"Not breathing," Keller pointed out

**Not much," she confirmed.

"Look at his eyes...."

"I see them." She hooked a strand of her redwood hair behind one ear in a damnably pleasant motion. "It's normal. He's asleep."

With his feet somewhere below, Keller managed a step. "Come on, Savannah..."

She looked up at him. "He's fine, Nick. This is how they sleep. Haven't you noticed?"

She checked Shucorion's eyes again, but seemed sat-isfied. The Blood just sprawled there beneath her hands, without a flinch.

'It's almost a coma," she said. "On their planet they have to work so hard and so much, they evolved this ef-ficient pattern. They're awake for four or five days at a time, sometimes longer. Then, when they finally crash, it's only about four hours of deep intense sleep. They go into this hibernation state and it's the devil to wake them up. It's nearly a complete metabolic shutdown. I had poor Dimion on life-support before I realized he was taking a nap."

"What about-the eyes?"

"Natural light blocking." She rested her arm on her knee and analyzed Keller. "You don't have much expe-rience with aliens, do you?"

"What's... he doing on the... damn deck? Why isn't he in his rack?"

"They don't like beds. Not accustomed to them."

"Holy Moses... what if there's a fire or-7"

"You really haven't noticed?"

"No!"

"This is why they never leave each other alone dur-ing the shutdown period. Blood sleep in mutually pro-tective groups. Never alone."

"So this is why I see them snoozing in the corridors and all over engineering."

She nodded. "Sure, so the others can keep working. Blood don't waste time. Sitting around on guard while somebody sleeps is a waste. So they keep at work and sleep wherever the other guys are working. On their planet they live in big lodges instead of houses. They even have what you and I might call hotels, where any-body can go in and sleep, where there's always a watcher on duty. At least one person is awake at any given time, in case there's a quake and your lodge starts falling down or a flood-"

"They have a designated stay-awaker?"

"Always"

With a gush of relief, Keller sat down on the bunk and pressed a hand to his face. Why hadn't he noticed this? In all these weeks-but then, he and Shucorion had been rotating watches and were constantly working on some fritzing system the rest of the time. He'd never taken notice of when or where anybody else went on or off duty. That was the concern of the department heads and watch leaders, not the commander. He'd forced himself to stop doing that job as part of learning his new role.

And wasn't he good at it?

Shucorion had always been around when Keller needed him. It never occurred to him to notice whether the other guy got enough sleep. **Crickets," he grum-bled. 'This whole day stinks tike low tide... second time in one day, I find him crinkled up on the deck, half dead..."

He flinched when Shucorion inhaled with a sudden jolt and let out a stressful groan, then shifted and flexed his arms and legs like a child waking up at Keller's feet

"Here he comes," Savannah mentioned. She politely retracted her hands.

They both watched as the Blood held the next big bream longer than seemed comfortable, and blinked once. The black paste over his eyes broke at the pupil and sank back toward the lashes, sheeting off like oil His eyes cleared to their normal almost human appear-ance. He blinked again, more consciously mis time, and focused on Savannah, then Keller. Their presence perplexed him.

"My greetings..."

Keller sighed roughly. "Hi, sport"

He reached down and took Shucorion by the wrist to lever him up to a sitting position on the deck. The long brown braid flopped over Shucorion's shoulder as he sat up and shook off the drowse. Here they were, all camped out like Pocahontas and a couple of mountain men.

"You all right?" Keller asked. His heart pittered in his ears.

Shucorion didn't understand, but amiably responded, "Much better, thank you."

'That's some survival method you've got."

"Which method?'

"This... your... I... I ought to kick you right in the asteroids."

Perplexed, Shucorion glanced at Savannah. "Would it help."

"Never mind," Keller said. **Why don't you sit up here. We've got something to show you."

The impolite deck creaked under his Durangos as he stood and gave Shucorion the place on the bunk. Shu-corion accepted help to get to his feet, a clue that this coma-sleep took some shedding.

His hands cold, Keller unlatched the room divider and folded it back out of the way, making the office and bunk area into one unit so they could all see the three monitor screens beside the desk. "Savannah, would you transfer the... those recordings over to these screens, please?"

"The what? Oh... sure." She moved to sit at the desk and work around the nifty model of the frigate.

Keller turned again to Shucorion. "I tried not to let all the cats out of the bag," he explained feebly, "until I knew what was going on, but now I'm after my own tail. I should've told you right away." He paused now, and sighed again. "Guess I hoped to protect you the way Derek Hahn used to protect me "

"Derikan?" Shucorion attempted to repeat

Keller felt Savannah's scoping gaze, though he ig-nored her. "Derek Hahn. Our exec on Peleliu. We were together four years-" He cut himself off. "Doesn't matter. Turn it on, Savannah."

She wasn't one for ceremony. Some buttons, pres-sure pads, a little tuning, and the critical tricorder recording presented itself on the largest wall screen available, a medical diagnostic readout right next to the physio scanner.

Keller watched to make sure the right image came up.

It did, just as eerie and mystical as hours ago.

He ticked off a few seconds for effect

Quietly he asked, "Is this your father?"

Talk about rude awakenings. Shucorion's enviable sapphire complexion lost a couple of facets. He stopped breathing-and stared until his lungs nearly had a spasm and he sucked a chop of air. Good thing he was sitting down. Emotions passed so quickly on his face that Keller could scarcely tag them before they were swept away by the next ones. Confusion, amaze-ment, horror, nostalgia, shock, disbelief, belief, disbe-lief again-zoom.

At first Keller just wanted to know what was going on, and anybody's feelings be damned. Now, as he looked at the effect on Shucorion of this totally unex-pected personal avalanche, the sight was pitiful enough to melt the mountain.

Time out Not everything had to happen at light speed. This was sadder than he expected.

I'm sorry," he offered. "I hate doing this to you."

Shucorion dredged up a ragged voice. "What hap-pened to him..."

Better choose the right words. Softly Keller explained, "He's been preserved. Like the rest of the people there."

"Where did you find... this?"

"In the room I fell into. Some sort of special cham-ber. I'd say your father went through that Gateway and made an impression on somebody."

Unimaginative and literal-minded, Shucorion plainly couldn't figure the implications of what he saw. He had no romance about him and could only think in straight lines. There didn't seem to be any here.

"I didn't want to show you this yet, but I need an-swers. And there's more. Might disturb you some."

Offering a little shrug of invitation, Shucorion sighed. He was already plenty disturbed by the effigy on the screen.

"Savannah," Keller invited, "go ahead and tell him."

She pointed at the mummy on the screen. "Unless you people live a lot longer than you've told us, this can't be your father. This is over eleven thousand years old."

Puzzled, Shucorion grimaced with emotional stress clashing against common sense. "Your equipment is faulty," he declared. "It is my father."

Planting his hand on Shucorion's shoulder, Keller leaned down to look him right in the eyes and, deter-mined to get his point solidly across, spoke very clearly. "It looks like your father. It can't possibly be him. Do you have another explanation?"

"What can be another?"

"I don't know. Is there anything about this man dif-ferent from your father?"

"His... clothing... his hair is not... the right hair."

'The right style?"

"Ennengand's was long, like mine. My mother taught me to wear mine this way because of..." He closed his eyes and seemed to weaken. "Oh, the crime of sentiment..."

Keller pushed aside the urge to give him more time. "Was he the first to see the Gateway?"

"Yes. He gave it that name. It was an accurate name, so no one changed it. His last messages warned of it, and described his escape through it, with the Kauld battlebarge in pursuit I have replayed the message many times and heard his voice describe the portal... he was angry, bitter at being forced to take so rash an action without time to see where he was going."

"Space commanders have to do that sort of thing,'* Keller told him. "He must've expected-"

"Ennengand hated the need to go to space," Shucorion explained sadly. "He found space inhospitable and unfor-tunate, a cursed necessity. Kauld would come to destroy us if we did not meet them in space. We were forced to become spacefarers. We did not choose this life."

"Could we be looking at the original civilization that seeded the Blood and Kauld worlds?" Keller asked "Maybe the Gateway is how they got around, and how you and the Kauld ended up way out here in the middle of this star cluster by yourselves, on a couple of pretty well matched planets circling binary stars-" He pressed a finger to one of his aching eyes. "Starting to sound like Zane..."

Savannah took over. "Starfleet's found evidence link-ing humanoid cultures all over the place, people who have no business being related at all, yet they seem to be. There are plenty of hypotheses about species-seeding. Add this to the rile."

The air actually got heavier. Shucorion stared and stared at the picture on the screen, trying to absorb what they had discovered and digest all the mysteries stirred up.

"This is my father," he stated.

Keller did the math again. "It can't be."

"Why did you keep this from me?"

"I didn't know what it meant. I didn't want to shake you up till we could find out what was happening. Just got squeezed by events."

"My thanks."

Amazed, Keller huffed and shook his head. "Why don't you get mad at me? Take something personally for a change. Take it as an insult I underestimated you. I lied. I hid the truth. I interfered in your personal busi-ness-cripe sake, hit me or something!'*

Shucorion's shaded eyes were sorrowful, but accept-ing. "You tried to shield me. I thank you for it"

"Great snakes... you're welcome."

"My thanks."

"You're-stop that." Keller leaned into the other man's periphery again. "Somewhere here, there's a clue we're missing and I mean to-"

"Bridge to Commander Keller. Quinones, sir."

Usually a call back to duty at a time like this would've been a relief. He punched the button. "Keller."

"Sir, I've been watching the optics and I think some-thing's going on outside. Riutta's bundle of spinners is in contact with the grave ship"

"Give me an optical down here. Can you get it through?"

"We 'II try. Check monitor four"

"Stand by." Shifting his hand, he engaged number four. Two screens down from the recording of Ennengand, a picture-rather a bad grainy picture-scratched into miserable focus. The optical cameras on the outer hull suffered to bring in a direct visual view, but since he knew what he was looking for, Keller managed to make out the spiky shape of Riutta's spinners, still welded into a cluster. He and Savannah and Shucorion watched as the cluster rolled like a big snowball toward the clawed bow of the grave ship and nestled between the claws. From the ends of the claws, both of them, razor spindles launched and pierced the cluster of spinners. The spinners* hulls changed from bronze metal-lies into a gelatin, like oil mixed with mercury.

"Look at this," Savannah uttered 'They're rafting up!"

Keller couldn't get a comment past the knot in his throat. The grave ship and the spinners were now joined into a single unit, a shaggy green barge with a morningstar on its bow. Impressive enough, considering the gross tonnage under Riutta's control had just tripled.

What kind of power did the two entities bring to each other? What could the grave ship do that it couldn't be-fore? What could those little pickers do once bonded together, and now rafted with the grave ship?

"At least we know what the razor quills are for," he mumbled, mostly to himself.

"And, sir, the report on the shields... sensor analy-sis confirms we didn't read anything at all when Ri-utta's portal opened. No readings, changes, no flux of any kind. We pick up Riutta's physical presence, but the window itself might as well be a mirage* We can't beam through our own deflectors, but it seems she can come and go as she wants.'*

"Then it's not beam energy. Starfleet deflectors are constantly adjusting themselves to repel new forms of energy or assault What she's doing must be a form of energy our shield science doesn't recognize as energy."

"Does that help, to know that?"

"Not a flippin' bit Lucy, maintain surveillance and hold the distance between us and them if they start moving."

"Why would they move in the middle of Gamma Night?"

"Don't know. If they do anything at all, call me. Keller out." He shifted his shoulders and turned. "Shucorion, b'sten... I need you to be clinical about this.

Do you have anything enlightening to tell me about this or these people?*'

The Blood blinked at him. "These people axe strangers to me.'*

"What about this man?" Unwilling to take second, Keller pointed at the other screen. "Is this your father or not?"

"If I didn't trust you about the years... I would say yes.*'

"But the years say no."

The Blood looked up at him, dazed by the spiral of new data. "It must be no. How can it be yes?" He con-templated his own query and added, "Did the people from the Gateway... the ones you saw... did they look like Blood? Like me?"

Keller flexed his aching back. "Y*got me there. They really don't Their skin and eyes are different, and their hands are different. They also have technology the Blood don't possess, or Kauld either, and I don't think anybody in a harsh environment could come up with what we saw in just twenty years. No matter how many facts we collect, they lock antlers with each other 'stead of helping. Savannah, have you got the red-alert record-ings of the bridge during Riutta's little visit?"

"Oh-sure."

"Let's see it"

The new idea took her by surprise. She had no com-ment A moment, and a recorded view of the damaged bridge came up. Keller watched himself standing with Bonifay at the helm, looking at the alien woman just as her micro-gate supped back into whatever pocket she stored it in.

"This woman is Riutta. She calls her people *the Liv-ing.' They use a transporter mat doesn't even register on our instruments. We got no readings of its existing at all, and she came in right through our shields. We can't beam through our shields, but her transporter win-dow didn't even notice our technology. Look familiar? Anything?"

Valiantly attentive, Shucorion scoured the visual record and his memory, his knowledge of the Sagittar-ius Cluster, and any legends he might have heard. Nothing rose on his face that gave Keller any hopes. Complete certainty overplayed the unhappiness that he was forced to deliver an unhelpful declaration.

"They are strangers here," he declared.

With a glance at Savannah, Keller silently ordered the recordings both clicked off. No more Riutta, no more ghosts. He paced away a few steps, turned, and leaned heavily on the lab doorframe. He folded his arms, and studied Shucorion passively.

"Now I know what happens when you see them,'* he said. "What happens when they see you?"

"Bridge to Mr. Keller!"

He flinched at the volume and urgency in Ensign Creighton's voice. "Yes, Dean?"

"Sir, five Blood Savages just moved into our opticals! "

"What? In the middle of Gamma Night? Are you sure you're not getting a reflection off the Pompeii?"

"Course not sir! We're getting visual code flashes from Avedon Delytharen. He wants to use his own transporters to beam directly to the bridge!"

Keller's eyes squeezed shut 'Ten hours early..."

"Sin" Creighton lowered his voice. "Bonifay's up here, y'know."

Damned if gossip didn't spread on this ship faster man a lizard with its tail on fire.

"All right... lower the shields as a sign of good faith, but stall him on permission to come aboard until I get up there. What's the status of the turbolift?"

"Still under repair"

"Stall, for God's sake. We're on our way." He straightened and thumped a sore knuckle on Shucorion's shoulder. "I expect you to back me up."

He hesitated a moment, fishing for reply.

But Shucorion had nothing to say.

Chapter Sixteen they spoke not a word to each other during the climb through the ship's veins to the bridge. Savannah was right behind them, but Keller was aware only of Shucorion. When they reached the bridge and climbed out of me hatch, Keller shot a glance around to make sure mere were no visitors here yet. For a moment he floun-dered at the sight of a handful of Blood crewmen work-ing on the hull damage and the turbolift He started breathing again when he realized he knew them all, that the new Blood hadn't beamed over.

From the sci-deck, Creighton reported without being asked. 'They really want to come over, sir. This guy is hard to stall."

'I'll bet," Keller huffed, and turned to the helm. "Zane, I don't know if you should be here/'

Nervous and angry, Bonifay snorted, "I'm impressed by your self-confidence. By the way, you look tike hell."

Keller looked down at the scorched front of his sweater, now a plaquet of melted black fibers overlaid with gory stains of Hytek's blood.

"Aw!"

And these were Blood dignitaries coming abroad! He had Blood blood all over him.

"Where are the sweaters?"

Bonifay pointed at the starboard cargo trunks. Kelly scrambled like a crab into the knee-high locker. The tiny utility light popped on, casting a feeble glow on a stack of sweaters piled Bonifay-neat in a corner.

From outside, Creighton called, "Mr. Keller, we've got transporter activation!"

"All right, but let me do the talking. I mean it. Every-body else, same order. I guess I'm ready-"

Creighton called down from the sci-deck, "Mr. Keller, we've got transporter activation!"

From halfway inside the trunk, Keller called, "Oh, hell-shields down! All I need is a half-dozen chumps bumpin' around space on a deflected transporter beam!"

With a sweater tangled in his fingers, he tried to back out of the hatch, only to bang the crown of his skull on a crosspiece. He burst out "Ow-ch!" and fell on his elbows. The inside of his head rang for a good five sec-onds.

"Commander Keller?"

His stomach crumpled. He didn't recognize the voice.

Everything was happening so fast lately....

He got stuck for a terrible second on the locker hinge. By the time he rolled out onto the deck, there were four freshly materialized Blood dutifuls on the port side, looking up at Dean Creighton on the sci-deck. Indeed Creighton seemed commandatorial up there, four feet in the air on a balcony, his sweater in-tact, his hair tidy enough-

Speak up, idiot, before he takes a bow.

"No, I'm... I'm over here." From the deck, the an-nouncement didn't exactly suggest stature. Dragging a fresh sweater, this one navy blue, Keller came out on his knees and made a point of not accepting Shucorion's tentative offer of help. His black T-shirt had some scorch matins on the front, which he self-con-sciously pawed. "I'm Nick Keller. Nice to meet ya."

Howdy. Ha y* all dewn?

The effect rammed home when Delytharen turned to him, then kept looking down, down, down, to the burned burgundy sweater now hitched to Keller's left boot heel. Some pets just didn't want to go gracefully. While everybody watched, Savannah stepped on the of-fender and gave Keller a chance to shake his boot free. After that, nobody moved.

" 'Scuse me a minute." He swam into the sweater, but got lost inside. When he finally came out, his hair was in six directions and the sleeves of the sweater were down around his knuckles. The neatly woven hem batted at his thighs. Extra large.

Whatever Keller was missing in grandeur, Delyth-aren more man equalized. The Blood avedon was miss-ing an arm, but carried the absence with style. His clothing was Blood-plain, mostly brown, pleat-perfect, and spotless. Even the fabric belt was tucked so the end didn't flap out The sleeve on his missing arm wasn't just pinned out of the way, but had been perfectly tai-lored to fit the stump. This didn't look like a man who had just picked his relentless way through the harrows of Gamma Night Such an exercise would've left Keller pasted in three layers of sweat

"Commander Keller," the dignified Blood began again, "I am Avedon Delytharen. I have joy to finally meet you... are you in distress?"

Toying with a long explanation, Keller instead said, "We're stable now."

**We received two flashes of distress.**

"Yen... they were somewhat premature. I think, as the Blue Net ventures farther away from our planets, you'll find how big space is. Usually, if we don't han-dle emergencies ourselves, there's not enough tune for anyone to get to us. We went ahead and handled ours. I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

**We joy in your success."

'Thanks very much."

"We see a foreign ship," Delytharen mentioned. "Shall we attack it?"

"No-" Keller stuck out a hand. "No, they could be friends. We aren't sure yet" Sounded almost twaddly enough. He changed hands and tried again. "We... haven't yet formulated a plan of action regarding... uh, them."

Delytharen accepted that completely. He managed to have no expression at all, and despite the curiosity of his men-their eyes kept shifting around the bridge, even though their heads didn't turn-he fixed his gaze studiously on Keller. "I see you succeeded in rescuing Avedon Shucorion. Was his companion also retrieved?*

"I'm right here." Wincing in the nav chair, Bonifay proclaimed his presence without even glancing at Keller for permission.

Whether or not Bonifay's instincts would serve this time, Keller couldn't tell yet The bosun might have simply been unwilling to hide when he believed he was completely in the right. He didn't want any illusions of guilt by silence. He might have even been proud of what he had done. After all, he had wrested both him-self and Shucorion from the jaws of warp detonation.

Whatever the residual emotions were, Keller lost his momentum and the chance to navigate this problem slowly.

Delytharen wasn't inclined to linger in amenities. The avedon studied Bonifay, said nothing to him, and seemed both unimpressed sand savvy about what was going on. He gave Keller a few seconds, then spoke up in plain talk.

**We are prepared to receive the condemned.*'

"The condemned?" Zane Bonifay came halfway out of his chair.

Careful not to appear too familial, Keller pressed him back down.

"You're using that word wrong, Avedon," he quickly said to Delytharen. "You mean *the accused.' "

"He doesn't," Shucorion interrupted. "We're quite strict about language."

Keller's ears got heavy, his eyes hot A death penalty? Without a trial? He stared at his first officer, who had just cut him off at the knees and seemed to in-sist upon not helping.

He stole a bitter moment to ask, "You knew this?"

Clearly Shucorion was torn between what he ex-pected and what he preferred.

As he skewered Shucorion with imaginary voodoo needles, Bonifay's black eyes took on a sheen of contempt. "He knew it. Would've been a lot easier for you if I'd been sweet and died of my wounds, wouldn't it?"

"You disobeyed a full avedon on a Blood Plume," Shucorion explained, his voice low. "Execution is man- dated. The higher a man defies, the greater number of people are affected by the defiance."

"I'm not dying for that box of bolts, then or now! You hypocrite, I saved your life!**

"I know you did."

The mere sound of Shucorion's mellow voice drove Keller's mind to a rage. 'There's nothing in your code between 'wrong' and 'dead'?"

Shucorion looked at him. "People will not keep to the rules or put themselves in the path of harm without fear of punishment. This is the nature of all life."

Bonifay stiffly snapped to Keller. "You aren't gonna let them do this! Are you?"

Carrying the weight of his crew's dependence upon him and of the untempered laws and tricky relation-ships being hammered out in the Sagittarius Cluster, Keller made up his mind for the second time to stand his ground. He motioned to Bonifay, but faced Delytharen.

"I'm sorry, Avedon," he said. "I'm retaining custody over him. He'll be held here pending a hearing. He's entitled to legal representation and a process of justice. We'll consult with the governor's office soon as the sensor darkness lifts. Until then, he'll have to cool his heels in house arrest."

The Blood visitors made no further attempt to hide their amazement or control their expressions. Not only them, but the Blood crewmen who had served on Chal-lenger all these weeks-Keller clearly saw their shock, disbelief, disappointment, and one of them gulped back a gasp.

And the silence nearly broke Keller's legs.

"House arrest," Delytharen chopped out, "is not part of the agreement!"

Inside the enormous sweater, Keller actually shrugged. "I didn't fully understand the details of the agreement until today. We'll have to renegotiate a few things. I'm sure we can work it out*'

He might as well have invited them to pull up a chair and help him kill a relative and eat it

Bonifay completed his venture to stand straight and when he got there he stuck a finger out to Shucorion. If his magical powers, were worth their salt, there were in-visible lightning bolts coming out of his fingernail.

"I warn you," he vowed, "I won't die for nothing."

Not-so-subtle body language and meaningful drum-ming of Keller's eyebrows seemed to do nothing to get Bonifay to quit digging a hole.

"Mr. Bonifay is a member of my crew," Keller said. *T11 retain custody for now. But you can be sure he'll be confined under guard until we can look at the details of the incident and get advice from Governor Pardon-net about due process of law. Lieutenant Quinones, take Mr. Bonifay to the brig-or since we don't have one, take him to the tool alley."

As Delytharen and the other stunned Blood watched, Bonifay shuffled to the steps, climbed them on his own, and managed laudable posture as he stepped up to the quarterdeck. Challenger's Blood crewmen, Bonifay's shipmates, moved out of his way. He and Quinones boarded the repaired lift. When the doors closed, every-one else was left in a cloud of silence, staring at the blue panels.

With the hot potato safely gone, Keller turned back to the Blood visitors.

Delytharen's face had flushed indigo with a mix of grief and shock. His mouth was open, but nothing came out Was he breathing?

All at once the avedon gawked at Shucorion. "What have you done to him!** he demanded. "Is this your idea?"

Shucorion ticked his lips and a light went on in his eyes. He seized the blame for this disaster with a quick "Yes!**

"No, no!*' Keller protested. "He didn't do anything. I'm retaining custody over a member of my own crew, for disobeying my first officer's order. Bonifay is cov-ered by Federation jurisdiction.*'

Delytharen rasped, "He disobeyed a Blood avedon aboard a Plume!'*

"The Plume was under my flag. Procedures have to be devised that'll satisfy Starfleet Command and the Department of Justice on Belle Terre.*'

Complete bilge. Starfleet Command was way yonder off and Belle Terre didn't have any Department of Jus-tice. Might as well throw in a couple more. They tike rules? Give' em rules.

"And on top of that, we have to establish violation of the Starfleet ordinance of officer conduct in deep space, and the Emergency Action Powers Act-it's pretty com-plex. Mr. Bonifay will have to stay here awhile...."

Any takers? Anybody at all? Speak right up. j

Immediately he realized he had just made a splendid! error. Their expressions told the story. They had picked up the disrespect and flippance of his tone, if not the flimsiness of his facts. Perhaps they could read embar-rassment or something else in Shucorion's expression. Or perhaps they'd done their homework while he bet they hadn't.

Still, Delytharen wasn't angry or insulted He was amazed. Not at Keller's gall, but at his freelance rewrit-ing of the agreement.

"Now," the avedon began, "we must take him from you."

Hairs rose on Keller's arms. He had to say some-thing-anything to continue the discussion.

"Don't try" he said.

Not exactly butter cream.

Delytharen, though, was done talking. He turned and nodded at one of his officers. The officer touched the signal pad on his wrist. Two seconds later the bridge brightened and the Whole team beamed out, riding the Federation transporter technology Nick Keller himself had given them.

So much for diplomacy.

"Dang, I haven't heard that many steel doors clang shut since Titanic hit the berg."

Nobody laughed, because there was nothing funny.

Shoulders knotted and his neck tight, he broiled a deep breath and let it out before turning to Shucorion with a leer so bitter, a glower so raw that others backed away and left the two men standing alone in the space forward of the navigation pulpit.

"Do you," Keller began through gritted teeth, "have anything to say?"

Shucorion's eyes were wide with warning, his hands very still, his lips pressed flat. He said only three words.

"Raise... the shields."

Chapter Seventeen

"HOLY cripe-shields up! Red alert!"

He got the words out, but too late. The frigate endured a drumming point-blank hit. This was friendly fire can-nibalized from wrecked Starfleet ships and privateers.

Starfleet phasers... and they hurt, in more ways than one. How could he fire back?

The first hard slam drove everyone to staggers. Zoa was the first back on her feet, clawing for the tactical boards so she could fire back. As his head cleared, he re-alized the Blood had toned down their phaser power. He had to do the same. They weren't shooting to kill-yet

"Zoa, half power on the phasers!" Keller called. He dragged himself along the rail, only now realizing that the bridge was tilted; the whole ship had lost its axis and was screaming to recover. "Drive him off but don't kill him! Savannah, take MEL! Shucorion, take the helm and get me some distance! Creighton, get the damn shields up, kid, or the next shot'11 peel us like an onion!*'

He cranked around and swept a hand across the gag-gle of Blood workers who had come to repair the bridge and were now stack here during action.

"You men, each of you take a station! One of you, engineering on the sci-deck! You-ah-Lumellen- come down to the nav! You've done this before!**

He snapped his fingers a couple of times, mostly to himself. How could he fire on Blood Savages and do enough damage to drive them off, but not enough to in-flict deadly damage? He hadn't spent much time on Blood ships-what were their weaknesses?

On the sci-deck over Keller's shoulder, Creighton clawed at the rail to get back on his feet at the science boards. He could raise the shields from up mere, but it would take seconds longer than direct-feed from the nav/sensory. Of course, there was nobody manning the nav/sensory-Challenger's chronic annoyance, today a critical weakness. He should've done it himself.

"Shields are up!" Creighton called, relieved. **We've got damage on decks four, five, and nine, outer perimeter hull breaches. Spectroscopy array is compromised-'*

"Evacuate the damaged areas,** Keller ordered. "Seal off. Zoa, target their weapons arrays and fire!"

The forward screen and all the other outside visuals were clouded over with Gamma Night's sensor sickness.

"Engage the opticals!"

He'd never given that order before, except in tests. Creighton's shoulders moved and Keller knew the right buttons were being pushed. Had Delytharen's un-shielded strike ruined any of the camera mounts?

On certain monitors around the bridge, at four points each representing a quarter of the field of view around the ship, telescopic cameras folded out of concealed slots in the saucer section's black hat They'd learned that Gamma Night mostly affected high-tech devices using subspace or fields. Light-gathering cameras with magnifiers, essentially a cluster of collectors on the hull, could still see at a limited distance. Passive sen-sors and telescopes, combining their efforts by way of a computer, could offer a tentative picture. They could use radio to communicate, with a slight delay.

Not as good as sensors, the cameras were better man the naked eye and didn't care about Gamma Night They couldn't read any data other than visual, but that was bet-ter than the static-laden distortions of sensor blindness. There were over three dozen camera units, and they could be used independently or combine on a field of vi-sion to bring a large single picture to the main screen.

That's what they did now. On the main screen, the grainy film of Gamma Night suddenly cleared to a far-off view of Delytharen's Blood Hand, five Savages in circle formation with Delytharen's primary Savage on the bottom-firing again!

Another hit rolled across the hull, this one muffled by the deflectors. When he felt the blunted blow, a flush of relief dizzied him. He crossed the deck behind the command chair to the crescent and took the Blood crewman Lumellen by the arm. Poor guy was stunned. "Get down to the nav, right now, pal."

The view of the Savages was very distant. Normal sensors would've made them look as if they were a hundred feet away, but the cameras only saw real dis-tance, so the ships looks small. Challenger's phasers responded, spitting through space to a pinprick target on Delytharen's flank.

Keller squinted at the main screen as he propelled Lumellen down to the main deck and pushed him to-ward the nav station. Then he climbed to the quarter- deck and rushed to Zoa's side. "I said target the weapons, not the engines!"

Zoa's golden face pivoted to him. "I cripple while we run and run."

"No, I don't want them crippled out here in the twigs. What are the other Savages doing? How many are firing on us? Lumellen, are you tracking them? And why'n hell aren't we moving?"

Lumellen didn't answer. He was sitting at the nav station, but only gripping the wrist roll. He wasn't doing anything but gawking at Shucorion, who was still standing on the foredeck. He hadn't moved a step!

Keller snapped, "Shucorion! Don't freeze on me sow-take the helm!"

What was happening?

But sow Shucorion turned to face Keller. Gray eyes crimped with misery, he stood his ground. His voice, though quiet, declared itself clearly over the noise of another hit

"I can't."

The deck swam under Keller's boots. He stormed to the rail and seized it as if to drive the barrier down under his hands. A hundred questions blew into his mind and almost instantly out again.

Suddenly, words weren't necessary. All around the bridge, the other Blood lowered their hands and backed to the perimeters. Horror and torment showed on their faces-they wanted to obey his orders, take their posts, defend what they had so diligently built and served. But they were all watching each other, and, to them, a full avedon was giving them the cues. They were all at once no longer Nick Keller's crew, but once again Shucorion's.

They were on strike.

Keller dug his fingernails into the rail's hard resin. His eyes fixed on Shucorion's as the ship endured an-other bolt of Starfleet technology from Blood hands. "Damn you for this."

"I'm deeply grieved,'* Shucorion said, "but I can't work here now. None of us can."

"Don't give me 'can't.' You 'won't'!"

Despite the hammering being given by Blood Sav-ages in half-blind strikes, so worked up that this had to be resolved now, in spite of Gamma Night, Shucorion spoke as if nothing were here to distract them.

"If you steal from me, this is punishable by heavy restitution and limits on your freedom. But if we have an agreement that we will not steal from each other, and you steal, the least you can expect is banishment The most is death." He tipped his head, indicating the area where Delytharen had stood only moments ago. "In his eyes, you are a criminal now too."

"You and your men signed on this ship" Keller snarled. "Don't you know what that means? Don't you understand at all?"

"We understand, but you must also, or there is no common land." Shucorion's lips were dry, his expres-sion one of torment and resolve. They weren't going to work, and he wasn't going to make them. He put his own hand on the rail, close to Keller's in a kind of fee-ble gesture. "Do you want us confined to quarters? Or shall we leave the ship?"

"Quarters?" Keller roared. "Even if you don't lift a finger, every one of you is going to stand a post I may not be able to make you work, but I can sure as hell make you watch."

Chapter Eighteen

"savannah, get some hands to the bridge! Quinones, take the helm and give me aft thrust! I want some ma-neuvering room. Zoa, you got weapons power?"

"I got."

"All right, crew, let's slap the Savage Hand. Lay down a restraining pattern, target engines!" Keller beard himself yelling and deliberately lowered his voice. They could hear him fine. "Keep 'em at a dis-tance. Don't let any of them close in on us."

As Zoa bent to her tactical pulpit to design a fir-ing pattern, Keller threw a glance at Shucorion. The Blood's expression was unreadable. He was the leader of a rebellion, a sit-in, but his heart wasn't in it.

Around the bridge, the eight other Blood stood back against the perimeter, every Blue body refusing to work.

But they weren't Vulcans. They twitched and flinched, clenched their hands and sought each other for whatever tentative support they could find. They

/ didn't like this. They were torn. They wanted to take posts.

Keller was gratified in a nasty way to see the guilt, the doubt, the touch of loyalty to title ship they had built. He hoped it ate them alive.

"Full opticals. Turn on all the cameras. We can't fight if we can't see."

*The lower range is only partially mounted, Nick," Creighton reported.

"Better than nothing."

"Aye, sir. Full lateral opticals."

On the forward screen, far-off pinpricks spread their circle outward and two more ships opened fire.

"I don't know what they think they're doing," Keller complained, eying the formation. "Unless they mean to kill us, they can't turn loose full phasers and I'm not about to give in under this kind of behavior."

Shucorion watched him, and listened carefully.

"Here they come!" Quinones squeaked from the helm.

Two more hits rolled across the primary hull's shields, drummed in their ears, and threw some of the unseated Blood to the deck. On the forward deck, Lumellen stum-bled into Shucorion and they both went down.

"Pretty tentative shots," Keller analyzed. "Keep our forward shields to Delytharen's ship."

**What about the other four?" Creighton asked. "They can surround us! Hit our flanks-"

"I'm betting Delytharen will do most of the damage himself. I don't think he's any more sure of what he's doing than I am."

'This is an error," Shucorion warned as he pulled himself to his feet.

Keller shot him a glower. "If you want to help, take a post. If not, shut up "

Were the Blood really that single-minded? Or did they just think of themselves that way? He made a bet otherwise. He'd seen Delytharen's disappointment and shock, and also regret in his eyes. The Blood didn't want the treaty with Belle Terre to fall apart any more man Keller did.

But Keller recognized the tactics of a defensive war. The Blood ships were firing one at a time and moving independently, instead of organizing their efforts. They didn't know how to stress the frigate's deflector shields with sustained fire or coordinated assault The Blood had always been at a disadvantage against the stronger Kauld. Unless they had a lucky event, they never had the chance to develop attack methods that could stand down a ship like Challenger. And Keller hadn't gotten around to teaching them yet Also lucky.

Another strike rolled over the primary hull, pounding the ship downward on her lateral axis. A shift in the graviton integrity threw Keller and the Blood men for-ward and down. Keller caught himself on the pilot sta-tion, but managed not to crush Quinones as she fought to bring the screaming frigate back up.

He swept a finger around at the staggering cluster of Blood men. "All of you sit down," he ordered. "Sit down!"

Some of them did. Others looked to Shucorion for guidance. Their former avedon wisely nodded for them to obey that simple order for safety's sake.

The turbolift opened and two Starfleet crewmen, Tyce and Ryan, both formerly of Peleliu, plunged through the gaggle of Blood men and instantly split up, one down to the nav/sensory and one up to the sci-deck, where Creighton could certainly use the help. At the helm, Quinones struggled to swing the ship around to keep Delytharen's ship on the frigate's forward screens, while still protecting the dorsal's sensitive sides and the nacelle flanks from the other Savages.

"Keep turning us, Lucy" Keller ordered. "Keep their relative bearing on the parallel axis. They'll have a harder time getting broad targets on us."

"I'm not good at this," she admitted.

"You're doing fine."

His reassurance was swallowed by another hit and a bad shudder through the spaceframe.

"What was it?" he demanded, turning to the sci-deck.

"Saucer separator system, I think," Creighton called over the alarms. **Two of the grab plates shook loose."

"Reinforce with the umbilicals. Never mind the hardware."

"Umbilicals, aye. Bridge to deck eleven-meinforce using umbilicals!"

"Zoa," Keller called, **figure out who targeted the cou-plings and get 'em off us. I'll reduce the impulse flux!"

He jumped to the quarterdeck, but only made it one step along the crescent toward the IM pulse/mule pulpit before he was blinded by sparks and a plume of heat that scorched the side of his face. A dozen processors on the bridge suddenly blew into funnels of smoke and sparks. Electrical stink rolled into his lungs and he choked

Dean Creighton gulped, "Power surge! Power surge!"

Keller coughed his lungs free and gasped, "Damm it! Cut thrust! Shut down your stations! Shut down!" Shielding his face, he doubled back aft through the clutter of Blood crew. He passed Savannah and stum-bled up the sci-deck steps. "Keep the shields up! Dang it all, why now?"

The ship's electrical innards buckled against each other, competing for power and priority.

He only got halfway up the sci-deck steps before re-alizing his place wasn't up there. Two men were al-ready working the science and engineering boards.

"Keep the status displays operational, Dean, what-ever you do! We need those external readings!*'

Creighton's face was red and dotted with spark bums. "Bonifay's the only one who knows the codes to synchro-nize velocity with the celestial buoys we've deployed."

'Damage to the main armory, Commander," Tyce croaked at Creighton's side.

"Evacuate and seal off." Keeping his feet under him, Keller turned and dropped to the crescent deck in front of MEL, then dropped again to the command deck. "Power your stations up slowly, everybody- don't strain the systems. Coordinate for priority. I want weapons and impulse drive first!"

"Life-support in main engineering's got a flutter" Savannah reported. 'They've got an overload hi the crystal coupling "

"Radiation spillage?"

"None yet Permission to suit them up?"

"They'll suit up if they need to."

"They won't take the time if I don't order them."

"Granted."

"Engineering, bridge. Suit up! Insulate, insulate-"

The ship was new, but she was a hot rod. Her used parts were incompatible, some completely alien, and at times of stress they showed their bullish lack of cooper-ation. Always something different, always some new weak point, or competing systems coming together mat were too strong and wanted a fight for supremacy. That was the hard part--weaknesses could be targeted and patched. The strong parts and connections and proces-sors were the stallions that didn't get along. Could each system be neutered until they worked together? Then the whole ship would be weaker.

If they only had a competent helmsman-but the Blood crew knew best how to navigate during Gamma Night and had done most of the piloting since Chal-lenger's launch. Now they wouldn't put their hands on a panel.

"We're venting electrofluid residue into open space!" Brad Ryan reported at the nav. They'll see it!"

"And they'll know we're overloaded," Quinones mourned.

"No, they won't," Keller said. "All they'll know is we've got some damage. They can't know how bad. They don't know the extent of our circuitry problems. Unless somebody told them."

He couldn't resist a glance at Shucorion, who re-ceived the bald accusation with a grimace. Might be anger, or something else.

Creighton shot him a troubled look. "We can't main-tain against five ships if they decide to go to full assault.**

"Don't tell me what we can't do." Keller punched the keys on the side of his command chair* communicating alert status and permission for independent action to the various department heads who might need it right now.

"Nick, radiation burns on deck three!" Savannah called. 'Tennission to go there! They're right below us!**

"Granted Get right back up here."

'Thanks!"

She bolted for the turbolift.

Challenger bristled with weaponry, just about the only system that always worked. Zoa devised a spider-web firing pattern and was executing it, broad short-range cluster shots that struck two or more ships at a time with divided streams. She didn't know how to re- pair the weaponry, but she sure could use it Her lined lips, which almost never came apart except for the odd word or two every other day, now were parted very slightly in concentration. Her intense eyes fixed with underlying passion on the dynoscanners that gave her a panoramic view at the tactical pulpit She wasn't even sitting in her chair. Her legs were braced, knees bent, arms out slightly, her hands poking at the controls a finger at a time.

A shot from an rocked the frigate again, but Chal-lenger swallowed it better than the previous hit, and on the main screen they saw the flush of raw energy sheet off and blow uselessly into space. Something automatic was working, compensating, fighting back, flushing strength to places where it was most needed. Some-where in the bowels of complication, Challenger was deciding how and where to defend herself.

"Atta girl," Keller muttered. He turned to Shucorion. *1 guess you're right Delytharen's really out to hurt us."

"Or impress you," Shucorion suggested. He held on to the nav station to keep on his feet as another hit rolled under them.

'I'd hoped he was bluffing or baiting."

**We don't do those things. We fight, or run, then re-turn to fight more. These tactics you use-Blood are not so clever."

"He must know he won't break our shields unless he uses full phasers. Even then, they'd have to hit us with all five Savages at once."

I'm certain he hopes you will decide to honor the agreement before he takes such actions."

"I won't honor anything under these circumstances. Not under fire from people who are supposed to be al-lies."

Shucorion only pressed his lips flat and held on to the rail as another hit thundered through the ship's bones. He shook his head at Keller's stubbornness, but made no argument. The hit rocked Ryan out of the nav chair, and for all the talk about not lifting a finger, Shu-corion bothered to pick the crewman up and hurry him back to his post.

Suddenly the sound of Challenger's phasers changed slightly, from a hum to a whine. The five Blood Sav-ages broke formation, but confused each other in the move. Delytharen's flagship and its wingman ended up crossing each other's paths. This accident gave Zoa a target too succulent to ignore. Phasers were now on full power, and she got two ducks with one arrow.

Delytharen's Savage spun off with severe damage to her underbelly. Three unmanned Plumes fell right out of their launch bays and splintered right in front of Challenger, washing the frigate's black hat with debris that rattled like rain on a tin roof. The second ship turned bow over tail and ended up gravity-compro-mised and spinning on an off-center axis.

"No! Zoa, no!" Keller shouted. "Not full power!"

Too late. A fresh salvo speared through space, light-ing up the hull of Savage 2, which took the hit just as it stopped spinning wildly. What a target!

The Savage was slammed up on a wing and now spun in the other direction, spewing hot fluids.

"No, no, Zoa! Too much!" Keller plunged for the quarterdeck and raced around the rail toward the tacti-cal pulpit. Zoa's reaction to such an incursion into her personal space usually resulted in an elbow in the ribs, but this time Keller was ready. He blocked the elbow, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her arm over her head to provide himself a doorway. He stuck his other hand into the gap and struck the phaser power level controls just as Zoa's most recent shot broke from the array and gut-punched Delytharen's damaged flagship.

The whine dropped back to a hum halfway through the shot-a weird buckling compromise made by the targeting computers. It meant the flagship got half a bullet, then a slap.

The Blood crewmen on the bridge grimaced and suf-fered the horror of ships they had trusted for years being so easily dismembered. They'd never come up against anything like Starfleet phasers, and even Keller's modifications to the Blue Net didn't come up to full starship standards. They'd never seen a full-out battle with Federation technology.

Keller jumped back down to the command deck "Put the transporter room on notice!"

"We'll have to drop the shields to beam the crew on board," Ryan reminded. "We'll be unprotected."

"Better than letting them die. They're our allies, even though they don't know it"

Shucorion was watching him. The other Blood were watching both Keller and Shucorion, in a vain search for signals and a way to behave while not serving a man who was ready to have his own ship heavily dam-aged rather than let other Blood die. The reasons and willpower didn't add up for them, and that too had never happened. Things were simpler back home, but this wasn't home.

"Can you read the damage on the wingman? Is its at-mosphere venting or something else?"

"Not sure," Ryan reported. "I'll try spectrometry"

"See if you can read his life-support! How much trouble are they hi?"

"Hey! Look at this!" Quinones came halfway out of her chair and pointed at the forward screen. "Mr. Keller, look!"

Though small in the lenses of the direct optics, a fa-miliar shape moved toward them at a pretty good clip, green and flowing, with the prickly ball of bonded spinners gleaming on its bow. The grave ship!

It grew large very quickly and came to a position a few thousand kilometers off Challenger's bow.

"I flay them 'live!" Zoa declared. Her braids bounced and her tattooed shoulders flexed as she happily took a firing sequence reading. "Phaser full! Torpedo also!"

"No!" Keller barked. "Not until I say. Are they heav-ing to?"

"They're at all-stop, sir," Quinones confirmed. "I can't understand it. Why would they float over here, then just hover?"

"What do they want?" Creighton asked.

Another Blood hit caused scattered overloads on the sci-deck, blowing sparks over the heads of everyone midships. Everybody was watching the grave ship, and there was no response from the frigate.

"Nobody told you to break off!" Keller glanced to Zoa. "Keep returning half-phaser fire on the undam-aged Blood ships, is that clear?*'

She bent over her board, and the frigate continued its pattern of fencing fire. The Blood ships kept up the as-sault, but didn't dare move in for better targets.

"Keller!" Shucorion seized his arm to turn him for-ward again. He simply pointed at the main screen.

Keller resisted at first, then realized what was hap-pening and quickly turned.

In space before them, the grave ship and its attach-ment of individual beetle-like ships with spikes had started doing something completely new. Keller had to squint to isolate what was happening. The spiked ships-spinners, Riutta had called them-began to, well, spin. Tiny threads worked out from their moving mandibles. Like baby spiders held by the mother's two great claws, the bundle of spinners turned loose a stream of shining silver filaments that spewed info space, traveling kilometers in an instant

"Is this a weapon?" Shucorion wondered.

Keller murmured, "You don't recognize it?"

"No..."

The distance between the grave ship and Challenger and all the five Blood savages meant nothing to the sil-ver threads. One each went to a ship, the filaments shot through space. As each thread approached its target, the filament began to swell into a bulb, then flatten out and grow larger, larger...

"Back us off!" Keller shouted. "Aft thrust!"

"It's on us!" Shucorion gasped in an instant, and he was right

The silver bulb filled the visuals-all of them-then thinned out to a shimmery film they could see through.

Phasers were still firing! The beams struck the silver veil, but did not cut it. Instead, the energy blew wildly around and around the ship, circling, crackling, with nowhere to go and no way to dissipate.

They were trapped inside a silver ball with their own destructive energy racing madly around them.

"Zoa, cease fire! Holy-"

Nick Keller held his arm up to shade his eyes from the blinding orange crackle of phaser near-detonation. The howl of constant phaser fire stopped, but the wild crackling around the inside of the silver ball continued in screen after screen all around the bridge.

"How long before those bolts lose integrity?"

"Forty years " Creighton called over the sizzle.

"Oh, fine..."

They didn't have to wait Something else happened. The silver veil entertained the phaser bolts for several more long seconds, then began to absorb the energy. The red glow faded to pink, the sizzle dissipated, and the silver shimmer returned.

"Hold position, Lucy," Keller countermanded. "Cut engines. Don't move us. Dean, what is this stuff?"

Creighton was hunched over his readouts, with an expression on his face that scared everybody who looked up there. "I... don't know..."

"Metal?"

"Maybe... doesn't read."

"Doesn't read as metal?"

"Doesn't read at all. Could be Gamma blindness keeping us from a good fix, I guess, but I'm not scooping up much more than a cloud. It's forming a globe around us... and it's around the Blood ships too."

"Uh-oh," Keller groaned. "Ryan, open a channel for me." He stepped back to his command chair and his link.

"Delytharen, this is Keller. Don't move until we fig-ure out what this thing is."

He waited for a response, but there was nothing.

"Did he hear us?"

Ryan shrugged. "Probably."

"He stopped moving," Quinones reported. "I think all the Blood are holding position."

Keller turned to the secondary screens on the port bulkhead, three screens larger than the auxiliary proces-sor screens over each station. They offered a view of near-space targets as recorded by the ship's sensors, or in this case the optical cameras. They were selective, and now showed angles outside the range of the forward screen. Those angles included all the Blood Savages, each held in a silver bulb, seen behind a shimmering veil from inside Challenger's own bulb.

Keller moved forward again between the nav and the pilot station. "What... the devil's... this?"

Nobody jumped forward with a colorful explanation. The Blood crew seemed even more perplexed than the humans, and more afraid. Keller empathized with them. They were no more used to foreigners, aliens, than he was himself. Probably even less so, for he came from a culture that at least knew how many other kinds of peo-ple might be out there. For Blood, this was a new con-cept and still scary. t(Ryan, you know how to work the optical zooms?"

At his right elbow, Brad Ryan shook his head in doubt. "Mr. Bonifay's the designer of that system, sir... I'd only be guessing."

"Okay, guess me a superzoom."

"Superzoom, sir. Any particular point?"

"Doesn't matter. Pick a section."

"Aye, sir."

It took damnably long seconds for Ryan to pick his way through the systems and call up computer assis-tance, and even then he couldn't find the *Forward opticals... focusing... damn, lost it... oh, there it is."

The screen blurred, then focused again. The zoom was so strong that the screen probably showed only a square yard of the silver veil, and still the fabric's con-struction was tiny, barely enough above microscopic to be seen as individual circular links, four links through a fifth, compounded indefinitely.

Shucorion studied the tiny circular links that made up the structure so effectively holding them. "I don't recognize this construction/*

Beside him, Keller endured a cold shudder of recogni-tion as he peered back in time to all his favorite periods of history and suddenly realized what they were up against

"I do," he said. "It's chainmail."

"Can we cut it? Anybody got a reading?"

"I got nothing."

"Just haze."

"Some magnetic jumps, but that's all."

"See it, can't smell it."

Nick Keller stared and stared, but the chainmail bal-loon around Challenger and around each of the Blood Savages wouldn't speak. The ship's sensors, Gamma-bounded, were no help. The phasers had run around inside the balloon like ants. He hadn't missed the significance.

"Don't shoot," he threw over his shoulder, in case Zoa got too happy again.

With the optical cameras feeding a combined photo-graphic view through the main screen, he could see three of the five Blood ships and the grave ship with its picker ball. The two remaining Blood Savages showed on Ryan's navigational board, on small screens. Five tidy bubbles. Six, counting the frigate. He could see the other ships, despite his own ship's being surrounded by this silvery stuff. That's how thin the chainmail was.

"How's the wingman doing? Can anybody tell?"

"I think he's got secondary thruster rupture," Creighton guessed. "The venting's got a green tint to it"

He was right. One of the bubbles, even through two layers of chainmail, appeared celery green.

"Hope they're all right... Zoa, next time I tell you half phasers, don't change without my direct order."

"I make an field promote."

"That's not what a field promotion is. Wait for my order, clear?"

"Is clear."

He prowled the bridge, going between the helm and nav like an obstacle course, always keeping his eyes on the forward screen. "What's she going to do? Leave us out here in these envelopes?"

"Maybe she's waiting for us to make the next move," Creighton suggested. "Like a test."

'Test? Okay... all right, I'll bite. If we can't phaser our way out, let's ram through this stuff. Power up the impulse drive, zero thrust."

"Yes, sir!" Quinones responded 'Towering pulse drive. Should I-uh, should I-should somebody else-**

"No, you're at the post" Keller patted her shoulder. "Just stay there."

She pushed her ashy blond hair behind her ears and hunkered to the helm. "Aye, sir...."

"All you have to do is go forward. Nice and straight And don't stop till I tell you "

He stood on the command riser, but didn't sit in his chair. Instead he came around behind the chair and gripped the backrest with both hands. A few steps away, Shucorion held the rail in the same manner and watched the forward shimmer.

"Shields stable?" Keller asked.

"Stable, sir," Creighton said.

"Everybody ready?"

Shucorion stepped up to Keller. "Are you going to rip through?"

"We'll see if we can. It might be able to deflect energy, but solid mass is another story, and we got a lot of mass "

Touching the arm of the command chair, Shucorion glanced at the Blood men, then the main screen. "Keller..."

Keller brushed him off the chair's arm. "If you want to participate, you know what to do. Otherwise, the sidelines are right down there.'*

Shucorion's cheeks flushed to cobalt "Of course. My apologies."

He stepped down, looking quite dejected.

The sight was satisfying. Keller worked to conceal a rising gloat, not that it helped much. He needed other kinds of help and the Blood all knew he did. Shucorion was forced to maintain their strike, though the toll on him was high-anyone could see the strain hi his eyes.

Keller couldn't afford to break, not with a shipmate's life hanging in the balance. And what would they think of him if he caved just to make things easier for a few hours?

Forget it.

"Keep powering, Lucy," he ordered "Get us up to point seven five, zero thrust. Tell me when.*'

"Aye, sir... point five... point five five... point six.. r

Around them the ship howled angrily, strained at her harness, and did everything but whinny. She was ready to rip.

"Point six five... point seven.."

"Sir, look!" Brad Ryan almost broke his ribs as he bolted forward against his console and pointed at the main screen. "One of the Blood ships is doing the same thing!"

On the glittering screen, the nearest of the bubbles had a purplish-red glow-Blood engine exhaust!

"All stop!" Keller snapped.

As Challenger wheezed out her power-up, the Blood

Savage blew out a sudden exhaust wash and jumped forward. Instantly it pressed the barrier of chainmail. The gauzy mail bowed out slightly at the push of the Savage's bow, but only for an instant.

A monstrous white explosion slapped Keller in the face. Everyone else ducked as if stricken. Moments later, the wash struck the chainmail bubble and the frigate, pushing it away as if a giant arm swept them back.

The deck ran out from under Keller's feet. He was cat-apulted forward over the command chair, rolled on his shoulder over the seat, and landed in a heap at Quinones' left side inches from the port hatch. He looked up, but Quinones wasn't there. She was between the helm and nav. Beyond her, Ryan and Shucorion were struggling to their feet from under a pile of Blood and Zoa.

"What happened!" Keller called. "What was it- what hit them? Did the grave ship hit them?"

*1 didn't see anything!" Quinones gasped.

"Catastrophic, whatever it was," Ryan said. He palled himself back to the nav.

Keller clasped his throbbing left arm, stumbled to the mid-deck, and fought to focus his half-blinded eyes. Through the flashes he managed to perceive the globe of chainmail nearest them. The globe wallowed and swam, but retained its own structural integrity. But in-side... there was nothing. No Savage. No wreckage. Instead, space to the right side of the screen sparkled and tumbled with tiny bits of debris.

**My God, where are they?" he choked. "Where's the Savage?"

Shucorion appeared beside him, also gaping at the screen. "It's-not... where have they gone?"

"Replay it! Dean, put it up, on slow!"

"Yes, sir." Creighton's voice was tenuous. The clicks and beeps of his science boards provided an eerie soundtrack.

In seconds, the main screen changed, reversed itself, blurred through the huge explosion, this time with flash-mute, and paused when the Savage appeared back inside the chainmail bubble.

Another click, and the screen rolled forward again, this time very slowly.

The Savage fired its sublight engines to high inten-sity, then puffed a plume of exhaust and surged for-ward. The chainmail bowed outward like pliant rubber, resisting slightly the force of the Savage's prow.

With the colors of struggle painting their faces, Keller and his crew were riveted to the scene before them. As they watched in disbelief, the chainmail seemed to peel back along the body of the Savage-but what came out the other side was not a ship. Thin splin-ters of matter pressed through the chain mail like meat going through a grinder. Into space came a blizzard of shredded material, pulverized and pebbled-metal, fab-ric, crew, and all.

The chainmail penetrated through the body of the Savage, disarticulated its way through until it reached the area of the dynadrive engines and the warp core. Now the enormous matter-antimatter explosion ruined what otherwise was a simple deadly dance.

In slow motion, atomization bloomed across the screen, but couldn't cleanse the ghastliness of what they had just witnessed.

An entire Blood Savage and forty men aboard... diced.

Chapter Nineteen was this what Shakespeare meant by "sea of troubles"?

This was supposed to be officer paradise. A ship of his own, unquestioned authority, out too far to be chal-lenged, with his own guns to stick up for him and a fair number of honest folks who had him to use them.

He had that, or some aberration of it, like an itch he couldn't reach. He had a ship-an untamed one. His crew was honest, but acted too much on their own. He was out too far to be challenged, but also too far to be helped. Just born lucky.

This was why the nonfratemization clause had stuck for century after century. Let go of the ties if you want command. Leave your Mends behind. Otherwise you'll never be able to send them to their deaths.

Sure, he'd heard it a thousand times. Everybody had. The dirty seduction of rules, the magnetism of a duty done, and a stable historic precedent making easier the hard thing.

Doing it was something else. Captains needed years to get used to the idea. That was why it took years to become a captain, and why everything changed on that day.

Shucorion had ordered Bonifay to stay on the Plume, and in a way he'd been correct about impending disas-ter. Bonifay had ended up in a worse situation. But was it better than dead? Probably. Bonifay did the wrong thing, but he had no particular loyalty to Shucorion. He didn't think his actions were the same as abandoning a ship and crew. Disrespectful, maybe. Treason?

Gale-force trouble. Because of Shucorion's distress call, a Savage Hand had come here in good faith. Be-cause of a botched treaty, one ship and crew had been butchered.

And Keller was still alone. There was no help to be summoned. He had to deal with all this by himself.

With Starfleet around, there would be procedures and support systems, a scaffold of replacement, legal representation, a whole barnyard of people with years of experience to help the decision get done. Instead Keller had a dislocated life holding the reins of a wild frigate that screamed and bucked every time he spurred her. He was a tenant sheriff, a badge-in-residence-

Or was he a vigilante? Was he self-appointed, or sta-tioned with Star-fleet's blessing? No matter how hard he worked or how many orders he gave, he couldn't shake the sensation of transience. He was a sojourner, a concierge, with only a brittle grip on the situation. The anal-retentive Blood were uncertain and picky, the parochial Kauld fickle, and now these new people had jumped on the Keller whirligig. He could pat himself on the back for his resilience, but had he done any of these people any favors? Could he protect all the plan-ets he had promised to protect?

He hadn't been able to protect his hostile colleagues on die Savage. Now he knew, also, that the chainmail of the Living was not to be taken lightly.

Not a word was spoken for the first long minutes after the dicing of the Savage. No one had seen any-thing like this. No one knew what to say about it The fear, though, thickened on the deck like putty.

With a twig of compliance on his shoulder, Keller moved to Shucorion.

"Obviously we can't bust out," he said.

"A nightmare," Shucorion murmured, and shuddered a little.

"You won't work. Will you give advice?*'

"I don't know what to advise. Their science is strong. They are in charge."

Keller kept his voice very low. 'Has this changed your mind any? You and your men?**

Grieved and frustrated, Shucorion closed his eyes for a moment "You must try harder to comprehend No one person's life is more important that what is being accomplished hi these days. The new structure will all fell over if Keller is seen to break his word I must help you keep your promises." Engulfed in sadness he didn't bother to hide, he turned slightly away as if to escape, and gazed up at Zoa at the tactical board, not really paying attention to her. "All because of Bonifay and me... better for both of us if we had died on the Plume, I think, man this...."

Zoa looked down at the two of them. She didn't care that she was overhearing a private conversation. Was there contempt in her eyes? Resentment?

Keller couldn't tell, but she made him more uneasy.

All this trouble, because of a treaty that hadn't even been completely hammered out

Could he make a choice between Shucorion and Bonifay?

He was finally absorbing the idea that he had to be very careful when speaking to the Blood people. If he told them to hold at all costs, they would die doing it. He'd better never engage in bravado. They would take such words literally.

But how could he speak to Riutta?

Now, with the frigate and the remaining Blood Sav-ages held immobile inside globes of chain mail, was the time to try.

"Let's have radio communication," he requested. The radio network was still flimsy, though better at short-range during Gamma Night than subspace, which was commonly distorted by the neutron star and pulsar orbiting each other that caused the sensor blind-ness.

"Go ahead," Ryan said, doing it by remote, through the nav station.

Entertaining a momentary thought about getting this ship properly staffed, Keller tightened his shoulders and looked at the forward screen. There, through a shimmering veil of chainmail, he saw the Pompeii and its new additions, still linked to Challenger and each of the Blood ships with a thin single thread each, as if it were holding kite strings. He glanced at Shucorion, who offered as supportive an expression as he dared.

"Challenger to Riutta. You're interfering in a private conflict. We have the right to operate our own interac-tions. Retract your barriers immediately."

Or what? He hoped nobody asked. Or we'll bounce our phasers around inside here till we fry ourselves.

"Did she hear us?" He glanced around. "Anybody picking up anything?"

Up on the sci-deck, Tyce complained, *Tm not even reading this thing we're in."

"Not at all?"

"Sir, I'm not a science specialist, but I don't get any-thing."

Keller peered up there. "Dean, can you do any better?"

Creighton frowned. "I'm not a science officer, Nick."

"Don't take this wrong, but you're better man noth-ing."

Quinones looked up at him from the helm. "You got anybody better than me? I'm no Gamma Night helms-man."

Keller gazed down at her with sympathy. She was a security specialist, a law-enforcement officer, a cop. He was asking her to do microsurgery.

Truth be told, they didn't have anybody who could do any of these jobs well enough. Only the Blood had any skill with Gamma Night, and that skill involved tender finesse with such things as stellar radiation on the hull, static filtration, light shifts, and subtle spectral informa-tion. Such work was tedious, and not for doing in a hurry by people who hadn't been doing it all their lives.

Not far from where Keller stood beside the com-mand riser, Lumellen hovered near Shucorion, hungrily eyeing the helm as Quinones struggled to get some-thing to use. More guilt. Good.

He endured a twinge of empathy. They really thought they had to abstain from work. What must that be for Blood, to whom work was everything?

How far would they carry their principle? Would they stand there and die when working would help?

He didn't want to push things that far, but-

"Sir!" Quinones flinched and leaned toward the mid-dle of the bridge. To her credit she didn't leave her seat at the helm, despite the abrupt and silent appearance of the Living micro-gate.

The Blood men on the port side had to scramble out of the way, but somehow Riutta's magic door managed not to hit anybody. All of a sudden there was a hole in the air over the tube hatch, framed by the brushed-pewter links not so different from those of the Gateway in space.

"Nobody move," Keller warned.

Through the micro-gate they could see the grottoes of the grave ship, and the rows of dark metal bodies like sculptures of daily life in some town of clay. Now what? Should he go up and knock?

He motioned the Blood men on that side to move farther forward. "Lucy, move out," he uttered, and mo-tioned her away from the helm.

When he moved toward the micro-gate, he noted in his periphery Shucorion take a step toward him, maneu-vering between the pilot station and the navigation post

Keller ignored him. Instead he glanced up at Creighton, who simply shrugged and mouthed, No readings.

He nodded.

"Riutta!" he called. "We'd like to conduct our own business without interference. Are you in there?"

"Why is this fight? Why?" Her voice echoed slightly.

He still couldn't seer her.

"Show yourself," he invited. Knowing he was up against people with far more power on some level than he possessed, he made a bet and played the only card in his hand right now. "I have new information for you. Meet with me, and I'll explain."

His stomach quivered. He was over his head. How could he keep from drowning? Riutta seemed secure in her purposes, though his remained undefined. He was guessing his way through this situation. Even though Riutta was a stranger here, she was setting all the boundaries. He had to change that

She appeared suddenly, at the bottom of a slope he hadn't even known was there. At her sides were several other Living, each in some version of the light mail shift and molded padding, though there was no unity of style. The colors were all grays, whites, and muted blues, as if color didn't matter. Maybe to the Living they all looked the same.

Riutta and one of the men climbed the slope and stood just on the other side of the micro-gate, inches from Keller.

"You are having conflict?" Riutta asked.

"Some," Keller admitted. What was the point of say-ing no? "We have some matters of dispute with the Blood ships out there. It's a private dispute. We don't appreciate being stopped. You've destroyed an entire ship and crew. More than forty people were cut to. pieces by your chainmail." Bitterly he added, "Do you know that?"

"Chainmail?"

"Your barrier. The metal fabric!"

"Chainmail," she repeated, tasting the word. She de-cided it was accurate and attempted no other identifica-tion of what she had done. "You saw the destruction. No one else will go through. You must tell all your peo-ple to stay inside. What is your new information?"

So much for sitting down to discuss this over coffee.

"Right here," Keller said bluntly. He reached out to his side, took Shucorion's arm and pulled him up close. Td like you to meet my faithful Indian companion, Shucorion."

Riutta squinted and strained, fought to make her eyes work. If they couldn't see red where they came from, what else looked different?

The man beside her suddenly gasped. "Ennengand!"

Instantly, as if stepping between rooms, Riutta raised her foot and came over the bottom of the micro-gate onto the bridge to get a better look at Shucorion.

Her eyes narrowed and she focused with effort. "En-nengand?"

Shucorion licked his lips to speak, then made a brief visual contact with Keller. The two of them made an unspoken connection, and Shucorion held his breath.

Riutta was more controlled than her companion. "Why are you here? How and why?"

Keller realized he had put Shucorion in a bad spot. Should they lie or make up a story, or what?

'Tell her," he encouraged.

Keeping one eye on Keller, and deliberately being vague with the truth about himself, Shucorion wisely attempted, "I am Blood, like those in the ships firing at us. Here, we are all different kinds of people, different races. There are many races here now."

"Where is 'here'?"

"We live in a common cluster of stars and planetary systems." Shucorion looked at Keller and made a mo-tion with one hand. "All of us, together."

Could Riutta see the difference in skin color? That Shucorion and the Blood were markedly different from the humans? From Zoa?

"They are the children of Ennengand," Keller added. At least there was a connection he could capitalize on. "We've come to join them here."

She looked at him with her strange star like eyes. "You have relations with the others who fight? Then why are you in conflict?"

The man with her blurted. "You are the same!"

**We all live together," Keller said, "and we have some things to work out We want to work them out without interference from people who don't understand us yet"

Riutta continued to watch Shucorion. In her eyes, a legend had just come to life. "You have no relation? Why are you doing these things?" She looked at Keller for her answer. "Why?"

Irritated, he said; "It's a private matter between me and the other commander. We're trying to work out a misunderstanding in a deal we made."

"Deal? You had a bond?"

She might be strange and foreign, but she had the concept of relationships down flat

"One broke the bond?" she persisted.

Although there might be a thousand ways to justify certain actions, Keller had to admit to himself that she had the basic idea right Every disagreement, betrayal, turmoil and war since time immemorial had started with a difference of opinion at some level or other. What could he say?-they were shooting at each other for fun?

"In the other commander's opinion," he admitted, "I broke the bond. But I didn't understand what had been negotiated."

But Riutta was finished with him. She turned her long thin form away, the knotted muscles of her shoul-ders and back showing through the thin metallic sheath in a body language anybody from anywhere could translate.

She faced Shucorion. "Gateway has made its deci-sion. The Anointed will show us the path lines of space. We will do as Ennengand provided us to do."

"What do you mean," Keller asked, "'provided you to do'? Did Ennengand leave instructions?"

But for Riutta, he no longer existed. She spoke only to Shucorion.

*The time of order has come," she said. "Everything in the records was true. All the plans are undistorted. Disorder was held in place here until we could return. You are the confirmation."

She stepped back from Shucorion and turned, this time to look back at the Living man who was still in-side the micro-gate. With just that look, and no other sign of communication, she made some connection with him. The man turned and looked down the slope at the others, who went into action below and disappeared back to whatever control center they had in the grave ship.

Three seconds later, the chainmail globe around Challenger was retrieved away from the ship, formed itself into a milky sheet, twirled into a strand, and was slurped back into the mandibles of the pickery ball on Pompeii's bow.

She was setting the frigate free!

Why? Because of Ennengand? Because she thought she was talking to a living legend?

Did Keller dare ask?

He clamped his lips and determined not to press his luck.

Still addressing only Shucorion, Riutta said, "We will protect the children of Ennengand from the curse of space. We know who we are. We will take care of all these things."

In move of supreme clarity, she stepped back inside the micro-gate without looking at them again. She'd made a decision.

"Wait!" Keller stepped toward the gate, but Shuco-rion reached out and dragged him back.

Inches away, the micro-gate shriveled, turned into a ball, rolled three times, and winked away.

The Grave Ship Pompeii

'Time has rushed forward on our side. lime stood still here while we marched forward. These are not the de-scendants of Ennengand's travelers... these are the ac-tual people. They have been made to wait for us."

"We are interfering." Under the tentative gazes of the other Living farers, Luntee pressed his knuckles to his tormented eyes and digested Riutta's vaulted state-ments. Her words were terrifying. 'This place is for-eign to us now," he said. "Better we go home, where all is familiar. Through the Gateway, we can see and func-tion as we are now meant to."

She led him among the rows of Anointed, working to use her senses in this new environment that had once been familiar. Even the ship of the Anointed was strange once they were through the Gateway. There were many, many new textures. There was red and other colors. Smells were overwhelming, a constant wash of unfading sensations spinning in her skull.

"You wanted to come here," she reminded.

"I want to go back. I don't like it here, Riutta. Living are not meant for this alien place anymore. To be here and be blinded? To find that color is not a gift, but a curse? To have this terrible scent and feel these ill-nesses?"

"We stay, Luntee. We have been summoned to work here."

"We have been in exile!" Luntee raised his hands, but hi a different manner. "Exile has become our home. This place is foreign!"

"Exile," Riutta echoed She stopped and gazed at the hundreds of Anointed in their imitation of life. "Or have we been in the forge? While we tempered ourselves upon a metal ball for lifetime after lifetime, disorder was not allowed to continue here. We have been made to be ahead of them. We possess the greater power now. Every bit of extra energy has been saved for a thousand of generations. Ennengand's effigy is here, alive, as a sign, a direction-bringer for us. Random order has planted him here, in plain sight You saw him.**

"But he doesn't know us, Riutta. He was surprised."

Riutta made her way again along the soft fabric dunes between the grottoes, moving between the sweeping cur-tains. Would she ever be able to visit the planet imitated here? Over the generations, Living had woven this tribute from hair and skin and sinew, bits of live tissue, as much as could be spared, and unusable material from the free dancers. This vessel was a giant picture of the ancient world from which the first Living travelers had come, fit-ted together from remnants of stories long faded in time.

Never before had she let herself contemplate so much of the future at one time. For her, before she was an Elder, the future came only in days. The hunt Her family. Rest. Storing energy. Reading the old records. Studying. Looking much more back than forward.

As an Elder, she must entertain new plans, long plans.

'This is where we have been stationed by random order. Whatever random order has in mind for us, it must be on this side. Our entire purpose on that side was to get here.'*

"You have condemned our civilization to a thousand generations of new suffering in space."

"I interpret the message of the Gateway," she told him. Why did he argue so much about things so clear?

"These people have abundant food, warm planets, and color. They eat, they have shelter, they have order and rules, and a simple way to know what the rules want, yet they travel. They must go into space because others will. If they don't go, someone will come and conflict will happen."

**Let them have then* conflict," Luntee said. "I was wrong, and the Elders were wrong."

"You and I are the Elders now." Riutta pushed aside the veils protecting the spinner mechanisms. 'The won-der of being marooned on a planet with food and color, Luntee-this is not ours to have. We have another pur-pose, a good purpose. We have the Anointed. There is a purpose to random order. All those lifetimes of suffer-ing were just to prepare all Living for this purpose. This is a new beginning. We will start here. We will give Ennengand's people what they need."

The chamber was warm now. Such luxury for those who had ceased to enjoy it The Anointed deserved everything, even pleasures they could never realize.

Luntee rubbed his eyes, disoriented in the warmth. "How many will you try?*'

**We will try five. They're very dense."

"Your project is foolhardy."

"Embrace it"

He nodded, troubled. "I must Riutta-the Anointed!"

Around them, in a great mysterious concert, forms of the Anointed began to flex and move their arms, sag-ging* from their poised positions along the steppes. They moved their heads and necks, though their faces had no curiosity, their eyes no light.

The Anointed would decide which among them would step down. This process was ancient and no one understood it. They would make their own choices and sacrifice, for this was their primary purpose once life was finished They were the source of strength.

Two women, one very old and venerated, and three men selected themselves from among the dark shifting throng. The small group climbed down from their pedestals, left behind the places they had been standing for generations, and moved toward the polished glass funnel in the chamber's core.

The old woman went first, plunging into the funnel as gracefully as a free dancer descending.

Deep inside the funnel, a flash swallowed the dark-ened body. The processing, had begun. One of the men went next.

Luntee shaded his eyes in respect as the Anointed gave themselves to the forge, into the mysterious process carrying them to the next level. The knowledge was long gone, but the process would take care of itself. Once the process had been established, all those generations ago, the people who developed it had been chosen, their knowledge taken away. New skills were learned, and the Living did not strive to rediscover what had been taken.

Riutta blinked at him, determined to learn better how this new vision should be used. She could spot red now, and was working on green. There was much green here, if she was right in her study.

As the remaining three Anointed who had selected themselves now one by one plunged into the forge, she raised her hands well above her head. "This is the pur-pose, Luntee. This is the beginning, our new starting place, our reason for these generations of work. We will secure this place, then bring the rest of our people through the Gateway, out of the blast furnace that made us strong, that stopped time and gave us the tools to do what is necessary. None of these people can stand against what we have. We are chosen to stay in space. We will help Ennengand's people be happy. We will re-store random order."

'They're warping out! And they're dragging the Blood ships with them!"

'Through Gamma Night?" Keller rushed to the nav station. "Ryan, what's their heading?"

"Direct for the binary. The Blood and Kauld home-worlds! They found 'em somehow."

"Figures. All right, crew, saddle up! Let's have warp power, Lucy. Match their speed. Don't let them lose us!"

Quinones' face was a matte of panic. "What if they plow into something!"

"Reckon we will too."

Poor Quinones was perfectly terrified. It was a hell of a bet they were making. Shield technology didn't have any effect on Riutta's science. But to take the chance that Gamma Night also had no effect? That they could navigate cleanly through it? Keller was betting against the very real possibility that Riutta just didn't know about Gamma Night and was misreading every-thing she saw. She could easily lead them on a death run into a gas giant or a gravitational anomaly. At warp speed, even with the opticals, they would never even see disaster coming.

"Commander, I'm not up to this!" Quinones pleaded with amiable honesty. Sweat drained down her face. **Sir, I don't want to get us killed!"

1 know. Go to warp speed." Keller bent over the helm and helped with the fine-tuning so critical during sensor darkness. Sometimes they couldn't even be sure of what they were seeing with their own eyes. 'Track Pompeii. Just stay with them. We'll talk about getting killed later."

Around them the frigate spat and shuddered, turned to its new course as plotted tentatively by Ryan, who also gave Keller terrible glances of fear and uncertainty. Ultimately the ship breached the great gap to hyperlight speed. On the blurry screens, space funneled and stars stretched out They were off, following the unknown.

"Warp one," Quinones gulped. 'They're still outpac-ing us."

"Lights just went out on deck nine," Creighton said, irritated.

"Understood. Go to warp two."

Quinones hunched her shoulders. "Warp two, sir...."

Whack

Their speed multiplied on a maddening scale.

"Still outpacing us."

But Keller was committed. "Match their speed. Do whatever it takes."

Tension mounted as Quinones shivered her way to warp two point five, two point seven five, warp three... three point two...

'They're-they're settling down-" she choked out "Warp three point... four."

"Sci-deck, how long till we reach the binary?"

'Thirteen hours," Dean Creighton reported. "If we reach it"

Back and legs knotted, Keller straightened and stepped to face Shucorion.

"How about taking the helm?" he asked

A simple question, but braided with trouble. There were Blood men here on the bridge, watching their avedon. Word would get around even if they weren't here, even if no one wanted to spread it.

Shucorion's hand touched the front of the helm, but he never looked away from Keller. There was terrible anguish in his eyes, guide-railed by willpower gleaned from a lifetime of strife. He desperately wanted to take the helm.

"I'm sorry," he said.

With a frustrated frown, Keller stiffened. "Then take your men and get off the bridge."

"Where would you like us to go?"

*1 don't care where you go. Go take a nap if you want. Don't be surprised if while you're sleeping I paint you all toucan orange."

Chapter Twenty

"WHY do we fly? Why? Why do we walk?"

Six hours gone. Seven to go.

Seemed long, but with a bomb ticking relentlessly away it was only minutes.

On the sci-deck, Dean Creighton grinned nervously down at his commander.

Nick Keller doggedly paced the lower deck. The bridge was a lot emptier than when the Blood men had been here. Somehow they were still here, like ghosts.

Quinones hunched over his pilot station. A few steps to her right, Ryan slumped back in his chair with his hands folded over his chest, watching his navigation and sensor readouts the way a man watches a pregnant wife in the last ten minutes.

The crew had made a laudable effort to pretend they were in control. They weren't. The frigate was traveling at more than warp three. During Gamma Night, this was perfectly insane. Out in front of them, Riutta's composite grave ship and spinners made a beeline to- ward the Blood and Kauld worlds, and once there they would be, cosmically speaking, not very far at all from Belle Terre, a completely defenseless planet

Riutta wouldn't answer his hails. If she could even pick up the calls through the sensor distortion. He couldn't be sure, but something inside told him she could hear him and refused to answer. She wouldn't talk to him. He had broken a bond.

Sounded damn familiar.

Angrier by the minute, Keller wandered to the star-board side, where Quinones, hi a pair of safety goggles, used a soldering tool on the damaged plates. "Why do we breathe? Why do we need a ship without holes in it? Why do we have lips? Why? To keep our cheeks from fraying."

With his cold hand on the rail, he moved forward to-ward tactical, where Zoa picked at her phasers and tor-pedoes and solutions and diagrams of firing patterns. She liked the firing patterns.

Keller paused, bent his lanky frame against the rail, and studied the Rassua's gold-threaded braids in their helmet shape, and the landscape of tattooed adventures running across her shoulders and down her arms, pic-tures that told of her many conquests and successes, wounds and challenges. Her **witnesses."

They were enticing pictures, exaggerated zoomorphs and story glyphs with a vicious edge, like the heads of Viking ships, meant to scare the enemy, or Celtic illu-minations meant to confuse the eye of evil.

"Why do we have officers hi tactical command? Why?" he mumbled. "To land us in hot water with long tall slickers from over yonder. Why else?"

Zoa looked at him. It was like being stared at by a sarcophagus.

"You 'mind me of husband five," she said.

"Pardon?" Then he realized, and asked, "You've had five husbands?"

"More."

"How many?"

"Four and three."

"Really... still have one of them?**

"Yes. But five husband were an butch like you."

"If you mean he let situations get out of hand, reckon you're dead-on right." He leaned an elbow on the rail and punished himself with immediate memory. "What do you suppose I did to turn this into such a mess?"

Zoa stood up, came down the access steps forward of the crescent, stepped around in front of him and squared off between him and the main screen.

"I will hit ye now," she declared.

" 'Scuse me?"

Booof

What was he doing on his butt, way back on the riser, with his shoulders against the command chair? His lungs seized up under bruised ribs. A cough of shock choked him.

"Hey!" Brad Ryan jumped up from the nav and got between Keller and Zoa.

Quinones shot out of her own chair and came to Keller's side, but neither knew what to do against this one not-so-big woman.

"Hold off." Keller grasped Quinones' wrist. His words were little gasps as he looked at the Rassua woman. "Wha-why*d-you-hit me?"

With one arm Zoa poked Ryan with one finger in the throat. He gagged, looked shocked, and dropped out of her way as if he were a potted plant. Her thick-soled sandals clunked twice on the carpet, bringing her to tower over Keller like an ancient colossus.

**Why you let me?*' Her golden face remained impas-sive, lined golden lips in perfect order, solid-blue eyes unblinking. "I warn ye. Why you din move? I always do what I say. Next time, move thee."

How many words was that? More than she'd strung to-gether at once in all these weeks-months, really, count-ing the voyage from Federation space to Belle Terre. Maybe this was the first time she had anything to say.

Something made him listen, more than to someone who talked all the time.

*1 varnish now, for drama. Be in paser room, you want me." She let her minimal lecture flap around the bridge a couple of times, then turned without any hint of helping him up, and thumped to the turbolift

The doors opened before she got there. Savannah Ring came out, instantly sidestepped the other woman, and got out of the way as Zoa disappeared into the lift and the doors closed again.

"I'd say that's dramatic," Keller grumbled. He rubbed his ribs, distracted.

Quinones knelt at Keller's side, the soft dome lights reflecting faintly pink on her blond hair. "Want me to help you up, Mr. Keller?"

Keller waved a hand. "Nah, I think I'll just sit here and pout Take your posts, keep us on track, stay alert You've got your hands full."

She and Ryan hesitated, but did as they were told.

Savannah stepped down to the command deck and crouched beside him. "What happened, Nick?"

Dimly aware of the attention, Keller spoke mostly to himself. "Zoa socked me in the breadbasket"

"Deserve it?"

"Uh..."

"She sneak up on you?*'

"Not exactly." As his gut started seriously hurting, he coughed again and rubbed his watering eyes. "She's not supposed to hit me...."

"I think she's flirting with you."

"They don't flirt on her planet They do that club-and-drag thing." He flexed a fist and curled his lip. "I shoulda biffed her one."

"She wouldn't notice. She's brain-dead. That sparkle in' her eyes is the light coming through her ears. Any-thing broken?"

Keller shook his head, bewildered. "I honestly don't know. Have you noticed I'm surrounded by scary women? No offense."

"None taken."

He brought his knees up and leaned on them. "She warned me," he mumbled, "then she hit me. What am I missing?"

"Get Bonifay up here for a s‚ance," Savannah com-mented. 'The spirit world should be able to read the mind of a sphinx."

"I don't think Zane would do me any favors right now."

"Mmm... with Zane, the glass is half empty and quickly evaporating."

He glanced around to make sure no one was listen-ing too closely, and murmured, "Did you see what hap-pened to the Savage?"

She widened her eyes and nodded.

Reliving the horror, he pressed down a flutter of nau-sea. "I don't think we have a word for what happened to those people."

"Nick, my medical computer signaled me with some news. But it's peculiar." When he looked at her, she low-ered her voice. Her brown eyes crinkled with wicked delight 'The man over on the grave ship doesn't just look like Shucorion's father. He is Shucorion's father."

He was glad they were sitting on the rise, out of everyone else's direct view. Wouldn't do for anybody to see his expression right now.

" 'Sense me, but isn't that impossible, given the years involved?" 4

"Everything checks out biologically. If you ignore the years, it's his father. The facts make me ignore the years"

"You're about to give me gory details, aren't you?"

'If you want them."

"Naw, I'll take your word"

"And something else," she went on, giving him a few seconds to absorb what she was about to say. "All the Anointed have names. The grave ship really is a ceme-tery. Shucorion's dad is catalogued as Ennengand, and logged to his specific pedestal. All those thousands of dead people are each named and listed to the posi-tion-the post-the thing they're standing on. It's meticulous. Zane would like it"

Keller shook his head at this new thing. He rubbed his face with one hand and let the other flop over his knee. He stared at the deck lockers under the quarter-deck. His eyes lost focus.

'I've got to add this all up. Let's just start with the differences, the things that support the eleven-thou-sand-year theory. Their clothing is very lightweight metal loops-virtually air. You can't put a knife through it, it takes a phaser hit, they're really good at energy, and that chainmail keeps the energy going round and round, until it finds a ground. Then it arcs.

Now we find out they can spin this chainmail big enough to surround a ship, and it acts the same way."

"According to their diaries," she supplied, "they stumbled around for five hundred of our years just try-ing to understand the physics of the place on the other side of the Gateway."

"In those years and the other ten or so thousand, they've learned how to work metal on a microscopic level. They're experts at dissipating energy. They also control some kind of energy that can't be read but sure is there." He paused to clear his head, and thought back on Riutta. "She doesn't carry weapons, but she com-mands a power source which we also can't read. What do their records say about the Anointed? Does Riutta control them? Does she make them move?"

Savannah shook her head. "No. It's just a computer system of action and reaction. The mummies moved themselves when they wanned up to pliability. They're programmed to embalm whatever's put in the embalm-ing machine. Live people aren't supposed to be in there at all. The grave ship is just a shrine to the dead who still have bodies when they die. The Living put the dead in there, and the mummies fill the body up with a metallic compound."

"Then they're-what, androids?"

"That's for you to figure out, sheriff, not me. Not in the conventional sense. They're solid metal. No circuitry or chips. Magnetics, maybe. Some kind of selective reaction? I don't know... they're run by the computer pilot program on the grave ship. Same thing that runs the ship. Basic signal and response, like navi-gational programs on scout probes. Go there, use this route, do this when you get there. The grave ship's computer system is very basic, way simpler than ours.

Communications too. I guess the Living didn't have anybody to talk to."

Keller stretched his legs out and flexed his back. "But they did have reasons to become experts at metallurgy. They have conducting and nonconducting metals. They make their chainmail out of the noncon-ducting stuff, like a mirror doesn't conduct light En-ergy just flows off."

She sighed. "Maybe in their universe, the electromag-netic reaction and the absorption of it act differently from ours. There's an awful lot of information to-"

"What did you just say?"

Startled, she paused. "I don't know... what'd I say? Electromagnetic reaction is absorbed-"

"Not that,"

"I didn't say anything else."

"Yes, you did." He sat straight and gripped her hand. "You did! You said... 'their universe.' "

She shrugged. "Just a figure of speech."

"Keep your mind open."

"Everything'll fall out"

But he was already onto his new line of thought 'They've got an aberration of Shucorion's attitude, an extreme of Blood and Kauld practicality and sense of rales, agreements.., and they've learned to work metal so it sheds energy the way a mirror sheds light The power source is invisible... can't be traced, scanned-energy that can't be found-"

"Maybe we're just misreading or making some other mistake."

"What if we're not?" he said sharply. "What if... what if that Gateway changes everything? What if the Living really are a huge exaggeration of Blood and Kauld... as if they'd had thousands of years of practice on one principle... eleven thousand years there... twenty here-"

She stared at him, no longer part of the conversation he was having with himself.

"Of course! Savannah-" He clapped his hands once and shot to his feet so fast he had to catch himself on the quarterdeck rail. "Another dimension!"

She got to her feet behind him. "Isn't that kind of a leap?"

Everyone else was watching him too.

He slapped the rail. "The
"That's too easy."

"Got something against easy? The ability to directly convert matter to energy is being beamed from inside the Gateway!"

She followed him across the bridge while Ryan, Creighton, Quinones, and Tyce watched the odd dance. "What do we do? Attack the Gateway?"

"It might defend itself," Creighton suggested.

Keller nodded and held up a staying hand. "Not yet. If our guess is right, the energy coming through the Gateway could be years' worth. Her people are still over there, catching electric fliers and sending the power over here. And she uses it, too. Those micro-gates-she can go anywhere she wants. She can drop a grenade anywhere on this ship, right through the shields and the hull, and we wouldn't even know it. We can't read the power. She just steps back and forth like you and I go between rooms. We can't beat her tech-nology, and I'm betting death's not what she's afraid of anyway. If they're eleven thousand years ahead of

Blood and Kauld, how far ahead of the Federation does that put them? How far ahead of us?"

"No idea," she accepted, "but I'll bet we can't whup 'em in a fair fight."

The carpet seemed unyielding under his boots. The rail fell behind as he moved to the main screen and communed with its fuzzy view of the grave ship in the forward distance, a green blur with silver dots trailing behind it The Blood ships, helpless inside globes of chainmail.

He combed over the choppy, fruitless conversation between Riutta and Shucorion, plucking and sifting for anything he could use. What were her inflections? Had the translator gotten the words right but maybe the sen-timent off?

"She talks about the Gateway as if it has a mind," he recalled. "Wisdom, from a metal object. She's got spiri-tual ideas about the Anointed, talks about them as if they're still alive and running their own ship... same way Zane talks about trees and cards and candles. With some kind of... respect. But how do I fight some-body," he contemplated, "who doesn't have to fight back?"

Savannah came to his side and raised her brows. "How are you at unfair fights?"

As he reviewed those critical moments of contact with people from so far away in time and space, Keller found the experience a mirror. He was really looking at himself, seeing again himself sprawled on the deck, flattened by Zoa after a fair warning.

Warning... yes, fair warning. She did always do what she said she would, didn't she?

Why hadn't he moved? Why hadn't he-anticipated?

Looking ahead wasn't enough. He had to learn to look beyond ahead, beyond what might be coming, to what he could force to come.

"I want that respect," he declared, more into the mir-ror in his mind than to Savannah. "I want it from Riutta, I want it from the Blood and from Shucorion, from Zane and the crew... I want it/'

Apparently Savannah Ring knew an epiphany when she saw it She said nothing as Keller stared with sud-den resolve at the colored blurs on the forward screen, a crisp view of his own purpose and a sense of control that had eluded him until now.

"I've got seven hours," he blurted "Savannah, get me every bit of cultural information on these people. Find out everything about her ship. If it's old Kauld, then we can fiddle the mechanics. I want to see their logs, their drawings, what they say about themselves, about that ship, the Anointed, their history-every-thing. I can't beat their science... maybe I can beat their attitude. If I can't have physical power, then I want mental power. Shucorion and the Blood crew won't work for me, Riutta won't fight me, Delytharen won't talk to me-I mean to get all these people to pay attention to me again." He turned away from the main screen and squared his shoulders. "Unfair fights? You watch."

Chapter Twenty-one

The Bosun's Tool Alley, Deck 14

"reroute your feed to the local quadritronic sub-processors in auxiliary, then boost to the main bridge through the secondary software.'*

" Won't hold up for long like that"

"Doesn't have to. Just make sure he's got the sub-light guidance he needs."

"What about the optical link?"

"Am I a computer specialist?

"No."

*Then do it the stupid way."

"This is realty making me nervous. I'll electrocute myself-maybe we better wait and tell Mr. Keller."

"Don't tell Keller. He's got his hands full."

'7 think I should tell him."

"I don't care what you think. You already told your watch leader, and he told me. If Keller needs to know,

I'll tell him. Keep your insulated gloves on, do one thing at a time, and don't hurry."

"Okay, okay..."

The starboard tool alley was a paradise of clutter in half-baked order. Every manner of wrench, socket, ma-chining tool, utility aid, coil, and leftover hardware lay about the deck and on dozens of shelves from deck to crossbeam, most of it time-tested junkyard rescues. Al-most everything here had been recycled, retooled, or yardsaled All of it was here because it hadn't broken yet

Zane Bonifay paced like a hyperactive hamster. His communicator had been in constant use since he ban-ished himself here. The ship was in trouble, racing to-ward more trouble, and he was here, under guard.

The guard was even more unhappy about the arrangement than Bonifay himself.

"Zane, I'm leaving," the big young man said from in-side his extra-extra-large moss-green crew sweater. His wide shoulders cast a shadow over half the tool alley. "We've got damage to the armory and I oughta-"

"Stay put, you oughta." Bonifay looked up, up, up, into Gyler's ruddy face. "I outrank you, marblehead."

"We're both ensigns!" Gyler complained. "I don't like loafing around so it looks like you're under guard.**

"We've got to keep up appearances for the nosy neigh-bors," Bonifay implored He talked fast No chance for witnesses to take notes. "Nobody'11 give Keller any crap if everybody knows I'm guarded by a walking power tool like Teddy Gyler. Here-keep your hands busy. Stack these cutters and everything in those boxes on the coded shelves in the right numerical order. Don't put the green ones next to the brown ones. Stop arguing!**

"I didn't say nothin'!'*

"You're arguing in your soul. Stack." Leaving Gyler with a job, he paced into the back of the tool alley and brought his communicator up again and adjusted the channel. "Ellis, Bonifay. How's that cascade amplifier coming? Tell me something wonderful."

"Ellis here. We're kidding ourselves. It keeps trying to focus on green phosphorous on the narrow aperture. It's got no periphery, no depth perception-it's pushing high-noon illumination on everything and I can't break through the radiation codes to stop the acutators"

**Why would it &o that?" He grumbled his way to-ward Gyler, then back again, deeper into the alley. "There's got to be a reason... let me think... let me get the diagnostics into my skull."

This process took thirty seconds or so before he could think his way back through the guts of the ship. It worked. It always worked. Stop, Think. Wander back in the mind... revisit, rediscover, walk it through-

He slapped his forehead, clawed his hands into his meticulously rakish black hair, and sold his revelation with a grimace. "I know what that is! You're getting flickers of leftover programming in the unclean chips all over the parts! Language impulses from whatever programs were embedded before this sea serpent was even a light in Keller's eye!"

"You want to conduct an exorcism?"

"Try a passive injector on low speed. And use the antigrav pontoons, no matter how crowded they are. Remember-in triple gravity, a six-foot fall is like a twenty-four-foot fall. So don't fall."

"Copy that."

"Zane," Gyler attempted again, "this is crazy. We're still under red alert. I'm gonna report back to the ar-mory."

Lowering his communicator, Bonifay leveled a finger at the big crewman's nose. "Stay put or 1*11 beat your fist in with my face." When Gyler batted the hand away, Bonifay ducked and chimed, "And never touch my earring!*'

"You're not wearing one!"

*'It*s ephemeral. You can't see it because you don't believe."

"Bonifay, Manteo. Where are you?"

"Bonifay. I'm just stepping into the hot tub."

"/ can't find the flight-stress punch for the grab plate. Isn't it supposed to be right on the site?"

"What shipyard did you grow up in? Can't you fake it?'*

"I'm a microbiologist!"

"Look behind the next bracket. Reach for it"

"Oh-got it!"

"Now, listen carefully. Watch my hand in your mind. Concentrate." He closed his eyes, put his hand out in front of his own face, and drew the procedure on the air between himself and Gyler, a process which freaked poor Gyler to the bone. "The main fluid reservoir for smooth actualization of the pistons runs right through the assembly on the right side of your spreader. Two inches down and four left is a manual latching option. There's a magnetic valve above the redundant sensor assembly. Is your forefinger where mine is?"

"Think so..."

"I want you to manually latch the reservoir before you unhook the umbilicals. Clear?"

"We really need some engineers...."

"We need more girls too. Keep burning your bay leaves."

"The Blood crew was refitting this system, weren't they?"

"And they did a damn fine job. Now it's your job. Just be methodical.'*

"Emmanuel to Bonifay."

"Bonifay."

"We're getting brittle metal in the driver coil assem-bly. Should I use the vent patch compound again?"

"We don't have any more. Use the fusion patch."

"But it shows a constant flash of load imbalance. I'm betting on a short"

"And a woman who picks St. John's wort while naked in the summer will be fertile. But it doesn't have any effect on us right now." He paused, rubbed his eyes, and with contempt huffed, "Gyler! I said don't put the green ones next to the brown ones!"

"Why not? What difference is the color?"

"It's just not a good idea."

"It'll wake the dead, right?"

"This is not a stance, goober. There are no ghosts. There are spirits. Fine line. Take these out, move those over, wedge this in, and put these between those and mat"

"What about this?"

"Doesn't go there."

"Just tell me one thing. Who'm I guarding you against?"

"Against myself. My own temptation to walk out that door, beat Tyce off the helm, and do it myself. Make sure I don't leave."

"You serious?"

"It's important."

Gyler frowned, but bought in.

As long as he was stuck here, Bonifay determined to make a tidy alley. The ship could be in trouble, about to fly into the middle of a maelstrom between hostile civilizations, but there was no reason not to be tidy. That was what he liked best about the Blood crewmen. They were-

A third presence startled him, at first only a floating shadow on the other side of Gyler, at the opening of the tool alley. Nobody ever came here without his permis-sion, so he wasn't expecting anyone.

He dropped off the thing he was standing on and leaned-way, way over-to see past Gyler.

"Ah, she of the slashing tongue," he greeted.

Zoa stood at the entrance to the alley. She didn't move. She just stood there, her right arm slightly poised at her side, her left tucked behind her back as if at parade rest. She looked Gyler up and down, and up again, which was work.

Gyler paused, stopped stacking, and looked at her. Great-two strong silent types. Pure vaudeville.

Bonifay snapped his fingers. "I know! You need a new needle key for the tactical pulpit I didn't forget I've got one back in here. I put it aside... it's back here. Swear t'God... well, it was here. Gyler, did you move a huge green utility box about the size of your head with a bundle of long skinny things with hooks on the ends? If you put it hi the wrong place, I'm gonna murder you."

Gyler didn't answer.

When Bonifay stopped craning into the top shelf and turned to see why, Zoa was almost nose to nose with Gyler, peering into his eyes as if searching for a rogue eyelash.

"What's this?' Bonifay asked.

Zoa ignored him. She stared more intensely at Gyler. She never blinked, not once. Her eyes were very wide, like the eyes of a cougar hunting.

Now Gyler wasn't blinking either. The big ensign sighed heavily, sucked in a yawn, and his head lolled

Suddenly his knees bent and he spiraled to the deck. She never even touched him and he went down like a darted ox!

Bonifay fell off the shelf and stumbled in the hard-ware, found footing with a clatter and gaped at the sack of meat on the deck. "What'd you do to him! Gyler, snap out of it!"

But Zoa's posture had changed. Her thick sandals mumped on the deck as she stepped over Gyler's bulk and revealed her hidden hand.

"You make an trouble Commander Keller," she said, and drew her left hand from behind her back.

Bonifay's skin grew cold at the sight of the armed phaser she pointed directly at him. If she fired it, the ship's sensors would set off the alarms. Of course, that wouldn't do him any good

"How'd you get a hand phaser?" he demanded ''No-body issued sidearms... hey... hey! No, no, mis won't work-what're you doing? What do you think you'ie doing! Hey!"

She moved toward him, her spot-eyes fixed

He backed away, but there was nowhere to go.

The Blood Planet

UFP Designation: Star System "Whistler"

Sublight speed, thank God.

At the helm, Lucy Quinones was a rag. Beside her, Brad Ryan had his head down on his arms, exhausted His reddened eyes were open, though, and fixed on me instruments. Gamma Dawn had come, and they could at least drive again. They now had a clear picture of the

Pompeii, soaring ingraciously through the solar system, dragging four Blood Savages in cocoons. Thirteen hours through deep space without a word from Delytharen or Riutta. Hail after hail. No response.

Keller felt supremely lonely. Shucorion and the Blood crew remained below decks, unable to participate without bringing the wrath of three solar systems down around them all. The big picture twisted in on itself.

Zane wasn't here, an absence more critical by the hour. Keller had never realized the benefit before, but somehow Bonifay's acidic mysticism lowered his blood pressure, not to mention the fact that only the bosun knew where the bolts and pins were kept.

Zoa wasn't at tactical. Where was she all this time? Probably in the armory. There had been heavy damage in that section. He thought about summoning her back after her exit for effect, but couldn't muster the will. What could phasers or photons do against Riutta's en-ergy from another universe? She had to be beaten some other way than sheer force.

After treating burns and minor injuries, Savannah was now up at the medical/environmental/life-support pulpit, quietly sifting through information from the grave ship.

Now that the grave ship approached the Blood planet, not bothering to orbit, Keller ordered a cautious distance and tried to hail Riutta again.

No answer.

"Brad," he said, nudging Ryan out of his torpor. "You and Quinones arrange safe distance where I can watch whatever Riutta does. I don't want to get close. Not yet, at least."

"Aye, sir."

"Saddle up, everybody. They're approaching the planet."

The bridge came to life as if he had lit off a firecracker

Creighton moved to the forward end of the set-deck. "What do you think she'll do?"

Ignoring the question, Keller said, "Stand by to assist Delytharen's fleet if they're still in distress."

"Pompeii's at the planet, sir," Quinones reported, confirming what they could all see on the screens. "Hey... why are they separating?'*

Keller turned 19 the main screen. Savannah came down to his side, and together they watched, mystified, as the spinners broke from the grave ship and dispersed in a random formation.

Or was it random? In fact, they were spreading out through the atmosphere of the planet.

"Look!" Quinones blurted. "They're turning the Blood ships loose!"

Hovering between the grave ship and Challenger, the silver cocoons around the four Savages suddenly split down the middle and were retrieved into the bow claws of the grave ship. Just like that, as if someone had reeled in a fishing net Keller could almost hear the slurp.

"Get this picture down to Shucorion," he said on an impulse. "Make sure he sees and hears everything."

"Understood," Ryan complied. "Switching."

"Nick," Savannah began, "they're surrounding the planet What do a dozen or so little ships think they can do with a planet that size?"

*Try hailing her again."

They never got the chance. The tenor of the bridge changed suddenly when the micro-gate opened in its spot over the port hatch. This time Riutta was already stand-ing on the other side, only steps away, waiting to speak.

Quinones flinched, but stayed in her seat, though Ri-utta blinked at her with catlike curiosity. She was on a different part of the grave ship than before. This area had all the earmarks of a lower-deck workshop. There was none of the beauty of the other chambers, none of the reverence or artistry. The walls and supports were undecorated, much more mechanical than the grottoes and forests of the other decks.

**We will remove the barriers from your ships," she said without any other greeting. "You may go home. No one will come out."

**What does that mean?" Keller immediately de-manded. "You're going to blockade an entire planet? Our civilizations are interdependent. These planets de-pend upon shipments and helping each other. Why are you threatening to blockade us?"

"There is not trust and cooperation," Riutta contin-ued. "You have trouble in space. No good comes of it No food, no work, no good."

He realized she wasn't speaking to him, but to every-one. She meant for him to spread the word.

"Look behind her," Savannah whispered. She tipped her head toward Riutta, but meant something else.

Keller squinted. Behind Riutta were five cubicles of some sort, without tops or fronts. In each was part of a humanoid form. Two had heads... but three of them were missing heads and at least one shoulder and arm. One of them had nothing above the waist Above each of the bodies was a spinning vortex, like a dust devil on new snow, sucking in the matter below.

"It's a factory," Savannah decided. *The Anointed are the source of raw material."

"Raw material," Keller murmured, "for making chain-mail!"

"We have been a thousand generations in the forge," Riutta went on. "We will be ten thousand before we will be allowed to rest. You will be remembered as the beginning. Witness this."

Hiding his words behind his knuckles, Keller grum-bled, "I don't like the sound of that...."

**Uh-uh," Savannah agreed.

Riutta apparently knew they could see what was hap-pening in space. She understood their visual screens and expected them to watch.

The view of the planet suddenly blurred-but it wasn't a blur after all. It was a veil of chainmail! Each of the spinners, those still in view, had begun to work their mandibles in and out, and from them spewed silvery strands of chainmail which bloomed wider and wider.

Were they surrounding the Challenger again?

No. The fabric of chainmail extended itself thinner and thinner, but spread in the atmosphere of the Blood planet

Keller looked up at Creighton. The other man scoured the sci-deck readings, then looked down and quietly informed, "No mass. Barely reads at all-"

"Warn your people," Riutta said. "Tell them to stay home, or their fate is written. Go back to your planets. Live your lives. You will have no more reason to be in space because you fear your neighbor will come and you will be disadvantage^!. You will enjoy your beauti-ful planets... with color and flower and smell-"

*Riutta!" Bristling, Keller stepped closer to the micro-gate. "What gives you the right to be in space and keep us all out?"

Riutta backed away, but only slightly. "It is our bur-den. We have been given power here. Random order has left me to do this,"

**Why not let us patrol space?" Keller challenged. "We prefer to do it!"

"You would not do it. You'll be here, and others will come, and you'll allow them to come. They'll want what you have, and someone will shoot. You'll shoot back. Our task is large, but finite, like storing energy. We will not finish the task, nor our children nor grand-children, but someday it will be done. We will secure this star cluster. Then we will secure the rest."

"The rest?"

"We have tracked your paths. You have many worlds. We will help them all. We have been given lifetimes more than you have had here. We are now the superior force. We have no need to destroy. Ruin will be at your hands, not ours.*'

Savannah leaned close to him and mumbled, "She's not really speaking to you, Nick."

"Not exactly a canned speech," he said. "She really believes all this. She's got a mystical system all worked out."

"What do you think she's talking about? What's 'the beginning'?"

He didn't bother to answer. They both knew.

As the individual silver veils from each spinner came together and formed seams, the entire planet was now blanketed in a thin upper-atmosphere layer of chain-mail. The entire planet. A more intimidating sight could scarcely be imagined.

Once the job was finished, the spinners broke off and backed away from the planet, leaving a pure platinum ball shimmering in the light of its troubled star.

"You will all go home and stay home," Riutta fin-ished. "Prepare your planets for peace."

Chapter Twenty-two

**are you taking me to be killed? You could just as easily hand me over to the Blood! They want to kill me too. Everybody wants to kill me. Stop pulling!"

Zane Bonifay hauled back on his own arm for the tenth time, but he might as well be in a Jefferies clamp. Zoa had him by the wrist and was drawing him from quarters to quarters through the ship, farther and farther below, deck by deck. At the slightest chance of being seen or heard, she stuffed him into a locker or a room or closet until the chance passed. He tugged, kicked, sat down-she was unaffected. She kept pulling, as if she had a poodle on a leash. A small poodle.

"Look, I know you're devoted to Nick" he coughed out. 'He doesn't know it, but I do. Are you intending to kill me to eliminate the problem? At least do me the re-spect of telling me!"

"You escape."

"What?"

"You flee."

He pulled harder, finding sudden strength. "Oh-no, no! I will not! I refuse! Guards! Where are the guards? Why don't we have guards! What kind of traction have you got on those sandals! How could we have believed you were a diplomat!"

"Keller better not decide."

"What's that mean? Speak English!"

"I am English. I drinked it."

"You can't go around making decisions like this! How-what-hey!"

She pitched him inside an airlock and he abruptly re-alized where she'd dragged him-the emergency pod dock on the underbelly of the engineering section, about as far from anything as a person could get on a ship without going outboard.

Locked into place was a two-man utility runner they'd modified from the Blood fleet, for use in servic-ing the Blue Net.

"What are you doing with the Blood pod? You can't operate this. You don't have the codes."

"Go in. Ry."

"I don't have the codes either."

"Ry. Go 'way now. Clean getaway."

He stepped back. "I will not escape! How would that look? Keller doesn't have enough problems? For-get it."

She got him by the wrist again and with very little effort pulled him inside the pod, then threw him into one of the two seats.

"Fine. I'll just sit here," he said. "Shucorion's the only one with the pilot codes. It's exclusive. You can't even disengage-"

She plugged in a computer cartridge and cranked the access latch.

On the outer hull of the pod, six docking clamps dunked open. The pod was free! Bonifay gripped the seat's arms. **How'd you do that!** **We launch when planet-dawn on Challenger. Go on dark side, till next Gamma Night. Then we get clean away."

While she spoke, she powered up the pod. Around them both, the pilot theatre came to life and the screens popped on.

Leaning forward in a vain hope to have some effect on her, Bonifay lowered his voice and hissed out his words. "You don't understand. This is no help for Keller! This won't look good. Nobody's going to be better to him because of this. They'll think he set it up." "I leave an letter. Keller is pure white innocent" "Look, I'm an officer and a gentleman, goddamn it! I do not escape custody!"

Still holding her phaser on him, Zoa settled back in the pilot seat and peered at the monitors, which showed various views of the chainmailed planet. Behind the planet, the corona of the sun called Whistler created a supernatural golden-orange aura around the rim of the chainmail globe. Planet-dawn would come... maybe twenty minutes.

Satisfied, she turned her blue dots to him. "You be gone. Keller jump off the hook."

The Fantail

They couldn't stop working. They couldn't sit or sleep. Not with the Humans working so hard only chambers away. The turmoil of conscience drove Challenger's Blood to activity. Neither Blood Many nor All Kauld had ever had time to indulge the kind of zest brought by these Hu-mans who came now to breathe passion into the star cluster. Humans seized their own plans with joy and daring, made mistakes with style, and plunged past those mistakes with sharp surges of determination. Caution served a purpose, but a small one to the larger vision of these vibrant newcomers. They let nothing stand in their way. Their very feet could ex-plode beneath them, and they would hobble on, or learn to fly.

Very hard to ignore, this Human way. Nick Keller, especially, took every defeat as a reason to push on with even more energy. Inexperience pestered him, but did not impede him. He knew what he would not be able to do, then did it anyway.

Shucorion was thinking about Nick Keller when he heard a footfall that had become, though he hadn't real-ized it, familiar to his ear. He knew Keller was ap-proaching long before he looked up to see the young commander who had not wanted command.

Must be those cowman boots. They made their own sound upon the deck.

All the Blood crew of Challenger had gathered here, on the fantail, but few spoke. There were no supple words for their condition. None was pleased with him-self, or their rules, or their obligations. None could go against those.

In their eyes he had seen the temptation, and he had put them to work here, though they worked angrily and with resentment.

"Can't stop working, after all?"

Shucorion, unlike the other Blood, was not working but instead was pacing before the operational screens, which showed a clear and frightening view of the planet where he was born, now surrounded in a vast glistening shell.

He looked up as Keller approached. "You look fa-tigued."

"Never mind how I look. I need to talk to you.'* Self-conscious, Keller pushed his fingers through his hair. With its simple cut, feathered back like a gentle helmet, his brown hair framed his eyes in a manner that showed off the concern ever present there. He sometimes redi-rected his emotions, but never attempted to hide them. He was honest

This begged appreciation. Add to it an easy manner and genuine care for the well-being of his shipmates- Nick Keller made everyone want to work for him.

Keller paused to glance at the other Blood men, who were riveting segmented blast shields into place on the fantail launchpad. Even now, in the midst of all this, he offered a generous nod of approval to the other men be-fore turning to Shucorion.

He gestured at the two screens with their picture of the planet "You've seen everything."

"Yes." With a simple nod, he accepted the invitation to turmoil. "It's impressive and terrifying."

"Riutta's given us an ultimatum. She wants Derytharen and the other Savages and the rest of the Blue Net to go back to the planet Then she'll keep them in-side and keep everybody else out"

"I was listening," Shucorion confessed. "Most com-pelling, this woman."

"Hell, yes, she's compelling. She means to close down space. She talks about our planets as a starting place. If I'm reading her right, she means to track us back to the populated galaxy and make everybody go home. Humans, Romulans, Klingons, Orions, Rigellians... scary part is, she might be able to do it She's got a huge store of raw material-"

He stopped speaking suddenly.

Shucorion caught the pause. "They have raw mate-rial? In what form?"

"Uh..." Keller's green eyes crimped and grew more troubled. He seemed to realize he'd made a poor judg-ment, though Shucorion couldn't understand why. Why would he not wish to tell? After a moment, he pressed his hand to his mouth, rubbed his jaw, and admitted, "It's the... the Anointed. Those mummies. They're a repository for the metallic compound Riutta spins into chainmail. We've been crunching some numbers. The Anointed are so dense and the chain mail so light and thin, it only takes one or two of them to surround the whole planet" He motioned toward the terrible view of the Blood world. "They could engulf a hell of a lot of planets... just a hell of a lot"

Watching him, Shucorion felt the fear mount in his chest "And she means to make everyone go home..."

Keller nodded. "Good fences make good neighbors, I guess." Once again he paced, unable to shake off the weight of responsibility.

"What if nothing in this universe will beat her?" Shucorion pondered.

'That's the other thing that scares me," Keller said. 'This is just one old battlebarge with some pickers. What if she summons more ships and Living to come from the other side, with more of their power source? A power source better than antimatter, better than olivium... with ten or eleven thousand extra years, what could you and I learn to do with antimatter or olivium? She's had the eleven thousand."

The concept was huge, overwhelming. Shucorion's skin tightened as he tried to imagine numbers so enor-mous, possibilities so wide and encompassing. Until the coming of Federation, his had been a Me of straight lines, of Blood and Kauld, and hardly anyone else.

"On the other hand,** Keller went on, 'there are some things they didn't tamper with. The grave ship is the original battlebarge that chased your father into the Gate-way. We've analyzed the mechanics. It's very simple."

"In so many years, they changed nothing?**

Keller shrugged. "You don't work to change reli-gious icons. Religion stops things from advancing. They got through the first thousand years deifying your father's basic rules for survival, then spent ten thousand trying to make a prophecy come true. You don't change things when you think you have the answers."

Shucorion parted his lips to speak, to voice his desire to help, tell how much he despised these conditions that divorced him from the bridge, from helping Keller in this terrible time. But such a conversation, he sus-pected, would weaken them both and serve nothing. Was Keller right? Was it unhealthy to stay home?

**We did some tests on that effigy over there,** Keller began, shifting the subject to the more personal. "I think you know what we found out, don't you?"

"I have my fears," Shucorion confirmed.

**You should be proud of him," Keller bothered to offer. "He went through that Gateway twenty years ago and a Kauld battlebarge followed The two teams landed on a hellish planet. By all rights they should've died in a week. Instead they got along for what amounts to eleven thousand years on that side. All their surplus goes into storing energy and processing metal, and they're real good at it. Your father got two warring tribes to hunker down and carve a whole civilization out of a metal rock."

"Yes, I suppose he did...."

"So what can you tell me about the Living?"

Startled, Shucorion paused. "What can I tell you-T

Keller stepped closer, intensifying his statements. **Well, Ennengand was your father... Riutta's your greatgrandsister. Knowing him, what do you think she's got in mind?"

Many questions could have come. Somehow Shuco-rion hadn't expected that one. He hesitated briefly, to contemplate.

"She mentioned 'the curse of space/ At first, I thought mis meant nothing, but now I begin to worry for it En-nengand hated space. He knew we should not be there, but we had to go because Kauld were mere. Riutta may embrace such ideas... if that indeed is what she meant and we're not misunderstanding." Suddenly over-whelmed, he rubbed his hands on his leggings. "How can we face them if they are so many years advanced of us."

"We can't beat their technology," Keller admitted. Obviously he had already given this much considera-tion. "We have to do something else. That means you and I have to retool our agreement."

Thus came the sinister truth, the reason for this un-easy visit

Shucorion clasped his hands at his chest to hold him-self to the moment "I bear the scars of a thousand falls," he mused, "yet I quake to see you harmed, even in small ways, for you take every wound to the core of you. This coming struggle will chisel you away to nothing, I think."

Keller spread his hands. Insult came out in his voice. "What's that supposed to mean?... Are you disap-pointed in me? You think I broke my word and nothing else I do is worth believing?"

Tormented, Shucorion battled his own expression.

Quietly he said, "You are bigger than you know in the eyes of Blood Many and All Kauld. Sovereignty has its tolls, lawlessness its furious demands. You are battling brainless chance with ritual and swift response. So far, you have kept above, but it cannot hold."

"If you're saying we been lucky, you're dang tootin.* "

"Lucky?... Lucky... I don't know. Blood Many struggle all our lives against the designless. Vigilance gives no help, prudence no comfort You have only the legend of Keller and what you have built, which we fly through space... and I am greatly haunted that I agree with Ennengand, with Riutta. All this trouble occurred because we came to space, I sometimes think."

"Quit thinking it. You'll have to start trusting me. It's not healthy to sit home. The whole thought of nothing new, nothing to quest for... it's like the Blood having no work. What if my idea of paradise was sitting around a beach, and I forced you to do it too?"

Without waiting for an answer, Keller shook his head and paced.

"Well, you can talk philosophy all you want," he said, "but we've got a more acute problem on our hands. It goes back to the moment on the Plume when you or-dered Bonifay to stay on a ship that was about to blow up." He stopped and faced Shucorion. '1 want you to ask yourself-was there any hope of saving the Plume?"

In deference to a legitimate query, Shucorion took the moment to think back, to feel again the strike made by the grave ship in what was apparently self-defense or mistaken identity, an action against which a Blood Plume was not stressed to survive. Mechanical confu-sion was an odd disease, sometimes cured, sometimes deadly.

When he met Keller's eyes, he still had no clear an-swer.

Sensing that, Keller lowered his chin and frowned "Then why did you order him to stay?"

Again the response was only a thoughtful silence. Shucorion believed he knew his own mind, but doubts began to leak in as he fielded Keller's steady eyes.

After a moment of this, Keller folded his arms, "ft takes time to learn who to trust. I wasn't even mere and I know what Zane was thinking. 'We're in a box, there's another box over there, this box is blowing up, so we'll go to that box.' "

"The decision was not his."

"No, it wasn't. But contacting Delytharen wasn't yours. Why'd you do it? You did it because you trust them more than you trust me. Same problem on the Plume-you admitted defeat too soon. You didn't give Zane's alternatives a chance."

Shucorion warned him with a tilt of his head. "You listen too much to your friends."

"And you don't listen enough to yours," Keller shot back. "Shipmates have our own kind of agreement, one that says we'll die if our leader asks us to. The other side is that the leader won't ask us to die for no reason."

Having said this, Keller paused and his attitude mel-lowed. He came to Shucorion's side, turned and leaned back against the chart desk. He looked down at me blunt toes of his cow boots and at Shucorion's gray knee-highs-Keller called them "moccasins"-and seemed to comb back over his own words before going forward.

"We're shipmates," Keller continued, "you and me, Zane, Savannah, Lumellen... all of us, we have our own agreement that we don't just give up on each other. We don't put a dissolving hunk of metal above a shipmate. You went too far."

'1 ordered him to stay and fight for the Plume!"

"Oh, no, your order wasn't "stay and fight' The order you gave was 'give up/ You gave up and Zane didn't All this is happening because he'll gamble and you won't"

Shucorion straightened, surprised by this cultural line he couldn't quite cross.

"You believe I broke an agreement with Bonifay he asked, amazed. "Do you think he believes this?"

Tightening his folded arms, Keller nodded. '1 believe you didn't expand your mind to the situation. Zane found a way for you both to live. Now he has to pay. As for you, you're still trying to be a Blood avedon more man a first officer of this crew. That's why he doesn't trust you yet You haven't decided where you're going to put your loyalty. You think the crew hasn't picked up on that?"

Shucorion's feet were suddenly cold, his hands tense and sore. He knew this was a turning point, mat Keller was closing in upon a decision he had already made. The set of those shoulders, the sedate expression of re-gret where before there had been only resentment and anger... these were signals Shucorion had learned to see hi Nick Keller's manner. So he remained silent, in realization that this might be the last time they would stand together.

1 can tolerate a hell of a lot," Keller said with false passivity. "I can deal with Zane's juju and Savannah's flirting with dead guys and Zoa staring me down and with you never taking a chance. But give up? Quit? Hell, buster, you got no business being disappointed m me. I won't give up on the Blood even though every last one of you gives up on me. I saw these men and women build a fighting ship out of broken sticks and used glue. I'll play every hand and I'll rifle other peo-ple's pockets for more cards if I have to. You want to go sit? There's the door."

"What are you saying?" Shucorion asked. "Are you making an order?"

"I'm saying you're released from your obligation to me and this ship. Take your Blood guys, whoever wants to go, get on the Blood pod and report to Delytharen or anyplace else you want. But if you're not off this ship by Gamma Dawn, I'll expect you to report to your posts and follow orders from then on. My orders. That's your timetable."

His voice sounded different

"I know you need us," Shucorion mentioned, hesi-tantly.

Keller actually laughed, but with irony rather than delight "Hell, yes, you're my trump card! Riutta trusts you. I need you to betray that trust You're the only one who can open a chink in her armor. My only edge is your special status with the Living." He lowered his voice. "We need your help. I need it."

Shucorion looked at him with a depth and signifi-cance that penetrated the officer commonality and went to something far more personal. There was desperation in his voice. "I want to help you."

The other half of the sentence went unspoken, but announced itself anyway. It wasn't a good clause. It de-manded that Keller meet him halfway,

"I know what has to happen," Keller told him. "I'll give you my word. I want yours. You take my orders, all of them, whatever they are, no matter what I say, 1 until you leave this command."

He was afraid, but not for himself. This was a big \ afraid, not very pleasant to see in the eyes of a brave man.

When Keller pushed to his feet, Shucorion caught his wrist and held him in place.

"Please understand/' he implored '1 do not prefer to see him killed."

"Well, that's a little late" Keller snapped, "and I don't know if it helps. But you can bank on this promise... 1*11 ask you and all our shipmates to fight I'll even ask you to die. But give up? You make that decision for yourself"

Behind him, as if in a sort of curious support, the Blood men had ceased their activities and crept forward. They knew something had changed, and had clearly been paying attention to their two leaders through the not-so-guarded conversation. How much had they heard?

As Keller stood before him, waiting, Shucorion watched the other Blood for a moment. He saw an en-tire civilization hi this handful of men.

*lf you fall back," he warned, "the repercussions will shatter all our planets."

Anger surged up in Nick Keller's eyes and stopped him from offering any sympathy.

"Deal." He stepped back, and with that executed a challenge to them both. "Rise and work."

When Keller and Shucorion arrived on the bridge to-gether, up through the OTC's favorite tube instead of the lifts, no one around them really knew what that meant They hadn't exactly put out a memo. The cu-riosity and worry in the crew members* eyes was hard to take. Keller forced himself to ignore the scouring gazes and the noise of unspoken questions. He didn't want to tip his hand.

With them came Lumellen, to take the helm, much to Lucy Quinones' thundering relief, and Milespark for the navigation. The Blood men couldn't make the frigate behave any better than the Humans could, but they could tease information both out of Gamma Night and out of normal space which otherwise would remain hi the sensor shadows. Their adjustments were more subtle, careful, their touch more sensitive.

On the main screen, the Blood planet turned pas-sively, surrounded by chainmail. The sight was per-fectly astounding.

Keller did something rare-he sat in the command chair. There was a certain image he wanted to impart. A little theatre helped sometimes.

"Hail Delytharen, on visual."

He wasn't even sure who did it. Nobody was man-ning the communications board, which meant maybe Creighton had rerouted through the sci-deck or Savan-nah had cross-fed from life-support. He didn't know, didn't care. Efficiency dropped by fifty percent this way, that was why they had individual boards each with a crewman to tend it. But beggars couldn't be choosers. The job got done-ten seconds late, but done. The main screen changed from a view of the planet to Delytharen's cylindrical bridge.

And what a mess.

Thirteen hours ago, Delytharen had been elegant and decorous. Now he was a shattered wraith. He had followed rules all his life and this freakish clatter of events left him shaken and obviously wounded. His clothes were torn and burned, as were those of the crew around nun. He looked exhausted, fighting for an illusion of control. Behind him, other Blood crewmen were just as wounded and tattered, and even more afraid than their .j avedon.

A twinge of guilt ran through Keller-apparently he'd inflicted more damage than he'd hoped. Even try- ; ing not to hurt them, he'd still hurt them. Alone in their bubble, they couldn't be helped and had endured the past thirteen hours of suffering and damage alone.

"Delytharen, do you require assistance?" Keller asked

"You are powerless against these new people, Keller" The Blood shuddered. "Even you have no weapons to push Riutta and her people away from us. Assistance? We are under a cloud bigger than Kauld or Federation now."

What a pitiful speech. Keller glanced at Shucorion, who only sighed and folded his arms.

"Oh, I dunno," Keller plunged. "Federation can be a pretty dang big cloud. Don't give up on us yet Riutta has made an announcement," he continued "She wants me to communicate that you can go back to the planet and settle down, but you can never come back out to space. She means to put barriers around the Kauld planet and Belle Terre also. We'll all be cut off."

"We heard," Delytharen said. "When such a force comes, how can we resist? She can block us from our families!"

"Are you saying you'll go?"

"What other way is there?"

'There is one." Pressing his bruised hands to the chair, Keller stood up. Sitting hadn't lasted long. Couldn't think on his butt. "All your ships and men have to take my orders. We can't have a dozen people making command decisions. I'm going to make the de-cisions. You have to do what I say now. We'll have a new agreement."

"New agreements don't abort old ones."

"Shucorion and I have worked it out I'm not in vio-lation of our previous agreement You will be satisfied.**

"Shucorion," Delytharen called, "do you support him?"

Keller held his breath.

*1 do,'* Shucorion said.

Delytharen stared at him, and again at Keller. A dozen doubts crossed his rugged bruised face. Was he being lied to? Tricked? Was Shucorion letting Keller skate? He had no idea. He had seen what had been done to the destroyed Savage, and now to his planet "If we stay in space, we'll never see our homes again! Do you know what you ask of me ? "

When Keller parted his lips to respond, he was cut off by the clang of an internal alarm-security breach!

"What is it?" he called, glancing around the bridge. "Malfunction?"

*The utility pod just launched!" Creighton an-nounced. "The Blood pod!"

"Visual, port."

One of the three larger screens on the port bulkhead flickered and clicked to show them the compact utility pod, blue-gray against the sunlight, chugging away from the frigate's underside.

'They're heading for the dark side of the planet, sir," Ryan reported.

Temper flared in Keller's gut bailing frequency!"

"Open."

"Who's aboard that pod! Respond immediately!"

"200 15 here. No shooting. I snatch Bonifay. No more problem."

"How 'bout that!" Savannah laughed. "She's got Zane!"

"A second betrayal!" Delytharen blurted. "You are letting the criminal go free!"

Keller speared Savannah with a silent threat and called, "Zoa, this won't help! Reverse course and get back aboard!"

His own voice echoed in his head. Why was he yelling? He was in command. They'd listen whether he yelled or not He could whisper, and they'd listen harder.

As if he'd just taken a refreshing shower, everything changed. He stopped shouting and clamped his lips shut for a moment When he spoke again, his voice turned conversational and gave everybody around him an eerie shudder, which he particularly enjoyed.

"Well, I'm sick to hell of this," he muttered. "I'm fed up with other people making command decisions around here and telling me about it later. This camel's back is busted. Dean, throw a tractor beam on that pod."

Creighton was ready, but shook his head. 'Tractors have been compromised."

"What's that mean?"

"Probably means Zoa shut them down before she launched."

"Reestablish."

'Trying."

"Ryan, jump up there and take tactical."

"Huh? Oh-" Startled, Ryan glanced at him, then bolted from the nav and jumped up to the fore-quarter-deck.

"Arm phasers, point-seven-five power, and open fire."

"Sir!"

"Nick!" Savannah came out of her seat. **Zane's on board! You could kill him!"

"Ryan, you will aim and you will shoot," Keller advised. "Debilitate that pod. Target engines. Fire phasers. Don't make me do it myself."

Ryan groaned and turned to follow the terrible order. Phasers spewed from the frigate and with very little trouble sent the tiny pod into a death spin. Within min-utes it would plow into the planet-

No-first it would strike the planetwide chainmail sheath and be minced. Hamburger.

'Transporter room, Keller. Lock on to the pod and beam the personnel directly to the bridge. Hurry it up.'*

He leaned on the chair and hung one hand on his hip as if he were watching a rodeo. On the secondary screen, the pod spun toward the planet, leaking a fine trail of plasma. Just beyond it, the chainmail shim-mered.

"Hurry it up," he repeated. He drummed his fingers on the chair's green leather.

On the main screen, Delytharen was still watching. Keller ignored him. The Blood commander suspected a bluff, if his expression gave any hints, and seemed dumbfounded that the phasers had actually fired.

"Hurry up," Keller said again. The channel was still open to the transporter room. A ghastly thought passed that maybe the transporter room wasn't even manned. Was there anybody there to work the controls? Or had he just condemned his two shipmates to a razor-edged fate?

His heart almost stopped when a whine of trans-porter beams overtook the silence on the bridge. Muf-fling a surge of relief, he turned toward the sound.

In the turbolift vestibule just starboard of Savannah's post, Zoa materialized, holding a phaser. Behind her, Zane Bonifay also appeared. They were both smudged with electrical smoke residue.

"She kidnapped me!" Bonifay blurted. "It wasn't my ide-"

Zoa got him by the throat and slammed him back-ward against the turbolift panel frame. The motion-sensing panels opened dutifully to allow them in.

Damn doors. Who/did they think they were, opening without permission? This kind of shenanigan had to stop.

"Dean, close and lock those doors," Keller tersely or-dered.

Without acknowledgment, Creighton punched a switch. The lift doors closed and stayed closed.

Zoa held Zane at the end of her stiffened arm, plas-tered against the turbolift frame. She had him by the throat and could crush his esophagus any time. Would she do it? To evaporate Keller's obligation? Holding Bonifay immobile, with her thumbnail dug into his carotid, she turned her hand phaser on Keller.

The deck seemed almost liquid under his feet He walked straight toward her and climbed the steps to the quarterdeck. The phaser hovered steadily between them.

His jaw took a set. "Don't you shoot me... don*t you dare shoot me/*

Zoa's burnished face was fixed as a statue's. "Pazer set on stun."

"If you shoot me, it better be set on 'kill/ "

The challenge chilled them both. Zoa stared at him and completely believed. In his periphery, Zane and Sa-vannah both held their breath. He ignored them.

Without waiting for more, Keller surprised them and himself-he reached out and took the phaser by the business end. A tingle went through his hand. Had he been shot?

He didn't look down to see if he still had fingers. He handed the phaser over to Bonifay, but continued clos-ing on Zoa.

"I will hit you now," he announced.

And he did-a tremendous blow, carrying all his frustration.

In that instant, he seized control. Zoa careered back- ward into Zane. They struck the brace first, then the deck.

But she was like a snake and struck instantly out of the coil. Together she and Keller slammed into the quarterdeck rail, Keller first.

He hadn't used his Starfleet hand-to-hand in a while, but he knew where it was. He blocked her next two blows and one kick, then miscalculated a backhand. Her steel-hard knuckles rang off his cheekbone. The bridge wheeled.

Though he lost balance for a moment, he caught the rail and twisted against it, then lashed out with his foot His heel connected with Zoa's flexed knee just before she would've rounded on nun again. Instead, her own momentum betrayed her and she stumbled. Seizing the chance, he drove her supporting leg out from under her. She looped in midair and struck the deck on her side with a whump.

As Savannah dodged in to pull Bonifay out of the way, Zoa's other leg swiped up at Keller in a high arch. The talon toenails provided armor plating better than any shoe. Her foot struck him in the hip. Her only disadvantages were his rage and the fact that she didn't want to kill him, but Keller made good use of both. He sidestepped just enough to lessen the blow, though it slammed him into the communications sub-processors. His elbow scraped across the tripolymer coating, leaving a burn under his lightweight knitted sleeve.

Zoa rolled and surged to her feet A gentleman would've let his opponent straighten before attacking again, but Keller wasn't in a gentlemanly mood. He de-ployed the heel of his hand to Zoa's chin before she was up, catapulting her backward. She pivoted on a hip over the bridge rail, went feet over feathers into the air, spun past Shucorion, and landed gracelessly on the lower deck. The edge of the command chair riser could easily have broken her neck if she'd fallen another two inches over.

Shucorion stepped out of the way.

Dazed, Zoa hiked up on her elbows, but Keller was already there. He kicked her left elbow out from under her and sat on her. With a final backhanded blow, he drove her head to the deck. Bronze welts showed on her jaw and chin now.

Bleeding at the lip, Keller swam through the stars spinning behind his swollen right eye and plunked his full weight on Zoa's stomach, held both her arms flush to the deck, locked his elbows, and glared down at her, nose to nose.

"Don't move," he suggested. "Zane!"

"Right here," Bonifay answered, startled.

Keller didn't look up. "Hand the phaser to Savannah. You will remand yourself to Shucorion's custody. You're confined to the bridge, until otherwise in-structed by Shucorion. Is that clear?"

Almost joyfully, Bonifay answered, "Yes, sir, it is."

'Take your post"

"Aye, aye!" Bonifay stomped down the steps, over Zoa's legs, and went straight to the unmanned nav sta-tion. Keller felt the vibration through his knees on the carpet He never looked up.

Satisfied, he sniffed a trickle of blood before it would've destroyed his relationship with Zoa. He Jeered down at her. "You, cobra, are on report. You plant your hide at the tactical station, eyes forward, and that's where you stay until Shucorion or I decide to move you. Other than to visit the head or scratch your ear, you will take no other independent action. Have you... got... that?"

She peered up at him, her blue dots ringed with white. The paint-blue lining around her eyes made her expression acute. "I got scratch."

With the promise in his pocket, Keller stood up and only now discovered the pain he was in. Devoted or not, Zoa hadn't pulled her punches. Straightening up took a grunt and a spasm or two.

The first thing he saw when the sparkles faded was Delytharen still watching from the main screen.

"Oh, yeah... the audience." Keller wiped his lip with an uncharitable sleeve. "Yes, Delytharen, I know what I'm asking. I'm asking you to take the biggest gamble of your life. This is space, not your granny's backyard What did you think would happen? It's not just Kauld bullies you're wrangling anymore. If we don't stand against the Living today, we'll never have another chance. Every-body's going to do what I say, today, or we're finished. Savannah, where's the remote you made up?"

"Right here." She was ready, and handed him a small device over the aft rail.

"What is that?" Shucorion asked, eyeing the palm-sized mechanism.

'It's my second trump card," Keller said, purpose-fully vague. In his hand, the communicator-sized com-puter tie-in mechanism winked a green light to confirm its power mode. "We made it up out of data from the grave ship. Simple old Kauld design."

"What does it possess? What influence-"

"If you'd wanted to participate, you could've done that thirteen hours ago."

When he stepped toward the afterdeck, Shucorion followed him. "But where are you going?"

"To the transporter room. You've got the conn. Re-member our deal. You'll do anything I say."

Savannah also met him at the steps. "The grave ship?"

"Yeh, that's right."

"Can I go?"

"They're not people anymore, Savannah, they're not even dead people. They're just machines now. Anything that's programmed can have new programming put in. Dean, secure the lift. Savannah, give me that sidearm and a communicator."

As the bleep of the locking mechanism freed up the doors, Savannah proposed, "I don't think this is in the treaty, if you get what I mean."

"Ain't no law for this," he snapped back. "So I'm making one up."

Suddenly anxious, as if just realizing Keller was seri-ous, Shucorion came up the steps, reached out, and caught his forearm, though he didn't go so far as to hold Keller back. "This is reckless, to go there! Riutta is hostile to you!"

"I know she is. Do me a favor. Call and tell her I'm on my way." He glanced briefly at Zane and snickered, `That oughta rattle her chainmail."

Despite everything, Bonifay flashed a spontaneous smile of appreciation.

But this drove Shucorion to a near-panic that was downright sweet. His grip lightened. "Keller!"

The tone of his voice broke through Keller's shell and caused him to pause, to offer a tincture of what the two of them had lately lost, and what three desperate planets were about to lose.

Keller gazed down at him, wishing there were more time. Everyone else watched them.

Quietly he confirmed, "I'm going."

"Please," Shucorion implored. "What can you do there?"

Overcooked and still broiling, Keller connected with him on a personal level while in their periphery the grave ship hovered its silent threat off Challenger's flank.

"I can practice some voodoo."

Chapter Twenty-three

The Grave Ship Pompeii what before had been a brainless maze of junglescapes, metallic moss, and impossible growth now appeared completely different. A certain gauzy order applied itself to Keller's new perception as the grave ship fizzled into being around him. He could see a kind of order and purpose here now, despite the wildness of alien art. He knew why this place was here, and he knew why he was here.

To his right, twisted brass spires reached to an artifi-cial sky. Decorative golden stones and glade-green moss, silver cascades and blue-green veils shimmered like peacock feathers. There was even a tingling sound imitating water.

Riutta and her people had probably never heard water running over stones and through reeds. They knew only rain and storms, and the sound of water sheeting off metal, tike plumbing in an old building.

He was alone, right where he wanted to be.

He stepped off the thing he'd materialized upon and sank to the insteps in a mucky puddle. To his left, silent eyes of attendants long passed on watched as he took a few steps. Before him stood Ennengand, memorialized beautifully in this statuesque condition.

Ennengand's pewter eyes, so like Shucorion's, were shaded by thick metallicized lashes. He seemed almost to whisper the dangers to come, describe the jagged paths of his life, the fear of space, and eons of patience.

"Hello, friend," Keller uttered. "You've waited a long time to come home. You started quite a thing. How many of us get to spark a whole civilization?"

Subtle light shone upon the jawline, the brow, the solemn eyes.

"We've got a lot in common, the two of us. Heavy loads to haul, problems we didn't ask for... people de-pending on us left and right... today we got a little se-cret squadron going here. You, your son, and I.'* He raised the Kauld remote. "Time to make good on both our pledges, and take care of your people and mine. Hope you're not brittle. I'll try not to be."

Crouching at the pedestal, he pulled aside the en-crusted lichen to reveal the foot of the pedestal. Slots previously hidden now showed themselves. With a bit of force, he installed the remote into a fitted coupling and transferred the information installed there. The grave ship and the Challenger were now plugged into each other, scarcely more than a fibrous link, which he hoped would be enough. He indulged in a Zane-wish that Savannah had everything right. They were about to coax science out of mysticism.

He stood again, and gazed at Ennengand. "You ready? Let's rumble."

The Main Memorial Sanctorum

"Riutta!"

His voice echoed and set chimes in the ceiling to jin-gling. All around him the metallic mummies stood in terraced rows from this center aisle to the roof. He knew now that above and below him were more chambers, each a microcosm of the planet to which the Living be-lieved they were returning. Was it the Blood world? He'd never been there. Shucorion hadn't recognized these decorations. Perhaps the Kauld world... but more likely a time-distorted echo, the background of a dream long faded into a gauze of legend.

While he waited for a response, Keller brought his communicator to his lips and spoke quietly. "Savannah, you read?"

"I'm ready, sheriff. You're tied in."

"Don't forget," he added, "you'll do anything I say.**

"I promise."

The others could hear, he was sure. Savannah would make certain they did Shucorion and Delytharen, Zane, Zoa, and everyone. It mattered.

"Keep the channel open and listen carefully. I'm putting you in my pocket."

"Leave an air hole"

With his hands free, he gazed again at the grotto-encrusted forest of people in ferrous stasis. Each one of them represented a story, a life, family, and some acci-dent or sickness that had left a corpse. Perhaps even the odd murder here and there. He let his mind wander. They seemed alike in their current condition, yet the more he looked, the more they seemed like individuals who had hoped and worried just as he himself did.

They had cloaked themselves in a survival suit of order, rules, and ritual, and thus armed had forded the ages on an inorganic ball. With a twinge of empathy, he wanted to help their desperate and resilient children.

But he had to save his own side first

"Riutta!" he called again, louder.

When no one came, he thought about traveling for-ward to the cluster of spinners and to confront Riutta there, but decided otherwise. He needed to be here. He wanted the company of the Anointed.

No point shouting. He fished around and came up with an imitation of a funnel-shaped plant which dis-lodged easily enough from its stem. Using it as a club, he began hammering disrespectfully on the nearest Anointed, a male teenager with muscular shoulders and a terrible bone-deep wound across the entire front of his body, which had probably killed him. Using his metal funnel, Keller stood back enough to get a good swing, and rang the instrument off the teenager's shoulder.

The jang echoed high and low. He struck again and again.

Worked. The veils parted and Riutta descended a slope, followed by the man Keller had seen before and two other Living men.

"Stop!** she called as they approached. 'This is dis-respect!**

"I'm sorry." Keller's arms ached-he'd put more into the effort than he realized.

"Why do you come here? Why?"

"I'm throwing a monkey into your wrench," he bluntly informed. "You won't be allowed to blockade our planets. We want life hi space."

"You will be comfortable at home," she said. "If your neighbor comes to space, we will put him home also. You will thrive on planets, and be guarded"

"Stifled," Keller corrected. "It's not good for vibrant beings to never change or stop doing new things. We don't want to stop striving. You're welcome to come here and join us, but we won't let you smother our po-tential. We want to paddle our own canoe."

To Riutta's left, her male companion stepped forward and spoke to Keller for the first time. "We have prepa-rations for all Living to come here and do this. My peo-ple are preparing in the Gateway. Tomorrow we will go to the planet Kauld. Next, this name of terribell."

"Belle Terre," Keller corrected. "Ought to at least pronounce it right, since you're so determined to cut us off. Who are you, fella?"

"Luntee," the man said. "I am the second Elder."

"Is this what you want too?" Keller asked. "To inflict your own strictures on people you don't understand?"

He thought he saw a flicker of doubt, but that could easily be the lighting. Nothing here looked normal, just as before. His own skin had changed color, his clothing unfamiliar, but he was no longer amazed or confused by the weirdness.

"You can't understand the scope of our task," Riutta insisted. "All will be better for you and your people, better than space. You'll go to a warm planet with wind and color. You have no experience to understand-"

"I understand," he interrupted. "You see yourselves as some kind of Levites, chosen for a single purpose. You think you're from here, but you're not. After all this time, you're not natives here anymore. You come from a place that only has three products-metal, en-ergy, and thought. You used one to tame the other two. In the process you developed psychological chaining] too. Good fences make good neighbors, and you make mighty good fences. That's fine, but we don't want to be your purpose. It's you or us, and-sorry, but it'll have to be you."

Riutta didn't like the sound of that. In a rare burst of anger and perhaps frustration at his refusal to take her gifts graciously, she said, "I will send you back to your ship now! The Anointed no longer want you here!"

Keller actually shrugged. "Well, I'm not having a conference over it. This is my one chance to get control over my ship, my crew, the Blood, the Anointed, and you. Pardon if I take it while the takin's good." He raised his voice slightly, just enough to make an im-pact. "Shucorion and Delytharen, you'll both follow this order. The frigate and all four ships of the Blood Hand will open fire on the grave ship and maintain full phaser blanketing assault. Don't stop firing, no matter what happens."

Five bad seconds passed without a change. Were they ignoring him? Refusing to do something so outlandish?

There it was-phaser impact blanketing the hull! The fighting power of five ships, one a fully banked frigate, digging through the grassy sheath around the grave ship and finding the bell of a hull to ring!

What a sound!

Bald energy went into the grave ship's impermeable shag coverings like electricity going into filaments. This ship had the same kind of shielding as chainmail around the planet-Keller knew he couldn't bust it, but this sound screamed otherwise.

"You shouldn't waste," Riutta commented. "Your en-ergy-you'll need it!"

Luntee's face swiveled as he looked up and to the sides. The noise of phaser fire penetrated the chamber and sang through the thickening air. "Why would you do this? Are you ill in the mind? Your weapons can't hurt the Anointed!"

The temperature in the chamber, in the entire grave ship, began abruptly rising. As sweat broke on his brow and neck, Keller said, "No, but energy has to go some-where or be converted. We'll either be cooked or blow up. Either way, the Living will be stopped here and now. Today." (

The air around them became almost too heavy to breathe. Dry heat pressed against his temples, his throat, his chest and arms, his legs, until his body ached and his head swam. Before him, Riutta gasped and suffered along with Luntee and the two other Living crew. Terror limned their faces. Luntee shook his head maniacally and called, 'Too much! Too much!"

He grasped Riutta's elbow and coughed fitfully, shaking her toward some unspoken decision.

But Riutta wasn't giving in. Apparently she had more faith in their technology than Luntee did. She pressed her people back, but made no orders mat would stop what Keller was doing.

So he didn't stop.

"Keep firing," he ordered. In his mind he could see Shucorion's face, cramped with anguish, doing as he promised.

And Zane-he could see him too.

Zoa probably liked this. As long as weapons were firing, she was happy.

"Riutta! Riutta!"

"He cannot break us," she said "He cannot-"

"The Anointed!"

The other Living crew backed away from Riutta and

Luntee, watching now the highest and farthest of the terraces and grottoes. In the folds of drapery and deco-ration, humanoid limbs were beginning to move, to flex, shoulders to turn and heads to rise. A knee, a hand-one by one the Anointed were coming to life.

Heat. Heat penetrated and filled the grave ship, warming the mummies and the compound that filled them. They were alive again, and on the move.

By the thousands the dead Living came awake, dis-engaged from their footings, dismounted from then-pedestals and grottoes, their spire forests and steppes. They swarmed down to the center aisle to surround Keller, Riutta, Luntee, and the two other Living men. Though they closed in around him, Keller didn't move.

Perspiration sheeted his body under his clothing, until the chenille fibers of his crew sweater were soaked and his trousers stuck to his legs. His hair plastered over his forehead and neck, but he loved and needed the heat

It seemed to daze and sicken Riutta and her compan-ions. They weren't used to warmth. Riutta stared at the swarm of zombies shifting pointlessly around with nowhere to go. Beyond them were thousands more metal-filled bodies, the walking history of the Living, who arrived from other chambers, through hidden doorways and passages, summoned for a purpose they couldn't process.

Riutta, Luntee, and the other Living crew stared and trembled, perfectly stupefied. The Anointed were mov-ing more, turning more and more pliant. Their faces, eyes, arms, and legs began to glisten and develop a moist film. If this heat continued its rise, they would ul-timately be rendered down to a molten pond.

As his skin crawled and his heart pounded and sweat rolled down his neck, Nick Keller stood stubbornly in the vanguard of the Phalanx of the Dead, ready to lead them all into the caldera.

Keller beamed at Riutta. "How 'bout this," he com-mented. "Night of the Living."

Didn't have sarcasm on Sheetmetalworld, appar-ently.

Condensate forming on the ceiling and plates began to form into large 'droplets and to fall, to strike the hot stones and decor, to sizzle and cause steam. The haunt-ing jungle became a steam bath.

With the heat cloying them and the Anointed shifting and shuffling an eerie threat, and the powerful assault fleet's phasers still ringing on the grave ship's hull, mere was little sentimentality about this moment Yet Keller felt in charge for the first time. Whether this was his last moment, he couldn't predict, but at least he was in control of it

"You'll take away the barrier from around this planet," he told Riutta. "You have power over the chainmail, but I have power over the Anointed If the Anointed don't want you to do this, then you'd better stop. You'll stand down and do whatever I say from now on."

Even under the pressure of what she saw looming before her, thousands of her revered ancestors and the animated body of Shucorion's father, indeed the father of the Living, a civilization of refugees, Riutta raised her chin and narrowed her star-eyes.

*The Anointed will never do what you say," she re-sisted. 'They are protected."

She hadn't survived all those hunts for nothing. Keller had to respect her power of will and linear deter-mination.

"Okay," he said. The sea of Anointed blurred before his eyes.

No-he couldn't pass out now. He had to endure the heat, keep his legs under him. Must be topping a hun-dred twenty in here.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Sweat broke from them and streamed down his face. When he opened them again, he fixed them on Riutta.

"Ennengand," he called. "Front and center."

Behind Riutta, one of the Living crew wobbled and collapsed, overcome by the heat. Riutta continued her standoff. Luntee made no more arguments, but he was terrified.

The throng of Anointed shuffled and parted. Beside Keller, Ennengand appeared like a ghost of royalty through his loyal subjects.

There was something stirring to watch him move, so much like Shucorion, yet missing the sense of contem-plation and wonder. Instead, poised and lifeless, the zombie moved on freshly pliant limbs until he stood beside Keller, peering through sightless eyes.

There he stood, and waited.

"I'm more powerful than their protection,** Keller an-nounced. "You'll take away the barrier around the planet... or I'll send these people into space. The Anointed will be forever lost."

"Even you would never waste them," she said. She was calling his bluff.

But it was no bluff.

"Micro-gate," he ordered. "Proximity space."

Several seconds passed. He imagined Savannah sift-ing through the programming to find the right connec-tions.

She must've found it, for a micro-gate opened just a few steps away, so close that Keller had to step back to avoid falling through, right into the airless vacuum of space. Directly outside they could see the red flashes of phaser fire engulfing the grave ship. Beyond the red lightning, the edge of the Blood planet, with its veil of chainmail, turned beside him.

"Cease fire," he said.

The phaser blasts sheeted away and stopped. The red glow sizzled off.

Metal, energy, and thought The only products of the Living. Add the element of mysticism, and they had found a way to bring out their strengths and find rea-sons to keep going.

Now he would use all that against them.

He took the zombie of Ennengand by one arm, turned him toward the micro-gate, put a hand on his back, and with a final grip of commonality and regret, he pitched the icon of a civilization into the reaches of open space.

Chapter Twenty-four in perfect mental agony, Luntee dropped to his knees and sobbed.

Even Riutta seemed physically to weaken with shock.

Their national treasure spun off into space, turning slowly until they could see his face and read the linger-ing sadness of his expression.

"Ennengand," Riutta uttered in her misery. "Wasted..."

Keller watched Ennengand float gracefully away, growing smaller and smaller against the star-studded vista. "1*11 waste them all," he swore. "I agree, it would be a shame. But you're not the only people who have been called to a purpose. This is mine.*'

Though her crew was shattered, her hero thrown away, and the Army of the Anointed doing the bidding of someone else, Riutta-he had to give her credit- still didn't cave in. She motioned Luntee to his feet and to move back from the micro-gate, but she gave no or-ders or made any motions that changed anything.

"Remove the chainmail," Keller demanded.

Around them the Anointed shifted and flexed, touched each other as if forming new relationships or reliving old ones. Was there some echo of their lives lingering in their programs? Had Ennengand known what was happening to him? Did he feel Keller's hands? Would he orbit his native planet for decades to come, half aware, like some kind of guardian angel?

"Untuxx!" Riutta called. "Move the Anointed away!"

Was she speaking to one of these men, or to some-one on her idea of a bridge?

A light show erupted through the chamber as the grave ship tried to move.

Luntee shook his head. "We have lost control!"

"I have control," Keller told them. "Stop working against me, or we'll all be destroyed here and now."

But Riutta was the custodian of an eleven-thousand-year-old dream and she wasn't about to let it go. Her eyes narrowed, her chin came down, and she moved toward Keller. He was the focus of her troubles, he had made himself the focus, and he sharply realized that she could very easily pitch him out into space with Ennengand

*The Anointed don't want you to hurt me," he said.

As Riutta drew within arm's length and reached for Keller's throat, a dark hand came between them and blocked her. Two of the Anointed stepped in front of Keller, braced against Riutta's strong presence. She was a mighty survivor, but the zombies were unim-pressed. Being dead awhile could do that

Startled, Riutta drew back her lips, gritted her teeth, and showed her anguish. He Anointed were protecting her enemy-and that had never happened before. A new page for the history books of the Living was being written before her very eyes.

Two... three... four more Anointed stepped in and pushed her back from Keller. He fixed his eyes on Riutta and refused to look amazed or show his relief.

Suddenly, beside them, the micro-gate weakened, frizzled, and snapped out of existence, but this time with a terrible crack, markedly different from the other times it had winked out.

Keller wince and stumbled back-he knew a loss of power when he saw it!

Before he could ask what happened, hah7 the lights went off in the chamber, leaving only a faint glow of op-erational worklights-another thing anybody could rec-ognize. Around them the hum of the grave ship's working factory complex died off, replaced by ominous silence.

Beside Riutta, Luntee moaned and covered his face with both hands.

"What happened?" Keller asked. "Why's the power shutting off?*'

"You have destroyed us," Riutta said. **We are all helpless now. I control nothing now. Nor do you."

Driven to anger again, Keller demanded, "Explain that!" He reached out and caught Luntee by the collar of his chainmail tunic. "Explain!"

Luntee's pale face crumpled. 'The Anointed have stepped down. Our people will think we've been de-stroyed. Consumed. The Gateway will close. All on this side will remain here. All there will-"

"Be stranded?"

Riutta stepped between them and pushed Keller back. He stumbled into a cluster of Anointed and bruised himself on a random elbow.

"You have what you wanted," she said. "We will soon be without power. Your weapons will rend us at your will. The work of thousands of generations will collapse. Our people on the other side have given all our stored energy to keep the Gateway open-"

"And these pedestals are some kind of counting mechanism? Now they think the Anointed are all gone and you've failed?"

"Yes." Unexpected bitterness flared in Riutta's voice. "They will close the Gateway."

"I didn't mean to do that," Keller told her angrily. 'This is what comes from your own silence, refusing to talk to me!"

"You too have tampered with things you misunder-stand," she pointed out. "With so much energy con-sumed, many thousands of our people must hunt now, so a few may survive. This is your random order, Nikelor. Our people have no more purpose, and they must now die off."

"No, they won't," he said. Defiance bolstered his tone. "After eleven thousand years, they deserve to come to living planets and have a future!"

"They will not know to come. They will close the Gateway."

"Hell they will. I'll go get 'em."

She bunked at him. "How can you make such bold-ness in your words?"

"Because I'm in charge now." He stepped to her, right up close, and leered into her eyes. "Are you ready to do what I say? Will you take my orders?"

"No!" Luntee shouted. "You're not an Elder!"

But Keller stared only at Riutta. "Are you ready?"

Chapter Twenty-five

"Tins is keller. I'm in the control area of the grave ship. Riutta is about to retract the chainmail from the planet. Delytharen, you and your ships will spread out to the Kauld planet and to Belle Terre. Explain what's been going on and have a warning sent at emergency subspace to Starfleet Command in case we fail at this next thing."

"I understand. It will be done"

"Shucorion."

"Yes?"

"The plan was to take the Anointed home, then go get the others in the grave ship. Plans have changed. The grave ship's power stream is being cut off at the source. Activate the Challenger's towing system, primed for highest possible warp. Activate tractor beams and fix them on the grave ship, and harness up the mules. Plot a course to the Gateway. We're going back."

The Gateway

"All right, Riutta, start feeding Anointed into the fac-tory system. Keep that Gateway open."

The grave ship had no engine power now. The Gate-way, when they came upon it, had actually begun to fade, to lose its metallic gloss, as if someone were erasing it

In a fresh sweater, thermal boots, and a field parka, Nick Keller felt tike an Eskimo preparing for the Iditarod as he took bits of specialized equipment from Zane Bonifay and packed them into his pockets and pouches. A fire-starting kit, microscope, pocketknife and implements, tricorder, battery pack, solar recharger.

"We should at least go through in Challenger," Boni-fay suggested, not for the first time. "It's more power-ful than those-'*

"I told you," Keller interrupted. "I know for sure the picker ships work over there. We're not sure Chal-lenger will."

"Hardly works over here."

Keller smiled, but not much. He looked up, meeting Bonifay's dark eyes squarely. The smile faded. "I'll talk to you later, gypsy. Understand?"

Visibly steeling himself, Bonifay paused. "Sure, Nick. I get the drill."

He offered a hand. Keller clasped it warmly.

"Here-keep this in your pocket." He held up a small polished disk hanging from a string, mounted in-side a thin titanium frame.

"What is it?" The concave disk was light brown, some kind of rock with circular marks, and concave enough to fit the pad of Keller's thumb perfectly.

"It's the deflector disk we made for the ship model,"

Bonifay said. "I carved it out of a piece of Petoskey stone, from the Great Lakes. It's a survivor. But just to be safe, I tied a knot over it, then dipped it in red pep-per/'

'Thanks... I'll bring it back."

"Nick," Savannah called from MEL, "I crunched the numbers. By feeding all the Anointed into Pompeii's conversion system, Riutta can keep the Gateway opened from this side for about thirty-one hours."

"Ought to be plenty long enough. If you don't hear from me, go on your way. Live your lives. I won't sur-vive thirty-one hours over there.*'

He zipped the front of his field jacket partly up and decided he was ready. On the main screen, not far for-ward of the Challenger, the grave ship hovered and beamed invisible energy into the Gateway, which domi-nated the view of space before them. It shimmered and struggled, clearly losing the battle to stay open. Keller got a frozen lump in the pit of his stomach. He was about to jump into the grizzly's gullet Now as he peered into the guts of the animal, he felt me blood drain from his face. Until now, he hadn't quite grasped what he was about to do.

Shucorion came to his side as Bonifay retreated and spoke very quietly. "I beg you... reconsider this."

"Can't We've started this. It's up to me to finish." He turned away from the main screen and offered Shucorion a sympathetic grin. "Got to take my own orders, y'know."

Though his anguished expression wasn't alleved, Shucorion folded his arms and endured his own fears. 'These people will not welcome you, I think."

"I can't leave them in that hellish place without telling them what happened and why their signal stopped. I crushed Riutta's dream-the dream of a whole civilization. I've got to at least tell them why and offer what help I can give "

"A different dimension... different universe... per-haps you cannot even breathe there."

"Then you won't have to wait the whole thirty-one hours."

"Keller..."

"Hush."

With a final pat -on the arm, he left Shucorion on the command deck-a symbolism not lost on either of them. They all watched him as he moved to the turbo-lift He wanted to climb down through the capillary tubes, but time was critical and he had to go quickly. Before the doors closed, he met Savannah's gaze, an uninterpreted expression that drew a wink from him which even he hadn't meant to offer.

When the doors closed he touched the frame and communed briefly with the ship around him. "Take care of them, calico."

As the lift activated to take him to the transporter room, he drew a last breath of the bridge air and held it as long as he could.

The spinner wasn't hard to handle. A ship was a ship. Forward, reverse, lateral, roll.

However, the Gateway itself was an alien and awe-some thing from close up, by far more frightening than any wild animal on the charge.

The giant bicycle chain and its bright center zapped and flashed before him, its energy sources doing battle with each other, one to shut down, the other struggling to keep it open.

Fully aware that his calculations, plans, hopes, and sense of duty could crumble before his eyes, he aimed the spinner into the dead center, and increased speed to fall.

Making the biggest bet of his life, Nick Keller shielded his eyes from an electrical storm the size of a continent, and soared into the Gateway, alone, not knowing what lay beyond.

Chapter Twenty-six savannah ring picked at her fingernails, which she al-ways did when she was nervous. Usually she could pre-tend not to be nervous, but today she wasn't interested in putting on. She stepped down from the quarterdeck to the command area.

On the edge of the command-chair seat, not relaxed at all, Shucorion gazed at the forward screen, at the grave ship and the Gateway. He didn't look at her when she came to his side. She didn't look at him.

They stood like that, silent, for several minutes be-fore he finally spoke.

His voice was barely a rasp. "Are you frightened for him?"

She buried her fingernails in knotted fists. "Aren't you?"

"Yes."

Around them the bridge made its constant electrical music. Everyone stood their posts, silent and unmoving as the Anointed.

"How long has it been?" Shucorion asked.

Savannah felt her legs tense up and begin to ache. "Five hours."

Sitting at the helm, Zane Bonifay rubbed his sore shoulder and swiveled to look at the two of them. His question haunted the bridge.

"How long on the other side?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

The End

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