The Sea is Full of Stars

On the Freighter City of Modar

“Your sensors were obviously disabled on the catwalk,” Jeremiah Kincaid said to the holographic crewman. “And your view of the bridge is obviously also false, probably a looped recording. Assuming that this is true for the sake of argument, is there any way you can physically determine the actual contents of the bridge void?”

“I have already gone to work on that,” the crewman replied. “A routine air-cleaning robot was dispatched into the ducting and reports the ducts on the deck level are flooded to the emergency lock stop; the ones on the top are clear, but it is likely the void is predominantly the same fluid as was in the catwalk. That is most unfortunate since the salts and minerals in the water are somewhat caustic and can cause damage.”

“Can you pump it out?”

“I could vent it to space, but it would be irrecoverable.”

“The hell with recovery! It’s obvious that it’s not part of the main system anyway. Probably pumped in during the master refueling. It would do as fuel for the engines just as well as the normal gel. That’s probably why you have such a weight imbalance in the gravity enabled sections. The water is shifting with the engine pulses rather than having a steady ooze as with the gel.”

“Most certainly a good hypothesis,” the crewman responded. “It will also mean that we will be short on fuel.”

“I suspect that’s partly the idea. We’ll hold off on going further in that direction until we get the rest of the picture. Vent the water from the bridge and reintroduce the gas atmosphere that should be in there.” He turned to the pair he’d brought with him, who now were simply trying to dry out.

“You two want to go back? I apologize for bringing you along just to get a dunking, but I couldn’t know what we’d find here and I believed I might have needed extra hands or backups or even witnesses. Now I see that the perpetrators are long gone.”

“I could use a fluffy towel and a dry cassock, but I’m game to see this through,” Angel told him. “I think I paid the price to see what’s at the end.”

“I, too, should like to see it through,” the Rithian told him. “I do not like the implications of this, and I would rather have knowledge than allow my imagination to flow as freely as the water.”

Kincaid nodded, seeming pleased. “All right, then. If there was anybody left in there, I suspect they are even now drowning in a nice nitrogen-oxygen mix. I certainly hope so.”

“You may go ahead,” the crewman told them. “I will meet you at the other end. I cannot restore things until you can get inside, since I will need to extend this probe to see what is actually there.”

Kincaid unhooked but did not remove the safety harness. Angel and the Rithian had both already discarded theirs, and neither felt like putting it back on unless they had to. Kincaid seemed to read their thoughts.

“I doubt if the harness will be necessary. It’s up to you.”

“You two go on,” Angel told them. “I will catch up to you in a few minutes.”

Kincaid frowned. “Be careful rushing on the catwalk. You are out of a full gravity field there.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised him, and first Kincaid and then the Rithian went through the lock.

Angel needed a few moments to slip off the cassock, which was all she had on, and roll it up. Then, by standing on it, kneading it with her feet and twisting with her hands, she squeezed an amazing amount of water out. It wasn’t dry when she put it back on, but it wasn’t heavy and sopping wet, either. It was, however, cold.

There was an odor in the air, of salt and some fairly unpleasant substances that reminded her of spray cleaners or insecticides. That water was foul.

She walked up to the lock, which opened for her in that curious lenslike fashion and gave green lights. She stepped out onto the catwalk, and the lock closed behind her.

The catwalk was another world, almost—a metallic grating for a floor, and two thin handrails, one on each side, the walkway not large enough for two of her to walk abreast. It was in fact nothing more than a great transparent tube with its own emanating light around it, and it seemed to go on and on.

Angel weighed about sixty-three kilos in gravity norm, and was used to slightly more in the heavier gravity of the world where she’d been working, but now she bounced along as if she weighed almost nothing. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as it felt, she realized, but not only was gravity well down in the tube, as Kincaid had warned her, it also varied, sometimes significantly, as you went along. It was disorienting enough that she found herself grasping the handrail and going nice and slow.

Kincaid certainly had been a godsend in this emergency, she reflected. If he hadn’t been aboard, what might have happened to all of them? Not that they were out of the woods yet, but what had seemed icy, alienlike distance and fearsome hatred had been transformed by circumstances into just the kind of confident authority she and probably most of the other passengers would need.

… godsend in this emergency…

This wasn’t an emergency! she realized with a start. Somehow, Kincaid had known, or at least suspected, that something bad was going to happen. That was why he was aboard. And if he’d devoted his entire existence to hunting down and destroying one of the legendary evils of history, then…

Didn’t that Rithian say the would-be Conqueror of the Universe was a water breather?

She didn’t catch up with the two, but did have them in sight, tiny figures in the distance whom she made out mostly by the fact that they moved.

Angel quickly discovered that to walk without getting dizzy and sick along this passage, she had to keep her eyes steadily on that vanishing point ahead. The tube was transparent; in null-space there was a Great Void, a nothingness that the brain interpreted as jet-black because it had no other way to depict it. Otherwise, there was only the ship, bathed in an energy glow that kept it insulated from the Great Void beyond.

She didn’t think she was going to make it, but eventually she did. Out of breath, disoriented, with some nausea to boot, she finally reached the end and a solid section with a double airlock. She stepped inside the one, heard it close behind her, and felt gravity of almost ship’s normal return. When the aft lock was closed, the forward one opened, and she walked into one huge wretched-looking mess.

There was the smell of electricity in the air, and a lot of the instrumentation on the big semicircular control panel was blinking red or simply shorted out. The whole place seemed covered with rusty reds and bleach-white and granular yellow scum, the undoubted residue of what was in the water. A computer pad, some papers, and a few customized real printed books—rare in this day and age, but common, she knew, among starship captains—were waterlogged, twisted, and ruined.

The whole place smelled like it had just been fumigated and not properly aired.

“Don’t mind the smell!” Kincaid called to her from a slightly elevated platform in the rear of the bridge. “I’m afraid it’ll get worse before it gets better, but the computer probe assures me that it won’t really damage any of us, just annoy the hell out of our lungs.”

She saw the big, padded command chair in front of the bridge, definitely the seat of authority, its high back blocking the view of anyone who might occupy it. It had controls and circuitry in the arms, and a set of modules on arms that could be brought in front or to one side. A series of monitors, six of them, were directly in front, although only a couple were working. She had the sudden, uneasy feeling that somebody was in that chair. Without saying a word, she walked toward it, slowly, almost as if expecting some monster to leap out from it at her throat, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, she began reciting the prayer of comfort to the Blessed Virgin over and over again. Still, she was drawn to the command chair.

Kincaid looked up, saw her and shouted, “I think you’d better not!”

But it was too late, nor could she have stopped if she wanted to. She came around the side of the chair, saw the occupant, stifled a scream, and looked away. She felt like throwing up, and couldn’t stop it. That nice dinner mixed with the mess and ooze on the deck.

The occupant of the chair was quite dead, and was almost certainly the late and heretofore missing Captain Dukodny. At least he hadn’t drowned, for all the good that meant. Clearly, whoever had done it hadn’t wanted the ship’s Master to have any idea of what was going on, nor any opportunity to stop it. They’d blown an airlock, probably from the tug, once they’d bypassed the ship’s computer, and Captain Dukodny had essentially imploded.

Captain Kincaid was by her side in a moment. “Are you all right? I tried to stop you—”

“No, no, I’m okay,” she assured him. “It was just—I hadn’t ever seen anybody dead like that. I’m all right now.”

“Hmm… I don’t know… Great Scott! Are you bare-foof?” he exclaimed, looking at the prints in the sludge.

It hadn’t occurred to her. “Yes, I—I just didn’t think I needed anything when I came to the lounge to have dinner and get the briefing.”

“It never occurred to me that anybody would walk barefoot around this crud.”

“Is it toxic?”

“Probably not, but I’d wash it all off as quickly as possible when I could get to some plain water, and watch for any reactions just in case. Not toxic doesn’t mean that it might not be caustic. If it starts to burn or feel inflamed, get to the medical station.”

“It feels all right. I admit to feeling foolish now at not thinking of it myself, but things happened so fast…”

He nodded. “Good girl. You are some kind of priest or nun?”

“Some kind, yes. I am Angel Kobe. You could call me Sister Kobe if you would feel more comfortable doing so, but Angel is fine.”

“Okay—Sister. You got guts or faith or maybe both, and that’s a handy set of attributes to have right now.”

“I’m afraid I’m beginning to think you may need a naval escort instead of a woman of God,” she commented. “Or am I wrong in what I am thinking here?”

He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I wish you were. And I’m afraid we haven’t any idea how many of our fellow passengers know all about this as well. Our Rithian friend seemed less surprised by the condition of the bridge or the Captain, for example, than in checking out how much damage might have been done.”

She got the hint. “Where is he now?”

“Teynal is helping the main computer by running temporary lines back in here independent of the usual systems. He can move through those ducts rather handily. We’ll need to get this up and running and also run down the taps and bypasses that allowed them to do all this right in plain sight. The computer thinks it’s got most of them now, but we’ll see.”

She looked over at the chair. “What will you do with—” She nodded toward the body.

“It is a tradition that if you die in the line of duty, you are given to space. We’ll pass him through to the fuel chambers, where his mortal remains will be consumed and then output as exhaust gasses that will join with and return to the universe. One day some tiny fragment of him may become part of a new star, a new world, or who knows what? It’s what he would have wanted.”

“I know nothing of him or his faith, if he had one, but I should like to perform a basic funeral rite and prayer for him as this is done.”

“It’s not necessary.”

She looked into those hollow eyes. “Yes it is. His place in the universe was as Master of this ship. My place is to perform what God has made me to perform.”

He sighed and nodded. “All right, then, Sister. It won’t do any harm. Now, though, you should go back if you can and see to those feet, and then you can do best in this circumstance by calming and informing the others. Don’t give too much away, but give them enough.”

“I cannot lie,” she told him.

“But you can playact. I saw you with the gown and the wig earlier. I assume you were just trying to mix without having the usual reaction to clerics kick in, but if it wasn’t a lie, it was at least not bringing up an important fact. There are two important facts here that we should keep quiet about, at least for a while: say nothing about this being a deliberate act, and nothing about the possible fuel shortage.”

“Is that really a problem? I thought the scoops brought in enough.”

“No, that’s only true in normal space. Propulsion here is from carried fuel. However, it’s not as bleak as all that. The purpose clearly was to have us not know what went on here, and run dry at a predetermined point. They didn’t count on me being aboard. Once we get this bridge back to some sort of normalcy, if need be I can use some of the cargo ahead. Almost anything works. It’s just not as efficient as the real stuff. Back in the age of steamships on oceans, on old Earth, there would be emergencies, they’d run out of wood or coal, and wind up cannibalizing the ships, which tended to be wood, and any cargo that would burn. That’s what we can do, and we have a tremendous amount of cargo stretching out in front of us. In fact, I’d like to find out what’s really in some of those container modules. I’ll bet you it isn’t all just what’s on the manifest.” He paused a moment, licking his lips. “And then we’ll look over the passenger manifest as well. Particularly the one for the two water modules…”

“You’ll be all right here? I mean—you’re going to be the target next if half of what you suspect is true, and you are a long way from friends and help if I leave,” she said, concerned.

“Well, bless you for the thought, but go ahead, I’ll be all right,” he responded, seeming genuinely touched by her concern. She wondered just how long it had been since anybody had treated him as a real human being. “I’m not as helpless and vulnerable as you think. In fact, I daresay I may be the only person anywhere who these people genuinely fear.”

Most of the people who had been milling around were gone by the time she got back, which was fine with her. She went immediately to her cabin, took a full shower and washed all the crud off her feet, found some sandals with thick soles in case she had to get back up there again, and felt a little better clean and dry. She was concerned about Kincaid even if he wasn’t worried about himself. It was odd how an object of fear and pity had turned so quickly to friend and ally, but she had taken a liking to the man, who had proven not as grim as his outward persona nor as unfeeling in his hate as his reputation suggested. Not that he didn’t hate. She could sense that, and the fact that he cared little about his own personal safety and well-being. He did, however, care about the safety and well-being of others, and that was what she found so likable in him. She had much the same attitude herself.

Angel decided to see if she could get a lighter and calmer fare for her now-empty stomach and then pretty much sit and wait. If any of the others came by and asked, she would give them a limited amount of information. Mostly, she wanted to see Kincaid again and be reassured that he was okay.

A ship’s clock with a standard time setting was maintained aboard so that guests wouldn’t get thrown completely off and some routine cleaning and maintenance by the module computer was possible. By that clock, it was now past two in the “morning,” so she wasn’t at all surprised to find the lounge empty. She was able to use the restaurant automation to order a light room service breakfast—some toast, jellies, and herbal tea—that made her feel much better. Still, as nobody else showed up, she was tempted to make the long walk back to the bridge. The restaurant holographic host, however, advised against it.

“Captain Kincaid is all right,” the maitre d’ assured her. “I have conveyed your concerns to the ship’s computer and on to him, and he states that you are to get some sleep and be prepared to brief passengers in the morning. He also states that you should be prepared to do your service for Captain Dukodny at 1000 hours, if that is convenient for you.”

She nodded. “Send him my thanks. I suppose he’s correct, but it will be difficult getting to sleep after all this.”

And yet, oddly enough, it wasn’t that hard getting to sleep. It had been a long, tense, and tiring day, and the future was even more questionable, but for some reason, she was out as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Angel had never needed a lot of sleep, and she’d left a wake-up call for 0800, enough time to get composed and dressed, talk to people, and then make it up to the bridge. She was still concerned about Kincaid, alone in a possibly compromised bridge with a computer that might be compromised as well, and with a Rithian he felt might be part of it. But she had the strong feeling that Kincaid knew what he was doing and was used to being alone. That, in fact, was his true tragedy—that he lived his life isolated and alone.

Some of the passengers were up and about when she got to the lounge the next “morning,” but she checked first with the computer connection inside the restaurant in the guise of a maitre d’.

“Good morning, madam,” he said in his usual stuffy tones.

“Is Captain Kincaid still up there?”

“No, madam. He and his companion returned about two hours ago. It was necessary for the area to be sealed before it could be sanitized. He said you should meet him here at 1000 hours.”

She thought a moment. “He can’t have had any sleep. Do you think he will be awake then?”

“I have instructions to ensure this. He shows evidence of using tricaps in the past, perhaps too much. I believe he has a more difficult time sleeping than staying awake.”

Angel didn’t like the sound of that. Using that level of stimulant at all was wrong, but using it enough to develop the characteristic pallor and lines and raised blood vessels in the eye said that it was dangerous. It certainly explained his hollow, almost corpselike appearance.

Even if she could override his instructions, which she couldn’t, she still wouldn’t order him to bed now, though. As much as Kincaid needed sleep, and as much as he’d need it even more later on, if he slept, he would be vulnerable, and she saw the problem with that.

She’d been relieved that her feet and ankles weren’t burned or peeling when she’d awakened, but the mixture of rust and yellow had dyed them a striking random pattern. She wondered if it wasn’t mostly the toughness of her skin and the callused soles and sides that had saved her. Save for the times out in the Junction and the little time of masquerading here, she hadn’t worn shoes in two years.

Angel took a light pastry and herbal tea breakfast and let the curious come over to her.

“Well, good morning, Sister Angel,” Ari Martinez said, approaching her small table still carrying a mug of coffee. “So, what was the big mystery and where did everyone go?”

She nodded but didn’t smile. “It wasn’t a very pleasant thing. We found the captain dead and the bridge flooded.”

There was always a slight murmur, an undercurrent of collective conversation, in almost any restaurant or cafe setting. It suddenly ceased, as if somebody had turned the volume down.

Martinez seemed genuinely shocked. “Dead! How?”

“We don’t know. It looks like some foul play back at the Junction. All of this is essentially handled by the various computers, you know. It did appear that it was quick. Then they filled the bridge with pressurized water to keep anyone from coming in until, I suppose, we were in null-space and far beyond any legal jurisdiction.”

“Then we’re running without a captain?”

“No, Kincaid’s a certified captain. A little out of practice, but he can do what little has to be done. At least the ship’s computer thinks he can, and that’s good enough for me. It’s not like we have a choice, is it?”

“Um, no. But—murder you say? And water? Why would anyone do this? How could they do this?”

“When we find out, you’ll be among the first to know,” she assured him.

In the time after the initial breaking of the news, Angel discovered that she’d become quite popular. Some seemed to be pumping her for details; others just wanted confirmation or merely reassurance that the ship was still going to get where it was going.

What she found most interesting were the various people who didn’t question her. She could understand why the Rithians didn’t—Teynal certainly gave them the gory details— but when she thought back on it, neither Wallinchky nor the Kharkovs came near her, nor did that little weasel Tann Nakitt the Geldorian.

And then there was Ming Dawn Palavri. She came over, all right, as friendly and casual as the night before, but the kind of questions she asked had less to do with the crime than with wanting exact details about it. Angel had the impression she was being interrogated, and she didn’t like it.

“I am not going into any more detail right now,” she told the businesswoman. “Sorry. Why do you want to know every little thing, anyway?”

“Just curious. Maybe curious as to why somebody would do this, and looking for some clues.” Ming sighed and smiled and patted Angel on the shoulder. “Sorry. I should know better. Force of habit. Still friends?”

Angel frowned and looked up at the other woman, feeling both patronized and lied to at the same time. Still, she answered, “Yes, of course. It was a very tiring day and I am short on sleep.”

Afterward, Angel wondered about her own reactions. Ming and Ari were kind of private detectives, after all. Was she getting as paranoid as Kincaid? But then, Ari hadn’t pressed her as Ming had. Why would Ming give her the third degree? Unless… unless she wanted to find out how much she and Kincaid really knew and what they might have in mind to do about it. That possibility annoyed Angel. She didn’t like the notion of being reduced to a pawn.

Promptly at 1000 hours, Jeremiah Kincaid showed up. He was dressed in utilitarian work clothes and boots, but he’d obviously had a shower and cleaned himself up, and he looked in remarkably good shape.

He seemed genuinely happy to see her. “How’s your feet?”

“Colorful, but otherwise no problem,” Angel assured him. “They are pretty tough.”

“Are you ready to go on back up?”

She nodded. “Lead on.”

They went back through the cafe and out the rear once more, into the bowels of the module. This time, however, Kincaid stopped her short of the ladder.

“That’s a storeroom with light over there,” he told her. “I think the pragmatic thing to do is to get you into general disposable work clothes. I took the liberty of having some made up by the computer. I think things will be warmer and generally better suited to this sort of area.”

She wanted to object and point out that the robe was okay with her, but she saw his point. The stretch jumpsuit was the same bright orange he was wearing. It fit like a glove and adhered to her body. The ankle-top sneakers grabbed where they met the deck, and she had to admit that the outfit was far more utilitarian.

She walked out and struck a pose. “Better?”

“Somehow I hadn’t expected you to have quite that good a figure. But, yes, it’ll serve. For one thing, it breathes but can also be a good insulator if need be, and the bright color allows you to be seen at a distance, which can be imperative inside the bowels of a ship this size. If you are satisfied, the computer can deliver a dozen more to your cabin. When you are done with this one, simply dispose of it as trash. Now— you aren’t bringing a Bible or something?”

“I don’t need one,” she assured him. “It is a simple affair.”

They went topside and then down the long tubular corridor to the main ship and bridge. Kincaid had been right about the work suit and shoes—there were few drafts and it was quite comfortable and flexible; and the sneakers, while feeling odd to her after not wearing shoes for so long, hugged the deck and gave her confident footing through the varying gravity field.

The bridge was almost unrecognizable. It gleamed, and everything seemed to be on and work. It looked brand new, as if nothing at all had happened. Only the body in the area behind the command chair reminded her of what had happened here only the day before.

The computer maintenance robots had prepared the dead captain’s body after running a full pathological study, then placed it in a gel-filled container. It was impossible to make the body look presentable, but at least there was a discernible human form inside and the gory parts were not obvious to the onlookers. Four small cleaner robots floating a hair above the deck by magnetic levitation held the makeshift sarcophagus.

“Would you like to say something?” Angel asked Kincaid. “Even if you did not know him, you knew his kind.”

He nodded. “Masters of spacefaring ships are the most lonely of people,” Kincaid began solemnly, “often cut off from friends and family by the time differential wherein we in space age at a rate far slower than those who never move. His family is his ship; his friends are whoever books passage from point to point. He doesn’t do it for the money, but because this is what he loves doing, what he is born to do. Captain Melak Dukodny died at his post, in his chair, doing what he loved. He certainly would have preferred it to go on longer, but he would not be sorry as to the place of his dying, nor the manner of disposition of these, his last mortal remains. I accept the temporary assignment of his commission, and bid him farewell.” Kincaid stood ramrod straight, faced the body, and saluted.

Angel began the Prayer for the Dead and the Commission of the Souls. It was a mantra less biblical than traditional, out of the sect’s book of common prayers.

“May he pass on, his soul joining the Universe of Eons, the Plane of Angels, cleansing him of all that is mortal and all that is sinful, and present himself to God bathed in the Ultimate Light. May he touch the six points of ultimate truth, and have everlasting life in the bosom of the Lord. That which cannot pass we commend to the deep, as the ashes of a fire long burning that now has passed beyond mortal ken, leaving only husks. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we return him to the stars from which all came. Amen.”

She bowed her head in silent prayer, did the sacred signs of the Hidden Truths, touching the six points and then making the cross within, then looked up. “Convey the Captain’s remains to their final destination,” she said, looking up.

The robots began to move it across the bridge, into a compartment in the rear, which then closed behind it. There was the sound of hissing as a seal was made, and then a roar, and it was over.

“Interesting ritual,” Kincaid noted. “I hadn’t ever seen that one before, although some of it is the same.”

“We have many levels to our faith. It is not as simple as most people believe faiths should be. Why should God be simple and create such complexity?”

He sighed. “Why indeed?”

“You have checked out the water breathing passengers?”

He nodded. “There are some bad sorts, and it’s clearly somebody or maybe most of them there, but the one I expected isn’t among them. I’m still having a physical inventory of all the barges ahead of us done, and that will take some time. We can’t trust anything except a true examination and analysis, and there are 311 cargo modules, including the passenger one. If something illicit in the cargo is the reason for this, it may be fairly small and be in a false compartment in just one of those. It will take a great deal of time for the probes to do their work. Days perhaps. Anybody in our area not surprised by the news?”

“It is more remarkable how really unconcerned they all were,” Angel told him, running down those who had something of a normal reaction, like Ari, and those who were unnaturally curious or equally unnaturally not curious.

He listened carefully until she was done, then said, “It may be worse than I thought. You see, of course, what the link is to many of those aboard?”

“Not exactly.”

“Jewels. Gems. The Rithians are all from the Ha’jiz Nesting, and that family’s entirely involved in the gem trade. The Kharkovs are gem cutters and also specialists in fine settings. Wallinchky is a man who likes the universality of gems both as collectibles and as commodities, and he doesn’t care about the source. I would suspect that, somewhere in that vast train in front of us, we have some very, very hot gems that are changing hands here. There is no particular reason for Wallinchky to be selling, so let’s assume he’s the buyer and that he’s brought the Kharkovs along to render the loot into something customs won’t recognize without devaluing them. The Rithians are the go-betweens who are guarantors of the deal. They will certify the transfer and ensure payment. I strongly suspect that the payment isn’t money. So what is it? What could be of such importance that this kind of crime, the murder of a starship captain, the sabotage of a ship, and the almost certain intent to do in the uninvolved passengers, would be warranted?”

She gasped. “They mean to murder us?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not in the way you think. Wallinchky, for example, has more money than any human can spend in a thousand lifetimes. He’s not really interested in that except as a means to power. Power is what drives his type. Power over just about everyone and everything. Those two women he flaunts as his companions—they are treated like property. He has them in his grip and he enjoys showing it. It could be drugs, some kind of mind control, hard to say, but he owns them.”

“Why would anybody want slaves when he could have robots do anything by snapping his fingers?”

“Robots are no fun at all to him.” He stared at her, grimly amused at her questions. “You really can’t understand that kind of thinking, can you?”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I can understand how this happened in the past, but not in this day and age. There is no reason for it. No logic.”

“The universe is neither reasoning nor logical nor even moral,” he said grimly.

“You do not believe in God?”

“I’ve found little evidence of Him, and I’ve looked. Believe me, I’ve looked. But I believe in the devil. I’ve actually spoken with him. And I can hardly avoid his handiwork. If you cannot understand the way these people think, then at least believe in evil. It’s out there. It may be the only pure thing in all creation. Call upon your God in crisis if you wish. They will still burn you at the stake, but it may make you feel better when they do. But believe in evil. It’s all around us. It’s traveling with us, and we have to figure out a way to deal with it.”

She looked at him. “I am prepared to die battling such evil if that is God’s will, but I do not believe in suicide. Is there some way we can regain full control of the ship and keep them away from us?”

“We could. I have pretty full control of the ship, and I know what to watch for if they make a move to take it back or take something offline. Captain Dukodny could have blocked all this if he’d had the slightest suspicion something was up, but they counted on him considering everything routine, and that’s what happened. At best, I suspect we’re no more than fifty-fifty between friends and enemies. Operations like this travel with large entourages and lots of agents and hidden guards. That’s why the likes of Wallinchky can travel so openly and comfortably even though a man like him has ten thousand mortal enemies. And of the ones on our side, many will be frightened and neutral, hoping to make a deal and escape with their lives, or else put themselves into denial, and the rest probably would be lambs to the slaughter of these killers.”

“I can’t believe it’s as bad as all that,” Angel said. “Still, why not simply withdraw the tunnel here and isolate yourself?”

“It may come to that, but it wouldn’t stop them from calling me, and from executing a few people—like one of the children, or someone equally helpless—if I didn’t let them in or didn’t come down. I had to make that decision once. It is the most horrible decision a ship’s Master can make. It’s why I’ve spent most of my time since then getting close to no one, having no friends or relatives, keeping my relationships anonymous. Even then, I should not like to have to make that decision again. Once in a lifetime is too many times.”

She decided not to argue with him, knowing they’d reached a point in their relationship where the walls would be too thick to bridge even under perfect conditions in the time they had remaining aboard, and these were not perfect conditions. She decided to turn things back to the issues at hand.

“It seems so particularly awful that all this should happen over something as base as who owns some gems,” she commented.

“Oh, it’s far more than that afoot here,” he assured her. “I told you that this was the devil’s work, and that means we must look not just at who is buying whatever it is, but who the seller is, and why he is selling them. This took a lot of money and influence to set up; money, then, is the tool here, not the object. In fact, I would be surprised if this wasn’t some sort of barter. A weapon, perhaps, or something along those lines.”

She stared at him. “You mean that your enemy is going to try once more to overthrow and rule the Realm?”

“He has always thought that way. He cannot abide that which he cannot rule. The odd thing is, if he ever did rule the known galaxy, he’d probably tire of it quickly and find some new things to step on. His pride was hurt that time so long ago. It’s his pride, and his ability to hold a grudge almost to infinity, that moves him now.”

“What does the devil look like?” she asked. When he smiled, she added, “No, I’m serious.”

“No horns, no cloven hoofs, but it’s an ugly little thing. Like a lump of raw undulating meat, really, with two very mean-looking eyes protruding from the rise in the middle. Lots of tentacles beneath, making it sometimes look as if it was sitting on a nest of hair. They’re quite small, really, and can flatten out even smaller. They’re parasites in spite of the eyes; those hairs are like needles, injecting into a host and then extending within until it controls all motor and nervous system functions. But since it does have eyes, and a kind of sonar common to water creatures, and since it can extract oxygen from water through rudimentary gills, it can detach and move from host to host. What it can’t do on its own is eat. It draws what it needs from the host, and when the host gets used up, it moves on. But it has a mind that’s surprisingly close to ours, and maybe smarter. That still remains to be seen.”

“A surprising number of races are parasites, or at least symbiotic,” she noted. “Evolution almost favors it. Otherwise you get races like ours, which tend to rape landscapes and then move on until they either find an infinite supply of new resources to destroy or cause their own demise. A smart parasite knows how important it is to keep things in balance.”

“But it does tend to color the smartest ones’ views of other races,” Kincaid pointed out. “It has a vision of operating and sucking dry whole worlds.”

“Are there any Ghomas riding with us this trip?” she asked him. “It would seem logical.”

“None show up, and I’m sure I have the computers back online and all the bypasses and plants removed. They couldn’t do an in-depth job on them without jeopardizing the ship itself. Still, there are at least two races breathing pretty much the same muck—those salts are a dead giveaway, since Ghomas need to ingest them when free of the host and forced to breathe the water. The fact that it’s a near optimal Ghoma mix says to me that either they expect Ghomas to show up or, equally likely, those people in that atmosphere are used to the Ghoma mix. I think we can safely say that they probably either had a hand in this or directed it. Not a one boarded at Asswam Junction, but they boarded at three different stops before it.”

She looked around at the vast bridge, which seemed so cold and complex. “So what will you do now?”

Kincaid sighed. “Well, they have to know we’re searching the cargo and that we have full control of the ship again. That means we may well discover what’s hidden here, perhaps both sides of this transaction, and we certainly will prevent any stops where they are expecting one. I’ve locked in a very complex security plan, and it’s been extended to all of the main computers in the modules. If they kill me, they can’t get around it and may well be trapped for murder. If they don’t kill me, the same is possible. That means they will attempt to get at whatever they are after and do some kind of sabotage that will allow them to get away. They know there is nothing they can do, no matter how gut-wrenching, that would cause me to bend. You can’t go to Hell twice.”

“They could drug or torture you for the codes,” she suggested.

“I’ve thought of that. I think they are well-briefed on me. If not, then they might accidentally kill me in the attempt, but they won’t succeed. I’ve been sort of programmed myself, you see, and only I know the signals that turn it off. Torture will equal my death, and that will just result in the same thing. No, I think they will be very careful before they move. Very careful. They won’t allow anything rash. I’m counting on that, since the more time I have with the computer and the probes, the more chance I can find out what this is all about.”

She didn’t like this, but what choice was there? “What do you want me to do?”

“Be yourself, and be my eyes and ears. I’m going to be pretty much of a recluse. Also, continue to wear the crew outfits. I realize they’re revealing, certainly too revealing for someone in your profession, but because of that it will be difficult for them to improvise some device or the most common parasitic remotes without it being obvious, and I shall be able to track you easily, even visually. Be my eyes and ears with the passengers. I want to know what they are planning, and who is planning what. Use concierge services to ensure that your cabin is not bugged, that nothing is drugged, that all is normal. Think of yourself as in Eden surrounded by creatures, many of whom are serpents. Be paranoid, but be alert. And be quite free telling them what I am doing and what I intend and what their own problem is if they don’t deal with me somehow.”

“Huh?”

“If they know the usual routes are futile, they probably won’t try them. I need time. I think I have some, anyway. Remember, we are still about twelve days away from civilization, and eight from where they’d planned us to run dry and emerge into normal space.”

That was the least pleasant thought of all.