"Nag, nag, nag." Pasty sweat sheeted Bonifay's face. "Seemed-like a derelict-on automatic... we moved in to investigate, then it hit us-with-some kind of- pulse bolt. I didn't get a-Temperance card this week,, so I came aboard.... I should've read the Tower card more closely... seemed safe over here... didn't register any life forms..."

 

 

"It also registered no motive power," Keller re-minded. "Did you believe that?"

 

 

"No-the ship read as dead-no power at all-" He spoke fast, gulping out his words, determined to give over the most information he possibly could. "No power source-only some kind of weird emanation that doesn't compute-it shouldn't go! I can't figure out how it goes." I

 

 

"But it does," Keller said. <
"We were-tracking-its arrival course-" Bonifay caught his breath. His eyes cranked shut. "There's something... in my back," he admitted with obvious effort, like a child afraid to report that he'd broken something important. Fear chiseled at him, but he muf-fled it. "It's got me right through the... solar plexus chakra.... Could you have a look?"

Keller met his gaze briefly, took a grip on Bonifay that he hoped was supportive without hurting him, and leaned around to look.

Under Bonifay's, right ribs in the back, the sweater's knitted fabric had been sliced so cleanly that it wasn't even frayed. Protruding from the slice was a glasslike tube, one end embedded through his sweater and into his skin at a downward angle. Unlike the razor threads, this was a clear tube, thick as a man's little ringer.

Without making any judgments, he motioned for Sa-vannah to maneuver closer.

"You're the medic," he said. "What does that look like to you?"

"Intubation," she told him. "Might be in an artery. But there's nothing in it. Nothing flowing. No blood coming out either." She squinted into the veiled depths behind Bonifay. "I don't see where it's originating."

"Can you-get it out?" Bonifay's question was clini-cal, as if the answer didn't really matter.

"We'll get it out," Keller assured.

How? Just grab and yank? Without knowing any-thing? He peered back into the shimmer, wondering if maybe they could pull the other end.

Bonifay shuddered and stiffened with effort. "I'm- Fm gonna slip pretty soon...."

Careful not to jostle any of the razor tethers impaling Bonifay, Keller slipped an arm around his waist and said, "Lean on me. Savannah, can we cut the tube?"

She dug through her kit and came up with a utilitarian pair of clip-alls. "Sure, and after that, I'll give all these corpses a haircut."

Keller shot her a silent warning, but too late.

Typically, Bonifay didn't miss the comment His eyes flared with sudden perception. His breath turned choppy. 'They're dead? They're not sculptures? Are you-say-ing they're-they're bodies? This is a-morgue?"

"Just a little stroll through the natural condition," Sa-vannah buttered over her mistake. She went after the razor wire in his throat first When it snapped, he sucked in his breath hard and shuddered in place. Keller felt the pain and terror run through Bonifay's body as he held him tight

"Get the other side, Savannah," Keller ordered.

Without commenting, Savannah snipped the exit end of the wire.

"Arms next," he said immediately. "Hold still, Zane."

"This-isn't good at all-" Bonifay choked, "to be in here... we shouldn't violate the dead..."

*They're not violated," Savannah mused as she sys-tematically snipped the threads spearing the arm Zoa was still holding up. 'They're all cooperating just fine."

'They-they don't like this-it's got to be on-their terms, not ours-they like to be asked first... what've I done... I've trespassed on the spectral plane!"

"Stop that," Keller broke in. "Give me some answers. What about all this green growth? Is the moss from moisture caught inside the ship?"

"Not m-m-moss," Bonifay stammered. "It's-all- metal. Everything here-is metal."

"I know plants when I see them."

"Not plants... just look tike plants. Colored, molded, hammered-composites-brushed, pearlized... noth-ing but... fine forms of metal. Even the grid-looks like glass, but it's not. Every-" He gasped and stiff-ened as Savannah started on the wires in his thighs. His back arched in agony. Blood trickled from the wound hi his neck, which still had the wire through the inside. His body shuddered with effort and exhaustion against Keller's. How long could he remain standing? If he slipped, the razor wires would slice his legs to sections.

Could they move him? What would the wire pieces remaining inside his body do to him? They could still shift, slice, pierce with every flex and step. Would he be cut to pieces while they dragged him out?

"Oh, look... he lived." Blinking, Bonifay panted out his new awareness. Shucorion had appeared in his line of vision. "I didn't-know for-sure-whether he followed me-"

From the bottom of the slope, Shucorion proclaimed, "You should not have been inside here to follow. I or-dered you to stay, yet you took this risk!" He pointed at the contraption, then folded his arms around his bruised body and in a pained way added, "Now see where you stand."

Bonifay willed a scowl. "Or I could be sifting cos-mic dust into your pocket!"

"Pipe down" Keller ordered. "Let's figure this out Argue about details later."

While Zoa held Bonifay's arm and Savannah clipped at the other end of the thread hi his thigh, and Shucorion kept uneasy watch from over there, Keller tried to bear Bonifay's weight without really moving him or holding on too harshly. The threads could be clipped, yes, but the tube sticking out of Bonifay's back... what could be done? This was no place for minor surgery. Why wasn't there a Starfleet regulation to cover this?

- / tsonitay twisted in undisguised agony as Savannah clipped at a wire in his right thigh. "Hurry up, will you?"

"No." Savannah was unaffected by his pitiful shudders.

Keller, though, was not only affected, but helping Bonifay shudder. "Almost done," he lied.

Bonifay had fixed his attention on Shucorion. "What's wrong-with the shadow?"

"He's hurt."

"I don't mean that... his aura is really yellow.. and he's looking at me funny."

"Just your magnetic personality."

"He's nervous."

"So'm I."

"He's got an idea about me...."

"Zane, knock it off, will you?"

"You might-have-to leave me-"

"Not a chance. Nobody else knows how to make your crystal ball work. All the stitches holding the frigate together'll pull apart" Keller pressed his face to his shoul-der to wipe a band of sweat off his cheek. It was instantly replaced by more. "Hot as a warp core in here...."

"Twenty percent increase in the last five minutes, I'd say," Savannah estimated. "My clothes are already dry."

Clip.

"Something's-different-in here," Bonifay gasped. "You can't-stay much-longer-"

"Don't tell me what I can't do," Keller stiffly said. "How many more of those, Savannah?"

"Dozen or so, both entry and exit wounds."

"Work faster."

At the bad news Bonifay moaned and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he abruptly gasped and stared out into die chamber. For an instant Keller thought Bonifay was gaping for some reason at Shucorion, but something had captured Savannah's attention too. Keller kept one hand on Bonifay and drew away enough for a clear view of the lower area in the cham-ber, the row of statues-bodies-behind Shucorion.

A few moments of silence trickled by, offset by the soft harping of the metal strings now mostly hanging free. Beside Keller, Zoa's sphinx-like face grew terrible with warning. -

Below them, arms began to rise. A dozen sets of shoulders flexed under the ghastly glow. Eyes like pol-ished gemstones blinked slowly. Heads began to turn toward them.

They had an audience.

**Um..." Savannah's voice was rough. "Are you looking?"

With one hand on Bonifay, Keller stared down into me cemetery chamber. What he saw blew a shiver down his spine till he could hardly stand.

"Have mercy," he uttered. 'They're coming back to life...."

Chapter Five on the sizzling Feast Grid, thousands of bewildered hunters stood and stared at Luntee and, beyond him, Riutta. With the heat energy from the dancer crash dissi-pating, cold wind moved in from the plain and brought with it the sting of metal sand shaved from the moun-tains. Beneath their burned feet, the ashes began to fly away and the fibrous Grid mats stiffened. The gum made a crackling sound, like the sky when the dancers fed

It had taken five hundred lifetimes to understand the physics of this place. Or so the rules remembered. This planet was a great distance from its star. Solar light was negligible, drowned by constant lightning. There were only days of more lightning and days of less, and never-ending thunder on this giant conduction machine.

For a while the first survivors believed someone would reopen the Gateway and come for them. They had lived off the trickle of reserved energy from their ships, and watched the massive explosions of dying dancers, and waited for someone to come.

After a thousand years of spare existence, picking at the corpses of crashed dancers, hope faded When they were nearly to a point of despair, a few scientists lived long enough to realize they could reopen the portal themselves, someday, with enough energy stored.

For hundreds more lifetimes, they had built towers to harness and save raw energy from the skies. It hadn't worked very well. Free dancers were far more efficient at capturing energy than clumsy towers. Gradually the cleverest people suggested that the animals would de-scend for two reasons-to die, or to feed on the right bait.

The only bait was Living themselves. By standing on the nonconductive gum mats, the people could tempt down the energy-packed atmospheric harvesters, hold them down, and steal all they had. If the timing was right, the bladderlike animals would be gorged on those flickering biologies everyone saw but could not reach.

Down came the huge towers. The hunt developed or-ganically into the scheme of survival. The most experi-enced hunters became the ones who decided when each step of the hunt should progress. Someday the current Elders, whoever they might be, would decide the time was right to open the Gateway and Living would return to the trails of black space Outside.

Though these were old stories, everyone relied upon them to push forward on this harsh planet. Cold wind, hot crash sites, a sparking sky, constant lightning, con-stant thunder, this inanimate place was meant to be a crash site for free dancers that fell dying from the upper atmosphere. Yet all Living had scratched out a pattern for survival where nothing was meant to live. They spent all their time preserving candlefly and stor-ing energy and hiding in shelters, and from time to time eligible hunters from every city risked death in the hunt to take fresh energy and candlefly harvest from the sky.

Obviously the Gateway was meant to be used, and not waited for. Otherwise, why hadn't those scientists been taken before their discoveries?

This was a world of light and lighter, dark and darker, bright and black, frost cold and glow hot, shadow and glare and dull, with and without luster. The old information told of more, of how things were dif-ferent Outside. There was something to help see better, distinguish more accurately, a new way to perceive everything-depth, distance, nearness, detail, even each other's faces and eyes. There were stories of going out of the shelters and still being warm.

How odd that would seem.

Wind blew stinging metal chips against Riutta's face and neck. Her protective shirt fluttered about her body. How strange would life be somewhere else? Could they adjust again? How much had been exaggerated over the lifetimes? Was she afraid to go because Outside might be a disappointment?

Everyone among Living interpreted this world in his or her own way. Some were known as the ones who al-ways took the best candleflies for themselves. Some tried to calculate the least likely place to be chosen dur-ing the hunt. Others were overly brave, knowing that if they were taken their families went to the front of every line. Sometimes hunters were so tired of the stress that they became suicidal and jumped into the floss, trying to be chosen quickly.

Nothing worked. Neither bravery nor fear worked. The choice was the choice, completely random. There was no better or worse place to stand.

Luntee thought she was afraid to go Outside. Maybe she was.

Until now there had been comfort in what she knew, knew for certain. They lived on a planet that neither col-lected nor held radiation. The other side of the planet was blistering hot, making a world of storms, wind, and light-ning caused by hot and cold air masses. They could breathe because the biosphere around the planet collected the sparse sunlight All balance of life came from the candleflies and the tree dancers, the complex colonies of microbial life sharing them, and the raw energy they used.

That was life here. Simple. Live, have children, be-come a hunter, stand naked on the Grid to tempt the dancers down, feel the rain as heat was released and the descent began, and eventually be chosen or anointed. If a hunter survived more hunts than anyone else, he or she became an Elder and would be able to decide things. When an Elder died, the next most experienced hunter moved into that place. Simple.

She would rather face a hundred hunts than stand here now, holding the two link shirts of the Elders. As the ashes blew away and left a darkened spot on the planet's bare surface, the other link shirts were exposed a few at a time, those unclaimed and buried by the rolling dancer. Without a Living person inside it, a shirt simply behaved like a piece of the planet. Energy conducted straight through and grounded into the bare plain.

Among the debris many bodies were exposed, those who managed to pull their shirts back on, but whose shirts were overwhelmed. Even a link shirt couldn't manipulate so much direct transfer. The bodies hadn't been able to convert. Anointed.

A piece of fabric flipped at her heel. Startled, Riutta peered suddenly down. Uncommon sense of direction had brought her to the right place, where the Elders had been standing before the call to run onto the Feast Grid. The third shirt of authority lay over her foot.

Three Elders chosen at one time. The dancer had rolled, and they had all been chosen.

Beside her, Luntee stood shuddering. Thousands of bereaved and terrified hunters shivered beyond him. They all looked at Riutta.

Ridiculously, Riutta found herself calculating the odds against such a strike. Never before had more than one Elder been taken in a hunt. Then the odds scared her and she stopped.

The Elders had thought the hunt might make history today. And it had.

"They were killed by their decision to take two. They gave their lives to make sure we have enough power to keep the Gateway open. We should go/'

"They were killed to make Riutta the senior Elder. We're not going."

"We've stored energy for thousands of lifetimes! This is the last hunt! We're ready to open the Gateway."

"The decision will be up to the new Elders."

*The chosen Elders already decided to go!"

"But why were they taken? To give Riutta the right to decide. And she doesn't want us to go!"

"Luntee is an Elder now. He can decide."

"Who is the third Elder?"

"Find the third Elder!"

"Signal the Cities! Find the third Elder!"

"It was unwise to send the Anointed through. Too much time has passed. Things are different here, differ-ent outside-"

"We should never have opened the Gateway!"

"Generations have waited to open it-"

"We don't even know why we're here!"

"We might be here because it's worse there. What if the first crossers were escaping?"

"Let Riutta decide!"

"Find the third Elder!"

"Has anyone contacted the Cities?"

"Riutta's the senior Elder anyway. The Elders may have been chosen today because their decision should stand, but Riutta should lead the expedition."

"I'm willing to let Riutta decide"

"I disagree!"

"Riutta! What do you say? Claim your shirt!"

After many cold minutes of bickering, the miserably aggrieved throng of hunters came to silence around her. Riutta hadn't said a word, yet there had been nothing but argument. Luntee was leading the argument against her, his cousins supporting him, her son and daughter and many others shouting back at them, others adding their own rumbles and grumps. All she heard clearly in her mind was the most resilient worry... What if it's worse there?

The harvest was tremendous. They had taken one very large free dancer and successfully drained all its energy and candleflies. Though the second had rolled and gone to ground, it had been drained of tons of can-dleflies. There would be plenty of food for a change. There was now enough energy to do what the Elders had planned before they'd been chosen, but also enough energy to make life on this planet much easier for a long time if it was not squandered on an ancient whim.

What was right? Why had they been taken at this critical time?

They waited for her to speak. They knew she was against going. She always had been.

Her own scorched hand swiped across her lips. The motion wakened her from her thoughts-the Elders' shirts still hung from her fingers. The surviving hunters were very still as she gave her first orders as an Elder.

"Take the fallen and prepare them to join the Anointed."

Decent. Orderly, and appropriate. But what did she mean? Even she wasn't sure.

She threw the two Elders' shirts to the gum mat, on top of the third.

"Then put power to the sled engines," she decided. "We'll open the Gateway and go Outside."

Chapter Six

The Grave Ship around them the graveyard shifted and flexed. Though not an eye bothered to blink, a half-dozen mummies down the middle aisle suddenly rediscovered their arms and legs, shoulders and necks. They moved toward Shucorion with sublime horror. To compound the nightmare, Shucorion didn't realize what was happening behind him.

"Great snakes-move!" Keller's brain divided be-tween the trapped Zane Bonifay and his injured first offi-cer about to be cornered down there. "Shucorion, move!"

Conditioned by a lifetime of disasters, Shucorion ducked and sidestepped the stony arm reaching toward him. His wounds betrayed him. He fell first to one knee, then both. The statues were lumbering up fast in the heat. A resinated woman bent nearly at the waist had seized Shucorion by the arm he put up to defend himself.

"Spooks in wonderland," Savannah rasped. With laudable resolve she continued her work on the strands stuck through Bonifay's body. "Now we know why it got hot in here."

Keller fought to keep his foothold. "Pompeii was never like this!"

At his other side, Zoa's stare was alarmingly like those of the reanimated bodies.

"Zoa, come out of it," he barked. "Security alert! Get your sidearm!"

He drew his own phaser and shifted right-Savannah was crouched in his way! He couldn't move back and maintain his foothold. Zoa went for her phaser but, un-accustomed to energy weapons in gun form, she fum-bled and discovered an instant too late that she still had the Rassua blade fan in one hand and Bonifay's arm in the other. The blade fan Christmas-belled as she let go of Bonifay and snatched up the phaser from her belt. Fresh pain choked Bonifay when the weight of his arm hit his shoulder. Keller sidestepped back into place and stuck a hand between the fine tethers. A nasty slice opened up on the back of his wrist, but he kept Boni-fay's arm from falling into the razor web.

Blood flowed all over his sweater sleeve. Against the bizarre pink glow on the knit his blood showed dark and gory. He was just as stuck as Bonifay!

"Zane, can you hold your own arm up?"

"Ah-God!"

"Copy that, stand by...."

Damnably far down the sculpted slope, six man-nequins thumped toward the web. Zoa danced to get a clear shot-she disappeared!

"Zoa! Aw, rollin' hell-" Keller craned sideways. "Where'd you go?"

She was down in a hole! Had it always been there?

"I failed." Her crayon-blue dot-eyes peered up at him from a good twelve feet down and she actually blinked once.

Bonifay grumbled, "You fell."

Manpower down by one!

*Try to climb out of there, please," Keller mildly mentioned.

"You've got to leave me and get out," Bonifay gagged. His face twisted in misery. "This is solemn ret-ribution from the supersensual! The clairaudients on Canus Station warned me not to open that sacred box! Why do I do these things?"

"You've never been to Canus Station "

"In 1612!"

"Stay in me moment, please. Zoa!"

The razor tether hummed between them and the group assault on Shucorion. The second and third corpses had reached the Blood officer and were helping the dead lady pull him along the grid.

He couldn't wait. Time for some old-fashioned ranch target practice, pinch of Starfleet thrown in for flavor.

"Zane," Keller began, "hold very still."

The phaser was hot hi his right hand. He thumbed the setting-pure guesswork-brought the muzzle up to his cheek, and extended his arm slowly through the web's strands. Just like pointing a finger, Dad always said. He closed one eye, tilted his head, held his bream, and squeezed.

The weapon whined. A bright yellow stream speared the environment Around him the razor web flashed like tinsel until he was almost blind.

He flinched at his own shot the stream should've been red. Forgot how weird this place was! He made himself hold the grip on the trigger. The phaser heated up fast in this warm cloister. Its whine rang and rang.

The lady mummy took the hit in the forehead over her right eye. Before their eyes her short hair parted, grew a long furrow, and began to melt around her face.

Melt? Her head should've been sliced off!

A pearly skull appeared. Her face heated up and paled like a cameo. Though the two behind her let go of Shucorion and moved around him, the woman con-tinued to drag him along the deck. And she was about to melt all over him!

Immediately Keller eased off the nigger. The phaser cooled slightly.

"Too bad/* Savannah commented. "Going for the heart?"

"Dang it all. I was thinking to knock her over." So much for pointing a finger. He thumbed the weapon's setting to full disrupt. "Shucorion, would you turn loose of that lady so I can shoot her?"

Shucorion threw a ridiculous glance over his shoul-der and pulled harder.

"Last thread." A snip punctuated Savannah's words. 'The only thing left is the tube in his back."

"Clear these threads," Keller ordered. "I've about had it with this place."

She was already pulling on her protective gloves. The coated palms allowed her to scoop up several strands at a time like a horse's tail and pull them clear while Keller held Bonifay's arm up and out of the way. Now that the threads were out of his body, the procedure sped up.

But the mannequins kept shambling toward them. Something about their deliberate, programmed motions clicked all at once in his mind. Their fingers, their un-focused eyes, lips frozen in expressionlessness...

The phaser in his hand was ready to fire again, this time on full, ready to disintegrate its target. Would it work in this environment of unrecorded compounds and living metal? Was this the time for experiments?

Another idea clicked. He acted on it

"Shucorion," he called evenly, "stop resisting. Stop fighting her."

The desperate glance came again, laced with convic-tion that the Earthling had finally flipped.

"Fm serious," Keller activated. He widened his eyes at Shucorion to drive home his point.

With some effort Shucorion capped his natural im-pulses, held his breath, and went limp. His arm sagged in the dead woman's grasp. What was left of her head wagged in satisfaction and she bent for a more secure hold. He grimaced at the attention, but didn't resist. In seconds he was neatly deposited out of the aisle and be-tween two clusters of big mushrooms. The woman straightened, flexed her half-melted neck, and joined the five others.

"Move clear right now." Keller kept a firm grip on Bonifay and turned his head. "Zoa, are you up here yet?"

"Slippy sides, dang't." Her voice was gravelly. She'd taken to hacking herself handholds one at a time with the point of her Rassua blade, now collapsed back into one unit. Flash after flash, her golden arms flexed mightily, the tattoos of past adventures coming back to life, as if this place weren't surreal enough.

"They've stopped coming at us," Savannah men-tioned. She tried to appear cool, but her voice had gone to a monotone. 'They're doing something..."

The metallic people stretched out their fingers, turn-ing to one of the stalactites at the edge of the tiled grid.

Each of them picked a stalactite and pressed his or her fingertips in a flared position to the structure.

"Nick," Savannah snapped, "look at this, look, look, look-"

The tube in Bonifay's back came to life, shifting and coiling as bubble-filled liquid moved out of the bulk-head and flowed down toward him.

"What is that stuff?" Keller demanded. In his arms Bonifay twisted pathetically to look for himself.

Savannah followed the mercurial liquid with her fin-ger. Her eyes widened.

"If this reaches him," she bluntly said, "he's dead."

Halfway up out of the hole, Zoa paused and stared at the stuff crawling through the tube. As Keller cranked to get a better look, Savannah finished her terse assessment

"I think it's an embalming machine."

"Zane, brace yourself! I need my hands!" As his an-nouncement echoed, Keller took a chance and released Bonifay. "Zoa! Blades!"

Below, the Rassua woman got a grip on something with one hand and stabilized herself. Her other shoul-der reflected a band of light as she tossed one of her blade fans into the air. Her leap of faith gave Keller a confident surge.

The blade turned only once overhead. With a wild reach he snatched it out of the air, almost losing fingers to the move. He had no idea how to make the blades separate into a fan, so he didn't try. He gripped the han-dle with both hands and sliced recklessly downward.

Luckily Savannah Ring anticipated his move and was clear when the blade slammed through the tube in Bonifay's back. Keller's clumsy whack sheared the. tube and almost took Bonifay's hipbone off at the tip.

Abruptly free and exhausted, Bonifay sagged into their grip. Keller dug in and shoved both Bonifay and Savan-nah out of the way with a ferocious push.

"Get him out of here!"

He jumped off the row of stones he'd been standing on and landed flat-footed on the signal grid. The glasslike coating shattered under his soles. Spider veins spread out from each foot Above his head, the razor web shivered and whined, hunting for a body to en-snare. At the same instant, the six mummies turned in confusion, let go of the stalactites that were obviously some kind of control panels, and all shifted toward Keller.

Shucorion struggled to his feet "Why are you doing that!'*

"Move in the other direction!"

Since the trap had already been sprung on Bonifay, the web didn't know what to do. Keller was able to avoid the strings. The unblinking mummies began to close on him-and only him.

"Get back to that vestibule where we beamed in! Zoa, get'em out! No arguments, Savannah!"

Zoa pulled herself out of the hole, took Bonifay by the body, and hoisted him like a sack of grain. Of! they went, down the slope toward Shucorion.

The gap between Keller and his crew inflated. The mummies had picked up on him and only him, and lost their interest in Bonifay and Shucorion. The tangence of attraction gave him a sense of control.

Despite the rockets of dissent in Savannah's eyes as the crew shuffled through the yellow-silver environ-ment the way they'd come in, Keller didn't wait around to hear the prosecution. If he gave them a chance to protest, precious seconds would be lost How persistent would these ambulatories be? How attached were they to their machine?

"Keep going!"

His call echoed. He tripped on something slippery, though he didn't know it until his knee rang off a blunt surface and pain sent him spinning. With his eyes crin-kled and his teeth gritted, he banked off a sculpted tree, glanced back at the stony faces growing nearer, gath-ered his legs, and leaped wildly.

Chilly air struck his face; then something solid struck the side of his head. For an instant he was blinded, dizzy, rolling and disoriented, as if he'd been put inside an accelerator and spun. This ship had more ups and downs than a Jefferies tube.

He landed hard on his left thigh, both legs bent, slumped in a forest of glossy orange spires twisting well overhead. Cold air looped around the turtleneck at his throat as if he'd been caught in a big cold grip. Zoa had fallen into a hole. Was this the same place?

The spires turned and turned. Keller pressed a hand to his eyes. His fingers on both sides were numb. Nau-sea surged up in his gut, forcing him to fight it back down. Was he unconscious? How long? Seconds? Min-utes? Long enough for the others to get out?

He forced himself to sit up and craned to look over his shoulder. No sign of whatever hole he had come through... must be some kind of trapdoor into a com-pletely undiscovered area. There was no portal or hatch behind him, no telltale frame or hissing pressurizers.

Gathering his collection of new bruises, he crawled to his feet and shook his head clear. Was his sidearm still with him? Yes, in his hand. Trouble was, he couldn't feel his fingers.

As he looked at the weapon and his hand, pain hit his right arm and radiated out from the funny bone. He sucked a wince and held his breath. When the arm started to throb, he could breathe again and think. De-termined to hang on to the phaser, he gripped his right wrist while he scouted the place.

This chamber was clearly different. The colors were warmer, the landscape coppery, burnished, with less embellishment and almost no artistry. His sweater ap-peared closer to its deep burgundy under the lighting here. The metals seemed more in raw form than in the other places. Was it unfinished? Or had efficiency stepped in at some point later?

His first step brought him out of the spire forest He'd thought he was deeper in. The height was some kind of illusion, the spires neither as tall nor as bulky as they appeared. Though he thought the spires towered over his head, he now saw that they were only a couple of meters higher, but tapered and tilted to create a sense of height. It was an architectural dick.

He took another step forward. Two more mummies appeared between the spires. Worn to a nub, Keller brandished his phaser at them.

They weren't moving. A man and a woman. Roughly the same height, clothes pretty much alike, simple sheaths, belted. Peaceful as river rocks, they stood guard over each other. The man held some kind of hefty clamp. The woman gazed off into a pretend distance.

Was this how it had been for them? In the place they came from? A person passes away for some reason, is brought to this vehicle, laid on that grid... and those who died before revive and bring the newcomer into their fold? No music, no pipes, no ceremony other than the march of the inexpressive?

And the ooze, that liquid flowing toward Bonifay down the tube, must be the compound hardened inside each of them. It filled up their bodily cavities, arteries, veins, and even converted the molecular structure of their skin and hair into this fossilized form. And here they stood for thousands of years, tributes to them-selves, acting as then- own gravestones.

Or maybe his instincts were on overload.

"Challenger to Commander Keller. Do you read?"

Keller choked and jumped a meter. His heart thudded in his chest. He snapped up his communicator and gasped, "Keller, aye! Quinones, is that you? Scared me silly!"

"Sorry, sir." A woman's voice crackled through the instrument, broken by static. "We just broke the com blanket, sir. At least partly. We put a Dunbar booster on the system, but it won't hold. I was about to send a search party."

"No, no! Don't send anybody else!" Keller started speaking fast. A Dunbar booster! "And don't close on this vessel. It's automated to protect itself. The board-ing party's on its way to the outer perimeter where we beamed hi before. Pick up their coordinates and beam them out, understand?"

The communicator squeaked once and went silent

"Quinones? Can you hear me?"

He paused. Nothing happened. A little static, then more nothing.

"Quinones, do you read?"

A shiver came out in his voice. Would they be able to get through again? The boosted gain would fry the frigate's system in just a few minutes. A pile of parts, fitted in a hurry, could only talk to each other so long without choking.

"Nick!" Savannah Ring's voice broke on the com-municator this time. "Where are you? 'Your communi-cator's not giving me a homing trace.''

"I'm stuck in a side chamber. Did you get Zane out?"

"Challenger just confirmed a beam-in. Sounds like the boys and the Zoa constrictor got out."

Anger hardened his features. "What about you? Aren't you out? I ordered you to evacuate!"

"Not my job. Search and rescue, remember? These compliants have settled down now that they can't find anything to embalm. Seems like they have a perimeter limit."

"They're a little less compliant than the average corpse,'* he muttered, rubbing his bruised knee. "Don't take any chances. Beam out. I'll take care of myself."

"Do you remember what you went through? Did you fall or go sideways? "

Agony. Someday she'd follow one damned order and he'd encase it hi plasticine and show it around to folks.

"I heard a sliding sound," he remembered. "Can't be more than a few steps from you."

"Stay put. I'm looking."

"Look for a way to open a door and keep it open, but don't come through till you're sure you won't be trapped with me. Are you in contact with the ship?"

"Patchy."

"Have them ask Zane what do to."

"As wounded as he is? He could barely sell me my own shoes"

Keller shrugged. "He's the only one who knows how |o make those twisted circuits make sense of each oth-holy Moses!"

"What's wrong?"

But Ring's words hung in the hot air.

Before Keller stood another metal mummy, realistic to the hair, face, irises in the eyes, this one so fami-liar that his heart pounded in his chest. His hand shot out, touched the arm-cool, formed muscles, veins... Keller heard himself take a sharp breath.

The familiar face gazed back at him with dark agate eyes cupped in lashes, thick straight hair resting on its shoulders, the cheekbones-

He shrank from the body-statue. Though he strug-gled to breathe, his lungs wouldn't cooperate. If he'd been gut-punched the hit couldn't have knocked him harder. His right hand continued its shaky pass over the metal arm. His left hand, though, and he raised commu-nicator again.

Speaking-that was another matter.

A third voice vibrated up his hand.

"This is Challenger. Quinones here. We think the gain's stable now, sir. Sir? Commander?"

The eyes glowed like polished agate. The hair was long, unbound, and seemed to be cast of a different metal from the skin, which had been lovingly buffed and seemed as good as new.

He would've liked to step back a little more. His feet wouldn't move.

"Commander Keller? "

"Is Shucorion there?" Keller choked out. "Is he on board?"

"Haven't seen him yet, sir," the security officer an-swered. "There was a rescue beam-out, but I don't have a report yet. Hey, Gyler, anybody seen Mr. Shuco-rion? Have the transporter worn report who came in"

Keller's imagination went wild with possibilities, the kind that only made sense in a place where nothing else did. The exercise scared him to the bone.

"Sir, I'm trying to patch you through to sickbay. We're having someprob-"

"Sickbay. Shucorion speaking. How may I help?"

Whew-weak, but not turned to pewter. Keller's aching eyes squeezed shut for an instant. His knees rat-tled. "You just did," he huffed.

"Pardon me?"

"Just glad to hear your voice, is all...."

"Hey, sheriff, you down in this pit?" Her boots nois-ily crunching closer, Savannah Ring broke through to him and rounded the spires, already talking. "I found a sliding door with a trip switch right next to-aw!"

She let out a shriek. Keller shot both hands toward her and grabbed her by the head, one palm over her mouth, the other pressing his communicator to the back of her skull. She almost staggered into another mummy.

"Don't say anything!" he hissed. "Stop squeaking!"

"Buffzzts- !"

"Shh!"

"Is something else wrong?" Shucorion asked from the safety of the frigate.

Another bleat slipped out of Savannah's mouth be-tween Keller's fingers.

Incredible.

"We'll try to get out of here," Keller stammered into the communicator. "Got... sidetracked."

"Shall I return ? Do you need help ? "

"No!" both Keller and Savannah bolted.

Keller eyed Savannah down ferociously. "No, don't come, don't send anybody else, we'll get out on our own." When Savannah mffi again, he grabbed her tighter. "Shh!" Into his communicator he made a dry-mouthed excuse. "Just stand by over there. Take care of yourself and Bonifay."

"When you return, we must discuss Bonifay's ac-tions. Are you sure you can get out?"

"We'll... we'll... we'll get out. The residents are settling down. I think we can evacuate if we don't trip any more switches. Contact somebody and see if you can get readings on this thing's motive power. Find out if it's being pushed or tractored or what."

Risking loss of the thready gain, he powered down the communicator just to get a moment without any possibility of being overheard, and swung to Savannah.

"Now don't let on," he warned.

Her palms wagged before him. "You mean not tell him he's got a mummified twin in this tomb?"

With a sweaty hand rubbing over his mouth, Keller muttered, "I don't want to tell him..."

"How can you ignore this!"

"I'm-believe me-Pm not ignoring this!"

"How can it be here? It looks just like him!"

"I don't know, Savannah... what if I tell him and it upsets the balance?"

**What if you don't and it upsets it more? If this isn't a statue of Shucorion, then it's at least Blood. What a resemblance!"

"How can you know that?" Keller asked. "You can't tell from skin color... otherwise this guy's just humanoid. If his innards don't tell you anything, he could be Orion or Vendikan for all we can tell." He circled the embalmed man with suspicion running high. "If these are Blood corpses on a ship that looks Kauld, the whole sector could break out in conflict again. We don't need that. Let's figure this out before we start trouble."

"You're talking about your first officer."

*1 know, Savannah, I know...."

Since no mystical answers descended from on high to enhance his commanderlike facade of wisdom, they both fell silent for a few moments while Keller thought and thought.

"Let's start with... do you still have a good gain from the ship? Can you tie that tricorder into the main-frame and get a reading on the age of any of this? Do some comparisons?"

She shrugged. "I'll try. Don't know how accurate it'll be. The mainframe's still skittish."

"Do your best."

Having asked, he had to now stand here and wait while she worked. And this fellow over here also seemed willing to wait. Fine as detailed waxwork, the statue-uh, mannequin-mummy-how could any-body get used to this? The dead were supposed to be buried or boxed or cremated or something de-cent! This one just stood there and gazed at him the same as Shucorion did. Literally the same. Even that little half-a-smile, like it thought Keller was funny to watch.

The chamber, spired and moin6-draped, set itself apart from the other chambers. This one had pearly spires, but no torture areas for petrification. In fact, there were very few of the standing dead here. Only their friend here and the other two.

"Mmmm," Savannah uttered, tormenting her tri-corder. "Well, we can rule out any idea that this is a modified Kauld battlebarge or any design from avail-able Blood or Kauld technology."

Keller spun around. "Why?"

Her Tahitian eyes squinted. A lock of russet hair fell between them. "Some of these bodies are pretty fresh, metallically speaking, but the majority are old enough to be historic relics. And they've been in place a long time. No signs of disturbance in their mountings or the stuff around them"

"Except us."

"Right. Until us, I doubt they've been bothered at all. The bulkhead in here and the ones behind it, right down to the perimeter of space, are pulling dates in the thou-sand-year range. Younger parts might be additions or repairs, but even those are old. The Kauld didn't have battlebarges more than eighty years ago."

"There goes that theory."

"Why did Shucorion think it looked like old Kauld, then?"

"There are only so many good designs to go around. Dang, I hate averages," Keller grumbled, unsatisfied. 'Tell me how old Shucorion's brother here is."

Turning to the subject, Savannah scanned its face. "More like his uncle. See the bracketing of the mouth? Crease across the forehead? I'd give him a few years on Shucorion. Lips are thinner too. And there's a slight slope across the-"

"I didn't ask for an art critic. Analyze, analyze."

"Give me some space, magpie." She shouldered him back.

Though her attitude managed to shuttle down the tension level for him, damnable seconds passed into good minutes before she was ready to report. She cali-brated and recalibrated her readings, double-checked, confirmed, started over and did the whole thing fresh.

Finally her dartlike brows went up and down and she looked into the eyes of the petrified corpse. "According to everything I can pick up here, he's been cooperating for about eleven thousand years. Error of fifty either way"

"Eleven thousand?" He shook his head and ended up in a grimace of doubt. "Naw... are you sure about all this? From what we saw in there, isn't it more likely they're some kind of android instead of corpses? Maybe it's not their skin."

She impaled him with a look. "It is skin. This is his hair. The follicles are still intact. These are real dead people, and most of them have been dead for thousands of years."

"Mercy..." ;

He eyed the man who so strikingly resembled his alien first officer. Just how alien was Shucorion?

"He's glossier than the others. Except the others in this room-they look different too. Are they made of something newer? They're more polished. Brushed."

Savannah responded with an immediate skin scrap-ing on the twin. The reading came back instantly, as if the little reader were hitting a stride. "Older. These are probably the oldest of all."

With a glance around at the ultimate occult, Keller hunched his shoulders. "Do you get the idea this room is special?"

She sighed tightly. "Subjective. Could be our imagi-nations playing on us. It's just so comfortable here."

"Thank you, Morticia."

Again she gave her attention to the face that so dis-turbed them both and threw everything they'd seen so far into a whole new bucket. "I think we should station this down in auxiliary control. Play with the crew's minds. Tell them Shucorion turned to rock. And it's a virus. Has he breathed on them lately?"

Keller held up a finger to stop her. "I don't want him to find out yet, understand?"

"I get it," she said. "I just don't agree. He might know something about this."

"He'd have told us if anything looked familiar. He's as out of place as the rest of us. Just got a feeling to keep quiet right now."

'The real question is why it looks like him "

"Could it be a coincidence?"

"Nick, if I painted Shucorion with silica resin you couldn't tell them apart. Except for the brackets and the crease in his brow and the slope of his nose... maybe the cheekbones are a little too-"

"You work on it quietly. The answer'll probably show up when we find out where this vessel came from. Maybe there's a genetic connection with the Blood."

"We could determine that if we had any idea what these people's original skin color was. That's the primary dissimilarity between Blood or Kauld and most other basic humanoid physiology. There's no blue human."

Holding up a hand, Keller drew a breath. 'Ten things at a time. I'm about to give a pack of orders and since I'm not likely to pay much attention, you'll have to re-member'em."

"Deal."

"First, get those strings out of Zane. Second, when we get back I want an exhaustive trace of the path of this vehicle. Where did it come from? How did it just appear in scouted space? Third, bring in a limited team and secure this place. Block off any of those grids and look for other trip switches. Fourth, keep Shucorion out of here, but show him any new data you get, not allow-ing him to happen to see this guy. In fact, keep all the Blood crew members out until further notice. I don't want any wild rumors. Fourth-"

"Fifth."

"Yen, fifth, figure out its weapons and sensors. Why did it attack Bonifay and Shucorion in their Plume?

How come it only lets us beam into that one area? What kind of a sphere of defense has it got? Auto-mated? Or is somebody hiding behind the walls peep-ing at us?"

Savannah glanced around, tantalized. "Ooohh..." His hand hooked her arm. He drew her toward what he hoped was still a way out 'That's my morning. Pickin' around a smelly old tomb with a herd of medal-lion-headed marionettes... some log entry this'll make."

Chapter Seven

The United Federation Frigate Challenger theoretically, and in the regard of the colonists she guarded, the Composite Frigate Challenger was a new ship. The word "composite," though, was a eu-phemism. In function, she was a discordant puzzle of sections and systems from dismantled vessels, all of which had been dragged from hell to Belle Terre be-fore being parted out. In the weeks since Keller had ordered her contrived, hoping to put up a front and scare off anyone cooking the idea to tamper with the planet or its precious resources, the frigate had per-formed in an eccentric, wild manner. She was strong, fitted with a Blood warp core and muscular towing engines-the "mules" that had hauled thousands of colonists here. She possessed state-of-the-art systems from Starfleet and a dozen other sources. Since inven-tion is a constant rolling process, though, the systems frequently argued and about thirty percent of the time put their noses in the air, demanding the other guy give in. Burnouts, overloads, and viral collapses rock-eted around the ship's guts on a daily basis. Hourly they discovered some new problem and had to figure a way around it. Keller and Bonifay usually spent two watches out of three every day putting out spot-fires and learning how to reroute power from a button to the thing they wanted to happen when the button got pushed. ;

When Keller needed power and presence, however, the ship stuck her chin out, picked up her skirts, and al-ways seemed to go where he wanted her to go. Since nobody but the crew knew she had anything but basic shakedown problems, her appearance on a scene of skirmish was usually effective. So far.

The transporters, fitted together piecemeal from a dozen other units, were unhappy machines. They oper-ated, but residual nausea was a side effect Keller kept forgetting to fight when he beamed in and out. When he materialized on the pad, his guts twisted like rubber-bands and didn't exactly spring back into shape when he saw Shucorion waiting for him, still ashy from their ordeal, at the base of the platform steps.

Savannah paused at the edge of the platform, locked her gaze on Shucorion's sapphire complexion and pale expressive eyes-back to Sagittarius Cluster normal after the weird lighting in the grave ship-then un-locked and thumped past him without a word. The poker face of a puppy.

Perplexed, Shucorion watched her go. He expected a remark and was surprised not to get one. Though Keller tried to descend the pad snappishly and exude confi-dence, the bottom step had other ideas. He stumbled. By the time he straightened, Shucorion was at one side and another form had moved out from behind-a media recorder unit was halfway down Keller's throat before he realized there was someone else in the room.

He swayed back and waved the media unit off. "Mr. Zapf, please! This isn't the time!"

Behind the recorder unit an egg-shaped face popped up at about chin-level, wearing anti-intensity goggles, a knitted hat, baggy trousers and a deeply contrived swag-ger. "It's always the time for the public to be informed," the little man's deep and dramatic voice proclaimed. "Everything that happens here is history. History hi the making. And you're part of it At the cusp. Bracing your determined jaw into the storms of new-"

"No, no, no storms today. Clear out of the transporter area, would you, and give me a chance to check on my injured officers. Not asking too much, eh?"

The lower lip poked out "Captain Keller, you agreed with the Office of the Governor, Belle Terre Colonial Law Enforcement Statute Zeta-B, to my being aboard this ship. To record any and all significant undertakings for the planetary archives. Secure these historic mo-ments for use as training footage for future patriots and the heroes of law enforcement. I'm a trusted archivist."

Keller's bruised hip cocked under his hand. "You're a newshound, Mr. Zapf. We got no news yet. We picked up a derelict, is all, and got potshotted by its auto defense. No casualties. Disappear, or I'll pitch you in that bay and make it happen. And don't call me 'captain.' "

To date he was running about sixty-forty at handling Seth Zapf. Letting his shoulder speak for him, he took Shucorion by the elbow and angled deeper into the transporter room. "Feeling better?"

"Yes, thank you. I must speak to you about Bonifay's actions aboard the Plume."

Out of the corner of his mouth, Keller whispered, "Not yet Have we picked up any source of motive power on that monster?"

"Monsters?" Seth Zapf interrupted from the trans-porter room door. He clicked on his recorder. "Describe diem, please/*

Shucorion, who didn't understand sensationalism at all, eyed the little man but continued his report. "I'm sorry. We can't find a source. It seems to have no en-gines."

"No engines," Keller mused. "Under power, with no source."

"When Bonifay and I were trapped in the crippled Plume," Shucorion altered, "I forward a call to the nearest Blood patrol. They responded. Though they were too far to rescue us, I was in contact with them when Bonifay abandoned the Plume."

'1 know" Keller soothed. "We've got to organize the Blue Net with better area coverage and see if we can't upgrade their speed-to-consumption ratios."

"But they maybe-"

Keller silenced him with a grip on his arm. Zapf was right over there. His damned recorder probe was still flickering.

"Mr. Zapf, I told you not to use activated devices on board," Keller spoke up. "You can report, but you can't eavesdrop. Do your sniffing on the lower decks."

'The people have a right to know, Captain."

"No, they don't." He took away the device and handed it to the kid at the transporter. "Midshipman, put this in your quarters, under guard."

"Yes, Commander!"

"I knew we shoulda never brought the media." Keller pulled Shucorion toward the door, bat drilled Zapf with final clarity. "Don't call me 'captain.' "

"How can we make those switches trip-proof while we work?"

"Quadruple safeties-on all the hatches-and evacu-ate the area so the motion sensors don't-activate... and reinforce the gag-swivel appliances."

"But we're out of lubricant.**

"Use the fire-retardant-ow!"

"Why can't we just adjust our load with the walker claw?"

"Not-strong enough for overloads."

"Where do we keep the backup gravbalancers?"

A clutter of voices.

In Challenger's garish excuse for a sickbay, a crinkly blue ball of steriles hovered beside the treatment couch. Somewhere inside the crinkles, behind a safety shield, Savannah Ring's head was tilted almost sideways. Her gloved hands worked incomprehensibly on the back part of Bonifay's thigh, just above the knee.

With Shucorion close behind, Keller stepped into the medical area and found himself hi a crowd. A half-dozen assorted crewmen were already here, loaded with questions gathered during Bonifay's absence.

"The clews on the head-wall in the armory vault won't take those bolts you gave me," someone was say-ing. "What do you want me to use instead?"

"Cannibalize the bolts out of the-longitudinal band-ings in the Rover strake dry stores. Those-can be- cold-riveted into place... mmm..."

When the crowd parted, Keller found himself awash in instant pity. The questions abruptly ended as he and Shucorion stepped through a mutter of welcome-sirs and mornin'-commanders, and finally got a look at the whole scene.

Wearing only a thermal blanket and his black Starfleet-issue T-shirt, Bonifay lay on his side in a per-fection of agony. He winced and moaned with every shift of Savannah's shoulders, his hands knotted under his chin, sad eyes wincing through a fence of black hair. Every few seconds his fingers flexed as if grasping for relief, or dug at the edge of the couch. Bloodied metal strings thin as human hairs lay discarded on the deck under him, more than a dozen at first glance.

Despite all that, Bonifay struggled through the an-swers. At first he didn't see Keller come up at his feet, because his eyes were focused on a small screen on the wall monitors busily working. It showed some kind of archaeological dig in a sunny environment. Bonifay's attention fixed on the screen as he battled to distract himself from the pain.

"We-always move cargo in-zero-G " he struggled. "Gravbalancers-are in the tool alley-starboard- aft..."

One of the crewmen started to ask yet another ques-tion, but held back when Keller and Shucorion moved forward along the med couch. At Bonifay's side, Keller's stomach pinched tight and an involuntary groan of empathy popped from his lips.

"Aw..." All he could offer was a firm touch and hoped Bonifay's arm wasn't one of the tender places. "Gypsy, you're a wreck."

"Kill me... strangle me..."

"Aw, sorry... Savannah, can you give him some anesthetic?"

"I did, some. Options are limited here."

"Can't you take the edge off mis?"

"I know my limitations," she bit sharply.

Yellow alert-scanning frustration.

A moment later she admitted, "I'm not so great at anesthesia. He'll tough it out I'm almost done."

"Where's the sterile field emitter?*'

"We don't have one,*' Bonifay answered for her.

Keller scowled. "I got it from the wreck of the mercy ship myself!"

"Turned up faulty."

"Didn't we have two of those lined up?"

"You should've asked me when I was alive...."

No point discussing what they didn't have, at least not now. Rather than pester Bonifay with stock ques-tions, Keller dropped the subject. He glanced behind him at the other crewmen, each needing the answer to some problem only Bonifay could answer.

"Folks, let's give Mr. Bonifay some time to recover. Is there anything that can't wait an hour?"

There was only one answer, even though it might be a lie. "No, sir," muttered the crowd in various degrees of conviction. Still, he was forced to jerk a thumb to-ward the door before they actually got the message and filed out, to leave the officers alone in the little bay.

'Thanks.. " Bonifay dug his fingers into the couch, huffed a grunt of relief, and continued to focus on the wall monitor. "Now I can-concentrate-on something important-"

"What're you watching?" Keller asked.

**Zapf just received-the new-warp twenty news-reels-from Earth."

"Already? They weren't due for three more weeks "

**Mmm... somebody finally got permission to-ex-cavate the-sunken settlement with the Roman villa they found under-the Turkish basin..."

"Fits,'* Keller offered, "since we just got back from Pompeii."

"Mmm..." Valiantly enduring the pain, Bonifay didn't take his eyes off the ancient ruins. "They haven't gotten to my house yet."

Out of the present, into something-else. Keller peered at him, but Bonifay was completely involved in the excavation footage. With a connective glance at Sa-vannah, Keller clamped his lips and didn't comment.

Instead he watched Savannah as she worked. She was the perfect kind of person for fieldwork, even if they weren't in the field. Her touchiness, Keller knew, came from the lack of proper equipment and not necessarily Bonifay's pain. Her patient's suffering didn't come into play. She tolerated it as part of the program, expected Bonifay to bite the bullet, and didn't let discomfort affect the treatment one way or the other. If it hurt, it hurt

Which quite apparently it did.

"Maybe we should take him back to the clinic on Belle Terre," Keller suggested.

"I'm almost done," she grumbled. 'Take a breath, Zane. It's no worse than having a baby."

"How would you know?" His complexion dusty, Bonifay gritted his bright teeth and sucked in a searing breath. He couldn't hold it, and was overtaken by shud-ders of pain.

"You sure about the anesthetic?" Keller asked, trying to talk over Bonifay to Savannah. "Seems like there should be-"

"Look, there are two facts in my business," she laid out. "One, you can't keep people from getting hurt. Two, you can't keep from hurting people." Her gloved hand appeared with a long bloodied metallic string in a pair of pincers. "Last one."

Keller bit his lip and kept his comment to himself. Beside him, Shucorion worked to control his own ex-pression.

"Good job, Savannah," Keller offered. "In the Great Someday, I'll send you to the colony for advanced training. Maybe get a ship's doctor back."

"Someday. When we get ten minutes hi a row."

Time to stop helping. He stood with both hands on Bonifay, to offer what little support he had to give. It was therapy for himself, too, to have a grip on a living shipmate and not be standing over a loss. Residual fear for Zane Bonifay still clawed at him-that horrid, help-less feeling. Year after year before this, his assignment on the Starfleet Patrol Cruiser Peleliu had been a com-fortable life, with plenty of everything, always within spit-distance of any help they needed. He'd been third officer, then second, buffered by the primary command structure ahead of him. The same captain, the same CO, a familiar unit, a stable crew complement, month by month, for four years in secured space. Always a starbase within flight range, other ships passing con-stantly, trade-offs, shore leaves, extra help, crew swaps, a real doctor and nurse on staff, well-stocked galley, well-stocked sickbay... thus he'd been spoiled. This life hi starvation mode had him by the neck. He'd built a ship, but Challenger was still forty percent facade, a pretense of completion, just for show.

Until today the deprivations of frontier life had been tricky, picky, and irritating enough. This was the first time a crewman actually suffered hi his hands because of what they didn't have.

"What's the matter with you?" Bonifay suddenly asked. He was looking at Shucorion. "You got a problem."

Keller looked at Shucorion, but he couldn't read his first officer's contemplative expression.

After a few seconds of silence, Shucorion interrupted the solemn nastiness of the moment and admitted, "There is a complication...."

What was that tone all about? Suddenly a cluster of little shadows from the past hour clicked into place as he realized Shucorion wasn't just recovering-he was nervous. >

"Let's hear it," Keller encouraged.

"Yes..." Shucorion eyed Bonifay. "You'll have to arrest him."

"Damn!" Bonifay's head popped up. "I knew he had a strange idea!"

Though troubled, Shucorion was uncomfortably steady in his conviction. "He deserted his post. I or-dered him to stay. He evacuated in spite of my order."

Instantly angry, Bonifay struggled, "We were losing control over the power plant! We tried to keep it patched together-" He choked through a wave of pain.

Keller's grip lost its tenderness. "Lay still and give me your story."

"Lie... not lay." Bonifay drew a lungful and rammed through the rest of the explanation. "We were losing. We sent distress calls-we didn't know if they got through, the Plume was breaking up, about to kill us. The Ship of the Dead looked derelict-seemed airtight, pressure was right, we weren't gonna pop when we opened the lock-didn't look like it would blow up, so I docked and that's where I went. We'd have died, and-we didn't"

He collapsed, exhausted. Behind him, Savannah kept working, but flicked her eyes off Keller a couple of times.

Shucorion insisted, "He went against a direct order to stay and fight for our patrol ship. He has broken the rule of any service."

His voice was stable, many-layered, evenly tem-pered. He paused and let them all absorb his deeper meaning before finishing his announcement.

"A Hand of Blood Savages is on its way to us," he proclaimed. 'They will take him"

Chapter Eight

"have you gone wild?" Keller bellowed.

Behind the couch, Savannah Ring jolted. A shock of fresh agony shot through Bonifay, who gulped and al-most rolled off the table.

Keller caught him and held him through the explo-sions in his own skull. An instant headache grabbed him by the eyeballs.

Shucorion waited until Bonifay's spasm passed, but not long.

"Agreement is everything," the Blood officer went on, undeniable in the force of his experience. "Any-one's refusal to work threatens everyone. In these days, the danger is worse than ever it has been. Ships are big-ger, faster, with more weapons, and Federation comes With even newer technology. If my people drop our guard and the rules of work slacken-"

*1 didn't refuse to do work!" Bonifay squalled.

Keller held him in place. "Nobody's saying you did."

"He's saying it!"

"That's not what he means." He looked at Shucorion. "Is it?"

With both caution and disdain, Shucorion met his glare. "He left his post. Blood Many will not tolerate such an abandonment."

"What business do they have in this?" Keller roared. "You're stationed on Challenger now, not with them!"

Shucorion's expressive eyes hardened as if this were some kind of insult "You cannot order me not to report," he protested, *to hold secrets from my own people. This is a condition of the extended fleet you 'borrowed.' "

Fiercely Keller challenged, "When did I agree to that!"

"In the Bond of Support. The alliance." Frustrated by Keller's anger and Bonifay's completely defiant scowl, Shucorion held an imploring hand between Keller and himself. "You were asked to be part of the negotiations between Federation and Blood Many-"

"I was not! Yes, I was...."

"Yes. You were. You remanded the duty to Governor Pardonnet He made an agreement to follow Blood rules on Blood ships."

Keller beat down the ringing in his head. Was the temperature changing in here now too? "I had my own ship to fit out in order to defend Belle Terre and your planet!" His teeth gritted as he added, "A good com-mander delegates!"

"But a good commander checks," Shucorion said. "You forgot to check. Governor Pardonnet did his best, but he is not a farer of space nor a soldier. Belle Terre needed Blood support and he saw no harm. But yours is an alien culture with alien morals. You have come into our Cluster and you must work to understand us. To Blood, agreement is everything. Discipline is ex-pected. This is how we have survived "

Fishing for a way to make all this simple and clear, Shucorion lowered his voice to tame the moment.

*1 am your voice,'* he added. "Would you let him dis-obey you?"

He was right. Military discipline existed for good reason, tempered by thousands of years in a thousand cultures. All over the known galaxy, the process had come out nearly the same, a Roman-army process of orders and assumptions of duty. Men had been weak and cracked, but most held to the standard.

What had affected Bonifay? Had weakness figured in? Fear? Defiance? The fact that he just didn't like Shucorion?

Ship's business Keller could handle. Political com-plications, legal twists-this had never been his place as third or second officer. He had been a first officer for a matter of days before seizing command from an un-stable captain. Just days... he knew what a first officer was supposed to do, but he'd never really done it. Cer-tainly captaincy had been even more steps away, a post of such sorcery that he had never coveted it. Collecting details and problems and handing them updeck was a whole other way of life. He'd never handled sweeping problems. Now what?

Shucorion had been appointed by Keller, had agreed to act as first officer on Challenger, had been asked to come and help, take a secondary position even though he had been a full avedon, a captain in his own planet's fleet. Keller had given his stamp of approval to Shuco-rion in view of the entire Star Cluster of Sagittarius. To disobey one was the same as disobeying the other.

But Shucorion wasn't Starfleet. He had been all his life in a war situation. In a culture ever seeking the reli-able, driven by damage and tempered by deprivation such as Keller had never experienced, he had risen to command of a warship during a patchy and cyclical conflict with very few constants. Though they weren't militaristic people at heart, like Klingons or Romulans, Blood Many had developed an exaggerated scaffold of behavior in order to hack out a future against fee odds. Self-preservation had been beaten back and replaced by the structure of supports. They depended upon each other's participation in it Shucorion peered outside of the structure more than most of his people, but he still clung to it with all fours. He wouldn't gamble, he wouldn't guess, and he wouldn't hope.

And so far, he hadn't lied.

Complications ran crazy in Keller's head. Shock number four hundred this week-it was no myth, old joke, or simple adage that a ship commander really did have to be in two places at once.

What other orders have I agreed not to give?

Before him Shucorion waited, watching the color go out of Keller's cheeks and his green eyes change to comprehension.

"Blood Many fear becoming second-rate," the Blood said. "We have managed for generations not to be dom-inated by All Kauld, yet in this day we're helping someone else dominate us."

He paused. When he spoke again, his voice much quieter, even Savannah stopped working. Shucorion, though, fixed his gaze only on the one man who would make the difference.

"Such a thread is thin, Mr. Keller. If you protect Bonifay from Blood judgment, this will be taken as proof that your Federation means sooner or later to dominate us."

"Ridiculous," Keller spat.

Shucorion was ready. "I've been reviewing your Fed-eration. The galaxy is far more dangerous than my direst imaginings of it. There are waning civilizations, monsters, mysteries-it amazes me that people survive. You do so with the same principles as Blood on our world of deprivation and disasters. Discipline. When there is not enough food, nature demands we kill the next man and take his food. Discipline stops us. It tames us to take back our hands and let ourselves starve because it is his turn to eat. Do you think it is Blood nature to struggle as we do? To go without sleep? Food? Work until' we die? 'Hold on to the end' is a rule all Blood understand because each Blood knows the man next to him will obey. Some will die, but we will all have a chance. If one runs, all will run. All will die."

Keller felt his jaw tighten. "I'm supposed to let Bonifay be taken because you want things tidy?**

"Loose ends will whip." Shucorion paused a mo-ment, then looked again at Bonifay, with something like sentiment or regret. "I understand... self-preser-vation is not weakness of character. It must be actively, forcefully counteracted. Otherwise, we can lose every-thing. And we, out here, can lose everything."

With a slight inflection on the one important big word, he drove home his point.

None of the Starfleet people could argue. They all knew that was the deal going in-Bonifay couldn't hide behind the dodge that he hadn't signed up for this. They had, all of them. It was the common clause in militaries throughout history, from star to shining star.

"It is the same with you, your Starfleet, the navies and squadrons that gave it structure. You have the calls of duty, the rights over wrongs, layers upon layers of structure-and the foundation of all this is finally the threat Blood ships are under Blood law. Desertion calls for particular action-"

*'I didn't desert you," Bonifay grumbled.

Shucorion looked at him. "We should have fought to maintain the Plume."

"It was about to blow up."

"It may not have had we stayed!" A volcanic rush of anger came up in Shucorion's voice as he looked again to Keller, not without some sympathy. "You have a repu-tation here now. There is much work for you to come up to that reputation. You are important here. You will issue an opinion by day, and people will live and die by it at night. On the Plume, my order was not to go. If you let him disobey an order, if you let him disobey my order-"

Shooting him a bitter glare, Keller warned, "Don't pressure me."

But Shucorion's air-gray eyes, dark-lashed and seri-ous, were steady in his conviction. "I must nourish your strength, not your compassion. You've chosen me to do it."

Keller pushed away from the couch, aware of Savan-nah's silent eyes and Bonifay's refusal to look at him. He felt supremely isolated Everybody out here was a maverick except him. He was the only one who hadn't been planning to stay at Belle Terre. All the others- Zoa, Zane, Savannah, the colonists-had come because they thought this would be a place that didn't have any rules, where they could make up their own. And who did they run into? The Blood. Rule-o-rama.

Shucorion had done his homework. Severe and sometimes unfair discipline had resulted in the most powerful and efficient naval units in history. All sailors and spacefarers understood and accepted mat The last thing they wanted was not being able to trust the man next to them to stand firm in the face of die enemy. They knew goof-offs would weaken their fabric and sooner or later- they'd all be dead. The rules were im-portant because they could control so little in their en-vironment A captain who wasn't stern, even harsh, wasn't trusted. It took one element of uncertainty out of a nearly unbearable way of life.

A battle situation, their ship dying around them-if Shucorion and Bonifay hadn't been near enough to raft with another vessel, they'd have had to stay and fight for the Plume and probably died there. Keller would have to ask that of them day by day out here, on Chal-lenger, mad stallion that it was. Who could predict when the Blood core might decide to buck the Starfleet guidance system or the mercenary coolants? Any day the Belle Terre treaty could collapse or some renegade faction in the Cluster could take out a contract on the new guys, or the Kauld civil war might go sour. His life, his crew's, their ship carried only so much cache, even among the human population of Belle Terre, and certainly among Blood and Kauld and anybody who lived or lurked in the suburbs of Sagittarius.

Didn't he have to ask them every day, wasn't it his obligation, to lay their lives on the line, no matter how near they might be to an escape route?

His innards puckered up. How had this happened? How had he gone from second mate in secure space to the marshal of mayhem? Never before had he encoun-tered a situation for which Starfleet had no ready regu-lation, no nearby support, or superior to consult?

*This is just... wretched," he muttered through the stranglehold. He turned with an acrid gaze to Shuco-rion. 'They're not out to punish Bonifay, are they? They're out to test me. Aren't they?"

The Blood's expression mellowed. "Of course they are."

'There's got to be some way around this."

Shucorion simply shook his head, but only once. "Blood will not stand for exceptions, especially not from Keller. We hold you in great esteem for your brav-ery and innovation, but it is fragile. You are still a stranger. My people are already having difficulty being secondary in our own star cluster. We vastly outnumber Federation here, yet we are all in secondary posts. The legend of Keller is the only force holding us with you. If you want my people to take your orders, then you must show them why. If you let my orders be dis-obeyed, if you protect him, all your words about treating us as equals will dissolve. You have planets watching you. Planets."

The plural came out clearly enough and bit Keller in the nose. As if one planet weren't enough! How many people was that? How many conversations in public and private? How many mutterings in the night, secret prayers, reassurances to children and cries for hope?

Dragging the weight of his own image, Keller fixed his eyes on Bonifay, lying helpless as Savannah closed his wounds, and saw quite clearly the much bigger wound.

He sighed. "Some pep talk."

Chapter Nine the ship smelled a certain comforting way. Industrial lubricants, insulation, heating elements, oiled spark tarps, cleaning fluids... work soup.

The climb up through the access companionways from the transporter room to the bridge made for a nos-talgic tour. Keller had never visited most of the ships whose parts had contributed to the construction of Challenger, but as he ducked his head and skimmed past the scored and stressed pieces, bolted with old bolts, welded with reconstituted solder, scratched with the names of engineers, ensigns, midshipmen, artisans, and every manner of person who tears down and refabricates, he heard the echoes of then: aspirations, the ef-fort of every mind and hand on the seventy ships of the Belle Terre Expedition. During these last few weeks as Challenger had been hurriedly fitted out, he and Bosun Zane Bonifay, Savannah Ring, Zoa, and everyone else who had traveled from Federation space, had become convinced that every one of the seventy vessels making that historic journey had contributed at least one piece, bolt or conduit or wire.

Maybe it was fantasy, but the reality wouldn't be too far off. They'd cannibalized to the last decimal, building a ship that could launch, fly, fight, load, haul, tow, and land, with traits of everything they could think to con-jure up. Down to the moss-green, burgundy, or dark blue commando sweaters that doubled as their idea of a uni-form, everything here had been bequeathed from some other vessel sacrificed to the settling of Belle Terre.

She was part Blood too-her hyperlight core had been taken from Shucorion's Plume, destroyed by the Peleliu's unstable captain. Challenger was officially a new ship, but in pure fact she was a resurrection.

Belle Terre's commitment lived here, too, right here in these scored bits. All these parts and sections, transmuted from scattered salvage into a single vessel, were a mark of forward determination. This frigate was the body of the colonists decision not to turn back, not ever. The transport ships were in the Sagittarius Star Ouster for good now, in me forms of their homes, barns, utility buildings, and gasping little towns and spaceports, and in this mongrel ship. The weather-racked struggle on Belle Terre would be their future, and Challenger would strike out to defend them, with a little situational help from the much less advanced Blood fleet She would put on a show of strength while her crew learned how to make her go forward without knocking themselves to their knees.

Always seemed Zane Bonifay was nuts, talking about the spirits and whispers of individuals both alive and dead, murmuring through the bones of this com-posite frigate... and maybe it was just the effect of the grave ship, but as Nick Keller climbed through the companionways in the vessel's neck, over and up through the primary hull made from the primaries of two wrecked hard-fighting Startleet ships, he heard those whispers. He felt the breath of the people who had died securing Belle Terre, their families and ship-mates who still depended upon him and this frigate, a partnership still in the forge.

He was glad to avoid the main corridors. They were narrow and intimate. He didn't feel like greeting any-one. He wanted to pick his way through the ship's veins and be left alone. The tornado was swirling around him, and all he could do was snatch at it here and there. Governor Pardonnet had made an agreement with Blood Many. Did that mean Keller had to accept every paragraph? How powerful was a treaty out here, where there were yet no laws, no diplomats, no tables of dis-cussion, no due process?

This was a lawless sector. How would things ever improve if they didn't follow the laws they made up themselves?

But with so few people knowing the rules yet, and more being made up by the day, everyone on the ship would be in the klink for one reason or another if he went strictly by the book, or whatever was left of it Keller had broken four Starfleet regulations before breakfast just to get the Blue Net supplied for another couple of weeks. There weren't enough people qualified in this patchwork crew to hold fighting posts on the bridge, not enough with basic engineering skills, never mind creative improvisers-not enough even to keep the laundry done.

And Shucorion wanted Bonifay put away for appear-ance's sake?

During the last thirty feet to the bridge, the tube was narrower than any other on the ship. The maze of shoulder-width veins gave them access to thousands of mismatched circuits and a pathway through the ship in case the psychopathic turbolifts acted up. He liked the tubes. They were personal. This last stretch was tight, though, took some getting used to.

His head popped out of the hatch forward of the sci-deck, in the command arena just port of the pilot sta-tion. The football-shaped sci-deck stood four feet higher than the command deck, flanked by stumpy steps both forward and aft of it Up there were the engi-neering master systems monitor and the science station, neatly fenced off by a wrist-high curved metal wall punched with quatrefoil designs. Like everything else on board, the screen had come off one of the Expedi-tion ships, in fact one of the most elegant of them-the Coroner Ship Twilight Sentinel. There was something sadly Gothic and yet stately about the burnished bronze screen with its beet-red caprail, like having a piece of a cathedral. The screen was his favorite part of the bridge. The Twilight Sentinel had been the kind of ship nobody wants to see coming, but everyone appreciates for its grace and its duty. No one wants a funeral home around, until it becomes the last chance for comfort And then, you want a little class.

"Oh-mercy," he winced aloud. Aches thundered across his back and thighs as he climbed the last rung of the ladder hatch and stepped out onto the carpet The burgundy low-nap was already worn, but of course it had started out that way.

He leaned on the slanted chip bank of the pilot's pul-pit and pressed his other hand to a bruised hip. He straightened more carefully the second time and hoped nobody noticed.

Nobody did. Up on the sci-deck, Lucy Quinones was picking at the science readouts, probably trying to fig- ore out the question of the day-the grave ship's power source. Her dirty-blond hair obscured her face, but her posture suggested frustration. No answers yet

Across the work theatre from where Keller stood, Zoa manned her post on the crescent-shaped quarter-deck, at the tactical/weapons pulpit. Her control desk was swung out so the operator could face forward and see the main screen without turning. The other stations up there-mule engine/impulse drive and communica-tions-were unmanned, therefore closed up tight, mak-ing curved bulges under the brightly colored systems monitors that ringed the workstations. Beneath each desk, a pivoting stool with a fold-down lumbar support waited for occupation. Since this wasn't a very roomy bridge, desk stations that swung out of the way made for easier movement

Okay, admit it to yourself, Commander, sir. Easier evacuation, easier to abandon ship. At least know why you've got what you've got.

And admit you like it here.

He did like it This place was roguishly mismatched, the same as her crew. There was something unpolished about it, like a rough ranch landscape or a wild horse. A little dirty, a little wild, quite a lot untamed about the black, khaki, and navy blue panels, the dark red carpet down here, blue up there, the access steps obviously from two different sources, the curved ladder to the sci-deck from a third. The ship had patchwork guts, patch-work skin, patchwork skeleton, and crazy-quilt looks on the inside and outside. The people who built her so quickly had done a good job trying for uniformity, try-ing to stick with earthy colors with roots in militaria. The only renegade was the forest green command chair with brass studs on its arms. Keller had no idea which ship had donated it to the cause, but certainly not one of the Starfleet ships.

Maybe he liked the goofy-looking bridge because it didn't demand Starfleet perfection of him. It didn't have any itself.

Over beside the kidney-shaped navigation/sensor post on this lower deck, Savannah Ring was pulling her boots on over the legs of a bright red one-piece envirosuit. Now, that looked more like somebody who was about to invade a foreign environment.

He came around the helm behind her, and for a moment paused to commune with their figurehead, the commemorative coin mounted like a standing lollipop on the nav desk. The historic coin, which the famous Chief Engineer Scott had called a hood ornament," had been struck in the memory of the Space Shuttle Challenger from Earth's first century space flight- just a bit of an inspiration here and now.

When Keller stepped into her periphery, Savannah yelped, spun around, and dropped her helmet. "Scared me!"

He grinned. "Next time I'll pop out of a deck box and break into 'The Michigan Rag/ What're you doing up here?"

"I didn't want to broadcast all over the frigate that we're going back. The boarding party is fitted out and we're ready to reengage the tomb ship. I've got four men, plus me, no Blood, no non-Starfleet."

Keller glanced up at the tactical post, where Zoa sat picking at her weapons alignment programs. "And no sphinx?"

"No, thanks." She picked up the recon helmet "Her IQ and her breast size are the same."

"I dunno... Zoa's pretty good backup." At her expression he gave up before starting, and instead sur-veyed her plump body in the service suit and harness. "You look fetching hi that rig."

"Precious, aren't I?" She stretched out one arm and surveyed the red outergarment's temperature-taming and cut-resistant fabric. "Those barbs'll never spear through this stuff."

He grimaced at the memory of Bonifay in the razor cocoon. "Don't get cocky. I'd prefer you be careful and nobody gets caught in a trap. Avoid disturbing those bodies."

"How can I analyze them if I can't disturb them?"

"Just walk up and ask what the devil they're doing here."

"They'll just ask what I'm doing here and I won't have an answer."

"Give 'em the old *Go to the brig or go to Belle Terre' story."

"The truth? Hell no."

"How's Bonifay?"

"He's off the table," she said with a sigh. **Last I saw, he was meditating in front of a pile of bay leaves on fire in a petri dish."

"What for?"

'To level his karma and cast a spell."

"On me, probably."

"I didn't ask. Pretty excruciating episode."

"Details, woman, details."

"Oh, few miles of internal injuries from those wires and the tube, some general contusions, a bump on the head... I sealed the lacerations in his organs, but he'll hurt for a while. From here on it's better to heal natu-rally than have me rooting around in there without so-phisticated equipment" She adjusted the utility harness over her protective suit and clipped it into place. "Or a medical license/' she muttered without looking at him.

His own legs ached as he sank into the command chair's forgiving leather and watched her adjust the suit's built-in sensors. They'd both made mistakes the first time over to that tomb. The boarding party should all have been wearing more protection than just the O2 masks. He'd never ordered a search and-rescue mission before. She'd never led one. Oh, they knew all the pro-cedures, but they'd been in a hurry. Was that an excuse or a reason? Somehow the emergency of a warp explo-sion on the two-man scout carrying their shipmates had blown away precaution.

I've got to make sure that never happens again. Our slip is showing.

Or was there such thing as moving too slowly? Not being impulsive enough in an emergency situation? So far, impulse hadn't been his problem. He'd impulsively dislodged his own captain from command. He'd impul-sively built this ship and impulsively set up a picket de-fense. How long before it didn't work anymore?

Did Savannah feel the same? They should discuss their errors... they should. A captain should...

His throat closed up. He couldn't ask.

On the sci-deck, Quinones was glancing at them, but didn't interrupt She plainly had no report yet and didn't even want to start a conversation that would put her on the spot Fine. When she had information, he'd be the first to know. Badgering the crew with demands for a report wouldn't do a bit of good.

"Y'know, Nick," Savannah began again as she picked at the sensors on her helmet, "sooner or later, you'll have to use the lifts."

His throat tightened. "I use the lifts."

Wisely she batted her eyes at him. "Ever since Derek died trapped in Peleliu^ you've avoided them.'*

A sudden heat rose under his skin. "You just don't see me when I use them. I use them.**

She lowered her voice. 'The shaft was damaged The track was completely dislodged. It wasn't your fault I couldn't get to him in time, any more than it was my fault'*

"I know, Savannah."

"You don't think it was my fault he died that way, do you?'

"No, no. No."

"Then why blame-"

He reached out and pressed a finger to her lips. "Hush. Go on your mission. Report directly back to me. I'll carry a communicator if I leave the bridge.'*

She pulled on her surveillance helmet with its portable bridge of optical scanners. "We'll talk."

"No, we won't"

With a noncommittal shrug, she clunked up to the crescent deck. To get to the turbolift she passed her own station, the MEL pulpit-medical, environmental, life-support. It was situated almost directly aft of the main screen, next to the off-center lift doors. He wanted her to go there instead of into the turbolift He pressed his lips tight and watched her go in an almost hungry manner. He didn't want to send her back to that ship. Or even into the lift

Don't get into this. Can't think that way. She 'U come out again.

A few moments later the lift door opened and Keller turned, expecting Shucorion and another confrontation. Instead, a disheveled wraith shuddered out of the archway.

"Aw," he moaned. **Zane..." Keller said.

He reached up to take Bonifay's arm, not sure where the wounds were or whether he would inflict more harm than help.

'Thanks-" By inches Bonifay winced his way into Keller's supporting grip. "I've got... a whole body... of paper cuts."

"Ouch" Keller empathized. "Why don't you go below and lay down?"

"Won't help... And it's 'lie' down. Quit getting it wrong."

"Sorry."

"Oh--oh, angels... oh..." Racked by spasms through his cut innards and legs, Bonifay let Keller lower him from the crescent deck to the nav chair with-out even trying to hide his misery. Once gingerly seated, he drew a long breath, shuddered it out, and fought to steady himself. "Oh... thanks... ooof."

Keller held him gently in place. **Who were you casting the spell on?"

"Can't tell you..."

"Spoil it, huh?"

"Rupture the energy flow." Bonifay blinked up at him. "You planning to take disciplinary action against me?"

Maybe the question was too direct, but Keller realized now that he should have expected it.

"Don't you think you deserve it?" he asked.

Bonifay pressed his elbow to the console and leaned - heavily. "Was I supposed to die for him? At his word? When did I become subject to his order?"

"When he accepted the position of executive officer on this ship, that's when."

Bonifay didn't buy the stern tone. "You can't just wave a wand and make him Starfleet"

"Maybe not," Keller said, suddenly ominous, "but we're a long, long way from Starfleet."

"We had an alternative right next to us. There was a way to survive! If his people are so good at survival, why didn't he understand what 1 was telling him?"

"His judgment was to stay aboard."

"I'm supposed to die for him?"

The room suddenly seemed small. Keller lowered his volume. "Yes," he said. 'That's what it comes down to. You've been through Starfleet basic. You know as well as I do, if the order is 'stay and die'... yes, that's what you do. To do anything else is desertion. We're follow-ing Starfleet guidelines-"

"Blueberry's not Starfleet at all"

Another step over the line. Or was this slippage because Keller himself had been slack in demanding protocol behavior?

"You be respectful," he scolded. "He's my first officer."

Bonifay started to speak, but writhed abruptly and gripped the edge of the console, his youthful face twisted. When the spasm passed he looked up again. 'Then why's he on Blood patrollers all the time instead of here? He hasn't exactly been doing first-officer duty. And who's been doing it? I have. You haven't had to deal with a single non-command problem."

"I know," Keller offered, "I know you have. This is more than a one-ship detail. Small supply vessels come and go from Belle Terre on almost a daily basis and Challenger can't protect that lifeline alone, even if our systems were all working right. We need the Blue Net. Shucorion's the thread holding it together."

"He can't serve on more than one ship at-"

Keller stopped him. "I'm not engaging in this conversation with you again. Our situation requires us all to do more than one job. You can't ask for proper arrangements, then want elasticity when it's conve-nient Maybe you were both right, I don't know. What can I say when Shucorion claims you didn't follow a direct order not to abandon ship?"

"His orders!"

"His are mine. You know that."

"You didn't give any orders about that." Unwilling to fold when he thought he was right, Bonifay wasn't intimidated by either rank or procedure. His brows screwed together and he demanded, "What order of yours did I disobey? There wasn't a ship left to aban-don. Are you telling me none of us can make a field de-cision without checking with Lord High You? Our ship was dead, the other ship was there, I went there. I tried to get him to follow me-"

"He's not supposed to take your orders!"

The turbolift again broke their argument, but again it wasn't Shucorion. In came terminally cheery red-haired Steward Calleo, a volunteer transplanted From the Hotel Ship Uncle Jake's Pocket, a fellow with the inner peace of a natural-born cabin boy. Whistling some tune, Calleo thumped down the bridge steps with a covered food tray in hand.

"Afternoon, Commander," he greeted. "I just came from the spectroscopy desk. Mr. Shucorion confirms no source of power on the mystery ship, but steady move-ment from some kind of energy trail that bends back into space. No idea what kind of energy it is. Readable, but it won't analyze. Sensors won't focus on it for some reason. Mr. Shucorion's trying to narrow the trace back to a source. He says he'll transfer the data to the bridge in a few minutes."

At Shucorion's name, Keller fought a bristle. "Under-stood, Max. Mighty Starfleet reporting for a civilian."

"Glad to serve, sir. Gotta earn my crew sweater, don't I."

"You're wearing it."

Calico's round face broke into a grin. "Still gotta earn it, sir."

Why hadn't Shucorion contacted him on the com system? Maybe he didn't want anyone to hear the questions in his voice.

Or maybe he didn't want to hear Keller's.

Calleo popped out the folding legs of the tray and pulled the cover off a plate of Nick-friendly finger food. "Got some lunch for you, sir. There you go."

Keller eyed the unappetizing clutter of not particu-larly freeze-dried fruit, processed meat, and a grilled cheese sandwich with preserved bread.

*Thanks, not hungry."

"You're never hungry, sir." Calleo thudded his thick midsection merrily. "You need some beef on you, sir. If you ever get injured in the line of duty, it'll do you good to have a few pounds on you for recovery. This here, this is insurance."

"He's right," Bonifay stuck in. "You won't do the rest of us very well either if you don't take care of yourself."

Keller shifted his feet and flicked a finger at Calleo. "Carry on, will you?"

The steward smiled. "Aye aye. Ring the bell if you need anything at all, sir, anything." He thumped back up the steps to the lift, his duty well done. Unfortu-nately the tension he had been about to take with him swarmed back in as he passed Shucorion at the lift door.

"Afternoon, sir" Calleo lilted. He sidestepped, and disappeared.

Now Shucorion stood there alone, gazing down at Keller, and at Bonifay at the nav pulpit After a pause, he came down to the command center. Typically, he neither minced words nor wasted time.

"You must have him arrested," he said to Keller. "He must not be on the bridge. Why is he here?"

"Because I need him," Keller said firmly. "You do too. He's the ship's bosun. We'll discuss this in... in the turbolift"

When the turbolift doors closed, and Keller had cut the circuit. Shucorion frowned. "What has his duty to do with this? He sorts things."

" 'Sorts'?" Keller almost laughed-almost Instead he shook his head and skewered the Blood with a leer of clarification. "Oh, no, no, no. He's the wizard of a mysterious puzzle. If a bosun gets off a ship, everybody else is confused for a long, long time. And that's a stan-dard starbase-built ship where everything is the way the plans say. On Challenger, he's the only one who knows the answers to a thousand questions we ask on every watch just to keep this ship pointing forward. Boy- you're not wrong very often, but when you are, you don't toy around, do you?"

"If such is so," Shucorion pestered, brows down, "why did you let him go with me on the Plume? If he is so critical, he should never be off this vessel."

When had Shucorion become a prosecutor?

Caught in his mistake, Keller stared down at his feet for a moment "It was a supply mission. That's part of his job. You got distracted to the grave ship. Doesn't make it a bad call. I'm about to resent these questions."

"Blood Many will question you, not I." Shucorion plucked a couple of dried cherries and passed them to Keller. `The Savage Hand is on its way. They'll arrive after the next Blind lifts-"

'They can heave to and wait" In a small act of defi-ance, Killer smooshed the rubbery cherries between his fingers. The clue gave him a timetable-the Blood fleet would show up some time after the coming Gamma Night ended and the sensor blackout lifted. Gamma Night was usually a problem, darkening all their sen-sors for ten hours out of every thirty, but today it bought him time.

"Bonifay's actions are a private problem," he said, "inside these bulkheads. It's my first officer who was disobeyed."

"In the eyes of Blood Many, it was a full Plume avedon who was disobeyed."

"Just put your feathers down, all right?"

"I'm not feathering." Shucorion handed him half of the grilled cheese sandwich. "I simply explain how this will be seen. You have a reputation now. It must be nur-tured for the bettering of all."

Without turning his head Keller shifted his eyes to him. "Doesn't mean one of my officers gets put on public trial."

"The senior avedon coming here is Delytharen. In his entire life, he has never gone against a rule. I am a mad renegade compared to him. When he comes aboard-"

"They're not coming aboard."

Silence followed Keller's statement, but the kind that meant a lot of words.

Shucorion's expression contradicted what Keller had too easily declared. He just stood and waited for Keller to get the idea.

And he did.

Was this one of those other things to which he had "agreed" by proxy? Boarding privileges?

"I must warn you," Shucorion continued, "Delytharen will expect him in chains."

Bonifay turned and looked at them. So did Quinones and Zoa. The subtle shuffle changed everything.

Keller eyed Shucorion with warning. **We don't use chains."

"You have chains in your history. Shall I remind you how to make them?"

"Look, don't make threats."

"Bonifay must be confined. I implore you to make an appearance."

"He's in custody right here. He's not leaving the ship."

With an annoyed sigh, Shucorion shook his head. Not enough. His voice became deathly quiet and deeply per-sonal. "You frighten me... these are reckless ways."

"I need him," he insisted.

Since the friendly way hadn't worked, Shucorion tilted his head meaningfully and spoke from an angle of great strength. "Do you need the nineteen Blood in your crew?"

The sentence struck home, square in the middle of Keller's chest. There it was, the real threat. Would they go back to their planet and speak of what they had seen here? An injustice in Blood perception?

Out of forty tireless Blood crewmen who had come with Shucorion when their Plume was destroyed, nine-teen were still here in the frigate's crew. The others had been disseminated into the Blue Net with their jump on training about Challenger's procedures. They weren't really gone-they had now served a Federation ship, and that never went away. They had helped build her, put their sweat and hopes into her, and they were al-ways in contact, usually through Shucorion.

Their point of view revealed itself in Shucorion's pale eyes. The great Keller had caught a reputation big-ger than his britches for throwing together a battleship out of sticks, parts, and assorted smells, to stand up against All Kauld's strongest battlelord... and after all that, he was also the cowboy who had stood up with the Kauld and been willing to put himself and his ship on the line for them too. Reputation? Yes, he had one. He hadn't wanted any at all, but here it was, sitting on his head, with all its quills. He hadn't even noticed it crawl up there. All of a sudden, one day a couple of weeks ago, mere it was.

Nineteen Blood. Out of a crew of forty-six, on a ship that needed fifty-five.

"We'll make some kind of arrangement with your friend Dell-Delinn-what'd you say his name was?"

'Ttelytharen. No arrangement will be possible."

Keller shifted his glare sharply again. This time he held up a warning finger.

"Never tell me what can't be done," he said. Keller stepped back out onto the bridge.

All around them the subtle beeps and tingles of a working ship murmured in constant struggle to find parity. Lateral and graviton sensor array readouts, accelerometers, optical gyros, inertia! dampers, constant surveillance, homing processors and internal diagnos-tics for damage control-and there was almost always damage of some kind, frequently self-inflicted.

He turned away from Shucorion, pivoting his chair more to port than necessary. On the main screen before them, the grave ship floated along its unspecified path. Pretending nothing was wrong or out of order... acting like it came through these parts every day. For the first time he took a good look at the design. Its long hull was a blotch of reds and browns, with added green decorations that looked like stuck-on Spanish moss waving mindlessly and giving the ship a shaggy ap-pearance, like some kind of floating anemone. Why would a ship need hair?

The outside looks like the inside, he realized as his brain began to relax. As If it's growing, organic, even though it isn't

For a moment his eyes shifted to the starboard tacti-cal screen at Zoa's shoulder. He peered past her helmet of braids at the picture of Challenger. He hadn't seen the ship from the outside in a few weeks, trapped in here instead, working. That was normal-crewmen rarely saw their own ships from the outside. One of the little ironies of service aboard.

Challenger also floated free in space, according to the virtual-reality scope showing the ship's attitude, using an artificial idea of up and down. The frigate was a bastardization of Starfleet design. Her saucer hull and engineering hull had come from Peleliu, fit-ted together with a neck salvaged from two private ships. The precious warp nacelles, ghosts from the CST Beowulf, were mounted below the engineering cigar, not above, mounted on odd-looking fanned strokes from the Pathfinder American Rover. The col-ors were like this bridge-khaki neck, gray and cream mismatched plates all over the main, the blue Rover strokes, and the radiation-resistant black-hat pot lid. Yes, this ship looked like herself inside and out, just as the tomb ship did.

So whoever had built that flying graveyard knew something about crew sensibilities-that you had to feel at home in or out. There were aesthetics in-volved.

Or was he reading too much out of his own percep-tions? Was his imagination taking off?

He looked again at the main screen, determined to be more clinical. On the forward section of the tomb ship were a pair of lobster-claw units-he had to admit they resembled the javelin launchers on the Kauld battle-barges. But there the resemblance ended. The grave ship had hundreds of pieces and segments no Kauld ship possessed, and plainly hadn't been intended for battle. It couldn't turn in a small enough radius to be useful in close quarters, and there were no signs of mounted attack arrays. Of course, that might not mean anything. It had, after all, destroyed a Blood Plume with one burst.

Burst of what?

"Sir, the mystery ship!" Lucy Quinones turned quickly and grasped the sci-deck rail with one hand, men pointed at the forward screen with the other. 'It's changing course!"

All eyes turned to the forward screen. The grave ship's bow had begun to slowly swing away from them.

With his elbows pressed to the chair's leather arms, Keller leaned forward. "Confirm that"

"Increasing speed too!** Quinones called. She danced from foot to foot as her hands focused the instruments. "Course, zero four-two, speed coming to warp one point three, still increasing!"

"Nick, be aware," Bonifay quickly said, "if it goes to warp we could lose it We're not stable enough for hot pursuit"

"The boarding party!" Keller pushed out of his chair.

He just couldn't command sitting down. Instantly he swung around and struck the com unit on the side of his chair. "Keller to Ring. Do you read? Shucorion, yel-low alert!"

Up on the sci-deck Shucorion already had his hand on the shipwide. "Yellow alert All hands, yellow alert"

"Keller to boarding party, do you read us?"

"Ring. Is this monstrosity doing something?"

"Affirmative, seems to be changing course. What's your condition?"

"Skin scrapings, hair samples, and filling up our tricorder's with area scans for analysis later"

"Get back to the main vestibule for beam-out We've gone to yellow alert. If we go to red, we won't be able to beam you in through our shields, so I want you back here now."

"We just got started!"

"Signal us when you're ready."

"Roger that."

"Alert the transporter room. What's the heading on that ship now?"

"Still coming about..." Bonifay squinted into the guidance opticals.

Keller stepped to the unmanned helm and watched the changes on the dual feed. "Okay, bow's still swinging... slowing... midship... course is now... three-two-eight" He looked up at the grave ship's flank as the vessel moved away. "Directly for Whistler and Mother!"

Bonifay's breathing turned choppy. "And from here, it'll go right through the Occult Star System to get there. Damn! All our planets are right there in a row."

That might or might not be bad, but the idea of a foreign object plowing straight toward population centers was a good reason to be nervous. Keller glanced at Shucorion up on the sci-deck. Suddenly they all had the same stake in this, despite not even knowing what that meant.

"We don't know anybody's in danger yet," he pointed out. "It's just one ship. Doesn't even have a crew."

Out the corner ;of his mouth Bonifay muttered, "Wouldn't exactly say that...."

"Hush. Maintain yellow alert."

Once again he looked at Shucorion, this time for longer. The Blood stood at the science pulpit, his eyes fixed on the main screen's vision of the grave ship. He looked supremely fitting up there today for some rea-son, with his blue sweater, sapphire skin, and long braid of brown hair hanging over one shoulder, all framed by the ship's barbecue black bridge dome. The cobalt-obsidian dome didn't gleam or even reflect, ex-cept where a light from the embedded matrices hit it just right and caused a ghostly hint of deep blue. It seemed to fold around Shucorion as lake water en-velopes a swimmer.

"Pompeii's increasing speed." Bonifay was sweating now. Would he blurt the truth about the grave ship? That it was filled with alien corpses able to self-animate to a purpose? Keller realized he hadn't given Bonifay any framework of what to say or keep private, nor did the bosun know about the echo of Shucorion over there. He could only hope Bonifay's natural in-stincts would serve with silence.

He snapped back forward and kept himself on his own course. 'Throw the mules on it," he ordered. "Full traction."

When Bonifay tried to push himself up and go to the mule station on the starboard crescent deck, Keller put a hand on his shoulder and kept him at the nav/sensory. "Quinones, you do it.'*

"Aye, sir!" She flew down the curved steps and ran around the crescent to the mules. "It'll take at least ninety seconds!"

"Understood," Keller uttered.

Shucorion hurried up to the sci-deck and took her place at the science pulpit

Instantly Keller saw the holes in his fabric. "Zane, call below and get us somebody to man engineering and the helm."

"I'll man the helm, if you quit holding me down."

"Stay put. I'll do it myself."

"You shouldn't. You're in command."

"Just call somebody who can drive."

**Nobody can drive a six-headed dragon," Bonifay grumbled. "Bridge to auxiliary. Ensign Creighton and Crewman Itytek, get up here pronto to man the master and helm "

''Creighton, on my way, bridge."

"Itytek. Acknowledged."

Careful that the com system was off, Keller asked, "Can Itytek drive?"

Bonifay managed a stiff nod. "If we go to warp, he's the best we've got left for the Blood core."

"Okay."

Not the best, but the best they had left. Fine line. Most of the Blood soldiers who had come with Shuco-rion had dispersed to the Blue Net with their new knowledge of Starfleet methods for crowd control. Itytek would probably be competent at piloting the ship, but uninspired-a trait common to cautious

Blood. Competence was fine for getting around. Trou-ble needed inspiration. A touch for the wheel, for the body of the ship under you.

But Keller knew Zane was right. If he were on the helm, he wouldn't be doing the job he was supposed to be doing. A commander couldn't have attention that cleanly divided. Both jobs would suffer.

"Nick!" Fighting die obviously sharp pains in his limbs and back, Bonifay pressed his wrists to the con-sole and winced through his readings. "I think we just found out where the mausoleum came from!"

"Let's have it."

"Open space, no characteristic bodies, bearing three-two-seven by nine-four-four, on a clean line aft of the original course, no identifiable spatial bodies nearby, no buoys or projectors-it's a window or a transport point with no discernible coordinates!"

Keller peered over Bonifay's shoulder at the sensor screens as they jumped and gibbered. "Then how could you possibly pin down where it is?"

Bonifay looked up at the main screen and squinted. "Because something else is coming through!"

His claim bolted through the bridge like a bomb. Keller reached to snatch it down before it destroyed their concentration.

"Shift the main screen, Zane. Full magnification. Let's see this thing."

The main screen faded from its view of the grave ship and focused on a section of open space. Particle clouds and ion storms raced past as the magnification drew them forward and picked a spot At first space held only the natural beauty of this fresh frontier, the bright panorama of an active star cluster.

Something was changing-there! In the middle of open space, a shape began to take form itself seemingly out of space dust.

At Keller's left side, Shucorion floated down the for-ward ladder steps, gripping the handrail for dear life. He stared at the sight before them. His eyes were wide, brows drawn, and his shoulders tightened.

He was barely breathing. 'The Gateway!"

Chapter Ten what they saw was a belt of segments bolted together in a circle, jewelry for a really big lady. The necklace hung in space where no unmoving object should be, and despite no source of power to work against solar winds and the forces of gravity from spatial bodies, the thing held its position. Until this morning, Keller had pretty much thought he knew metal and non-metal when he saw it, but their experience on the grave ship had thrown all his confidence sideways a couple of feet

The necklace read four thousand feet tall, almost that wide-not very big in spatial terms. Unlike most things in space, it had a definite up and down, and from here was slightly tilted, and slowly wheeling. Did it have a back and front? Was this the front?

"Mercy," Keller muttered. "King Kong's bicycle chain."

"Looks don't mean much," Bonifay commented. Having just come off a ship that looked tike a swamp, with plants made of metal, he touched his sensors and fine-tuned the readings, focusing on what appeared to be steel with a sparkle coating. The object hung against the depths of night, winking in the distant light of Belle Terre's sun, the star they called Occult.

At Bonifay's side Keller leaned over the nav, but didn't take his eyes off the necklace. "Where'd it come from? Why didn't we pick it up before?"

"Wasn't there. Unless it was cloaked." Bonifay looked past him to Shucorion, who stood on the sci-deck staring at the screen. "Ask Blue Boy. Something's going on with him."

Up on the sci-deck, Shucorion's grip on the rail had turned his hands from blue to gray, knuckles nearly white. Was he breathing?

That stance was getting recognizable-Shucorion suddenly still, waiting to see whether or not disaster would strike. Such a pause for decision might have been common to the Blood, or just a trait Shucorion had learned as a blast engineer on his planet, a place so often stricken by forces of space and nature that the whole existence was devoted to arrival at the next day alive.

Keller stepped to the base of the sci-deck and threaded his fingers through a quatrefoil cutout. "You recognize this thing?"

"I thought-" Shucorion's gasp was almost inaudi-ble. *I thought it was a myth!"

*Is there a legend? Any information we can use today?"

"Legend?... legend... no. History. I thought they were deluded... daring to hope..."

With one eye on the forward screen Keller jumped to the steps and brought himself almost to Shucorion's eye level but didn't invade the sci-deck. Together they watched the glittery chain of bolted segments. *Tell me quick."

Shaken by the tone, Shucorion muddled out of the trance of shock.

"In my father's time," he began with effort, "the suns crossed and the cycle brought us war with Kauld... again... it was the third cycle in my father's life. He was a sanitation specialist...."

When memories flooded in again, Keller looked up. 'Tm impressed. That's a critical enough job in places where you don't have earthquakes and storms every third day."

"Yes... he was valued highly. Very studious man... he always saw implications before they struck, followed every trail of possibility back, forward... any way it led."

He paused. This tune he forced himself to recover from die nostalgia, or fear, or whatever had a grip on him. He seemed to realize it wasn't helping.

"When the cycles came, my father went to fight. He was leading a small Blood feeder fleet when they were set upon by a Kauld battlebarge and pursued toward our solar system. According to the survivors, he turned hah7 his fleet and tempted the battlebarge away. Survivors told conflicting tales... one of the tales involved a structure they called Gateway... the Gateway-a freestanding spatial window through which my father escaped with his half of the fleet The Kauld barge followed them in. Apparently the doorway closed. They were never seen again. A single rescue mission reported... nothing at all. The Gateway had vanished, if it ever..."

When Shucorion's voice pittered away, Keller clamped his lips shut as eerie evidence began to collect. Torn between captain's duties and mate's duties-both of which he wanted very much to do-he broke his attentiveness with the space necklace and instead looked up at Shucorion.

"What was his name?" he asked.

Shucorion struggled for a moment "Ennengand."

His father. Keller instantly grasped the thunderous implications of what he had just heard, and what he had so recently seen. His father...

"Sorry, shadow." He punctuated his sympathy, how-ever unhelpful, with a grip on Shucorion's arm. In a way he was apologizing ahead of time for what he sus-pected might soon come.

His eyes tightened at the touch, but Shucorion couldn't manage a response. Slowly he lowered into the chair at the engineering desk, bringing him down to the level where Keller stood on the steps. He still gripped the rail, his arm tense under Keller's hand.

'1 thought it was a myth," he murmured.

For several seconds, together in silence, they watched the links roll slowly. Keller forced himself to think about the other things going on at this mo-ment-a captain's trick, and one he rarely had to do as second mate of Peleliu, a skill that still came hard for him. The boarding party was over there, the Pom-peii coming under traction, and now this new struc-ture had popped up. Which one should get his fullest attention?

"Where did they get the name 'Gateway'?" he asked, fishing for ownership or responsibility. "Did they make it up?"

"Some said it was an even older legend, from lost times. But it was risky to believe that, so most never did. With so much doubt, those who recalled the legend ceased to tell it There was no use in perpetuating it... I only recall because die report was given to my mother. She cherished it to her very death."

'They have logs? Records?"

"There were in those times no recordings of visions in space," Shucorion finished. With his story out, he seemed agitated and exhausted at the same time. 'They were considered wasteful. Unnecessary. We have only the words and the pictures they make in our minds. Pic-tures of... mat.'* t

The Gateway wheeled in space, very slowly. There was dignity in its slowness. Whatever its mysterious purpose, it was willing to wait.

"How long ago was this?" Keller asked. **Earth stan-dard.'*

Shucorion's lips pressed as he tried to mink past what certainly seemed a difficult personal encounter. "Perhaps... twenty years."

'"Wake up-" Bonifay snapped. "Something's com-ing through mat thing!"

Keller clunked off the steps and hurried to his side. "Are you sure? What do you see?"

"The colors are different The sparkles are more ac-tive."

"Doesn't look any different to me-----Have you got a lock on a solid object? Energy?"

*Tm telling you, I sense a change."

Irritated, Keller demanded, "Do the sensors sense it?"

Bonifay's shoulders trembled with physical and mental effort and he turned to him. "Nick, something wicked mis way comes. You can believe me or not."

But now he could see what Bonifay had sensed with raw instinct In the middle of the necklace, there was a presence coming through, freckles of polished bronze and gold in the weak sunlight and the kiss of the stars. f

Ships. Somebody else's ships. What are you? Who's there ?

'Translators on. Open a hailing frequency. In fact, open them all.*'

As Quinones reached for the communications con-trols at the next pulpit, Keller eyed the big necklace filling the main screen and the squabble in the middle of it. As yet he couldn't tell the construction of what-ever those things were.

"All frequencies are open, sir," Quinones said. "Translators are on."

She was excited. It came out in her voice, and in the exuberant stretch she made to reach the communica-tions board from her seat at the mule desk.

Somehow they had to get mis bridge better staffed.

Clearing his throat, Keller took a shaky step and willed his voice over the expanse of space.

'This is the United Federation Frigate Challen-ger. You're about to enter space claimed under die Treaty of Belle Terre. Identify yourselves and your purpose."

Now they'd wait.

A handful of seconds went by.

The Gateway glowed in the middle. The flecks of bronze and gold grew more solid. Moving closer.

"Bonifay, come here," he began, and looped his hands around the bosun's arm. "Take the helm."

"You're going to move us?"

"Just be ready."

"Butltytek-"

"He's not here yet. Come on, I'll help you."

After he shifted Bonifay to the helm pulpit, some-thing lit in Keller's mind, a snigger of warning or per- haps just simple caution. He wasn't ready to tip all his hands yet

He stepped to port and tapped the sci-deck grid. Up there, Shucorion still sat staring at the main screen.

Another tap. "Shadow, go below and make sure the warps are powered up and the Blood core's stable. I want to be able to increase speed without any over-loads."

Keller prudently didn't mention whether or not he wanted to chase somebody or get away from some-body. Or that he wasn't ready for Shucorion to see what he and Ring had discovered over there.

Through a raw throat Shucorion agreed, "I will.** He seemed relieved to stand, to be given a reason to go to engineering and suspend whatever plucked at his heart With a series of exhausted movements he came down the aft sci-deck ladder and hurried to the turbolift.

When he was gone, Keller asked, "Any signal from the boarding party?"

"None yet," Bonifay said. Then he looked up. "Why'd you send him below?"

'To check the warp core, like I said."

Bonifay's black eyes scoured him.
Self-conscious, Keller twitched and kept his gaze forward. Bonifay was still watching him. He felt Zoa's blinkless shifting eyes, the Fleet faith of Quinones, the absence of Savannah Ring at MEL, and the ghost of Shucorion's reactivated grief. They were all depending on him.

"Hush, Zane," he murmured.

X)n the quarterdeck, Quinones swiveled in her chair. "Mule traction locked on to the Pompeii, sir. Sorry to take so long, but the circuits-"

"Understood. Bear down. Slow the Pompeii's prog-ress. Bonifay, astern one-third."

"One-third astern.'*

The repeats and "sirs" of protocol were like his grandmother's blanket Much of the misfit crew didn't have those habits yet and Keller hadn't insisted on them. The Blood transferees, the Federation volunteers from Belle Terre, and those from other ships had enough to worry about going through basic. Trained Fleet officers like Quinones were prizes here. And she wasn't planning to stay much longer.

At least she was here now.

The bleeps and whirs around the bridge intensified as the towing engines took a bite. Either at warp speed or sublight, Challenger's mule engines could pull the fillings out of God's teeth.

The thrum of effort rose around them. The frigate pressed upward against Keller's legs, shuddered deeply, then wallowed.

"Pompeii's resisting," Bonifay said.

"Maintain."

Vibrations burbled through the deck into Keller's boots, his heels and knees, his thighs and arms. He stiff-ened, helping Challenger find the concentration of pur-pose in her mismatched parts and the veins of energy find their way. These systems had yet to be tested. Would they break down? Would his luck run out here and now?

"Adjust azimuth," he said, adding up the angles in his head, "point seven degrees."

"Point seven." At his elbow, Bonifay barely got the response out

With one hand gripping the back of Bonifay's chair, Keller pushed the toes of his cowboy boots into the car-pet. He gritted his teeth and spread his fingers.

Lack be damned-there had to be more here man just stuck-together salvage. There had to be. This ship was built of a thousand dreams... there had to be more!

"Come on, calico," he murmured, "find your bones... "

Skittish and untempered, the ship plucked what she needed out of the million bolts and clews and fakery she was made of. The mule engines dug in. She pressed against Keller's feet, took a bite on space, and stub-borned into a turn.

"Thank God," Quinones whispered.

Bonifay gripped the helm. "Nobody sneeze...."

Held breaths, crinkled shoulders, anticipation of a seizure that would leave the ship powerless in the path of oncoming menace-Keller felt them all from the crew.

But he got another message too. One from the ship. Though she thrummed with strain, the frigate didn't flut-ter once she'd taken mat bite. Shouldering into her load like a plowhorse against the yoke, she knew what she wanted Wild or not, she had a job and she liked working.

**Don't worry," he assured softly. "She knows how to paddle her own canoe."

Every ship has to be built a certain way for a certain purpose, but how well that purpose is executed shows itself only in durability and stress, and might be years down the tine. They knew the frigate well enough, bolt for bolt, because they had built her. But how well she would prove out remained to be seen. Today they'd see a little.

The grave ship was larger by half than Challenger, with an unexplained power source, immeasurable by sensors or any guesswork.

Challenger began to whine, then quickly to scream as mechanical strain grew and grew.

"Redline!" Bonifay warned.

"Maintain."

Could they make such a big ship stop its forward progress? Once done, could they hold it? Was this a show of bravado, just to prove he could master that monster? Or this monster?

Before he knew it, Keller was in over his head. The frigate tipped up under him like a horse with its heels down. It raised its head, flared its nostrils to the sky, slipped, then recovered.

Keller glanced up at the black hat-somehow he felt the spirit of the ship was up there, pasted into place with the memory of those who had died when Peleliu fought her last fight This hull was most of that hull, and he still felt the old attachments.

"Come on, calico," he murmured, "pull"

The frigate slipped again, pitching the crew back-ward Keller almost fell, but caught a hand on Bonifay's chair and managed only a clumsy stagger. The powerful mule engines were compensating like crazy, finding power from places there weren't even places.

"Power shutdown, deck twelve!" Quinones shouted over the snarl of strain,

"Evacuate."

"Deck twelve, bridge! Evacuate and secure! Evacu-ate!"

The grave ship turned in space, pivoted on its axis, turned on its side, and careened completely around until its bow faced the frigate. The ships were on two differ-ent planes now, like tumbled toys on a black carpet

"Sublight guidance just blew!" Quinones reported, gasping out the words.

She wanted him to break it off-he could tell.

Deliberately he didn't respond or even glance at her.

Warning klaxons started ringing from every system. Half the monitors on the bridge flickered and shot down. Overhead lights dropped to bare haze. Emer-gency worklights came on, casting a yellow haze on their feet. Keller thought immediately of the grave ship's interior and the otherworldly lighting mat had so disoriented him.

The engineering board on the sci-deck crackled tike a campfire. His eyes' shifted from the main screen to the lollipop on the nav station, the tiny symbol of their ac-complishments-the Shuttle Challenger coin stubbornly standing there on its stick. In his mind he saw the homely muscle of a ship lifting its black pot lid to viciously putt against a bigger dog, the fan-shaped Rover strakes lean-ing down to the duckwing nacelles below, warning tights flickering all over her outer hull and flush vents angrily spewing funnels of residual plasma. The crew hunkered down, waiting for the hull to implode around them.

Bonifay twisted to give Keller his favorite emer-gency expression. "You're crazy!"

"But you mean that in a good way," Keller added, and actually smiled.

With a shake of his head Bonifay smiled too and dug into his controls, compensating tike mad.

Suddenly half the noise dropped off. Systems began to settle down. Had they cracked?

No! The grave ship had lowered its power levels!

Joyously Keller declared, "Mules, hell. They're pit bulls!"

"Did it!" Half out of his chair, Bonifay hammered the controls, going for stabilization. "Grave ship's re-laxing its power by two-thirds. Still got some thrust, though-"

"Adjust traction and keep holding."

'Traction's barely holding, sir," Quinones reported, "but we're managing to keep Pompeii in place."

"Understood. We can't keep this up forever." He reached back and tapped the com on his chair. "Keller to boarding party. Ring, are you in position for trans-port?"

On the main screen, the bolts of the metallic circle sparkled blighter. Flickers raced around its frame and reminded him of new-fallen snow hi sunlight, or the stuff mat makes fool's gold shine.

He boosted the com. "Savannah, come in."

Nothing.

Was it a communications blackout or was the board-ing party in trouble?

He shifted his weight uneasily. "Great snakes... why can't one thing go right?"

His answer came not hi the form of a reassuring voice from a shipmate or from the boarding party, but in the grating screech of metal against metal. He clapped his hand to his ears and stumbled behind the command chair. Before him, Zane Bonifay huddled in shock at the nav/sensory. Over there, Zoa and Quinones were both pressed against the quadritronics ring. The drilling noise grew louder, a maddening whine that shook the primary hull.

"Dang--what is that!"

No one knew. His only answer was a hard bonk on the hull, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere.

Keller looked up at the black hat. "Somebody knocked?"

Then Quinones yelped, "Sir, Pompeii just grabbed us!"

"Main screen!"

The main changed, abandoned the Gateway and switched back to the shaggy green grave ship-which was now turned with its bow directly toward Chal-lenger and appeared to be only inches away!

"How'd it get so close!" he demanded.

"Faulty reading," Bonifay told him, obviously irri-tated at the equipment failure.

The frigate began to shake under them. The turbolift door scratched open and Dean Creighton and the Blood crewman Itytek stumbled through the terrible noise, then fell over each.other on the shuddering quarterdeck.

Keller made a grab for Itytek and ended up making things worse. "Take the helm! Aft thrusters! Shake us loose!"

But Itytek never made it to the helm to carry out that order.

The drill noise grew immediately louder, cutting off Keller's last word. In his hands Itytek tried to get to his feet and come down the steps when the starboard bulk-head just forward of the sci-deck cracked like a mirror. Through it came a three-sided silver spine like a mus-keteer's rapier, and it didn't stop coming.

Chapter Eleven there was no hilt, no end. The metallic spine shot across the bridge in an instant, from starboard forward to port aft, past Bonifay's head, tore Itytek out of Keller's hands and carried him to the lift doors, where it skewered him into place and kept on going.

Creighton hit the deck under the communications pulpit. Quinones squawked and tumbled out of her chair. The shish-kebab tine thundered with vibration and began to cut the two ends of the bridge into shards around its puncture points, goring Irytek's body in a most ghastly way. Purple blood splattered, his arms, legs, and head convulsed-Keller could only hope mercy was with them and Itytek was already gone.

Seconds were lost to horror. The mule engines rum-bled with strain as the ship bucked against the forces that held it. She knew this was wrong, deadly.

"Javelin?" The long vibrating tine wagged toward Keller's left arm as he ducked. It nearly sliced him in half.

"Don't touch it, Nick!" Thrown violently from the helm, Bonifay huddled on the deck.

"Is this what it hit you with?"

"No!"

"Can you get back to the helm?"

"Uh... yeah..."

The razored quill made a vicious noise. It shivered like a giant nerve and hacked at the wounds it made in the ship's body. ,

The instant Bonifay's hand crawled to the helm's slanted desk, Keller called, "Boost thrusters! Zoa, tar-get the source on then* hull!"

Damn, the noise! The big stiletto continued to hum and cut. Two puncture wounds in the impaled hull got bigger, sucking air out into space through the holes. Automatic sealant blew into the perforations, instantly hardened, and was almost as quickly sanded away by the three-sided spine. Challenger had been run through.

On top of the quill's scream came the whine of phasers. At point-blank range the weapons arrays opened up on the Pompeii. Zoa's golden face was tight as she held the trigger down, fired, and fired again, and again.

Beneath the silver auger as it oscillated above him, Bonifay peeked up over the helm's wrist roll "New contacts! At least sixteen!"

He wasn't surprised. He'd known instinctively some-thing was coming. If no one else believed him he was at least going to believe himself.

Keller scrambled to the other side of the command chair, continued to duck the deliberate reaming of his ship, and tried to see what Bonifay saw on the helm's auxiliary monitor screens.

Fighting the helm, Bonifay called, "You better re-lease traction! We can't reverse against our own engine power!"

"Quinones, release tractor beams! Zoa, cease fire! Cease firer

Had she heard him?

Yes, the phasers broke contact

Terrified, the dutiful Quinones put one hand on the chair she'd been thrown out of and dragged herself toward the mule desk, through a punishing spray of fresh air from the compensators, mixed with fire retardant and bits of hardened sealant. The gouts of blowing matter and air clouded the bridge within sec-onds. Keller stumbled to his feet and waved wildly, trying to see.

"Traction off, sir!*' Quinones called.

One thing done.

But how could they back up? Challenger was im-paled and being held between Pompeii's lobster claws. Those claws were some kind of capture device, a trap. Keller scorned himself for not taking them for what they looked like in the first place instead of something fancy, technical or decorative. Sometimes a snake's tongue is a snake's tongue.

If he didn't get that drill out of the hull, it would maul the primary hull to crumbs. The horrifying sight froze his hands for a few seconds, until he realized everyone was expecting an order from him that would save them. He had no idea what kind of miracle to work. An eighty-foot metal stiletto piercing the ship- what could he do? What could he possibly do? Wait for mercy?

"Everybody down! Keep your heads down! Zane, stay on the deck!"

Accounting for each of them one by one, he ducked his own head and scrambled for the equipment locker under the sci-deck. The click-magnet door depressed slightly under his frantic hand, then popped open with a lie of conformity. He threw himself inside and dug through the bosun's box-it was here, it was here somewhere! When his hand closed around a recogniz-able handle, he hauled himself out with a utility phaser saw. His teeth gritted-the saw was heavy and hard to control, like a wild-eyed animal. He leaned back against the skittering tool, twisted hard, launched him-self forward, and hit the trigger.

The limited-range saw lit up in his hands, its bright maw reaching for something to cut He squinted against the pain in his eyes, but there was no time for goggles.

At his elbow, Bonifay threw up an arm to shield his face. Keller turned his back to him, trying to protect him, and drove forward to contact the razor quill.

Sparks exploded across the bridge in a massive bulb. They danced in the smoke and burned Keller's face and hands, then blew past him to burn Bonifay. His arms strained, his back knotted, and his teeth grided until his neck grew hard and a fierce growl bellowed out. Before him the razor quill roared back against the cutting torch of the saw and smashed against the emit-ter guards on the top and bottom of the tool's business end. Pieces of the curved cups hit Keller's face and nearly blinded him. He turned his head to shield one eye, but kept to the work despite the buck and whine of contact

Was it cutting? Was it having any effect at all? What kind of metal could stand up to this punishment! A heavy-duty phaser saw!

'We've got approach!"

Bonifay. Did he mean the new contacts or the grave ship?

Pompeii couldn't get any closer. Must be the other one.

Nick Keller sucked one stiff breath and shouted. "Red alert! Battle stations!"

Chapter Twelve

"TURN around! Turn, turn! It's a horror! This is wrong! It's supposed to be wondrous!"

As Luntee howled his astoundment and waved his hands before his face to drive away what he saw, Riutta gagged out her response.

"It is wondrous-----Look up, Luntee, and think!"

"Hideous... hideous, hideous!"

Carrying them dutifully, the spinner sailed through the Gateway without even a bump or flutter. They could have been skating a hunt plain on the planet.

Living who manned the spinner, though, endured shock after shock-around them the universe altered it-self instantly. Almost everything that could change im-mediately did.

Riutta clung to the vertical rods supporting the body of the spinner. Look up and think. Around her other Living farers choked and fell, screamed and pitifully gripped to the bolted seats. A few more stood in a stu-por, as if they had been Anointed.

"Turn us!" Luntee screamed. "Turn! Turn! We'll be lost!"

His voice tumbled in Riutta's head. She pulled her stare from the transparent of open space and looked down at Luntee himself, for he had changed. Every other person around her had changed too, but she stared at Luntee as he cowered beside her. She focused on him and fought to adjust to completely new experi-ences. His skin-what had happened to it? It no longer looked like the continuous platinum plains, but a field of tiny segments joined with the finest of etching. She clearly saw blood pulse through his veins, and saw the depth of his horrified eyes. She never knew eyes had depth. She could see his fears as if looking through ice!

Where they came from, they could trust what they saw and felt Surfaces were dependable. Their world was brittle, glassy, harsh-edged, toneless. The only sto-ries of other places, with growth and variation and tex-ture, came from the old records, the very most old Only in the dimmest valleys of their imaginations could they summon these haunting.

But at the instant their spinners flushed through the Gateway, they suddenly discovered a hundred unused senses. Her arms and legs were tingling, floating, but her feet were still on the floor. Inside her body there seemed now to be solid weights where once there had been or-gans. While her limbs tingled and her innards turned, Riutta fought to stay upright Her companions tumbled and crawled and clung to their drive boards, lost in the swarm of physical shocks. She looked down at her hands.

Her own skin, her arms and shoulders, her hands and legs had changed as if she had painted herself with wax and sprayed metalflake across the curing coat. A mil-lion fine creases and marks that had never been there before-she now saw them all on her knuckles and wrists, and saw the veins carrying life through her body, to her thumb and all three ringers. She saw where die bones were, things that were usually seen only after great tragedy, when a Living body had been torn vio-lently from itself. Such things were not meant for look-ing. Had they always been there? Were they a secret of the Gateway? Or was this a test of Living resolve?

She raised her eyes and pushed her hands down. At her side, Luntee trembled and sobbed and searched for his hands. Others were looking at each other and gasp-ing. They looked monstrous, distorted to each other. Some looked at their own hands and screamed. On the other side, her cousin Untuxx valiantly struggled to un-derstand what the instruments were trying to tell him. The spinner itself knew l > physical shocks, but only read what came to it and interpreted information for them to use. Untuxx at least tried to use that information.

*Touch everything!" she called. 'Touch to know how close or far! Use your hands!*'

"Riutta!*' Untuxx rasped out. 'The Anointed are call-ing to us!"

The spinner had provided one thing they could de-pend upon-a signal through space.

Summoning the depth of will mat had never failed her, Riutta forced herself to cling to that one thing. "You have contact with the Anointed?"

"Yes!""

Seizing this tidbit, Riutta deliberately controlled her voice. Shouting would not serve. They were in this place now and must adjust.

"Stay on this plane," she said. 'Track the Anointed. What sort of signal do we receive from them?"

"They say we.., they say they're Linking with us!"

Untuxx took Riutta's example and modified his own volume, though he still trembled and sucked his breath. "How can they say that? We're nowhere near them!"

He was the only one other than Riutta who was not overwhelmed to a stupor. Around them, others contin-ued to shriek in fright each time they opened their eyes or tried to stand. Some lay upon the floor and rolled and moaned like sick children.

Luntee, though, had dragged himself to his feet and stood with his knees bent and both hands out before him. He tried to touch what he saw in space through the transparent

"We've come to the wrong place!" he gagged. "Please-turnaround!"

"You've faced seventeen hunts,'* Riutta sharply said. "Stand and face this!"

'The hunt is normal! This-this-"

"The Anointed are speaking to us. This is where they are. We must keep on this plane. Look for familiar things. Here-darkest And this--lighter. Look at the familiar and ignore what is between. You wanted to be here, Lun-tee. We're both Elders now. Stand and be here! Look and tell me-do you think this might be... color?"

Tears puddled Luntee's astonished eyes. His teeth were gnashed, his shoulders hunched, his hands out He was physically ill.

Step by step, Riutta battled to judge distance, even from her hands to the mechanisms before her. They seemed to loom up against her, though still arm's length away. On the transparents, the vista of space had a thousand depths, some as near as her nose, other for-mations impossibly distant Which was real? Which should she trust? How could she make a judgment? How should she order the spinners to move?

She closed her eyes briefly and bumped her knuckle along the mechanism until her fingers found the signal generator.

"Link the spinners!" she called. "Or we'll lose each other in this sensory maze."

Untuxx tried to obey her command, but kept missing the automatic link control. After a long struggle, he pressed his hands to his face and sank against the drive box, overwhelmed.,

Even in the cusp of confusion and an overloaded mind, Luntee was the one who acted. He raised his hand before his face until it touched his cheek and he forced his brain to make sense of his own fingers. From mere he moved his hand slowly away, directly from his face to the link control until he touched the mechanism. Once he felt the metal on his fingers, he closed his eyes to block out the wildness. His face scrunched with ef-fort Without watching, he manipulated the control until the automatic reaction began.

The spinner hummed with more energy and fired its six component engines. Would they balance? Would the power systems still operate here? Draw energy prop-erly, as before it entered the Gateway?

Clinging to the sustenance that Luntee had recovered some, Riutta held her breath. If he in his fears could ad-just, then others could also. The other spinner leaders were probably also urging their Living to work through the disorientation.

'The Anointed!" Untuxx grunted "The barge says it has been breached! Someone has broken in!"

"Why would anyone be in space?" Riutta chal-lenged. "You must be wrong."

"Then why do they say they're linking?" Luntee shuddered. "Too much wrong..."

She had no answer. Her own vision was confused enough. She took a moment to make sense of what she was seeing. Through the transparent^, a panorama of spectacles shimmered madly. Clouds and stars, bands and bubbles, nebulae and bejewelments by the billions seemed to occupy the same area, to compete for atten-tion, to come forward and sink back without design, without order.

Was there random order here? Could she count on that, at least?

There were things here she thought were mentioned in the old records, but they were not as she had pictured them in her mind. Perhaps that brilliance was a star, this intensity an explosion those particles space dust-but so complex! They weren't all the same size or distance, nor even the same dark or lightness. Something else was hap-pening here. Color? Dimension? The old words that made no sense to Living? Were these things... those things?

'They claim a link," Luntee gasped out, each word a spit His tortured eyes fixed on the information coming in as the spinner sifted space. "Is there someone else there? They can only link with us-"

"If someone else is there," Riutta said, "we will ask why."

"Ask? We will take action!"

"Not yet Not until I know more."

"We have waited generations. Take action!"

"No."

"If we had brought Croash, he would have agreed with me."

"Bring all the Elders to this side? That would be reckless. And I am senior on this side."

"We're all new Elders," Luntee struggled. "You must consider my counsel."

"I have, and rejected it. You wouldn't want me to be reckless-T

"No! But do what random order says."

"Order has not been revealed. Caution is better.'*

Lunte wiped his eyes, then shaded them with one hand from the debilitation around them. "Why would we be here now? We would have been turned away if action would be wrong."

Riutta covered her own eyes for a moment It helped, but did not wipe out the feeling of lightness and contu-sion. She would, and he would, soon be forced to look at this great area and continue to look. "Random order will explain itself," she said. "Why we were made to struggle, why we were allowed back, and why now. When we find^-"

"There!" Untuxx choked. One hand was on the drive box, the other pressed to his brushy hair as if to hold his mind inside.

Riutta's own stubbly hair was moist with sweat It had been a long tune since she had been so warm-since she left her mother's dome for her first hunt, all those descendings ago. Here, through the Gateway, even the reac-tion of the spinner to its own engines was unrecognizable. Ambient heat came off the slanted flankings and wanned the Living crew, heat never felt before hi a spinner.

She would have to lower the warmth, later. For now, they would have to think through the comfort

They fought for footing as the spinner followed the given order to find and to link with the other spinners, to form one large body with which they could move through space to the Anointed, then discover where the original Living who came through the Gateway had begun, and whether Living descendants had a purpose here.

She hoped not. They possessed a perfectly good planet, with air to breathe and a way to eat and build. They should have stayed there.

But the old urge to return through the Gateway had to he put to rest Too many generations had held the goal, had stood in the hunt to collect energy for the Gateway's activation. A great action of historic significance would be needed to quell such a drive, something so momen-tous that future generations of Living would never ques-tion its finality. Like the hunt, once begun this adventure would have to be played out to its own end.

If the Anointed had come to some dire end, purpose-less and wasted, this would certainly be a stunning first step.

Yet Riutta hoped this would not be so. The Anointed deserved better man waste.

'There! I see them! I see the Anointed!" Luntee's shout shocked Riutta out of her thoughts.

This was like being in a drugged state, this magical place with its sights and sensations. Her limbs felt light and empty, as if there were no muscle, bone, no sinew. Her organs turned with nausea. She glanced at Luntee, then quickly looked away. The detail hurt her eyes-his skin, his hair, the terror in his face. Even the spackled panorama out there was easier to digest than the phantoms she and her companions appeared to each other.

Yes, she could see the barge of the Anointed now. Look at it! Its long sheaths of gift-drapery floated, weightless, in space as if stimulated by the electrical field of a hunt! The barge looked enraged, animated, much different than during the uncounted generations it had sat on its planet-bound pedestal, central to all the hunt plains. This precious fixture of then: planet and history now rode the wild lanes of space, with its blan-ket of gift-drapings flying like a free dancer's floss.

She wondered if the gravity generators inside the Anointed ship were working properly, holding the Anointed in place as they had been so lovingly arranged. Were the sculptures and artwork undamaged? The representations of the ancient planets still in place? Or had the shock of space broken everything?

How reassuring to see the Anointed again! For all of their lives, and all their ancestors' lives, the ageless barge had been on its pedestal, until the Elders decided die time had come for them to travel. At least the Gate-way had brought the spinners to the Anointed and not sent them each off to some unexplained destination where they would be forever wandering.

"A second contact," Untuxx reported "Another ves-sel!"

"Strangers!" Luntee growled. "The Anointed are linking with strangers!"

Untuxx seemed in physical agony. 'The stranger ship is pierced, Riutta! The Anointed are causing trou-ble!"

Horrified, Riutta slammed both her hands forward on the top of the drive box. She stared at what she had caused, the last thing Living ever wanted.

'Trouble!" she gasped. 'Trouble in space!"

Chapter Thirteen

Blood Savage Nine, Prime of the Savage Hand Blue Net Patrol

*the blind is descending, Avedon."

"Curse the Blind... slow all progress. Drop from dynadrive. Signal the other avedons to slow."

Avedon of the Hand Delytharen paced the cylindrical interior of his Savage, glancing up at the Blood men above him.

A few steps along the curve of the cylinder, the anx-ious young officer Camarith twitched and paced. Camarith was never calm, always afraid of things that might go wrong.

The gravity cyclones would have to be charged soon. At rest, the Plume Savage spun dependably, creating natural gravity. Cyclone spinners provided a solution to movement at dynadrive. There had to be gravity, or there would be no light speeds.

Now they were really in the dark.

The stone-colored interior of the Savage was a calm-ing environment, a pleasant side effect of recycled paint, which always came in planet-basic colors. Against it the blue skin and solid-block vests, tunics, or wraps of his companions were the only colors. Some different blues, some browns, a green or two... Blood farers wore what was available. If a man was cold, he might coil a length of fabric around his legs or arms and therefore be wearing more color, but there was no unity of style as displayed by Human farers in the recordings Federation had provided.

Missing the lower part of his right arm, Delytharen looked at the simple rust-brown clothing he wore and beat down sensations of inadequacy, sustained only by the crossed strap around his remaining wrist that marked him Avedon of a Savage Hand. The crossed strap was meant to be an honor, but he was cautious to not think too well of himself. Many had turned down the rigorous duty of commanding five Plume Savages, including Shucorion.

And his little strap would not impress Human. Those recordings from Federation were majestic, tapes of beau-tiful military organizations, marching and fighting, each in its own special attire, entertaining delighted spectators, recalling with great pride their histories. Unlike many avedons, Delytharen had studied these recordings kindly provided by the very open Federation, and made his offi-cers study them. During his Blind, he might look again.

He had once thought a Savage was a large vessel, be-cause each was big enough to hold eight Plumes. Since the coming of Federation to the star cluster, these as-sumptions had been destroyed. Though Kauld had been superior to Blood, with their thick-bodied, long-hulled Marauder battlebarges, now came people who were superior to Kauld. Federation's ships were not afraid of size or power. Challenger, they said, was nowhere near their largest battleship, and Challenger was much big-ger than a Savage, much more powerful.

So Shucorion had communicated while setting up the Blue Net. Thus far it had proven true.

A thrill ran Delytharen's remaining arm at the idea of seeing the frigate for himself. Until now he had been part of the Blue Net, guarding and supporting trade be-tween Blood and Belle Terre, gently pushing down surges from unhappy Kauld. As the nearest Savages on mis side of their solar system, Delytharen's Hand had received the cry of distress from Shucorion in a Blood Plume. After passing along the information that they had taken the signal and would answer, the five Savages were most of the way to answering the call, but now the Blind had come down around them. To travel faster than light during the Blind was a mission of complete des-peration, too much to ask for the lives of Shucorion and his companion, who were both probably already dead.

He rubbed the stump of his missing arm, not so much for the feeling as just habit, to give his other hand a duty.

'This is shameful," he uttered. "We should have pro-gressed farther before the Blind. We should have en-gaged more speed. We've been of no use."

"Do you mink Keller rescued Shucorion and this criminal Bonifay?"

"I would be guessing, Camarith."

Within the frame of woody hair, lighter man most Blood, Camarith's expression crumpled. "Oh... for-give me."

Delytharen smiled at his young assistant "You haven't guessed yet It's always better when farers are kept from dying in space. Keller may have found them.

He would be the kind of man who finds them. He does nothing arbitrary."

Camarith nodded, squeezing his hands closed, open, closed, open. "What is he like? Is he an interesting per-son?"

" I have yet to meet him," Delytharen said. I've been curious.,. I've never met any Human person. These Human crossed unbelievable distance, more distance than Blood believed could be crossed. When they came, they moved moons to make their planet livable, and they've done well to survive upon it since com-ing here. They must be powerful and determined peo-ple... can you imagine what their civilization must be like? 'Federation'... someday I would like to witness such a blizzard of achievement."

He believed the stories because he had evidence. In a matter of two seasons, Keller of Federation had ham-mered into place an organized defense mechanism for Blood, Kauld, and Federation planets. The planet Belle Terre was supposedly his only official consideration, yet he had opened his consideration to include Blood Many, and even their enemies, All Kauld. There was confusion and strife now upon Kauld world, for Kauld had never experienced such enemies as Federation and some were ashamed while others were suspicious. These were bitter seeds.

Blood Many had made a bond with Belle Terre, in large part because they had no good alternative. Avedon Shucorion had provided an unusual explanation- Human had found a way to succeed without conquest For "Blood, living in the shadow of Kauld closing in upon them, the chance to go unconquered was a gift Blood had not expected.

Such magnanimous treatment required a stylish response. He'd been thinking about this since the distress flash came.

'The agreement,*' he began, "says we show 'all pos-sible respect* to each other between the Blue Net and the frigate. To Human what would that mean? Who should stand in which position? What will he expect? Who shall receive the criminal? Camarith, you're the specialist on the governor's agreement Read through it and through it Use the banks of information given to us about Federation and its history. Study the formal ways. We must have a proper procedure for greeting Keller, for receiving the criminal, offering assistance... make sure our attire is correct Then drill the men in their proper behavior. A man of Keller's stature could never succeed without attending every detail-"

An alarm interrupted him. Danger lights began to ro-tate.

"Avedon!" Camarith pushed Delytharen out of the way in his passion to get to the communication bars. "A new signal! A distress flash from Challenger!"

"From Challenger? Are you sure?"

"It possesses Shucorion's personal encoding. He says they're being attacked!"

Always careful, Delytharen leaned closer to the bars. "Is it an echo of the previous signal?"

"No, this one is new. It suggests danger to Chal-lenger, not to a Blood Savage."

"But you say it comes from Shucorion?" The avedon straightened. "Then he was rescued after all...."

Camarith looked up at him desperately. "Should we believe the signal? A second attack before we've even responded to the first?"

Delytharen scowled at himself. "Our tardiness is my fault Yes, we must believe the signal, of course. Shucorion is known for repeated risking, but he never lies. A danger to Challenger... loss of the strongest fighting vessel would be disastrous for all our planets. What does the agreement say in this case?"

"It says response to catastrophic emergency will be made with all possible speed."

'Is there anything in the agreement about suspending emergency response during the Blind?"

"No... not specifically," Camarith said. "I assumed it to be implied, since movement during the Blind is so-"

"All possible. Not all safe, all cautious, all sensible. A man like Keller would use every power he possessed to respond if we were in danger. Yes... we'll go now."

"Dynadrive through the Blind? For this much dis-tance?"

" 'All possible* means "all possible.* Keller agreed to protect our planet. He stopped the Kauld scourge. He formed us into a working fleet taken seriously by everyone. Once we were isolated Plumes with Savages scattered like debris. Now we are the Blue Net and we have respect. Even Kauld show us respect now. We must show Keller mat nothing, not our lives, not the Build, will keep us from upholding the governor's agreement*'

"Yes, Avedon."

"Of all the random decisions our destiny should make... that a reckless wildman like Shucorion should end up with Keller. What must he mink of us! What obscene twist puts a radical at Keller's side?**

The other men were listening to him, just as Ca-marith was, but Camarith was the only one authorized to respond unless directly addressed. Still, Delytharen's frequent vocalizations of his thoughts were a characteristic of his command. He didn't care if they heard him. His thoughts were always better outside of his head.

"How long" he mused, "before Keller becomes dis-illusioned with Shucorion? Before he decides he should never have made a bonding agreement with Blood Many? We have much to correct in his vision of us. He'll need real Blood standing by him. You and I, and this Savage Hand, will correct everything. Bring forth our best navigators for sensor darkness. Power the dynadrive. We'll use our preprogrammed chartings. Pre-pare to read star heat upon the hull and adjust with each degree. Bring your friend Tinlaur here. He has a talent for reading gases and spectral information. Pay special attention to space-dust density in this area, and solar-light shifts. Get ready for strict calculations.*9

"Yes, Avedon!" Camarith scrambled up and down me curved bulkhead to execute those orders. He was in a panic. He had never traversed the Blind at light speed before.

"We should learn to say `warp speed' instead of `dynadrive," Delytharen commented. "Let us begin to practice."

This time Camarith could only nod and motion to the men at the drive base to keep working. They were frightened too.

Delytharen, though, had committed himself and no longer worried. Slowly he began pacing again, thinking far ahead into the darkness.

"We'll show Keller that Shucorion is the exception and he can trust us after all. This single performance will bring us high in his mind. We can show him differ-ent Blood! Challenger will have the help he needs hours earlier than he expects/'

As Camarith twitched about transferring the new order to the rest of the farers, and men began hurriedly to shuffle from one position to another, Delytharen watched the instruments around him struggle to tease information from the sensor darkness. They could eas-ily die in this endeavor.

He steadied himself for the coming troubles of ma-neuvering through the Blind. This would be a tedious effort, but he was ready to have pride about it He mo-tioned Camarith and the others to hurry, to bring their specialists in navigation forward, quickly. This was a good struggle, a good opportunity for Blood to shine.

"After all is made stable for our Mends,*' he mused, "the accused man Bonifay will be received properly, will be properly judged, and properly he will be put to death.*'

Challenger

At red alert, the frigate shifted to emergency status in-board and out. All through the ship the day lights turned off and the efficient red lights came on, allowing human eyes to remain adjusted no matter where they looked, beautiful and eerie at the same time.

Specialized systems popped on-at least, those that could find their way home-but full deflector shields couldn't engage with the grave ship's lobster claws in direct contact and this big drill boring through the pri-mary hull. In his mind Nick Keller saw the crackling blue and yellow sheets of energy trying to find each other past the obstacles. He felt them through his boot soles. What a light show it must be out mere! What a fury of energy out of control!

The hull vibrated with alert mode. Challenger would take care of herself out there, fight dirty and give the at-tacker a frigate version of hellfire.

In here the story wasn't so good for the telling. Keller's brown hair flopped forward and pricked at his eyes until they watered. The phaser saw whined in his hands. He fought the demon's vein with phased light and sheer muscle until he thought his arms would shear off. He couldn't feel his hands anymore. Numbness crawled to his elbows. His bent knees were scorched. The fibers of his pants and sleeves glowed and smoked. Any moment he would light up.

And the saw was completely silly against the con-struction of the spindle. He wasn't making a scratch, wasn't even affecting the vibration's rhythm. What else could he do? How could he stop it? The ship would be cut up around them.

Evacuate the saucer section? Were the lower decks any better off? The turbolift was smashed-could they find their way through the maze of tubes? Could Bonifay climb in his condition?

His mind clattering, Keller bore down on his task. If he couldn't cut the damned thing, maybe he could bend it!

He never got the chance.

Just steps from where he made his ferocious stand, the air itself began to sparkle. He saw the change in his periphery and thought it was his own eyes being burned out of their sockets, but it got bigger.

He dared a glance. The air on the port deck turned gauzy in one spot; men a glaring sparkle appeared and flashed brightly twice before expanding in an instant Over the port deck hatch, a man-sized portal blew into existence, with metallic edges in bolted segments-just like the Gateway! For a second Keller thought it was an insane echo, a mirage, of what showed on the main screen.

Then somebody came through it

Out of the surprise doorway stepped a tall individual, gaunt-faced, quick-eyed, a humanoid being with varie-gated skin of purple and gray dapples and tightly cropped hair the color of eggplant, moving like a cat

Once she was through, the micro-gateway folded up and disappeared with an artistic flash.

Keller stared through the sparks and smoke created by his phaser saw's relationship with the spindle. Was it-? Yes, a woman! Hard to tell-she wore some kind of cut-and-stuffed body padding on her chest and hips, cut into a geometric pattern something like lightning. Under the padding was a simple shift

A shift-silver and lightweight, the same as those on the tomb ship! Just like those mummies were wearing!

Ah-hah! Keller shouted, but his voice was stolen away by the phaser saw and the screaming spindle.

The woman shifted her strange colorless eyes to the razor quill.

Off to his right a metallic rasp rang in his ear. His skull boomed. Even more quickly man it had spun its way in, the razor quill disengaged from the hit door and Itytek's unfortunate remains. It dropped Itytek on the crescent, whizzed past Keller's saw, buzzed a final time, and slurped back into the hole it had made for it-self in the port bulkhead.

Just like that-gone!

Suddenly overtired with nothing to cut, the phaser saw blew itself out and instantly went dead. The force of its abrupt discharge flung Keller backward. He spiraled into the sci-deck locker hatch. Over the jangle in his ears he shouted new commands.

''Break all contact! Full shields!"

The helm! Bonifay was lost in a gout of smoke.

The phaser saw dumped on the deck. Keller stum-bled forward. "Zane!"

Under the helm chair, Bonifay's elbow flashed in a puff near the deck. "Nick, are you burned?**

"I don't know.'* Keller eyed the intruder, but she wasn't making any moves. He divided his mind be-tween her and the ship that had to keep them all alive.

Bonifay clutched at him for both their sakes. "You took a whipping!"

"Come on. Back us off, dead slow." Eyeing the alien woman, he hauled Bonifay up and deposited him back at the helm. "Creighton!"

"Sir..." The burly ensign crawled out from under the communications pulpit and around Itytek's gaudy remains.

"Make sure those punctures are sealed off. Quinones, check MEL! Stabilize life-support"

Had anyone other than Itytek been killed? What was the damage on the rest of the ship? Had other sections been perforated?

But the first question was standing ten feet from him on the port deck, right next to the gaudy wound in the ship. Automatic sealants hissed beside the intruder, fill-ing the hole. The woman didn't seem to care or even notice. She seemed both unimpressed and dazzled by what she saw around her.

Dry-mouthed and gasping, Keller pressed his hands to Bonifay's shoulders and quietly ordered, "Intruder alert."

"Mmm-hm," Bonifay acknowledged.

They were on their own anyway. Security couldn't get up here without finding their way through the maze of capillaries in the ship, which would take crucial min-utes longer than the smashed turbolift would've taken.

Were the shields still up? How had this woman come on board with the shields up?

'Try to contact Ring," he added.

Bonifay nodded.

His legs chattering under him, Keller stepped out from behind the helm. He put himself between the woman and Bonifay. On the deck over mere his utility saw burbled sadly, wanting its battery recharged.

Zoa was down on the main foredeck! She had her fan blade out and she was stalking the intruder!

Keller's hand shot out "Zoa! Hold off!"

She didn't like it, but she held back.

The intruder simply stared at Zoa. They were two of the most unalike women Keller had ever seen. The in-truder's long limbs were hardly cousins of Zoa's com-pact muscular body, nor was her silvery sheath and geometric padding anything like the leather straps Zoa called day clothes. Her rubbery footwear, obviously poured or molded, was nothing like the clunky Rassua sandals and curving toe talons. Zoa's hair was braided into a wide bronze fan framing her sphinx-like face, but the intruder bore only a stiff purple stubble, completely unadorned. She'd had a hard life, Keller guessed.

The gaunt-faced woman was unimpressed with Zoa's threats or theatrics. Keller had no idea how she might have defended herself. There was no sign of a weapon. Her milky eyes shifted to him only after he moved be-tween her and the sci-deck, which she was intently scanning. Her eyes were more reptilian man human, but had a softened quality and long thick eyelashes on * the top and bottom.

No-that wasn't fair. There was nothing reptilian about her, as he got used to the obvious intelligence in her eyes. The pupils were hi the shape of a little four- pointed star, and the rest was a milky coating over green or blue. After a few moments they didn't look like a lizard's anymore. A little getting-used-to took care of things.

Keller leaned into his question. "Did you make the spindle retract?"

The woman didn't answer right away.

"The link," she said. "Yes."

One down, thirty million to go. At least she under-stood him.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Do you have a name?"

"Riutta."

Two down. --\

A rush of relief cooled Keller's fever. If they had names, he could go forward from here and find other things in common. He drew a sustaining breath. Before he had a chance to speak, the alien woman raised her hands to touch a passing tendril of smoke, as if she'd never seen such a thing before. Only now did Keller notice that her hands were missing the pinky finger and were almost as slim as her wrists, making her arms seem long and spearlike.

He logged that away and stayed on track.

**My name is Nick Keller. Are those your transport ships?"

"Spinners."

On the main screen was a panoramic view of the Gateway, and between it and Challenger now moved a cluster of alien flying machines. They were small ships, each with a set of mandibles off the bow and some kind of arched leggy extensions on the sides, and they were pulling closer and closer to each other until Keller thought they'd collide.

They did, but instead of doing damage the pickers grabbed hold of each other and began to knit into a sin-gle unit Before his eyes the scatter of individual ves-sels no bigger than shuttlecraft galvanized into one ship more massive than the frigate.

He'd said "transport" and she had agreed. Did that mean they weren't fighters? His attempt to suck out a clue hadn't really worked. He still didn't know.

The woman peered around the bridge. She blinked often, as if having to focus and refocus her eyes. Clearly nothing was familiar to her. The technology made no sense-she didn't pause over any console or monitor, but did fix on the bridge rail as if it might be important The flickering of diagnostic lights made her flinch.

Though Keller tried to make something of that, he remembered how he had behaved on the grave ship, how many takes he needed to accept the statues, then comprehend mat they were bodies, and mat they still had their strings attached.

Finding no interest hi the bridge tech, Riutta faced Keller again. 'The Anointed have been disturbed. Why did you attempt to link with them?"

Were shrugs universal? He tried one.

"We applied our tractor beams," he said.

"Were you attacking?"

**No-no. The *Anointed* tried to change course to-ward a populated area."

"Why would you care?"

"I have people aboard the Anointed ship. I tried to stop it from leaving."

'The Anointed cannot be stopped. Why are you in " space? Why?"

"We... work here. We guard the populated area."

"Where are you going?"

Keller glanced at Bonifay, but the bosun seemed equally confused. To the woman, he attempted, "I'm not particularly going anywhere. We live on the ship.**

"Why?"

"Uh... it's helpful. People live on planets, the plan-ets interact, and we help. We also protect"

"You struck at the Anointed?"

Slippery ground. Careful, or the foot ends up in the mouth.

He ticked his tips. "We had to turn our weapons on the barge when it-" What word had she used? "-linked with us. But we understand now that was a mistake."

"Why do you have weapons?" she asked. "Why?"

At his elbow, Bonifay sucked a quick warning breath.

"Ships always carry weapons," Keller said. "For a variety of reasons."

"You'll kill? Or others will kill you?"

Aware of the eyes of his crew, he lowered his voice to a tone of soft honesty. "It happens."

Please don't ask why....

Almost an afterthought, but as a way to reduce the tension on the bridge, he waggled his finger at Zoa and motioned her back up to the crescent deck. Better snip that fuse while he had the chance.

Zoa didn't tike it, but she went.

Riutta continued sizing up the surroundings, but now she was looking at the people, not the instruments. She stared at Lucy Quinones and Dean Creighton without a care for politeness or explanation, the way a child stares. And Itytek's body-she surveyed it without even a flicker of apology. She had things to learn and meant to learn them. Her sense of purpose was clear, though the purpose itself remained a mystery.

Keller tried to learn too. Riutta didn't seem to feel responsible for Itytek's death, or any other injury that might've happened here. A thorn of resentment poked up in his stomach. He pushed it down. Was it possible she thought all this was his fault?

"What do you call this?" She put her hand on the bridge rail, testing as if it might bite.

"It's the caprail."

"Of course it's a rail," she said. "This..." Her nar-row hand moved across the polished surface. "What do you call this?" 4

Having already given the only answer that made sense, Keller stood with his lips parted and nothing coming out What did she want?

"It's red," Bonifay abruptly spoke up. "It's a color.**

Riutta leaned to get a better look. "Color..."

She seemed to know the word, revere it, and be com-pletely enthralled with what she saw.

While she was distracted, Keller dug a hand into Bonifay's wrist. "How'd you know mat?"

The bosun shrugged with his other hand. "I noticed she doesn't have any."

Pretty good noticing-Keller actually thought Riutta was plenty colorful, with her skin's variegated grays and blues and her purple hair, but now that he thought about it, everything including her clothes and eyes were in the monochromatic cool spectrum. Gray, blue, silver, milk.

"Red," Riutta played back. She rubbed her hand on the rail, then looked at her hand to see if the color came off. When it didn't, she straightened "Living have been gone a long time," she said. "This choice to leave a.good planet and cause trouble hi space, this is what gave Living five hundred generations of misery."

"Living?" Keller interrupted "Your lives?"

Bonifay leaned toward him. "I think she means the Living. Name for themselves."

"Oh..." He cleared his throat and addressed Riutta again with gentle phrases. "We welcome the Living to our space. Can you help us get our Mends back?"

The woman's small eyes narrowed. "Why?"

His heart skipped. "They're not harming anything- anyone over there. We were trying to learn."

"The Anointed will defend themselves."

"Is that why it attacked us?"

"Attacked? They were Linking with you."

"Linking... you mean docking? Joining?"

"Yes."

"Explains it-" He glanced at Bonifay. **Case of mistaken identity."

"Well, they're dead," Bonifay muttered. "Judgment's probably off."

Control, control... how good was he at diplomacy? In front of him was a woman from a completely un-known civilization in a place they hadn't identified, through that looking glass in space, who had influence over the ship where his crewmates were now appar-ently trapped. Step lightly.

"Can you help us?" he asked again, more slowly this time, with more emphasis.

Riutta considered the question and didn't respond immediately, as if Keller might have the situation re-versed. She was sizing him up too. Her eyes squinted across the bridge, trying to add up what she saw with what he had so far told her. Was he lying? Would he be-tray her? She had those decisions to make. So far all she knew was that Keller and his crew had broken into her private cemetery and rifled around. What would she think when she found Keller had destroyed the em-balming machine and melted a lady's face?

"Nikelor," she began, "my spinners will link with the

Anointed. None of yours will ever go there again. I will go to the Anointed now."

On an impulse Keller blurted, 'Take me with you this time!"

"Nick!" Bonifay shot halfway out of his chair before the pain stopped him, but he managed to get Keller's elbow.

**Hush," Keller snapped. To Riutta he quickly said, "My people won'* recognize you. They may try to de-fend themselves. You'll need me to make sure mat doesn't happen."

Without acknowledging his proposal in any particular way, except perhaps the lack of response, Riutta turned away from bun. She made no particular movements or signals, no motions with her hands or any equipment Indeed she appeared to carry none at all. She was as simple a being as Keller had ever seen walking.

The micro-gate appeared again near the port bulk-head For an instant it looked like a hole in the side of the bridge, but a brief pause showed it in fact to be out from the wall about three feet Keller looked behind it and could see the bulkhead. A person could easily walk around the window. It wasn't a hole in anything at all, except air.

Inside the door-sized necklace of metal segments was a tidy framed view of the ulterior of the grave ship, with its bedazzled brassy growth, dripping metal moss, and rows of pewter mummies in grottoes. At the sight Quinones let out a horrified squeak. Creighton uttered a swear word. Zoa pulled her blades. Otherwise every-thing was peachy.

Bonifay pulled on his arm. "What're you doing!"

Keller threw him a charity glance. "All I can mink of. After I'm gone, get Shucorion up here."

"Don't go through that tiling!"

With a firm hand Keller pressed him back into his seat. "Pipe down. We've got shipmates over th-"

"Look!"

The micro-gate framed a moving form now-one of the boarding party in his helmet and envirosuit. Then in front of him Savannah Ring and another suited crew-man straightened up, peering through the linked frame. Tyce and Ellis, Keller guessed from what he could see of their faces.

He glanced at Riutta distrustfully and realized the next step was his.

"Ring, front and center." He reached through and wiggled his fingers.

Staring at Riutta, Savannah hesitated, but took the offer and tested her footing. She stepped through onto the bridge, wavered a moment and got her balance. Keller passed her behind him and reached through to get Tyce and Ellis, then looked to see if anybody else was there. The scents and bizarre lighting of the grave ship, along with the thousand eyes of mummified aliens, gave him the crawly creepies.

"Where are the others?" he asked. 'There are two more."

Riutta didn't touch the micro-gate, but somehow it changed to another chamber, opening just steps from Biologist Manteo and Midshipman VanAlden in the middle of collecting whatever they were after.

"Come on, boys," Keller called. "Step through. Move. Come on! Manteo, on your feet!"

The dumbfounded crewmen abandoned their work, glanced at each other, stumbled to their feet, and after that tittle commitment had no choice but to accept their CO's order, or at least accept that it really was Keller talking to them and not an illusion. Manteo got through the micro-gate without help, but VanAlden tripped on the lower segments and landed flat on his belly at Riutta's feet Keller quickly hauled him out of the way and herded them all behind the command chair. One by one they took off their helmets and bunked at the change in lighting.

Only Savannah Ring had the nerve to step back to Keller's side. "Wow... who's your girlfriend?" she whispered.

"New neighbors. You all right?*'

Ring's quick eyes flashed as she took in the new information all around them, including the scene on the main screen showing the new arrivals. "We're good..."

"We're well," Bonifay corrected.

"Us too." To Keller she murmured, "Got a lot of new stuff... what happened to your clothes? And your hands? And-him?"

She'd noticed Itytek, lying mutilated on the crescent

"A close encounter," Keller truncated. "Hush a minute."

Pushing."

Riutta had moved directly to the micro-gate without the hesitation of die boarding party. She placed her hand on a side segment and leaned inside to have a look around.

Could she see the damage Keller himself had done? What would she do when she found the wrecked ma-chine with its shattered tiles? The mummies he'd been forced to lash out against? Was there a good excuse for poking around private property? Would Riutta buy the explanation of a rescue mission?

Seemed flimsy now.

"Why don't you stay on your own planet?" she asked without looking at him.

Keller paused. Was that a loaded question? Rhetori-cal or not? He couldn't tell from her tone.

'It's our nature to expand," he attempted. 'It's every-body's nature. After all, why did you come through the Gateway?"

"Because of the one great mission." She spoke the words as if they were themselves an explanation. With that announcement she stepped through the micro-gate, feeling her way carefully step by step. With the set of her body she hinted that she didn't trust what she saw.

"Wait!" Keller bolted to the micro-gate again. When Riutta turned to look, he asked, "What is the great mis-sion?"

Her milky eyes were passive and unambiguous. 'It is what we are here to find out," she said "I will take care of mine. You will take care of yours. We will be sepa-rate."

She backed up a step, turned, and moved to the side, out of their view, apparently going to check on the Anointed

Anointed... what did that mean? He wished he'd asked

Savannah peered through the micro-gate where Ri-utta had stood "Was that a warning?"

"Get back!" Bonifay blurted.

As Keller pulled Savannah toward him, the micro-gate spiraled down to a dot, twinkled, turned over once with a sense of purpose, and winked out Where it had been just an instant ago, the deck hatch folded open and Shucorion reappeared, with absolutely no idea of what he had almost bumped his head into.

He climbed out, scanned the terrible damage, the twirled ends of smoke being sucked out the ventilators, the rather befuddled boarding party, and quickly fo-cused on the scorch marks still smoldering on Keller's clothing and hands.

"What occurred here?" He took Keller by the arm and patted out a smolder. "Are you injured?**

Must look worse than it felt Round the fringe, I guess. Got the boarding party back. You just missed a show" ,

"Yes, but-" Itytek's body was hard for Shucorion to miss from his position on the deck, and now through the clutter of crewmen and the clearing wisps of smoke he saw what was left of one of his own Blood crew, as well as the telltale destruction of the lift doors. "What occurred?"

Keller glanced at Itytek. "Some kind of monster spike came through from the grave ship." What were those red lights in his eyes? Oh-of course. He glanced back at Creighton and made frivolous eye contact "Dean, se-cure from red alert, will you... maintain general quar-ters and stand by. Scramble some damage control. See if you can find out what happened to the shields.**

"Secure from red alert, maintain general quarters, damage control, shields, sir."

The red lights of emergency alert changed to the day lights of normal work life.

"Thanks," Keller said, glancing at Creighton. "Good job, Dean. Lucy, you too, very good."

You too, Commander" Quinones pushed out a smile, ¯ What else was he forgetting?

Shucorion was looking at the port flank, the scar of invasion from that side, and added up that something had flung itself all the way across the expanse of the bridge. "A javelin?"

"No, bigger!" Bonifay blurted "You should've seen it! Turned out to be a docking mechanism we're not set up to receive! You should've seen what Nick did! He got that phaser saw over there and went after this thing, and got his hands all burned and then this window pops open right here on the bridge, and it looked just like that huge one outside, except small! Just tike magic it twirled and plink-opened right up, right through our deflectors, and mis alien woman came out with funny eyes and tie-dyed skin and Nick stepped right hi her face! He fired the first shot and ordered her to give back the boarding party and she waved her hands and incanted the window and here they are! Just like a song!"

A groan pushed out of Keller's throat "Zane..."

"Wait till Seth Zapf hears about this!"

"Oh, agony..."

"And out there, right there, all these little spiked ships came out of the Gateway and bundled up together into one composite operation-you can see it out there now! Then this woman went into the window, into Pompeii with all the metal people, and she tried to make a speech or a threat, but Nick-and twinkled- rolled over-could just tell-she had this look of total-" ,

The words tumbled and strayed off any sensible pat-tern. Suddenly drugged by sheer relief, Keller pressed scattered fingers to his face and somehow got diem all up there at the same time. A film of sweat glazed his palm. His head howled on the inside, ears still buzzing. The buzz got louder, Bonifay's voice more distant Then the tunnel vision closed in. His balance warbled and his knees folded. He reached out for the arm of the command chair to steady himself-it was there, wasn't it? Wasn't it in the middle of the command deck? It was here yesterday.

He heard Savannah speak, something short and quick, and felt Shucorion's grip around his body. His brain flooded with fuzz. His feet moved, but he wasn't moving them. The bridge tipped up on a side, wheeled fore to aft, and swam around. By the time it came back, the green leather command chair had folded around his thighs.

"Put your head down, sheriff."

Savannah. Head down? What would mat look like to the crew? Ridiculous. He replaced the idea with a few long deliberate breaths and let them out slowly, until the light-headedness lost its grip.

When the black curtain slowly opened before his eyes, Shucorion still had a firm grip on him and somebody had shoved a survival flask of enriched mint-flavored water into his hand. Working against the tremble in his arms and shoulders, he indulged in a swig.

"Pretty tasty for water," he commented. Another few seconds passed, and after that he could see everybody again. "Oh, there you all are... quit flying around the dome.**

Were his feet still there? Yep. Way down there, spread all over the riser. Hate to lose those. The Durango boots were pretty precious way out in the middle of this wide open space.

"I'm fine," he claimed. He was getting too much at-tention. All his energy was over there on the deck next to the pathetic phaser saw. In a lump. He'd have to con-jure up more.

Another swig cleared his head more. He blinked up at Shucorion, sad and worried at his side, and Savan-nah, who was taking his pulse.

He pulled his wrist out of her grip. "I'm better now.**

"You need treatment," Savannah contended. "You turned three shades of gray just now. You could be in shock."

"Oh, cripe, honey, I'm beyond shock." He looked at Shucorion. "What's the condition below? Any other ca-sualties?"

Disturbed, Shucorion sighed heavily. "No other dam-age or casualties. The core and engines are ready, We tried to reach you. We could hear and feel the attack, but no one answered when we called you."

"Couldn't hear. The thing made a godawful jangle. My ears are still buzzing." He pointed at the forward screen, at the bubble of alien ships gathered between them and the grave ship. "See those clustered pickers out there? Apparently the Pompeii belongs to those people."

Eyes blue-shaded and dark brows drawn, Shucorion gave one more look at the afterdeck, at Itytek's pitiful body. A cracked light from the dome cast an orange band across his mahogany hair. "You should be aware," he said. "When we heard nothing from you, I sent a call of distress."

If he hadn't been in a chair, Keller would've stum-bled. He gnarled his fingers into Shucorion's sleeve, not in a nice way. "You sent-you mean another one? A different one?"

"Yes, another one."

"Who'd you call!"

"A general distress signal. Most likely the nearest Blood Hand will intercept it I thought the bridge was-"

"Your friend Dely-something?"

"I don't know him personally... probably him, yes."

Throwing his hands in the air, Keller bellowed, "Just because we're-don't send-you-you... you've got to quit doing that! Why do you send signals without permission? That's crazy!"

"Crazy?... crazy..." Genuinely baffled, Shucorion frowned his frustration. "Why would you not want a signal to be sent? If we were being torn apart-"

'It's my job to decide when to complicate things!" Keller wailed. "Sending a Mayday might not be the thing to do!"

"Why would it ^not?"

"Because-I don't know-maybe I don't want to draw somebody else into trouble. Maybe I want to handle things myself until I know what's going on. You may have put five Blood crews in unnecessary danger!"

"But I have an obligation to alert Blood of our-**

Keller cut him off with a swipe of his hand. "It's not the right decision unless / decide it's right! There might be important things you don't know about the problem. You're going to have to stop doing these things! You have to wait until I say. When I'm dead, then you can say."

Everyone had fallen silent around him. No one moved or even shifted. The boarding party held their helmets tensely.

Maybe his tone sounded different outside his head than inside. Maybe he sounded mad.

Maybe he was.

Shucorion stood before him, also still, but with a hardness in his expression that might be disagreement, or might be defiance.

Some things couldn't be done from a chair. Keller pushed himself to his feet in a way mat warned no one to help him. Still unsteady from the knees down, he kept a grip on the chair's arm and lowered his voice.

This way he made much more impact than when he had shouted.

'This isn't going to be the way this ship runs," he warned. "We'll be rewriting some agreements. One of them is about you. You're not a Blood avedon here. Here, you work for me."

Chapter Fourteen

'they live in a metal desert."

A cryptic sentence. Savannah Ring knew what she was saying and waited for Nick Keller to see the image in his mind before she went on.

He knew she was painting a picture in his mind on pur-pose with her silence. They had known each other long enough for her to give him a panorama with one wont

The small sickbay was a cloistered area. Savannah had it pretty much to herself most of the time. A few crewmen were trained in emergency medical treatment, but only as a hobby.

Generally, she thrived in solitude. Unconscious pa-tients or the cooperative dearly departed were preferred customers.

She had come back with a cornucopia of new infor-mation. Tyce and Manteo had struck gold on the bio-logical data, and Savannah herself had stumbled onto a loaded databank-no mistake. She'd brought back a history of the Living, as told by the Living.

Not unusual, really, for people to stock their ships with information about themselves and their home-worlds. Everybody in the Federation did it The un-usual part had to do with how much she could decipher, and how quickly. She'd sprayed Keller's burned hands with a quickie treatment right there on the bridge, then vanished to sickbay to analyze her findings and called Keller in record time.

Now he was down here, stalking the diagnostic couch while she sat upon the couch with her legs folded like a kid and twitched to tell what she knew. ^

'It's a planet virtually made of ores and natural al-loys," she launched. "Every kind of compressed com-pound or base ore you can imagine, just like the grave ship. We wondered why there's nothing but metal on Pompeii, even the things mat look like planets and moss-it's because they don't have anything else to build with. They built the insides of that ship to look like the place they think they came from. Someplace here/*

"Where here? Which planets?"

"No idea. They don't use names for places. Space is just 'outside.' There's no sign of charting or tracking. They don't know where they're going. They came from someplace other than the planet they've been living on for generations. And it's been a fight to live mere."

Relieved that she'd found so much, yet also over-whelmed, Keller folded his arms to hold in the rising fears. "How'd you hammer this out so fast?"

Perhaps he secretly hoped she was wrong, making mistakes, not translating correctly.

Savannah read his mind and gave him the short an-swer. "Normally, even with computer help, it would take a couple of days to translate and decipher a com-pletely alien language, but it didn't My tricorder recognized this even without the mainframe tie-in. The Living language is a mixture."

"Of Blood and Kauld, F U bet"

She surveyed him, curious and entertained. "How d'you know?"

He wasn't sure how he knew. In a Zane-like strike of intuition, he tugged on the only thread he had.

"The mummy... the one who looks tike Shucorion... it's some* kind of binding tie. I don't believe in coincidences or long-lost twins or magical doubles."

"I don't either," she said, "and you're right Another piece of evidence is this-men: place was never meant to have life. Life organisms might've stumbled or fallen in and managed to muddle along, but it's all simple forms. As far as the Living know, they're the only com-plex life-form. They're obviously not natural to their planet I think they came from here."

"What about the hands?"

"Okay, that was my fault," she admitted. "I missed it Should've seen it the first time we were over there. Those mummies, some of them have five digits and some only have four. I mean, three fingers and a thumb."

"Riutta's got three and a thumb."

"1 know. Some of them, the tittle finger is shorter and some have a kind of stub there. The younger ones don't have any sign of a finger there. The grave ship is an evolutionary tour! It's frozen archaeological evi-dence on the hoof. Blood and Kauld... then later, the Living. Confirms how long it's been. Changes like this take thousands of years."

Keller pursed his tips and decided to play naughty. "It's only been twenty years since Shucorion's father went through."

"I can track the gripping strength if you want The

Living needed good grips to survive over there. If you're going to be a blacksmith or a metalworker, you need power. Small fingers are good for tactile work, but they needed strength. They sacrificed a finger and the remaining ones got stronger/*

'They don't look like Blood or Kauld either. Their eyes-"

"And the mottled skin;' she broke in. "I know, it's different Those are just cosmetic. Well, the eyes proba-bly aren't, but I'm telling you those people have ge-netic ties to Blood and Kauld."

"Let me ask you this," Keller altered. "Turn it around. Could those changes have taken place naturally in twenty years?"

"Not a chance."

"Oh... okay... if the planet's made of metal, how do they live? You've gotta eat, don't you? Does your databank say anything about that?"

"Lots. They hunt a large breed of animal that lives over there." She spread her hands demonstratively. "A big one, a biological nuclear plant-massive amounts of power! These animals free-float in the atmosphere, feeding on some kind of high-flying krill or plankton. They go up and down by generating heat or releasing it. The planet's metal, so the animals don't have any rea-son to come down. The people have to tease them down."

"How?" Keller asked. "What's the bait? How do the animals know to come down and get their necks wrung?"

Her eyes widened expressively and she indulged in an evil grin. "It's a fantastic anthropological trick! The creatures only come down for two reasons-to die, or to feed on the Living. The people have to ex-pose themselves naked on nonconducting pads. Huge woven rubber fields the size of whole cities! Isn't that enticing?"

"Oh, charming, yeh... the animals are heat-seekers of some kind, then?"

"I don't know. Or they see electromagnetic fields hi the Living's bodies. Every being has a way of sensing its own food. They sense aliveness on the planet, so they get tempted down." Suddenly she snapped her ringers. "Maybe that explains the skin colors! Pigment develops because that's what you need. Who knows-maybe the flying floaty monsters can see her skin better than yours or mine or Shadow's. Maybe she radiates more electromagnet-ism"

Keller tightened his arms into a knot, which made him wince. His hands were still reddened and bruised Somehow the pain kept him alert "They stab these things, shoot them, or what?"

"When the creature comes down, they throw a con-ducting net over it and suck the thing dry in a direct matter-to-energy conversion. Direct! Can you imagine knowing how to do that with a whole phaser bank? They have to make these rubber flats to stand on. If the animal lands on me planet's bare surface, it's like a wire that immediately goes to ground and the energy is lost back into the planet-whack! Life on this planet really exists in the upper atmosphere. Nothing could possibly evolve there. A whole lot of people are taken hi these hunts. They could easily defend themselves, but if they don't let the animals feed, they stop coming down. They might be related to Shucorion's folks, but compared to the Living, Blood and Kauld are soft-boiled. And your girlfriend? The one with the eyes? Guess what-she's an Elder."

"An 'Elder'?" he belted out "She couldn't be more than thirty-five!"

"Over there she's the wizened old matriarch. Thirty-five is getting up there. The way they get along, most people don't make it through very many hunts. They get to be Elders by continuing to live. Not by beliefs or lightness or cheating or power brokering or the usual methods. Seems they can't afford arguments, because mere are only two or three Elders at a time."

"How many people are we talking about?"

"I don't know that. We can crunch some numbers, but it would only be guessing. We don't have any way to know how many people were taken over thousands of years of hunts. Or when the hunts actually started. Or-"

A wave of his hand stopped her. "Got it," he said, "got it Does it say what the Anointed are?"

'Those are the people who live to die natural deaths. To the Living, 'natural' is almost anything where you don't get sucked up in the hunt Accidents, stillbirth, illness, old age, or wounds. Even wounds from the hunt If there's a body left when you die, no matter how you die, you're Anointed." She crooked a thumb, indi-cating the great outdoors. "We found a whole chamber with nothing but babies and advanced embryos. It's a tough culture, Nick. There weren't very many of them, considering thousands of years."

"Mercy," Keller empathized. "So the Living-the ones left-they scrape an existence from this metal planet by hunting these atmospheric fliers. How do the fliers know to come down low enough to get snagged?" He held up a hand. "I know that one... bears know when the salmon run. If the salmon don't run, the bears stop coming/'

She nodded. "The Living have to let the bears take some food so they'll come back the next time. All they have to offer is themselves. They had to balance be-tween enough energy to stay alive and saving energy to open that big interstellar embolism."

"What?"

"That's what it says. They opened me Gateway on purpose. It took generation after generation of putting aside energy. They've got a complex system of food dis-tribution-whose family eats first and why... if they have a spare hunt, half of them could starve and set their plans back a couple of generations. If I'm reading this right, those things weren't uncommon in their history."

Cupping a hand over his mouth almost as if to hide, Keller grimaced in empathy. "Oh, dear..."

They fell silent and wrestled a few moments with the surge of visuals racing through their imaginations. Bar-ren silver landscapes, glistening bronze mountains, zinc spirals instead of trees, and a sea of ball bearings.

'The Anointed were the first through the Gateway," he spoke up. "Could it have been sending signals to Riutta?"

"I don't know that answer," Savannah said.

He plowed on. "If Riutta's an Elder, and there are only a couple of them, she must've made the decision to come here!**

"Think so? How does that help?"

Immediately he thought of something more impor-tant "And why did she think this was the time? What do they want here?"

He could ask all he wanted The only response he got was a log of the question he should've asked Riutta while he had the chance. Guesses were cheap. Until now he had clung tightly to the facts and figures of putting together a fighting ship and a defensive fleet to guard the almost constant shipping of supplies, food, and critical personnel between Blood and Belle Terre. The job was hard, all-consuming, and in its way thera-peutic for an overwhelmed second mate who was better off keeping his hands busy.

Busy? No problem.

This racket of figuring out motivations and what made people tick and who would tick together and who wouldn't-might as well take a spoon and dig out his guts, rearrange them a little to the left.

"Savannah," he said, his voice gravelly as he scouted her posture, "cough it up. I see it in your lack of a re-flection." When she hesitated, he loaded the question and fired it. "Why does that one man look so much like Shucorion?"

"Okay, call me crazy," Savannah said with a nod, "but I think Doppel and Ganger are directly related. I could run specific DNA and PGL tests and give you a-"

"Hell, yes!"

I'll have to bring the Shadow down here. With Blood and Kauld, because of the chromosome arrange-ment, physical attributes are passed only through the male side. Their looks change much more slowly than human genealogy. Their genetics are less complex than ours, less varied. It's a survival mechanism for an ex-tremely spare environment where the men have to be gone lots of the time. Women always know their own babies. Men don't This is the only way for the man to be sure. You can see how this might evolve, all the sons and daughters looking like the fathers. I think some-how-"

"You think Shucorion's a direct descendant of this man? All right, then why couldn't it be his father?"

"Eleven thousand years, Nick," she reminded. 'I'm not wrong."

"No, no... not saying you are. You tested this man. He's eleven thousand years old."

"Yes," she said clearly. "In fact, this particular man is one of the oldest. I took dozens of scrapings while I was there."

"Does any of your data say anything at all about what they're doing here? Why they came and what they hope to accomplish?"

She shook her head. "I looked for that. I knew you'd ask. Far as I can tell, they ask themselves that question all the time. There's a lot about purpose and rules and direction, and there seems to be something important about sending their Anointed through as a herald of coming things. What comes after, we don't know. I don't think they know either."

"And the Anointed aren't likely to tell us, are they?"

"Oh, they're doing what they can...."

"Why can't these things be simple?" Keller started pacing pointlessly. "Why can't years just be years? What if then: years are really eleven thousand minutes? I spent my whole career in or near Federation space. Everybody knows what a year or a week or a day is. Shucorion and his people went out of their way to ad-just and do Federation standard just so we wouldn't have to get used to a new thing. We ought to just hail Riutta and tell her it's not eleven thousand years any-more, it's eleven thousand minutes."

The diagnostic couch creaked as Savannah leaned back and did her Cleopatra imitation. "You done?"

"Well... grumble, complain, grouse. Now I'm done."

Bad style, hiding something so important from his exec. Until now Keller had been hell-bent on not getting any answers. This whole episode was off-beat by a bar.

Why is there something on an alien ship that looks like you?

"All right..."

"Want me to call him?"

"Naw, some things are better in person. Know where he is?"

"Right down the hall. He mustered some Blood guys to repair the bridge and he was about to help, but I or-dered him to his quarters for some sleep. As long as we're in Gamma Night, y'know..."

Keller nodded. Gamma Night. A few hours of still-ness before the Savage Hand could navigate through.

"Stand by," he decided. 'Til go get him."

The officers' quarters on Challenger were spare enough to make even the deprivation-oriented Blood feel at home. In fact, the only exclusive amenity Keller and Shucorion got, as commander and executive offi-cer, was privacy. Instead of two crewmen to a room, the senior officers had a little bitty wedge with a bunk and private shower and an outer office with a computer desk, separated by a retractable room divider. On ships where prestige wasn't a factor, saving of space certainly was. Challenger was decidedly one of those ships.

Keller buzzed at Shucorion's door, but it wasn't Shu-corion who answered. Instead the man who came to the door was Milespark, a Blood magnetologist, timid and friendly, with a bad limp from a very old hip injury. "Commander," Milespark said, rather uneasily. "Hey," Keller greeted. "Shucorion in here?" "Yes... will you be here now, Mr. Keller?" "I guess." Whatever that meant. He stepped into the tiny office, dark except for a worklight at the desk. And that single light shone on a surprise. "Well, look at this!"

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and leaned over a startlingly accurate scale model of the Chal-lenger. Over two feet long, the model was almost fin-ished, complete with her "flying buttresses"-the Rover strokes, fanned stalks on each side that held the nacelles down and back-the charcoaly black hat, and every crease and line between the hull plates lovingly etched in. Even the bolts in the plates were there. Along with all the perfections were the many imperfections specific to this ship. Her mismatched parts, bargain-basement ports, windows, wales, and bracers were applied every which way to get the job done. The model fastidiously repli-cated every goofy establishment From what he could tell, there was nothing left to be done to the model but the task Milespark had been doing just now-installing a tiny but impressive UFP standard on the khaki-colored dorsal neck section so those in this new sector could tell they were from out of town. The closer he looked, the more detail came out and the more infectious the effect

A rush of affection softened his whole being. There it was, the metal hole in space that kept them all alive. Kinda looked like a starship that'd been through a laun-dry press.

"Isn't this sweet," he commented. "Liable to win the Ugly Ship contest... danged if she doesn't stand there proud as a chickenhawk... You do this on your own?**

**Mr. Bonifay ordered it," Milespark answered. **He was trying to explain to us about installing the optical cameras along the lower hull, but the schematics weren't detailed enough. He wished for us to have a very clear perception of the outer skin before he sent us outboard to work. Avedon Shucorion thought a scale representation would help us. You can see here and here where we installed the cameras."

He pointed to a row of triangular ports along each side of the engineering section.

"Kinda nice to have around too," Keller commented. "I can see myself inside this window. Polishin' m'boots. Someday I gotta get a real job/* He flopped a hand on Milespark's knobby shoulder. "You oughta sign this. It's a work of art, ranger."

"My thanks." Milespark stepped toward the door. "If you'll be here now, Commander, I'll go for my meal."

"What's stopping you? Dismissed."

The model ship hypnotized him for several long sec-onds as he walked her decks and ran his ringers along the nacelles. He wished he could stay here longer, maybe do some work on her himself. Funny how work-ing on the big one was work, but working on the little one was fun.

"Shucorion, you 'wake?" When no one responded, he stepped around the room divider into the dark area and looked at the bunk. "Your friend out here's really got-"

There was no one in the bunk. He stepped toward it to confirm what his adjusting eyes told him. His toe snagged on a solid bulk at his feet.

He drew back. "Computer, worklights!"

A polite pair of amber functional flicked on, not bright enough to blind him, but enough to see Shu-corion crumpled on the deck on his side, turned away.

"Oh, God-" He dropped and pulled Shucorion over.

The Blood rolled without resistance and flopped onto his back, his arm hooked lifelessly over Keller's. Now the breath that had stuck in Keller's gullet came out in a gasp.

Where once Shucorion's eyes were soft gray, be-tween the ring of dark lashes they were completely blacked out, as if drowned in ink.

In a rush of panic Keller grasped Shucorion at the throat, searching for some sign of life.

There was none. Nothing.

Chapter Fifteen shaking like spider silk, Keller backed off until his spine bumped the divider. Shallow involuntary breaths racked his chest. With an icy hand he jabbed at the communications panel and managed to speak.

"Keller to sickbay, emergency!"

''Ring here."

"There's-something-wrong with Shucorion... Savannah, I think he's dead."

"Don't jostle him. I'll be right there"

Those eyes... black and glazed, featureless.

Keller pressed his knotted fists into his thighs. He wanted to kneel there again, do something to help, hammer Shucorion's chest or push breath into his lungs, do something heroic. A hidden awareness told him those actions would do no good.

Accident? Sickness? Should he run after Milespark and accuse him of murder? What was so wrong on this ship, to come to this?

Worse than the prospect of facing the Blood Hand was the spectre of facing them alone.

He suddenly felt alone as a desert stone.

The outer door thumped and Savannah appeared at his side.

"He's..." Keller tried to speak, but it caught tight behind his lips. "No pulse-"

His midsection knotted up.

Savannah knelt, and put her medical touch to Shucorion's bizarre eyes. She pressed two fingers between his neck and left shoulder.

"He's got a pulse," she said. Why was she so casual?