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on the schedule. As it is now. And that means the hotels are already filling up—yes, months early—with delegations from every member. Support staff arriving early. Your crew, since they’ve been involved in the case, will of course have to be debriefed by Fleet Intelligence and Federation Security. And if they go onplanet after that, they’ll be harrassed by the news-media. “

Sassinak frowned. “Well, they can’t stay locked up in the ship the entire tune. We’re not going anywhere and there’s not enough to do.” In the back of her mind, she was running over all the miserable long-hour chores that she could assign, but with the weapons systems locked, and flight decks supposedly off limits, nothing but cleaning the whole environmental system with toothbrushes would keep everyone busy.

“My advice, Captain, would be to see if those who’ve been deposed, and whose testimony is at best minor, couldn’t be released to go on long liberty over on Six. That’s a recreational reserve: hunting, fishing, sailing, a few good casinos. Fleet has a lodge in the mountains, too. They’d have to go by civilian carrier, but at least they’d be out of your hair.”

“I don’t like splitting my crew.” Without calling up the figures, she couldn’t be sure just how far away Six was: days of travel, anyway, on a civilian insystem ferry, perhaps more. If something did happen . . . She shut that line of thought down. Better to clean the whole environmental system with toothbrushes. Preparedness, she’d noticed, tended to keep trouble from happening. And there were worse problems than boredom.