"Yes, I'm afraid so. With the huge numbers of people in the workforce, and the finite number of jobs, there's bound to be strife between the immigrants and the natives. That's why I joined the Fleet. There was no guarantee of advancement here for me."

Lunzie nodded. "I understand. So they created a labour-intensive system, using cheap labour instead of mechanicals. You'd be overqualified for ninety percent of the jobs and probably unwilling to do the ones which promise advancement. Who is the person we're waiting for?" she asked in an undertone as a loud party rolled in through the restaurant doors.

Aelock quickly glanced at the other diners to make sure they hadn't been overheard. "Please. He's an old friend of mine. We were at primary school together. May we talk of something else?"

Lunzie complied immediately, remembering that secrecy was the reason she was here. "Do you read Kipling?"

"I do now," Aelock replied with a quick grin of appreciation. "When we had him in primary school literature, I didn't think much of Citizen Kipling. Then, when I came back fresh from my first military engagement in defense of my homeworld, and the half-educated fools here treated me with no more respect than if I'd been a groundcar, I found one of his passages described my situation rather well: 'It's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!' "

"Mmm," said Lunzie, thoughtfully, watching the bitterness on Aelock's face. "Not a prophet in your own land, I would guess."

"Far from it."

"I've been fervently reciting 'If' like a mantra today, particularly the lines 'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same...' " Lunzie quoted with a sigh. "I hate it when Rudy is so apt."

The relative merits of the author's poetry versus his prose occupied them until the appetisers arrived. The server whisked his billowing cape to one side to reveal the chilled metal bowl containing the captain's salad and the steaming odwood plate bearing Lunzie's appetiser.

"This is delicious," she exclaimed after a taste, and smiled up at the waiting server.

"We are proud to serve," the man declared, bowing, and swirled away. "Flamboyant, aren't they?" Lunzie grinned.

"I think everyone in a service job needs to be a little exhibitionist," the captain said, amused.

He took a forkful of salad, and nodded approvingly. Lunzie smelled fresh herbs in the dressing. Another gaudily dressed employee with burning eyes appeared at their table and bowed.

"Citizen A-el-ock?" The captain looked up from his dish.

"Yes?"

"There is a communication for you, sir. The caller claimed urgency. Will you follow me?"

"Yes. Will you excuse me, my dear?" Aelock asked gallantly, standing up.

Lunzie simpered at him, using a little of the ambient flamboyance in her role of evening companion. "Hurry back." She waggled her fingers coyly after him.

The darkeyed employee glanced back at her, and ran a pale tan tongue over his lips. Lunzie was offended at his open scrutiny, hoping that he wasn't going to make a pest of himself while Aelock was away. She didn't want to attract attention to them by defending herself from harassment. To her relief, he turned away, and led the captain to the back of the restaurant.

Alone briefly, Lunzie felt it perfectly in character to glance at the other diners in the restaurant, wondering which of them, if any, could be the mysterious contact. She didn't notice anyone getting up to follow Aelock out, but of course the snitch would have been careful to leave a sufficient interval before having him summoned. She also didn't notice anyone surreptitiously watching their table, or her.

She was a minor player in a very dangerous game in which the opponents were ruthless. Lunzie tried not to worry, tried to concentrate on the excellence of her appetizer. One life more or less was nothing to the pirates who slaughtered millions carelessly. But if the captain's part was suspected, his life would be forfeit. When Aelock reappeared at last through the hanging vegetation, she looked a question at him. He nodded guardedly, inclining his head imperceptibly. She relaxed.

"I was thinking of ordering another drink with the entree. Will you join me?"

"A splendid notion. My throat is unaccountably dry," Aelock agreed. "Such good company on such a fine evening calls for a little indulgence." He pushed the service button on the edge of the table. He had been successful.

Lunzie controlled a surge of curiosity as discretion overcame stupidity. It was far wiser to wait until they were safely back on the base.

"By the way, what do you plan to do next, now that you're no longer employed by Destiny Cruise Lines?" Aelock asked. "Most of the others are already on their way to other jobs. That is, the ones who aren't staying here to sue the Paraden Company."

Lunzie smiled brightly. "In fact, I've just been checking some leads through the library computer," she said and summarised her afternoon's activities. "I do know that I absolutely do not want to stay on this planet - for all the reasons you gave, and more, but especially the pollution. I have this constant urge to irrigate my eyes."

Aelock plucked a large clean handkerchief out of his pocket and deposited it before Lunzie. "I understand completely. I'm a native, so I'm immune, but the unlucky visitor has the same reaction. Tell me, did you enjoy working as a commercial ship's medic?"

"Oh, yes. I could get to like that sort of a life very easily. I was very well treated. I was assigned a luxury cabin, all perks, far beyond this humble person's usual means. Not to mention a laboratory out of my dreams, plus a full medical library," Lunzie replied enthusiastically. "I got the chance to copy out some tests on neurological disorders that I had never seen before in all my research. Interesting people, too. I enjoyed meeting the Admiral, and most of the others I encountered during those two months. I wouldn't mind another stint of that at all. Temporary positions pay better than permanent employ."

Aelock grinned and there was something more lurking in his eyes that made Lunzie wonder if this was just casual conversation.

"Hear, hear. See the galaxy. And you wouldn't have to stay with a company long if you don't care for the way they treat you."

"Just so long as I don't get tossed into deepsleep again. I'm so out of date now that if I go down again, no one will be able to understand me when I speak. I'd have to be completely retrained, or take a menial position mixing medicines."

"It's against all the odds to happen again, Lunzie," Aelock assured her.

'The odds are exactly the same for me as anybody else," Lunzie said darkly - "and bad things come in threes," she added suddenly as she remembered the whispers in the Officers' Mess.

The captain shook his head wryly. "Good things should come in threes, too."

"Gracious citizens, the main course."

Their server appeared before them, touching his forehead in salute. Lunzie and Aelock looked up at him expectantly. Apparently not entirely familiar with his waiter's uniform, the server swirled aside his huge cape with one hand as, with the other, he started to draw a small weapon that had been concealed in his broad sash.

But Aelock was fast. "Needlegun!" he snarled as he threw his arm across the table to knock Lunzie to the floor and then dove out of the other side of their seat in a ground-hugging roll. Startled, the pale-faced humanoid completed his draw too late and the silent dart struck the back of the seat where Aelock had been a split second before. With a roar and a flash of flame, the booth blew up. The ridiculous cloak swirling behind him, the server turned and ran.

The frightened patrons around them leaped out of their seats, screaming. With remarkable agility, the captain sprang to his feet and pursued the pasty-faced man toward the back of the restaurant. There was a concerted rush for the door by terrified diners and the musicians. Smoke and bits of debris filled the room.

Summoning Discipline, Lunzie burst out from under the shadow of the false cliff where Aelock's push had landed her, intending to follow Aelock and help him stop his would-be assassin. As she gained her feet, someone behind her threw one arm around her neck and squeezed, grabbing for her wrist with the other hand. Lunzie strained to see her assailant. It was the other pale-faced employee, his eyes glittering as he pressed in on her windpipe.

She tried to get her arms free, but the silk folds of his costume restricted her. Polymer boots weren't very suitable for stomping insteps so she opted for raking her heel down the man's shins and ramming the sole down onto the tendons joining foot and ankle. With a growl of pain, he gripped her throat tighter.

Lunzie promptly shot an elbow backward into his midsection, and was rewarded by an oof. His grip loosened slightly and she turned in his grasp, freeing her wrist. Growling, he tightened his arms to crush her. She jabbed for the pressure points on the rib cage under his arms with her thumbs, and brought a knee up between his legs, on the chance that whatever this humanoid's heritage, it hadn't robbed her of a sensitive point of attack. It hadn't. As he folded, Lunzie delivered a solid chop to the back of his neck with her stiffened hand. He collapsed in a heap, and she ran for the door of the restaurant, shouting for a peace officer.

The local authorities had been alerted to the fire and disturbance in Colchie's. A host of uniformed officers had arrived in a groundvan, and were collecting reports from the frightened, coughing patrons milling on the street.

"An assassin," Lunzie explained excitedly to the officer who followed her back into the smoke-filled building. "He attacked me but I managed to disable him. His partner tried to shoot my dinner companion with a needlegun."

"A needlegun?" the officer reported in disbelief. "Are you sure what you saw? Those are illegal on this planet."

"A most sensible measure," Lunzie replied grimly. "But that's what blew up our booth. There, he's getting up again! Stop him!"

She pointed at the gaily costumed being, who was slowly climbing to his feet. In a couple of strides, the peace officer had caught up with Lunzie's attacker and seized him by the arm. The assassin snarled and squirmed loose, brandishing a shimmering blade - then folded yet again as the officer's stunner discharged into his sternum. The limp assassin was carried off by a pair of officers who had just arrived to back up their colleague.

"Citizen," the first one said to her, "I'll need a report from you."

While Lunzie was giving her report to the peace officer. Captain Aelock came out the front of the restaurant with the other assassin in an armlock. The captain's tunic was torn, and his thick gray hair was dishevelled. She noticed blood on his face and streaking down one sleeve.

The assassin joined his quiescent partner in the groundvan while the captain took the report officer aside and made a private explanation.

"I see, sir," the Alphan said, respectfully, giving a half salute. "We'll contact FSP Fleet Command if we need any further details from you."

"We may leave, then?"

"Of course, sir. Thank you for your assistance."

Aelock gave him a preoccupied nod and hurried Lunzie away. He looked shaken and unhappy.

"What else happened?" she demanded.

"We've got to get out of here. Those two probably weren't alone."

Lunzie lengthened her stride. "That's not all that's bothering you."

"My contact is dead. I found him in the alley behind the building when I chased that man. Dammit, how did they get on to me? The whole affair has been top secret, need-to-know only. It means - and I hate to imagine how - the pirates must have spies within the top echelons of the service."

"What?" Lunzie exclaimed.

"There's been no one else who could have known. I reported my contact with my poor dead friend only to my superiors - and I have told no one else. It must mean Aidkisagi is involved," Aelock muttered almost to himself in a preoccupied undertone.

They turned another comer onto an empty street. Lunzie glanced behind them nervously. Yellow city lights reflected off the smooth surfaces of the building facades and the sidewalk as if they were two mirrors set at right angles. Each of them had two bright-edged shadows wavering along behind them which made Lunzie feel as if they were being followed. Aelock set a bruising pace for a spacer. They heard no footfalls behind them.

When he was sure that they had not been followed, Aelock stopped in the middle of a small public park where he had a 360 degree field of vision. The low shrubs twenty yards away offered no cover.

"Lunzie, it's more imperative than ever that I get a message to Commander Coromell on Tau Ceti. He's Chief Investigator for Fleet Intelligence. He must know about this matter."

"Why not give it to the Admiral? He told me he was going to visit his son."

In the half shadow of the park, Aelock's grimace looked malevolent rather than regretful. "He would have been ideal but he left this morning." Aelock gazed down hopefully at Lunzie and took hold of her wrists. "I can't trust this message to any ordinary form of transmission, but it must get to Coromell. It is vital. Would you carry it?"

"Me?" Lunzie felt her throat tighten. "How?"

"Do exactly what you were going to do. Take a position as medical officer. Only make it a berth on a fast ship, anything that is going directly to Tau Ceti as soon as possible. Tomorrow, if you can. Alpha is one of the busiest spaceports in the galaxy. Freighters and merchants leave hourly. I'll make sure you have impeccable references even if they won't connect you with me. Will you do it?"

Lunzie hesitated for a heartbeat in which she remembered the devastated landscape of Phoenix, and the triple-column list of the dead colonists.

"You bet I will!"

The look of intense relief on Aelock's face was reward in itself. From a small pocket in the front of his tunic, he took a tiny ceramic tube and put it in her hands. "Take this message brick to Coromell and say: 'It's Ambrosia.' Got it? Even if you lose this, remember the phrase."

Lunzie hefted the cube, no bigger than her thumbnail. " 'It's Ambrosia,' " she repeated carefully. "All right. I'll find a ship tomorrow morning." She tucked the ceramic into her right boot. Aelock gripped her shoulders gratefully. "Thank you. One more thing. Under no circumstances should you try to play that cube. It can only be placed into a reader with the authorised codes."

"It'll blank?" she asked.

Aelock smiled at her naivete. "It will explode. That's a high-security brick. The powerful explosive it contains would level the building if the wrong sort of reader's laser touches it. Do you understand?"

"Oh, after tonight, I believe you, even if this whole evening has been like something from Tri-D." She grinned reassuringly at him.

"Good. Now, don't go back to the BOQ. They must not realise that you're with me. It could mean your life if they think you are connected with the Fleet. They killed my friend, a harmless fellow, a welder in the shipyard. His family had been at Phoenix. Couldn't hurt a fly, but they killed him." Aelock shuddered at the memory. "I won't tell you how. I've seen many forms of death, but that sort of savagery..."

Lunzie felt the Discipline boost wearing off and she'd little reserve of strength. "I won't risk it then, but what about my things?"

"I'll have them sent to you. Take a groundcar. Go to the Alpha Meridian Hotel and get a room. Here's my credit seal."

"I've got plenty of credits, thank you. That's no problem."

Aelock saw a groundcar, its 'empty' light flashing, and hailed it. "That one ought to be safe, coming from the west. Someone will bring your things to the hotel. It will be someone you know. Don't let anyone else in." He opened the car hatch and helped her in. He leaned over her before closing the car. "We won't meet again, Lunzie. But thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You're saving lives."

Then he slipped away into shadow as yellow street-lights washed across the rounded windows of the rolling groundcar. Lunzie buckled herself in and gave her destination to the robot-brain.

The Alpha Meridian reminded Lunzie of the Destiny Calls. In the main lobby, there were golden cherubs and other benevolent spirits on the ceiling holding up sconces of vapour-lights. Ornate pillars with a leaf motif, also in gold, marched through the room like fantastic trees. A human server met her at the door and escorted her to the registration desk. No mention was made of her casual clothing, though she appeared a mendicant in comparison to the expensively dressed patrons taking a late evening morsel in cushiony armchairs around the lobby.

The receptionist, who Lunzie suspected was a shapechanging Weft because of the utter perfection of her human form, impassively checked Lunzie's credit code. As the confirmation appeared, her demeanour instantly altered. "Of course we can accommodate you. Citizen Doctor Lunzie. Do you require a suite? We have a most appealing one available on the four-hundredth-floor penthouse level."

''No, thank you," Lunzie replied, amused. "Not for one night. If I were staying a week or more, certainly I would need a suite. My garment cases will follow by messenger."

"As you wish. Citizen Doctor." The receptionist lifted a discreet eyebrow, and a bellhop appeared at Lunzie's side. "One-oh-seven-twelve, for the Citizen Doctor Lunzie." The bellhop bowed and escorted her toward the bank of turbovators.

Her room was on a corridor lined with velvety dark red carpet, and smelled pleasantly musky and old. The Meridian was a member of a grand hotel chain of the old style, reputed to have brought Earth-culture hostelry to the stars. The bellhop turned on the lights and waited discreetly at the door until Lunzie had stepped in, then withdrew on silent feet. In her nervous state, she flew to the door and opened it, to make sure he had really gone. The bellhop, waiting at the turboshaft for the 'vator to come back, threw her a curious glance. She ducked back into her room and locked the door behind her.

"I must calm down," Lunzie said out loud. "No one followed me. No one knows where I am."

She paced the small room, staying clear of the curtained window, which provided her with a view of a tiny park and an enormous industrial complex. The bedroom was panelled in a dark, smooth-grained wood with discreet carvings along the edges near the ceiling and floor. The canopied bed was deep and soft, covered with a thick, velvety spread in maroon edged with gold trim that matched the smooth carpeting. It was a room designed for comfort and sleep but Lunzie was too nervous to enjoy it. She wanted to use the com-unit and call the ship to see if Aelock had made it back safely. A stupid urge and dangerous for both of them. Shaking, Lunzie sat down on the end of the bed and clenched her hands in her lap.

Someone would be coming by later with her clothing and possessions. Until that someone came, she couldn't sleep though her body craved rest after the draining of Discipline. The hotel provided a reader and small library in every room. Hers was next to the bed on a wooden shelf that protruded from the wall. She was far too restless to read, the events of the evening on constant replay in her mind. Even if the two assailants had been captured, that didn't mean they had been alone, or that their capture would go unremarked. That left a bath to fill in the time and that at least was a constructive act, helping to draw tension out of her body and ready it for the sleep she so badly needed.

While the scented water was splashing into the tub, Lunzie kept imagining she heard the sound of knocking on her door and kept running out to answer it.

"This is ridiculous," she told herself forcefully. "I can take care of myself. They would scarcely draw attention to themselves by levelling the hotel because I'm in it. I must relax. I will."

Her clothes were dirty and sweat-stained and there was a large blot of sauce on the underside of one forearm. She tossed them in the refresher unit, and listened to them swirl while she lay in the warm bath water.

The bathroom was supplied with every luxury. Mechanical beauty aids offered themselves to her in the bath. A facial cone lowered itself to her face and hovered, humming discreetly. "No, thank you," Lunzie said. It rose out of her way and disappeared into a hatch in the marble-tiled ceiling. A dental kit appeared next. "Yes, please." She allowed it to clean her teeth and gums. More mechanisms descended and were refused: a manicure/pedicure kit, a tonsor, a skin exfoliant. Lunzie accepted a shampoo and rinse with scalp massage from the hairdressing unit, and then got out of the tub to a warmed towel and robe, presented by another mechanical conveyance.

It was close to midnight by then and Lunzie found that she was hungry. Her entree at Colchie's had turned out to be an assassin with a needlegun. She considered summoning a meal from room service but she was loath to, picturing chalky-faced waiters in silk capes streaming into the tiny room with guns hidden in their sashes. She'd been hungrier than this before. Wearing the robe, Lunzie climbed into bed to wait for the messenger with her bags.

Most of the book plaques on the shelf were best-sellers of the romance-and-intrigue variety. Lunzie found a pleasant whodunnit in the stack and put it into the reader. Pulling the reader's supporting arm over the bed, Lunzie lay back, trying to involve herself in the ratiocinations of Toli Alopa, a Weft detective who could shapechange to follow a suspect without fear of being spotted.

Somewhere in the middle of a chase scene, Lunzie fell into a fitful dream of pasty-faced waiters who called her Jonah and chased her through the Destiny Calls, finally pitching her out of the space liner in full warp drive. The airlock alarm chimed insistently that the hatch was open. There was danger. Lunzie awoke suddenly, seeing the shadow of an arm over her face. She screamed.

"Lunzie!" Tee's voice called through the door and the door signal rang again. "Are you all right?"

"Just a moment!" Fully awake now, Lunzie saw that the arm was just the reader unit, faithfully turning pages in the book plaque. She swept it aside and hurried to the door.

"I'm alone," Tee assured her, slipping in and sealing the locks behind him. He gave her a quick embrace before she realised that he was wearing civilian clothes. "Here are your bags. I think I have everything of yours. Sharu helped me pack them."

"Oh, Tee, I am so glad to see you. Did the captain tell you what happened?"

"He did. What an ordeal, my Lunzie!" Tee exclaimed. "What was the scream I heard?"

"An overactive imagination, nothing more," Lunzie said, self-deprecatingly. She was ashamed that Tee had heard her panic.

"The captain suggested that you would trust me to bring your possessions. Of course, you might not want to see me..." He let the sentence trail off.

"Nonsense, Tee, I will always trust you. And your coming means that the captain got safely back. That's an incredible relief."

Tee grinned. "And I've got orders to continue to confuddle whoever it is that sends assassins after my good friends. When I leave here, I am going to the local Tri-D Forum and watch the news until dawn. Then I am going to an employment agency to job hunt." Tee held up a finger as Lunzie's mouth opened and closed. "Part of the blind. I go back to the ship when you are safely out of the way and no connection can be made between us. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Yes indeed," Lunzie said. "I never got past the appetizer and I haven't eaten since you and I had breakfast this morning. I don't dare trust room service, but I am positively ravenous. If the wooden walls didn't have preservative varnishes rubbed into them, I'd eat them."

"Say no more," Tee said, "though this establishment would suffer terrible mortification if they knew you'd gone for a carryout meal when the delights of their very fancy kitchens are at your beck and call." He kissed her hand and slipped out of the room again.

In a short time, he reappeared with an armful of small bags.

"Here is a salad, cheese, dessert, and a cold bean-curd dish. The fruit is for tomorrow morning if you still feel insecure eating in public restaurants."

Lunzie accepted the parcels gratefully and set them aside on the bedtable. "Thank you. Tee. I owe you so much. Give my best to Naomi. I hope you and she will be very happy. I want you to be."

"We are," Tee smiled, with one of his characteristic wide-flung gestures. "I promise you. Until we meet again." He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. "I always will love you, my Lunzie."

"And I, you." Lunzie hugged him to her heart with all her might, and then she let him go. "Good-bye, Tee."

When she let him out and locked the door, Lunzie sorted through her dufflebags. At the bottom of one, she found the holo of Fiona wrapped securely in bubblepack. Loosening an edge of the pack, she took the message cube out of her boot. At the bottom of the bubblepack were two small cubes that Lunzie cherished, containing the transmissions sent her by her daughter's family to Astris and the Ban Sidhe. One more anonymous cube would attract no attention. Unless, of course, someone tried to read it in an unauthorised reader. She hoped she wouldn't be in the same vicinity when that happened. She could wish they'd used a less drastic protection scheme; what if an "innocent" snoop were to get his hands on it? She would have to be very careful. Hmm... she mused. Maybe that was the point.

Lunzie tried to go to sleep, but she was wide awake again. She put on the video system and scrolled through the Remote Shopping Network for a while. One of the offerings was a security alarm with a powerful siren and flashing strobe light for travellers to attach to the doors of hotel rooms for greater protection. Lunzie bought one by credit, extracting a promise from the RSN representative by comlink that it would be delivered to the hotel in the morning. The parcel was waiting for her at the desk when she came down early the next day to check out. She hugged it to her as she rode down to the spaceport to find a berth on an express freighter to Tau Ceti.

CHAPTER Ten

Two weeks later, Lunzie disembarked from the freighter Nova Mirage in the spaceport at Tau Ceti and stared as she walked along the corridors to the customs area. The change after seventy-five years was dramatic, even for that lapse of time on a colony world. The corrugated plastic hangars had been replaced by dozens of formed stone buildings that, had Lunzie not known better, she would have believed grew right out of the ground.

She felt an element of shock when she stepped outside. The unpaved roads had been widened and coated with a porous, self-draining polyester surface compound. Most of the buildings she remembered were gone, replaced by structures twice as large. She had seen the Tau Ceti colony in its infancy. It was now in full bloom. She was a little sad that the unspoiled beauty had been violated although the additions had been done with taste and colour, adding to, rather than detracting from their surroundings. Tau Ceti was still a healthy, comfortable place, unlike the gray dullness of Alpha Centauri. The cool air she inhaled tasted sweet and natural after two weeks of ship air, and a week's worth of pollution before that. The sun was warm on her face.

Lunzie appreciated the irony of carrying the same dufflebags over her shoulder today that she had lugged so many decades before when she had left Fiona there on Tau Ceti. They'd all showed remarkably little visible wear. Well, all that was behind her. She was beginning her life afresh. Pay voucher in hand, she sought Nova Mirage's office to collect her wages and ask for directions.

The trip hadn't been restful but it had been fast and non-threatening. The Nova Mirage, an FTL medium-haul freighter, was carrying plumbing supplies and industrial chemicals to Tau Ceti. Halfway there, some of the crew had begun to complain of a hacking cough and displayed symptoms that Lunzie recognized as a form of silicosis. An investigation showed that one of the gigantic tubs in the storage hold containing powdered carbon crystals had cracked. This wouldn't have mattered except that the tub was located next to an accidentally opened intake to the ventilation system; the fumes had leaked all over the ship. Except for being short fifty kilos on the order, all was well. It was merely an accident, with no evidence of sabotage. A week's worth of exposure posed no permanent damage to the sufferers, but it was unpleasant while it lasted.

Lunzie had had the security alarm on her infirmary door during her sleep shift. It hadn't let out so much as a peep the entire voyage. The hologram and its attendant cubes remained undisturbed at the bottom of her dufflebag. None of the crew had sensed that their friendly ship's medic was anything out of the ordinary. And now she was on her way to deliver it and her message to their destination.

"I'd like to see Commander Coromell, please," Lunzie requested at Fleet Central Command. "My name is Lunzie."

"Admiral Coromell is in a meeting, Lunzie. Can you wait?" the receptionist asked politely, gesturing to a padded bench against the wall of the sparsely furnished, white-painted room. "You must have been travelling. Citizen. He's had a promotion recently. Not a Lieutenant Commander any more."

"Admiralties seem to run in his family," Lunzie remarked. "And I'll be careful to give him his correct rank. Ensign. Thank you."

In a short time, a uniformed aide appeared to escort her to the office of the newly appointed Admiral Coromell.

"There she is," a familiar voice boomed as she stepped into the room. "I told you there couldn't be two Lunzies. Uncommon name. Uncommon woman to go with it." Retired Admiral Coromell stood up from a chair before the honeywood desk in the square office and took her hand. "How do you do. Doctor? It's a pleasure to see you, though I'm surprised to see you so soon."

Lunzie greeted him with pleasure. "I'm happy to see you looking so well, sir. I hadn't had a chance to give you a final checkup before they told me you'd gone."

The old man smiled. "Well, well. But you surely didn't chase me all the way here to listen to my heart, did you? I've never met a more conscientious doctor." He did look better than he had when Lunzie saw him last, recently recovered from cold sleep, but she longed to run a scanner over him. She didn't like the look of his skin tone. The deep lines of his face had sunken, and something about his eyes worried her. He was over a hundred years old which shouldn't be a worry when human beings averaged 120 Standard years. Still, he had been through additional strain lately that had no doubt affected his constitution. His outlook was good, and that ought to help him prolong his life.

"I think she came to see me. Father."

The man behind the desk rose and came around to offer her a hand in welcome. His hair was thick and curly like his father's, but it was honey brown instead of white. Under pale brown brows, his eyes, of the same piercing blue as the senior Coromell's, bored into her as if they would read her thoughts. Lunzie felt a little overwhelmed by the intensity.

He was so tall that she had to crane her head back to maintain eye contact with him.

"You certainly do tend to inspire loyalty, Lunzie," the Admiral's son said in a gentle version of his father's boom. He was a very attractive man, exuding a powerful personality which Lunzie recognized as well suited to a position of authority in the Intelligence Service. "Your friend Teodor Janos was prepared to turn the galaxy inside out to find you. He certainly is proficient at computerised research. If it were not for him, I wouldn't have had half the evidence I needed to convince the Fleet to commission a ship for the search, even with my own father one of the missing. It's nice to finally meet you. How do you do?"

"Very well. Admiral," Lunzie replied, flattered. "Er, I'm sorry. That's going to become confusing, since both of you have the same name, and the same rank."

The old man beamed at both of them. "Isn't he a fine fellow? When I went away, he was just a lad with his new captain's bars. I arrived two days ago and they were making him an admiral. I couldn't be more proud."

The young admiral smiled down at her. "As far as I'm concerned, there's only one Admiral Coromell," and he gestured to his father. "Between us, Lunzie, my name will be sufficient."

Lunzie was dismayed with herself as she returned his smile. Hadn't she just vowed not to let anyone affect her so strongly? With the painful breakup with Tee so fresh in her mind? Certainly Coromell was handsome and she couldn't deny the charm nor the intelligence she sensed behind it. How dare she melt? She had only just met the man. Abruptly, she recovered herself and recalled her mission.

"I've got a message for you, er, Coromell. From Captain Aelock of the Ban Sidhe."

"Yes? I've only just spoken with him via secure-channel FTL comlink. He said nothing about sending you or a message."

Lunzie launched into an explanation, describing the aborted dinner date, the murder of Aelock's contact and the attempted murder of the two of them. "He gave me this cube," she finished, holding out the ceramic block, "and told me to tell you, 'It's Ambrosia.' "

"Great heavens," Coromell said, amazed, taking the block from her. "How in the galaxy did you get it here without incident?"

The old Admiral let out a hearty laugh. "The same way she travelled with me, I'll wager," he suggested, shrewdly. "As an anonymous doctor on a nondescript vessel. Am I not correct? You needn't look so surprised, my dear. I was once head of Fleet Intelligence myself. It was an obvious ploy."

Coromell shook his head, wonderingly. "I could use you in our operations on a regular basis, Lunzie."

"It wasn't my idea. Aelock suggested it," Lunzie protested.

"Ah, yes, but he didn't carry it out. You did. And no one suspected that you were a courier with top secret information in your rucksack - this!" Coromell shook the cube. He spun and punched a control on the panel atop his desk. "Ensign; please tell Crypotography I want them standing by."

"Aye, aye, sir," the receptionist's voice filtered out of a hidden speaker.

"We'll get on this right away. Thank you, Lunzie." Coromell ushered her and his father out. "I'm sorry, but I've got to keep this information among as few ears as possible."

"Well, well," said the Admiral to an equally surprised Lunzie as they found themselves in the corridor. "May I offer you some lunch, my dear? What d'you say? We can talk about old times. I saw the most curious thing the other day, something I haven't seen in years: a Carmen Miranda film. In two-D."

Lunzie passed a few pleasant days in Tau Ceti, visiting places she'd known when she stayed there. It was still an attractive place. A shame, on the whole, that there hadn't been a job here for her seventy-four years ago. The weather was pleasant and sunny, except for a brief rainshower early in the afternoon. By the hemispheric calendar, it was the beginning of spring. The medical center in which she worked had expanded, adding on a nursing school and a fine hospital. None of the people she'd known were still there. Flatteringly enough, the administrator looked up her records and offered her a position in the psychoneurology department.

"Since Tau Ceti became the administrative center for the FSP, we've seen a large influx of cases of space-induced trauma," he explained. "Nearly a third of Fleet personnel end up in cryogenic sleep for one reason or another. With your history and training, you would be the de facto expert on cold sleep. We would be delighted if you would join the staff."

Tempted, Lunzie promised she'd think it over.

She also interviewed with the shipping companies who were based on Tau Ceti for another position as a ship's medic. To her dismay, a few of them took one look at the notation in her records indicating that she'd been in two space wrecks and instantly showed her the door. Others were more cordial and less superstitious. Those promised to let her know the next time they had need of her services. Three who had ships leaving within the next month were willing to sign her on.

She spent some time with old Admiral Coromell, talking about old times. She also found it affected her profoundly to be in a familiar venue in which no one remembered many of the events that she did. To her, less than four years had passed since she had left Fiona there. The Admiral was the only other one who recalled events of that era and he shared her feelings of isolation.

Two weeks later, Coromell himself stopped by to see her at the guest house where she had taken a room.

"Sorry to have booted you and Father out of the office the other day," he apologised, with an engaging smile. "That information required immediate attention. I've been working on nothing else since then."

"My feelings weren't hurt," Lunzie assured him. "I was just incredibly relieved that I'd got it to you. Aelock had impressed its important on me. Several ways." The assassin's grim face flashed before her eyes again.

Coromell smiled more easily now. "Lunzie, you're a tolerant soul! To cross a galaxy with an urgent message and find the recipient is brusque to the point of rudeness. May I make amends now that all the flap is over and show you around? Or, perhaps, it's more to the point that you show me around. I know you'd been here when Tau Ceti was just started."

"I would enjoy that very much. When?"

"Today? With the nights I've been putting in, they won't begrudge me an afternoon off. That's why I came over." He held open the door and the sunlight streamed in. "It's too nice a day, even for Tau Ceti, to waste stuck indoors."

They spent the day in the nature preserve which had been Fiona's favourite haunt. The imported trees, saplings when she left, were mature giants now, casting cool shade over the river path. Following her memory, Lunzie led Coromell to her and Fiona's favourite place. The brief midday showers had soaked the ground and a heady smell of humus filled the air. In the crowns of the trees, they could hear the twitter of birdsong celebrating the lovely weather. Lunzie and Coromell ducked under the heavy boughs and clambered up the slope to a stone overhang. At one time in the planet's geologic history, stone strata had met and collided, shifting one of them upward toward the surface so that a ledge projected out over the river.

"It's good for sitting and thinking, and feeding the birds, if you happen to have any scraps of bread with you," Lunzie said, half lying on the great slab of sun-warmed stone to peer down into the water at small shadows chasing each other down the stream. "Or the fishoids."

Coromell patted his pockets. "Sorry. No bread. Perhaps next time."

"It's just as well. We'd be overrun with supplicants."

He laughed, and settled next to her to watch the dappled water dance over the rocks. "I needed this. It's been very hectic of late and I get to spend so little time in planetary atmosphere. My father has talked of no one else but you since he got here. He married late in life and doesn't want me to make the same mistake. He's lonely," Coromell added, wistfully. "He's been working on throwing us together."

"I wouldn't mind that," Lunzie said, turning her head to smile at him. Coromell was an attractive man. He had to be on the far side of forty-five but he had a youthful skin and, out of his official surroundings, he displayed more enthusiasm than she supposed careworn or rank-conscious admirals usually did.

"Well, I wouldn't either. I won't lie to you," he replied carefully. "But be warned, I can't offer much in the way of commitments. I'm a career man. The Fleet is my life and I love it. Anything else would run second place."

Lunzie shrugged, pulling pieces of moss off the rock and dropping them into the water to watch the ripples. "And I'm a wanderer, probably by nature as well as experience. If I hadn't had a daughter, I'd never have been trying to earn Oh-Two money to join a colony. I enjoy travelling to new places, learning new things, and meeting new people. It would certainly be best not to make lifetime commitments. Nor very good for your reputation to have a time-lagged medic who's suspected of being a Jonah appearing on your arm at Fleet functions."

Coromell made a disgusted noise. "That doesn't matter a raking shard to me. Father told me about the chatter going on behind your back on the Ban Sidhe. I should put those fools on report for making your journey harder with such asinine superstitious babbling."

Lunzie laid a hand on his arm. "No, don't. If they need shared fears and experiences as a crutch to help them handle daily crisis, leave it to them. They'll grow out of it." She smiled reassuringly, and he slumped back with a hand shielding his eyes from the sun.

"As you wish. But we can still enjoy each other as long as we're together, no?"

"Oh, yes."

"I'm glad. Sure I can't persuade you to join up?" Coromell asked in a half-humorous tone. "It'll improve your reputation considerably to be a part of Fleet Intelligence. You could go places, meet new people and see new things while gathering information for us."

"What? Is that a condition for seeing you?" Lunzie asked in mock outrage. "I have to join the navy?" She raised an eyebrow.

"No. But if that's the only way I can get you to join up, maybe I'll have the regulations altered," he chuckled wryly. "Do stay on Tau Ceti for a while. I'm stationed here, flying a desk on this operation. I hope to persuade you to change your mind about the service. You could be a true asset to the Fleet. Stay for a while, please."

Lunzie hesitated, considering. "I wouldn't feel right hanging around waiting for you to get off work every day. I'd be useless."

Coromell cleared his throat. "Didn't you speak to the Medical Center about a job? You could be employed there, until you decide what to do. They, urn, called me to ask if your services were available. They seem to think you're Fleet personnel already. You have other unsuspected valuable traits. You listen to my father, who would be so happy to spend time with you. At his age, there are so few people he can talk to." Coromell looked wistfully hopeful, an expression at odds with both uniform and occupation.

Her last protests evaporated. How well she understood old Admiral Coromell's dilemma. "All right. None of the current prospects at the spaceport appeal to me. But that's not why I'm staying. I'm enjoying myself."

"I like you. Dr. Lunzie."

"I like you, too. Admiral Coromell." She squeezed his hand, and they sat together quietly for a while, simply enjoying the brook's quiet murmur and the sound of birdsong in the warmth of the afternoon.

Thereafter, they spent time together whenever possible. Coromell's favourite idea of a relaxing afternoon was a stroll or a few hours listening to music or watching a classical event on Tri-D. They shared their music and literature libraries, and discussed their favourites. Lunzie enjoyed being with him. He was frequently tense when they met, but relaxed quickly once he had put the day behind him. Their relationship was different from the one she had had with Tee. Coromell expected her to offer opinions, and held to his own even if they differed. He was perfectly polite, as was appropriate to an officer and a gentleman, but he could be very stubborn. Even when they got into a knock-down-drag-out argument, Lunzie found it refreshing after Tee's selfless deferral to her tastes. Coromell trusted her with his honest views, and expected the same in return.

Coromell's schedule was irregular. When pirates had been sighted, he would be swamped with reports that had to be analysed to the last detail. He had other duties which had not yet been reassigned to an officer of lesser rank that could keep him at the complex for four or five shifts on end. Lunzie, not wishing to take a permanent job yet, found herself with time on her hands that not even her Discipline training could use up.

Coromell knew that she had passed through the Adept stage of Discipline. At his urging, and with his personal recommendation to the group master, she joined a classified course in advanced Discipline taught in a gymnasium deep in the FSP complex.

There were two or three other pupils in the meditation sessions, but no names were ever exchanged, so she had no idea who they were. Her guess that they were upper echelon officers in the Fleet or senior diplomats was never verified or disproved. The master instructed them in fascinating types of mind control that built on early techniques accessible even to the first-level students. Using Discipline to heighten the senses to listen and follow the development of a subject's trance state, one could plant detailed posthypnotic suggestions. The shortened form of trance induction was amazing in its simplicity.

"This would be a terrific help in field surgery," Lunzie pointed out at the end of one private session. "I could persuade a patient to ignore poor physical conditions and remain calm."

"Your patient would still have to trust you. A strong will can counteract any attempt at suggestion, as you know, as can panic," the master warned her, gazing into her eyes. "Do not consider this a weapon, but rather a tool. The Council of Adepts would not be pleased. You are not merely a student-probationer any more."

Lunzie opened her mouth to protest that she would never do such a thing, but closed it again. He must have known of cases in which students had tried to rely upon this single technique to control an enemy, only to fail, perhaps at the cost of their lives. Then she smiled. Perhaps the technique worked too well and she had to learn to apply it correctly and with a fine discrimination for its use.

One delightful change which had occurred while she was in her second bout of cold sleep was that coffee had had a renaissance. On a fine afternoon following her workout, Lunzie came back from the spaceport and programmed a pot of coffee from the synth unit. The formula the synthesisers poured out had no caffeine, but it smelled oily and rich and wonderful, and tasted just like she remembered the real brew. There was even real coffee available occasionally in the food shops, an expensive treat in which, with her credit balance of back pay, she could afford to revel. She wondered if Satia Somileaux back on the Descartes Platform would ever try any.

The message light on her com-unit was blinking. Lunzie wandered over to it with a hot cup in her hands and hit the recall control. Coromell's face appeared on the screen.

"I'm sorry to ask on such short notice, Lunzie, but do you have a formal outfit? I'm expected to appear at a Delegate's Ball tonight at 2000 hours and your company would make it considerably less tedious an affair, I will be in the office until 1700 hours, awaiting your reply." The image blinked off.

"Gack, it's 1630 now!"

Bolting her coffee, Lunzie flew for her cases and rummaged through them for the teal-tissue sheath. The frock was easily compressed and didn't take up much room, so it was difficult to find. Yes, it was there, and it was clean and in good condition, needing only a quick wrinkle-proofing. She communicated immediately with Coromell's office that she would be free to come and hastened to set the clothes-freshener to Touch Up. She tossed the sweat-stained workout clothes in a corner and dashed through the sonic cleanser.

"Much more modest than I remembered." Approvingly, she noted her reflection in the mirror, making a final twirl. She smoothed down the sides of the thin fabric which shimmered in the evening sun-light coming through her window, allowing herself to admire the trim curves of her body. "You wouldn't think I was interested in this man, with the fuss I'm making to look good for him, would you?"

Lunzie fastened on her favourite necklace, a simple copper-and-gold choker that complemented the colour of her dress and picked up becoming highlights in her hair and eyes.

Coromell arrived for her at 1945, looking correct and somewhat uncomfortable in his dark blue dress uniform. He gave Lunzie an approving once-over as he presented her with a corsage of white camellias. "Earth flowers. One of our botanists grows them as a hobby. How very pretty you look. Most becoming, that shimmery blue thing. I've never seen that style before," he said as he escorted her out to his chauffeured groundcar, "Is it the latest fashion?"

Lunzie chuckled. "I'll tell you a secret: it's a ten-year-old frock from halfway across the galaxy. It's surely the latest vogue somewhere."

The party had not yet begun when they arrived at the Ryxi Embassy, one of an identical row of three-story stone buildings set aside for the diplomatic corps of each major race in the FSP. Lunzie was amused to observe the resemblance between the embassies and the BOQ barracks on the Fleet bases. A flock of the excitable two-meter-tall avians stood at the entrance greeting their guests, flanked by a host of silent Ryxi wearing the crossed sashes of honour guards.

"Great ones for standing on their dignities, the Ryxi," Coromell said in an aside as they waited in turn to pass inside. "Excited they forget everything, and I shouldn't like to tangle with an enraged birdling."

A storklike Ryxi stepped forward to bow jerkily to Coromell. "Admirrral, a pleasurre," he trilled. The Ryxi normally spoke very fast. They expected others to comprehend them but occasionally, as on this festive evening, they slowed their speech to gracious comprehensibility.

Coromell bowed. "How nice to see you, Ambassador Chrrr. May I present my companion. Dr. Lunzie?"

Chrrr bowed like a glass barometer. "Welcome among the flock, Doctorrrr. Please make yourrrself frrreee of the Embassy of the Rrryxi."

"You're very kind," Lunzie nodded, beating back a temptation to roll the one r like a Scotsman.

With their stiff legs, Ryxi preferred to stand unless sitting was absolutely necessary. For the convenience of humans, Seti, Weft, and the dozen or so other species represented that night, their great hall had been provided with plenty of varied seats for their comrades of inferior race.

"That's what they consider us," Coromell murmured as they moved into the hall, "or any race that hasn't a flight capability."

"Where do they rank Thek?"

"They ignore them whenever possible." Coromell chuckled. "The Ryxi don't think it's worth the time it takes to listen."

An elderly Seti, who was the personal ambassador from the Seti of Fomalhaut, held court from the U-shaped backless chair which accommodated his reptilian tail. He made a pleasant face at her as she was introduced to him.

"Sso, you were graduated from Astriss Alexandria," he hissed. "As was I. Classs of 2784."

"Ah, you were four years behind me," Lunzie calculated. "Do you remember Chancellor Graystone?"

"I do. A fine administrator, for a Human. How curious, elder one, that you do not appear of such advanced years as your knowledge suggests," the Seti remarked politely. Seti were very private individuals. In Lunzie's experience, this was the closest that one had ever come to asking a personal question.

"Why, thank you, honoured Ambassador. How kind of you to notice," Lunzie said, bowing away as Coromell swept her on to the next introduction.

"I'm surprised there aren't any Thek here," Lunzie commented as they acknowledged other acquaintances of Coromell's.

He cleared his throat. "The Thek aren't very popular right now among some members of the FSP. Even though the ordinary Ryxi never seem to care what anyone else thinks, the diplomatic corps are sensitive to public feeling."

"That makes them unusual?" Lunzie asked.

"You have no idea," Coromell said dryly.

"Why, Admiral, how nice to see you. And who is your charming companion?"

Lunzie turned to smile politely at the speaker and took an abrupt step back. A dark-haired female heavyworlder with overhanging brow ridges was glaring down at her. But she had not spoken. Seated in front of the huge female in an elegant padded arm-chair was a slight human male with large, glowing black eyes. He was apparently quite used to having the massive woman hovering protectively behind him. Lunzie recovered herself and nodded courteously to the man in the chair.

"lenois, this is Lunzie," Coromell said. "Lunzie, lenois is the head of the well-known Parchandri merchant family whose trade is most important to Tau Ceti."

"This humble soul is overwhelmed by such compliments from the noble Admiral." The little man inclined his head politely. "And delighted to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine," Lunzie responded as composedly as she could. It would never do to display her distrust and surprise. She knew the reputation of the Parchandris. Something about lenois made her dislike him on the spot. Not to mention his taste in companions.

lenois indicated the heavyworlder woman behind him. "My diplomatic aide, Quinada." She bowed and straightened up again without ever taking her eyes off Lunzie. "We haven't had the pleasure of seeing you before, Lunzie. Are you a resident of Tau Ceti?"

"No. I've only just arrived from Alpha Centauri," she answered politely. Coromell had assured her there was no reason to hide her origins beyond the dictates of simple good taste.

"Alpha Centauri? How interesting," intoned the Parchandri.

"My daughter's family lives in Shaygo," Lunzie replied civilly. "I had never met them and they invited me to a family reunion."

"Ah! How irreplaceable is family. In our business, we trust family first and others a most regrettably distant second. Fortunately, ours is a very large family. Alpha Centauri is a marvellously large world with so many amenities and wonders. You must have found it hard to leave."

"Not very," Lunzie returned drily, "since the atmosphere's so polluted it's not fit to breathe."

"Not fit to breathe? Not fit?" The Parchandri bent forward in an unexpected fit of laughter. "That's very good. But, Lunzie," and he had suddenly sobered, "surely the air of a planet is more breathable than that of a ship?"

Lunzie remembered suddenly the engineer Perkin's warning about the owners of the Destiny Cruise Lines. They were a Parchandri merchant family called Paraden. She didn't know if lenois was a Paraden but preferred not to provoke him or arouse his curiosity. What if he was one of the defendants in the case against Destiny Cruise Lines? Coromell might need this man's good will.

"Lunzie was shipwrecked on her way to Alpha Centauri," Coromell said, completely surprising Lunzie with this remark delivered in the manner of keeping a conversation going.

"I see. How dreadful." The Parchandri's large eyes gleamed as if it were not dreadful to him at all and, in some twisted way, she became more interesting to him. That was a weird perversion. "Were you long in that state?" the Parchandri pressed her. "Or were your engineers able to make repairs to your vessel? It is quite a frightening thing to be at the mercy of your machines in deep space. You appear to have survived the calamity without trauma. Commendable fortitude. Do tell this lowly one all!" His eyes glittered with anticipation.

Lunzie shrugged, not at all willing to gratify this strange man. Coromell would not have placed her in jeopardy if this lenois was a Paraden and possibly one of the defendants in the case against Destiny Cruise Lines.

"There's not much to tell, really. We were towed in by a military ship who happened to pass by the site of the wreck."

"How fortuitous a rescue." lenois's eyes glittered. His... minder - no matter if he called her a diplomatic aide, she was a bodyguard if ever Lunzie had seen one - never wavered in the stare she favoured Lunzie. "Stranded in space, landed on Alpha Centauri and now you're here. How brave you are."

"Not at all," Lunzie said, wishing they could move away from this vile man and his glowering "aide" but Coromell's hand on her elbow imperceptibly restrained her. Strange that he failed to notice that she had given no details about her ship. Did lenois already "know"? "Travel is a fact of life these days. Ships and rumours traverse the galaxy with equal speed."

lenois ignored her flippancy. "Admiral," he turned to Coromell, "have you tried the refreshments yet? I do believe that the Ryxi have brought in a genuine Terran wine for our pleasure. From Frans, I am told."

"France," Coromell corrected him with a bow. "A province in the northern hemisphere of Earth."

"Ah, yes. This is one world to which I have not yet been. The Ryxi have truly provided a splendid repast for their guests. Raw nuts and seeds are not much to my liking, but there are sweet cream delicacies that would serve to delight those far above my humble station. And the cheeses! Pure ambrosia." The Parchandri kissed the back of his hand.

In spite of her shield of will, Lunzie flinched involuntarily. Ambrosia. It was a coincidence that the Parchandri should use that word. Having carried and cherished it like an unborn child for the better part of three months, Lunzie was sensitive to its use. She caught both men looking at her. Coromell hadn't reacted. He knew the significance of the word, but what of the merchant? lenois was studying her curiously.

"Is the temperature not comfortable for you. Doctor?" lenois asked in a sympathetic tone. "In my opinion, the Ryxi keep the room very warm, but I am accustomed to my home which is in a mountainous region. Much cooler than here." He beckoned upward to his gigantic bodyguard. They whispered together shortly, then Quinada left the room. lenois shrugged. "I require a lighter jacket or I will stifle before I am able to give my greetings to my hosts."

lenois drew the conversation on to subjects of common interest on which he held forth charmingly, but Lunzie was sure that he was watching her. There was a secretive air about the little merchant which had nothing to do with pleasant surprises. She found him sinister as well as perverted and wished she and Coromell could leave. Lunzie was made uncomfortable by lenois's scrutiny, and tried not to meet his eyes.

Finally, Coromell seemed to notice Lunzie's signals to move on. "Forgive me, lenois. The Weftian ambassador from Parok is here. I must speak to him. Will you excuse us?"

lenois extended a moist hand to both of them. Lunzie gave it a hearty squeeze in spite of her revulsion and was rewarded by a tiny moue of amusement. "Can we count on seeing the two of you at our little party in five days time?" the merchant asked. "The Parchandri wish to reignite the flame of our regard in the hearts of our treasured friends and valued customers. Will you brighten our lives by attending?"

"Yes, of course," Coromell said graciously. "Thank you for extending the invitation."

The Parchandri was on his feet now, bowing elaborately. "Thank you. You restore face to this humble one." He made a deep obeisance and sat down.

"Must we go to the party of the unscrupulous Parchandri?" Lunzie asked in an undertone as they moved away.

Coromell seemed surprised. "We do have to maintain good relations. Why not?"

"That unscrup makes me think he'd sell his mother for ten shares of Progressive Galactic."

"He probably would. But come anyway. These dos are very dull without company."

"There's something about him that makes me very nervous. He said 'ambrosia.' Did you see him stare at me when I reacted? He couldn't have failed to notice it."

"He used the word in an acceptable context, Lunzie. You're just sensitive to it. Not surprising after all you've been through. lenois is too indolent to be involved in anything as energetic as business." Coromell drew her arm through his and led her toward the next ambassador.

"She lied," Quinada muttered to her employer as she bowed to present a lighter dress tunic. "I checked with the main office. According to our reports from Alpha Centauri covering those dates, no disabled vessel was towed in. However, numerous beings of civilian garb were observed disembarking from a military cruiser, the Ban Sidhe. One matches her description. That places her on Alpha at the correct time, and with a false covering story."

"Inconclusive," lenois said lightly, watching Lunzie and Coromell chatting with the Weftian ambassador and another merchant lord. "I could not make a sale with so weak a provenance. I need more."

"There is more. The man in the restaurant to whom the dead spy reported had a female companion, whose description also matches our admiral's lady in blue."

"Ah. Then there is no doubt." lenois continued to smile at anyone who glanced his way, though his eyes remained coldly half-lidded. "Our friends' plans may have to be... altered." He pressed his lips together. "Kill her. But not here. There is no need to provoke an interplanetary incident over so simple a matter as the death of a spy. But see to it that she troubles us no further."

"As your will dictates." Quinada withdrew.

A live band in one comer struck up dance music. Lunzie listened longingly to the lively beat while Coromell exchanged endless stories with another officer and the representative from a colony which had just attained protected status. Coromell turned to ask her a question and found that her attention was focused on the dance floor. He caught her eye and made a formal bow.

"May I have the honour?" he asked and, excusing himself to his friends, swept her out among the swirling couples. He was an excellent dancer. Lunzie found it easy to follow his lead and let her body move to the beat of the music.

"Forgive me for boring you," Coromell apologised, as they sidestepped between two couples. "These parties are stamped out of a mould. It's a boon when I find any friends attending with whom I can chat."

"Oh, you're not boring me," Lunzie assured him. "I hope I wasn't looking bored. That would be unforgivable."

"It won't be too much longer before we may leave," Coromell promised. "I'm weary myself. The tradition is for the hosts giving the party to toast the guests with many compliments, and for the guests to return the honours. It should happen any time now."

The dance music ended, and the elderly Ryxi made his way to the front of the room with a beaker in one wingclaw. He raised the beaker to the assembled. At his signal, Lunzie and the others hastened to the refreshment table. Coromell poured them both glasses of French wine.

When everyone was ready, the ambassador began to speak in his mellow tenor cheep. "To our honored guests! Long life! To our fellow members of the Federated Sentient Planets! Long life! To my old friend the Speaker for the Weft!"

Coromell sighed and leaned toward Lunzie. "This is going to take a long time. Your patience and forbearance are appreciated."

Lunzie stifled a giggle and raised her glass to the Ryxi.

"I can't wear the same dress to two diplomatic functions in a row," Lunzie explained to Coromell over lunch the next day. "I'm going shopping for a second gown."

When she had arrived on Tau Ceti, Lunzie had marked down in her mind the new shopping center that adjoined the spaceport. Originally the site had been a field used for large-vehicle repair and construction of housing modules, half hidden by a hill of mounded dirt suitable for sliding down by the local children.

The hill was still there, landscaped and clipped to the most stringent gardening standard. Behind it lay a beautifully constructed arcade of dark red brick and the local soft gray stone. In spite of the conservative appearance, the high atrium rang with the laughter of children, five generations descended from the ones Fiona had once played with. Lunzie overheard animated conversations echoing through the corridors as she strolled.

Most of the stores were devoted to oxygen-breathers, though at the ground level there were specialty shops with airlock hatches instead of doors to serve customers whose atmosphere differed from the norm. Lunzie window-shopped along one level and wound her way up the ramp to the next, mentally measuring dresses and outfits for herself. The variety for sale was impressive, perhaps too impressively large. She doubted whether there were three stores here which would have anything to suit her. Some of the fashions were very extreme. She stood back to peruse the show windows.

In the lexan panes, she caught a glimpse of something very large moving toward her from the left. Lunzie looked up. A party of heavyworld humans was stumping down the walkway, angling to get past her. She recognized the sombre male at the head of the group as the representative from Diplo, whom Coromell had pointed out to her at the Ryxi party. They took up so much of the ramp walking two abreast that Lunzie scooted into Finzer's Fashions until they passed.

"How may I assist you. Citizen?" A human male two-thirds of Lunzie's height with elegantly frilled ears approached her, bowing and smiling. "I am Finzer, the proprietor of this fine outlet."

Lunzie glanced out into the atrium. The party was gone, all except for one female who had stopped to look into one shop window across the corridor. And she wasn't one of the DipIo cortege. It was the Parchandri's bodyguard, Quinada. The heavyworld female turned, and her dark eyes met Lunzie's with a stupid, heavy gaze. Lunzie smiled at her, hoping a polite response was in order. Quinada stared back expressionlessly for a moment before walking away. Puzzled, Lunzie glanced back at the shopkeeper, who was still waiting by her side.

"I'm looking for evening wear," she told Finzer. "Do you have something classic in a size ten?"

Finzer produced a classic dress in dusty rose pink with a bodice that hugged Lunzie's rib cage and a full evening skirt that swirled around her feet.

Two evenings later, she held the folds of the dress bunched up on her lap as she and Coromell rode toward the Parchandri's residence.

"I'm not imagining it, Coromell," Lunzie said firmly. "Quinada's been everywhere that I've gone these past two days. Every time I turned around, she was there. She's following me."

"Coincidence," Coromell said blithely. "The area in which the Tau Ceti diplomatic set circulate is surprisingly small. You and Quinada had similar errands this week, that's all."

"That's not all. She stares at me, with a look I can only describe as hungry. I don't trust that perverse unscrup she works for any further than I could toss him. Didn't you see how his eyes glittered when I said I'd been spacewrecked? He's got nasty tastes in amusement."

"You're making too much of coincidence," Coromell offered gently. "Certainly you're safe from perversion here in Tau Ceti. Kidnapping is a serious breach of diplomatic immunity, one a man of lenois's status and family position would hardly risk. As for that aide of his, you told me yourself that you have a deep-seated fear of heavyworlders."

"I do not have a persecution complex," Lunzie said in dead earnest. "Putting aside my deep-seated fear, once I got to thinking that Quinada might be following me, I tried to lose her. Tell me why she was in four different provisions stores without buying a thing! Or three different beauty salons! Not only that, she was waiting outside the FSP complex when I finished my Discipline lessons."

Coromell was thoughtful. "You're convinced, aren't you?"

"I am. And I think it probably has to do with ambrosia, even if you won't enlighten me on that score." Coromell smiled slightly at the reference but said nothing, which further annoyed her in her circumstances. Ambrosia must be a classified matter at the highest level, and she was only the envelope which had delivered the letter, not entitled to know more. Stubbornly, she continued. "I don't think lenois's reference was as casual as you do, despite his unassailable diplomatic status. In any event, I find his aide's surveillance sinister."

"On a personal level, there's not much I can do to discourage that, Lunzie. However," and he cocked his head at her, a sly gleam in his eyes, "enlist in Fleet Intelligence and you have the service to protect you."

Lunzie cast a long searching look at his handsome face to dispel the unworthy thought that popped into her head. "To what ends would you go. Admiral Coromell, to get me into Fleet Intelligence?"

"I do want you in FI - you'd be a great asset, and frankly it would be wonderful having you around - but not at any cost. I can't compromise Fleet regulations, not that you'd want me to, and I can't give you any special consideration, not that you'd accept it anyway. The most important thing of all, Lunzie, is that you're willing to join. Even if I could press you into service, that's not the kind of recruit we want. I do know that you'd be ten times better as an operative than someone like Quinada... if you do decide to volunteer."

Lunzie hesitated, then nodded. "All right. I'm in."

Coromell smiled and squeezed her arm. "Good. I'll see to your credentials tomorrow morning. There will be a follow-up interview, but I have most of the details of your life on disk already. I hope you won't regret it. I don't think you will."

"I'm feeling more secure already," Lunzie said, sincerely.

"Good timing. We've arrived." The Parchandri mansion lay on the outskirts of the main Tau Ceti settlement. lenois and a group of Parchandri were waiting on the steps to greet their guests in the deepening twilight. Pots to either side of the wide doors swirled heavily scented and coloured smoke into the air. Two servants met each vehicle as it pulled up. One opened the door as the other ascertained who was inside and announced the names to the hosts. Lunzie caught a passing glimpse of burning dark eyes in pasty-white faces and gulped. The unexpected appearance of representatives of the same race as the assassins in the Alpha Centauri restaurant was unsettling to say the least. The burning eyes, however, held no flicker of recognition. But then, why should they? She was getting overly sensitive to too many coincidences.

lenois greeted them warmly, introducing Coromell to members of his family. Each was dressed in garb of such understated elegance Lunzie found herself trying to estimate the value of their clothes. If her guess was correct, each Parchandri was wearing more than the value of the clothes on the entire party of diplomats. As the evening weather was fine, drinks were circulated under the portico by liveried servants.

"Admiral Coromell! And Lunzzie, how very niccce to sssee you again," said the Seti Ambassador, wending his way ponderously up the front stairs from the welcoming committee. "Admiral, I had hoped to sssee you a few days ago, but I missssed my opportunity."

Knowing a hint for privacy when she heard one, Lunzie excused herself. "I'll just find the ladies' lounge," she told Coromell, placing her drink on the tray of a passing servant.

Asking directions from one of the Parchandri ladies, Lunzie made her way into the building. lenois had given her no more than a disinterested "Good evening," which reassured her. Maybe her assumption was only part of her heightened awareness since that disastrous evening with Aelock. She was pleased to have escaped his attention. Rumours she had heard since the Ryxi party confirmed her feelings about his proclivities and the reality was worse than she had imagined. Discounting half of what she'd heard, he was still far too sophisticated in his perversities.

Lunzie found herself in the Great Hall, a high-ceilinged chamber in an old-fashioned, elegant style. The ladies' lounge for humanoids was at the end of a pink marble corridor just to the right of the double winding staircase with gold-plated pillars which spiralled to the three upper floors. Several other corridors, all darkened, led away from the Hall on this level.

"How beautiful! They certainly do know how to live," Lunzie murmured. Her voice rang in the big, empty room. The lights were low, but there was enough illumination at the far end of the corridor for her to see another woman emerging from a swinging door. "Ah. There it is."

Lunzie readjusted her makeup in the mirror once more, straightened the skirt of her dress, and then sat down with a thump on the couch provided under the corner-mounted sconces which illuminated the room. No one else was making use of the facilities, so she was quite alone. There was only so much time she could waste in the ladies' room. It was a shame she didn't know any of the other diplomats present. She hoped that Coromell had nearly finished his negotiations with the Seti.

Well, she couldn't stay hidden in the lounge for the entire evening. She would have to circulate. Sighing, she pushed open the lounge door to return to the party. There, on the other side, was Quinada, massively blocking the hallway. Startled, Lunzie stood aside to let her by, intending to squeeze out and return to Coromell. The heavyworlder female filled the doorway and came on. Lunzie backed a few paces and stepped to the left, angling to pass as soon as the door was clear. Quinada wrapped a burly hand around her upper arm and steered her, protesting, back into the lounge.

"Here you are," she said, bearing the lightweight woman back into a corner of the room. "I've been waiting for you."

"You have?" Lunzie asked in polite surprise. She braced herself and looked for a way around the heavyworlder's massive frame. "Why?"

Quinada's heavy brow ridges lowered sullenly over her eyes. "My employer wants you disposed of. I must follow his orders. I don't really want to, but I serve him."

Lunzie trembled. So her intuitions hadn't erred. lenois suspected her. But to order her death on the strength of a recognized word? The heavyworlder pressed her back against the wall and eyed her smugly. Quinada could crush her to death by just bearing down.

Mastering her fear, Lunzie gazed into the other's eyes. "You don't want to kill me?" she asked simply, hoping she didn't sound as if she was begging. That could arouse the sadistic side of the big female's nature. Quinada was the type who would enjoy hurting her. And Lunzie needed just a little more time to muster Discipline. She had already made a tactical mistake, allowing herself to be put at a significant physical disadvantage. Quinada and her master must have been hoping for the opportunity. Quinada had seen her emerging from the FSP complex. Could they possibly know that she was an Adept?

"No, I don't want to kill you," Quinada cooed in a lighter voice, charged with implications which alarmed Lunzie considerably more. "Not if I don't have to. If you weren't my enemy, I wouldn't have to kill you at all."

"I'm not your enemy," Lunzie said soothingly.

"No? You smiled at me."

"I was trying to be friendly," Lunzie replied, disliking the intent and appraising fashion in which Quinada was staring at her.

"I wasn't sure. In this city all the diplomats smile, in deference to the lightweights. Their smiles are phony."

"Well, I'm not a diplomat. When I smile, it's genuine. I'm not paid to practice diplomacy." Lunzie rapidly assessed her chances of talking her way out of this tight spot. If she used Discipline but didn't kill the heavyworlder, her secret would be out. The next attempt on her life wouldn't be face to face. But if she used Discipline to kill, her ability would be revealed when Medical examination would show that a small female's hands had delivered the death blows. And then she'd have an Adept tribunal to face.

"Good," Quinada said, narrowing her eyes to glinting lights under her thick brow ridges, and leaning closer. Lunzie could feel the heat of the big female's skin almost against her own. "That pleases me. I want you to be friendly with me. My employer doesn't like you but if we are friends, I can't treat you like an enemy, can I? That's such a pretty gown." Quinada stroked the fabric covering Lunzie's shoulder with the back of one thick finger. "I saw you when you bought it. It suits you so well, brings out your colouring. You attract me. We don't have to stay at this dull party. Come away with me now. Perhaps we can share warmth."

Lunzie was frightened, but now she had a tremendous urge to laugh. The heavyworlder was offering to trade Lunzie's life for her favours! This scene would have been uproariously funny if it hadn't been in deadly earnest. If she managed to live through it, she could look back on it and laugh.

"Come with me, we'll be friends, and I'll forget my instructions," Quinada offered, purring. Her stare had turned proprietary. Lunzie tried not to squirm with disgust.

Masking her revulsion at Quinada's touch, Lunzie thought that even with the heavyworlder's promised protection, she was likely to wind up dead. lenois was the sort of man whose orders were followed. How could Quinada fake her death? She had to get away, to warn Coromell. She found herself measuring her words carefully, injecting them with sufficient promise to seem compliant.

"Not now. The Admiral will be waiting for me. I'll give him the slip and meet you later." Lunzie forced herself to give Quinada's arm a soft caress, though her hand felt slimy as she completed the gesture. "It's important to keep up appearances. You know that."

"A secret meeting," Quinada smiled, her lips twisting to one side. "Very well. It adds excitement. When?"

"When the toasting is over," Lunzie promised. "They'll miss me if I'm not there to salute your master. But then I can meet you wherever you say."

"That's true," Quinada agreed, backing away from her. "That is the custom. And your disappearance would be marked."

Lunzie nodded encouragingly and stepped toward the door. Before she had taken a second one, Quinada seized her bare arm and slapped her smartly across the cheek. Lunzie's head snapped back on her neck, and she stared wide-eyed at the heavyworlder, who gripped her with steely fingertips, and then let go. Lunzie staggered back and leaned against the wall to steady herself.

"Where do we meet? You haven't said that. If you are lying, I will kill you." Quinada's voice was caressing and chilled Lunzie to the bone.

"But we meet here," she said as if that had been a foregone conclusion. "It's the safest place. As soon as the toasting is done, I'll come back here and wait for you. That conceited Admiral will think I wish to make myself pretty for him. See you then, Quinada, but I've been gone a long time. I must get back." With a dazzling smile, Lunzie ducked under her arm and out the door.

Whether Quinada would have followed or not became academic, for a group of five chattering humans were coming down the corridor towards the ladies' room, providing a safeguard.

When Lunzie found Coromell and his ambassador, the Seti was expressing his gratitude to Coromell. He bowed to Lunzie as he turned away. Lunzie managed an appropriate response even as she pulled the admiral to one side behind the smoking incense pots.

"I must talk to you," she hissed, casting around to see if Quinada had followed her. To her relief, the heavyworld woman was nowhere in sight.

"Where have you been?" he asked, then clucked his tongue in concern. "What happened? You've bruised your arm. And there's another mark on your cheek."

"Darling Quinada, the Parchandri's aide," Lunzie whispered, letting the revulsion she felt colour her words with bitter sarcasm, "followed me to the ladies' lounge and jumped me there." She took some satisfaction in the shock on Coromell's face which he quickly controlled. "She's under his orders to kill me! She didn't only because I tentatively accepted an exchange for my life I have no intention of granting. I'm Fleet now, Coromell. Protect me. Get me out of here! Now!"

BOOK FOUR

CHAPTER Eleven

She went into hiding in a Fleet-owned safe house while Coromell arranged for a shuttle to take her off-planet. Except for the Discipline Master and Admiral Coromell Senior, there was no one to regret her abrupt departure - except perhaps Quinada. But Lunzie did want the Adept to realise that she had been unavoidably called away. That was Discipline courtesy. Her studies in the special course had progressed to a point where she didn't need direct instruction although she had hoped to obtain permission to teach what she had learned. As it was, the powerful new techniques would take her years to perfect.

The next day a shuttle made a rendezvous in space with the Exploration and Evaluation Corps ARCT-10, a multi-generation, multi-environmental vessel that carried numerous exploration scouts and shuttlecraft. Lunzie was transferred aboard. Her files were edited so that her enlistment in Fleet Intelligence had been excised and a false employment record with the Tau Ceti medical center inserted. She was an ordinary doctor, joining the complement of the ARCT-10 to explore and document new planets for colonisation.

"There are thousands of beings aboard," Coromell had assured her. "You'll just be one of several hundred human specialists who sign on for three-year stints with the EEC. No one will have any reason to look twice at you. Once you're settled in, you can be another remote sensor on that vessel for me. Keep an ear open."

"You mean, I'm not entirely safe on board?"

"Far safer than on Tau Ceti," he replied encouragingly. "Blend in but don't call attention to yourself. You should be fine. You've got me slightly paranoid for your sake now." He ran restless fingers through his hair and gave her an exasperated look. "Think safe and you'll be safe! Just be cautious."

"I'm totally reassured!"

Once her shuttle matched velocity with the ARCT-10, it circled around the back of the long stem to the docking bay. The ship was built with a series of cylinders arranged in a ring with arcs joining each segment. Along the dorsal edge of the ship, Lunzie could see a partially shaded quartz dome which probably contained the hydroponics section. The drives, below and astern of the docking bay, could easily have swallowed the tiny shuttle up without a burp. The five exhaust cones arranged in a ring, rimed with a film of ice crystals, were almost a hundred feet across. The ARCT-10 was reputed to be 250 years old. It had an air of majestic dignity, instead of creaking old age. It was the oldest of the original EEC generation ships still in space.

There was a Thek waiting in the docking bay as the shuttle doors cracked open. The meter-high specimen waited while Lunzie greeted the deck officer, then neatly blocked her path when she started to leave the deck without acknowledging it.

"I beg your pardon," she said, stopping short, and waited for the translator slung around the Thek's peak to slow her words down enough for it to understand.

"Ttttooooooooooooorrrrrr," it drawled.

Tor. "Your name?" she asked. Talking with a Thek was like playing the child's party game of Twenty Questions, but there was no guarantee she would get twenty answers. Theks did not like to use unnecessary verbiage when a syllable or two would do.

"Yyyyyeeeeessssss." Good, that was short and easy. This must be a relatively young Thek. There was more. Lunzie braced herself to comprehend Tor's voice.

"Llllllluuunnnnnnnn...... zzzzzzzzzziiiiiieeeeeee.... sssssaaaaaaafffffffeeeee...... hhhhhhhheeeeeeerrrrrrreeeeee."

Well, bless Coromell. She'd no idea he had Thek confederates aboard the ARCT-10. If he'd only thought to mention it, she'd have been more reassured.

"Thank you. Tor," she said. Although come to think on it, she wondered how much help a Thek could provide, flattering though such an offer was from such a source. Even the Thek who had pointed out her escape capsule to Illin "Romsey hadn't been able to tow her in on its own. A thought struck her. Theks had no real defining characteristics, but this one was the same size as that Thek. "By any chance, were you the one - no, that's too long - Tor... rescued me... Descartes?"

A short rumble, sounding like an abbreviated version of his previous "yes," issued from the depths of the silicoid cone. Now this is one for the books, Lunzie thought, much heartened. Then Tor moved aside as an officer entered the landing bay with a hand out for Lunzie and it settled down into anonymous immobility.

"Doctor, welcome aboard," the tall man said. He had the attenuated fingers, limbs and long face that marked him as one of the ship-born, a human who had spent his whole life in space. The lighter gravity frequently allowed humans to grow taller on slenderer, wider-spaced bones than the planet-born. They also proved immune to the calcium attrition that planet born space travellers experienced on long journeys. As she shook his hand, Lunzie had an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu. Except for eyes that were green, not brown, the young man fit perfectly the genotype of the banned colony-clones that she'd investigated as a member of the investigative panel on Astris seventy years ago as a medical student. "I'm Lieutenant Sanborn. We had your records just two hours ago. It'll be good to have someone with your trauma specialty on board. Spacebound paranoia is one of the worst things we have to deal with. Walking wounded, you know. You have general training as well?"

"I can sew up wounds and deliver babies, if that's what you mean," Lunzie said drily.

Sanborn threw back his head and laughed. He seemed to be a likeable young man. She felt bad about teasing him. "I shouldn't have asked for a two-byte resume. Sorry. Let me show you to the visitors' quarters. You're in luck. There's an individual sleeping cubicle available in the visitor's section." He held out a hand for her bags and hoisted them over his shoulder. "This way, please, Lunzie."

Her compartment was tiny and spare, but just big enough to be comfortable. Lunzie put her things away in the drop-down ceiling locker before she followed Sanborn to the common room to get acquainted with her shipmates. The common room doubled as a light-use recreation centre.

"The last third of each shift is reserved for conversation only so we don't have to worry about a game of grav-ball bouncing over our heads," Sanborn explained as he introduced Lunzie around. The common rooms in the humanoid oxygen-breathers' section were set with free-form furniture that managed to comfortably accommodate the smallest Weft or the largest heavyworlder.

"Welcome aboard," said the man in blue coveralls who was lounging with his seat tipped backwards against the walk He had a smooth, dark brown skin and large, mild eyes.

A sallow-faced young man dressed in a pale green lab tunic sat nearby with his elbows braced on the back of his chair and glanced up at her expressionlessly. "I'm Coe. Join us. Do you play chess?" the dark man asked.

"Later perhaps, eh?" Sanborn intervened before she could answer. "I've got to get Lunzie to Orientation."

"Any time," Coe replied, waving.

His companion swept another look and met Lunzie's eyes, and said something to Coe. Lunzie thought she heard her name and the word "ambrosia."

Panic gripped her insides. Oh, no! she thought. Have I left one bad situation for a worse one? I'm trapped aboard this vessel with someone who knows about ambrosia!

"Who's that young man with Coe?" she asked Sanborn, forcing her voice to stay-calm.

"Oh, that's Chacal. He's a communications tech. Not much of a conversationalist for a com-tech. Coe is the only one who can stand him. Keeps to himself when he's not on duty."

That would be appropriate if he was an agent for the Parchandri, or the planet pirates. Lunzie wondered to which, if either, Chacal might be attached. She wished she could speak to Coromell, but he was out of reach. Lunzie was on her own, for good or ill. What was the meaning of "ambrosia," anyway? Or was she simply exhibiting symptoms of spacebound paranoia, as Sanborn put it?

The ARCT-10 was so huge that it was easy to forget that she was travelling through space instead of living on a planet. It was designed to be entirely self-sufficient, not needing to make contact with a planet for years. Sanborn took Lunzie to the Administration offices by way of the life support dome where fresh vegetables, fruit, and grain were grown for carbohydrates to feed the synthesisers and to supplement the otherwise boring synth diet as well as refreshing the oxygen in the atmosphere. Lunzie admired the section, which was twice as big as the hydroponics plant aboard the Destiny Calls, though by no means stocked with the same exotic varieties.

One section of the ship was the multi-generation hive, where the Ship-born and Ship-bred lived, apart from the "Visitors' habitation." She quickly discovered that there was an unspoken rivalry between the two groups. The Ship-born were snobbish about the Visitors' difficulty adapting to almost all-synth food and the cramped living conditions on board. The Visitors, who were often part of the ship's complement for years on end, couldn't understand why the Ship-born were so proud of living under such limited conditions, like laboratory animals who were reduced to minimum needs. It was obvious to each group that its way was better. Mostly the rivalry was good-natured.

Since the Visitors on the ship were mission scientists or colonists awaiting transport to FSP sanctioned colonies, few crossed the boundary to socialise between groups. The matter was temporary, as far as the Visitors were concerned. On average. Visitors lasted about three years on the ARCT. When they could no longer stand the conditions, they quit.

The Ship-born felt they could ignore anyone for three years if they wanted to. In the million-light-year vision of the generation ships, that was just an eyeblink. Fortunately for more gregarious souls like Lunzie who joined the EEC, the boundaries were less than a formality.

Several of the major FSP races had groups aboard the ARCT-10 in both habitations. Heavyworlders occupied specially pressurised units designed to duplicate the gravity and harsh weather conditions of their native worlds. The Ryxi needed more square metres per being than the other groups did. Many Visitors were resentful of the seemingly spacious quarters the Ryxi occupied, though the Ship-born understood that it was the minimum the Ryxi could stand.

Theks skimmed smoothly through the corridors like mountains receding in the distance with no extraneous movement. They ranged in size from Tor's one meter to a seven-meter specimen who lived in the hydroponics section and who spoke so slowly that it took a week to produce a comprehensible word. A small complement of Brachians worked aboard ship. Lunzie recognized their long-armed silhouettes immediately in their low-light habitation. A family of the marine race of Ssli occupied their only environment in the Ship-born hive. Those Ssli had resolved to devote their entire line to serving the EEC, and the ARCT-10 was grateful for their expertise in chemistry and energy research.

As on the Descartes mining platform, there was an effort made to draw the inhabitants of the ship together as a community, rather than passengers on a vessel intended only for research and exploration. There was an emphasis on family involvement, in which praise was given not only to the child which got good grades, but for the family which supported and encouraged a child's success. Individual accomplishment was not ignored, but acknowledged in the context of the community. But Lunzie never sensed a heavy administrative hand ensuring that all were equally treated. Departments were given autonomy in their fields. The EEC administration only stepped in when necessary to ease understanding between them. Denizens of the ship were encouraged to sort out matters for themselves. Lunzie admired the system. It fostered achievement in an atmosphere of cooperation.

When she wasn't researching or working an infirmary shift, Lunzie spent time in the common room getting to know her shipmates, and her ship. The ARCT-10 had been in space a hundred and fifty Earth-Standard years. Some of the Ship-born were descended from families who had been aboard since its commissioning. One day, Lunzie became part of a lively discussion group that held court in the middle of the floor, suspending the normal polarisation of Visitors to one end of the room and Ship-born to the other.

"But how can you stand the food?" Varian asked Grabone, rolling over on her free-form cushion to face him. Varian was a tall Xenobiologist Visitor. "It's been recycled through the pipes, too, for seven generations."

"Not at all," Grabone replied. "We use fresh carbohydrates for food. The recyclate is used for other purposes, such as fertiliser and plas-sheeting. We're completely self-sufficient." The Ship-born engineer's shock of red hair helped to express his outrage. "How can you question a system with less than four percent breakdown over a hundred years?"

"But there's something lacking in the aesthetics," Lunzie said, entering the discussion. "I've never been able to stand synthesiser food myself. It's the memory of real food, not the actual stuff."

"If your cooks just didn't make synth food so boring!" Varian said in disgust. "It'd be almost palatable if it had some recognisable taste. I'll bet, Grabone, that you've never had real food. Not even the vegetables they grow on the upper deck."

"Why take chances?" demanded Grabone, leaning back defiantly on the floor and crossing his ankles. "You could poison yourself with unhygienically grown foodstuffs. You know the synth food is safe, and nourishing."

"Have you ever even tried naturally grown food?" Varian demanded.

"Can't tell the difference if I have. I've never been off the ARCT-10," Grabone admitted. "I'm a drives engineer. There's no reason for me to have to make planetfall on, I might point out, potentially hazardous missions. Risk your own neck. Leave mine alone."

"Life can be hazardous to your health," Lunzie said cheerfully to Varian beside her. She liked the lively, curly-haired girl who was unable to sit still for more than a few minutes. They did Discipline exercises together in the early shift. Lunzie could tell that Varian's training was of the most basic, though it would seem advanced to anyone who was not an Adept. "How are you chosen to go on planetside missions?" she asked Varian. "Do I have to put my name in the duty roster?"

"Oh, no," Varian replied. "Nothing that organised. Each mission requires such different skills that the first person off the queue might not be qualified. Details of a mission's personnel needs are posted days before the actual drop. If you're interested, you inform Comm Center and you're listed as available. A mission leader then picks the complement. Some missions are planned at FSP Center. Some develop out of circumstances. Let me explain. The ARCT-10's job is to keep tabs on all the Exploration and Evaluation vessels in our sector and support them with ground teams when necessary. So you really never know what's or who's going to be needed. The ARCT also keeps checking in on message beacons previously set in this sector by initial EEC scouts. They strip off messages whenever we're in line of sight and send reports back to FSP Center. If a recon or an emergency team are needed, ARCT supplies it. So really," and Varian shrugged, "you can gain a lot of xeno experience in a three year stint."

"And that's what you're after?" Lunzie said.

"You bet! That's what'll get me a good dirtside job." Then her vivacious face changed and she lowered her voice. "There may be a very good one coming up. I've a friend in Com and he said for me to keep my ears open."

"Then you're not at all nervous about the scuttle-butt I've been hearing?"

"Which one?" asked Varian scornfully.

"The one about planting colonists without their permission?"

"That old one." Grabone was openly derisive. "Rumours sometimes start themselves, you know. I'll excuse you this time, Lunzie, since I know you're not long on board. You wouldn't know how many times that one's oozed through the deckplates."

"That's reassuring," Lunzie said. "It seems so unlike an official EEC position."

"It's a lot of space dust," Grabone went on. "You got that from the heavyworlders, didn't you? Their favourite paranoia. They think we'll strand them the first chance we get. Well, it isn't true."

"No, actually, it wasn't the heavyworlders," Lunzie said slowly; she'd kept well away from any of that group. "It was one of the visiting scientists who wants only to finish his duty and go home on time. I gather he's expecting a grandchild."

"For one thing," Grabone went on to prove the rumour fallacious, "ARCT--1O can't plant anyone. Colonies take years of planning. It's hard enough to find the right mix of people who want to settle on a certain world, and live together in peace, not to say cooperation. You wouldn't believe the filework that has to go out to EEC before a colony is approved."

"Well, planting would be a quicker, if illicit, way to get more colonies started," Varian suggested. "There are some found that don't meet minimum requirements but if people were planted, they'd learn to cope."

"Doesn't anyone planetside practice birth control?" Lunzie asked, with a vivid memory of the crowds on Alpha Centauri. "Having dozens of offspring without a thought for environment or a reasonable standard of living for future citizens."

"Even a mathematical expansion of the population, one child per adult," Varian pointed out, "would soon deplete currently available resources, let alone a geometric increase. Judicious planting could reduce some of the pressure. Not that I advocate it, mind you."

One of the lights of the duty panel flickered. Involuntarily everyone in the room glanced at the blue medical light. Lunzie clambered to her feet. "I can respond."

She flipped on the switch at the panel. "Lunzie."

"Accident at interface A-10. One crew member down, several others injured."

Lunzie mentally plotted the fastest path to the scene of the accident and hit the comswitch again.

"Acknowledged," she said. "I'm on my way." She waved farewell to Grabone and Varian.

The interfaces were one of the most sensitive and carefully watched parts of the multi-environmental system aboard the ARCT-10. Whereas normal bulk-heads were accustomed to the pressure of a single atmosphere, the interfaces had to stand between two different atmospheric zones, sometimes of vastly different pressure levels which might also vary according to program. A-10 stood between the normal-weight human environment and the heavyworlders' gravity zone. Had this happened in her first few weeks aboard, she'd have become hopelessly lost. Now she knew the scheme which named decks and section by location and personnel, she knew she wasn't far from A-10 and found her way there without trouble.

Dozens of other crew members were on the move through the corridors in the A Section. At the point at which A-10 had been breached, frigid wind of the same temperature as the ambient on Diplo was pouring through into the warmer lightweight zone. Clutching her medical bag to her chest, Lunzie passed through a hastily erected baffle chamber that cut off the icy winds from the rest of the deck and would act as a temporary barrier while the heavy gravity was restored. Beyond the broken wall, heavyworlders who had been in their exercise room were picking up weights and bodybuilding equipment made suddenly light by the drop in gravity. Workers of every configuration hurried in and out of the chambers, clearing away debris, tying down torn circuits and redirecting pipes whose broken ends pumped sewage and water across the floor. Lunzie made a wide circle around two workers who were cutting out the ragged remains of the damaged panel with an arc torch.

"Doctor, quickly!" An officer in the black uniform of environmental sciences motioned urgently where she knelt by the far wall. "Orlig's twitching even if he is unconscious. He was checking the wall when it blew."

Lunzie hurried over, ignoring the stench of sewage and the odour of burned flesh. Stretched out on the deck at the woman's side was a gigantic heavyworlder wearing a jumpsuit and protective goggles. He had been severely gashed by flying metal and a tremendous haematoma coloured the side of his face. Though his eyes were closed, he was thrashing wildly and muttering. Lunzie's hands flew to her belt pouch for her bod bird.

"I don't dare give him a sedative until I know if there's neural damage, Truna," Lunzie explained.

"You do what you have to do. Other heavyworlders incurred only heavy bruises when the wall popped and they were blown against the bulkhead toward light gravity. They walked away. No one else was on this side of the wall. Orlig took the full blast. Poor beast." The environment tech got up and began shouting orders at the mob of workers, leaving Lunzie alone with her patient.

Orlig was one of the largest specimens of his sub-group that Lunzie had ever seen. Her outstretched hand covered only his palm and third phalange of his fingers. She had no idea what she would do if he went out of control.

"Fardling lightweights," he snarled, thrashing. Lunzie jumped back out of range as his swinging arm just missed her and smashed onto the deck. "Set me up to die! I'll kill them!" The arm swept up, fingers curved like claws, ripping at the air, and smashed down again, shaking the deck. "All of them!"

Nervous but equally determined not to let her fear of heavyworlders keep her from treating one in desperate need of her skills, Lunzie approached to take a bod bird reading. According to that, Orlig was bleeding internally. He had to be sedated and treated before he haemorrhaged to death.

She couldn't fix his arm while he was banging it around like that. The bod bird was inconclusive on the point of neural trauma. She would have to take her chances. She programmed a hefty dose of sedative and applied the hypogun to the nearest fleshy part of the thrashing man. Orlig levered himself up when he felt the injection hiss against his upper arm and snarled bare-toothed at Lunzie. The drug took speedy effect and his arms collapsed under him. He fell to the deck with a bang.

Still shaking, Lunzie began debriding his wounds and slapping patches of synthskin on them. Shards of metal had been driven into his flesh through the heavy fabric of the jumpsuit. The goggles had spared his eyes though the plasglas lens were cracked. What with flying debris and the force of the explosion, the man was lucky to be alive. She tried to think which ship's system could have blown like that.

Unbelievably, Orlig started moving again. How could he move? She'd given him enough sedative to sleep six shifts. Lunzie worked faster. She must unseal the upper half of his jumpsuit to repair his wounds. The fabric was so heavy she got mired in the folds of it. Then in a restless gesture, he jerked his arm and sent Lunzie stumbling across the room.

Lunzie crawled back to him and gathered her equipment together in her lap. She programmed the hypo for another massive dose of sedative and held it to the heavyworlder's arm. Just as she was about to push the button, Orlig's small eyes opened and focused on hers. His gigantic hand closed around her hand and wrist, immobilizing her but not hurting her.

He'll kill me! Lunzie thought nervously. She drew in a breath to yell for help from the struggling engineers at the broken wall.

"Who are you?" he demanded, bringing the other fist up under her face.

Lunzie kept her voice low out of fear. "My name is Lunzie. I'm a doctor."

Orlig's eyes narrowed, but the fist dropped. "Lunzie? Do you know a Thek?"

He's raving, Lunzie thought. "Orlig, please lie back. You were badly injured. I can't treat you if you keep thrashing about. Let go of my hand." Sometimes a firm no-nonsense voice reassured a nervous patient.

His fist grabbed her up by the neck of her tunic. "Do you know a Thek?"

"Yes. Tor."

Subtly the heavyworlder's attitude altered. He swivelled his head around to glare at the bustling crowd of workers and technicians, and wrinkled his nose at the sewage, now being mopped up.

"Then get me out of here. Someplace no one would expect to find me." With that he let her go and sagged to the floor.

Lunzie shouted for a gurney and waited by Orlig until it came. She sent an emergency crewman back for a grav lift so that she could manage the gurney herself in spite of Orlig's mass. He snarled when the crewman came a centimeter closer to him than necessary. He had to be in considerable pain with those wounds. She wondered just why he was braving it out. Without any help he somehow rolled his mangled body onto the gurney.

"Get me out of here," he muttered, eyes glittering with pain and an underlying fear that he permitted her to glimpse.

Operating the anti-grav lift, she guided the gurney out of the interface area, through one hatch, running along beside her patient and up a freight turbovator.

"Anybody following?" he demanded urgently, gripping her hand in his huge fingers.

"No, no one. Not even a rat."

He grunted. "Hurry it up."

"This was all your idea." But then she saw what she was looking for, one of the small first-aid stations that were located on every deck and section, usually for routine medichecks, contagion isolation quarters, or treatments that didn't require stays in the main infirmary.

Once the door slid shut behind them, Orlig grinned up at her.

"Krims, but you lightweights are easy to scare." He surveyed the room with a searching glance as Lunzie positioned the gurney by the soft-topped examination table which doubled as a hospital bed when the sides were raised. He raised a hand as Lunzie started toward him with the hypo. "No, no more sedatives. I'm practically unconscious now."

Lunzie stared at him. "I thought you must be immune to it."

Orlig grimaced. "I had to use pain to stay awake. Someone rigged that wall to fall on me. They want me dead."

With a sigh, Lunzie recognized the classic symptoms of agoraphobic paranoia. She put away the hypospray and held up the flesh-knitter.

"Well, I'm a doctor and as I've never seen you before, I have no urge to kill you." Yet, she thought. "And since you heavyworlders are such big machismo types, I'll sew you into one piece again in front of your eyes. Does that relieve your mind?"

"Coromell didn't say you'd be so dumb. Doctor."

Lunzie nearly dropped the piece of equipment in her hands. "Coromell?" she repeated. "First you want to know my Thek acquaintances, now you're throwing the Admiralty at me. Just who are you?"

"I work for him, too. And I've got some information that he's got to have. This isn't the first attempt on my life. I've been trying to figure out a legitimate reason to contact you. But I had to be careful. Couldn't have suspicion fall on you..."

"Like a wall fell on you?" Lunzie put in.

"Yeah, but it's working out just right, isn't it? I can't risk this information getting lost." He groaned. "I tried to get in touch with Tor. I think that's where I blew it. Us heavyworlders don't generally seek out Theks." He winced. "All right, I think I'll accept a local anaesthetic now you're playing tinkertoy with my ribs. It feels like meteors were shot through it. What's it look like?"

Lunzie peered at his chest and ran the bod bird over it. "Like you got meteors shot through it. I might be able to reach Tor without anyone suspecting me. I don't know why, but it likes me."

"Few are as lucky. But you've got to find the right Thek without asking for it by name. That's the hard part. They all look alike at the size they fit on the ARCT. Look..." Orlig's voice was weaker now as shock began to seep through his formidable physical stamina. He fumbled in his left ear, tilting his head. "Fardles. You got something like tweezers? That wall must've knocked it down inside."

"What am I looking for?"

"A message brick." He turned his head so she had the best angle for the search.

"You might have irreparably damaged your hearing," she said, disapprovingly as she finally retrieved the cube.

"It fit. It was safe," Orlig replied, unpenitent. "If you can't get to Tor, wait until Zebara gets back. You can tell him to check out AidkisagI VIII, the Seti of Fomalhaut. The cube gives him the rest of the pertinent details."

"The Seti of... their head of government?" Lunzie's voice rose in pitch to a surprised squeak.

"Shh! Keep it down!" Orlig hissed. "Whoever rigged that wall to blow may be looking for me now he knows he failed to kill me."

"Who?"

Orlig rolled his eyes at her naivete.

"Sorry."

"Wise up, gal, or you can end up like me. And you couldn't stand a wall felling on you." His voice was now a thin trickle of sound.

She tucked the cube into her soft ship boot. "Tor or Zebara. Count on me. Now, I stop being courier and start being medic."

Just as she finished and had him plas-skinned, his eyes sagged shut. The sedative and shock were finally overwhelming him.

"You're safe now," Lunzie murmured. "I'll pull the food synthesiser within your reach so you don't have to get up if you're hungry or thirsty. I'll lock the room so that no one can get in. And I'll knock if I want to come in."

,. Orlig nodded sleepily. "Use a password. Say 'ambrosia.' That way I'll know if it's you or someone you sent."

"That particular word keeps getting me in trouble. I'll use 'whisky' instead." As soon as she sealed the infirmary door, Lunzie immediately went back to her compartment to change out of her bloodstained clothes. She kept the cube in her boot but decided to attach her Fleet ID disk against her skin under her clothes. It was safer to keep it on her person than to risk someone finding it among her possessions. Orlig's "accident" brought a resurgence of her paranoia. Too many odd things happened to couriers of messages to Coromell.

"How's the patient?" Truna called to her as Lunzie returned to the common room. The technician and her assistants were sitting slumped over a table with steaming mugs in their hands.

"As well as can be expected for a man who's been knocked about by a bulkhead blowing out on him," Lunzie answered, programming a cup of coffee for herself. "How'd repairs go?"

"We got the wall temporarily put together again. It's going to take at least a few days to recreate the components needed to replace the damaged systems. Those circuits got truly fried!" Truna said, taking a deep drink from her mug. The woman's eyes were puffy and rimmed with red.

"What caused the explosion?" Lunzie asked, settling down at the table with the others. As soon as she sat, she realised how sore her muscles were from dealing with Orlig and his injuries.

"I was about to ask you. Could Orlig tell what happened?"

"Not really," Lunzie nodded. "He was too shocked to be lucid. Though come to think of it, he rabbited on about the chem lab. Could something have been flushed away that shouldn't be and detonated in the pipe?"

"Well, the waste pipes sure were blown into a black hole," Truna agreed. "I'll check with the biochemistry section on the ninth level. They use that disposal system. Thanks for the suggestion."

"Will Orlig recover?" a crewman asked.

"Oh, I expect so," Lunzie replied offhandedly. "Even heavyworlder physiques get bent out of shape from time to time. He'll be sore a while."

Lunzie sat with Truna and her crew for a short time, chatting and encouraging them to share their experiences with her. All the time she was apparently listening, she was wondering how she could get to Tor or how long it would be before "someone" discovered that Orlig wasn't in the infirmary. Then her thoughts would revolve back to the astonishing information that a Seti of Fomalhaut was involved in planetary piracy. That news would rock a few foundations. That was what Orlig had implied. Well, Seti were known to take gambles. The stakes would be very high, if the Phoenix affair had been any guide.

In the back of her mind, she ran scenarios on how to track down Tor. First she'd have to find out where the Theks were quartered. She couldn't just list it all on the ARCT e-mail channel.

"I must check up on my patient," she told the environment engineers she'd dined with. "I left him alone to sleep, but he's probably stirring again."

"Good idea," Truna said. "Tell him I hope he heals soon."

She took a circuitous route to Orlig but saw no one obviously following her.

"It's Lunzie," she announced in a low voice, tapping on the infirmary door with her knuckles. "Um, oh, whisky."

The door slid back noiselessly on its track. Orlig was behind it, clutching his injured ribs tenderly in one arm. "I wondered how long it was gonna be before you came back. I haven't been able to relax. Even with that sleep-stuff you shot into me I tossed and turned."

Lunzie pushed him into a chair so she could check the pupils of his eyes. "Sorry. That happens sometimes in shock cases. The sedative acts as an upper instead of a downer. Let me try you on calcium and L-tryptophane. It's an amino acid which the body does not produce for itself. Those should help you sleep. You don't have any sensitivities to mineral supplements, do you?"

"You sure don't know much about heavyworlders, do you? I have to pop mineral supplements all the time to keep my bones from crumbling in your puny gravity." Orlig produced a handful of uncoated vitamin tablets from a singed belt pouch and poured them into her palm.

Lunzie analysed one with the tracer. "Iron, copper, zinc, calcium, magnesium, boron. Good. And I'll see to it that the amino acid is added to your food for the next few days. It will help you to relax and sleep naturally."

"Look, while you were gone, I thought of something to get the bugger that's after me. You can noise it about that I was critically injured and may not live," Orlig suggested grimly. "Maybe I can trick my assassins into the open. Let them think they have another chance at me while I'm weak."

"That's not only dangerous but plain stupid," Lunzie replied but he gave her such a formidable look, she shrugged in resignation. "You're healing but your injuries were severe. You may think you're smart but right now you've little stamina to get into a fight. Give yourself a chance to regain your strength. Then you can be moved to the infirmary - and at least have assistance near at hand when you try a damfool scheme like that."

"I'll handle this my own way," Orlig said brusquely. "Out. I want to go to sleep." He sat down on the examination bed and swung his legs up, ignoring her.

Irritated by his dismissal, Lunzie left. The door shut behind her, with the double hiss that meant the seals were being put on. What they had both forgotten was that Lunzie was the medic on record attending that accident. The CMO asked for a report on the status of the victim. Lunzie filled out the requisite forms but asked the CMO to keep it secure.

"The man's suffering from a mild paranoia."

"Don't think I'd blame him with a wall blowing out like that. Those heavyworlder vendettas are costly."

"I've put him in one of the small treatment rooms. He felt safer there, but I'm trying to get him to transfer to the infirmary. He'd be safer from retaliation here."

Her next visit was brief, too. Orlig was improving so much that he had a raging case of cabin fever, and exploded at Lunzie.

"Why haven't you passed that brick on to Tor? What in the comet's tail are you waiting for?"

"I suppose I should just list it on the Bulletin Board that Lunzie Mespil, medic, wishes to speak with Thek Tor?" Lunzie snapped back tartly. "You told me not to draw attention to myself so I'm not."

"I risked my life for that information. You light-weights think you're so smart - well, think up a plausible reason but pass that information on."

"When circumstances permit!"

That began a screaming argument in which, to her surprise, Lunzie managed to hold her own. In retaliation, Orlig threw a few very personal insults at her that questioned her parentage and personal habits, and showed an intimate knowledge of the details of her life. Had Coromell actually given him access to her file? Shocked and offended, she marched out, vowing that it would be a warm and sunny day midspace before she'd go back.

Three more shifts passed. Lunzie felt guilty for having lost her temper with Orlig. He was as much under strain as she was, and it was wrong to indulge in a petty fit of temper at his expense. She returned to the infirmary and tapped on the door.

"Orlig? It's Lunzie. Oh, whisky! Orlig? Let me in."

She tapped at the doorplate and the door swung partly in. It was neither locked nor sealed. Startled, Lunzie leaned cautiously forward to investigate. The chamber was dark inside, reeking with a peculiar, heavy smell. She passed her hand over the panel for lights, and jumped back, gasping at what she saw.

There had been a fight. Most of the furniture was smashed or bent, and there were smears of blood on the walls. The sink had been torn out of the wall and stuffed halfway into the disposer unit. The equipment cabinets were smashed open, with their contents strewn throughout the chamber. Still attached to the wall, the shattered hand dryer sputtered fitfully to itself, dropping hot sparks.

Orlig lay sprawled on the floor. Guiltily Lunzie thought for a moment that internal bleeding had begun again. The cause of death was all too evident. Orlig had been strangled. His face was darkened with extravasated blood, and his eyes bulged. She had seen death before, even violent death. But not ruthless murder.

The marks of opposable digits were livid on the dead man's windpipe. Someone with incredible strength had thrown Orlig all over the room before pressing him to the ground and wringing his neck. Lunzie felt weak.

Only another heavyworlder could have done that to Orlig. And she'd thought that he was the biggest one on the ARCT-10. So who? And what did that person know or suspect about her? She checked the door to see how the killer had forced its way. But there was no sign of a forced entry. The seals were unsecured. Orlig had let his assailant into the room himself. Had the killer followed her, undetected, and overheard her use the agreed password? Or had Orlig overestimated his own returning strength and cunning? Sometimes being a lightweight was an advantage - you found it easier to recognise physical limitations.

If the murderer should decide to eliminate Orlig's medic on the possibility that the dead man had passed on his knowledge, she was once again in jeopardy from heavyworlders. How long had Orlig been dead? How much more "safety" did she have left?

"I've got to get off this ship. Just finding Tor and passing on that brick are not going to be the answer. But how?"

First she had to report the death to the CMO, who was appalled by the murder but not terribly surprised.

"These guys are temperamental, you know. Strangest things set off personal vendettas." But the CMO could and did slam a security lock on the details.

Since the CMO didn't ask more details from her, Lunzie ventured none. Enough people had seen Orlig manhandle her after the accident so that she would seem an unlikely recipient of any confidences. But she wouldn't rest easy on that assumption. She continued to feel vulnerable. To her own surprise, she felt more anger than fright.

She did take the precaution of attaching her personal alarm to the door of her cubicle at night. She was cautious enough to stay in a group at all times.

"They wanted me to find him, that's clear," Lunzie mused blackly as she went about her duties the next day. "Otherwise, they'd have stuffed the body into the disposer and let the recycling systems have it. His absence might even have passed without any notice. Maybe I should grumble about patients who discharge themselves without medic permission." She doubted that would do any good and scanned the updates on mission personnel with an anxious eye. Surely she could wangle the medic's spot on the next one. Even if she had to pull out her FI ID.

CHAPTER Twelve

"It's Ambrosia," was her greeting from those in the common room the next morning. She recoiled in shock. "It's Ambrosia!" people were chorusing joyfully. "It really is Ambrosia."

Lunzie was stunned to hear the dangerous statement delivered in a chant, taken up by every new arrival.

"What's Ambrosia?" she demanded of Nafti, one of the scientists. He grabbed her hands and danced her around the room in his enthusiasm. She calmed him down long enough to get an explanation.

"Ambrosia's a brand-new colonisable, human-desirable planet," Nafti told her, his homely face wreathed in idiotic delight. "An EEC Team's on its way in. The comlinks are oozing news about the most glorious find in decades. The team's called it Ambrosia. Believe it or not, an E-class planet, with a 3-to-l nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere and.96 Earth gravity."

Everyone was clamouring to hear more details but the captain of the EEC Team was wisely keeping the specifics to himself until the ARCT-10 labs verified the findings. Rumours ranged to the implausible and unlikely but most accounts agreed that Ambrosia's parameters made it the most Earthlike planet ever discovered by the EEC. Lunzie wasn't sure of her reaction to the news: relief that "It's Ambrosia" was now public information, or confusion. The phrase that had already cost lives and severely altered hers might have nothing at all to do with the new planet. It could be a ridiculous coincidence. And it could very well mean that the new planet might be the next target for the planetary pirates. Only how could a planet, which was now known to the thousands of folk on board the ARCT-10, get pirated out from under the noses of legitimate FSP interests by, if the past was any indication, even the most violent means?

The arrival of the Team meant more than good news to her. Zebara was the captain. A lot easier to find than that one Thek named Tor. She asked one of the communications techs to add her name to the queue to speak to Captain Zebara when he arrived. A moment's private conversation with him and she'd have kept faith with Orlig.

Like most of her plans lately, that one had to be aborted. When Captain Zebara arrived on board, he was all but mobbed by the people on the ARCT-10 who wanted to be first to learn the details of Ambrosia. Lunzie heard he'd had to be locked in the day officer's wardroom to protect him. Shortly afterward, an announcement was made by the exec officer that Zebara would speak to the entire ship from the oxygen-breathers' common room. With a shipwide and translated broadcast, everyone could share Zebara's news.

Lunzie waited with Coe amid a buzzingly eager audience packing the common room. There was a small flurry as the Team Captain entered the room. Lunzie peered around her neighbours, saw a head of fuzzy blond hair, and belatedly realised that the man towered a good foot above most of those in the surrounding crowd.

"He's a heavyworlder," she said, disbelievingly.

"Zebara's an okay guy," Grabone said, hearing the hostility in Lunzie's tone. "He's different. Friendly. Doesn't have the chip on his shoulder that most of the heavyworlders wear."

"He's also not from Diplo," added Coe. "He was raised on one of the heavyworld colonies which had a reasonably normal climate. I'd never thought climate had that much effect on folks, but he's nowhere near as bad as the Diplos."

Lunzie did not voice her doubts but Coe saw her sceptical expression.

"C'mon, Lunzie, he's a fine fellow. I'll introduce you later," Coe offered. "Zebara and I are old buddies."

"Thanks, Coe," Lunzie murmured politely. Zebara had a very catholic selection of friends if both Orlig and Coe were numbered among them.

"Wait, he's starting to speak."

Zebara was a good orator. He had a trick of smiling just before he let go of a piece of particularly encouraging data. His audience soon caught on and was almost holding its breath, waiting for the next grin. For a heavyworlder, whose features tended to be rough, Zebara was the exception, with a narrow face, a beaky, high-bridged nose and sharp blue eyes.

Lunzie decided that his composure was assumed. He was as excited as his listeners were about his subject.

"Ambrosia! Nectar of the gods! Air you want to drink as well as smell. Only it doesn't smell. It's there, light in the lungs, buoyant about you. This planet is fourth position out from a class-M sun, with a blue sky stretched over six small landmasses that cover only about a third of the surface. The rest is water! Sweet water. Hydrogen dioxide!" There was a cheer from the assembled as Zebara took a flask from his pouch and held it aloft. "There are of course trace elements," he added, "but nothing toxic in either the mineral content or the oceanic flora. No free cyanides. Two small moons far out and one large one close in, so there are some spectacular tides. There's a certain amount of vulcanism, but that only makes the place interesting. Ambrosia has no indigenous sentient life-forms."

"Are you sure?" one of the heavyworlder men in the audience shouted out.

Sentience was the final test of a planet; the EEC prohibited colonisation of a planet which already had an evolving intelligent species. "Brock, we've spent two years there and nothing we tested had an intelligence reading that showed up on any of the sociological scales. One of the insectoids, which we call mason beetles, have a complicated hive society but EV's are more interested in the chemical they secrete while hunting. It can melt solid rock. There's a very friendly species which my xenobiologist calls kittisnakes but they don't even have very much animal intelligence. There're a lot of pretty avians" - a squawk of alarm rose from the Ryxi scattered throughout the crowded chamber-"but no intelligent bird life." The squawks changed to coos. They were jealous of their position as the only sentient avians in the FSP.

Zebara threw the meeting open for questions, and a clamorous chorus of voices attempted to shout one another down.

"Well, this will take hours," Coe sighed. "Let's leave him a message and see him next shift."

"No," Lunzie said. "Let's stay and listen for a while. Then we'll go down and wait for him by the captain's cabin. I'm sure he'll go there next, to give the administrators a private debriefing."

Coe looked at her admiringly. "For someone who hasn't been with the EEC long, you sure figured out the process quickly."

Lunzie grinned. "Bureaucracy works the same way everywhere. Once he's thrown enough to the lower echelons to keep 'em happy, he'll be sequestered with the brass until he satisfies their curiosity."

They timed the approach perfectly, catching the heavyworlder as he emerged from the turbovator near the administrative offices.

"You came back in style from this one, didn't you, Zeb!"

"Coe! Good to see you." Zebara and the brown- skinned man exchanged friendly embraces. The big man reached down to pat the smaller one familiarly on the head. "I've got to talk to the bitty big bosses right now. Wait for me?"

"Sure. Oh, Zebara, this is Dr. Lunzie Mespil. She asked especially to meet you."

"Charmed, Citizen." Cold blue eyes turned to her.

Intimidated, Lunzie felt a chill go up her backbone. Nevertheless, she had a promise to keep. She thrust a hand at the heavyworlder who engulfed it in polite reaction. He felt the Fleet ID disk that she had palmed to him.

"Congratulations on your discovery. Captain. I had a patient recently who told me to see you as soon as you got back."

"As soon as the brass finish with me, Lunzie Mespil," he said, keenly searching her face. "That I promise you. Now if you'll excuse me... Lunzie Mespil." He gave her one more long look as he palmed the panel and let himself in.

"Well, he got your name right at least," Coe said, a bit sourly.

"Who can ignore the brass when it calls? I'll catch him later. Thanks for the intro, Coe."

"My pleasure," Coe answered, watching her face in puzzlement.

She left Coe there, right in the passageway, and went back to her cubicle to wait for a response from Zebara. The disk alone was tacit command for a private meeting. Why hadn't she anticipated that he might be a heavyworlder? Because you don't like heavyworlders, stupid, not after that Quinada woman. Maybe she should find Tor. She trusted Theks. Though why she did, she couldn't have said. They weren't even humanoid. Just the nearest thing we have to visible gods, that's all. Well, she was committed now, handshake, cryptic comments and all.

The passageway along which her space lay was almost empty, unusual for that time of day but she hardly noticed, except that no eyebrows or feather crests went up when she kicked a wall in frustration.

Both Coe and Grabone spoke well of Zebara, and they hadn't of any of the other heavyworlders. That said something for the man. If he's at all loyal to the EEC - but if he doesn't get back to me as soon as he's finished debriefing, I'm finding me a Thek named Tor.

Then something Zebara had said bobbed up in her thoughts. Zebara had been on Ambrosia for two years. Her first courier job had been less than a year ago, with Ambrosia the important feature. Had Zebara had an informant on his scout ship?

With such uncomfortable thoughts galling her, Lunzie let herself into her room and changed into a uniform tunic for her infirmary shift. She tossed the off-duty tunic into the synthesiser hatch, to be broken down into component fibres and rewoven, without the dirt. The cool, efficient function of the machine made her recall Orlig's body on the infirmary floor. Why had his killer left the body there? What had he expected her to do when she found it? Maybe she ought to have followed her initial impulse and run screaming from the little chamber, alerting everyone in earshot that she had found a murder victim. Maybe that would have been smarter. Maybe she'd outsmarted herself?

The communications panel chimed, breaking into her morbid reflections. It let out a click as an audio pickup was engaged somewhere on the ship.

"Lunzie," said the CMO's voice, "please respond."

She leaned over to slap the panel. "Lunzie here, Carlo."

"Where are you? There's a Brachian in the early stages of labour. She's literally climbing the walls. Someone said you were good with the species."

"Who said that?" Lunzie asked, surprised. She couldn't recall mentioning her gynaecological experiences with anyone on the ARCT-10.

"I don't know." That didn't surprise her, for the Chief was notoriously bad at remembering names. "But if you are, I need you ASAP."

"I'm on my way, sir," she answered, fastening the neck of the tunic. Anyone would be a more capable midwife for a Brachian than the Chief.

Lunzie slipped into the empty corridor. Her quick footsteps echoed loudly back to her in the long empty metal corridor even though she was wearing soft-soled boots. Where was everyone? She had neighbours on both sides who had small children. Probably all were still in the common room, rehashing Zebara's talk. There wasn't a spare sound within earshot, just the swish-thump swish-thump of her step. Curious, she altered her pace to hear the difference in the noise she made. There was a T-intersection just ahead. It would pick up the echoes splendidly. Abruptly, she lengthened her stride and the swish grew shorter and faltered. That wasn't an echo of her own step. There was someone behind her, carefully matching her.

She spun to see a human male, half a head taller than she, about ten paces behind her. He was a burly man, with brassy brown hair and a wide, ape-like jaw.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

The man only grinned at her and moved to close the distance between them, his hands menacingly outstretched. Lunzie backed away from him, then turned and ran toward the intersecting corridor. Letting out a piercing whistle, the man dashed after her.

He couldn't be Orlig's killer, she thought. He wasn't big enough to have strangled the heavyworlder. But he was big enough to kill her if she wasn't careful. She initiated the Discipline routine, though running was not the recommended starting position. She needed some time. Lunzie thought hard to remember if either corridor ended in a dead end. Yes, the right-hand way led to a thick metal door that housed a supplementary power station. She veered left. As she rounded the corner, a gaudily coloured female Ryxi appeared, stalking toward her.

"Help me," Lunzie panted, indicating the man behind her. "He intends me harm."

The Ryxi didn't say anything. Instead, she jumped back against a bulkhead and stuck out a long, skinny leg. Lunzie tried to hurdle it but the Ryxi merely raised her foot. Lunzie fell headlong, skidding on the metal floor into the wall.

Who would have expected the avian to be a human's accomplice? She'd been well and truly ambushed. Her vision swimming from her skid into the hard bulkhead at the end of her spin, she walked her hands up the wall, trying to regain her feet. Before she was fully upright, strong hands grabbed her from behind.

Automatically, Lunzie kicked backwards, but her blow was without real force. She got a rabbit punch in the back of her neck for her pains. Her head swam and her knees sagged momentarily under her. Discipline! Where were all those Adept tricks she'd so carefully practiced?

"Watch it, Birra, she thinks she's tough."

The man's voice was gloating as they turned her around, keeping a tight grip on her upper arms. Dazed, Lunzie struggled. She tried again for Discipline but her head was too fuzzy. The Ryxi was very tall for her species and the muscle masses at the tops of her stalky legs were thick and well corded. She lifted one long-toed foot and wrapped it around Lunzie's leg, picking it up off the ground. Lunzie, leaning her weight on her assailant's arms, kicked at the Ryxi, trying to free herself.

She began to scream loudly, hoping to attract the attention of anyone living on the corridor. Where was everyone?

"Shut up, space dust," the man growled. He hit her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her.

That shut off Lunzie's cries for help but left one of her arms free. She deliberately let herself fall backwards to the deck, twisting out of the Ryxi's grip. She scissored a kick upward at the Ryxi's thin leg and felt her boot jar against its bone. With a squawk of pain, Birra jerked away, clutching her knee. The man dove forward and kicked out at Lunzie's ribs. Clumsily, Lunzie rolled away.

"Kill herrr," the Ryxi chirred angrily, hopping forward on one foot. "Kill her, Knorrrradel, she has hurrt me."

The man kicked again at Lunzie who found that she had trapped herself against the bulkhead. The Ryxi raked her clawed foot down Lunzie's shoulder and attempted to close the long toes around the human woman's throat. Lunzie curled her knees up close to protect her belly and chest and tried to wrench apart the knobby toes with both hands. It was getting harder to breathe and the talons were as tough as tree roots under her useless fingers. Lunzie felt the bruised patch on the side of her head beginning to throb. A black haze was seeping into her vision from that side. She knew she was about to lose consciousness. The man laughed viciously and kicked her in the side again and brought his foot down against her upraised left arm. The bone snapped audibly in the empty corridor. Lunzie screamed out what little air remained in her lungs.

He raised his foot again - and to her relief and amazement, the surge of adrenaline evoked by fear and pain awoke Discipline.

Ruthlessly ignoring the break in her forearm, she grasped the Ryxi's toes in her hands. With the strength of Discipline she pulled them apart and up, and twisted the leg toward the avian's other limb. Ryxi had notoriously bad knees. They only bent forward and outward, not inward. The Ryxi, caught off balance, opened her claw wide, searching for purchase. The creature fell against the man, knocking him off balance before she collapsed in a heap of swearing, colourful feathers to the deck.

In one smooth move, the human doctor was on her feet, en garde, two metres from her would-be assassins. Her mind was alert now as, her chest heaving like a bellow, she coolly summed up her opponents. The Ryxi was more adaptable; she had already proved that by countering Lunzie's moves, but Lunzie knew the avian body's weak point and there wasn't room enough in this corridor for the avian to fly. Though the human was more powerful than Lunzie, he wasn't a methodical fighter.

Lunzie's recovery surprised Knoradel. That gave her her first advantage. She didn't want to kill them unless as a last resort. If she could disable them, knock them unconscious or lock them up, she could get to safety. Curling her good hand to stiffen the edge, Lunzie feinted forward at the man. Automatically, rather than consciously, his hands balled into fists. He danced backward, one leg forward, and one back. So he'd had some martial arts training - but not the polish of Discipline.

Lunzie had the edge on him. Her left hand, deprived of muscle tension because of the snapped bone, was beginning to curl into a claw. She curved the other hand so it looked as though she had two good ones. She had to get away from her assailants before the adrenaline wore off and she would again feel the pain. As long as it looked as if the broken bone hadn't affected her at all, Knoradel would be disconcerted.

The Ryxi was also on her feet again. Lunzie had to take care of the man before dealing with the wily avian and her long reach. He was sweating. His ambush plan had gone wrong and he hadn't the brains or experience to adapt. Lunzie feinted left, then right, then a double left, which made Knoradel unconsciously step in front of his cohort to counter Lunzie's moves. When he was just far enough in front of the avian to block her attack, Lunzie spun backwards in a swift roundhouse kick. It took the man squarely under the chin and flung him against the wall. His head snapped back, connecting with the metal bulkhead with a hearty boom! He slid down to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head. If Lunzie could dispatch the Ryxi quickly, Knoradel wouldn't be able to chase her.

But Birra stepped swiftly into the fray as soon as her partner was out of her path. She was relying on her clawed feet and the heavy expanse of her wings with their clawed joints as weapons, keeping the delicate three-fingered manipulative extremity at the tips of her wings folded out of danger. Lunzie fought to grab at one of those hands, knowing that Birra would be thrown off guard to protect them.

"You wingless mutant," Birra hissed shrilly, raking at Lunzie's belly with one claw. It tore her tunic from the midriff to the hem as Lunzie jumped back out of the way. She countered immediately with a sweep kick at the avian's bony knees. As the avian moved to guard herself, Lunzie grabbed the fold of a wing that flapped above her head, threw an arm across Birra's body, and flipped her.

Automatically, the wings opened out to save the Ryxi. Birra shrieked as her hands rammed against the walls of the narrow corridors. Her wingspan was too great. Swiftly, she folded her pinions again, with the single deadly claws at their center joints arching over her shoulders at Lunzie. She pecked at the medic with her sharp beak. Lunzie drew up her crossed hands to block the blow and knocked the avian's head up and back.

"Fardles, I really hate to do this to you," she said apologetically. With both hands balled into fists, she smashed them in under Birra's wings against the avian's exposed rib cage. Wincing, she felt the deli- cate bones snap.

The Ryxi shrieked, her voice carrying into higher and higher registers as she clawed and flapped blindly at Lunzie.

"You're still ambulatory," Lunzie said, moving backward and countering the attack. "If you get to a medic right away he can set those bones so you don't puncture a lung. Let me go, or I'll be forced to keep you here until it's too late."

"Horrible biped! You lie!" Birra cradled one wounded side, then the other. She was gasping, beak open.

"I'm not lying. You know I'm a doctor. You knew that when you were sent to attack me," Lunzie threw back. "Who told you to attack me?"

The Ryxi gasped with fury, and clenched both wings against her midsection. "I die." Her round black eyes were starting to become glassy and she rocked back and forth.

"No!" Lunzie shouted. "You daft bird."

The Ryxi was going into shock. She was no longer a danger to Lunzie but she might put herself into a lethal coma. Disgusted to be caught by the moral dilemma, Lunzie limped to the nearest communications panel and hit the blue stud.

"Emergency, level 11. Code Urgent. Emergency involving a Ryxi. Rib cage injury, going into shock. Emergency." Lunzie turned away from the panel. "Someone will be here in minutes. I meant to inflict no lasting damage on you but I'm not staying around in case the person who gave you your orders shows up first. You will keep my name out of an investigation, won't you? Good luck."

The Ryxi rocked back and forth rhythmically, ignoring Lunzie as she slipped through the access hatch to the stairs at the end of the corridor.

Impatiently Lunzie tapped out the sequence of the officers' lounge. She couldn't go there, even with an overlarge smock covering the shreds of her blood-stained uniform. But she prayed to all the gods that govern that Zebara was available. The adrenaline of Discipline was wearing off and she would soon be caught by the post-Discipline enervation. She had to hand over the cube ASAP.

"Officers' lounge." To her infinite relief she recognized Lieutenant Sanborn's bright tenor voice.

"Is Captain Zebara here?" she asked, trying to sound medium casual. "It's Lunzie Mespil. Something's come up and I need a word with him."

"Yes, he just came in from the brass meeting. Having a drink and he needs it, Lunzie. Is this really urgent?"

"Let him judge. Just tell him I'm standing by, would you. Lieutenant?" She wanted to add, "like a good boy and go do as mother asks" but she didn't.

"Right you are," Sanborn replied obligingly.

She fidgeted, blotting blood from the wound on her temple. The flesh was awfully tender: she'd shortly have a massive haematoma and there weren't many ways to conceal that obvious a bruise. What was taking Sanborn so long? The lounge wasn't that big.

"Zebara." He announced himself in a deep voice that made the intercom rattle. "I'd just placed a call to your quarters. Where are you?"

"Hiding, Captain, and I need to see you as soon as possible." She heard him sigh. Well, he might as well get all the bad news at once. "First they dropped a wall on Orlig, then they strangled him while I had him stashed in a nice out-of-the-way treatment room. I've just had an encounter with a life-seeking duet and I'd like to transfer the incriminating evidence before my demise."

"Where are you?" he repeated.

She gave him the deck, section and corridor.

"How well do you know this vessel?"

"As well as most. Medics need to get places in a hurry."

"Then I suggest you get yourself to Scout Bay 5 by the best way and wait for me. I certainly have a good reason to return to my ship. Over and out."

His crisp voice steadied her. In the first place it had none of the soggy mushmouth tones that most heavyworlders seemed to project. His suggestion was sensible, keeping her out of the way of anyone likely to see her, and surely the scout ship would be the last place "they" would expect her to go.

She took the emergency shafts down to the flight decks, assisted by the half-gee force at which they were kept. She got the wrong bay the first time she emerged into the main access corridors, but they were empty so she continued on to Five. He entered from the main turbovator and didn't so much as slow his stride as he caught her by the arm. He pulled out a small com-unit and mumbled into it as he half carried her up the ramp into the not-so-small scout ship.

"You got rightly messed up if your face is any indication," he said, pausing in the airlock to examine her. He twitched away the large coat and his eyebrows rose. "So they got Orlig. What have you got?"'

"One of those neat little message bricks which had better go forward to its destination with all possible speed."

"There's usually a phrase to go with a brick?" He arched an eyebrow in query. It gave him a decidedly satanic look.

"I'm paranoid at the moment. I keep thinking people are trying to kill me." Her facetiousness brought a slight smile to his face.

"We'll get your message off and then maybe you'll trust this heavyworlder. Come!"

He took her hand and led her through the narrow corridors of the scout vessel to the command deck. A centimetre less on each side and the ceiling, Lunzie thought, and he wouldn't fit. Then he handed her into a small communications booth, slid the panel shut and went on into the bridge. She sat down dazed while he spoke briefly to the heavyworlder woman on duty. She instantly swung around with a grin to Lunzie and made rapid passes over her com board.

"This is a secure channel," she said, her voice coming through a speaker in the wall. "Just insert the brick in the appropriate slot in front of you. They're usually constructed to set the coding frequency. I'm shutting down in here." She pulled off her earpiece and held up both hands. For a heavyworlder, she had a very friendly grin.

Lunzie fumbled with the brick but finally got it into the slot which closed over it like some weird alien ingesting sustenance. There was no indication that anything was happening. Abruptly the slot opened, spitting the little brick out. As she watched, the thing dissolved. It didn't steam or smoulder or melt. It just dissolved and she was looking at a small pile of black dust.

She sent the communications officer the finger-thumb 0 of completion and sagged back with a deep sigh of relief. Zebara rose from his seat next to the com-tech and came around the doorway into the tiny chamber where Lunzie was seated.

"Mission completed in the usual pile of dust, I see," he said and swept it off onto the floor. Then he took a handful of mineral tablets from his pocket and popped a couple into his mouth.

Lunzie looked up at him limply. "I thank Muhlah!"

"And now we're going to do something about you." He sounded ominous.

Lunzie tensed in a moment of sheer panic which had no basis whatsoever except that Zebara was pounding on the quartz window with one massive palm.

"Flor, tell Bringan to get up here on the double. You look like hell, Lunzie Mespil. Sit tight for the medic."

Lunzie forced herself to relax when she noticed Zebara regarding her with some amusement.

"So what do we do about you?" he asked rhetorically. "Even on a ship as huge as the ARCT-10, you can't really be safely hidden. You escaped once but you are unquestionably in jeopardy." She wished he would sit down instead of looming over her. "Did you get a look at your assailants?"

"A Ryxi female named Birra and a human male she called Knoradel." She rattled off physical descriptions. "The Ryxi has a crushed rib cage. I left a few marks on the man."

"They shouldn't be too hard to apprehend," Zebara said and depressed a toggle on the board. She heard him giving the descriptions to the Ship Provost. "You won't object to remaining here until they have been detained? No? Sensible of you." He regarded her for a long moment and then grinned, looking more like a predatory fish than an amused human. "In fact, it would be even more sensible if you didn't go back to the ARCT-10 at all."

"In deep space there aren't many alternatives," Lunzie remarked, feeling the weakness of post-Discipline seeping through her.

"I can think of one." He looked at her expectantly and, when she didn't respond, gave a disappointed sigh. "You can come back to Ambrosia with us."

"Ambrosia?" Lunzie wasn't certain that the planet appealed to her at all.

"An excellent solution since you're already involved up to your lightweight neck in Ambrosian affairs. Highly appropriate. Assassins won't get another chance at terminating your life on any ship I command. I'll clear your reappointment with the ARCT-10 authorities."

Lunzie was really surprised. Somehow, she had not expected such positive cooperation and solicitousness from this heavyworlder. "Why?"

"You're in considerable danger. Partly because you gave unstinting assistance to another heavyworlder. I was well acquainted with Orlig. My people are beneficiaries of your risk as much as yours are. Do you have any objections?"

"No," Lunzie decided. "It'll be a great relief to be able to sleep safely again..' She was beginning to feel weightless, a sure sign that adrenaline exhaustion was taking hold.

Zebara grinned his shark's-tooth smile again, and crunched another tablet. "If Orlig's murder and the attempt on your life are an indication, and I believe they are, then Ambrosia may be in even more danger than I thought it was. Orlig was keeping his ears open for me on the ARCT, which was receiving and transmitting my reports. So we'd already had an indication that this plum would fall into the wrong paws. You confirm that. I came back to ask for military support to meet us there to stave off a possible pirate takeover until a colony can be legitimately installed with the appropriate fanfare. Relax, Lunzie Mespil."

"Thank you," Lunzie called faintly after him, the weight of her own indecision and insecurity sliding off her sagging shoulders now that someone believed her. She let her head roll back against the cushioned chair.

Soon, she became aware that someone was in the tiny cubicle with her.

"Ah, you're awake. Don't move too quickly. I'm setting your arm." A thickset man with red-blond hair cut short knelt at her side. "I'm Doctor Bringan. Normally I'm just the xenobiologist but I'm not averse to using my talents on known species. I run the checkups and bandage scratches for the crew. Understand you're signing on as medical officer." Very gently, he pulled her wrist and forearm in opposite directions. The curled fingers slowly straightened out. "That'll be a relief," he added with a welcoming smile. "I might just put the wrong bits together and that could prove awkward for someone."

"Um, yes," Lunzie agreed, watching him carefully. Mercifully the arm was numb. He must have given her a nerve block. "Wait, I didn't hear the bones mesh yet."

"I'm just testing to see if any of the ligatures were torn. No. All's well." Bringan waved a small diagnostic unit over her arm. "You were lucky you were wearing a tight sleeve. The swelling would have been much worse left unchecked."

"So I see," Lunzie said, eyeing the reddish wash along the skin of her arm which marked subcutaneous bleeding. It would soon surface as a fading rainbow of colours as the blood dispersed. She poked at the flesh with an experimental finger and, with curious detachment, felt it give. Bringan put the DU in his belt pouch and gave a deft twist to her arm. Lunzie heard the ulna and radius grate slightly as they settled into place.

"I'm going to put you in a non-confining brace to hold your bones steady. Won't interfere with movement and you can wash the arm, cautiously. Everything will be tender once the nerve block wears off." He flexed her fingers back and forth. "You should have normal range of motion in a few hours." Then he gave a snort of a chuckle and eyed her. "I should be telling you!"

She managed a weak, but grateful, smile. "Bringan, are we going to Ambrosia?"

The doctor raised surprised blond brows at her. "Oh, yes indeed we are. Myself, I can't wait to get back. Why, I intend to put in to settle here when I retire. I've never seen such a perfect planet."

"I mean, are we going soon?" She stressed the last word.

"That's what I meant." He gave her a searching look. "Zebara has told me nothing about you, or why you arrive looking like the survivor of a corridor war, but he logged you on FTL. So I can enjoy a few shrewd guesses, most of which include planet pirates." He winked at her. "Which gives the most excellent of reasons for burning tubes back there. The FSP needs witnesses on hand. Or maybe that's your role on our roster."

"I'll witness, believe you me, I'll witness," Lunzie said with all the fervour left in her depleted body.

Bringan chuckled as he gathered up his gear. "If we're delayed in any way, by any agency, I think Zebara would probably tank himself up and swim back shipless. He's allergic to the mention of pirates. And bloody piracy's turning epidemic. It seems to me that every time a real plum turns up in the last century, the pirates are there to wrest it away from the legitimate finders. With a sophisticated violence that makes alien creatures seem like housecats."