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the others. On the other hand, he had found two of theirs. He left them alone, unworried.

The personal kit he always had with him included the very best antisurveillance chip, bonded to his shaver. Through his own taps, he picked his way delicately toward control functions. Some were too well guarded for his limited set of tools. He could not lock the captain in his cabin, or shut off air circulation to any crew compartment. He could not override the captain’s control of bridge access. He knew they were watching, suspecting just such a trick. He could not roam die computer’s files too broadly, eidier. But he could get into such open files as the maintenance and repair records, and find that the galley hatch had repeatedly jammed. As an experiment, to see if he could do it widiout anyone noticing, Dupaynil changed die pressure on the upper hatch runner. It should jam, and be repaired, widi only a few cusswords for die pesky thing.

Sure enough, one of the crew complained bitterly through breakfast that the galley hatch was catching again. It was probably diat double-damned pressure sensor on die upper runner. Hie mate nodded and assigned someone to fix it.

On such a small vessel, the escape pods were studded along eidier side of die main axis: three opening directly from die bridge, and the others aft, six accessed from the main and six from die alternate passage. Escape drill required each crew member to find an assigned pod, even if working near another. Pod assignments were posted in both bridge and galley.

Dupaynil tried to remember if anyone had actually survived a hull-breach on an escort, and couldn’t think of an instance. The pods were there because regulations said every ship would carry diem. That didn’t make them practical. Pod controls on escort ships were die old-fashioned electro-mechanical relays; proof against magnetic surges from EM weapons which could disable more sophisticated controls by scrambling die wits of their controlling chips.