worth the price of their last coin," Terry said. "Tell them to pull the pea out from all those mattresses, I'm just a pathetic mass of bruises. Explain ransom to them. Or they'll let us strangle."

She said, "These don't talk. We'll have to wait."

The new East India Mediator was old, as old as Eudoxus, with gray streaks at the muzzle and along the flanks. She was escorted into the chamber by a Warrior and a younger Mediator, who both left quickly.

When she was presented to Horace Bury, the trader flinched. Chris Blaine moved closer and saw what the Motie was carrying. "A newborn?" he asked, and watched Bury relax. Of course Bury took it for a Watchmaker.

The aged Mediator examined the humans and turned toward Bury radiating delighted surprise. "Excellency! I had never dared hope to meet you in person, even when it became known that you were again in the Mote system. I have thought long on the name I would give myself and have chosen Omar rather than something more pretentious. It is my greatest pleasure finally to meet you."

Bury bowed slightly. "I am pleased to have had such apt students."

"And my new apprentice. We have not chosen a name, but-"

"You presume," Eudoxus said. "We too have new apprentices, and we are eager to introduce them to His Excellency."

Of course." Omar turned to Wordsworth and began to speak.

"Hracht!" Eudoxus looked pleased. "We agreed that all conversation will be in Anglic. This means yours as well, does it not?"

Wordsworth was about to speak, but some gesture from Omar silenced her. "I would prefer rigid rules to no rules," Omar said. "Very well, I will receive my information for all to hear. Where do matters stand now?"

"Not good not bad," Wordsworth said. "We make progress, agree that East India will have honored place, second to Medina but only to Medina."

The Mediator pup was staring intently at Horace Bury. The trader was not annoyed. Interesting...

"Progress indeed," Omar said. "And how will all this be accomplished?"

Chris Blaine smiled thinly. "Not all details have been resolved," he said. "Yet we can agree, there has never been a better time to unite all Moties. Mote Prime is not a factor. The Empire has many ships. With Medina and East India, and allies you may bring..."

Omar moved closer to Bury. The Mediator pup stretched toward him. Absently Bury's hand reached out, touched the pup's fur, drew back.

"Excellency," Omar said. "Let us speak seriously. Medina and East India are powerful if united, yet it must be obvious to all that even united we are not the greatest power among the space dwellers."

"King Peter wasn't the most powerful Master on Mote Prime," Chris Blaine said.

Bury spoke softly. "Medina and East India were the first to understand the implications of the protostar. Your ships even now negotiate with the Empire. Why should you not have the rewards of prescience?" He deliberately scratched behind the pup's oversize ear. "May I choose a name? Ali Baba, I think." Bury smiled. "Of course there is a small favor we require."

Eudoxus said, "We have begun to speak with the Crimean Tartars. It goes slowly. They know only obsolete languages."

"Obsolete to you," Omar said. "Not to us. One of my sisters has spoken with the Tartars, and I received word moments before I landed here. Excellency, the Tartars are afraid. They find that every Motie's hand is against them, and they do not know what they have. Only that it is important, and holding it is dangerous."

"They're holding a wolf by the ears," Joyce said.

The hull clonked

In Hecate's cabin, they waited.

A Warrior bounded through the new air lock, scuttled about the cabin, and presently settled. It exchanged words with the Warrior already present. It emitted a warbling whistle.

Other Moties entered: a Master, a meter and a half tall and clad in thick white fur, and a smaller Motie furred in a dense brown-and-white pattern: a Mediator.

"We're in business," Glenda Ruth said.

Two Engineers followed, towing a glass cylinder with green goo sloshing in it: Hecate's sewage recycler. Six-fingered hands had been at work on it, but it didn't seem greatly changed.

"Another compliment," Freddy said. "Given what that cost me, I'd have been surprised if they could make it much more efficient."

Glenda Ruth felt Freddy's relief; she even shared it. Their life spans had just been extended by several weeks. More important was the timing.

"We thank for glorious gift," she said in the language Jock and Charlie had taught her, King Peter's language, from Mote Prime.

The Mediator's stance indicated receptivity but no understanding.

Damn! But free-fall might alter a Motie's body language. (Stance, indeed!) Or her words might be wrong, or her own gestures. How would a crippled Mediator speak, one with a missing arm?

Two of those little Moties with the Engineers weren't Watchmakers; they were Mediator pups. Jennifer waved. The larger pup jumped across ten meters of space, impacted, and clung. Jennifer wasn't having trouble communicating.

Okay. Glenda Ruth released her seat belts to give her body full play, worked her foot under a strap for anchorage, and said, palms facing out, regal-but-unarmed. "Our lives much improved by generous-"

The Moties converged on her.

Glenda Ruth had to remember to resume breathing. She was very aware of the spiky Warriors. They shifted constantly to keep a free path between prisoners and weapons. The four humans held quite still as six-fingered hands moved over them.

They had guessed this might happen. Glenda Ruth's mother, the only woman aboard MacArthur, had stripped so that Moties could learn something of human anatomy. Jennifer wanted that slot for herself.

It didn't matter. The caste that Jennifer thought was a Doctor moved in with the Engineer, and they peeled Hecate's crew like bananas. The humans had to help in self-defense. The Doctor shied back from waves of alien pheromones, then sniffed dutifully. It had been many hours since there was a shower aboard Hecate.

Jennifer blushed and twitched at tickle points. Freddy thought it was funny and was trying to hide it. Terry's rounded nudity didn't bother him, but his hyperawareness of the Warriors' guns was driving Glenda Ruth nuts. She tried not to flinch at the touch of Motie hands. Dry. Hard. Right hands felt like a dozen twigs gliding over her face, seeking the muscles that make the front of a human head into a signaling system. The left hand clamped like a vise to hold her arm or leg or torso to be probed.

They turned and twisted for the Doctor. The Mediator and Master hung back, watching.

Human vertebrae fascinated them, as they had thirty years before, when MacArthur's crew met Moties from Mote Prime. Evolution had not taken that path on the Mote. Motie life-forms had spines of solid bone and heavy, complex joints.

The brown-and-white pup jumped from human to human, sniffing, feeling, comparing. Even the Master, judging it safe, moved forward to run its right hands along Glenda Ruth's spine. Jennifer collapsed in giggling that was half sobs, sandbagged by everyone's favorite memory from Summer Vacation.

(Outside the museum on Mote Prime, a Master's dozen fingers explored Kevin Renner's back. Renner shifted in delight. "Right! A little lower. Okay, scratch right there. Ahh!")

They couldn't talk under such circumstances. Glenda Ruth tried. They had to educate the Mediator, give it words to learn... but the others' embarrassment was just too strong. Glenda Ruth quickly gave up.

The Doctor and Engineer began talking to the Master. Pointing, demonstrating, explaining. The white-furred Motie took it all in. It asked short questions (that one inflection, query, brought verbal responses, where another, command, caused action), and the Moties resumed their examination. One question sent the Engineer to join its Watchmakers at work in the air recycler. Another had it comparing Freddy and Terry, Jennifer and Glenda Ruth. Hands. Hair. Toes. Spines again. Genitals (will you stop that giggling?)

The Mediator watched.

And finally they were allowed, to put their clothes on. They found it hard to look at each other. The Master and its attendants were still talking.

"We should have guessed," Glenda Ruth said. "Masters do talk. It's different from the Mediator skill. They have to organize data from a dozen different castes... professions."

Clothed, it was all right to speak again. Jennifer said, "I think the Doctor's nearsighted. In a surgeon that's probably good."

The adult Mediator took the second Mediator pup from its Engineer parent. She crossed to the bridge, caught herself, and offered the little Motie to Freddy: clearly an offer, not a demand.

Freddy looked at Glenda Ruth. He was showing surprise, no distaste, and a touch of hope. She said, "Take it." Why Freddy? Freddy immediately reached out, smiling, and accepted the thing into his arms.

Why Freddy? Why not me?

It clung with five limbs, its hands exploring Freddy's head and shoulders, where his skin was exposed. Presently it pulled back to watch his face. Moties caught on to that one quick, the notion of a mobile face. Why not me, or Terry?

The Master spoke. The Engineer led the Mediator to the door. The Mediator began playing with the code readout.

"Damn," Glenda Ruth said. The others looked at her.

If she let the others know exactly what she had in mind, a Mediator would know it now or later. Could she get some help on this? She pointed at the safe and shouted, "Show signs of distress, dammit! It's too soon!"

Distress, right. Freddy spasmed, pointed to the safe with an outflung arm, and flung the other across his averted eyes, crying, "Weep! Wail!" Glenda Ruth choked back a laugh. The pup was trying to imitate him, right arms pointing, left across its eyes.

Terry's hand closed on her ankle. "The Warriors."

"They-" She looked. They would, "Freddy love, cut it."

"What was that about?"

She shook her head. "Anyway, you made the point."

One of the Warriors scuttled forward and anchored itself next to the safe, gun pointed back toward the humans.

The safe door slid open. A Watchmaker scuttled in. It handed out a laboratory sealed-environment jar as large as itself, then a plastic jar of dark powder, a stack of documents, a roll of gold coins.

The Engineer examined the gold and said something to the Master. The Master answered.

The Engineer put the papers back, and the cocoa. It examined the jar.

"Don't touch that!" Glenda Ruth shouted. No Motie would understand, but the Mediator would remember.

The Engineer opened the seals.

There was a pop. The Warrior's head snapped around to catch the same puff of gas that caught the Engineer. Glenda Ruth wondered if they would be shot.

The Warriors didn't shoot. The Engineer took a scraping from the sludge in the jar, then resealed it and put it back. It left the door open. It spoke a word and tossed the gold at one of the Watchmakers, who caught it and jumped through the new airlock.

The other Engineers had reattached the sewage recyling system where six lines of graffiti-green met in a sunburst. They continued to work on it, add a pipe here, bend, constrict. The Warriors maintained their stations. When Glenda Ruth kicked herself forward to the safe, she could feel phantom bullets. The Warriors came alert; the Master gave no signal that she could recognize; but no Motie stopped her

Thanks to the Moties' parsimonious lowering of cabin pressure, the canister's pressure had sprayed perhaps 10 percent of the encysted eggs of the Crazy Eddie Worm into the cabin as an aerosol. Most of the contents were intact. There was a mild odor of petroleum and other pollutants, the natural state of water on Mote Prime, fading rapidly as the air filters did their work. The Moties clearly didn't like the smell any more than the humans did. It wouldn't have bothered planet-dwelling Moties.

They've evolved in space, Glenda Ruth thought. Space-dwelling Moties who don't detest pollution will die of it.

Glenda Ruth carefully wiped the rim and resealed the canister, and glared at the Engineer. It might be vital to be able to claim that the Moties had been infected by accident.

Then she suppressed a shudder: a hundred wormlets would hatch and die in her lungs.

Thirty years before, Whitbread's asteroid-mining Engineer had been infected with the parasitic worm. MacArthur's biologists determined that it couldn't infect humans and labeled it Form Zeta, the sixth living thing they'd found during autopsy on the Engineer. Present, not in large numbers, but present.

Jock and Charlie and Ivan carried it in greater numbers, and they didn't care any more than humans care about E. Coli. Parasite Zeta did no harm beyond consuming a few calories; which was why the Blaine Institute biologists had used it as the base for their genetic engineering experiments.

It would be interesting to know if the parasite was normal among these space-evolved Moties. Not that it mattered: surely it would live, and this worm was different. And it would not survive in human lungs, but just the thought-

The Mediator spoke at her shoulder, and she jumped. It said, "Mediators talk. No Horace Bury Fyunch(click), but we talk."

"Good," said Glenda Ruth. "Let's talk. Please leave our trade goods alone. This is all we have to bargain with. It should not be ruined."

And now the Crazy Eddie Worm was growing in an Engineer, a female. Had the Warrior been female, too? Would it affect these Watchmakers?

How many Masters were aboard? Too many, of course, more than their captors would actually want, but... three? Four? And the clock was counting down.

"Your Lordship's presence is requested," the voice said. "My Lord. My Lord, I must insist. Rod Blaine, wake up, dammit!"

Rod sat bolt upright. "All right, already."

"What is it?" Sally asked. She sat up with a look of concern. "The children..."

Rod spoke to the ceiling. "Who?"

"Lord Orkovsky. He says the situation is urgent," the telephone said.

Rod Blaine swung his feet over the edge of the bed and found his slippers. "I'll talk to him in the study. Send coffee." He turned to Sally. "Not the kids. The Foreign Secretary wouldn't call us in the middle of the night about that." He went across the hail to his study and sat at his desk. "I'm here. No visuals. All right, Roger, what's up?"

"The Moties are loose."

"How?"

"Actually, it's not quite that bad." Lord Roger Orkovsky, Secretary of State for External Affairs, sounded like a diplomat under stress. "You'll recall there was some question of when Dr. Buckman's protostar would collapse."

"Yes, yes, of course."

"Well, it's happened, and the Moties were ready for it. Due to some clever thinking-Chris is mentioned in the dispatches-Mercer had sent everything he could scrape up out to where the new Alderson point would form, so we were ready, too. Almost ready.

"Details later. We got a whole bunch of reports at once, about stellar geometry and such. You'll have to read them all. What's important is that there are some Motie ships with an ambassador on board cooling their heels under Navy detention while we decide what to do about them. And Mercer wants a battle fleet."

Rod was aware that Sally had come up behind him. "Roger," she said.

"Good morning, Sally. Sorry to yank you up like this-"

"Are the children all right?"

"I was just getting to that," Orkovsky said. "We don't know. Chris volunteered to be Navy liaison aboard Bury's ship-Sinbad. Commodore Kevin Renner commanding."

"Commodore."

"Yeah, that's complicated, too."

"So they went into the Mote System," Rod said.

"Right. Sinbad, a light cruiser-Atropos, Commander Rawlins- and a Motie ship. The reports say the first person the Moties wanted to talk to was Horace Bury."

"Roger, that doesn't make sense," Sally said.

"Maybe not, but it's true. Look, I better give you the rest of this. There'll be a cabinet meeting in the Palace in two hours. We want you there. Both of you. Matter of fact, we want you back on the Motie Commission. You were going back to New Caledonia anyway, now the government will pay for getting you there. The Navy will have a ship ready by the time you get to the Palace."

"We can't leave so soon!" Rod said.

"Yes, we can," Sally said. "Roger, thanks. You mentioned Chris. What about Glenda Ruth?"

"That was the last message in the stack," Orkovsky said. "Sally, a hundred hours after Sinbud went into the Mote system, Freddy Townsend took his yacht through. Glenda Ruth was aboard."

"I want his name," Sally said.

"Huh?"

"Whoever let them through. There's got to be a Navy man in charge out there, and he let our daughter go into the Mote system in an unarmed yacht. I want his name."

"Sally..."

"Yes, I know, he thought he had a good reason."

"Maybe he did."

"It wouldn't matter, would it? When was the last time you won an argument with her? I still want his name. Fyunch(click)!"

"Yes, madame?"

"Is our car ready?"

"Yes, madame."

"Tell Wilson we'll be leaving in an hour. Get clearances for the west entrance to the Palace."

"Yes, madame."

"So what do we take?" Sally said. "Jock. Fyunch(click), we want to talk to Jock. Wake him up, but check with the doctors first."

"Good thinking," Rod said. "Sally, we can't take him with us."

"No, but we can get him to record something to prove he's still alive," Sally said.

"What?" Rod held a sheath of facsimile papers. "The last report says, and I quote: ‘The Hon. Glenda Ruth Blaine, on the basis of brief conversations with the Motie representatives, has concluded that although these Moties know Anglic and have some familiarity with the Empire, they are not part of any Motie group previously encountered.' I don't think they believe her."

"More fools they."

"Madame," the ceiling said. "Jock has been awakened. Do you want visuals?"

"Yes, thank you."

Brown and white fur streaked with gray. "Good morning, Sally. If you don't mind, I'll have chocolate while we talk."

"By all means. Good morning. Jock, the Moties are loose."

"Ah?"

"You knew about the protostar."

"I know what you have told me about the protostar. You said that it would collapse within the next hundred years. I take it that was wrong? That it has already happened?"

"You got it," Rod said. "Jock, we have a problem. Moties that Glenda Ruth believes aren't part of King Peter's group have got out of the Mote system. So far they appear to be stuck in a red dwarf backwater, but we all know the Empire can't keep up two blockades."

"And you and Sally have been given the problem of what to do about the Moties," Jock said. "Have they made you an admiral yet?"

"No."

"They will. And they'll give you a fleet." Jock's hand moved expressively. "At least it's not Kutuzov. Of course they want you to leave immediately. I am afraid I cannot accompany you."

"No, the Jump shock would kill you."

"Are the children well? They must have involved themselves by now."

Sally said, "They've gone to the Mote."

"I did not think you could surprise me," Jock said, "But you have. I see. Give me an hour. I will make what records I can."

"In what language?" Rod asked.

"In several. I will need recent pictures of Chris and Glenda Ruth, as well as of myself."

"We have a meeting."

"Of course. We will discuss this when you're done with that."

The Motie paused, and somehow the Motie smile was a grin of triumph. "So the horse learned to sing after all."

"I hadn't expected this," Jennifer said. "We're infested with Moties! Freddy... Freddy, I can't keep thinking of this ship as Hecate!"

Freddy Townsend looked around. "Yeah. Hecate's cabin mounted on a ship of unknown name. Bandit-One? And we'll just hang numbers on the rest of the fleet."

Glenda Ruth said, "We could ask-"

And she shied back before he snarled, "I won't ask Victoria. She'd give us the name of this Motie ship, like we're strap-on cargo."

Jennifer said, "A two-headed ship. Two captains. We've never seen the Master that gives the orders. Cerberus?"

Five Watchmakers, two Warriors, three Engineers nursing two Mediator pups, the old Mediator they now called Victoria, a Master, a Doctor, and a lean, spidery variant that scuttled back and forth through Cerberus's big new airlock, perhaps bearing messages, had all made their nests in the cabin.

The change had come gradually, while they slept. Glenda Ruth remembered waking from time to time in a shifting pattern of variously shaped Moties. Twelve hours of that, then she woke choking and weeping. The Doctor had examined them and then meeped at the young male Master they'd named Merlin, who warbled at the engineers, who readjusted the air and sewage recyclers until the air was back to standard... but it was still thick with Motie smells, and every human's eyes were still red.

The green strips painted along the walls had grown into vines, furry green tubes as thick Glenda Ruth's leg. The various Moties used the lines to mark off their territories

They'd turned Cerberus's original airlock into a toilet: one toilet with a variety of attachments. The Engineers had worked on Cerberus's original toilet, too. It worked better now.

"They've put screens up. Both toilets," Glenda Ruth "We're talking now."

"Can you tell them to leave us some room?"

"I'll give it another try, but you can guess the answer. This much is more personal room than they've ever seen in one spot."

An Engineer arrived with food. All of the Moties converged except one Warrior. Glenda Ruth said, "Jennifer, go and see what they're eating."

The meal was democratic: the young Master called Merlin supervised distribution and sent a Watchmaker with food for the Warrior on guard. Merlin looked around when Jennifer came near. Victoria said he was a young male; this was not obvious, given he was helping to nurse the Mediator pups. The human presence didn't disturb him. Jennifer looked about her; spoke a few words to Victoria.

The Mediator swam to join Glenda Ruth. Victoria had been learning Anglic much faster than Glenda Ruth could learn Oort Cloud Recent.

She said, "About food? I think, thought you have your own."

"I'd like to know if this is like what we eat," she told it.

"Will ask Doctor and Engineer."

"I would like to feed you cocoa."

"Why?"

"On the planet they liked cocoa. If you like cocoa, we have something to trade."

"You said, what is in safebox is trade goods. We should not take without giving. Cocoa in safe?"

"Yes."

Victoria brought her flat face close. "Trade space with us! Past the starhole is all the worlds, all within your gripping hand. Give us the worlds, take what you want. Take tools you see, tell tools you want, Engineers make that. Take any caste of us, tell what shape and kind you want, you wait, your children will have."

Glenda Ruth said, "This is not so simple. We know how your numbers grow."

Stillness.

"We think we have an answer, but it's still not easy. Many Motie families will need to work together. As Moties do not always do."

"Glenda Ruth, who is Crazy Eddie you speak of?"

Glenda Ruth was only surprised for a moment. "Planet-dwelling Moties told us about Crazy Eddie. Maybe you know him with another name."

"Maybe"

"Crazy Eddie isn't one person, he is a kind of person. The kind who... who tries to stop change when change is too massive to stop."

"We tell children about Sfufth, who throws away garbage because it smells bad."

"Something like that." Sfufth? Shifufsth? She couldn't quite make that sound.

Jennifer had rejoined them, and now she carried the older pup. She said, "We had a very powerful Master, long ago. Joseph Stalin had the power of life and death over all of his people, in hundreds of millions." Jennifer glanced at Glenda Ruth: stop or go? Uncertain, Glenda Ruth nodded.

Jennifer went on, "Advisers told Stalin that there was a shortage of copper tube in his domain. Stalin gave his orders. Everywhere across a tenth of the land area of our world, what was made of copper was melted down to make tubes. Communication lines disappeared. Tractor parts, other tools. Wherever copper was needed, it was made pipes instead."

"Sfufth. We know him," Victoria said. "Sfufth is found everywhere, in every caste. Sfufth breeds Watchmakers for sale to other nests. No need for cage, they take care of selves."

Jennifer was delighted. "Yes! There's a painting in a museum on Mote Prime." She was about to convey an unfortunate nuance, and Glenda Ruth couldn't stop her. "A burning city. Starving Moties in riot. A Mediator stands on a car to be seen and heard and shouts, ‘Return to your tasks!'"

Victoria nodded head and shoulders. "When possibilities close, Crazy Eddie doesn't see."

Glenda Ruth said, "In Stalin's domain, fifty years after. Things changed. More communication, better tools and transport. Their Warriors ate half their resources for all that long time, but the weapons they made were second best. Lesser domains began splitting off. Some older Masters acted to take charge of the domain and turn it all back. The Gang of Crazy Eddies."

Had she got her point across? Years of watching Jock and Charlie weren't helping enough. Too much of Mediator body language was conscious; was arbitrary. She said, "When possibilities open, Crazy Eddie doesn't see."

The Mediator thought that over. She said. "Make cocoa to look at first. For safety."

For poison, she meant.

So Freddy made cocoa for the four of them-"Make it hot," Glenda Ruth whispered-and an extra bulbful for analysis.

"Too hot," Victoria said when she touched it. She gave it to the Engineer, who carried it into the hidden part of Cerberus. The human crew huddled with their heads together, sipping, their shoulders shutting out the aliens around them. Freddy had a crime drama running on a monitor; Victoria might have been watching it, and Merlin watched intermittently, but no human was.

"How are you doing?" Freddy asked.

Glenda Ruth said, "I'm dancing as fast as I can, but the pace is too damned slow. Jennifer, what were they eating?"

Jennifer was running her hand along the pup's back as if it were a cat; but her hand kept stopping to feel the weird geometry. She said, "Just one dish. A gray crust around gray-green paste that looked a lot like basic protocarb."

"Jen, did it steam? Was it hot?"

"It wasn't hot. What do you want to know?"

She dared not tell them too much, but she had to know this. "Do they cook?"

"Glenda Ruth, the air coming through the new lock is warmer than it is here, but there's no smell of cooking."

"Okay." She looked at the faces around her. Open, honest faces shadowed by every passing thought. Did they understand, would they reveal, too much?

Engineer and Warrior were certainly infected. The worm eggs might well infect every Motie form in Cerberus's cabin. If that didn't reach a Master, then an Engineer might have passed it on by now. But if a Mediator wasn't infected soon... there wouldn't be anything to talk about. Just a Master turned sterile male, and other forms showing the same symptoms, and the blame very clear.

2 Vermin City

And in that state of nature, no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitarv, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

From the beginning Freddy Townsend had been concerned about his equipment. "I know we're prisoners," he told Victoria as soon as the Mediator would understand. "I know you can take what you want."

"Leave your stuff alone if play to win," Victoria said. Need some stuff for now."

"Good. You think about future. You want us happy for future?"

"Say instead we want you not hating us for future."

"Good. Good. Then get them to leave my telescope the hell alone! It's this whole complex, here and here, all this stuff-"

"Engineers make it better."

"Don't want better. Want this stuff the way it is," Freddy said distinctly. He had watched what happened to Hecate. He believed-and so did Glenda Ruth-that the Moties would strip the telescope of anything they wanted, leaving a tube and two lenses to be improved to their hearts' content.

They must have convinced Victoria; Victoria must have convinced one of the Masters. Days later, the scope and its computerized direction-finding and data-recording systems still matched Empire racing specs.

Freddy's fingers behind her ear teased Glenda Ruth awake.

The smaller pup was clinging to his back, a tiny skewed head above his left shoulder, wearing the generic smile; but Freddy looked quite solemn. Glenda Ruth followed his pointing finger to a screen and... what? Display of a broken kaleidoscope? Numbers indicated that she was looking aft, under one-hundred-power magnification, via Freddy's telescope.

"We're decelerating. Whole fleet. To that," Freddy said.

A shattered mirror on star-dusted black... mirrors, lots of mirrors, circles and ribbons and scraps and one great triangle. The mirrors weren't rotating, but some of what they illuminated was, on an eccentric axis. Sunlight off the mirrors set it to glowing like the City of God.

"Schizophrenia City," Jennifer said.

Glenda Ruth winced. "Pandemonium," she said. John Milton's capital of Hell. If this was Captor Fleet's home base, they were indeed mad.

Pandemonium was backlit, showing mostly black, but she could see the lack of pattern. There were blocks and spires and tubes, considerable fine structure, very spread out. As an artistic whole... it wasn't whole.

Jennifer said, "Cities do grow this way, if there's no street plan. But in space? That's dangerous."

"Dangerous," her pup said emphatically. Freddy's pup peeked out of his arms and nodded wisely.

Glenda Ruth called, "Victoria?"

"Something's happening," Terry Kakumi said.

Light flashed here, there. A chunk of Pandemonium City broke free, 6 percent or 8 percent of the whole; rotated to use its section of mirror as a shield, and pulled away. Ruby light sputtered at it, belatedly.

"Civil war, maybe. Maybe a lifeboat running away from us. I don't think they see Captor Fleet as friends."

"Yeah, Terry. Maybe it's how Motie cities breed? But whose city? Victoria?" No answer came. Glenda Ruth said, "Likely she's asleep." Moties needed their sleep, or at least Mediators did.

Terry said, "We've been decelerating for two hours now. Matching velocities. Glenda Ruth, we have to see this-" Terry's arm flashed up to block her eyes. A ruby glare filled the cabin. An instant later all screens were black.

"Langston Field," Terry said. "Ours. Don't think that place has one. Sorry. Are you okay?"

Freddy said, "Hell, we're under attack!"

"But by what?" Jennifer asked.

"Good question.'

When nothing further happened, Terry presently cut bricks of basic protocarb for their breakfast. They watched the screen, but it remained dark.

Victoria emerged from the airlock. The Mediator skimmed along one of the big vines, picking red berries, then veered to join them. She asked, "Do you take chocolate for breakfast?"

Glenda Ruth spoke before Terry Kakumi could. "Sure. Freddy? Make it lukewarm, then we can heat ours. Victoria, does your Engineer say it's safe?"

"Yes."

Terry couldn't stand it. "We're pulling near a large structure. Is it your home?"

A moment's pause, then Victoria said, "No. Chocolate?"

Freddy didn't move until Glenda Ruth opened the cocoa and pushed it into his hands. No, he couldn't read minds, but she made eye contact and thought hard: Yes, Freddy, Victoria's trying to distract us, yes, she's hiding something, Freddy love, but we want the lizard-raping chocolate!

Freddy set to work, meticulously measuring powder, shaking it with boiled water, adding the basic protocarb product most crew called milk. He poured it into squeezers and handed one, lukewarm, to the Mediator. The others he set heating in the microwave.

Victoria sipped without waiting. Her eyes widened. "Strange. Good." She sipped again. "Good."

"This is the least of what the Empire can offer. More to the point is the meeting of unlike minds. And elbow space."

Terry's patience was short. "The city?"

"It's resources, Terry," Victoria said. "We will take them."

"Uh-huh. We want to observe the battle on-site," Terry Kakumi said. "If-"

"Not a battle, Terry. Pest control. No Master in there, no Mediators, not even Engineers."

"What are they, then? They're shooting at us."

"Watchmakers and... I don't know your word. Only animals. Destructive small animals, dangerous when cornered. Use resources we need."

"Vermin," Glenda Ruth said.

"Thank you. Vermin. Yes, they're shooting, but we can protect ourselves. What is it you want?"

"I want to go in with you, with a camera." Terry took the bulb Glenda Ruth handed him, but didn't drink. She sipped the chocolate: a bit too hot, and that was good. Heat would kill what her fingertip had added to the cocoa powder.

"You would see our weapons in use. I know your nature, Terry Kakumi. Warrior-Engineer, as close as your generalist species comes. But able to talk well."

Freddy suppressed a smile; but Terry showed his teeth. "You wouldn't use your serious weapons for varmint control, Victoria. Whatever it is that has you so embarrassed, it's something we have to know. Later would be worse. Nasty surprises breed nasty surprises."

The screen cleared. Pandemonium glowed before its mirrors. Cerberus's Watchmakers had pushed a probe through the Field.

Victoria sipped, and thought, and said, "I will ask Ozma."

Merlin nested in the forepart of the cabin. He was young, with clean white fur you ached to touch; he had never been female. He spent much of his time watching the humans and-if Glenda Ruth was indeed learning some basic captor language, if she'd correctly judged his body language-discussing them with Victoria, the Doctor, the Engineers, the Warriors. Masters asked questions and gave orders. They did not seem inclined to needless conversation, even with other Masters. But they did talk.

Ozma, an older and clearly superior Master to Merlin (parent?), lived somewhere out of sight beyond Cerberus's big new airlock. Thence Victoria went. An hour later, the spidery Messenger scuttled through and summoned Merlin from his place in the forecabin.

Terry Kakumi slept curled in his couch like an egg in an egg cup. Glenda Ruth watched for dreams to chase themselves across his round features, but really, he was remarkably relaxed for a man who was about to enter mystery.

"He does that better than anyone I know," Freddy said. "If he knows nothing is going to happen for twenty minutes, he's out like a light. I guess that's what they mean by old campaigner."

"You think it's a warrior's skill?"

"It never would have occurred to me before. Sauron, heh?"

The chaotic industrial complex was considerably closer now. Its shape had changed, had closed around the gap left by the one departing section, which was still in view a few kilometers away, under desultory thrust. There was motion on the surface, a doubly silent rustling: windows glinting (not many), small vehicles racing along wire tracks, mirrors rippling as they swung to block a laser spear, a sudden spray of... missiles? Tiny ships?

Sporadic ruby beams bathed Cerberus with no effect. Just once the entire mirror-sail complex focused white light with enough energy that the cameras had to be pulled in. Several minutes later the screen was glowing with just a touch of red heat. More minutes later the probe was out again, and Pandemonium showed almost unchanged.

"They ran out of power," Jennifer surmised. "What do you suppose is in there? Watchmakers and what?"

"Maybe nothing we know about," Glenda Ruth said. "Watchmakers alone might have built this. You saw Renner's recording: they ran riot through MacArthur and finally turned it into something alien."

A tube poked from near the center of the structure, and extended, longer and longer. Like a cannon. "Grab something," Jennifer said, and reached to tighten Terry's straps. His eyes opened; with a shrug he freed his arms and folded Jennifer into his chest.

The screen went dark. In the airlock Merlin snapped some command; every Motie form snatched for handholds. Cerberus torqued about them. In the screen was a red glow...orange, yellow...holding.

Victoria popped up beside Merlin, with several other Motie shapes behind her. They all held close to their handholds. A Messenger was towing one of their pressure suits.

"Terry, you may travel with us, unarmed," Victoria said. "You'll want hands for your camera anyway. We have restored it to the state you are accustomed to. Don't try to leave your escorts."

Terry took the camera from the Engineer. He made adjustments. One of the screens lit with a close view of Victoria, blurred, then sharper. Terry said, "How long?"

"Suit up now"

The Field was orange and cooling.

Terry and Freddy examined the suit, whispering. Hecate's pressure suits had been confiscated and stowed on the other side of the oval airlock. They were hard suits, rigid pieces shaped to slide over one another, with a fishbowl helmet. Now green-gray sludge in a flaccid plastic bag rode the jet pack on the suit's back. The helmet's view had been expanded; the sunblind visor was gone; the helmet itself was no longer quite symmetrical.

"You trust it?"

"No choice, boss. I'm bored." Terry worked his way into the suit. Before he'd finished, the Engineer and three Watchmakers were already at work on him. Freddy and Jennifer smiled to watch. Glenda Ruth's stomach was a hard knot.

He could die

Terry was zipped up when the alarms sounded again. He knew that one: Anchor against attack!

When the screen cleared, Pandemonium was very close. The pipe still protruded near the center of the complex, but it pointed askew of Cerberus. More conspicuously, the mirrors were gone...shredded, trailing outward in comet's configuration.

"It was a double attack on us," Terry said for his companions' benefit. "The laser cannon isn't maneuverable, but you had to take out the mirrors, too, right, Victoria?"

She waved it off. "Battle is no skill of mine."

Motion swarmed around the shreds of mirror. Glimmers and flashes: they began to re-form. The laser cannon jerked into sudden motion, too slow to catch Cerberus drifting around the city's edge. Others of Captor Fleet were moving into position.

"Come," Victoria said. She leapt for the airlock, and Terry, almost as agile, followed.

The Moties could hardly be unaware that they were showing him Cerberus's Motie sections for the first time, and on record. Terry waved his camera where he would. He was not trying for detail, but rather looking for whatever would bear further investigation.

He didn't get much of that. He was in a tube that curved like a loop of intestine. Here a dark opening, here a bulge and an armed Warrior clinging to handholds, here a lighted opening and a first glimpse of an older Master. "Studying me. I'd better not stop," he said. "Victoria isn't."

The tube ended in a canister full of Warriors in armored pressure suits.

Victoria waved him in. The Warriors watched him, every one. "Forty armed and armored Warriors, no two weapons alike, no two suits alike, and... that one's pregnant, and that one." Distinct bulges in the armor, where a human heart would be. Terry let the camera hold on four others: "And I don't know what to make of those."

There was a couch just for him. It had an orthopedic look and a plenitude of straps. Terry gave the camera a good look before he strapped in. "Looks like an Engineer and Doctor tried to design this for a human spine. Let's see... Not bad. Not many humans build chairs this good."

The airlock was sealed and Victoria was gone.

"Three windows, one fore and one aft... whichever... and this.

"Considerate bastards." The amidships window was right before his face. One of the odd ones handed Terry a big folded umbrella, nearly weightless. "They've taken me for a Pom."

He was being judged. He chattered because of nerves.

The tradition of Terry Kakumi's family was never to dwell on tradition. Flexibility was a virtue. Landing on one's feet was a graceful thing to do. In anarchy and in war and in the Empire's peace, on Tanith and a score of other worlds, their numbers had grown. But he and they knew their ancestry.

The Kakumis were of Brenda Curtis's line.

Brenda Curtis had lived nearly four hundred years ago. She'd had six children of her own, and over two hundred had passed through her orphanage farm on their path to adulthood. They tended to intermarry because they understood each other.

Brenda Curtis had been a Sauron superman.

Current tales of the Sauron breeding centers were entirely imaginary. Terry had no idea what his ancestor had escaped from. Only the bald fact of her origin was known, and only to her children...and their fathers? Who could tell, now?

But twenty-four gene-tailored Motie Warriors were about to learn whether a child of Brenda Curtis could take care of himself.

He was not required to fight, Terry reminded himself. He would be judged by whether he survived.

The canister surged. Aft defined itself: the window was wreathed in pale flame. Terry's chair rotated; the others didn't.

"They're pampering me, I think."

His eye and camera found a broad patch of black against the stars, and a scattering of blunt cylinders accelerating alongside his own. The black edged across the stars. The troopship struck it with a surge and an ominous crunch.

The troopship turned powerfully. Thrust distorted Terry's voice. "We've punched through the mirror. It's stronger than I expected. Maybe they reinforced it after Cerberus's attack. I can see a ragged black hole-ooppshit!" Pellets blasted through the cabin.

Terry hadn't even had a chance to curl around himself. He took a moment to understand that he was alive, unhurt. The rest- "Some Warriors are hit, but they're ignoring it." He let the camera watch Warriors place meteor patches in a tearing hurry. "The ship's decelerating hard. The hailstorm isn't over. Maybe you can hear the impacts, but the pellets aren't hitting the life support system anymore. We're thrusting, too. Something-" Terry grabbed handholds.

The ship smacked nozzles-first into a wall, with a booming recoil.

Terry's vision cleared quickly. One of the odd ones had already cut the ship's hull wide open, and the Warriors were pouring through. Terry searched for a strap release.

The four odd ones moved last.

Terry cut himself free and followed them out. "I'd bet anything that one's a Warrior-Doctor," he told his audience. "Those two are officers: better armor, and the widgetry they're carrying looks like communications, not weapons." The officers separated quickly. The last Motie was more compact, larger head, the hands more delicate. "That one looks like a cross between Warrior and Engineer. I'll follow it."

The starscape was gaudy, but the mirrors were brighter yet. Terry opened his silver umbrella... his laser shield.

Pandemonium was brilliantly backlit by the mirrors. The troops were jetting into a madman's maze. One and another Warrior flashed red, then puffed neon-red gas. Answering fire made actinic flares among the spires and blocks. Warrior troops swarmed from other directions. The ships of Captor Fleet were on all sides of Pandemonium.

Once Terry looked back. He reported, "The troopship's wrecked and nobody cares. They must be counting on their Warrior-Engineer to build them a way home. They'll guard him pretty carefully." But Terry was no longer sure of that. Pandemonium was very close.

They were approaching a windowless wall. The lasers that menaced them were suddenly unable to reach them, except for stragglers... such as Terry Kakumi, crouched behind his umbrella. A red dot played across it, and then he, too, was out of the lasers' view. He moved his umbrella-mirror and saw a bulging crater in the wall, and Captor troops diving through.

Too fast. He activated his backpack jets, then swore luridly for his audience and posterity. "Sorry. I'm getting low thrust. Watchmakers must have fixed my bloody jet pack." The crater came up, too fast, and he steered to miss the edge. "Must think I don't mass that much after all." He clutched his camera to his chest, pointing down into the dark.

A racer's crew must see what's going on. A warship is a different matter, and most of Hecate's window space had disappeared . .. but not all.

So Cerberus's human crew had three views of the battle. There was Freddy's telescope, and the window, and Terry's camera. Mostly they watched the feed from Terry's camera.

Thirty-four black-armored Warriors had plunged through a black wall, and the camera POV plunged after. Mirrorlight glowed through from behind, illuminating a honeycomb structure too small for humans or normal Moties. Ruby and green flared within the structure. An explosion ripped open a score of rooms. Then tiny forms in silver armor were jetting among the larger Warrior shapes, riding bullet-shaped rockets no larger than themselves, swerving at terrific accelerations, or just blasting through walls and Warriors and into space carrying dead passengers.

Terry's voice said, "Watchmakers, I think."

Jennifer said, "Right. It's like films from MacArthur."

Terry's voice ran on. "They're using projectile weapons, and so are the Warriors: spray guns with tiny bullets."

Jennifer clutched Freddy's arm and pointed through a window. Glenda Ruth didn't turn around. In a moment Freddy touched her shoulder and said, "Somebody's arrived, some other ship. Real Moties, not vermin. We can see the ripples in the skin of Cerberus. Maybe your brother's arranged something."

"Great," Jennifer said. She started to say something to Glenda Ruth and fell silent.

"Glenda Ruth?" Freddy said. "Are you-"

"Not okay, Freddy. Not. He's so scared!"

"Traces of the original structure here, I think. Nickel-iron being shaped on site. This may have been an icy asteroid rather than a comet, closer to the sun before all these mirrors altered its orbit-"

"I never saw you like this. How do-"

"Can't you hear the fear in his voice? He could be killed. That's why Mediators can't stand battle. They're all trying to chew each other up, the Warriors and those little Hell beasts and whatever's out of sight and-oh God!" The view jerked and skewed, and Terry's voice stopped. Her hands clamped hard on Freddy's arm.

Freddy didn't speak. Glenda Ruth saw that her nails had drawn blood. Her voice rose into a hysterical whine. "They shot him!"

This looked solid, some kind of support strut. Terry had dodged behind it when the bullets sprayed across him. He huddled behind it, reaching. Engineers and Watchmakers had been at work on his suit, and he could only hope-there, the pouch of meteor patches.

He pulled one open. His fingertip traced three tiny holes across his chest carapace, between his right nipple and right shoulder. They'd nearly closed themselves; the hiss had dwindled. The patch covered all three.

But the hiss continued, and he wondered how he would reach his back. The pain and wet were just over his shoulder blade.

The Warriors had gone on. A big Motie head poked around a partition (big was friendly) looked him over (officer?) and withdrew. Another such shape floated nearby, leaking fog through scores of tiny holes, its laser weapon spinning nearby. Maybe the little demons had gone after it deliberately. It was the Warrior-Engineer.

"Doctors probably aren't intelligent." Terry had forgotten his audience; he was talking to himself. "Probably. One to treat any Class, but none to treat a human. Who's going to treat me? Three bullets through my right lung."

With his fingers on the edge of the second patch, he reached behind him, forced it past the pain, then rubbed his back across the support strut. The hiss stopped.

A cough would have worried him. He'd be coughing blood before this was over. Meanwhile, for his audience: "These were high velocity slugs intended to penetrate armor. Fast but small. No tumble. No stopping power. They're for Watchmakers or something not much bigger. Infections aren't any danger out here. Ronald Reagan was shot through the lung with a bigger bullet than these, seventy years old in FDA-era medicine, and he went on to finish two terms as president of the United States of America." And Reagan hadn't had Brenda Curtis for an ancestor.

"I'm going for the gun," Terry said, and leapt. Turning, he snatched the Warrior-Engineer's laser rifle and impacted his feet against a wall, the camera and gun turned down. The wall shuddered, and his camera caught six silver shapes plunging through.

His gun caught them, too, in a spray of projectiles. There was no answering fire, only a twinkling of edged weapons. His tiny bullets were cutting them up good, but six had become twenty jumping in pursuit as Terry Kakumi's recoil and suit jets hurled him up through the crater hole. And now they were all bright in mirror light and starlight, and Terry held his camera on the swarm.

A fireball blasted out of Pandemonium, half behind an angular bulge. Terry didn't bother with it. The camera recorded the shock wave surging through the city.

His breathing was going ragged; he'd have to stop talking soon. But: "They don't fit the suits. There are slack parts. Six-limbed suits, Watchmaker suits, with one limb tied down, and-" He coughed and stopped trying. Let the camera speak for him.

They wore borrowed pressure suits with the lower left arm tied down. Half of them had used up their jets and jumped anyway. Animals. Others were fleeing the light; but three turned and made for Terry. He held the camera on them and slashed them with high-V pellets.

Nice. Two merely died, but one silver suit, filleted, puffed its occupant thrashing into space. They weren't Watchmakers at all.

They were something nastier.

"I never saw …" Freddy peered at the display. "Victoria? What in Hell-" Victoria was missing. "Glenda Ruth? I've seen ‘em before."

She didn't want to look. She made herself look and considered what she was seeing. She said, "The Zoo on Mote Prime," and watched them remembering.

Fourth floor: a Motie city, struck by disaster. Cars overturned and rusted in littered, broken streets. Aircraft had embedded their wreckage in the ruins of fire-scorched buildings. Weeds grew from cracks in the pavement. In the center of the picture was a sloping mound of rubble, and a hundred small black shapes darted and swarmed over it.

Every student at the Institute had studied that scene. The Motie cycle of boom and bust was so dependable that plants and animals had evolved specifically for ruined cities!

One had a pointed, ratlike face with wicked teeth. But it was not a rat. It had one membranous ear, and five limbs. The foremost limb on the right side was not a fifth paw; it was a long and agile arm, tipped with claws like hooked daggers.

"But those were quite different," Jennifer said. "Look, these are all hands, and longer, leaner. Freddy, can you summon up a copy of What I Did on My Summer Vacation? I think the skulls are bigger, too!"

"They're changed," Glenda Ruth said. "Evolution must have moved much faster for them. Shorter generations, bigger litters. Why not? Freddy, I've got to get Victoria."

Terry Kakumi's voice was much weakened. "I don't know how to tell Warriors that I need medical help. Freddy, if you're still hearing me, s-s-s—" Coughing.

Freddy nodded. He floated toward the airlock, slowly, hands visible for the Warrior on duty. When Freddy reached the lock, the Warrior put his gunpoint in Freddy's ribs.

Freddy put his head in the lock and yelled, "Victoria! Now! Terry's been shot! Do you hear me?"

A lopsided face wreathed in white fur confronted him. Freddy wondered if he was seeing Ozma. The Master spoke a word to the Warrior, who pointed its gun elsewhere. The Master turned full away and hiss-whistled.

Victoria came. Freddy explained rapidly; Victoria translated; the Master went away; so did Victoria. The Warrior reached, turned Freddy around, and pushed him back to the control center.

On-screen, a pair of Warriors had retrieved Terry. Freddy could glimpse them at the screen's edge, towing him. Voiceless, Terry pointed the camera to pick up: A snowstorm of dead war rats, big as greyhounds and small as puppies, all armed with edged weapons, some armed with guns.

A factory, empty, scaled down. That looked to be a distillery; that, a smelter. Even in the asteroid mines of most systems, humans would align their furniture. Here boilerplate-bulky machines pointed off at all angles, leaving almost no waste space.

A sudden firefight receded as Terry's escorts made for safety. A Warrior's grenade opened a wall to space. War rats blew past them toward the stars. Warriors picked off the few in stolen suits.

Victoria was back. "Ozma has told the Chief, but-" She saw the screen. "That's better. Your friend was inside too many walls. Ozma has also summoned a hybrid who might help your friend, an interbreeding of Doctor and Master. We only have one."

Freddy nodded and said appropriate things. Glenda Ruth only watched. The camera didn't seem to be pointing at anything interesting anymore.

3 Chocolate

And there're a

hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers, like

all of you successfully if

delicately gelded (or spaded)

gentlemen (and ladies)

e. e. cummings

When the Doctor-Master arrived, Freddy had anticipated him. He had library medical tapes already running. The long-fingered almost-Master watched for a few minutes, looked the three humans over, decided Freddy was the male, peeled him, and began comparing him to what he was seeing on the screen. The Anglic commentary ran at low volume while Victoria spoke a running translation into the fleshy trumpet of the Doctor's ear. She was frequently baffled.

The Doctor was a young male, Victoria told them. "Doctor Doolittle," Glenda Ruth named him, and saw Jennifer smile. Freddy's face remained a rictus of discomfort.

Glenda Ruth wondered why Captor Fleet had chosen to feed such a peculiarity when they were so obviously short of resources. As if they had known aliens were coming... known ten years ago. Where the hell was Terry?

Terry was alive, technically, when they brought him in nearly two hours later. A misshapen Warrior was pumping his rib cage, breathing for him, Glenda Ruth looked at him and gave up hope.

Doctor Doolittle spoke rapidly.

The Warrior slashed the front of Terry's suit and pulled him out. A pair of Watchmakers pulled a black pressure balloon open and fished out transparent tubes and a canister. The little Doctor-Master wrapped itself around Terry's head and shoulders, planted his ear on Terry's torso, and listened. Then it pulled his head far back and fed the tube into his nose.

Terry thrashed weakly. Red flowed down the tube. The Motie watched for a few minutes, then spoke. The Warrior had gone back to breathing for Terry, flexing his chest, on and on, without fatigue. The Watchmakers fished out a squeezebulb of clear fluid.

Glenda Ruth stopped watching. She couldn't stand it.

Freddy pulled his shorts on and left it at that; the Motie Doctor might need to compare again. He caught her eye as she turned away, and she knew another moment of dread.

"Glenda Ruth-"

She turned away as the strange doctor spoke softly to the Warriors.

Captor Fleet was at work beyond Cerberus's windows. From all they could see, the War Rats and Watchmakers were no longer to be feared. Larger ships had moved in. Altered troopships and tinier ships yet moved in a cloud around Pandemonium. An Engineer with a crew of Watchmakers worked on one of the damaged troopships. Large Moties from time to time came out of the ruins with-things. Broken machinery. Tankage. Plastic bags.

Jennifer said, "Remember the battle? Just before we were captured? Just lasers, no projectiles. In Pandemonium the Warriors used bullets, but only inside walls. But the rats and brownies were shooting everywhere."

"Your point?"

"Well, Victoria keeps calling them animals. She especially likes the word vermin. Maybe because they don't care how much stuff they throw away, even if it can be recycled. That's what all those little ships are doing, chasing down stuff that got loose during the fight."

Glenda Ruth nodded. "Yeah. How's Terry?"

"Breathing on his own. I want a human doctor."

"Hang in there. Terry's tough."

Silence.

"I couldn't watch."

"I noticed," Jennifer said.

"You think he's not feeling anything, and you're almost right, he won't remember how bad it is. But his body, his nerves, he's hurt, Jennifer, and I can feel it. Oh, hell, don't you leave me, too!"

"Too?"

"Freddy saw me! He saw me turning away from Terry. Squeamish. I'm going to lose him, Jennifer!"

"Not if he watches you save our asses. But you're juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity, girl."

Glenda Ruth only nodded. She couldn't answer that at least they were right on schedule.

"I hope you're not overly tired, sir," Chris Blaine said.

"Not yet, not in this gravity," Bury said. He looked across the room to Omar, who once again held Ali Baba. "Against all reason I find myself attracted to the pu-to Ali Baba. An unexpected pleasure. But I fear we are away from the comforts of Sinbad to no great purpose. Except, of course, to reassure our hosts." It was an awkward situation, made more so because no one wanted to talk about it. It was the one thing East India and Medina Traders agreed to completely: neither would allow the other to talk to Horace Bury alone. "They cling to me as to a talisman," Bury said.

"Or a credit card," Blaine said, and Bury glared.

The outer door opened and a thin, spidery shape entered. The Motie went to Omar and waited patiently as Omar and Eudoxus gathered around it, then chattered excitedly.

"Something important," Blaine said. He thumbed the microphone of his communicator. "Captain, an East India messenger just came in. Whatever it's saying has got both the Mediators listening hard."

"Could it be about Hecate?" Renner's voice asked.

"I don't-"

"Stand by one," Renner said.

"What?" Joyce demanded. "What's happening?" She edged closer to the Moties, pickup camera whirring softly.

"Rawlins has spotted a fleet," Renner said. "A big one, coming from in-system. Hyperbolic orbit, accelerating like they've got lots of power."

"Warships," Blaine said.

"Sure sounds like it," Renner said. "Don't know whose, but they're heading this way."

"Excellency, we have news," Omar said.

"Thank you."

"Excellency, the humans are all safe. One, the ship's engineer, was injured in a way that I do not quite understand, but I am assured it was through no fault of the Crimean Tartars, who have been persuaded of the value of their guests. One of my apprentices, very young and inexperienced but fluent in Anglic, has been accepted by the Tartars and will presently be allowed to speak with the humans." Omar beamed. "He will, of course, be pleased to invite a representative of our Medina Allies, as soon as one arrives."

"This is splendid news," Bury said. "We are in your debt. I wonder if we might prevail upon Medina's hospitality for one more favor."

"You have but to ask, presuming it is possible," Eudoxus said.

"A message," Bury said. "It would be well for all concerned if Lord Blaine were informed that his offspring are safe."

Eudoxus and Omar looked at each other. Ali Baba's attention remained fixed on Bury. "An interesting notion," Eudoxus said. "But one that presents considerable technical difficulties. Neither East India nor Medina controls Crazy Eddie's Sister. Nor do the Crimean Tartars. The Khanate now holds that point and even now gathers more warships to consolidate their hold. Their own, and others. We fear they have created a formidable alliance, one which may even now be growing."

"A combined action of Medina and East India might suffice to escort one ship to the Sister," Omar said. "But as East India has more ships in that area, our losses would be the greater. We would require compensation."

"I had in mind something simpler," Bury said. "Send a message through the Crazy Eddie point to Murcheson's Eye. Take one of your flimsy token ships. Wrap a transmitter in a thick layer of suitably ablative material with a mechanical device to turn it on once through. Let it broadcast its location. Message cubes inside should survive long enough to be retrieved."

"Simple mechanical device," Omar said.

"Jump shock is an experience previously described to us, which I have now twice experienced," Eudoxus said. "It is-formidable. Excellency, I need hardly point out that the contents of a message to your blockade battle fleet will be of great interest to all of us. Will you summon that fleet here?"

"I think not," Bury said. "But surely it would be to our advantage to have those not inconsiderable resources at our disposal?" He looked significantly at the Motie Warriors. "And of course we will continue to enjoy your gracious hospitality as we negotiate."

Eudoxus and Omar exchanged looks, then Eudoxus began to speak, slowly and carefully, in the glottal language the Moties had been using to speak to their Masters. Both Masters replied, each to a Mediator, never to each other. The messenger was sent out. Two came back; they delivered messages to each of the Mediators. The Masters spoke quickly and curtly, the Mediators at greater length. The discussion continued for a long time as Joyce's pickup whirred

Bury waited with a look of serene calm. Ali Baba aped his look, a study of serious concentration. Blaine reported developments to Sinbad and Renner.

Finally Eudoxus spoke. "It seems you are correct, Excellency. We may have need of your fleet. We count five fleets probably converging on us. One is from Byzantium. We have reports that the Masters of the Mote Beta moons, the group we have called the Persian Empire, are gathering a fleet. The Khanate has summoned allies to their aid in holding the Sister. There comes another large group from sunward."

"In other words, everyone who has warships is becoming involved," Joyce Trujillo said.

"Just so," Omar said. "And thus our Masters are agreed. The partnership between Medina and East India shall be renewed. When that is accomplished, it would be well to summon whatever resources your Empire can bring."

"Before they kill us all," Joyce said.

Omar bowed. "Just so."

Engineers had erected a screen around the area where Dr. Doolittle and his aides worked on Terry. Freddy was back there for ten hours, while Jennifer and Glenda Ruth waited alone. Finally he came out.

"I'll have to go back presently," he said. "They want my opinions. Mostly I don't know, but I can work the data retrieval system for Dr. Doolittle. It's mostly in charts. Some of it I have to read to him, with gestures. He learns fast, numbers he understands already. Got any coffee?"

Jennifer handed him a bulb. "I should heat that."

"Heat the next one. I'll drink this."

All right." Jennifer put a bulb in the microwave and started it.

"Freddy, I haven't heard Victoria back there?"

"She's been gone for hours. One of the others, I think the Engineer that's been... improving Hecate, came and got her, and that was the last I saw of her. Sometimes I talk into a mike and Dr. Doolittle listens to what has to be a translation, but I don't know who's on the other end." Freddy sipped the lukewarm coffee. "Good stuff. Thanks."

"When can I see him?" Jennifer's cry was more nearly a wail.

Freddy looked to Glenda Ruth.

Glenda Ruth dropped her pensive look and shuddered. "I think you should wait to be asked. Something odd is happening."

"I'm scared," Jennifer said. "We talked about-he grew up on Tanith, you know. Freddy, he will be all right!"

"If the Moties can manage it, he will be," Freddy said. "They're going all out. They have some instrument the size of a spatball racket that puts a three-D image of Terry's insides on our tri-vee screen. They've got him stabilized. Blood pressure has been the same for hours now."

It had not been instantly obvious: the looming bulk of the Mosque had been a block of water ice permeated by tunnels when Sinbad docked. But Engineers had been at work, carving rooms out of the ice, insulating, decorating. The lounge, located just outside Sinbad's airlock, had been growing during the negotiations. Now there was a small kitchen, a wardrobe, and a half-completed minigym besides the conversation pit with Motie and human chairs and couches. Chris feared it would be the size of Serpens City before they accomplished anything.

Eudoxus spoke long and earnestly to the Master called Admiral Mustapha Pasha. From time to time Omar spoke to the East India Master in the guttural language Chris Blaine had learned to recognize as the Motie trade koine. Ali Baba moved from Bury to Omar and back, but his attention was always on Bury.

Messengers went to and fro like big-headed, lopsided spider monkeys, beautiful only in their agility. Mediators and Masters took frequent rest periods and returned always together, sometimes with Motie pups. The Mediators were talking now, briskly, as if it hadn't all been talked to death long since.

Chris watched and listened and presently offered to speak for Joyce's pickup camera. Joyce tried to find an excuse to refuse and gave up almost instantly. "Thank you, Lieutenant Blaine," she said most courteously, and posed him in a corner of the new lounge.

So: scholar's pose, no sexual signals, and give her his best. "A pidgin is needed to bridge two languages because shadings and nuances and background assumptions don't work. You need it whenever nuances don't work. But Motie language is inflections and body language and even scent, and any of that might have to be dropped for a telephone, or pressure suits, or video with a bad connection. The weird thing is just how easily these Moties use what they can and drop everything else. It isn't just the flexibility of the trade language. They generally have to create a trade language on the spot." Chris saw goblin ears focused on him and wondered how much they would understand. How much he understood.

"We're watching a parallel here. Ali Baba, not yet at the age of reason, clearly understands the concept called Fyunch(click) in the Mote Prime language. We're watching him learn both Anglic and the new pidgin simultaneously, and in hours he has learned what a bright human child might pick up in days or weeks. Biological specialization at work. And of course we've seen that in the other specialties.

"We're learning a lot about Moties, and that's important."

"Can you say more about that, Lieutenant?" Joyce asked. Her tone was richly professional.

"We've no choice, this time," Chris said. "Blockades just aren't going to work. We'll have to learn to get along with the Moties-"

"One way or another," Joyce said, but her own pickup mike wasn't on. "Lieutenant-" She stopped.

Here came the paired messengers again. Chris watched them scamper along the chamber's multicolored rock, breaking stride and zigging into channels and depressions. He'd watched them several times, and this time he was sure: their fur changed color to match the rock. Piloerection was doing that, exposing different layers, but the effect hid them like chameleons. They reached their respective Masters, clung to their fur, and whispered briefly.

The Masters had one final exchange with their Mediators, and all four Mediators came to the human group.

"Excellency," Omar said. "I am pleased to inform you that Medina and East India are agreed, in principle and in all essential details." He bowed; his feet left the rock and returned when he straightened.

"This is pleasing," Bury said.

Eudoxus bowed, too. Nobody laughed. "We have agreed on our status and domains, but more important is that we have agreed about you. We tell you nothing new when we say our choices are limited, and our greatest asset is your friendship."

Bury nodded. "More pleasing still. We are honored to be your friends."

"Thank you," Omar said. "We perceive that even if we watch you compose the message you will send to your colleagues in the Crazy Eddie Squadron, we must still trust you to tell us its meaning. Before you send this message you will naturally wish to speak with crew aboard your ship, and it is pointless to detain you here. When your message is complete, East India will deliver it. A suitable ship is being readied."

This time Bury's smile was warm and genuine. "Our thanks. Your hospitality has been admirable, but perhaps my friends would be more comfortable aboard our own ship."

"There is one matter," Omar said. "My colleague at the Crimean Tartar fleet reports his own observation that all the humans aboard Hecate are alive, and only the engineer-warrior has been injured; but for reasons that the Crimean Tartar Mediator will neither explain nor discuss, he has not been permitted to speak with them. We have been promised that this will change soon."

Bury acknowledged with a nod.

Damned odd, Chris thought. Something has changed, something happened that the Tartars don't want us to know. What? But Eudoxus and Omar knew that as well as he did.

"Do you wish to return to your ship now?" Eudoxus asked.

Bury nodded gravely. "It would be convenient."

"Medina and East India have come to another agreement, Excellency," Omar said. "But one which requires your consent. With your permission, Au Baba will become your companion. An apprentice. Of course he will spend only part of his time with you, as he must learn our languages and customs as well."

Bury bowed slightly. "I am flattered. I find him an agreeable companion. However, you will understand, there will be times when I must be alone with my friends."

"Of course, Excellency."

"Meanwhile, this is satisfactory. We go now to draft our messages. We will, of course, read and explain to you any message we compose."

"Thank you. We will provide you with an escort," Eudoxus said. "Joyce, your viewers may be interested in this base. If you would care to see more of it, I am available to conduct you on a tour. We'll have you back on Sinbad in, say, two hours?"

"Perhaps another time," Chris Blaine said. What did they have in mind? Nuances here, subtle, ominous.

Eudoxus spread her hands slightly. "There may be no other time when we are both free, but of course it will be as you wish."

"No, I want to go," Joyce said. "You can tell me about the message later when we finish the interview. Eudoxus, I'd love to see the rest of your base."

"Very good. Join us when you can, Joyce," Bury said affably.

Chris as a Navy officer knew that he didn't have Bury's authority. If Bury saw no way to stop her or them, how could Chris? He'd have to use persuasion- Outmaneuvered. Joyce was gone, Eudoxus leading and a Warrior behind. Bury and Omar followed at a leisurely pace, chatting, Bury carrying Ali Baba. They left Chris and Cynthia to bring up the rear.

After fifteen hours in the hidden depths of Cerberus, Victoria arrowed through the airlock with the agility of a Messenger. Glenda Ruth was jolted.

"Victoria? Victoria, what are th-"

"We have to talk. Ambassadors are arriving."

"Ambassadors from where?"

"Second, from the kingdom that allies with your ships called Sinbad and Atropos, henceforth Medina Trading Company."

Jennifer smiled acknowledgment. "Medina-"

"Later," Victoria said. "The Medina ship will rendezvous here; Vermin City makes a convenient target. But the first is already aboard. He speaks for former allies of Medina, henceforth East India Trading Company. The two are now involved in a dominance dance. We must settle certain matters before he may see you. We've been verbal-dancing for some days."

Glenda Ruth looked at the screen that hid Terry and Doctor Doolittle. "Can we summon a human doctor?"

"He is in no more danger than you are," Victoria said. "How is it that one of our Engineers has turned male without first giving birth?"

"Oops," Jennifer said.

"And so has one of our Warriors," Victoria said, "and although Watchmakers are difficult to keep track of-"

"How do you feel?"

"We must settle this now. Have you brought alien death among us? What did you say, Glenda Ruth?"

"How do you feel, Victoria?"

The Mediator tasted the question, as if she found the flavor novel and fascinating. "I feel good. Motivated. The air is sweet, our food seems up to specs, my appetite-" Victoria suddenly reached between her legs. "Talk fast," she said. "For your lives."

"I have a recording to play for you."

BLAINE INSTITUTE REPORTS, Volume 26, Number 5, Imperial Library number ACX-7743DL-2359 10:26:5

Approaches to Stability of the Mote Civilization

Ishikara, Mary Anne, Dashievko, Ahmed, Grodnik, Vladimir Lambert, George G.: Rikorsky, W. L., and Talbot, Fletcher E,

"The C-L Symbiote,"

Research reported in this document was funded by grants from the Imperial Ministry of Defense, the Imperial Select Commission for Governing Relations with Aliens, and the Blaine Foundation.

Summary

The Blaine Symbiote or C-L (Contraceptive-Longevity) worm is bioengineered from a Motie benign parasitic organism similar to platyhelminths. The resulting C-L organism is a symbiote that lives in the Motie body and produces the same hormone that the male testes produce.

The original symbiotes were universally present in the intestinal tracts of all Moties studied. The first forms were detected in the Motie Engineer taken aboard MacArthur, but none of those specimens survived. The current C-L syrnbmote has been bred from a strain taken from the Motie known as Ivan. It is known to survive in Mediator castes, and there is no reason to suppose it will not thrive in all Motie castes,

In all Motie castes so far examined there has been one testis, and the documents brought by the Motie ambassadors, and the Moties themselves, do not contradict this, This testis normally withers, Hapgood et. al (I) have speculated that this withering is triggered in part by pheromones given of f by a pregnant female, but it is known Ivanov and Spector. (2)) that the process is more complex than that.

Upon withering of the single testis, the Motie turns female, Pregnancy must follow soon after or the Motie sickens and dies, with symptoms not unlike vitamin deficiency. See Renner, K. (3), Fowler, S. (4), and Elaine and Blaine (5), as well as The Report of the MacArthur Expedition (6), for details. The process of giving birth excites cells in the birth canal, and more male testes form,

The C-L symbiote normally sites itself anywhere in the body cavity and does not wither. Present data indicate that several C-Ls have no more effect than one, It is believed that this is due to excretion of surplus hormone via Plumbing-Six, tentatively the kidney.

We have observed no signs that C-L will breed in a host Motie, undoubtedly due to inhibition by the hormone itself. Consequently C-L must be bred externally in an environment that provides sufficient fluid around them to flush the hormone.

Video Report (Reuters)

Blaine Institute Announces New Developments in Bioengineering

(Film clip: Lord and Lady Elaine, the Hon. Glenda Ruth Blaine, students at the Blaine Institute, and His Excellency the Ambassador from Mote Prime, announcing publication of results of bioengineering development.)

"Of course that record could have been made at any time," Victoria said.

"It has me in it."

"Or a very good double, Glenda Ruth. It would take much forethought to plan far in advance to deceive us into believing that a Mediator can survive this long-but your Empire has both means and motive."

"I'm in the pictures, too," Jennifer said.

"Yes. You would require two doubles and two surgical alterations of adults. Is this beyond your capability?"

Freddy's eyes wandered from the screen to Glenda Ruth to the screen, and he shook his head.

Victoria, watching him carefully, said, "Jock's survival surprised you, Freddy, when you learned of it from Jennifer and Glenda Ruth. With her training, could Glenda Ruth deceive you? And Jennifer?"

"It's not that. Think, Victoria. If that's not Jennifer and Glenda Ruth, then it's two actors just out of surgery who have to fool Motie Mediators, and know they've done it!"

Good, Freddy! "This game gives us no profit," Glenda Ruth said. "Victoria, you already feel better than you have in years! And your Engineer, and your Warrior, are they sick?"

"Is this reversible in fertile castes?" Victoria demanded.

"Probably. With difficulty, but very probably. Is the native parasite endemic to space civilizations?"

"If so, I do not know of it. It is no skill of mine. Would I be infected with a parasite and not know?"

"Why not? People often are," Freddy said.

"Even those who live in isolation? I see you believe so." The Motie paused, and whatever expressions Glenda Ruth had been able to read were replaced by a different mask. "I must think on this."

"Wait. There." She could have remained silent- Too late. Victoria turned. "What?"

"I don't have any better argument than that." Glenda Ruth pointed. "On the screen, Victoria."

The busy spacecraft of Captor Fleet had torn away a tremendous strip of the city's skin. Pandemonium lay exposed, a hive of cells still sparking with defenses. Corpses floated away in a pestilential cloud of black dots. The ships pulled a square kilometer of transparent skin over the wound and moved inside to work. Nothing was to be lost.

"That's your past, a million years or more of your past. Breeding yourselves into a starving cannibal horde, then tearing your numbers down in blood. Vermin City. That's your future, forever, without us." Glenda Ruth waved at the screens. "It's Vermin City or the Crazy Eddie Worm."

4 Messages

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

"Chris, it's time," Kevin Renner said. "Tell me about you and Joyce."

Blaine looked from Renner to Horace Bury. No help there. Sinbad's lounge had grown larger yet; it seemed very large, and very empty.

"All right, Captain, we were sleeping together, so to speak, and then we weren't. I'm more worried about what the Moties might get out of her."

"So am I. Try again."

Chris Blaine saw no point in pretending to misunderstand. "I got to know her. I could see what she was looking for in me, in a man, and when I got some free time, I, hell. I let her see it. But when we reached MGC-R-31 and Motie ships came spitting out...How to put this?"

"She wanted you to keep your promises."

Chris gaped. "Well, but I never-"

The Captain said, "What she wants from a man is knowledge and power. That was what you let her see. But when Moties appeared, she wanted in on the action. You couldn't give her that. You couldn't even let her keep interrupting you while you were on duty. What else couldn't you give her?"

"Aw, hell. Captain, she wanted to know what my sister's bringing. I don't know! Not certainly, I only know what Dad and Mom, what the Institute, wanted."

"Which is enough," Renner said.

"Well, no... well. That was the trouble. I couldn't tell her as much as I do know because the Mediators would read her. They'd be doing that now if she knew anything. Now she won't talk to me at all."

"Chris, you did make promises. You used body language and nuances and all the things Jock and Charlie taught you. You've got to be more careful of how you use people."

Chris's ears burned.

"If you told her anything, if she learned anything that the Moties shouldn't know, tell me now."

"Captain, she heard you talking about Crazy Eddie's worm. She was sure I must know all about it. There was nothing I could do to tell her different."

"She's a reporter. She must have met every brand of liar there is."

"Yeah. I thought it must be Mom's C-L worm. I didn't tell her that. Now she thinks I'm dirt. Yes, she's right, I lied to her. I had to."

Captain Renner studied him and presently sighed. "All right, Lieutenant. Now what the hell else is going on? What's your reading of this situation with the Crimean Tartars?"

"I think Omar is as confused as we are," Blaine said. "Glenda Ruth must have done something to shake them up."

"We may well be able to guess what it is," Bury said. "Which could leave her in some danger."

"Whether or not the worm works as advertised," Chris said.

"Yeah, I'd thought of that," Renner said. "But so far-"

"So far no harm has come to them," Bury said. "And time is very much on our side. The Empire, for all its divisions, remains a nearly unified force. We have no need to negotiate alliances to gain great strength. With the Moties it is not so."

"Horace, what will happen to the Moties?" Renner demanded. "What should happen to them?"

"I truly do not know."

"You'll pardon me, but you don't seem quite the fanatic you used to be."

"Kevin, how could I be? I see here a tragedy, a people not unlike my own, with few resources, divided against themselves."

"Finding the whole place shot through with Bury Mediators might have changed your perspective?"

"Don't miss the implication," Chris said. "They can swallow His Excellency's views and not choke. That tells us a lot about them."

"Yeah, but does it tell us enough? Horace, I can't believe you've changed that much."

"I bow to Allah's will. Kevin, the Empire barely had the resources to guard one gate, and that one through a sun. Shall it now have two blockade fleets, one to hold a volume of normal space? Perhaps, but at great cost, and for how long? Kevin, the Moties are no less a threat than ever, but our ability to contain them is not adequate to the task."

"So now what?"

Bury looked through the Mosque's picture window and made a face. Somewhere on the pale face of Base Six was Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo, unreachable.

He said, "One day's work at a time. We are to compose a message, which the Moties will attempt to send for us. What shall we say?"

"Think we're secure here?" Renner asked

Bury shrugged. "All of Nabil's skills were unable to detect listening devices. I do not believe the Moties can be so confident that they could plant a device with the certainty that we would not find it. If we found one, it would very much affect our relationship. Let us act as if there are no Moties listening, but not act as if we were certain of it."

"On that score, what happens when Ali Baba's with us?" Renner demanded.

"Then we are faithful allies of East India," Bury said. "Mediators serve their own Masters."

Renner nodded. "Blaine. Message."

"A quick description of the situation, with all of the Alderson geometry data we have," Blaine said. "Including all that data from the Alexandria Library. That will make it a lot easier to get the Fleet in here. Of course there's not much chance it will happen. Admiral the Honorable Sir Harry Weigle. Sent out after Joyce Trujillo's first articles. Assigned to clean up the corruption, put some discipline back in the Crazy Eddie Squadron. He's doing a good job at that, but he's not big on disobeying orders."

"And his orders are to maintain the blockade," Renner said.

"Just so."

"What can we do to convince him?"

Blaine thought for a moment. "He'd have to be convinced that he had a higher duty than carrying out his orders."

"Could you persuade him?"

Chris thought that one over. "Possibly. I can't reach him. You can. So let's look at what he knows. The Alderson point back to New Cal has moved. So has the Jump to the Mote, and he'll know that, but he probably hasn't found it. It's dancing around down there inside a red giant star."

"MacArthur found it easily enough thirty years ago," Bury reminded them.

"Different geometry. No jittery new star to distort the path," Renner said. "Not that bloody easily, either. Trust me."

Blaine nodded. "MacArthur and Lenin were specially equipped and had some of the Empire's best scientists aboard, along with a top navigator. Even then it took them a while to find the old one. So. We're going to help him find the new Crazy Eddie point. That will start him off thinking right. We give him information that helps him in his mission."

Renner's nod prompted Blaine to continue: "The tricky thing is to be sure we don't ask him to violate orders. Such as letting anything get out of the star and through to New Cal."

"So if we ask him to listen before he shoots."

"He might do that," Blaine said. "It's worth a try."

Eudoxus led her down and slantwise from the lounge. Vacuum gear waited in an alcove a hundred meters below the Mosque. Joyce was taken aback. This hadn't come from Sinbad!

Eudoxus was watching. That irritating smile... hah. Joyce recorded, "The Motie smile is rigid. It's always there. You don't see it on a Mediator unless she's not sending any other signal."

Joyce donned a skintight pressure suit (it felt funny, comfortable though), fishbowl helmet, thermal oversuit (lighter than she'd expected) and mirror cloak. They looked archaic: they almost matched Empire Navy specs of thirty years ago, altered to alien tastes.

"Comfortable?"

"Yes," she told Eudoxus. She was relieved. She'd thought they would have to return to the Mosque. The helmet would reveal her face for the pickup camera.

Two of the little Messengers joined them. The party returned to the tunnel as five puffy silver dolls. They passed through three doors of a massive airlock and out onto an icy surface.

Frozen hydrogen, she remembered: fluffy, loosely packed, not visibly different from water ice. Maybe crusted in water ice. How could you tell? She didn't feel the cold.

"These are handholds, all but the green and red," Eudoxus said. "Don't lose your grip, Joyce. The Base is under acceleration."

Joyce gripped a yellow-and-orange line. "Green and red?"

"Green is superconductor cables. Red is fuel." Eudoxus was already moving, jumping along the surface, the cable sliding through her hands. "And the big translucent tubes are for transport."

The gray ice curved sharply. The top of a dome showed beyond the curve. In another direction, the Mosque cradled Sinbad. A bright red spark looked over its shoulder: the Eye. In another, a violet horizon-glow that had to be the fusion motors pushing Inner Base Six.

Fabulous pictures! The kind of thing careers are founded on! She chuckled to herself. Chris Blaine's frantic look! As if he'd told me anything to begin with. As if the Moties could read my mind or my face. What could Eudoxus see, anyway? I'm a big silver pillow.

But if Joyce could see the Motie smile... less irritating, now that she understood it... then Eudoxus could see her face, too.

Eudoxus was taking them away from the motors: forward. Joyce followed. The Warrior followed her, and the Messengers.

The cable split; they followed yellow. It led over a small dome. Moties looked up at Joyce through a glass bull's-eye and a forest of dark green moss: three Whites, a Warrior, a Messenger, some Watchmakers.

Eudoxus asked, "Joyce, what's with Horace Bury?"

"What do you mean?'

"Thirty years ago, he thought the Mote system was the way to get rich. He couldn't see enough of anything. Now he seems much calmer, less ambitious, more like a Keeper. But-"

Joyce was amused. "He was already older than a man can get without serious medical help. It's thirty years later."

"There's more. He flinches when a Warrior comes near. All right, so do you, I can understand that." Eudoxus had lost all trace of accent, Joyce realized suddenly. "But he flinches from Watchmakers. Even from the newborn, until he knows they are not Watchmakers."

"They blindside him. His eyes can't be all that-"

"No, Joyce, it's not their size. He likes the little Mediator pups, once he knew what they are."

Bury's attitude toward Moties was no secret within the Empire. Rather the opposite. "He has always been afraid of you," Joyce said. "Terrified, even. Since he returned from the first Mote expedition. But that's changing. I can see it."

"Why?"

Joyce thought it over. Bury's attitude toward Moties was no secret, but the cause of MacArthur's death was a Navy secret; secret from the Moties, by order of the Privy Council. It was a good question, though. What was changing Horace Bury? Greed, probably. "There are still vast fortunes to be made. Power and influence, for Bury and his relatives."

Three dissimilar spacecraft nursed from red cables that dipped into the ice. Each ship was built as solidly as a safe. A transparent tube ringed the ships; canisters and Moties of several sizes flew along inside it.

Eudoxus didn't try to stop Joyce from circling the ships with her pickup camera running. Others-Chris, the Captain, Dr. Buckman-would understand more than she did. She pointed her pickup along the tube, watching the Moties fly. Warriors, four Engineers, a Messenger.

Eudoxus said, "We don't have to move this slowly, Joyce. The tube is faster and you would still have a view."

No accent, but an irritating richness, an overemphasis on consonants- My voice! Eudoxus spoke with Joyce Trujillo's voice, exactly as she sounded on video. "No, this is fine," she said. "I'm getting great pictures."

The Mediator led off. Aft, the glow of jets had faded to black sky.

Eudoxus stopped. Joyce and the Warrior caught up; Eudoxus spoke briefly to the Warrior. Then her upper right arm pointed ahead and up. "There, Joyce, what do you see in the sky?"

Joyce followed the creature's long upper-right arm. "Just stars."

"The Warrior says he's spotted it, the locus of your friends."

"Do Warriors have good eyes?"

"Yes."

Joyce tapped at the pickup, instructing it to find and fix on the brightest spot in its field, narrow the field, zoom in. She raised it by its sleeve, aligned along Eudoxus's arm, and set it going.

The camera wriggled in its sleeve, gyros whirring. A wide field of stars showed on the monitor screen. There: crumpled tinsel reflecting dim sunlight, just bigger than a point. Joyce set the camera zooming. Structure began to show, crumpled mirrors, a beehive torn open, violet points that might be fusion torches or spacecraft.

"Do you have it? It's a nest of war rats and Watchmakers. It's being harvested by the Crimean Tartars."

"Now follow my finger down to the horizon. A scattering of blue points?"

Joyce shook her head. Again she worked with the pickup.

"I don't see it either, but Warriors can. That's a war fleet bearing down on the nest."

"Got it." It was as Eudoxus had said, a scattering of blue points and no more.

"Mostly Khanate ships. In four hours they will arrive at the rat nest, but in twenty minutes the Tartars will be running. It's being negotiated now. They'll rendezvous with Base Six as we pass, and they have your friends."

"Great! I should tell the Captain."

"We will do that," Eudoxus said.

"Good." Chris should have been here, she thought with satisfaction. A sudden thought. "Have the Tartars become your allies?"

And thus ours.

"Perhaps. For the moment they are in mortal danger, and we offer them refuge. For the future-what is the future, Joyce? The question is not what place the Tartars have with Medina and East India, it is what place have Moties in the universe."

"I can't answer that."

"No, but you must have thought about it."

"Sure. A lot of people have." Interest in Moties flared and died and flared again through the Empire, and the latest news would cause the biggest flare of all. What to do about Moties would be the topic of discussion everywhere. The Humanity League. The Imperial Senate. The Navy League. The Imperial Traders Association. The editorial board of her own news syndicate. Little old ladies at tea parties.

She was beginning to notice the cold... or was it the dark? Her body wasn't cold, she was sweating with the exercise, but the black sky and gray ice pulled at her mind. They'd left the domes and ships behind.

Eudoxus bounced alongside her, talking, with the Warrior at the lead. "We've taken a great gamble, you know."

"Yes."

‘If we could only understand one thing, we would feel far less at risk. Your superiors seem to expect... what shall we call our gathering of alliances?... expect the Medina Consortium to remain stable, ultimately to speak for all of Mote system. How can they expect that?"

"I don't know." The Motie was too distant: Joyce couldn't see her face. She wouldn't be able to see Joyce's either. But all discussions of Moties came down to the same thing: there was no central Motie government, and it didn't look as if there ever could be. How could there be stable relations with a caldron of Motie families? Even the real Genghis Khan hadn't been able to form a stable empire of Mongols...

They'd reached a ring of domes wreathed in cables of all sizes and colors, with a great ship rising out of the center. In the minuscule gravity Joyce bounded to the crest of a dome and caught up a handhold line. Joyce considered herself to be hard and fit, but this was hard work... and the Warrior was alongside her in an instant, and here was Eudoxus, too. Didn't Moties get tired faster than humans?

Eudoxus spoke to the Warrior, who said little, and then switched to Anglic. "A Master's ship is bigger, to house an entourage, and is built for intelligence and communications and defense, and never for stealth. In battle a Master may be left alive for later negotiations."

"Uh-huh." Joyce was filming the huge ship, retractable antennae, the long cylinder that must be a weapon: ram tube, rocket magazine, laser, whatever.

"I have heard that your Empire prefers not to interfere with its member cultures, but sometimes it must. Is that our fate?"

"I don't know that, either, but it's got to be better than what you've been doing." Joyce was surprised at her own vehemence. I sounded just like my father, and I never thought of myself as an Imperialist.

"Joyce, we have a great deal more to see. Shall we take a tube?"

Fatigue made her irritable. "Eudoxus, they're too small. Anyway, why would that be easier? We'd still have to move!"

"No. Difference in air pressure moves us. To fit inside we must deflate our oversuits. Let the Messengers follow with them."

"Done."

Victoria came into the humans' area of Cerberus. "Representatives of houses allied with your Empire await you," she said. "Gather your possessions. Particularly your trade goods. You will not be returning here, and we may not be able to save this ship."

The humans stared in astonishment. "What's happening?" Glenda Ruth demanded.

"The Khanate comes. We have formed an alliance with Medina Trading. Their representatives await you. They call themselves Mentor and Lord Byron and you must assure them that you have been well treated. I trust there will be no difficulty with that."

"That's not a problem," Freddy said. "And I can afford to lose Hecate, but just what's about to happen to us?"

For answer Victoria pointed to an image on the telescope screen. Vermin City continued to change, to dwindle... was rapidly melting away, Glenda Ruth saw, leaving long bulges... slender spacecraft emerging from the wreckage.

"Looks familiar," she said.

Freddy laughed. "They're oversize copies of Hecate!"

"You'll board the fastest of those. We're running away. Warriors will delay the Khanate as long as they can, others will try to save this ship and any others, but we will be matching velocities with your friends, who appear to be aboard a sizable traveling fortress."

"How fast will we be going?" Jennifer demanded.

Victoria frowned. "As swiftly as possible. Three gravities-Mote Prime gravities."

Mote Prime was a lighter world. Freddy said, "Call it two and a half standard gee. Terry-"

"Terry can't take that," Jennifer said.

"No. Victoria, thanks, but-"

"You will not save your friend by being captured by the Khanate," Victoria said. "And they might not be quite as understanding about the benefits of your cocoa. I am afraid I can leave you no choice here. Your friends will forgive us for leaving behind one human, wounded in activities he insisted on joining. They will not be so kind if we abandon you all. Come."

"I'm staying," Jennifer said. "Glenda Ruth, you and Freddy go. Victoria's right, you're important, and it won't matter how it happened, the Empire won't accept it if you're lost. But someone has to take care of Terry, and you can tell them I insisted. Pollyanna-"

"Stay with Jennifer," the Motie said. Her voice was Jennifer's accent but in a lower register.

"Whatever we do, it must be done quickly," Victoria warned. "A Khanate battle squadron approaches, and your friends are impatient to talk to you."

"Battle squadron. How reasonable will they be?" Glenda Ruth demanded. "Would they talk?"

"Mediators will always talk when there is not active fighting. Sometimes then. Whether the Mediator with this expedition can speak your language is another matter, of course. You will have Pollyanna to help."

"I will help you talk," the Mediator pup hugged her.

She said, "You're not trying to talk me out of staying."

"I had hoped you would stay," Victoria said. "Your Terry might then survive until Medina can buy him back from the Khanate. Without your help I do not think so."

"I don't like this much," Freddy said. "Glenda Ruth?"

"Victoria, how will you leave them?'

Victoria chattered rapidly to a Warrior. The Warrior answered briefly. Victoria said, "We can leave you Cerberus, minus our own life support segments, and a Warrior pilot and motors to give half a gee... in fact, you should have Hecate's motor of alien design, to indicate your nature. Jennifer, you might be overlooked, and if so, Medina will find you. I regret we cannot allow Dr. Doolittle to accompany you."

"What are their chances of escape?" Glenda Ruth persisted.

"Not good," Freddy said. "Stealthing is fine, but Cerberus needs thrust to get away from here, and they'll see that."

Victoria shrugged. "This is likely. If we delay much longer, none of this will matter. I will also leave recordings in the trade language, informing the Khanate that they have a valuable possession which those more powerful than the Khans will wish to buy back, but only if intact."

"Go on, Glenda Ruth," Jennifer said. "It's the best we're going to get."

"Come," said the Mediator. "Come meet the representatives of your friends."

The Warrior led; then Joyce, then Eudoxus, all in skintights and helmets. Air pressure wafted them down the tube. Their insulating oversuits followed, collapsed, with two little Messengers to tend them.

Eudoxus said, "Bury's Fyunch(click) brought us tales of swimming. Is it like this?"

"A little," Joyce said. The currents kept her from brushing the sides. She drifted like seaweed, in a dead man's float.

An industrial complex wafted by, brightly lighted. Where the tube curved, she could see Watchmakers following her, a swarm of them bracketed by two Engineers.

"Crazy Eddie always misreads the turning of the cycles," Eudoxus said. "Crazy Eddie tries to arrest the turning, to make a civilization that will last for all time. What do humans think of Crazy Eddie, Joyce?"

"I suppose we think he's crazy." Silence prompted her to continue, "Not all that crazy, though. Our cycles of history, they go up and down but generally up. A spiral. We don't just go round and round. We learn."

"So you use the term without embarrassment. Crazy Eddie point our term, yes, but you don't flinch from it. Crazy Eddie Squadron. Joyce, you've studied the Crazy Eddie Squadron?"

"My views are on record, Eudoxus, and you can't have the records. Navy matters." How the hell had Eudoxus learned that? Was there a hole Chris hadn't plugged? So to speak.

"We are allies. It seems unfair that we cannot know what you have told every casual inhabitant of the Empire."

"Unfair. Yes, it is, but it's still not my decision, Eudoxus. I took an oath."

The Motie said, "Yes, of course. Joyce, nobody loves blockade duty. The Squadron is crumbling, isn't it? The opening of the Sister is not a bad thing for you, but how can your companions expect to create stability here?"

Good question, and Joyce didn't know. The Empire had something, though. Something to do with the Institute, Joyce thought, and the Crazy Eddie Worm. Joyce knew only the name, and even that she must keep secret. Why? But the Mediator was behind her; her view was of Joyce's feet, not her face.

"Mote Prime sent you ambassadors," Eudoxus said. A Keeper and two Mediators. You've had thirty years to study them. We've studied billions of ourselves for millions of years. What can you possibly have learned that we could not?"

"Eudoxus, I am not supposed to talk about this."

"The Imperials have told you very little, haven't they, Joyce? They didn't trust you to keep secrets."

"That's right. So there's not much point in this, is there?"

"Yet you are a public opinion specialist. You are heard throughout the Empire. Joyce, it is clear that your Empire is united as the Moties have never been, but not every family is obedient. Has your Empire the strength to exterminate us? Is this your real plan?"

"No, we don't plan that!"

"Are you so sure? No secret weapons? Ah, but they would not tell you. Joyce, look ahead and up."

The ball of crumpled tinsel was a larger point among the stars. Violet sparks were rising from it. Joyce trained her pickup and spoke for continuity. "Spacecraft are rising to meet us, bringing the human hostages captured by the group our Motie allies call the Crimean Tartars. The humans are Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine. The Hon. Frederick Townsend. Jennifer Banda of the Blaine Institute. And an engineer crewman, Terry Kakumi... Eudoxus, when can we talk to them? To the people who were in that ship? Did they get any pictures of the war rats? What are war rats?"

"In due time. When your friends arrive. For now-we should show you the motors."

Joyce looked up. The crumpled ball and its sparks were setting, and the violet-white glow of Base Six's motors was coming into view ahead. "Yes," said Joyce. "Please."

Eudoxus spoke into his hand. Mediators ruled all transport, Joyce remembered. And sometimes sat in judgment. The wind that moved them almost died; then the tube branched, and pressure wafted them left.

"We knew that Glenda Ruth Blaine must be daughter to Sally Fowler and Roderick Blaine, and the Honorable Frederick Townsend son to another powerful master, but we don't know of a Blaine Institute

"It's a school, but it does research."

"I thought you called such organizations ‘universities.'"

"Yes, that's right, the Blaine Institute is like a university, deliberately located next to a university, but universities everything. The Blaine Institute has only one purpose. To study Moties."

"Ah. Was this Institute responsible for the blockade?"

"No, that was Imperial policy. Although Lord and Lady Blaine helped set the policy even as they were founding the Institute. And Lady Blaine's uncle. But the blockade was proclaimed before I was born." Instead of an extermination fleet. The Mediator still couldn't see her face: right. "You can't imagine the impact you made on the Empire. Just your existence."

"Do you have children?"

"No. Not yet."

"You will have?"

"Let's leave it at ‘not yet.'"

Neither do I, of course. But I'll see your Motie impact on the Empire and raise you not getting pregnant until you happen to feel like it!"

Jennifer's ears felt scorched.

Eudoxus said, "Never mind. I might guess the Empire's reaction, knowing that we've solved your inbuilt reason for making war and then invented our own."

"How so?"

"Mediators prevent misunderstanding," Eudoxus said. "Moties will fight for territory and power and resources for their descendants, but if there's a way to avoid fighting, the Mediators will find it. You fight because messages are badly worded."

"Oh. And invented your own, yes, of course. If you don't get pregnant, you die. And Mediators don't get pregnant." I should just shut my face and give it a vacation, Joyce thought.

"The Institute, is it considered a success?"

"It gets the best minds in the Empire."

"Yes. But such structures always freeze up, don't they? They get old and can't react anymore, like the Blockade Fleet."

"Oh... generally." But she hadn't heard that about Blaine Institute. "Ossified is the word you want."

"So they study Moties and nothing else, and they have not yet become ossified. Will they study ways to kill Moties?"

"Don't be absurd! You've met Chris Blaine. His parents own the Institute. What do you think?"

"I think he has secrets, some terrible," Eudoxus said.

So do I. Maybe enough of this. But... she can't see my face, so what is she reading?

But I'm a reporter, I'm as good at controlling my face as any politico or poker player. But they put me in a silver balloon and let me get complacent and then snaked me out of it, and who ever taught me to control the muscles in my damn feet?

"Joyce, it's important. What did you tell them?" Renner asked.

"Nothing at all," she said, and laughed. "Look, you don't have to keep asking. I taped it all. Here."

"Thanks. Blaine, let's look at this."

The voices were identical: Joyce Trujillo's voice, recognizable Empire-wide. The only way to tell them apart was through context. This was the alien speaking: "I think he has secrets, some terrible."

"What do you think she meant?" Renner asked.

Chris Blaine frowned. "I don't know. But notice the context, just after Eudoxus asked if the Institute was set up to find ways to kill Moties. If I'm reading Eudoxus right-pity the camera wasn't on her much-"

"How could it have been?"

"I know, Joyce. Now, if I read this right, Eudoxus is convinced that Joyce doesn't believe the Institute is for making Moties extinct, but that hasn't laid all suspicions to rest."

"Anything we can do about that?"

"I'll think on it. I have some general recordings about the Institute, mostly promo stuff, but they might help. We'll give them to Eudoxus."

"Better review them first."

"Sir, I did already. There's nothing about the Empire they won't already know. I was holding off in case I might be wrong, but now..."

"Okay. Sounds reasonable. Anything else?"

"Only the message to Weigle. It should go while East India is still willing and able to deliver it."

"That should do it," Chris Blaine said. He held a message cube. "All the Alderson data we can find including the stuff from Alexandria. The Admiral shouldn't have any trouble finding the new Crazy Eddie point. Now it's your turn, Captain. Remember, heavy on duty. You can't lay that on too thick."

Renner took the cube. "Thanks. I'll be a while, and I have to be alone." He waited until the others had left, then inserted the cube into the recorder and began to dictate.

"And that's the situation as we see it," he concluded. "The Moties are ripe for an alliance. It's dicey, but there may never be a better chance.

"I don't believe we have the power to exterminate the Moties. There are too many of them, too many independent families, scattered through the rocks and the moons and the comets."

"We can't exterminate them, and we never expected to maintain the blockade forever, and now we'd need two blockades. My assessment is that we'd do better to try for an alliance using the Crazy Eddie Worm to help control Motie breeding. Of course we don't know what the Motie reaction to the worm will be, and we won't know for another forty or fifty hours. I don't think I should wait that long. Right now Medina Trading and East India are cooperating to send this, and they have the means to get the message through. God knows what can happen in fifty hours."

"Kevin J. Renner, Captain, Imperial Navy Intelligence; Acting Commodore, Second Mote Expedition. Authentication follows."

The authentication was more trouble than the message had been. Renner stretched a metallic band around his forehead and attached its cable to a small hand-held computer. Then he plugged in earphones and leaned back to relax.

"Hi," a contralto voice said. "Your name?"

"Kevin James Renner."

"Do you eat live snails?"

"I'll eat anything."

"Where were you born?"

"Dionysius."

"Are you alone?"

"Quite alone."

"What's the word?"

"Hollyhocks."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure, you stupid machine."

"Let's try it again. What's the word?"

"Hollyhocks."

"Sure it's not rosebuds?"

"Hollyhocks."

"My instructions are to be certain you are calm and uncoerced."

"Damn it, I am calm and uncoerced."

"Right. If you'll attach me to the message cube recorder."

"You're on."

"Stand by. This may take a while."

Renner waited as seven minutes went by.

"Done. You may disconnect."

Renner took out the message cube. It was encrypted in a code that could only be read by an admiral or at a Navy Sector Headquarters; and the authentication code identified it as coming from a very senior official of Imperial Naval Intelligence. The only way to get that authentication was to convince the encrypting device that you really wanted it done. Any deviation from the script would have produced an authentication sequence that proclaimed the sender was under duress or wasn't the proper sender. Or so Renner had been told.

Renner punched the intercom. "Okay, Blaine, here it is. You sure the Moties can manage to duplicate this at long range?" If the Moties couldn't do that, the cube itself would have to be sent, and that would take days, if it got through at all.

"They're sure. We sent the details of the message cube system to the East India group at the Crazy Eddie point. They've built a recording device. Now we send the encrypted message, they record it onto a cube, and pop it through."

"Fine."

"Now what?" Joyce asked.

"Now we wait," Renner said. "For the Tartars."

5 The Guns of Medina Mosque

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" whilst you find a rock.

Attributed to Talleyrand

A day or three ago, the Great Hall must have been solid ice. This day it occupied half the volume of the Mosque. It was lavishly decorated: Renner recognized a modified illustration from A Thousand Nights and a Night. Tapestries with fantastic decorations: a djinn, a roc, Baghdad as it might have been in the twelfth century. The carpets were soft with unmistakably Saracen designs. There were also certain anachronisms: the big viewscreen on one wall, the opposite wall a vast curve of glass looking out onto the ice,

The screen showed another region of Inner Base Six, and a ship dropping through the iceball's black Langston Field sky.

Horace Bury paced, looking very relaxed, bobbing as if underwater in the low gravity of Base Six. He hadn't noticed that Joyce's pickup camera was on him. All Baba bobbed along beside him, a perfect half-scale mime.

It was a funny sight. Kevin Renner saw that, but he found that command has its own emotions: he had to look beyond humor, and beyond calling attention to humor. There was a lot at stake here, and the responsibility fell squarely on Kevin Renner. And that's what Captain Blaine felt, back at the Mote. That and his reluctant tolerance for the smartass Sailing Master.

"Almost neutral territory," Eudoxus said. "Our base, but your part of it, a place where Commodore Renner may come and yet retain control of his ship. Excellency, this is to be a formal reception. Are you certain you will not invite any of the crew of Atropos? To act as entourage. Warriors, for instance."

"Is that really important?" Renner asked.

"It is important," Horace Bury said. "But it is also important that all Motie groups understand us as we begin to understand you. Moties and humans must modify their customs when they meet. Let us begin now."

Eudoxus bowed. "As you wish."

Chris Blaine watched the alien ship descend. "Looks like a racing yacht," Blaine said. "But bigger."

Eudoxus said, "I had wondered at the strange design. The Crimean Tartars must have taken considerable resources from the vermin city."

And your Engineers will already be examining everything about that ship, Renner thought. Moties aren't just innovative, they're adaptive.

The ship docked in a pattern of concentric scarlet circles, onto a platform that began to descend at once. As it sank from sight, Eudoxus listened to a handset. "They're down. Do you wish to see your friends disembark?"

"Of course," Renner said. Bury and Ali Baba turned as one.

The screen blinked, then showed an opening airlock. A Warrior emerged into the pressurized reception lock, then a Mediator with an odd marking pattern. Glenda Ruth Blaine followed, clutching a sealed carrying case to her chest. After her came a young man in space coveralls who carried a Mediator pup in his arms. Two Warriors and a young Master followed them.

"Only two." Bury and Ali Baba were bristling. "We had understood there were four?"

"Yes, Excellency. We are only now learning the details. One of the four insisted on filming the cleansing of Vermin City. He was hurt. His wounds were serious, life threatening. The Tartars have not ceased to tell us of the resources expended in saving his life.

"But when the Khanate ships were seen to be attacking, all realized that Terry Kakumi would not survive the acceleration required to escape. He was cast adrift. His female companion insisted on accompanying him."

"And thereby hangs a tale," Renner said. He looked at Blaine and got a slight nod. "And what has happened to them since then?"

"I have not been told," Eudoxus said.

The handset squawked. Eudoxus listened for a moment. "Your friends seem to be of two minds. They wish to see you immediately, but they are concerned that their appearance might lead you to suspect they have not been well treated."

"Tell ‘em we've already seen them on-screen," Renner said. "With war fleets coming at us from all directions I don't think we have a lot of time to waste washing up. Eudoxus, can Medina Trading send someone to rescue the other humans?"

"I will learn."

‘"Adrift,'" you said," Joyce noted.

Eudoxus shrugged. "What better word?"

Blaine said, "Cast loose at low thrust, concealed but with a transponder beacon that will answer if pulsed with the right signals. Right?"

"I have not been told, but I assume so. We will do what we can to rescue them, but I suspect we must simply buy them from the Khanate."

"Buy how?" Joyce demanded.

"A matter for negotiation," Eudoxus said. "And not yet."

Renner prompted her. "Why not yet?"

"Kevin, the Khanate Axis cannot themselves know what they will want. You have seen the pattern of their movement as well as I." She gestured toward the screen, which now showed points of light clustered around nothing whatever. "They wished to control the Sister. This they attained. Now they assemble their strength so that they can send through their war fleet. They wish to escape into your Empire, as we would have done if you had not been present to meet us, but the Khanate will not talk or bargain first. They have this advantage over us: they know that ships went through and lived to return, something that no ship ever did before. Now they believe that surprise is their best weapon, victory their best bargaining tool. Is it not clear to you?"

Blaine nodded. "Clear enough."

"But that's horrible!" Joyce said. "Captain Renner, shouldn't you be doing something?"

Renner's eyes fell on her without interest; wandered back to the screen. Mediators ruled information flow; this would be as good as anything Atropos could tell him. The Khanate was gathering. They would involve all the allies they could persuade to break free into the wide universe: every family within a billion miles, likely, excepting those who flew Medina's banner. All ready to flash through to MGC-R-31, where Balasingham waited with Agornemnon and whatever reinforcements might have reached him. If they broke past Agamemnon, they would be loose in the Empire.

The Khanate Axis. How would they work it? By long odds, they would soon have Jennifer Banda to describe Agamemnon and MGC-R-31 as she'd last seen them. Terry Kakumi might be used to persuade her. By now one of their allies might have brought a Bury Fyunch(click) to read her face. Jennifer could translate, could convey surrender terms... in either direction.

But what was Commodore Renner to do about it? He must talk to Glenda Ruth, soon. Was Agamemnon holding the MGC-R-31 system alone, or did other Navy ships arrive before Hecate came through? What had she done with the C-L worm? "Eudoxus..."

"We will fight, of course," Eudoxus said. "All of the strength of East India and Medina assembles. We have sent messages to Byzantium, and their war fleets are gathering. The Khanate Axis will send their Warriors through to fight whatever they find on the far side of the Sister, but they must leave their Masters safe on this side. Those ships we can attack, but we must know what contributions you humans can make."

"War for the stars," Joyce said, awed.

"Here are your friends," Eudoxus said. The outer door of the Great Hall opened. It had been made wide, so that a number could come through it at once.

Warriors streamed in and took places along the walls. They were followed by Admiral Mustapha Pasha, Master of Base Six. Behind that group came new, strange Moties, and two humans; and with them were other Mediators, a small group of Warriors who huddled around two Masters, and a scattering of other forms including a Doctor.

That must be Freddy Townsend, with a Mediator pup riding his shoulder. The box in Glenda Ruth's arms threw her balance off. She settled it and stepped away. She was radiating joy like a summer day as she turned to her brother; but Lieutenant Blaine was entirely absorbed by the Moties.

Eudoxus spoke slowly, formally, in the trade language. The visiting Mediator answered. "Victoria," Glenda Ruth said, and waved, but Victoria didn't notice. East India spoke. Blaine was trying to follow it, and so was Glenda Ruth... and then brother and sister grimaced at each other because all the Mediators were talking faster and faster. Twisted bodies shifted, danced. Renner was awed. Before his eyes and Joyce's camera, they were turning the skeletal trade koine into a language. The Mediators broke off to speak to the Masters, then resumed their gabble. The Masters spoke, first one of the newcomers, then Admiral Mustapha.

And every Warrior jumped straight into the air.

Glenda Ruth screamed, "No, no, it's a gun, Victoria! You point it!"

The Warriors ringed the ceiling and their weapons ringed the humans. They could fire, now, without hitting each other. Two Engineers and a dozen Watchmakers scrambled forward. Victoria shouted at the Masters, at the other Mediators. They gabbled, while Watchmakers surrounded Glenda Ruth's box and began spraying it with plastic foam. Every Motie Warrior held a weapon, and every weapon was pointed at a human.

Kevin hadn't gone for his pistol, and neither had anyone else. His only real weapon was Atropos. If the Masters had cut his communications, then Atropos would be on alert status now.

"I presume there is an explanation for this rather startling behavior," Bury said.

"Your Crazy Eddie Worm," Eudoxus said. "A boon to Mediators! But terrible for Masters. You knew of it and did not tell us. Joyce knew and would not tell us."

Joyce drew in a breath to speak but held it in. Her neck and cheeks flushed pink, then red.

"Our natural suspicion," Eudoxus continued, apparently to all of them, "is that your altered parasite is a means of making Motie life extinct. You would not consider this suggestion insane, would you, knowing what Victoria has just told us? Kevin, you did not instantly describe the Crazy Eddie Worm. You were much disturbed when you knew that you were going not to Mote Prime, where winds might distribute your parasite, but to a domain where spacecraft must bring the worm to an infinity of closed environments-I see my point is made. So. I fear some tension remains, Excellency, until we again reach understanding. It is, after all, not too late for us to join forces with the Khanate."

"Endless war," Chris Blaine said.

"Preferable to extinction. Glenda Ruth, what did you mean-"

She cried, "But it's for you! It doesn't reproduce except under controlled conditions. You can point it, like a gun. You win a battle, you don't have to kill your enemies. You give them the Crazy Eddie Worm instead, and now they're Keepers, conservative-"

Eudoxus waved her silent. He spoke rapidly to Victoria. They gabbled. A Master spoke. Eudoxus asked Glenda Ruth, "Do you wish to change anything you told Victoria? So. Lieutenant Blaine, tell me what you know of this. Quickly."

"His Excellency knows more than I do."

"Excellency?" The tone held respect; but the Warriors clung to the roof, their weapons tracking back and forth among the humans.

Quietly, calmly, moving slowly so as not to startle any Warrior, Bury had linked himself to Nabil's medical package. The displays were alive and the lines they drew were turning jagged. Bury wasn't as calm as he looked. Ali Baba regarded the displays with interest.

Bury said, "I know this. One of King Peter's Mediators was alive when I was last on Sparta. Less than a Mote year ago. Alive. I was told that this was due to the action of a genetically altered parasite."

"And you believe this?" Omar asked. "Truly, Excellency?"

"Certainly those who told me believed it, as do all those here. Yes. I believe."

"You fear Moties," Eudoxus said. "The Bury who came to Mote Prime did not, but you do. When we first spoke to you, I was surprised to see that. Yet since you came here, that, too, has changed. What has happened to change you, you of all humans, not once but twice? Speak truth, Excellency."

"The first is a Navy secret," Bury said.

Enough. Kevin Renner said, "Watchmakers destroyed the battleship MacArthur. Civilians had to be evacuated by lines across vacuum to Lenin. Horace was almost there when he realized that the man crawling up behind him was a pressure suit full of Watchmakers. He fought them off with his suitcase and his oxygen tank. Okay, Horace?"

"No longer secret, then." The lines were turning choppy. "There was worse. I had intended to bring Watchmakers to the Empire, to aid in building my fortune. Then I saw the danger. The war of all against all, and I nearly caused it."

"We have pictures to top that," Glenda Ruth said. "Wait'll you see Vermin City, Your Excellency!"

Bury looked at her. "Wonderful." To Eudoxus: "You must understand, I enjoy the company of Mediators. Even half-grown Mediators, yes, Ali Baba?"

"Certainly, Excellency- "And Watchmakers would be fantastically useful, fantastically valuable in Empire space. But that was not to be. Your society is much like that of the Arabs before the Prophet. Infanticide. Genocide. No other way to control your population. And after the Prophet, we burst forth to conquer, but we had not learned how to live with other cultures." Bury shrugged. "Nor had others learned to live with us, and this was still true when I last visited your star system."

"And you have learned now?" Eudoxus demanded.

"Yes. We have learned, the Empire has learned. The Arabs have found a place within the Empire. We are not yet as honored as we would wish to be, but we have a place that is not without honor. We are free to govern ourselves, and we can travel among the Imperial planets. As you see that I do."

"You are tolerated."

"No, Eudoxus, we are accepted. Not by all, enough, and that, too, will change."

"And you see us in that role?"

"Provided that you accept our terms."

Eudoxus turned and spoke slowly in the newly adapted trade language. Admiral Mustapha spoke briefly. Eudoxus turned. The Warriors had not moved.

"Your terms?" Eudoxus demanded.

Bury smiled. "Of course we cannot speak for the Empire, but I know what those terms will be. First, there is to be one Motie government. That government will see that no Motie leaves the Mote system without carrying the stabilizing parasite. Within the Mote system-well, I suspect that is all negotiable. Kevin, would you not agree?'

"Mmm... yes. The notion is generally that you keep your own house clean. Mote system is to be one government, kept that way by Mote citizenry. We've had at least one piece of luck, Eudoxus. Mote Prime is . .. eighty, ninety percent of your population? But they're not a consideration because Medina Concordance can keep them bottled up. That is, if you can hold the rest of the system in your gripping hand."

A Master spoke. Six Watchmakers finally ceased spraying foam plastic on a sphere that was now two meters across. Moties resumed their rapid conversation. Abruptly Eudoxus turned to Renner. "The worm is the heart of your strategy. Must we examine it?"

"We have holograms," Glenda Ruth said. "Victoria has records, too. Why not save it? You don't have anyone to use it on yet."

"Victoria tells us different, Glenda Ruth, and I'm amazed that you could forget. For Mediators, the Crazy Eddie Worm extends our life span at least twenty years. We're being very careful not to let that sway our judgment."

"Judgment," Bury said. "That is your real purpose, isn't it? Not mere obedience, and more than negotiation. Judgment. In your zeal for fairness, think on a Mote society in which Mediators live long enough to learn for themselves."

"We have," Omar said. "Excellency, you speak of holding the Mote system. Will the Empire help?"

"Of course," Renner said.

"Defending System unity is Imperial policy," Joyce Trujillo said. "They're already keeping the Blockade Fleet. Expensive, with no return. Trade with the Moties will be so profitable that the costs of helping you to keep order in here won't matter. His Excellency can tell you-"

"None of this requires extraordinary intelligence for understanding," Bury said.

"True," Omar said. "Excellency, it appears that your Crazy Eddie Worm truly is the key to human and Motie cooperation."

The Mediators began their gabble again, each to his own Master. Admiral Mustapha listened, then spoke rapidly.

"The Admiral agrees," Eudoxus said. "The question now becomes, what shall we do about the Khanate?"

Kevin Renner thought hard. "Horace-do we trust them, Horace?"

"They trust us." Bury swept a hand to indicate the Warriors who now hung relaxed, their weapons holstered, though still in place. Ally had turned enemy had turned ally, and no Warrior seemed surprised.

"Right. Glenda Ruth, what was the situation beyond the Sister when you left?"

"Not much different from when you came through. Agamemnon was on guard at the Alderson point leading out of the red dwarf system. There were three Motie ships waiting there with Agamemnon. Reinforcements from New Caledonia were expected, but hadn't arrived. But that was hundreds of hours ago."

"Thank you," Renner said. But they didn't have any ships to send. Meaning we better assume there aren't any. "They'll send their fleet through. What happens if we attack the Masters that stay behind?" Renner asked.

"They'll send for their Warriors."

"The whole fleet?"

Eudoxus spoke with the Master of Base Six. Another Master got involved, then two Warriors and an Engineer. Ultimately Eudoxus said, "As I surmised. Dividing one's forces is rarely a good idea. They will bring back all of their fleet."

"Nothing to gain. Why did they try it at all?"

"We surmise that they did not anticipate our use of Inner Base Six. We've already built up a respectable velocity for several hundred ships and an enormous fuel dump. They believe they have time to clear a path beyond the Sister. We can deny them that time. Still, Kevin-"

"Good. Then what we do is get in position, wait until their battle fleet goes through the Sister, and pounce."

"And when their fleet comes back?" Omar asked. "Several thousand ships."

"We cross that bridge when we come to it," Renner said.

"And hope the horse can sing," Glenda Ruth added, but she spoke so softly that no one but Renner could hear her.

6 Judgment

First ponder, then dare.

Helmuth von Moltke

"No," Kevin Renner said. "Damn it, we're going into a battle!"

"I'm the only correspondent present," Joyce said. "An opportunity of a lifetime, and you can't say no!"

"You'll slow us down."

"Not I, Commodore Renner. With His Excellency aboard you're limited in how fast you can go to begin with."

"Horace."

Bury was pacing a contorted path through Sinbad's crowded cabin: his last chance to inspect his altered ship. "Ms. Trujillo is correct, of course. Yet I must come. This is my ship, and I have messages to send, orders to give, that I can only give personally." Bury waved toward the new control panel. "Sinbad is better defended than she has ever been. And all that is irrelevant. Kevin, if we do not win, no one in the Empire is safe. Having Joyce aboard will not change that and will not lessen our chances."

So who do we leave behind?"

"Jacob, I think. Nabil-"

The old man hissed in surprise. "Please, Excellency, I have served you for all of my life."

"Serve me now. Hold this message cube in safety aboard Base Six," Bury said. "Cynthia-"

"I think I should be with you, Excellency."

"Then we agree, because that was what I was about to say."

"All touching, but we have no time," Jacob Buckman said. "Horace, I think you're crazy, but good luck." He shook Bury's hand and held it an instant longer. "We-"

"Good-bye, Jacob."

"Um. Yes." He turned and joined Eudoxus and the others who would stay on Base Six.

"Mother isn't going to like this," Chris Blaine said. He took his sister by the shoulders. "Commander Rawlins is right. They need one of us here on Sinbad, and I'll be more useful on Atropos."

"If we don't bring this off, nobody's safe," Freddy Townsend said. "Anywhere. Not even Sparta."

Renner nodded to his new copilot. "I'm afraid you're right, Freddy. Okay, secure the airlocks. Everybody strap in."

Sinbad was intensely crowded. The Motie Engineers had reworked Sinbad's interior and added a fuel tank outboard, where the add-on cabin had been. The control bridge held two couches for humans. It was bounded by collapsing doors that opened onto the main lounge. There they had built shaped acceleration couches for two Mediators and two Engineers, each with a Watchmaker, as well as couches for the other humans. Sinbad looked cluttered, with incomprehensible gadgetry attached at odd angles wherever there was space for it.

Cynthia had Bury tethered into his water bed. Bury watched the Moties settle in.

"They've all got the worm," Kevin said.

"Yes. And how does it affect these cursed little Motie brownies? We test it here for the first time!"

"We may need them for damage control," Renner said. "Omar, can you keep them from mucking about with the ship? The last thing I need is to have the control system rebuilt."

"They will do nothing without orders." Omar took his place next to Victoria of the Crimean Tartars. "Your MacArthur was safe until the Engineer died. A Medina Engineer, Kevin. Even then a Medina Master or Engineer could have saved her. But-"

"But we didn't allow any communications with the Engineer or the Watchmakers, and Medina was already fleeing from King Peter," Renner finished.

"Precisely. It was not all your doing. After the arrival of King Peter's ship it would have been very difficult for you to communicate with Medina."

Renner nodded to himself. Even then, thirty years ago, the Moties had known more than the humans suspected. And what did they know now? But there was work to do.

"Rawlins?" A screen showed the commander of Atropos watching Sinbad's chaos with concealed disapproval. "Let us get well clear before you move in and refuel," Renner said.

"Aye, aye. Godspeed, Commodore."

"Thank you."

Refuel only. No Motie would ever touch Atropos. Paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? After thirty years with Horace Bury? Renner said, "All right, Mr. Townsend, let's launch."

An hour after Sinbad's departure, Rawlins called to report launch from Inner Base Six with full tanks.

One of Renner's screens displayed Atropos as a black dot on a violet-white glare. Another display, unmagnified, showed violet dots weaving a slow pattern about Sinbad. Another showed Commander Rawlins sprawled in his acceleration chair, and Chris Blaine behind him in a similar couch. The strain of three-gee acceleration showed in both faces.

"First things," Renner said. "The Moties report that our message to the Crazy Eddie Fleet went through as planned. No way to know if the Admiral got it."

"But he ought to," Rawlins said, "And no way to know what he'll do about it."

"Right," Renner said. "Anyway, for once things are pretty simple."

Rawlins lifted an eyebrow with some effort. "If so, it's the first time."

"Yeah. Bury and I have discussed the Khanate's options with the Moties, and we're all pretty much agreed on how things have to be. They've got two options. Plan A, they go through the Sister with everything they've got, hit whatever's waiting, and get through into Empire space, where they scatter. The Khanate is used to living off slim pickings: give them any kind of a system, and they'll soon be breeding like mad, if they can get their colony ships through."

Rawlins said, "What's to stop them? Why have a Plan B?"

"Well, they don't know they can get through," Renner said. "Or what they'll find when they do."

"They're risking everything they have," Glenda Ruth said. "Those colony ships are the Khanate. Everything they have, and they don't really know what they're facing. By now they'll have Terry and Jennifer, so they'll know Agamemnon was all there was a couple of hundred hours ago."

"Pity that engineer didn't just get himself killed," Rawlins said.

Freddy bridled; Renner spoke quickly to head him off. "What they don't know, because nobody on Hecate could know, is what reinforcements Agamemnon may have picked up."

"It won't be a lot," Rawlins said. "But maybe something. We did have some ships under repair, and this wouldn't be the first time Sinclair and his crew at the Yards passed a miracle."

"We're presuming they can talk to Terry and Jennifer," Freddy Townsend said. "The first Tartar group couldn't."

"The Khanate is richer than the Tartars," Glenda Ruth said. "They could have bought a half-trained Bury Fyunch(click) by now. I hope so."

"Why?" Rawlins asked.

"Jennifer admires Bury," Glenda Ruth said. "And she's impressed by the Empire. She'll be sure there'll be a big fleet with Agamemnon because she's got a romantic view of our competence. If they could talk to Joyce, it would be a different-"

"Now, Glenda Ruth, I don't-"

"We can hope," Renner said. "It may have happened that way. Whatever the Khanate learned from Jennifer Banda and Terry Kakumi, they're playing it plenty cautious. They're sending their warships through, but so far they've left their Masters behind. Those are still in Mote system with nothing but a corporal's guard."

Renner touched the screen controls and brought up images of the remaining Khanate ships. They were big ships, like civilian cruise ships in the Empire, and not one resembled any other. They were accompanied by a score of smaller ships.

"Two dozen-actually twenty-six of the big ships. That's the target. The thing is, a Master's family and entourage are a colony. Those are all the Masters and everything they need to survive, plants, symbiotes, useful Classes, everything. Each family a little colony.

"We go after those. Medina is vectoring everything onto those ships. So are East India and the Tartars. Byzantium has agreed to help. In about twenty hours, things are going to be plenty hot for the Khanate Masters."

"That part I understand. Fine by me," Rawlins said.

Blaine said, "It won't be a surprise attack by the time we hit them, but right now they don't know how fast we're coming. They won't have factored in the boost from Inner Base Six. The Medina Alliance is bigger than they thought, too, as they'll soon find out. So-what choices do they have? Either they pop through to get support from their war fleet, or they send for help. Quite possibly both, that is, they go through and then yelp for assistance, which means recalling the war fleet. That should buy some time for Agamemnon."

"Yeah, it just might," Rawlins said. He looked thoughtful. "If they do that, maybe we can reinforce Balasingham in time to do some good."

"Good thinking," Renner said.

"What's Plan B, Commodore?"

Renner said, "Our best guess is that the Khanate's Plan B is the same as Medina's. If they can't blast past Agamemnon, then they come back here, put together a big alliance that can defeat Medina, and offer to negotiate with the Empire."

"So the important thing is to see they don't get past Agamemnon. Other than that-do we care who wins?" Rawlins asked.

Kevin Renner had never thought of that at all.

"The Empire may not care," Bury said. "But we do."

Rawlins frowned.

"I'll second that," Freddy Townsend said.

Both men were civilians. Rawlins couldn't quite suppress a patronizing tone. "Now, I know you like these Moties, but Imperial policy is not to get involved with the internal affairs of candidate systems."

"We all know it happens," Freddy said.

"Maybe, but this is at a policy level a hell of a lot higher than any of us," Rawlins said. "Even with the Blaine heirs aboard."

"Rawlins-" Renner began.

"Commander," Glenda Ruth said. "We're only speculating on what the Khanate might do. The fact is, they haven't tried to negotiate with us. They have taken two Empire citizens captive, and they won't even talk to us about it."

"Hell, your friends took you captive."

"And are doing their damnedest to make restitution," Freddy said.

The two Mediators were listening intently, but neither spoke.

"Medina has earned our trust," Bury said. "Should we not earn theirs? Then there is a matter of property rights. Medina knew that-"

"Property?" Rawlins demanded, his reply delayed by the lightspeed gap.

"Yes, Commander. They knew that the protostar would collapse, that the Sister would open. They bought that knowledge with scarce resources. Including the life of an Engineer we allowed to die aboard MacArthur."

"Be damned," Renner said.

"Yes." Bury's voice sounded labored. "The situation is not quite what happened to Mr. Townsend, but there are similarities. And from that little store of knowledge they guessed what we would do, and they bet their survival on being right. I have done the same myself. Do you not regard ideas as property? In a sense, Medina Consortium holds copyright on the Empire."

A beat. Then, "Copyright. Thank you, Trader. Commodore?"

Renner said, "We'll fight alongside Medina Trading. I'll take the heat. You've got your orders, Commander. Go hit those colony ships. We'll be thirteen hours behind you."

"Yes, sir." Too late to be of any help, but they both knew that. "You're an unknown to the Moties," Renner said. "They won't know what your ship can do. I don't know if that means they'll concentrate on you or try to avoid you. Be ready either way. We're going to need your protection when we get closer, so try to stay alive."

The delay was longer this time. "We'll try.'

"Any more questions?...Right. Let's get to it. Godspeed." Renner switched off, to find Bury chuckling.

"Yeah?"

"I was thinking," Bury said. "I can envision a trial. With Blaine's parents presenting our defense."

Sinbad was accelerating at 1.2 standard gravities. Glenda Ruth Blaine was using the cramped space of the galley area to do slow stretches. She asked, "Have you ever had a pet?"

"My dad had a pair of Keeshonden," Joyce said.

"They died, though. You knew they'd die someday and did." Glenda Ruth didn't wait for a response. "It was like with Jock and Charlie. They told me themselves. Charlie died. My folks had a version of the C-L worm by then, but it was late for Charlie, or it wasn't quite right. No, Joyce, you leave camera where it is."

Joyce hadn't moved. "I can't help what I'm thinking, Glenda Ruth, but if they were about to shoot me for knowing too much, I'd still be listening."

"I'm not sure what I want to say for the press. What I did, it wasn't honest and it wasn't simple and it would be insanely complicated to try to describe. What I'm getting at is that the C-L worm pulled my oldest friend off death row. Hello, Freddy."

Freddy had popped out of the pilot's enclosure. "Hi. Being interviewed?"

"Off the record. Coffee?"

"Bless you." Freddy Townsend turned to Bury. "Gravity all right, sir?"

Bury looked up at him. "It is no worse than Sparta. I am quite comfortable. Thank you. It is harder on Ali Baba and our friends." The Mediator pup was huddled into Bury's armpit; it didn't seem unhappy.

"I came back to show you something," Freddy said. "We've got cameras outside the Field." He indicated the lounge screens. Bright flashes and softer glows, the intricate light threads of a space battle

"Atropos group?" Glenda Ruth asked.

"They're still a couple of hours short of the Sister. That's the Tartar fleet. They were closest. Victoria, I'm afraid it's not going well for your people."

"We did not expect it to," Victoria said.

"A fearful consumption of resources," Omar said.

"An investment," Bury said.

"With potentially unlimited returns," Omar said. "We have had years to contemplate, but this is the first generation of Moties to see the universe as a place of real opportunity. So. How soon will we be there?"

"It's a bit under two light-minutes," Freddy said. "Call it twenty-six hours at our present rate."

"Won't it be all over by then?" Glenda Ruth asked.

"Possibly not," Victoria said. "Space battles take time."

"And this is a battle such as few have ever seen," Omar said. "A battle of Masters, the final failure of the Mediator class."

"One thing I don't understand," Joyce said. "Why won't the Khanate negotiate?"

There were new flashes of light on the screens.

"More ships," Glenda Ruth said, "Whose are those?"

"Hard to tell," Freddy said. "But they're shooting at the Khanate, so they're on our side."

"Enemies of our enemies," Bury said. "We can but watch with patience. Allah has been merciful."

"Joyce, there are many answers to your question," Victoria said. "Their history. The Khanate has had few successes with alliances."

"Given their record this is not surprising," Omar said.

"All true. They treat their allies with contempt. They did not honor the terms they had made with us. And now they see unlimited potential if only one of their colony ships survives to roam Imperial space."

"Unlimited," Glenda Ruth said. "Crazy Eddie. An entire clan."

"We see it, too," Victoria said. "As do Medina and East India. Call it an entire culture."

Sinbad's control bridge was dark except for the navigation screens. Freddy had closed it off from the lounge. He had set the pilot's couch for massage mode.

Glenda Ruth noted Freddy's relaxed posture. "Hi."

"Hello."

"I saw some activity on the screens."

Freddy nodded. "The battle's started up again. I told the Commodore. There's not much we can do about it, for another fourteen hours, so there wasn't any point in rousing the others."

And you're not saying why you didn't call me. "What do we do when we get there?"

"Good question," Freddy said. "On this course we'll shoot past at about two hundred klicks a second."

"That's not much use."

Freddy showed some irritation. "If we slow to match velocities, we'll be forever getting there. The idea is that we can boost our thrust at the end if somebody needs our firepower. Otherwise it's safer to go through fast and backtrack."

"Good news from all over," Glenda Ruth said.

The main screen flared, a blue flash. She stared at it. "Freddy-"

"It's all right. You don't have to watch."

Her voice was almost patronizing, though it came three seconds later. "Freddy love, there's not much point anyway. All I'm seeing is colored lights. Why don't you tell me what's happening? Pretend it's a race."

"Race. Okay." A touch zoomed the picture, expanded the center of the maze of colored lines. Lasers were splashing across black and coal-red balloons of varied size. One was inflating, green, blue, a white flash like a nova. "They began with twenty-six big ships. After twelve hours of fighting it's twenty-three. They're not moving much, but your brother would recognize that dance they're doing. Ship A floats behind Ship B. Ship B takes the heat for a while. You can't do it unless the enemy is all in one direction. Ship A sheds some energy, then drops the Langston Field just as it passes from the other ship's shadow. Fires everything. Turns on its Field again ... oops."

"Doesn't always work?"

"No. Twenty-two"

"Uh-huh. Freddy, that was twenty-six clans of the Khanate. Each ship is an extended family. The ships are different sizes because some families are bigger, or richer. It's worth remembering that Moties don't flinch at extermination."

Freddy looked at her

"What are they doing now? Freddy, there goes another one!"

"Caught you looking." He turned. "Where's the cloud?"

"No, it just winked out. There, another one."

"No, my love, that one's not dead." He slapped keys. "Commodore! Mister Bury!"

Bury's image appeared on the intercom screen. "Two ships have fled through the Sister. I think motion. There goes another one, yes, Freddy?"

"Yes, and another one just died. Five down, three gone through, and the rest are converging on the Sister."

"0-okay. Atropos won't have to fight." Renner sounded tired, and there was no image on the screen. "Freddy, we'll have to go through, but that won't be for fourteen hours. You have the watch. I'd appreciate it if you'd work the navigation problem. It lets the rest of us get some sleep." There was a moment of silence. "Horace, we've got to talk to the Moties. We can't go through the Jump alone."

"So I had surmised. Go to sleep, Kevin. I will negotiate."

Kevin Renner set his couch to full recline and closed his eyes. He heard Bury's voice, brisk but with a thread of fatigue in it. "Omar, we will need as many warships as can be assembled to accompany Atropos and Sinbad through the Sister..." And then it all faded out.

"Urgent message," the computer announced.

Renner sat up at the console. "Put it through."

Eudoxus showed on the screen. Renner punched in questions: Base Six was a bit under four light-minutes behind him.

"Kevin, the fleets of Byzantium are delayed. They will not reach the Sister in time to accomplish anything, Shall we send them elsewhere? Also, we have detected objects on an intercept course with Sinbad. Three unidentified ships on this vector." There was a twitter of binary data. "They should be twenty-six minutes from intercept when you receive this."

Renner thought it through, then sent, "I assume Byzantium is still your ally. Ask them and any other allies to join you at Base Six. Help to secure the Sister. We will look at your unidentified ships. Our present plans are unchanged. We will follow the Atropos group through the Sister. With luck you will secure the Sister from this side." Kevin thought for a moment and shrugged. Why not? "Godspeed." Renner clicked off. "Mr. Townsend?"

Freddy Townsend's picture said, "What's up?'

"Screen two." They studied the screen together. Black space and stars, and three dots approaching from low and thirty degrees off the port bow, a degree below the Pleiades.

"Sinbad's detectors haven't seen them yet," Freddy said. "Maybe now that we know where to look..."

"Right." Renner punched in commands. "Three targets acquired. Constant bearing, and closing, thirty thousand klicks. They're not throwing anything at us yet, Freddy." He watched violet-white lights weaving about him and said, "I'd say our allies are already alerted, but call them anyway and make sure Rawlins knows, too."

"Wake anyone else up?"

"Call Joyce." Bury was fast asleep. His readouts were a little jagged, a bit disturbing. The Moties slept, too, and Kevin considered. "We don't need a translator, do we?"

"Let her sleep. Death makes Glenda Ruth twitchy."

Joyce Trujillo was awake: Kevin could see her screen alight past the back of her head. "Hi, Joyce. Battle shaping up. Freddy, have you got any of the other ships?"

"Signal from Ten, but I can't read it. Warriors. I'm waking Omar."

"Swell."

Omar uncurled and sat up. What followed was a rapid exchange between Sinbad and its twenty small Motie Warrior fighter escorts. Omar said, "You are to be protected."

Irritating. Kevin said, "If I tell you that I am a Mediator-Warrior-"

"Ships Six through Twenty deployed between us and Bandit Cluster One. Ships One through Five in reserve. Expected attack at high velocity, two clusters of fighters around a fuel tank, expected to separate, plus a Master ship. These are some random ally of the Khanate, arriving late but obliged to protect the Sister from capture by East India and Medina."

"Much better, Omar. Might they be aware that the Khanate has abandoned them? Give me your best guess."

"They will not guess that, because the Khanate need not have told them what the Sister does. Ship One suggests you activate your Langston Field now."

Renner did that. Screens went black, then lit one by one as he raised cameras.

Violet lights were diminishing toward the Pleiades. "Omar, did all of our escort go off to fight?"

"Omar's off," Freddy said. "I see four Warrior fighters still with us, not holding any special position. Dammit-" He didn't have to finish. Glenda Ruth was watching Joyce's screen with bright eyes.

Joyce spoke to her, a near-whisper in the dark cabin. Kevin wasn't meant to hear. "Are we going to fight, do you think?"

"To fight, or to timidly hide behind our allies? Hmm." If Glenda Ruth hadn't meant him to hear, Kevin didn't believe he would have. "Joyce, we tried to put everything we know in the message to Weigle. We even duped your tapes as a supplement."

"'Even'?"

"Barring that message, whether or not it went through, everything mankind knows about Moties is right here in Sinbad."

Three enemy dots had become a spray of lights. Sinbad's Warrior fighters were dancing, an unpredictable pattern. The enemy began to dance, too. When the enemy is light-seconds away, it is possible to dodge laser beams.

"The thing is," Glenda Ruth said, "if Sinbad has to fight, it'll be a very bad sign."

"It's likewise true that my holos may be the most important thing to emerge from Mote system."

"Point."

"I've read about space-fleet engagements," Joyce said. "They all say the same thing. They'd be boring if they weren't terrifying. I didn't really believe that before."

The weaving lights of the enemy ships had converged to one blurred point and stayed that way. Renner frowned. What did they think they were doing?

They were withdrawing, the Warrior ships protecting the Master Sinbad's entourage were too many for them.

Bandit Cluster Two was bigger. They went past at six hundred klicks per, firing once. Cluster One's beams impinged on Sinbad at the same time, the attack easily absorbed by Langston Fields. Cluster Two decelerated to join One.

Atropos reached the Sister and took up station there, without incident, surrounded by East India Trading's Warriors and the remnants of the Crimean Tartar war fleet. The Medina outriders were already arriving.

A third Bandit Cluster arrived, too. With Cluster One/Two they gathered their forces into a complex pattern half a million klicks out and forward of the Sister, then held station.

Freddy Townsend recorded that and later played it for Renner at high speed. "Sir, it ought to make a pattern, but I can't see it."

"Omar, who are these?"

"Three families, one local, none of any consequence. The Khanate's contract to depart Mote system must leave enough wealth behind to back any number of alliances."

"Okay. There aren't enough to attack us. They're expecting the Khanate to come surging back through the Sister. Then when we flee, these guys block our path."

"What's in that direction?"

"It doesn't matter. They're not between us and what we want. They only think they are. Freddy, how close are we to the Sister?"

"Three hours, but we'll be going through at two hundred klicks per, unless we increase thrust. Another three hours if we miss the pass."

Bury was asleep. His telltales seemed to have settled down: he was resting well. Give him another hour, Renner thought. "Belay thrust increase. Omar, we need a conference with our escorts and allies. Freddy, please call Commander Rawlins."

"Let me be sure of this," Rawlins said. "We're going through the Sister. Me first, and I'm to try to protect the lot of you. What from?"

"Whatever the Khanate has left as doorkeeper," Renner said. "Opinion is divided on just how much that will be."

"Okay," Rawlins said. "Standard convoy escort through a Jump point. I can do that, but the Moties will have to cooperate. Shall we work out the courses, or will you?"

"Your job," Renner said. "I've been away from it awhile. You'll do it better. Now, we're six hours behind you if Townsend's maneuver works, thirteen if it doesn't. You'd better not wait. We'll follow you."

"Yes, sir. Okay, I go in and cover the forty-seven Motie alliance warships you're vectoring in. Then when we're all through, we make for Agamemnon at flank speed."

"Everything that gets through," Renner said. "You've got a copy of my report to Agamemnon. Relay that if you can. The important thing is to keep the Khanate from getting out to the Empire. Don't you agree?"

"Yes. All right. Sir. Okay, but there are too many ships for me to cover them all. I'll have to send some through in a dispersion pattern. I'll work out the course vectors and send them over within an hour. As for Sinbad, you're moving too fast, it would take hours to match velocities."

"We don't have hours. We're too slow anyway, with Mr. Bury aboard."

"Exactly. We'll fight what we find there while you and your escorts go right on past. They won't be expecting that."

"That's the way I see it," Renner said.

"Then we all go on. Commodore, I suggest you work on the message to Balasingham. He isn't going to like seeing a bunch of Motie ships coming at him."

"Right. Thanks," Renner said. "Omar, make sure your people understand. Commander Rawlins will have his computers work out a course for every ship. It's important they follow directions exactly."

"Understood," Omar said. "Thank you."

"Okay, Commander, we'll wait for you to call. Thanks." Renner turned to Freddy Townsend. "So. Still think we can get through at two hundred klicks?"

"Piece of cake."

"Just what is happening?" Joyce asked. "Freddy?"

"Give me a minute," Freddy said.

"Omar," Renner said. "When you can spare a moment, we have a job for your Engineer." He tapped furiously and a series of diagrams appeared on the screen. "I need this set up."

"The Flinger, Kevin?"

Bury. "Yeah." Renner glanced at Bury's medical readouts. They'd settled to normal. "Glad you got a good rest. We're going through, and we don't know what's on the other side. I want to erect the Flinger."

"Indeed." Bury sighed. "In that case-Cynthia, I believe you should open the sealed locker in Compartment Eight. We may need its contents."

The brown Motie Engineer had been studying the screen. Now she chattered to Omar.

"Problem?" Renner asked.

"No, she understands the mechanism and its purpose. It will be done in less than an hour. Indeed, she says she can make considerable improvements-"

"No!" Bury said. "My ship, and by the Prophet, no! Leave it as it was designed."

Renner was chuckling, but stopped when he saw the medical readouts. "Omar, I think it will be best if the system works as I expect it to. We can leave the improvements for another time."

"Very well." Omar spoke rapidly. The Engineer and Watchmakers went aft to find their pressure suits

"Please," Joyce said. "Won't somebody tell me what's happening?"

"What's happening, or what we think is happening?" Glenda Ruth asked.

"Both!"

"I would appreciate the information myself," Bury said.

Kevin kept an ear cocked. Freddy, too, was listening, though he had his own work.

"Not for the record, my opinion only." The screens showed a chart of the Mote system. Glenda Ruth said, "The Khanate sent its main war fleet through the Sister while the Masters and their colony ships stayed behind. East India and Medina made it too hot for them, and they fled through as well. We figure they'll be headed for the Jump to New Cal, but they'll have to find it first.

"Meanwhile, our group is heading toward the Sister. There's another squadron of alliance ships that can work it so they get there just ahead of us. Atropos goes in with those. If there's nothing there to shoot at, they'll head directly for Agamemnon at the exit point. We'll follow at our own speed."

"Oh," Joyce said. "Of course. We know where it is."

"So we ought to get there first... Atropos and the Medina fleet, that is. Rawlins goes directly there, so the Khanate won't know just how strong we are."

"But we're expecting trouble."

"The Khanate is entirely likely to leave a sniper or six," Glenda Ruth said.

"But they know how many ships we have. Don't they?"

"How could they possibly know what we'll take through? Anyway, that's why Atropos goes first. He goes through and we follow, as many as we can. Some snugged up behind Atropos, the rest in a crazy-quilt pattern. The notion is that some get through. A lot get through."

"Oh."

"Something else they won't expect," Freddy said. "Or rather they will expect-"

"Jump shock," Omar said. "They will have experienced it. Eudoxus says it is formidable-but less so for you than us. They will not expect you to recover as quickly as you will. Our Warrior officers agree. It is a good plan."

Atropos went second. First there was a fan of twenty East India warships not much larger than Imperial corvettes traveling at high but different speeds. Their mission was to distract whatever enemy waited on the other side of Crazy Eddie's Sister.

Freddy Townsend watched in appreciation. "Any regatta commodore would be proud of that performance."

"Or fleet admiral for that matter," Renner said. "All right, there goes Atropos." Alliance warships huddled close behind the Imperial cruiser, in what would have been called "line ahead" in wet navy days. Now they vanished one by one as Sinbad hurtled toward the Jump point.

Sinbud's Warrior entourage would have been visible if the Field were not up. They were needed for more than protection. Freddy Townsend was using them for triangulation.

The Sister was thirty seconds away.

"If we make this, it'll be a record," Freddy said. "Will I be allowed to file it?"

Kevin said, "Not my decision. And if we miss, we can try again, of course, but that's three hours down the recycler, Freddy, and I don't know how important three hours is. Give it your best."

"Always."

Victoria and Omar concurred: any decent Warrior pilot could do this. With twenty Warrior pilots to triangulate, even a human pilot had a chance.

Kevin never saw Freddy hit the switch.

7 Jump Shock

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

Niccolo Machiavelli

In the two days before the Khanate ships found them, Jennifer had little to do but watch Terry, and talk to Pollyanna, and pray. The God of mankind was God of the Mote, too. She prayed for solutions that would bring peace to both kinds of mind.

When the Khanate ships approached, Jennifer looped Freddy's stored data on the Contraceptive-Longevity Worm. The Khanate Warriors found it running when they burst through the wall.

For a time they ignored it. Two Engineers, four Watchmakers, and a Warrior searched once for booby traps, then in leisurely fashion for anything of interest. A Mediator and a Master arrived, discussed, examined. Cerberus's cabin was again infested with Moties.

The Mediator listened to the recording Victoria had made, the notice in trade Koine that the ship was salvage but that Medina Alliance would pay well for Jennifer and Terry. The Mediator turned to the Master and spoke. The Master spoke curtly. Both ignored the humans.

The Warrior went away. The Mediator examined Pollyanna without waking her, then took position in front of a monitor recently worked over by an Engineer. Watchmakers scurried about like big, helpful, curious spiders.

Over the next several hours Cerberus changed again. A pity Freddy couldn't see this. The Khanate found his drive, Hecate's drive, pushing too light a load. They added a truss to hold cargo, fiddled with the drive to get yet more thrust, added nets of spheroids, as if Cerberus had sprouted clusters of tremendous grapes. More cargo . .. and weaponry? Jennifer couldn't tell. Terry would have known, but Terry wasn't talking.

Terry dozed most of the time. Something would get his attention: Jennifer caressing his neck or ear, or a Watchmaker running across his back. His eyes would open; maybe he would smile, maybe he would drink some water or broth, speak a few words, and presently go back to sleep. He wasn't keeping good track of events. Jennifer had to keep her own counsel.

Help would come. Jennifer waited.

Inside, the Moties were at work. This time there was no stopping them. Their interest was in the screens, cameras, computers, communications. They didn't touch the air system. Perhaps the Tartar Engineers had sufficiently altered that.

Pollyanna woke. She and the Khanate Mediator chattered as they watched the monitor

The Master came back with a Doctor and another Engineer. Pallyanna jumped to her at once and began to nurse.

The Khanate's Doctor was distinctly different from Dr. Doolittle, smaller, frail seeming. She did little to disturb Terry, though she examined Jennifer in detail.

Pollyanna, well fed now, returned to Jennifer's shoulder and stayed there while she chatted with the Khanate Mediator. Her toes clutched Jennifer's shoulder now, while her arms waved in flamboyant gestures. The adult's answers were more concise, a flip of the wrist, right elbows rapping each other: how the hell would a human copy that? Jennifer tried to concentrate. An infant Mediator was teaching a mature one to speak Anglic! The recording would be fantastically valuable, but it would miss things, nuances...that head-and-shoulder tilt, ‘"not quite".

Terry stirred, and Jennifer looked into his eyes. Was sense returning to him?

And everything went blurry

Jennifer recovered slowly. It struck her that if she were Terry Kakumi, and uninjured, she could take the ship from these wailing, kicking Moties. But lack of sleep had done Jennifer in, and the Moties were already gathering themselves. She moved hand over hand to the telescope controls.

Cerberus had jumped, of course. The Frankenstein's monster of a spacecraft was nearly the first through to MGC-R-31. Ships were pouring through aft, accelerating, sweeping past Cerberus and leaving it behind, a crippled hybrid. Cerberus limped behind the Warrior fleet at about one Mote gravity. The drive flames of a thousand small ships retreated ahead.

And the Mediator spoke to Jennifer for the first time. "You are Jennifer Banda? Call me Harlequin. I serve the Master Falkenberg." She must have seen Jennifer's reaction-Oh, really?-but she did not try to temper the arrogance of her claim. "We must discuss your future."

"Surely yours, too," Jennifer said.

"Yes. You are ours now. If all goes best, we break free from the Empire to seek our own stars. You and Terry Kakumi with us. When finally we must confront the Empire, you or your children must speak for us."

It was hardly the future Jennifer would have chosen. But the Mediator was speaking: "Barriers wait before us. Where will the next bridging point lead us? What stands to block us?"

"The Empire of Man," Jennifer said. Terry smiled, barely, and she saw bright glints: his eyes were open.

"Detail," the Mediator said. "We find one tremendous ship and several much smaller."

"There'll be more. We got the jump on you. More ships will be coming through from New Cal, any hour. You don't know what you're facing. This is the Empire."

When Jennifer Banda was six years old, the Navy had declassified certain bob recordings. The whole school assembled to watch them.

That was twelve years after the Empire fleet had assembled off New Washington before the final Jump to New Chicago, a world that had seceded from the Empire and renamed itself Freedom. That world had been restored to the Empire, its name restored, too. There had been battles, but what Jennifer remembered was the massed might of the Empire of Man, ships the size of islands passing at meteor speeds and higher.

No Motie Mediator could see all that in her eyes. Still, Harlequin would see nothing to deny what Jennifer believed: that the power that held a thousand worlds in its gripping hand was coming down the Khanate's throat.

Harlequin said, "If we could reach the new bridging point in time-"

"You'd find our battleships just the other side. You felt the Jump shock. And they'll be waiting."

"I will show you what we plan."

Warrior and Engineer and Mediator huddled, and Pollyanna with them. On Cerberus's screens the gory details of an Engineer's autopsy were replaced with... something astronomical. The colors were poor, but this was MGC-R-31, there the little red star, there the blue sparks of Warriors retreating well ahead of Cerberus, there a lozenge next to concentric circles: undoubtedly Agamemnon and the Jump to New Cal. And there, popping out of the other target area aft: more ships, bigger.

"The Masters come before it was intended," Harlequin said. "Never mind. What waits beyond"-she indicated the outward target-"this?"

"Classified," Terry said.

"Oh, good! Terry, how are you feeling?"

"I might live. Won't like it at first. Thanks for staying."

"Oh, no! How could I leave you?"

"Don't tell them details. Sleep now," Terry said, and closed his eyes.

Jennifer nodded. She'd expected him to speak earlier.

Harlequin said, "What system lies beyond the bridge? There must be other bridges."

"I'm going to stop talking now," Jennifer said.

"Not a problem." Harlequin pointed at the cluster of large ships aft. "I will tell you. Twenty Master ships have come through. Our Warriors will prepare the way through to the Empire. There must be bridges to other stars. We seek the one that departs the Empire. So do you, Jennifer, for my life and yours, and to save the lives of any in our path."

"You shouldn't be running from the Crazy Eddie Worm," Jennifer said. "You can surrender. Don't you understand, you don't have to die!"

The Warrior made a sound, and Harlequin turned. On the screen other ships were popping through behind the Khanate Masters.

Something big was crawling across Renner's chest. A monkey or a big spider, injured, missing limbs. "Ali Baba is sick," it said. "His Excellency is sick. So is, am I. Sick in the head, concussion, scrambled brains and wobbly eyes. Kevin?"

"It'll be all right." Renner hugged the little Mediator. Craning his head around made him dizzy and sicker. "Just wait, it'll get better."

Bury was on his back, toes pointing slightly apart, hands apart and palms upward, Yoga corpse position: he was calming himself the only way he knew how.

The screens were blurred. A voice was shouting from the background, shouting for the Captain. I'm too damned old for this.

Renner popped his restraint belts. "Townsend?" His balance was still screwy. He pulled himself around to where he could see Bury's monitors. The medic array had turned itself off at the Jump. Now it was running a self-test loop. But here came Cynthia, moving quickly on hands and knees. She crouched above Bury and began a medical inspection, pulse, tongue, eyes...

"Townsend!"

"Here."

"What's-" Renner couldn't say it properly.

"Atropos on line. We can receive."

But no transmissions yet. Renner slapped at the keys. The screens were still dark, but a voice was saying, "Sinbad this is Atropos. Sinbad this is Atropos. Over."

Renner stretched experimentally. Integral e to the x dx is e to the x... He'd found that the computers recovered quicker than he did. Should be safe enough to test now. He woke the communications computers. A snarl of static.

"Atropos, this is Sinbad."

"Sinbad, stand by."

"Rawlins here."

"Status report?" Kevin croaked.

"Critical. We're under attack by half a dozen ships. One of them's a big mother. Sir."

Green lights showed on one corner of Renner's control board. "Freddy! She's waking up, see if you can see anything."

"Right."

"We're recovering," Renner said. "How bad is it?"

Rawlins: "We're peaking in green. I won't last forever, and I can't shoot back. No chance to send a message to Agamemnon."

Renner shook his head. Critical. Can't shoot back. Why can't he shoot back? Energy. Energy control. More green lights on his console.

Bury's machinery started suddenly: displays hunting, then drips to adjust his chemical balance.

The Mediators were thrashing feebly.

A screen came to light. Then another.

"Rawlins," Renner said. His voice was still thick. "Hang in there. We're going past."

"Here's a battle picture. I'll relay as long as I can."

The enemy fleet was a scattering of black dots across MGC-R31's orange-white glare, visibly receding with Sinbad's velocity. They'd positioned themselves well, Renner thought. Just sunward of the Sister, to foul an intruder's sensors; near enough to blast them at point-blank.

Atropos was glowing far brighter than the little sun. Nothing smaller than Atropos would have survived this long, without Atropos itself as shield. Too few Medina ships were adrift behind Atropos, firing around the shield, easing back. When Atropos went, they'd go, too.

It was going to be tricky. The Moties aboard were no use at all. Sinbad's computers were Navy quality, three independent systems, each working the same test problems until they all got the same answers-and they weren't getting them.

"Townsend!"

"Sir?"

"Get the Flinger going! Hit that Motie fleet. Especially the big ship."

"Will do. Launcher self-check. In order. Erecting." The Field blinked for a second as the loops of the linear accelerator eased up through the black energy shell. "Launcher outside Field. I'm getting direct camera information. Trajectory analysis-"

Sinbad was flashing past the battle. They had almost no time.

"Trajectory computers give divergent answers!" Freddy shouted. "Rape it. Launching. Stand by!"

Sinbad recoiled. Then again. "On the way. Automatic loaders are working," Freddy said.

A muted keening sound had to be coming from Glenda Ruth.

"Stand by," Freddy said. "On the way. Dispersion pattern. Continuous fire, stand by!"

There was a floodlight glare from every screen, then all screens went dark. "They hit us. That's it for the cameras," Freddy said. "Captain, the Flinger's dry. We'd have to bring it in to reload."

"Never mind."

Bury was trying to crawl up Kevin's ankle with just one hand. "Bring it in. Kevin, bring it in!"

"Okay, I'm doing it. Lie still, Horace." Unseen, the loops of the Flinger were sinking through the Field into the hull.

"Superconductor," Bury said.

"Ah." Sinbad's finger was a linear accelerator made with Motie superconductor. That was why it hadn't melted in the glare of Khanate lasers. If it wasn't withdrawn, it would conduct the energy of the laser attack into Sinbad.

"We're still getting relays from Atropos," Renner said. The relays would be progressively out of date as Sinbad moved away from the battle. "And I've got a camera on-line."

Someone, human or Motie, made a strangling sound. Glenda Ruth wailed again. The black beyond the windows began to glow dull red.

An image formed on Renner's screen, a composite of the relay and direct observation. It showed a cluster of Motie ships receding as Sinbad moved past the battle. Beams reached from three smaller Motie ships toward Sinbad. Six others held Atropos pinned like a bug. One of the Motie ships attacking the Imperial cruiser was nearly as large as Atropos.

"Blue field," Renner muttered. Give him another five minutes. Then he's gone and so are we.

"Five. Four," Freddy counted. "Three. Two. One. Zero. Maybe the timer's off. Or the trig-"

Something flashed intolerably bright beyond the larger Motie ship. The larger Motie ship went from green to bright blue, expanding. Another flash. Another. The blue shaded toward violet.

"Jesus, Horace," Renner muttered. "Fifty megatons? More? How long have we had those aboard?"

"You would not..." Bury's voice was weak but held a note of ironic triumph. "You would not have approved. At what those cost I nearly did not approve myself."

"It's working!" Joyce shouted. "They're not attacking Atropos anymore. They're-"

She fell silent. Two of the Motie ships flashed violet and beyond and were gone. The largest ship was now glowing blue-white, and Atropos was firing at it. "He can't last," Joyce said.

The big Motie ship flashed and vanished. Now a score of bright dots clustered around the fading glow that was Atropos and accelerated toward the remaining Tartar ships.

"Sinbud, this is Atropos."

"Go ahead, Commander."

"Well done, sir. We've won this battle," Rawlins said. "The Moties can clean up the rest of their blockade fleet. Sir, there was no opportunity to contact Agamemnon. I suggest you do that."

"Right. Carry on, Rawlins. Townsend!"

"Here."

"Find Agamemnon. Send that message."

"On it."

"You fight like vermin," Harlequin said with contempt.

Jennifer flinched at the insult, then wondered at its meaning. But the Mediator had kicked himself aft without giving her a chance to reply. Now the Moties huddled, chattering, and Jennifer turned back to the display.

There had been a battle. Ships had died. It looked as if the intruders had won.

Harlequin was back, with the Warrior hovering behind her. "I apologize," the Motie said. "I understand now. You throw away resources like vermin, but it is not that you are animals. You have endless resources."

"If you win everything you want, your descendants will think the same way," Jennifer said.

"Yes. Our battle plan has changed, Jennifer, We no longer believe we can pass to New Cal."

"Surrender," Jennifer said. "Accept the Crazy Eddie Worm. No Motie need die because there are too many."

A wave dismissed the notion. "We have considered this. There are domains to be fought for, and we may yet win."

And Mediators speak for the Masters. "You can't win. The Empire has-you've seen the resources we have. This hasty little expedition. A civilian ship was enough to harm your war fleet and alter your plans, and you haven't seen what the Empire can do! Harlequin, talk to your Masters!"

"I have done so. You have none of your altered parasite. There is no time to test it, and your altered parasite might well be fiction." Harlequin might not even have seen her reaction. "In any case, our options are not ended. Your representatives have made agreements with our rivals. Medina Consortium, Pollyanna calls them. Very well, we need only conquer Medina and take their place. Then we will have a gripping hand on the vast resources offered by your Empire."

This at first seemed ludicrous to Jennifer. "All Moties look alike?"

"We must assume that you passed messages describing your situation, describing promises made to Medina Consortium, describing battle plans. But if we silence every human voice, and if we make our rivals extinct, who will tell your Masters which of us was Medina Consortium?"

Jennifer sensed that her answer would be taken very seriously; so, very seriously, she thought it through.

"What if you fail? One voice could destroy you all."

"Humans are conspicuous. They require their special life support systems. We will find you."

"What are you going to do?"

"It is done. Our Warriors will follow your human-built ships and destroy them. Others may remain on Medina's major carrier, but my Warrior adviser calls it a mere hydrogen snowball, conspicuous and slow, easy to capture."

She's crazy! But all Moties look different. It's no better than looking all alike. It could work, Jennifer thought. And Harlequin knows I believe it might work. Damn. "What of us?"

"We may have need of you."

"Of course." If the Khanate failed, she or Terry would convey surrender terms to the Empire. So, they would be the last to die. I have to think. There must be some way to convince them that this is madness. "Crazy Eddie."

Harlequin had not mastered the art of appearing to shrug, but her inflection conveyed the same sentiment. "As you say. These are Crazy Eddie times. But time is short, and if we seek this option, we must seek it now. We will speak later."

Freddy Townsend said, "Sir, I have some other ships in view. Interested?"

"No. Find Agamemnon."

"Waiting."

"Making coffee," Joyce said. "Strong, with hot milk?"

Freddy said, "If Agamemnon has shields up, I won't find it, period. What if we just beam your message at the Jump point?"

"Good, Freddy. Do that. Then keep trying."

"Aye, aye."

Lights dimmed. All of Sinbad's power was going into that one blip.

"Oh, Lord," Freddy said.

"Talk to me, Townsend."

"More ships under acceleration. Fusion drives, high acceleration. I count sixteen no more than five million klicks away, all with a redshift and no drift, and I don't know where they're aimed but it isn't at the Jump to New Cal."

Renner brought the images in closer.

"Kevin, what is it?" Joyce demanded.

"Not enough data."

"There's more," Freddy said. "A whole sparkling field of drive lights at maybe sixty million klicks, all of ‘em between us and Agamemnon."

"They've cut us off," Joyce said.

"That they did," Freddy said. "Skipper, I've got four minutes integration on them now. They're showing a decreasing redshift and no drift."

"Thrust?"

"Close enough to three standard gee."

"Bound to be Warriors."

"All redshifted?" Joyce asked. "That means they're going away from us."

"Decreasing redshift," Freddy said. "Going away, but they're thrusting toward us. An airplane would be turning around, but you can't do that in vacuum."

Renner touched the intercom buttons. "Omar, have you been following this?"

"Yes, Commodore."

The Motie's voice conveyed weariness, confusion, and determination at the same time. Never off duty, Renner thought. "Watch. That group I just marked. That's the main body of the Khanate fleet. Best estimate is that their Warriors were going all out toward Agamemnon and the Jump point to New Cal until the Masters popped through."

"That is reasonable."

"Okay. But now the Masters are all moving away from the Sister, and the Warriors are slowing, probably coming back. What are they likely to think they're doing?"

"The Warriors are swarming back to defend the Masters from us. The Masters have many options. Their target may be a place of hiding, perhaps the comets around the brown dwarf star. They seem to have given up the Jump point out of the system. Something has convinced them that your defense at the Jump is too formidable."

"Jennifer," Freddy said. "She must have convinced them."

"Those bombs did not weaken her arguments," Omar said. "Whatever else you have done, you have shown that you are willing to expend resources."

"Resources to burn," Joyce said. "Which we quite literally-"

All the screens whited out. Kevin moved two dial displays, in haste. The screens dimmed to a scattering of laser-green points. Sinbad was under attack.

"Whatever. Now what's happening?" Renner mused. "Omar, that Warrior fleet is aimed right at us. Or at the gate back to the Mote system. Which is it?"

"Why not both?"

"Both."

Omar and Victoria conferred briefly. Then Omar said, "If we threaten the Khanate Masters, they will attack us, of course. But consider this. If they have abandoned the notion of forcing their way past Agamemnon, then the Khanate may have instructed their Warriors to return through the Sister to prepare a path of safety for their return to Mote system."

"They're giving up?" It was the first time Glenda Ruth had spoken since the battle.

"Perhaps." Omar shrugged. "Or they may attack Medina, to soften our power for later negotiation. Or something else. This is a matter for military strategy."

Victoria said, "They'll kill or capture the humans if they can. If your Empire has only the Khanate to negotiate with, any contract would favor the Khanate."

"Bet?"

Victoria answered in Motie. Glenda Ruth laughed as their speech became faster and faster. She said, "Uncle Kevin, they're betting! Descendants for their Masters! Victoria's giving four to one-"

"Later, Glenda Ruth. Omar, it looks like their whole fleet of Warriors is coming straight at us."

The cabin went dark. "I've found Agamemnon," Freddy reported. "I'm beaming your message again."

"Good. Very good. Now we've got to get out of here. Suggestions?"

No one answered. "Freddy, turn us around. Get us on course to go back through the"-hell-"through the Sister."

"Through the Sister. What thrust?"

Renner let the computer work for a moment. "That's a god-awful amount of radiation they're aiming at us. If it keeps up, we'll have to duck. What are they trying to do?"

"Kill us?" Freddy suggested.

"Well, if they can, but what else?" Renner studied the screens. If the Motie fleet continued on course, it would get to the Sister in about twenty-five hours. Another moment of indecision. Then, "Keep it reasonable. Say point three for now." The Field was dull red. Not bad, but they'd be bathed in that green laser glare for hours to come. "I want to see what those Warriors will do."

"What of our ships?" Omar asked.

"I'll keep Atropos," Renner said. "Have all your Motie ships reinforce Balasingham. Look, he's going to be a bit wary of them."

"We have discussed this," Omar said. "Our ships will position themselves to aid your warship without threatening it."

Horace Bury's voice trembled with exhaustion, but there was triumph, too. "Mercy of Allah! Kevin, we have sent our message to the Empire, and the Khanate has turned back. We have fulfilled our mission, whatever happens. Now we survive if Allah wills it."

"We may have fulfilled the mission," Kevin said. "It all depends on that Khanate Warrior fleet. We don't know what they're going to do, and as long as they're in this system, they're dangerous. They could still batter their way past Balasingham." Renner studied the screen again. "Well, as long as they're chasing us, they're not doing that. If they're back in Mote system, they're for sure not doing that. Maybe we can lead them there."

"Good," Bury said.

Kevin thought, Can you take another Jump? and didn't speak. What if he said no? "I'll tell Rawlins."

"My viewers may not understand," Joyce said. "I'm not sure I understand. First we come through to the red dwarf system. Then we fight. We win. Now for the past four hours we've been slowing down, and we're headed back the way we came." She looked at her screens, noted the yellow glow of the Field. Sinbad was under continuous attack.

"It's all part of the same battle," Freddy Townsend said.

"The important thing is that the Khanate fleet is moving toward the Sister, not going after Agamemnon," Glenda Ruth said. "We have to keep them heading toward us."

"But are they after us, or would they go back to the Mote anyway?"

"It doesn't matter, Joyce," Victoria said. "Anything that gets them back into the Mote system."

"So we're bait," Joyce said. "I guess that wouldn't be so bad-but to be bait when you don't even know it's you they're after!"

"They're after us," Freddy said.

"How can you be sure?" Joyce demanded.

"If they're not, they're sure wasting a lot of energy," Freddy said. "They can't spare the fuel. I think it's this way. If they can kill us, they won't go through, but if we run through, they'll follow us. Glenda Ruth?"

"Best bet," Glenda Ruth said.

Joyce said, "And there you have it."

"Situation unchanged, Commodore," Rawlins said. "They haven't tried to intercept the allied ships we sent to reinforce Balasingham. It's us they care about, all right, and there's too many to fight. Our only chance is to run. I suggest we increase acceleration. The less of this fire we take, the better chance we'll have once we're through."

"Agreed. Take it up to one point five gee."

"One point five, aye, aye." Rawlins's image turned away for a moment.

"Once we're stabilized in the Mote system, thrust along this vector," Renner said. There was a twitter of data. "And I had the Moties record some orders. You'll recover before we do. Send these messages to Base Six as soon as you can."

"Messages to Base Six. Aye, aye."

"Keep the comm link," Renner said. He sighed and touched the intercom buttons. "Stand by for increased gravity. One point five g." He touched another button. "Horace-"

"I will survive."

"Yeah. If they keep that beam on us too long-"

"Kevin, you will do what you must do."

Renner had been at work. Sailing Master aboard MacArthur, Bury's pilot for thirty years: this he could have done in his sleep. "Horace, can you take one point seven gee for eleven minutes?"

"Yes, of course, Kevin."

Of course. The danger to Bury wasn't from another increase in thrust, but from Jump shock. "Townsend, do it."

Ali Baba's eight kilograms hit him in the chest. The pup cried, "No, Kevin! Not again!"

"Here, Ali Baba," Bury said, and the Mediator went, fearfully. Freddy said, "Aye, aye. Done. Any margin of error there?"

"We'll be violet when we go through the Eye." Freddy shuddered.

The Engineers were up and crawling; the Mediators watched. Kevin bit back his questions and presently understood. The Moties had Cynthia's couch disassembled and were putting it back together next to Bury's water bed. That crowded Glenda Ruth, so they had to move her couch before they could return to their couches and collapse.

"Commodore? I've got the Master ships' target. It's the brown dwarf. Maybe they expect to take cover in the ring."

"Once they kill us."

Cynthia had finished her exercise set in the kitchen space. The view through the window was a uniform cheerful green.

On the enlarged screen that the Watchmakers had finished erecting, one blazing point reached the Sister and disappeared without exploding. Then the second. Jennifer heaved a great sigh of relief. "They're through," she said.

Terry squeezed her foot. She reached around to pat his cheek. "How are you doing?"

"Healing. You?"

Just waiting. Harlequin's up front getting battle data. Should I really stop talking, or try to talk them into something?"

"Talk. They'll read you anyway."

But it was over an hour before Harlequin rejoined them. "The Sister hides your ships for the moment," he said. "We did not expect they could survive our barrage."

"That's another thing about resources," Jennifer said. "Our ships are bigger, better defended, more powerful."

Harlequin laughed in great amusement and some scorn: Freddy's laugh. Harlequin must have had it from Pollyanna. "Another thing about our breeding problem: our ships are more numerous by far! Jennifer, our intentions are not your concern. We will discuss strategy. These two ships-"

"I must stop listening-"

But the Mediator's big left palm was out, pause a minute, while the Warrior spoke.

They finished. Harlequin said, "Jennifer, we sent most of our Warriors to chase your two Empire ships down, under the command of our junior Master. Medina's lizard-raping Warriors managed to destroy that command ship as they passed, but our Warrior ships are nearly untouched. They will follow your Empire-built ships through the Sister to Mote system. They can't hide, Jennifer, their drives are too peculiar."

In fact, the blue sparks of the Warrior ships' drives were disappearing even as Harlequin spoke. Other, larger sparks had flown past: the Khanate Master ships were on their way to Bury's Star. "Where will your Masters hide?"

"In the rocks. Does it matter? We've given up hope of bursting through the other bridging point into your Empire. We must wait until our Warriors report success at the Mote."

"You intend to kill us all?"

"Yes. Your ships will have the advantage in the first instants because they will go through first and recover first from the shock. Unless humans tolerate the shock worse than we do?"

Jennifer laughed.

Harlequin frowned. "No? We watched you. You recovered very slowly."

"Harlequin, I'm half-dead of fatigue. Poor Terry's half-dead, period." An instant later she could have bitten her tongue off. Too late: Harlequin was leaping aft.

Terry's hand closed on the Motie's ankle and yanked him backward. Jennifer shrieked, "Kill him! Kill him, Terry!"

The Warrior was arrowing toward them.

Terry's arms closed around the Motie's head and shoulders. He twisted. "Dammit!" he muttered, and set himself and twisted much harder. The lopsided head turned with a pop like a branch breaking, and then the Warrior was wrapped around Terry like strangler vine, with his gun in Terry's ear.

Terry let go. Harlequin floated loose, still screaming thinly.

Under the Warrior's gun, they watched the Doctor pull and twist the Motie's head back into place. Harlequin's screaming died to a moan.

"No good," Terry said. "I forgot. No vertebrae, just that kind of handle that connects the skull to the shoulders. I only dislocated it, and the spinal cord isn't even in it, it's underneath. He'll talk."

"Jump shock. It hurts them much worse than it hurts us. They didn't know it."

"Yeah. But that was the last Warrior ship going through. I'm right, aren't I, Jennie?"

Jenny looked. "Yeah. Those other lights are all big Master ships, and they're all past the Sister."

"Hah. Slowed Harlequin down just enough. Now their whole Warrior fleet is in Mote system chasing down Sinbad and Atropos, and no Master to tell them different. Isn't that interesting? I wonder what a Navy man can do with that."

"We may not live to see it."

"Jenny, that took everything I had. If they decide to shoot me, don't bother to wake me." Terry's eyes closed.

8 Stern Chase

Retreat, hell! We're just attacking in the opposite direction!

US. Marine Corps commander, Changjin Reservoir, Korea

I'm just too damned old for this. Renner gradually became aware...

Cynthia was swearing in a loose-lipped mumble. Her body covered Bury's, obscenely, kissing... breath for him, squeeze his rib cage closed, blow into his mouth, squeeze...

Freddy said, "Atropos calling."

"Put'm through... Hello, Rawlins."

"Commodore, you're a flawless diamond on black velvet, Brilliant blue-white."

"Flattering. Ss'a quote-" From a historical novel, The Taking of Serpons Peak, just before the ship exploded. "Any threats here?"

"We're clear. Bandit Group One-Two-Three pulled well back from the Medina ships. East India is still holding the Crazy Eddie point for us, but not with enough ship to defeat what's coming here. Byzantium hasn't got here yet. Nobody's shooting at us. What's our move?"

Reimer's eyes were properly focusing now.

"General order: Make for the Crazy Eddie point. Keep station with Sinbad. Are we in communication with the Motie fleet?"

"Yes. I'll relay."

Bury was trying to sit up. Cynthia braced him.

Renner didn't recognize the Motie on-screen. A young Mediator, presumably male. "Commander Rawlins has informed us that a large Khanate war fleet, too large for our power, will arrive here through the Sister within the hour," the Motie said. "I am ready to convey your instructions to our Master."

"Avoid combat with the main fleet," Renner said. "Preserve your power, but we want you to take out any command ship that comes through. We expect the main Khanate fleet to chase us. As long as it does, leave it alone, but we don't want that fleet to get new instructions.

"Same for the Jump point. Make it expensive to go back through the Sister. Their main war fleet can do anything it wants to, and you can't stop them, but you can stop them reporting back to the Masters on the other side with anything short of a real battle group. Do that, please."

"Instruction received. Stand by for acknowledgment."

What else? "Townsend, get us moving toward the Crazy Eddie point. Cynthia, how much can he stand?"

"Pulse is strong."

"Anything," Bury said. "Kevin, do what you must. It is now in the hands of Allah."

"Yeah." And I think I'm too old for this. "Run up to one gee, Townsend. There's a stunt I want to try."

The communications screen lit again. "Your instructions will be obeyed," the Mediator said. "We will do what we can."

"Thank you. Rawlins, you stay with us."

"I can boost harder than you can."

"I thought of that, but no. I need you with us."

"You're assuming they're sending their whole fleet."

"I sure hope so," Renner said. "The warships anyway." His last observation in the red dwarf system was of the Master ships making for Bury's Star at low thrust. It didn't look as if they'd be coming back to the Mote system soon. And as long as the Warriors were chasing Sinbad- "We're bait," he said to no one in particular.

After Rawlins rang off, Renner looked around his ship. Horace was breathing by himself, eyes open, jaw slack, full of funny chemicals. Borloi extract, no doubt: no prohibition in the Koran against borloi. It was amazing that he could talk at all.

Freddy had recovered from Jump shock with stunning speed. Renner resented that. Glenda Ruth Blaine still looked as if she'd been blackjacked. The Moties were worse off, still keening in pain and angst. That couldn't last. Renner needed them.

The Empire ships fell toward the Crazy Eddie point at zero gee, following forty-five minutes of thrust. Renner couldn't tell them how long that would last. Cynthia was leading Horace Bury through a program of stretches. Joyce was preparing a sketch lunch. Nobody had ever asked if the reporter could cook. She could.

Telescopes aboard Atropos, then aboard Sinbad, observed small hot ships emerging through an invisible hole at high velocity and high acceleration. They dimmed, reducing thrust while they sought their targets. Presently they flared and moved at low acceleration toward the position of Bandits One-Two-Three.

"It worked."

"Why are you whispering? Call Atropos."

Freddy cleared his throat. "Yessir."

"They can't have taken time to refuel," Renner told Rawlins. "They're burning fuel they can't spare. Which means we can beat them to the Crazy Eddie point at anything above one point one gee."

If they chase us."

"Yeah. Assume they will."

"Then their best bet is to take it easy," Rawlins said. A stern chase is a long chase. Easy to use all your fuel in the chase and have none for the battle, Of course, they won't know where you're headed." Pause. "Or if they do figure it out, they won't know why."

"Okay. All we have to do is make sure they don't cripple us. I want to beat them to the Crazy Eddie point, but not by much, and I want to make sure we have plenty of maneuvering fuel when they catch up to us. Meanwhile, maintain your watch. You, too, Freddy. I want to know instantly if large ships with cooler exhaust and lower acceleration come through."

"Aye, aye, sir." Rawlins signed off.

At least he didn't ask if I know what I'm doing.

An hour later Freddy saw the Khanate Warriors turning. "They've found us," he said. "Somehow."

Renner grinned widely. "They've found us and they're chasing us. Stand by for acceleration. Horace, how does one standard gee sound? We'll take it up slowly."

"Heavenly," Bury said.

"Stand by." Weight returned slowly.

"There," Freddy said. "You can unstrap now. It should be steady enough."

Behind Sinbud, little dots of fusion flame now numbered over a hundred and rising. As many more Khanate ships had not turned: they were still on route toward the massed Khanate allies, Bandits One-Two-Three. Other lights... what were they doing? Converging, then going out one by one.

Renner said, "Omar, get on the horn to our forces around the Sister. Orders unchanged: leave the main fleet alone, but watch for stragglers. Keep it expensive going through the Sister, but stay alive."

"Fleet in being," Victoria said.

"Right-where did you learn that phrase?"

"It was in one of the books MacArthur left behind. The reference was to sea power, but-"

"Mahan," Joyce said. "He wrote before space travel."

"Oh. Victoria, I need your help."

"Yes, Kevin."

"I need some work done. Get the Engineers on it. We need some alterations in Sinbad's Langston Field. Townsend can show you what we need."

"Right away."

"Horace, how are you feeling?"

"I've been better, Kevin. I've been altering my will. I will need you to witness that it is my work, and that I am in my right mind."

"Bizarre. You never were before."

"Kevin, you will need to be convincing. Truly. Now say, ‘Horace Bury was in his right mind,' without smiling."

"Maybe another approach. Tonight, Igor, we must build a convincing duplicate of Kevin Renner."

"May we have doglike devotion this time, Master? I wanted doglike devotion last time."

Glenda Ruth was staring. It was something, to have shaken Glenda Ruth Blaine.

"But it might interfere with his sense of humor, Igor!"

"Yes, Master, yes, yes! Please may we interfere with his sense of humor... . I don't have the energy, Kevin."

"Yeah. Give me a sanity check, Horace. Glenda Ruth, listen up. Here's what I have in mind...."

Joyce's hand was steady as she poured tea into Cynthia's cup. Acceleration was down to one-half gravity for the moment, but she didn't expect that to last. For the past ten hours there had been sudden and random accelerations as Sinbad avoided different attacks from the hundreds of ships following.

"If someone tells me that ‘a stern chase is a long chase' one more time," Joyce said, "I'll scream." She sipped carefully, then looked at the older woman, not bothering to conceal her curiosity. "You've been with Bury a long time. Is it always like this?"

Cynthia's smile might have been painted on. "Not precisely. When my uncle Nabil offered me service with His Excellency, I knew we would face many enemies, but few of them had warships. Mostly we are concerned with assassination."

"What's it like, working for a man who has that many enemies?"

"He has enemies because he is a great man," Cynthia said. "I feel honored to serve him. When I graduated from medical school-"

Joyce was startled and showed it despite her news training. "You're a doctor?"

"Yes. Does that seem so unlikely?"

"Well, no, but-yes, actually. I thought you were a bodyguard."

Cynthia's smile softened. "I do that as well. But you were supposed to assume I am a concubine. Thank you, I will have more tea."

"I'm supposed to think you're a concubine. Are you?"

"The appearance is a professional duty. Nothing else is required."

Which could mean anything. "It must be a strange career for a doctor."

"Call it my first career. I will have others after I retire from His Excellency's service. And think of the stories I can tell my children!" Cynthia's laugh was almost inaudible. "Of course first I will have to find a father for them."

Joyce laughed. "Looking at you, I wouldn't think that would be so hard to do."

Cynthia shrugged. "I have no difficulty finding lovers. And our culture is changing. Not just on Levant."

"That's for sure." Joyce looked around Sinbad's crowded lounge, humans and aliens, magnate and aristocrats and naval officer, and grinned. "That's for damned sure."

The Empire ships fled across the Mote system. For Joyce it had been three days of trying to make sense out of myriad details.

Sinbad and Atropos had jumped into Mote system, then accelerated toward the inner system for forty-five minutes, then coasted. Minutes later the Khanate Warrior ships had poured through an invisible hole, paused, then blasted away in the wrong direction. They'd used up an hour's fuel-but at low thrust-before they found Sinbad and Atropos.

Since then it had been a race; but there were nuances.

Bury's couch was located near the door to the control cabin. It made a convenient gathering point when the cabin door was open. When Freddy went over to tell Bury what was happening, Joyce went to listen-and noticed that Glenda Ruth didn't come over until after Joyce had joined the party.

"We laid low. Got them moving in the wrong direction for a while," Freddy said. "Odds are they can recognize our exhaust, so we didn't give them one. Maybe they found Atropos's old-style Langston Field. But this much for sure, they're chasing us."

"Flattering," Glenda Ruth said.

Freddy didn't answer.

"Getting all our enemies into one bunch," Bury said. "It is not the first time. On Tabletop-but that was a long time ago."

"Yeah. Well, it isn't quite working," Freddy said. "We've got maybe a hundred twenty on our tail, out of a thousand. Three hundred kept going; they've just about reached the Bandit cluster. We still don't know what they think they're guarding, but never mind that. I've lost five hundred of the buggers."

Kevin Renner said, "They haven't disappeared. It only means they're not under thrust."

"What are they doing?" Glenda Ruth asked.

Freddy shrugged. Kevin said, "Something else. Something interesting."

Horace Bury spoke suddenly. "The thing to remember is that we've won."

Joyce said, "I beg your pardon?"

"The Khanate Axis will not pass Agamemnon. Will not burst free into the Empire. They can never reclaim that option. Now their only hope is to replace the Medina Alliance. Well, what of that? They must reproduce Medina's agreements and fulfill them as best they can. They must even be over cooperative, to cover promises they might be expected to remember."

Joyce thought that through. "But they'd have to kill us all. And our friends."

"Silence every voice, yes. But the Empire of Man is safe now. The Mote will be organized according to our wishes and custom. We have won that war now," said Horace Bury. "We have protected the Empire of Man, indeed."

And Kevin Renner was trying to swallow a laugh; but why?

Wait- "You could do it!" Joyce cried. "I mean, I'm being very unprofessional here, but-if push came to shove, if they've got us in a box, you could still negotiate. The Empire could get what it wants from the Khanate instead."

They were looking at her. Joyce was sorry she'd spoken. Nobody spoke until Renner said, "Yup."

"Would you? Rather than, um, die?"

"No."

Now the eyes turned away, and only Glenda Ruth sighed in relief. Joyce thought, Why not? and said, "Okay."

"We don't want to teach the wrong lesson here, Joyce. Treachery can become habit-forming."

Five days: part acceleration, part coasting, Sinbad and Atropos led the enemy fleet across Motie space. Five days to observe, not just the battle, but the people.

Freddy Townsend was busy, too busy to talk... but it was more than that.

Freddy was avoiding Glenda Ruth, just a bit. Joyce was willing to learn why, but she hadn't thought of an excuse to probe. And Freddy would clam up a bit when Joyce was wearing her "reporter" hat.

But he would talk to both women. Joyce found herself coming on to him a little; when she caught herself at that, or when Glenda Ruth did, she would back off; but she could loosen his tongue that way. There was so much to understand, and Freddy was her best source of information.

"But this is the part we're wondering about," Freddy said, and with a woman peering over each shoulder, he moved his cursor about the screen. "Here, a quarter of the fleet turned around to chase us. Another third went on to join the Bandit cluster, the Khanate allies that never went through. What are they after? Why did they think they'd find Sinbad and Atropos in that direction?"

"Fuel," Kevin Renner said without turning around. "They must be desperate for fuel by now. They're trading time for fuel."

"The rest of them turned off their drives. That lasted for hours. Then we got this." Freddy put the cursor on a tight pattern of blue-white points, like a cityscape or the work lights on a half built factory. "And that's been following us, changing as it goes."

Again Kevin spoke without turning. "We think those ships are all linked up into one framework. They'd have broken up some ships to build it. It took them ten hours. Then they came after us."

"If Empire ships tried that, they'd come apart like nose wipes in the rain," Freddy said. "Even so, they're only doing a fifth of a gee. Hundreds of ships are following them from Bandit cluster, linking up."

"Fuel ships, of course. I bet they're dropping stuff on the way, too. Empty ships. Spare troops. They'll keep some framework to make their structure stronger. Unless I'm crazy. Jesus, Freddy, I wish we could see that thing better."

"It looks a lot like Vermin City, backlit," Freddy said. "Not much pattern, and that changes every minute. Okay, Joyce, Group A is still in the lead. They'll reach us first, yes? We have to outrace them."

"First, but with dry tanks. Group A can't maneuver," Kevin said. "That's not going to hurt them, unfortunately, because they've guessed where we're going. Group B might get to us late, but with fuel to maneuver."

"You're guessing, Commodore."

"But it's what Moties would do," Glenda Ruth said. "The ships they start with won't be the ships that attack you."

"Keep a watch. I want to close my eyes for an hour."

"Yessir. Hold it! Commodore?"

Drive lights flared where the cursor lay. "I see it," Kevin said. "See if you can get a better picture. I have the watch."

"What is it, Kevin?" Bury demanded.

"Won't know for an hour," Renner said.

They were building a sketchy dinner when they heard Freddy whoop. Joyce reset the oven before she followed Glenda Ruth.

Freddy was grinning. "Sanity check. We've been right all along. What do you see?"

Behind the tight pattern of blue lights that was Khanate Group B was a looser pattern, a score of drive lights well spread out and shifting in intensity. Kevin said, "Two of those just went out. Shot down by our guys?"

Freddy looked. "Our allies aren't anywhere near. It's possible of course. Warriors are just bloody damned good at killing...Enhanced view, Screen Two."

"Right. Khanate rescue ships, Freddy. They're towing that cylinder now. Rescue or salvage. And the rest are still coming... and there goes another pair. They're merging. Group B must be leaving garbage and personnel clear across the sky."

"That'll hurt ‘em."

"It will if our allies have anything to say about it. They're losing mass, losing numbers, losing firepower, all to get the fuel to reach us. You agree? It's us the Warrior ships are after. The Empire ships."

"Yes sir."

"I should talk to Atropos."

Joyce found the next hour even more confusing. It was frustrating: she had her news equipment, nothing was being kept from her, but she wasn't getting a story she could tell.

"The only thing that still concerns me is this," she heard Renner telling Atropos. "When we go through the Crazy Eddie point, we have to know that no Master ship has given the Warrior ships new orders. Otherwise we'll be abandoning the Mote system to the Khanate."

And that made sense, but how to lay it out for a viewer? If we lose, you'll never know it. Even we may never know. If we returned via New Cal and that little orange star, a year from now we could be talking to a replacement Eudoxus speaking for a replacement Medina. All Moties look alike, but these are the good guys and-?

"Maybe later," she said to Bury. "Maybe I'll understand later."

"And perhaps you never will," Bury said.

"If we lose-"

"Yes, of course, but even if we win. It has happened to me." And he launched into another tale of his terrible past, a skewed view of Empire history that Joyce could never have bought with pearls and rubies.

There had been incidents. Sometimes the Khanate fleet beamed laser light at them, forcing Sinbad and Atropos to take turns shadowing each other. Renner and Townsend had at first considered this a mere annoyance.

"Probably tryin' to distract us," Freddy said in one of the rare intervals he was off duty. Commodore Renner kept Freddy Townsend busy. When he did get a break, he often used the opportunity to talk to Horace Bury; and when that happened, Joyce invited herself into the party.

"They've scattered their fleet," Joyce said. "Some of the ships used all their power and now can't keep up. Why would they do that, Freddy?"

Freddy said, "I can tell you what they're doing, but why is out of my department. You'll be famous even if you don't know why."

Horace Bury chuckled. "I should instruct my brokers to invest in your network. You will have the highest ratings in Imperial history, I think."

"A few weeks ago I would have resented your saying that," Joyce said. "And even more resented it if you'd actually bought stock in IBC."

"And now?"

Joyce shrugged. "It's your ship, and we're all on it."

"Besides, his brokers will already have made the investments," Glenda Ruth said.

"Cautiously. They'll buy too little," Bury said. "After all, it was not certain that we would be bringing Miss Trujillo to the Mote."

"Or that we'd come out alive," Joyce said.

"Well, if we don't, it won't matter if the investment's no good," Freddy said.

"Oh, Freddy, that's silly," Glenda Ruth said. "His Excellency- "Acceleration warning. "Action stations."

"Oh, Lor', what now?" Freddy demanded.

"It's a big mess of junk under high velocity," Renner said.

Most of the leading Khanate ships were in deceleration mode at high thrust. Most of them. A few were burning fuel at a prodigious rate and converting that to energy beamed at Sinbad; and out of the glare of that beam came a dark mass on a collision course.

"We'll have to dodge," Freddy said. Sinbad began to turn.

"Yeah. Horace, Group A ran up to maximum velocity and then stripped their ships. It could be mostly fuel tanks. Freddy's turning the ship."

"It won't cost us too much fuel."

"No, but I should- Atropos calling, good." Joyce heard Renner setting a direction for the other ship. Sinbad and Atropos would diverge.

Four minutes later-the lightspeed gap-Group A's junk pile pulled into two masses. They'd armed it with motors. Freddy spoke of raping his lizard; Renner called Atropos and ordered a laser barrage.

Four minutes later the junk pile flared with the light of Atropos's barrage. An instant later it flashed a hundred times as bright! The camera overloaded and burned out before Freddy could enfold Sinbad in the Langston Field. Glenda Ruth was cowering with an arm over her eyes, and Joyce was waiting for glowing spots to disappear. She knew better than to interrupt Freddy or Kevin.

Freddy spoke anyway. "They had a mirror. The clever little nightmares waited for our beam and then threw it back at us. It's way dimmer now, but they're still throwing sunlight at us. It's nothing, Glenda Ruth. Just another goddamn nuisance attack."

And more to understand. Medina Alliance ships trailed the Khanate fleet, darted in toward it with a reckless expenditure of resources, fired lasers and missiles, then darted away again, fuel gone, coasting away from the battle to be rescued by unarmed ships from other clans.

"Another major development," Joyce dictated. "There's a big fleet, two hundred ships and more, trailing the Khanate war fleet. They're rescuing ships that run out of fuel. Khanate and Alliance ships alike, they're retrieving stragglers. We thought they were Khanate allies, but they're not. They're neutrals.

"We've changed Mote politics like nothing else in their history. A hundred families and clans in cooperation, hundreds more gathering their strength, but all of them staying uncommitted.

"Our Motie allies say this is a good sign.

"Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo, Imperial Post-Tribune Syndicate."

"We are ninety minutes from the Alderson point everyone calls the Crazy Eddie point. The Moties are getting nervous. No one likes Jump shock much, but our Motie friends really dread it. We can hope the prospect makes the Khanate Warriors nervous.

"The situation is this: Sinbad and Atropos are on course for the Jump point and decelerating. The leading elements of a war fleet from Byzantium, the most powerful of our allies, have already reached the Crazy Eddie point and are standing by for orders.

"Meanwhile, things are happening in the pursuing fleet." Joyce zoomed in on a screen.

The structure they'd been calling Khanate B was under heavy deceleration. The tremendous junk pile was no longer a single object. The bright sparks of fusion drives were separating in pairs.

Another screen showed a blurry picture relayed from Atropos: two Khanate ships docked and remained docked until one reconstructed ship began to decelerate, leaving part of its mass as debris.

"We don't know what this means," Joyce said. Reporterspeak for I don't know. Kevin and Freddy had given over arguing about it, but Renner had taken time off to talk with Bury. Marooned face up in a water bed at high gee, Horace Bury could at least use the entertainment. Joyce turned the camera on them; they didn't notice.

"So what have we got?" Renner said. "Group A boosted to high velocity, coasted, and is now under deceleration. Classic. They'd get to the Crazy Eddie point about the same time we do, but we can fix that."

Bury wasn't asking, so Joyce did. "How?"

Renner's glance showed his irritation. "Low thrust deceleration now, high thrust later, brings us in sooner. They can't play that game. They're at max thrust with no spare fuel."

"But high thrust-"

"As Allah wills, Joyce. What of Group 13, Kevin?"

"Aye, there's the rub. They never turned off their drives. They did low thrust forever, right up to midpoint turnover, and dropped mass every step of the way. Fuel tanks, Engineers, that mirror thing, who knows? It looks like they'll get to the Crazy Eddie point just behind Group A, but with plenty of fuel to spare. If we miss our Jump, I'd say we're dead. So, we're forced to jump."

"If so, Kevin, they've made themselves very vulnerable to Medina. The Medina forces will face seven hundred Khanate ships strung in a long line. Is this a winning strategy? They must do more than silence all human voices. They must control the Sister. When the Empire comes again, the Khanate must speak first."

"You're missing something," said Glenda Ruth Blaine.

An odd source, but- Kevin said, "Okay. What?"

"I don't know." She perched on the edge of the water bed and scratched behind Ali Baba's ear. "But they're Warriors. They're following a Master's orders, but that doesn't make them silly. Remember their mission and look again."

Cynthia knew how to prepare Turkish coffee. Bury sipped his and said, "Fuel matters here. The Khanate ships are depleted. Are we? Base Six is following us, of course."

"They'll be a hundred and ten hours late. They can rescue any ship that ran dry, but that doesn't help us fight. Still, we could refuel from a Medina ship. I don't think we even need to, And we'll go through the Crazy Eddie point at three hundred per, just like last time, with the East India ships to triangulate for us."

"Ah!"

Cynthia snapped alert. "Excellency?"

"I'm all right, Cynthia. Kevin, the debris. The mass, the junk left over when two ships merged at a thousand klicks per second. Set Atropos to tracking the course of the junk. You'll find that a mass equivalent to over a hundred spacecraft is on course to pass straight through the Crazy Eddie point just when we would like to do that."

"Okay, lie down already. Freddy?"

"I'm on it." Freddy Townsend was working his control board hard. A screen lit: Rawlins's talker.

Now why am I less scared than I was? Renner wondered. Because my people are getting the right answers? No, more; because Horace Bury's mind is alive and alert.

While Freddy was at work, Renner said, "Omar, I need that debris blocked somehow. The only ships that have to go through the Crazy Eddie point are Atropos and Sinbad. Will you inform Medina's Masters?"

"I will learn," Omar said.

Now no one had time to explain things, and her questions were distracting. Joyce could only record everything and hope to make sense of it later. "We've heard about the ‘fog of war,' " Joyce dictated. "It's all too real. I don't know what's going on, and neither does anyone else, not really. Sometimes you just have to make choices and stick with them."

With twenty minutes to go, Kevin gave the order to strap in. The Khanate ships' stream of high-V debris couldn't be far away.

"I have a feed from Atropos," Freddy said. "On Screen Three."

Star-sprinkled black. Kevin said, "I don't...One bluer than the others. That stellar background ...? Freddy, it's a Master ship that's just popped through. Now prove me wrong."

Medina called. "We have a Khanate Master ship just emerged from the Sister. One ship only. It made no attempt to communicate, so our man has fired on it. He reports an overpowered shield."

"One lousy Master. That's all it takes," Renner said. "We're dead."

Bury was chuckling. "Why, Kevin?"

"This whole thing falls apart if the Khanate Warriors get the right orders. Here's a Master, just in time, and hell, it's even too late for us to abort!"

Bury was laughing with some effort. "Yes, Kevin, they can send orders to their Warriors, but what would they say? What can they learn in time, across a lightspeed gap of thirty-eight minutes?"

Medina was still speaking, had said something about the barrage. Renner hadn't caught it. "What did he say, Freddy?"

"The Warriors will solve it. Hold to the plan."

Pity Omar hadn't been at the comm. The lightspeed gap was already too great to get any answers. Eight minutes. Everyone strapped in? "Joyce! Strap in!"

"Okay, Skipper." She'd been standing on her chair to get altitude, photographing them at work. She dropped and strapped in, cheerful as hell, hugging the camera like her own baby.

The Khanate Master ship was still in view, glowing fiercely bright in green. Medina's forces must be bathing her in energy. She'd never get a message through that.

The feed from twenty East India ships was providing good triangulation: he would hit the point dead center. Bury was doing savasama, but his heartbeat and brain-wave displays were all over the place. Scared. Calling his attention to it would be worse than useless. Behind Sinbad a darkness was growing... black dots crowding out the stars. What the hell?

Two minutes. And weird lighting effects among the black dots, sparks in rainbow colors.

The Byzantium fleet! They were blocking the Khanate barrage, catching the stuff with their Langston Fields.

And the Crazy Eddie point was here, now, unseen, passing at three hundred klicks per second as Freddy touched the contact.

Orange murk looked in through the screens. Renner, bemused and groggy, enjoyed the appearance of a mechanical hell in which men and monsters writhed in torment and confusion. But his memory was already organizing itself, and he barked, though it came out a croak, "Townsend."

"Renner. Captain. Get us behind Atropos?"

"When I start the drive."

Sinbad was coming alive again, but slowly. Now Afro pos was a black near-circle against white light, unmistakable, a few hundred miles distant... almost toward the core of Murcheson's Eye, according to Sinbad's instruments.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to get ready, then all hell.

There was a lot to do, but some of it would have to wait for the Motie Engineers, and they were flat out of action.

Communications. "Atropos, this is Sinbad. Atropos, this is Sinbad, Sinbad, Sinbad..."

It would just be dawning on Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo that they were inside a star. Wonder and terror and a reflex reach for the camera. Glenda Ruth was a basket case, no better off than the Moties. "Atropos, this is Sinbad..." Others were moving. Renner craned his head around. At least Bury wasn't thrashing. "Atropos, this is Sinbad..."

Bury was too still. "Cynthia!"

She was already loose, pulling herself against him, fingers on his throat. "No pulse."

"Do something. Sorry, of course you will." The drive test lights blinked green. Renner enabled the drive. "Move her, Townsend."

"Aye, aye. Acceration. Stand by."

"Sinbad, this is Atropos."

"Blaine. Good. Situation unchanged as of our Jump time."

"Unchanged as of your Jump time. Acknowledged, sir."

"Report."

"Yes, sir. We're broadcasting on Fleet hailing frequencies. Nobody's shot at us yet. That may be a good sign."

"Not shooting, but not answering."

"No answer yet, Commodore."

Where the hell was Weigle and the Crazy Eddie Squadron? Silly question. Weigle could be anywhere. "Keep trying. We'll hide behind you when we get there."

"Right. I'll leave the channel open."

More movements behind him. Cynthia had reattached the medical systems to Bury. He thrashed suddenly, and quieted. Electric shock. Still dead. Skeletal metal arms lifted from the box, for the first time in Kevin's memory, and began to work on Horace Bury.

Ali Baba howled in terror.

"Victoria. Glenda Ruth. Anyone," Kevin shouted.

"Yes, Kevin." Renner turned joyfully. It was Bury's voice! It was Omar.

Not Omar's fault. Renner said, "When the Engineers recover, make sure the Flinger is ready and loaded, and keep double checking the Field generator." They had rebuilt the Field generator, altered it so that it would not expand and present a larger surface area to the wispy super hot star stuff around them. Now it matched all the Crazy Eddie Squadron ships, including Atropos.

"Stand clear!" Cynthia shouted. "Glenda Ruth, take Ali Baba! Clear!" Horace Bury thrashed again. Once more.

Glenda Ruth made crooning noises. The medical-panel lights glowed, but no sign of heart or brain activity. Dead panel, or- Glenda Ruth said, "Kevin, Cynthia, my God, stop! He's dead!" You never know- Kevin bit it back. She would know.

They were alongside Atropos now. Townsend matched velocities. "Stay alongside," Renner said. "Blaine."

"Sir?"

"I'm changing the plan. If I'm going to use the Flinger at all, it'll have to be before we build up too much heat, so we'll stay alongside you for the first phase of the battle."

"Yes, sir?"

"Keep relaying data."

"Aye, aye, sir. Data relay set," Blaine said.

"Got it. Any luck contacting the Fleet?"

"Not yet. Any further orders, Sir?"

Renner looked back into the cabin once more. "Yes. I'm canceling the instructions on avoiding high gees. Use any acceleration the tactical situation demands."

They saw through the eyes of Atropos. A black dot popped into place, then another, then two more. A green thread from Atropos to one of the intruders. The intruder's Field flared, expanded.

"It's working," Renner said. "The Khanate ships have an expanding Langston Field, which is great for most battles, but in here when it expands, it picks up even more heat."

"Could they have done what you did?" Joyce asked. "Got their Engineers to rebuild it?"

"Omar?"

"No data. I would not have thought of it."

More black dots. "Freddy, stand by the finger. We'll aim for the center of the cluster."

"Right."

The black dot expanded, ran through colors, and vanished. Atropos's green thread moved to another ship.

"Atropos."

"Aye, aye, Commodore."

Not Blaine. "Tell your skipper we'll commence firing when we have twenty-five targets. Watch the data link for exact time."

"You will fire when you have twenty-five, that's two five, targets. Observe data link for exact time. Aye, aye, sir."

Joyce's camera was running. Why not? What could it matter now if everyone learned that Sinbad carried nuclear weapons?"

"We've got another edge," Renner said. Imperial Autonetics has developed a ship's coating that only becomes a superconductor at forty-four hundred Kelvin. That's two hundred degrees cooler than what it takes to soften the hull. I can run a superconducting wire into Sinbad's water tank and then vent the steam.

"In short, we can stay alive a long time."

"We may need to," Freddy said. "Twenty-four."

"Load."

"Erecting the Flinger. Loading. Wow, it's warm out there. Fire. Retracting the Flinger into the Field."

A timer began on Renner's console. Twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-eight...

A bright star within the star. Twenty black dots expanded, stretched, added their stored heat to the white glare. Green lines converged on another. It flashed and was gone.

And thirty more ships appeared.

"Stand by Flinger," Renner said.

Scattered across a brilliant orange sky were sixty to seventy colored balloons. The eye couldn't tell their distance: sizes varied too widely. Most were red. Fewer were orange, and those faded into invisibility until they grew hotter. A handful were green and blue, inflating as their temperature rose, until one or another made a brief nova. It was a kindergarten astronomy class, the stars colorcoded to their places on the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram.

"Three. Two. One. Bingo," Freddy droned.

Another flare. Red and yellow bubbles inflated suddenly, green, blue, flashflashflash.

"How many is that?" Joyce demanded.

"Counting what Atropos bagged, over a hundred."

"Should we be cheering? Sorry, Glenda Ruth."

"It's all right. They're only Warriors. To the Moties they're valuable property, but-"

"Retracted. Seven warheads left," Freddy said. "Timing's about right, we'll be too hot to use it pretty soon. Captain, I have to say this is easier than I thought it would be."

"Too easy," Renner said. "Atropos, let me speak with Captain Rawlins, please."

"Rawlins here."

"This was Group A, agreed?"

"Yes."

"I think it's time to get the hell out of here before the B group arrives."

"Agreed. What course?"

"Out of the star. Head for the Jump point to New Cal. I'll lead. And keep calling for the Fleet."

"To New Cal. Damn right we'll keep calling! Acceleration?"

"Two gee's?"

"Good enough."

"Here they come!" The Atropos talker was shouting. "Hundreds of them!" Then in a calmer voice, "Sinbad, this is Atropos. Enemy fleet coming through the Alderson point. The count is three hundred ships. We are firing torpedoes."

"Maybe this would be a good time to use our last loads," Townsend said.

"I hate to fire ourselves dry, but, yeah." Renner touched keys.

"Atropos, designate us a target group, please."

The screen jumped, and a ring appeared indicating a cluster of ships moving together at high velocity away from the Jump point. Other ships were appearing every second.

"Hail Mary," Freddy Townsend said. "Okay, I've got a solution...erecting... on the way. Eighty-nine seconds." The timers began the countdown. "Of course you know we can't fight all those ships."

"All true," Renner said. "Of course we don't have to."

"They're not going to give up," Joyce said. "Omar, Victoria, can't they see they've been defeated? It won't do them any good to destroy us now!"

"They have their orders," Glenda Ruth said. "Victoria, do Warriors ever question a Master's orders? Joyce is right, this can't do them any good, not now. Whatever they do to us, they get back to the Mote overheated and out of fuel, and the Alliance fleets will be waiting. Do they know that?"

"They know it better than you," Victoria said.

"And they have their orders." Glenda Ruth shuddered.

"I think it is more than that," Omar said. "If they return, it will be the first time that Mote ships have done that. Many neutrals will join them just for that reason. And if a sizable group comes over to them-"

"Bandwagon," Joyce said. "Glenda Ruth, you agree?"

"I guess I have to."

"I have a new target group for you," Atropos said.

"Engaging."

"Rawlins here. Commodore, we're getting no answer from the Fleet, and we're going to be overwhelmed."

"Suggestions?"

"Run for it while we can. Pop back into the Mote system, where we have allies."

"It's not much of a chance."

"More than we have now," Rawlins said, "Sir."

"Actually, it's a good plan, for you," Renner said. "It won't work for us, we don't have the acceleration, but- Yeah. You do that. Commander Rawlins, I'm ordering you to detached service. Your mission is to survive and report to any Imperial fleet."

"Just a minute-"

"No, we don't have any time at all. I'm staying on course. You run like hell. Rawlins, somebody's got to survive this. Our Moties analyze it this way. If the enemy gets back alive, the neutrals will join the Khanate. We can't let that happen! Rawlins, you get back into the Mote system and let everyone know the Empire is coming!"

There was a long pause. "Aye, aye, sir. Godspeed."

"Godspeed. Freddy, get the Flinger ready."

"Sinbad's last stand," Freddy said. He nodded toward Bury. "I guess he deserves a Viking's funeral. Only there's no dog at his feet."

The cameras went dark. "We've lost the link to Atropos," Joyce dictated quietly.

"No shadow from Atropos now," Renner said. "Our field temp's going up. Stand by, you'll have to fire blind after I get a quick look."

"I've got a tentative target group. Give me a look to be sure. Right. Launching. Retracting. Captain, I think that's it for the Flinger."

"Agreed."

"I hate being blind!" Joyce shouted.

"Who doesn't?" Freddy said.

"In the days before superconductors, we'd be getting burn throughs now," Renner said. "I recall the battle off New Chicago. Captain Blaine-Commander then-got his arm half-burned off. Now we sit here comfortable."

"Whoopee. How long do we have?" Glenda Ruth asked.

"Hour anyway," Renner said.

"The Engineers are rebuilding cameras," Victoria said. "And I am informed there is a new antenna ready that might be able to communicate with your other ship."

"Bless you," Renner said. "Antenna, Freddy. I don't much like blind either."

"Identify yourself."

"What the hell? God damn! Imperial Fleet, this is Imperial auxiliary destroyer Sinbad, Commodore Kevin Renner commanding."

A short delay, then the regular communications screen lit. "Imperial Fleet, this is INSS Atropos, William Hiram Rawlins. We are part of the task force Agamemnon, detached to duty with Commodore Renner."

"Are there other Imperial ships with you?"

"None. Atropos and Sinbad," Renner shouted. "Get us a data link and I'll prove who we are."

"I may have a better way. Put Lieutenant Blaine on."

"Atropos here. Here's Blaine. Admiral, if you're going to help us, you better be damn quick about it! We're in trouble."

"We can see that. Blaine, who am I?"

"Captain Damon Collins," Blaine's voice answered quickly.

"Right. Blaine, tell me something a Motie wouldn't know."

"Poker. That first game. I know how you beat me, Captain."

"Remind me."

Renner made sure the mike was off. "I hope it's not a long story."

But Blaine was talking fast. "I'd never played Big Squeeze before. High-low, six cards plus a replacement. We had our six. I was showing two little pair up, and two down cards. You had three hearts and a something, club six maybe-"

"It's coming back."

"-nothing bigger than a nine I threw a down card. You threw the nine of hearts. Pulled the jack of hearts. We declared, both high. You had the flush."

"You swore you'd never figure out how I did that."

"I worked it out after the next game. What happened was, you already had your flush, but you had a shot at low hand, too. I was betting like I had a full house. You believed me. You threw your flush away and got it back with your low hand ruined. ‘Rape my lizard,' you said to yourself-"

"And beat you for the very last time."

"Fyunch(click)."

"Enough," another voice said. "Is it Blaine?"

"Definitely, Admiral."

"Sinbad and Atropos. Converge on the Flag. We're sending escorts. All squadrons, engage enemy closely."

Epilogue Endgame

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Inner Base Six had lost 80 percent of its mass. Its skin was wrinkled and folded. Despite the Engineers' busy maintenance, pipes and lines were bent in curves and loops, and domes edged against each other. The sky was clotted with spacecraft waiting to be refueled.

From the stretched-taffy look of the ice around the Mosque, it must have been twisted almost horizontal, then later pulled back to true. No damage showed. If anything, it had been improved.

The tremendous space of the Great Hall now sprouted semicircular balconies at every level. Men and Moties clustered on the balconies in groups of three or ten, sometimes shouting or even jump/flying from balcony to balcony. Diplomacy moved at a breakneck pace here, slowing down at times to accommodate human minds.

What Joyce was doing wouldn't have worked in the older Mosque; wouldn't have worked without the gyrostabilized camera either.

In the diminished gravity Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo was leaping from balcony to balcony stopping to swing the camera at Nabil and a handful of Moties, again with Glenda Ruth and her brother to do a short interview, then leaping on. She looked like some lovely goddess moving from cloud to cloud, gradually approaching earth.

She reached the floor flushed with the exercise, started to say something to Kevin, then swung toward the great monitor screen.

The great blue-and-white sphere filled most of the view. Cloud patterns streamed sluggishly across continents whose borders were marked all in circles. "That's Mote Prime! Isn't it, Kevin? I can see the craters. I came to see Mote Prime, and we've been here seven bloody months without coming anywhere near it!"

He put a hand out to steady her in the minuscule gravity. "You won't get any closer this trip. The good news is, they still don't seem to have any kind of access to space. That footage was taken from a Medina ship skimming just above the clouds, pole to pole, and nobody tried to shoot back."

"I would have loved to see the Zoo."

"Probably gone by now. Things don't last among Moties."

Joyce and camera faced him. "So it's a blockade again, but with Moties in charge."

"Subject to approval from home."

"Of course." Joyce switched off the camera. "Off the record? You don't have any doubts, do you, Kevin?"

"Plenty. How do we use the worm here? We could pick a faction on Mote Prime-maybe King Peter's family survived-and distribute it. Or not. Or not yet. The Crazy Eddie Worm is still experimental. Say..."

"What?"

"Bear with me a second, Joyce. Victor! Dammit, that worm's done it. Mediators really do all look alike now. Victor? All just out of adolescence."

The Mediator who had been the Tartars' Victoria bounded toward them in a low arc. "Kevin?"

"Yeah. Victor, sooner or later you'll be in contact with Mote Prime. We want certain bodies returned to us for proper burial. Three human males, Midshipmen Potter, Staley, Whitbread. They may have been dissected, God knows what, but please retrieve them at your earliest convenience."

"It will be done. If there is any successor to the group that held them. Things change rapidly there."

"Some don't. Try."

"Yes. Anything else?"

"Yeah. Joyce, guess what the Bandit Group was guarding?"

"Some weapons cache that was too far away to use," Joyce said promptly.

"No. It was the Khanate's main base, including all their wealth. They offered it all as bribes to their allies, and the allies have turned it all over to Medina. Victor, did your people find any surprises?"

"Not to us. We'll make holos, Kevin. Their Engineers are ingenious; you'll see some interesting innovations in the hardware."

Joyce considered the nuances. She turned the camera on Victor.

"Then it's over? The Khanate didn't just surrender, they meant it."

Kevin caught Glenda Ruth Blaine's semaphore wave, halfway up the Great Hall's curved roof, and her all-too-knowing smile. Kevin grinned and waved back. No hiding anything. Dammit, Joyce had caught it, too.

"We control all of what was Khanate wealth," Victor answered. "The families have returned from hiding at Bury's Star, and all of them now carry the worm. I see no way in which they could harm us or you, ever again. Their line is at an end, unless we choose differently; would not that satisfy Horace Bury's anger?"

Joyce answered carefully. "As much as I came to know Bury, I think he had no anger left for Moties. This was his last corporate war. I believe he enjoyed it very much."

The Motie smiled and moved on. Kevin felt his eyes begin to sting. He said, "That was wonderfully well said."

"Thank you. I actually miss him, Kevin. Not like you, I expect. Almost thirty years."

"Yeah. But he did go out a winner, and .... can't seem to decide how to feel about finally being free of the old man's power games, Life is about to turn simpler."

"What was the smirk about?"

"Smirk?" Joyce's black eyebrows came together and he said, "It's a secret. There are still secrets. Dammit, Joyce, is every woman going to go around reading my mind for the rest of my life?"

"This isn't any diplomatic secret, Kevin. And it isn't a scandal because you'd never be stupid enough ... you wouldn't."

"Joyce, there is a secret you should not hear. Just like last time, when Eudoxus read your feet."

She swallowed her first answer. "Maybe, but I have to have it."

"Okay." Kevin Renner began to talk.

Inner Base Six had been following the Empire ships. Renner took his own sweet time returning thence, sending the Blockade Fleet ships on ahead, thrusting at half a gee while he and his people healed. It still took him only eight days.

On the afternoon of the sixth day he found Glenda Ruth perched on the arm of his chair with a tray in her hand. He settled in with his lunch and said, "Talk."

She didn't seem able to.

"Freddy," he said. "Aristocrat. Just a touch lazy by my admittedly rigorous standards. Didn't want to join the Navy. He'll have precious little choice now. They'll hit him with major medals and a Reserve commission."

"Good motivation," Glenda Ruth said. "Put him in charge of avoiding a war so he won't have to work."

"He tenses up when you're around. What's he afraid of? You're too sensitive?"

"Squeamish," she said. "Whoever gets hurt around me, child or adult or cat or Motie, I feel it. But I had as much to do with saving us as he did. More. Kevin-"

"Glenda Ruth."

"Oh. Sorry." She shifted to the navigator's empty chair and slumped a little and smiled at him.

"I was going to say... oh." That wide, her smile looked a little vacuous. "You got it."

Glenda Ruth said, "Please turn down the sex appeal because it makes me uncomfortable."

"Yeah. And I don't doubt you could turn it up again if I need to remember what gender I am."

"Maybe not. Kevin, you've stopped thinking of me as not quite human."

"Don't test that out, okay?" Unless you mean it ....o, dammit, seducing Lord Blaine's daughter is one of the many things I'm going to skip in this life. "Sure you're human. You may be a great many humans. Every child does a lot of role-playing. You and Chris would do it better than most. What kind of role have you been playing with Freddy?"

"I haven't been playing! Uncle Kevin, I was running a game on the Tartars, for our lives and the Empire. There wasn't room to play that many games. He's seen what I am. I'm squeamish. When it all gets too much for me, I hide."

"You could get him back. He can't drop you, he's got obligations, and if you work on him for an hour, he'll never want to again. So what's really bothering you, Glenda Ruth? Turn it off!"

She shifted in her chair. The blood was thundering in Renner's ears. To his skewed perception she was going off and on like a light bulb. She asked, "What if I'm serious?"

"Get frivolous!"

"You're so wary of rubbing up against a lord's daughter. I can talk anyone into anything, Kevin. I can make mistakes and damage people, and I've done it, and so's Chris. You'd think I was a real fool, wouldn't you, if I weren't testing my limits?"

Kevin considered retreating to his own cabin and locking his door. But first he said, "I'm not just your randomly chosen dirty old man. I'm the junior officer who ordered Lady Sally Fowler to Captain Roderick Blaine's room when I felt it necessary to their survival. You're my responsibility."

She stared, then burst out laughing. That was better. He asked, "What do I have to do to get you to turn off?"

She was off. She said, "I'm sorry."

"I'm human. You don't need proof."

"I've been in Freddy's bed. He'd have gone crazy... well, antisocial, at least, if I hadn't. But I've only just got some freedom. What I think I want to do is turn Freddy loose with the option to marry him later. But he saw me do something he didn't like, and now I could lose him."

"Let's see. He'd marry you-"

"Because he'd have to."

"You're a nineteen-year-old girl. Being confused is part of the game. But look: he thinks he'd like to avoid you for a while. Let him. You free him of all obligation, you make it clear you mean it, and you're not mad. He'll be meeting you for years, lady! You're the heroes of the Mote Conquest! When you want him back, flash him. Agh! Not me!"

"Yes, Uncle."

"I think you'll want him. Good genes, good attitude, your families will approve, and in a pinch you're both survivors. Finding that out can be very expensive."

"Still breeding Blaines, are we, Uncle?" And she'd gone away. And Kevin Renner was suddenly very tired....

"So I went for a nap. And two hours later you were at my door-"

"Horny as hell."

"Suddenly taken horny, and curious, too. You wouldn't let me get back to sleep after-"

"We didn't just talk."

"No."

"And nobody smirked when I moved into your cabin."

"They were much relieved. Two extra cubic inches for everyone aboard Sinbad. Luxury beyond your wildest dreams. But-"

"I can't think what took me so long," Joyce Mei-Ling said. "I guess I was still mad at Chris. No, he didn't lie to me, I guess-"

"Sure he-"

"But this is no secret, Kevin! You and Glenda Ruth know something."

"But do you remember what I asked you?"

Her brow furrowed. She said, "Where did I just come from? I was in the galley with a tea bulb. Where was Glenda Ruth Blaine? Having tea with me. You laughed. Then I rubbed up against you and the conversation went all to hell."

"She sent you. She was grateful, so she sent me a gift."

"Oh, the hell she did! Kevin, all we talked about..."

He waited for her to finish. Presently he said, "All I had to ask was, ‘Who were you talking to a moment ago?"

"But I just... came to realize. You're the quintessence of availability. No visible ties, wealth, heroism, and you know more about current Mote affairs than any other human being in the Empire of Man! Glenda Ruth didn't ... we only talked about ... dammit."

"I don't really know if you'll ever want to see me again, Joyce. But if you do, there are secrets that you should not know, and by God I will keep the next one."

There were two message cubes labeled and dated. One had been given to Nabil for safekeeping aboard Base Six. The other was dictated during the long chase across the Mote system and completed just before Sinbad jumped across into Murcheson's Eye.

"Should we be looking at this?" Renner asked. "I thought we were supposed to wait for lawyers."

Nabil's leathery face was a mask. "Commodore, His Excellency has instructed on the package that you review this immediately." He pointed to a scrawl in Arabic. "This is your name."

"Okay."

"It also instructs me to invite witnesses, specifically Glenda Ruth Blaine and Frederick Townsend, and as many alliance Motie Mediators as may conveniently be assembled," Nabil said. "Beyond that I know nothing."

They began with the cube dictated aboard Sinbad. It showed Bury in his couch. His face was drawn and his voice exhausted. The authenticity of the cube was witnessed by Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo and Glenda Ruth Blaine.

"That's one picture of me I'll never put on the news," Joyce said.

"I am Horace Hussein al-Shamlan Bury, trader, Magnate Citizen of the Empire of Man, pasha and citizen of the planetary principality of Ikhwan al-Muslimun, known commonly as Levant.

"This is a codicil to my will and testament left in the safekeeping of my true and faithful servant Nabil Ahmed Khadurri. I hereby confirm all bequests made in that previous testament, except as may be directly and explicitly contradicted in this codicil. I dictate this document in the full knowledge that neither it nor this ship is likely to survive our present mission; but Allah may will differently.

"I hereby name Kevin Renner, commodore of the Imperial Space Navy, as executor to my will and confer on him full executive power to execute my wishes and dispose of my property in accordance with my original will as amended by this codicil. This supersedes the appointment of ibn-Farouk named as executor in the original testament. Kevin, I suggest but do not require that you delegate the detailed implementation of my will, and particularly supervising the bequests of entailed property on Levant, to the law firm of Farouk, Halstead, and Harabi, and I commend to you its senior partner, ibn-Farouk, as a longtime friend and counselor. I believe you will recall meeting him from time to time.

"I confirm the bequest of my house, my lands, and all entailed properties on Ikhwan al-Muslimun shall be divided among my blood relatives by the laws of my home planet; except that to my great-nephew Elie Adjami I leave the sum of one crown and what he has stolen from me. It is less than the law would have given him, but the choice was his.

"It is my strong recommendation to the Empire that Kevin Renner be appointed the first governor of the Mote system, and it is my belief that the Empire will make that appointment."

"Great Ghu," Renner said.

"My God, Kevin, I think they will," Joyce said.

"Governor or not, I know that Kevin Renner will be ridden by demons if he cannot observe future events in the Mote system. I confess I wish I could be there myself. To aid Kevin Renner in satisfying his compulsive curiosity, I bequeath to him my personal ship known as Sinbad; and since I know that he has not stolen any of my money, and certainly has not enough to operate my ship, I leave to him the sum of ten million crowns in cash to be paid after liquidation of assets other than Imperial Autonetics as described in the main body of my will, such to be deducted from the residual properties; and also I leave to Kevin Renner ten thousand and one shares of voting stock in Imperial Autonetics. Kevin, that's five percent plus one share of the company, and there's a reason I want you to have it.

"The balance of my holdings of Imperial Autonetics, amounting to an additional sixty-five percent of the total voting stock, shall be divided as follows:

"To my oldest living grandson, thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine shares. To Eudoxus as representative of the Motie family known as Medina Traders, thirty thousand shares. To Omar as representative of the Motie Family known as the East India Company, twenty thousand shares. To Victoria as representative of the Motie Family known as the Crimean Tartars, five thousand shares. To the Motie Mediator known as Au Baba, thirty thousand shares."

Bury's image chuckled. And well he might, Renner thought. "The remaining shares are held by partners, banks, business concerns, and other humans scattered through the Empire. If you care to contemplate the possible voting blocks, you will find the combinations interesting. Kevin, Allah has willed that you shall live in interesting times, and I do no more than abet His will.

"One final bequest: to Roderick, Lord Blaine, onetime captain of the Imperial cruiser MacArthur, I bequeath the personal sealed files designated with his name. They contain information about agents who have been useful to the Empire of Man, but who may now be dangerous. I know that Lord Blaine will satisfactorily carry the moral obligations of this knowledge.

"As for the rest, you will find the details in the cube I have entrusted to Nabil. I have provided generously for those who have served me faithfully. I believe that I have faithfully discharged my duties to Allah, to my compatriots, and to the Empire; and whatever Allah wills for my future, I am content that we have done all we could do.

"Witness my voice and signature, Horace Hussein al-Shamlan Bury, aboard the ship Sinbad somewhere in the Mote system."

Look round our world; behold the chain of love.

Confirming all below and all above,

See plastic nature working to his end,

The single atoms each to other tend,

Attract, attracted to, the next in place

Form'd and impell'd its neighbor to embrace.

See matter next, with various life endu'd

Press to one center still, the gen'ral good.

See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life dissolving vegetate again;

All forms that perish other forms supply,

(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)

Like bubbles on the sea of matter born,

They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;

One all-extending all-preserving soul

Connects each being, greatest with the least;

Made beast in aid of man and man of beast;

All serv'd, all serving! nothing stands alone;

The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man