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Dollish speaking.” Dallish looked like most Lieutenant Commanders stuck with shore duty: slightly bored but wary. When he’d had a moment to take in Sassinak’s rank, his eyes brightened. “Commander Sassinak! A pleasure, ma’am. We’ve heard about your exciting tour!”

Sassinak let herself smile. She should have realized that, of course, rumor would have spread so far. Fleet kept no secrets from itself. “Not entirely my idea. Is the Admiral available?”

Dallish looked genuinely disappointed. “No, Commander, he’s not. He’s gone rhuch hunting over on Six and won’t be back for several weeks Standard. You could go and—“

Sassinak shook her head. “No, worse luck. Orders say to deliver my prisoner and stand by for pre-trial depositions and hearings.”

“Kipling’s copper corns! Sorry, Commander. That’s too bad. This is no port for a cruiser.”

“Don’t I know it! Look, is there anywhere I can give leave to the crew who aren’t involved? Someplace they can have a good time and not get into too much trouble?” She did not miss the change in Dallish’s expression, a sudden cool wariness. Had she caused it, or something in his office outside the scan area?

“Commander, perhaps I’d better come aboard, and you can give me your message for Admiral Coromell in person.”

Perfectly correct, perfectly formal, and completely wrong: she had said nothing yet about any message. Sassinak’s experienced hackles rose. “Fine,” she said. “What time shall we expect you?”

“Oh . . . sixteen hundred Fleet Standard; that’s twenty-three fifty local.”

Late, in other words. Late enough Fleet time that he wouldn’t be going back to the Admiral’s office afterwards; very late in local time.

“Very well. Fleet shuttle, or . .

“Federation Insystem Security shuttle, Commander. Fleet has no dedicated planetary shuttles.”

Oho, Sassinak thought. So Fleet personnel onplanet are isolated unless Security lets them fly? She asked

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for, and got, an identification profile, and signed off. When she looked around, her bridge crew had clearly been fastening.

“I don’t like that,” she said to Arly. “If-^when—I go downside, III want one of our shuttles available, just in

case.

Arly nodded, eyes twinkling. Sassinak knew she was thinking of the last shuttle expedition. And young Timran’s unexpectedly lucky rashness.

“Weapons systems lockdown is supposed to include shuttle lockdown,” Arly reminded her.

Sassinak did not bother to answer; Arly had had her orders. They understood each other. She hoped an unauthorized shuttle flight would not be necessary. But if it was, she trusted that Arly would arrange it somehow.

Lieutenant Commander Dallish, when he appeared in her office shortly after debarking from the Security shuttle, apologized for his earlier circumlocutions.

“The Admiral told me he considers you in a unique position to provide evidence against the planet pirates,” he said. “For that reason, he warned me to take every precaution if you contacted his office. I don’t really think that anyone there is a traitor, but with that much traffic . . . and one of them a Council bureaucrat ... I decided not to take chances.”

“Very wise,” said Sassinak.

In person he looked just as he had on the screen: perhaps five years younger than she, professional without being stuffy, obviously intelligent.

“You asked about liberty for your crew. Frankly, you could not be in a worse place, particularly right now. You know the Grand Council’s in session this year?”

Sassinak hated to admit that she had only the vaguest idea how the Federation Grand Council actually scheduled its work, and gave a noncommittal response. Dallish went on as if she’d said something intelligent.

“All the work gets done in the preliminary Section meetings, of course: the Grand Council’s mostly a formality. But it does overlap the Winter Assizes; a convenience for delegates when a major intercultural case is