91

FTL travel really meant. Or where, in real terms, they might be. Somewhere behind (as he thought of it) was the cruiser he had left, with its now-familiar crew and its most attractive captain. Its very angry and most attractive captain. He wished she had not been so transparently suspicious of his motives. She was no planet pirate nor agent of slavers. She had nothing to fear from him. And he would gladly have spent more time with her. He let himself imagine the nights they could have shared.    __

“Sir, we’re safely in FTL, if you want to come up to Main.”

Dupaynil sighed as the voice over the com broke into that fantasy and thumbed the control. “I’ll be there.”

He had messages to send, messages he had had no time to send from the transfer station. And with the angry Commander Sassinak sitting on the other end of the block, so to speak, he would not have sent diem from the station anyway. He re-discovered what he had once been taught about escort-class vessels in a few miserable minutes. They were small, overpowered for their mass, and understaffed. No one bunked on Main but the captain who was the pilot. Crew consisted of a round dozen: one other officer, the Jig Executive, eleven enlisted, from Weapons to Environmental. No cook: all the food was either loaded prepackaged, to be reconstituted and heated in automatic units, or synthesized from the Environmental excess.

; Dupaynil shuddered; one of the best things about the Zaid-Dayan had been the cooking. With fall crew and ,,jme supercargo, the escort had to ration water: limited :j bathing. The head was cramped: the slots designed to ;K.discourage meditation. There was no gym but the un-^ even artificial gravity and shiplong access tubing offered ;; -Opportunity for’ informal exercise. For those who liked r ^climbing very long ladders against variable G. Worst of J: all, the ship had no 1FTL link.

“ ‘Course we don’t have IFTL,” said the captain, a Major Ollery whose face seemed to brighten every time

92