Chapter Two

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—i—

APPROACHING INNER SYSTEM WAS a matter of hours, at a high fraction of c.

Dumping that velocity while they could still graze the interface was a relatively easy matter.

Working at station-proximity speeds to get a high-mass freighter into a rotating station, on the other hand, was a tedious, nerve-wracking operation. Always be aware of the nearest take-hold point. Stay out of the lift except on business. Stay out of fore-aft corridors. Keep belted when seated or asleep.

Meaning that trim-ups might be rare when a long-hauler was following the computer-directed approach—no pilot flew docking by the seat of the pants—but stations were debris-generators, thick with maintenance and service traffic and escaped nuts, bolts and construction tiles, and, while in the zone of greatest risk a freighter pilot was no-stop, come hell or the Last Judgment, or absent anything but damage to the docking apparatus (meaning any pusher-jock in a freighter’s approach path was a bump and a noise and a gentle course-correction), the possibility of evasive maneuver did exist. That meant the children battened down in the cushioned Tube in the loft, in which they could take most any vector-shift; and crew off and on duty found themselves a definite place to Be for the duration.

Which in Marie’s case was her office; and in a junior computer tech’s, it was the bridge. Load the file, wait for the check, load another file, wait for the check.

It left too much time for said junior tech to think, between button punches, in his lowly station sandwiched in with seven other cousins at the tail of the bridge.

It left too much time to rehearse the session with Mischa, and the one with Marie, comparing those mental files for discrepancies, too, but you never caught them out that easily. They didn’t outright lie in nine tenths of what they told you. They were brother and sister. They had grown up conning each other. They’d learned it from each other if nowhere else. And they were good at it. He wasn’t.

Heredity, maybe. Like the temper Mischa said did him no favors. He was, if he thought about it, scared as hell, figuring Marie wasn’t done with double-crosses. Marie didn’t trust him.

And, when it came down to the bottom line, Marie would use him, he knew that in the cold sane moments when he was away from the temptation she posed to think of her as mama and to think he could change her. Get that approval (she always dangled) in front of him, always a little out of possible reach.

But nothing mattered more to Marie than dealing with that ship. And if Marie was right and she smelled something in the records that wasn’t right with Corinthian—you could depend on it that she’d been tracking them through every market and every trade she could access long-distance—she might have files down there in cargo that even Saja didn’t know about. Files she could have been building for years and years and never telling anyone.

Load and check, load and check. He could push a few keys and start wandering around Marie’s data storage—possibly without getting caught, but there were a lot of things a junior tech didn’t know. The people who’d taught him undoubtedly hadn’t taught him how to crack their own security: the last arcane items were for senior crew to know and mere juniors to guess. So it was load and check, load and check, while his mind painted disaster scenarios and wondered what Marie was up to.

Supper arrived on watch. The galley sent sandwiches, so a tech had one hand free to punch buttons with. Liquids were all in sealed containers.

On the boards forward in the bridge, the schemata showed they were coming in, the numbers bleeding away rapidly now they were on local scale.

A message popped up on the corner of his screen. At dock. See me. Marie.

—ii—

MARIE LEANED BACK FROM THE CONSOLE, seeing the Received flash at the corner of her screen. So the kid was at work. The message had nabbed him.

He’d arrive.

The numbers meanwhile added themselves to a pattern built, gathered, compared, over twenty-four years. How shouldn’t they? Corinthian was what it was, and no ship and no agency that hadn’t had direct and willing information from Corinthian itself could know as much about that ship as she did.

She knew where it traded, when it traded, but not always what it traded.

She knew at least seven individuals of the Perrault clan had moved in from dead Pacer, long, long ago. Pacer had had no good reputation itself, a lurker about the edges, a small short-hauler that, on one estimation, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time… and on another, had entirely deserved being at Mariner when it blew.

She knew that Corinthian took hired-crew, but it didn’t take them often or every voyage, or in great number. Hired-crew skuzzed around every station, most of them with egregious faults—tossed out of some Family, the worst of hire-ons, as a rule, or stationers with ambitions to travel, in which case ask what skills they really had, or the best of them, the remnant of war-killed ships. Sure, there were hired-crew types that weren’t out to cut throats, pick pockets, or mutiny and take a ship. But those were rarer, as the War generation sorted itself out.

Mutiny had never taken Corinthian. Which argued for a wary captain, a good eye for picking, or cosmic good luck.

Except that Corinthian rejects never turned up on dockside. And her crew spent like fools when they were in port—certainly hired-crew had reason to want to stay with Corinthian, and could count themselves well paid.

But nobody ever got off. Not that she’d found. Not, at least, in any crew record she’d found… and she’d searched—nothing to prevent any ship in any port from drinking down the hired-crew solicitations, and reviewing the backgrounds they’d admit to: had a program for that, too. And at Viking, where Corinthian had called frequently (since the second closing of the Hinder Stars, strange to say)—there were no Corinthian ex-crew. There might have been hires. But no one let off.

You couldn’t be so lucky as to get all saints, all competent, all devoted crewmen.

So what became of the rejects? There was still a commerce in human lives—rumor said; the same commerce as during the War, when the Mazianni had stopped merchanters and impressed crew. Rumor said… some ships that dealt with the Mazianni still traded surplus crew for a fair profit in goods, and therefore hired-crew had better watch what they hired-to.

The lurkers in the dark were certainly still out there. Accidents took ships—rarely, but accidents still happened, and ships still disappeared somewhere in the dark. Couldn’t prove that Corinthian in specific had anything to do with those rumored tragedies… but it had to get your attention. You had to realize… if you were in port with the likes of Corinthian, and if they knew you were on their trail… that your odds of accident had just gone higher, too.

You had to realize, if you were the only one aboard who wanted that son of a bitch’s hide, that certain members of the Family, less motivated and habitually more timid, would sabotage you, out of concern for their own lives.

So Tom was on her side. And Tom had talked to Mischa.

So Mischa had his spy.

Well, at least that meant walking out of the ship was easier.

—iii—

THE CENTRAL QUESTION, IN TOM’S mind, was how the clearance through customs was going to work—or, at least, how it was going to look.

If Mischa believed he was leaving the ship with Marie on his business, he’d get the permission fairly easily; but Mischa wasn’t supposed to know that he’d told Marie that Mischa had put him up to it, or he wasn’t supposed to know that Marie already knew all about it and they’d agreed to go diving in station records.

It was all too damned tangled, and he’d had word from Marie, which might or might not mean Marie accepted him at face value… or that Marie had been in contact with Mischa. He didn’t know—couldn’t know without asking questions that might bring Mischa and Marie head to head.

So he didn’t wait for official clearance to come to him from Mischa’s office. He excused himself off duty with Saja, telling Saja that Mischa had said see to Marie, and got Saja’s leave to go downside the minute Sprite locked into dock. He shut down his station, left his seat and rode the lift downside, leaving the cousins to wonder—and Saja to ask Mischa was it true, and Mischa to give the permission, granting Mischa hadn’t yet figured out that he’d gone over to Marie’s camp, and wouldn’t be reporting in.

He went to Marie’s office, found Marie talking with customs on com, a routine call he’d heard her make since he’d first sat in on her duty station—at six or seven, close to when Marie’d first taken him home. He’d thought all this exchange of numbers and origins and cargo data mysterious and impressive, then; he’d rated it tedious since—but now he listened to it in suspense, hoping for some clue to Marie’s intentions and dreading intervention from Mischa at any moment.

But nothing in the conversation sounded unusual, just Marie’s easy, crisp way with station officials, all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. Station, at least, showed no indication to them that Viking was in any way nervous about their presence. He didn’t hear any word of special security arrangements from station officials, didn’t hear any advisement from Marie whatsoever that there was a history between Sprite and a ship already in dock—just a welcome in from station, a little chatter of a friendly nature, a little exchange of names and procedures.

A free port meant no customs to speak of, the way he’d understood the briefing, at least not the usual meticulous accounting of goods carried in. There were rules, mostly about firearms and drug trading, and an advisement that long-haulers would be advised to stay clear of white sector.

Meaning out of the Viking local haunts, he supposed, the territory of Viking miners, dockers, construction personnel, and the occasional citizens who preferred the free and easy atmosphere of dockside to the pricier, fancier establishments above.

In that arrangement, Viking was no different than Fargone, where you didn’t go into insystemer bars and sleepovers unless you were truly spoiling for a fight.

“We copy that,” Marie said. “We’re a quiet lot. Thank you. Glad to be here, hope we can be a regular. We need to do some on-site consultation with the Trade Bureau. Can you tell me who to talk to?”

His ears pricked up. A name. Ramon French, Trade Bureau, Union Affairs. Marie made another call, said they’d been called in on short notice, hadn’t any Alliance figures, wanted access to the local Trade resource library, in the Bureau, which they’d had word at Mariner that they would be able to access under the new rules. They had to establish an account, had to take care of certain legalities. General crew would exit in about an hour after shut-down, but certain officers would as soon be through customs early so they could get the credit accounts established, could Viking arrange that?

There was a good deal of back and forth after that, on screen, Marie looking for something, the program, he supposed it was, searching at high speed through the records for the patterns it wanted, while Marie talked on the station line with m’ser French, secretary in the Viking Trade Bureau, about accounts, and arranging the data search.

“Good, good,” Marie said, signed off, and spun her chair about. “I take it you’re coming, Tommy-lad.”

“I guess I am,” he said, wondering if it was really going to be that simple to get off the ship. But Marie just closed down her boards, led the way down the corridor, and keyed them through the airlock.

He was appalled. You didn’t just… open the lock without the captain’s order. But nobody had the lock codes alarmed, evidently. Mischa had to know what Marie was likely to do, and Mischa hadn’t ordered any special security.

Which was one vote, he guessed, for Mischa having told him at least a quarter of the truth.

Which might bear on who was telling the rest of the truth… and whether he ought in fact to report back to Mischa. Scary proposition, to be first out of the ship… down the winding access, breath frosting, and out the station lock on the downward ramp.

He’d never gone through customs with Marie before. Maybe the easy attitude he saw in the officers was because Viking had just become a free port, whatever that exactly encompassed. Maybe it was just that senior crew on reputable ships didn’t get the once-over and question and warning juniors got in places like Mariner and Fargone. Marie got a wave-through from a uniformed officer, the only one visible, without even a kiosk set up, or a single glance at her papers. She said, “He’s with me,” and the customs official waved him past with her.

Amazing. He thought he could like being senior crew, if that was what it meant. And Viking might be a grim, utilitarian place, as grim and browned-steel as his childhood memory of this station, but if it meant wave-throughs from customs, and no standing in long lines of exiting crew, he thought he could like Viking port’s attitude.

Except for the other clientele.

—iv—

BERTH 19 ORANGE SECTOR WAS moderately convenient to Viking’s blue section, where the Trade Bureau maintained its offices, a long walk or a relatively comfortable ride on one of the slow-moving public transports. There was, uncommon on stations Tom was familiar with, plenty of sitting room on the transport benches. You stepped aboard—if you weren’t able-bodied you could flag it to a complete stop—and it also would do a full stop at any regular Section Center, but otherwise you just intercepted it when it made one of its scheduled rolling stops, stepped up as you grabbed the boarding rail, and stepped off the same way.

One of those full stops was, of course, the station offices in blue sector. Marie got up, as the stop came up. He waited beside her, hanging onto the rail until the transport slowed down. A crowd was waiting to board, confronting a good number getting off. You could always figure that blue would be the highest traffic area on the station, give or take the insystemer bars at maindark or alterdark shift-change, or the occasional concert or public event: blue held all the station business offices, the administrative offices, the main branches of all the banks, the embassies and trade offices, the big corporate offices, and the station media centers. You saw people in business suits, people in coveralls—half the crowd carried computers or wire-ins, pocket-coms, you could take your pick of accountants and security officers, official types—those usually in single cab-cars that wove in and out of foot traffic, and hazardously close to the ped-transports: step off without looking and you could get flattened.

Heart-stopping, close call, that, just then, cab and pedestrians, human noise of a sort you only heard in places this dense with people. It gave him the willies… just too many people, all at once, going in chaotic directions, not caring if they hit each other. Marie stepped off in the middle of it. He stepped off beside her, his eyes tracking oncoming traffic.

“Straight on,” Marie said, as if she’d had an inborn sense where things were—or maybe she’d checked the charts. He hadn’t. He really didn’t like the jostling and the racket—he’d looked all along the dockside they passed for Corinthian patches, or for any reaction at all from Marie, as if she’d seen something or might be looking for something other than what she said, but Marie was cold and calm, all business, Marie tolerated people shoving into them, which was steadier nerves than he had, and fell back as the crowd surged toward the stopped transport. He caught his balance as a man shoved him, looked around for Marie as the transport started to roll, with people still trying to grab the rails and board.

Marie was back on the transport.

People shoved past him in a last-moment rush for available deck-space. He elbowed back and tried to catch the boarding rail, but others were in front of him and the transport was gathering speed, faster and faster.

“Marie!” he yelled, knocked into a man in a suit, and into a rougher type, who elbowed him hard. He wasn’t interested in argument. He ran, chasing the transport in the wake it made in the crowd, knocked into a woman as they both made a frantic grab for the standing pole on the rear of the transport flatbed. He caught it, and clung to it.

The woman had gone down. Others were helping her up, he saw them diminishing as, having gained the platform, he spared the glance back. He hoped the woman wasn’t hurt. He didn’t know what else he could have done, and he’d made it.

Wobbly-kneed and out of breath, he excused himself past several pole-hangers on the standing-room-only transport, worked his way up to where Marie was standing, likewise holding to the pole.

She awarded him a cold glance.

“Dirty damned trick,” he panted. “I knocked a woman down, Marie! Where in hell do you think you’re going? Where’s this about appointments with Records?”

“Did I bring you up to be naive?”

“Dammit, you brought me up to tell the truth!”

“That’s to me. Don’t expect any favors from the rest of the universe. Why don’t you jump off at the next stop?”

“Because I didn’t lie to you! I want to help you! Can’t you take loyalty when you get it?”

“I take it. For what it’s worth.”

“God, Marie!” He couldn’t get his breath. He hung on to the pole as the transport swerved. “This is crazy!”

“I’m crazy. Hasn’t Mischa told you? Poor Marie’s just not that stable.”

“You’re acting like it!” There were people all around them, giving them room, determinedly avoiding their vicinity even standing shoulder to shoulder with them. He couldn’t get breath enough to argue. He felt crushed by the crowds. He clung to the pole with one hand, people sitting behind them, the dock business frontage passing in a blur. Green sector was coming after blue, where, according to what they’d seen coming in, Corinthian was docked. “Where are we going? The obvious?”

“Not quite,” Marie said, leaving him to wonder, because they couldn’t discuss murder on a crowded transport.

He didn’t want Marie arrested. Marie wasn’t going to give him an answer here anyway, and he wasn’t entirely sure, by that last answer and by Marie’s sarcasm about poor Marie and Mischa, that Marie wasn’t still on to something that didn’t involve attacking Corinthian bare-handed, or doing something that could get both of them… he recalled Mischa’s warning all too vividly, and had a sickly and immediate fear in the pit of his stomach… caught by station police and ground up fine in station law.

Held on station while the ship went on without them. Psych-adjusted, however far that went, until they didn’t threaten anyone.

Stationers wouldn’t kill you, no, they didn’t believe in the death penalty. When the psychs were through with you, you couldn’t even wish you had that option. That was what Marie was risking, and he shut up, because he didn’t know what the local law was; he didn’t know whether just suspicion of intent to commit a crime could get you arrested—it could, on Cyteen Outer Station, and he didn’t want to talk about specifics or name names with witnesses all around them. He just clung to the pole on the overcrowded transport, watched Marie for some evidence of an intent to bolt, and watched the numbers pass as they trundled along from blue dock, where the government and the military ships came in—a government contracted cargo didn’t entitle them—toward green dock, ordinary merchanter territory, closer and closer to Corinthian.

The transport stopped just before the green section doors. Three passengers got on, maybe ten or fifteen people got off. A transport passed going the other direction, and stopped near them. He stood ready to move in case Marie should try to lose him again, and go the other way around the station rim. But she stayed still, refused when he pointed out to her that there was a seat free. Someone else took it. Marie held to the pole, not saying anything, but sharp and eager and not at all distraught—happy, he kept thinking, uneasily, happy and alive to her surroundings in a way he’d never seen in his life.

They passed the section doors and rolled into green. He didn’t know Corinthian’s exact berth, but he had it pegged from the visual display as somewhere a third of the way into green out of blue.

He wasn’t ready for Marie’s hop off the transport as it slowed for a flag-down. He jumped, and tagged her quick pace along the frontage of bars and sleepovers, overtook her as she stopped and waited for him.

“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Marie, what are you doing? Tell me when you’re getting off!”

“The berth’s right down there,” Marie said, gazing down-ring, deeper into green. “They’re showing as offloading.”

He could see the orange light, but only a single transport was sitting, loaded, at the berth. “Not moving.”

“Taking their own time, for certain. I want a look at the warehouse and the company where that’s going. The transport logo says Miller.”

It sounded better than shooting at Corinthian crew. “What are we looking for, specifically?”

“What we can find. What they’re dealing in. “ She grabbed his sleeve and drew him back against the frontage of a trinket shop as a man walked past them. He was confused for a moment, looking for obvious threat on the man, but Marie didn’t let up.

“That’s a Corinthian patch. Corinthian officer.”

Sleeve-patch on the light green coveralls showed a black circle, an object he understood was some kind of ancient helmet. Crossed missiles. Spears. He’d learned that word from Marie. The patch had never looked half as much merchanter as military.

But, then, that described Corinthian to a tee.

And that might even be a cousin, striding along as if he owned the dock. Or a cousin’s shipmate, he amended the thought, considering that the slurs about hire-ons and sex as a pre-req for employment that he’d heard all his life from his cousins were probably entirely true. He found himself nervous, unaccountably afraid, even in this degree of proximity to the ship and a side of his life he didn’t want to meet.

“Come on,” Marie said, and tugged at his arm, urging him closer to that berth.

“No!” He disengaged, grabbed her arm and drew her back. “You said you’d settle with them in the market. You said you were looking for. something in the data.”

“Scared?”

“You can’t go down there, I won’t let you go down there.”

“Won’t let me?”

“I won’t. If they spot a Sprite patch, they’re going to be all over us. It’s crazy, Marie! If you can fix him through the market, do it, I’m with you, I’ll help you, but I’m not going to see you go down there and do something stupid!”

“I’m fine. What’s to worry about? Afraid to say hello to your father? I’m sure he’d be interested.”

The cousins who gave him trouble had nothing on Marie. “I doubt he knows I exist. Unless you know a reason for him to.”

“Interesting question.”

“Marie,—for God’s sake—”

“It’s not a problem, Tom, I don’t know why you’re making it a problem. We just go a little closer, have a look around…”

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Marie, what do you care now? After twenty years, for God’s sake, what could you possibly care about that man? I don’t. I don’t give a damn where he is, what he does, I don’t want to meet him, I don’t want to know anything about him.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No, I’m not afraid, but—”

“Liar yourself.”

“Do you want him to rule your life, Marie? Is what happened twenty years ago going to govern your whole damned career?”

Marie’s hand was in motion, and he’d gotten faster over the years. He blocked it. It stung, even so.

“Don’t you lecture me!” Marie hissed. “Don’t you lecture me, Thomas!”

“‘Bygones be bygones.’ Hell!”

He wasn’t looking for the second try. He didn’t intend the force of the hand that blocked it.

“Cut it out, Marie!”

“Don’t you lift a hand to me, don’t you ever lift a hand, you hear me? Damn you!”

“I said cut it out!” He intercepted the third try, realized he was holding too tight and let go. “I’m not him, dammit, Marie, I’m not him, God, stop—stop it, Marie!”

She got a breath. She was absolutely paper white, staring at him with white-edged eyes, mouth open—he was shaking. She could still do that to him, he didn’t know why, except that she could make him mad and that when he was mad he didn’t think. He could hit her in his temper and maybe hurt her, maybe want to hurt her, that was the fear that paralyzed him.

She got her breath. She stared at him. “Whose side are you on?”

“I didn’t know there was a side!”

“You damned well believe there’s a side! Don’t you talk to Mischa behind my back! I didn’t have to have you. I didn’t have to keep you. And what’s fair—what’s fair, Tom, your talking to Mischa, when Mischa never did one damned thing to help me, my own ship never did a damned thing to help me—like it was all my fault—”

“I know what you feel, Marie, I don’t blame you, but you don’t know—”

“You don’t know what I feel! You don’t know any part of what I feel. Don’t give me that!”

“I don’t want this ship to leave you in some station psych unit!”

“I’m not stupid, boy! Does Mischa think I’m stupid?”

“Mischa doesn’t have a damned thing to do with my being here, I’m here for you, Marie, for God’s sake, don’t act like this! Listen to me!”

“Get away from me!” She shoved him off, ran along the frontages, and he ran after her, caught her, but she started hitting him.

“Marie,—”

“Hey!” somebody said, a voice he didn’t know. Someone grabbed him hard from behind and shoved him, Marie broke and ran, and he was staring at an angry spacer a head taller and a good deal wider, yelling, “What’s your problem?”

“That’s my mother, dammit!”

The man grabbed him by the collar. “You treat your mama like that?”

“She’s in trouble! Let me go!”

“What trouble?”

“Let go!” He broke the hold and ducked, ran toward Corinthian’s berth, and stopped, having lost all sight of Marie. Someone came running behind him, and he swung around, held up both hands in token of peace, ducked the man’s attempt to grab him again.

“I’m telling you that’s my mother, it’s crew business, I’m not after a fight—just leave me the hell alone, she’s breaking regs, I got to find her!”

He shoved the man off, ran down the dock closer to Corinthian, hoping he’d find some hidey-hole Marie might have found—there were bars and he skidded into one, hoping for a service door—saw one, but it was behind the bar. He kited back along the wall as the damnfool spacer came in looking for him. He slipped out the door behind the man’s back, then ran down the row to the second bar over, and into the far dim back of the room, in case the man should give it another try. He was out of breath, hoped the man hadn’t called the cops. He saw a public phone and went to it—it was too far around the station rim to rely on the pocket-com. He punched in the universal number for ship-lines, Sprite’s berth at orange 19, then the internal number for bridge-corn.

“This is Tom Hawkins. Put me through to the captain, this is an extreme emergency.”

Mischa came on, immediately, with, “Where did she lose you?”

“Green 10,” he said, shamefaced. God, not even a What happened?

“Kid, stay put, do you copy? Where are you right now?”

He had to look up at the bar name on the back wall. “The Andromeda. “

“You don’t budge from there. Do you copy? Don’t budge. Saja’s on the dock. He’s had you in sight. He’s been trying to catch up to you since you left, damn your hide.”

Chasing us, he thought. Why? They had the com. Why didn’t they just call us?

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll be here. “ Imagination painted what Marie might be up to, trying to get on board Corinthian, lying in ambush for their crew on dockside—getting caught at it, and arrested, because Corinthian had probably gathered all sorts of evidence on Marie’s intentions over the years, if Mischa was right about the messages she’d sent.

He hung up. He followed the edge of the room, around the tables, not to leave the bar, but because he wanted not to be visible from the door. Traffic was moderate in the establishment. A group of spacers came in and went to the bar. He spotted a darkness about the patch. It could be Corinthian. He couldn’t tell from his vantage; and the man that was following him hadn’t shown. He thought he might just sit down in the corner and order a drink, but it wasn’t a table-service kind of place, you had to go up to the bar, and he wasn’t eager to go up there with the newcomers.

He took a look outside, a careful look-see, anxious whether there was any sight of Sprite personnel, or whether the man who’d followed him into one bar was still searching.

No sign of either. But he saw Marie, down the row, just standing in front of some shop, looking across the wide dock to Corinthian’s operations zone.

He could go back and call Mischa. He could lose her, that way. He stayed where he was, thinking Saja and his group could spot him that way, and thinking to keep Marie in sight.

But Marie started to walk along the frontage, still in the direction she’d been going, with consistent looks toward Corinthian’s area.

Stalking them. He stood watching, looked frantically for Saja to show up, and. saw Marie getting further and further away.

Screw it, he thought. Mischa knew where he was better than he was going to know where Marie was if he didn’t move. He started walking as fast as he could—he figured running would draw attention he didn’t want. He just tried to look like someone on business, without making the noise that would alarm Marie or drive her to cover down some service access that on some docksides you found unlocked.

She stopped and took something from her pocket, he was scared to death it was a gun; but it was an optic of some sort, maybe a camera, he wasn’t sure. She was looking toward Corinthian and he took the chance to run, as lightly and quietly as he could, in her direction.

She saw him at the last moment, spun about in alarm and then scowled at him.

“Dammit,” he panted. “What are you looking at?”

“Damn yourself. The answer’s Miller Transship, 23 green, no long distance from 10. They’re onloading. But that’s a Miller company transport. You’d know that son of a bitch was going to deal all inside.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s not hiring outside help. No freight handling by any outside party. He sells to Miller, he buys from Miller, Miller’s his transport, his commissioned supplier…”

“That’s not illegal, is it?”

“No, it’s not illegal. It does mean there’s minimal contact with people who might ask questions. God, I wish we’d been here just five days ago.”

“When he was offloading.”

“Damn right when he was offloading. The market’s just so smooth right now. Can you imagine a ship arriving and the market not showing a single change on the boards?”

He couldn’t. The market always reacted. “I don’t think so.”

“Bravo. You don’t think so.”

“So what do you think?”

“Oh, just coincidence. Corinthian just carries such a mix of average goods you just don’t get a tick at all. Goods Miller warehoused the instant that ship hit system. And you still don’t get a tick.”

“Why doesn’t station spot it?”

“Station may have spotted it. But it’s not illegal for Miller to hold a shipment off the boards, either. They’re a transshipper. They don’t have to declare in a free or a dutied port, not since the War. Transshipped goods are technically still in transit until they deliver them elsewhere.”

“With the cargo broken up and dribbled out in patterns that don’t make patterns.”

“Brilliant. You must have gotten deviousness from his side.”

“The hell I did. What are you going to do about it?”

“Just take a few pictures. “ Marie lifted the camera that probably, he thought, had a close-up function that meant business.

And a couple of Corinthian crewmen were looking their direction, maybe out of frame from what Marie saw.

“Marie. Marie, they’re looking at us. Let’s just walk.”

“Nerves. All right. “ Marie put the camera back in her pocket and they started away, but the men started across the dock, four of them.

“Damn,” Tom said. “Marie,—”

“Just keep walking.”

“We could go into a bar. It’s safer.”

“I don’t like to be in places.”

God. Marie was sane ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. And then you got the schitzy tenth percent.

“I don’t care, we should get off the dock… get where we’ve got protection…”

Marie threw a look over her shoulder. Started running. He did, casting a fast look back, and they had, and he caught up to Marie, grabbed her arm as they were running and tried to drag her into the nearest bar, but Marie started fighting him and he let go and put on double speed as the Corinthian crewmen came pounding up the deck behind them.

They knocked into a woman coming out of a bar, knocked her flat, and kept going. People were shouting.

Then he saw people start to run toward them from down the dock in the other direction, and realized it was Saja in the lead.

Marie started to change direction. “It’s Saja!” he yelled at her, and grabbed her and ran for oncoming reinforcements.

But Corinthian personnel weren’t giving up the chase. They reached Saja and three of the cousins, and Saja had pulled a length of light chain from his pocket, the cousins had come up with other contraband, and there wasn’t time to think about anything but getting Marie out of there.

Except Marie wouldn’t go, Marie had a piece of chain, too, and it whipped about and caught a Corinthian crewman across the neck. There was a pile-up of bodies as the man went down, Marie went down, and the nearest bar emptied out more Corinthians.

“Security!” somebody yelled, on their side or Corinthian’s or the bystanders, he wasn’t sure, only a number of people had mixed into it that weren’t Corinthian or Sprite, people yelling that the cops were coming, about the time a fist came out of nowhere and hit him in the temple.

He couldn’t see. He stumbled over somebody’s leg or arm and went down, trying to fend off the attack with his uplifted arm, hearing chains flying and people yelling—he heard somebody yell cops, and look out, and he couldn’t find Marie, couldn’t find anything but the deck-plates. He scrambled for what he thought was a clear zone, and met what might be the frontage wall, he wasn’t sure. Hands helped him up, held onto him as the dark gave way to hazy sight and an orbiting couple of red spots.

Flashing blue, then. The cops were coming in, breaking it up with stun-sticks and bare hands. He didn’t see Marie. He didn’t know what to do. They were hauling people out of the tangle on the deck and arresting them and he found space to retreat at his back, people just pushing past him to shout information, who’d swung, who’d done what, the cops were shouting to calm down, they wanted officers, and they wanted them now.

He heard Saja saying he was an officer, dammit, and Corinthians started it, and somebody else shouting it was Sprite and there was a crazy woman trying to kill their captain, but Marie wasn’t anywhere in sight, Marie was loose somewhere and she was liable to do anything… or some Corinthian could have dragged her off, he didn’t know and he didn’t take station police as going to listen to a spacer quarrel.

He had the chance. He just backed away, just turned and kept walking, dizzy, his head hurting. He wasn’t aware of where he was walking, only it turned out to be toward Corinthian, and where they’d come from, and then he knew where Marie would go if she was loose. If she wasn’t crazy, she’d want the evidence to prove to the universe Corinthian was guilty and they’d had the motive to attack her, she’d fry Austin Bowe if it was the last and only thing she could do, and the evidence, if she couldn’t get at Corinthian’s own data, was at an address.

His head hurt. He couldn’t think of it. It was in the twenties on the same dock, and that was a long hike down from Corinthian’s berth at 10, but nobody was offering to stop him, he was just any spacer walking on the dock, staggering a little, but spacers did, on the Strip, that was why safe, moral stationers didn’t come walking here, it was spacer territory, spacer logic, even with the cops… couldn’t say they’d actually arrest anybody if nobody landed in hospital, just fine hell out of both ships, you didn’t know, you couldn’t predict…

Support column came up in his face. He grabbed it, leaned against it, head hurting, vision doing tricks again.

Couldn’t blame Marie for running. She’d conned him. She’d used him. Made Mischa think everything was under control. She’d probably scammed Saja, too, with that trick of stepping back onto the transport, Saja’d had to wait for the next one.

But what did you expect of Marie? She was what she was. She didn’t deserve to be in any psych ward, please God.

She’d pulled the same thing on Mischa twenty years ago. He wasn’t any brighter.

She’d said she had trade information, she said she was working on Corinthian doing something illegal, at least something borderline—she said if she could get some information out of the trade office,—and she had an appointment… everything looked good… but that wasn’t where she’d gone. She’d come here…

Wandering the ever-night of the docks, the clash and crash of loaders, the echoing of distant voices. He was walking again. He didn’t remember since when.

Abundant places to hide. Abundant places to lose oneself in, if one were determined, and Marie was that. Spacers passed him. He saw patches on sleeves but he didn’t know the ships. Strange to him. And he’d never been a place in his life where that was true.

Past the frontage of a sleepover. He felt his hands sweating despite the cold, his heart pumping and not keeping up with the oxygen demand. Opposite berth 18, it was. Looking for the twenties, he said to himself, and saw a transport go past.

Saw a sign, not a big one. Hercules Shipping. Commercial district. And warehouses. The character of the zone changed that quickly. Suddenly it was all warehouses, some with open doors, cans standing inside in the light, most with doors shut.

Transshippers, Marie had said. Couldn’t remember the name or the number, until he saw the sign.

Miller.

Miller Transshipping.

The doors weren’t open. Looked closed, except shippers didn’t ever close. No neon about the sign, easy to miss, on the frontage like that, with no lights. But Miller was the name, he was sure of it.

He tried the personnel entry, heavy door with no window. It was supposed to work on hydraulics, but it didn’t, you had to shove it after the electric motor took it halfway, and it wasn’t illegal to walk into an office and ask directions to some place: he could pretend he didn’t know where Hercules Shipping was, he had his story all ready.

But nobody was in the office. The side door wasn’t locked, either, and that led into the lighted warehouse.

Going there was a little chancier, but he could still say he was lost and looking for somebody… please God the vacancy in the office wasn’t because Marie had done something, like killing somebody.

He was lost, he’d tell them, if he ran into workers inside. He’d gotten separated from his crewmates in the transport crush, he didn’t know where he was.

He walked among tall shipping canisters, cold-hauler stuff, up in racks, like a ship’s hold, only more brightly lit. The cans drank up heat from the air, made the whole warehouse bitter cold. They were covered in frost.

The rack-loader had stopped with a can aboard. It was frosted as the rest. He undipped his ID, used the edge to scrape the plate to find out what was listed in it… Marie wanted to know, and he wanted to be able to tell her. Prove he was on her side.

It said the origin was Pell. It said… he couldn’t make out the contents, the label was faint and the plate kept frosting over again while he scraped thick greyed peels of ice off it, but it said it was cold-hold stuff, it said it was biologic, that was a check-box. It said food-stuffs. He was freezing where he stood, hadn’t realized it was cold-hold goods filling the warehouse. He needed more than the insulated coveralls you used on the docks. Needed gloves, because his fingers were burning just peeling the frost off, and the can drank the heat out of his exposed skin, out of his eyes, so he didn’t dare go on looking at it. Deep cold was treacherous: if you felt it do that and you didn’t have a face-mask, you needed to get out.

A door opened behind him. His heart thumped. He heard voices, decided he’d better go ahead with his charade. So he clipped his ID back to his pocket and walked out to see who’d come in, to give his story about being lost.

Personnel came in wearing heavy coats, in gloves; then a handful of spacers in no more protection than he stood in—in the same green he’d seen on Corinthian crew.

He decided to bluff it through, giddy and shivering as he was. “There you are,” he declared. “I was wondering if there was someone in charge.”

“What in hell are you doing in here?”

“Door was open,” he said, walking toward them, scared as hell and trying not to show it. “Sorry. I thought there’d be somebody in the warehouse, if nothing else. “ He didn’t want Corinthian crew to see the patch on his sleeve, please God, he just wanted to deal with the warehouse owners. “Lost my mates, got off at the wrong stop… I was supposed to go down to Hercules Shipping, I forgot the damn number…”

“He was with her,” one of the spacers said.

Shit, he thought, desperate, and made a throwaway gesture, measuring the distance to the door. “I was with my crew, except I got off too soon. Sorry if I’ve inconvenienced anybody, I was just looking for a number…”

His legs were stiff from the cold. He wasn’t sure he could run with any speed. The spacers came closer, the warehouse workers saying things about the dangers of cold cans, about not wanting any trouble on their premises.

Fine, he thought, he’d go through them, not the spacers. And he bolted for the door.

But the warehousers grabbed him, all the same, and swung him around to face the spacers. Six of them.

“Sprite crew,” one of them said, and the young man who looked like an officer of some sort said, “Looking for an address, are you?” The young man walked up and undipped the ID from his pocket. Looked at it.

Clean-cut young officer. Stripes on his sleeve. Didn’t look like as much trouble as the crew might be. Looked at the ID. Looked at him.

“Thomas Bowe-Hawkins.”

Bowe, the pocket tab on the officer said. C. Bowe. Cousin of his, he thought, and didn’t welcome the acquaintance.

“Well, well, well,” the young man said. “Marie Hawkins’ darling offspring. Search the place.”

“She’s not here.”

The Corinthian clipped the tab back to his pocket, one-handed. Straightened his collar, a familiarity he didn’t like.

“Thomas. Or Tom?”

“Suit yourself,” he muttered. He was scared. He’d been in cousin-traps a hundred times. But there were a dozen ways to get killed in this one.

“Tommy Hawkins. I’m Christian Bowe. Papa’s other son.”

Other son.

More than possible. He hadn’t known, he hadn’t guessed, and he looked at this Christian Bowe, wondering whether kinship was going to get him out of this or see him dead.

“Where’s your mama?” Christian Bowe asked him. “Hmmn?”

“I don’t know. She’s not here.”

“So you just went walking in the warehouses, did you? Looking for something in particular?”

“I know Miller’s handling your stuff. I thought she might have come here. But she didn’t.”

“Come here for what?”

He didn’t answer. One of the men came back from a circuit of the area. “He was scraping at the labels, “ that man said. “Or somebody was.”

“Marie Hawkins?” Christian shouted at the empty air. The voice echoed around the vast, cold warehouse, up among the racks. “You want your kid back?”

Marie didn’t, Tom thought. Not that much.

Or maybe not at all. Echoes died into silence. He stood there, with two men holding on to his arms, and hands and face numb with the cold. Eyes were frosting around the edges, the stiffness of ice.

“He knows too much,” somebody said, at his back.

“Don’t know a thing,” he said.

“The hell,” Christian said, and turned his shoulder, hand rubbing the back of his neck, while he thought over what to do, Tom supposed, while all of them froze, but he was getting there faster.

“Put him out,” Christian said then. He thought he meant out of the warehouse, and hoped, when the man holding his right arm quit twisting it.

But that man’s hand came around and under his jaw, then. He knew the hold, tried to break it before it cut the blood to his brain, but he didn’t have the leverage, they did, and the white suns in the overhead dimmed and faded out, quite painlessly.

—v—

DIDN’T KNOW WHERE HE WAS, then, except face down on the icy deck with a knee in his back, pressing his forehead against the burning cold of the decking. They taped his hands and ankles together. He yelled for help, and somebody ripped off some more tape and taped his mouth with it—after which, they threw some kind of cold blanket over him and rolled him in it, until he was a cocoon. He tried to kick and tried to yell out, figuring their beating him unconscious was no worse than smothering to death or freezing to death in the warehouse, if there was anybody to know.

But they picked him up, then, head and feet, and earned him a distance, through a doorway, he thought, before they dumped him on the deck. It was the office, he gradually decided, because he could feel the warmth in the air that got through the blanket, which was a source of cold, now, instead of warmth.

He heard them walking around him, talking about the transport rolling, how it had been down; he heard them cursing somebody named Jeff and wishing he’d hurry, but he hoped for maybe one of the company owners or a customer to come in, who’d be willing to call the cops and canny enough to get out the door. Now and again he gathered his forces to try to make noise in case somebody was in earshot, and they’d kick him half-heartedly, not with any force through the blanket, and once they told him they’d beat hell out of him if he didn’t lie still.

Somebody did come in, just after that; he heard the door open and close; but it was the guy named Jeff, who said he’d got the stuff, that was all. He didn’t know what they were talking about; but abruptly they grabbed him, unwrapped the blanket, unfastened his collar and shot him with a hypo in the back of the shoulder.

Damn you all, he wanted to say. He didn’t know where he’d wake up—or if he’d wake.

He’d met a brother he didn’t know he had. That wasn’t a dream.

He’d lost Marie. He hoped they hadn’t caught her. He didn’t know if she could survive if they took her aboard Corinthian, if Bowe wanted a personal revenge.

He didn’t know but what they were going to dump him in a can and put the lid on and ship him to Fargone or somewhere, where they’d find an unexplained frozen corpse. He stared up at the circle of interested faces. He was very, very scared, but he was losing it again…

The room dimmed. He could hear his own pulse, proving he was alive.

That was all.

Chapter Three

Contents - Prev/Next

—i—

A BROTHER HE’D RATHER NOT HAVE met lying like a heap of laundry on the bunk in the brig, and, Christian said to himself, Austin was very possibly going to kill him, when Austin finished sorting out the fines and the penalties… none of which was his fault; but that didn’t mean whoever approached Austin with a minor problem wasn’t going to catch hell.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” Beatrice said, in the vicinity of Austin’s office. As a mother, Beatrice wasn’t the historic model… she’d dropped her kid between jumps, left him to cousin Saby’s ten-year-old mercy, and nowadays abdicated him to Capella’s, God help him. Right now Beatrice showed the ravages of a night on the docks, red eyes, hair trailing out of its usual tight twist—the glitz-paint was worn on one bare shoulder, saying Beatrice had been in bed when the search team found her or the beeper on the pocket-corn finally blasted her out of whatever lair she’d intended for the next several days.

So they’d all had cancelled plans. Capella was in a funk. Beatrice looked mildly sedated, just a little strange about the edges when she grabbed him and hugged him in the corridor, not Beatrice’s maternal habit. Then she got a fistful of his hair and looked him closely in the eyes with,

“You’ve given us a problem. You’ve given Austin one.”

“What was I to do? He’d been looking at the cans. And pardonnez-moi, maman, I didn’t pick this particular problem. He’s Austin’s.”

“He won’t thank you.”

“Pity.”

He started to leave. Beatrice didn’t let go her fistful of hair. “Christian. Keep your mouth shut. It will die down. We can leave this fool at Pell… send him to Earth, for that matter, and he won’t find his way back.”

“It won’t die down. There’s too broad a trail, and there’s that woman…”

“Shit on that woman!”

“Shit on the whole situation, I—”

The door of Austin’s office whisked aside. Austin loomed in the doorway. “Get in here!”

“Who, me?” He honestly wasn’t sure, and mimed it. Austin grabbed him by the arm, jerked him through the door, and backhanded him hard into the wall, which left him nursing a sore ear and a personal indignation.

“It’s not my damn fault!”

“Why could somebody just walk into the warehouse? Where in hell was the guard?”

“Millers’ had people on duty, but they had to have somebody sign the damn repair order, I didn’t know they were going to leave the office unlocked…”

Austin took a glancing swipe at him, total disgust. “All you had to do was have a guard on that door.”

“I know that.”

“You know that, sir, damn your impudence! You look to inherit Corinthian? You’re a long way from it, at the rate you’re going! We’ll be lucky not to lose this port, and Miller, and all they do for us, you understand that? Does that remotely affect your social interests?”

“I was busting my ass, sir, getting Miller moving. I got us turned around, we just can’t use any damn deckhand that comes along. We’re loading, we’re going as fast as the loader can roll, I’ve sent out the board-call. The only thing I didn’t predict was Miller’s man deciding to take a walk and leave the damn door unlocked—”

“Try predicting what we’re going to do when the cops show up wanting Thomas Hawkins! Does that fit in your crystal ball? Sprite crew is all over the damn dock out there!”

“Looking for Marie, by my sources. Not interested in calling the cops, no more than we are. They’re asking up and down the row, every bar, showing her picture. They probably think he’s with her.”

“Damn lucky they didn’t arrest half the crew.”

“I hear luck had nothing to do with it.”

“Expensive luck. I’m not in a damned good mood, boy. Nobody’s coming through those access doors or near our lock. Damned elusive woman. Damned persistent—and you snatch her kid? Thanks. Thanks a whole lot. It’s just the luck we needed.”

“Dump him in space. It’s no different than leaving him lie in a warehouse full of cold cans. He was taking a tour of Miller’s premises, for God’s sake, it wasn’t my doing, I don’t know what more I could do than I did… if I’d left a body behind, you wouldn’t be happy with me either, especially seeing he’s your own offspring,—sir. I wouldn’t want you to get the idea I wanted him dead.”

“You’re real close to annoying me, Christian.”

“I did what seemed to me to be less liability.”

“After you finally deigned to return a com call. After you gave that ship that much extra time to let Marie Hawkins loose on the dock.”

“It’s not my fault the transport broke down. It’s not my fault everything on this God-forsaken station depends on some separate labor union—I could have fixed that damn transport with a screwdriver, Miller could have fixed the transport, we didn’t know we had an emergency, and I wasn’t that hard to track down, sir, I’d told Miller where I was and what general direction I was going. You could have called Miller.”

“Miller isn’t an officer on this ship. Damned right I called Miller, once Bianco saw fit to tell me the offloading was stalled.”

“You tell Bianco what you thought about it?”

“Bianco’d told you. You were the officer of the watch, boy, and if you have any desire to stay an officer on this ship, I suggest you establish clear understandings with the duty officer of each watch, that you take threats against this ship damned seriously, that you don’t screw with the guard I’ve put on our accesses, because I don’t take for granted that woman won’t try to slip us a bomb in one of the cans or walk onto this ship armed, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“As long as they’re searching for her… she hasn’t gone to the cops or reported in. Just keep those cans moving. And let me tell you something—” Austin went to the door and opened it again. “Beatrice? Beatrice, I want you to hear this, too.”

Beatrice came in… subdued, for Beatrice. She folded her arms and stood there glumly.

“I don’t know how seriously you take the threat Marie Hawkins poses,” Austin said. “But twenty years of threats and her skulking around out there don’t add up empty in my book. She’s got this kid—by her own letters, she’s primed this kid of hers to get us, meaning the crew, and particularly anybody attached to me. That kid stays in the brig. Nobody takes chances with him. I’m damned serious, Beatrice.”

“What do you intend to do with him?”

“Take him as far away from Sprite schedules as we can.”

“No paternal interest.”

“Filed right behind your maternal instincts, Beatrice, don’t push me. Tell your offspring use his head. I am tired. I am hung over… Beatrice, this wasn’t the best wake-up I’ve had in a year.”

Beatrice moved in for aid and comfort. It seemed a good moment to excuse oneself out the door. Christian slid in that direction, opened the door—Austin had it set on fast, and auto-dose—and walked—

“Boy. Don’t screw up.”

—out. The door whisked shut in his face, leaving him blank surface instead of the pair that were ultimately responsible—leaving words in his mouth, and nowhere to spit them.

He didn’t hit the door. Or open it. He dropped the fist and walked the curving deck, headed for the lift.

He’d ordered the dockside crew to keep an eye out, see if they could spot this Hawkins woman—keep her off Austin’s neck. No damn thanks from Austin, Austin never asked, Austin never looked to see who did what, it was just your fault if something went wrong.

Never Austin’s fault. Never Austin’s damned fault. Austin never made mistakes.

—ii—

CANS WERE OFFLOADING. You could hear the hydraulics working, distant, a comfortable, all’s-well sort of sound.

Couldn’t figure. What station? When had he gotten back to the ship? One spectacular blow-out in a bar, maybe, drunk till he couldn’t figure…

Except he was face down on a bed that didn’t feel like his own, and it didn’t have sheets, and his mouth felt like fuzz inside while the outside felt skinned.

A moment of fright came back to him, shadows around him while he lay on a freezing deck trying to fight them off. He grabbed the edge of the bed and sat up in a hurry, legs off the edge, and a cold plastic line dragging from his wrist.

Hell, he thought, scared. Blurred eyes made out an unfamiliar room, green, not white, an unfamiliar blur of metal grid in front of him, and a spinning of his head and a queasiness in his stomach said it hadn’t been a good experience that put him in this unfamiliar place. The station brig, maybe. Maybe the cops had come and arrested everybody, and Marie…

Marie was still out there. Maybe she’d gotten away, but he hadn’t, and he couldn’t remember everything about how he’d come here, just the warehouse and the cold, and people around him.

People. Corinthian crew.

And there was a cold metal bracelet around his right wrist, and a plastic-sheeted cable going up to where the wall met the ceiling, which he couldn’t make out the sense of, except the metal grid where the front wall ought to be, and the rest was any crewman’s ordinary accommodation, without sheets, without personal items, without anything on the walls, or any internal com unit—just a patch on the wall where one might have been taken out, and nobody’d cared to paint it, or anything else people had scratched up… skuzzy walls, skuzzy panels, where previous occupants had scratched initials and obscenities.

He didn’t remember any station cops.

It wasn’t Viking’s brig. It wasn’t the legal system that ran this graffiti-scarred cell. It was Corinthian. He’d become a hostage for something, or a prisoner Corinthian had some reason to keep, or God knew what else.

He staggered up, shaky in the knees and immediately aware the cell wasn’t precisely on the main axis of the ship. He grabbed the cable that trailed from his wrist and gave it a jerk that burned his palms—but it didn’t give. It went out a little aperture at the join of wall and ceiling, and it was securely anchored somewhere the other side of the wall.

His breath came short. It might be the anesthetic they’d shot him with. It might be the exertion. It might be the beginnings of panic, but he couldn’t get enough air to keep the room from going around as he stumbled to the metal grid and tried to slide it one way and the other.

It didn’t give, either, not even so much as to show what way it could move when it opened.

There was, at the other end of the narrow space, the ribbed panel that, aboard Sprite, rolled back to give access to the bathroom, and there was a trigger-plate. He leaned against the wall there and pressed it, and the panel rolled back, making itself the side wall of the bath.

There was a sink, a toilet, a vapor closet for a shower, same facilities his own cabin had. He punched the cold water. It gave a meager amount and shut itself off. He punched the hot, and it wasn’t, but it shut itself off.

Not the ritz, he thought distractedly. He felt better that the bath worked. At least it wasn’t deliberately bad treatment—they hadn’t left him to freeze, they hadn’t beaten him unconscious: they must have sent to the ship for what they’d dosed him with; and, aside from a slight nausea and a frost-burn on his fingers and the side of his face, he wasn’t exactly hurt… but the cable crossed his legs every time he took a step or reached for anything, telling him he wasn’t free, he wasn’t all right, they didn’t intend him to get loose, and they weren’t doing what they’d done for his convenience.

More… he didn’t know what might be going on outside, or whether they’d also caught Marie, or what his crew might be doing.

Not much, he thought, trying to be pragmatic. A, Mischa didn’t give the proverbial damn, B, if Mischa did give a damn, Marie would still be Sprite’s first worry for very practical reasons, and, C, if Mischa did decide to do something about it, Sprite didn’t hold an outstandingly high hand.

Unless Marie had come up with the evidence Marie had said she was looking for.

Marie lied without a conscience.

But Marie had brought a camera, Marie had committed every subterfuge she’d committed with the simple, predictable notion of getting to Corinthian’s dock—but whether the camera was an excuse to do it or the reason for doing it, he didn’t know. She’d said there were things she wanted to ask the station trade office, and maybe she’d wanted to gather evidence enough to be allowed to get at station records, or to make someone else take a look…

He didn’t know. He couldn’t know from here. But if Marie was in fact on to something, he knew what motive Corinthian could have for taking him and holding on to him, at least until they were ready to leave port, or until it was clear Marie couldn’t prove anything.

Only hope they hadn’t caught Marie. Only hope Marie hadn’t done something to lose whatever leverage she had with Mischa or with Viking station authorities, or whoever could get him out of here.

He found himself walking the length and width of the cell, staggering as he was, telling himself he was all right, Marie wouldn’t let him stay here, Marie would move whatever she had to move to get him out—telling himself they couldn’t have caught her, Marie was slippery as hell, that was how he’d gotten into this in the first place, and something was going to get him out, Corinthian couldn’t just kidnap somebody and get away with it, and they couldn’t have the motives with him they’d had with Marie. Surely not. Please God, that wasn’t even a reasonable thought.

He heard someone walking in the corridor, heard someone come near the cell. He went to the bars of the grid, leaned against them to try to see.

A young man. Blond hair, sullen expression, a face and a body language that jolted into recognition… the warehouse.

Corinthian.

Christian.

Brother.

“Alive, after all,” Christian said. “So happy to be here. I can tell.”

“Happier to be out of here. What’re my chances?”

“Hey. You’re already lucky. Pump drugs into a body, you don’t know, you woke up. I don’t know what’s your bitch.”

He didn’t think he liked Christian Bowe. But there was some cause, he could see that, for Corinthian not to like the situation. Christian Bowe said it—he was alive: point on Corinthian’s side.

He looked his half-brother up and down. Pretty boy, he thought. Papa had good genes.

“So why’d you bring me here?”

“Hell if I know.”

It was more and less answer than he expected. A disconcerting answer. “So what do you want for me to get out of here?”

“Idea of the moment, bringing you here. Don’t ask me. I don’t do long-range planning.”

“Am I the only one?”

“The only what?”

Temper flared. “The only one, the only one you brought aboard, you know damned well what I mean.”

Pretty-boy made a motion of his fingers. “No. I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Screw you.” It wasn’t getting anywhere. This wasn’t a friend. He walked back to his bed and sat down.

“You mean your mama?” Christian asked from the other side of the bars.

He meant Marie. He was scared. And mad. He tucked his foot up into the circle of his arms and the cable dragged across his shins. He didn’t look at Christian Bowe. He didn’t expect any help, or any honest answer.

But if they’d caught Marie, he thought Christian would be happy to tell him so.

Machinery whined, sharply, suddenly. The cable jerked tight, jerked him off the bed and up against the wall, his arm drawn up and up.

The whine stopped. His arm did, the bracelet cutting into his wrist, his feet all but off the deck. It hurt, from his chest to his wrist. It scared him, what they could do, what his half-brother could do.

“Want down?”

“Son of a—”

The cable yanked him half his height up the wall. It made him think, at that point of rest, what the winch could do to his wrist once it hit the exit point.

“Want down?” Christian asked.

He had a choice. He knew he had a choice. He’d never backed down in his life. He couldn’t manage to say I give. Couldn’t find it.

The winch took up another spurt. There wasn’t another inch left.

“Want down?”

He couldn’t get the wit to talk. He couldn’t frame an appeal to reason. Or kinship.

“Good day,” Christian said, “good luck, good bye.”

“Christian!”

“Please?”

“Damn you!”

Christian walked off. He hung there, against the spin of the whole of Viking station, telling himself he’d been a fool, he had nothing to win, he’d nothing to lose, he just wanted down before his arm broke or his hand went dead, which could happen, and he didn’t know how long it could take.

“Christian, damn you!”

He’d been a fool. But he wasn’t sorry. Hell, he wasn’t sorry. He’d seen more of Corinthian already than he hoped to see in his lifetime, he didn’t like it, he hoped for papa’s curiosity, if nothing else, to draw him down to wherever his prison was, and he hoped to hell they hadn’t caught Marie.

God, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think of anything but that his wrist or his shoulder was going to give.

He heard Christian’s footsteps going away.

“Help!” he yelled, “help! dammit!” and couldn’t get the breath to call out, after.

Christian didn’t come back. Not right away.

Eventually—he measured the time in the clunk and thump of the loader hydraulics—Christian’s shadow darkened the bars again, and Christian hung a casual forearm through the grid.

“Want down?”

Damn you, was what he wanted to say. He’d said it to his cousins. But his cousins wouldn’t kill him, and something said Christian might, given the right moment.

“Yes,” he said through his teeth.

“Pity,” Christian said. And left him.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, and ran out of breath.

“H’lo, Chrissy,” came from the corridor. Someone female met Christian. He kicked the wall and tried to grab the cable with his left hand, the bracelet was pressing bone in his right one. “Mmm,” female-person said, “and aren’t we cheerful. Told Austin yet?”

He couldn’t hear what Christian said. He got the second hand on the cable. He kicked the wall, trying to get a better grip, and slammed back into the panel.

Female-person came to stand at the grid, forearms through the bars, staring at him… an apparition of glitz-paint, exposed skin in shimmer cloth, and a shock of pale, shave-sided hair. Bar-bunny, he thought. Traveling entertainment.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” she said. “Austin does good work.”

“You stay the hell away from him, Capella, you hear me?”

“Aww.”

The cable was cutting into his fingers. Breath was short. He shut his eyes, to time out, but Capella said, “Let him down, Chrissy. He’s going to turn blue.”

“Don’t call me Chrissy.”

“Christian. Chretien Perrault-Bowe. Be nice.”

He didn’t know what happened or who did what. But the cable spun loose of a sudden and dumped him onto his feet, hard. His arm swung down and life tingled back into a hand with the mark of the bracelet blazoned white.

Capella stuck her hand through the bars. “H’lo. I’m Capella. You’re Thomas Hawkins. How-do.”

“Capella. “ Christian wasn’t pleased.

“Jealous?”

The hand stayed. He’d thought space-brain. But he didn’t now. He saw the bracelet of stars tattooed around the woman’s wrist, and felt his blood run a little colder. He’d heard about that mark. Never seen one. Navigator’s mark, but one no merchanter needed—navigator off a damned Mazianni pirate, near as made no difference. The sort that raided shipping during the War, the sort that the Trade still ducked in mortal terror.

Surely, even time-lagged as hell, she was too young to wear that mark.

He walked up and reached out to the offered handshake.

Whine of a motor. The cable took up, jerked him backward and, off balance, down to one knee.

“Chris-sy,” Capella said.

“Damn you!” It hurt his pride, his wrist and his knee; and it was Christian’s doing, his Corinthian half-brother.

“Hands off,” Christian told Capella. “Don’t screw with him, you hear me?”

“Sounds like fun,” Capella said, leaning on the bars, flashed him a feral grin. “How are you in bed, Christian’s older brother?”

He got up from where the cable had jerked him, dusted himself with the hand that wasn’t pulled in the direction of the wall. He didn’t think Capella was any prospect of help. But he swallowed the Screw Yourself that leapt up first in his mind, and shot Capella a not-hostile look. “Is he always this tense?”

It tickled Capella. It didn’t amuse Christian.

“Just leave him alone,” Christian said. “Haven’t you got a duty assignment?”

“Not in your c-oh-c, darlin’. But probably. Don’t break his wrist. It just annoys Medical.”

Christian still wasn’t amused. Capella sauntered off. He expected another jerk of the cable, except Christian’s hands were both in sight. Control that temper of yours, Mischa had said, and much as he wanted to get his hands on Christian’s neck, he was in a bad situation. He didn’t like what he’d seen, he didn’t like the company, but, painful as the wrist was, and mad and scared as he was, he was in no position to carry on an argument.

“Look,” he said. “Christian. I don’t want any fight with you. All I want is to get my mother off the docks… she lied to us, she got away from us. That’s all. I just want to find her and get her back to the ship.”

“Expected to find her in a shipping can, huh?”

No answer for that one. The whole line of Marie’s thinking was evident in where they’d caught him, scraping ice off a can label. He was no help to Marie, tipping them to more than he had.

“What’s going on outside?”

“We’re loading.”

It wasn’t the answer he wanted and Christian knew it. Pretty-boy had a tilt of the head and a smug expression that made him want to pound pretty-boy to pulp, but he couldn’t come closer to the bars than he was. He couldn’t do anything. He had only to hope they’d let him go and by where they’d caught him… he didn’t think they would.

He just couldn’t figure where Marie was, or what might be happening out there.

Mischa talking sense to Austin Bowe, if he had his choice. Maybe offering a pledge not to get either of them involved in station law. No ship wanted that kind of entanglement. We get our lunatic off the docks, you give her her boy back, and neither of us files station charges…

“Have fun,” Christian said, evidently deciding the amusement value was nil here, and shoved away from the bars.

“You want to release that cable?”

“Please?”

“Please. Politely.”

Christian flipped some sort of switch beside the door. He tugged at the cable and it ran free, take-up gear disengaged. He went as far as the grid and tried to see where Christian went, but it was around the corner of the block where the cell was—tried to see the control panel for the cable, and it was out of reach, and no damn good, since the only thing you could do with it was free the gear or take the cable up, and he didn’t want to turn the winch on.

Nothing like this on Sprite.

Nothing like this on any honest ship. It wasn’t lower-main corridor, at least: off the axis but not much off, you could feel the slant in the deck. It was for keeping someone locked up while the ship was docked: half the heated, pressurized deck space a ship owned became vertical while the ring was de-spun and locked to some station’s orientation. You didn’t give up a centimeter of downside deck space to a facility that wasn’t manned during dock, and that meant this was one important facility to Corinthian, and prisoners weren’t unusual—or let off to station jurisdiction, where you’d think a hired-crew ship would be glad to dump its problems for good and all.

You did get the skuz of the spacer trade among hire-ons, they had that universal reputation. A Family ship very rarely took one or accepted a passenger, and that only after careful background checks and an oath from God that the individual was trustworthy. But this… this place, occupying valuable dock-positive space, was built to contain people the ship didn’t intend to turn over to station authorities, people who could try to break out and take over the ship. The cable arrangement meant you couldn’t get further across the cell than they wanted you to go. The bracelet had a kind of lock he’d never seen before, a lever that shut, that had no wobble in it, no hint of how it opened.

He went back and sat down on the bunk, and worked and worked at the lock in frightened silence.

There wasn’t anything else to do. Wasn’t any other hope. He didn’t know if they’d caught Marie or if they were still looking for her. If he was held hostage—that was a joke.

He wasn’t sure at this point that Marie wanted him back.

Justifiably.

—ii—

THE LOADING OPERATION WAS A steady flow of data on Austin’s office monitor, a steady stream of canisters thumping through the cargo access port, contiguous at the moment with the passenger ring, so it sounded through Corinthian’s ring structure like some monstrous heartbeat.

Machine parts was the principal load they were taking; also radioactives, medical and industrial, transshipped; chemicals, organic and otherwise; minicans of rejuv, lately legal, tapes, transshipped; minicans of personal goods and small commercial freight, transshipped and some originated at Viking—no mail: they hadn’t a bond for that, and he didn’t want the background check. But this was the payout cargo, this was the one where Miller bought on spec and they rebought, and sold at their destination; this was the one that paid the bills and kept them running. It was an eclectic load, and a few minicans went up the lift and into the ring, where they’d jury-rigged passenger accommodations into warm-cargo space.

The further you got from Earth the pricier Earth goods got, simple proposition, but the further you got from civilization, the pricier, too, the sweet taste of the motherworld. And pay they would, in credit and in various ways.

If—

Com beeped. “Excuse me, sir,” the voice said, from the bridge. “Marie Hawkins. On the com. For you. Do you want to take the call?”

Damn the woman!

Tell her go to hell? Let her have the frustration?

Better hear the threats, he thought. Better give the woman the satisfaction. Five got ten she wasn’t calling with Mischa Hawkins’ blessing and go-ahead. The woman was still on the docks somewhere. Corinthian had gone on the boards as Departure: 1400h. And if she was out there—and he’d bet she was—she knew.

“Quillan?”

“Sir?”

“She’s at a phone. Probably within sight of our dockside. Get a team looking.”

Not a damned word from Mischa Hawkins. The cops hadn’t arrested anybody after the set-to, just tagged the ships involved and a judge had slapped both Corinthian and Sprite with thousand credit fines, with a warning.

Damned right a warning. “You keep your people clear,” he’d phoned Sprite to say. “And we will.”

“Aye,” Quillan said. “Put her through, sir?”

“Put her through,” he said, and heard the click. “Marie Hawkins?”

“You son of a bitch,” Marie Hawkins said. “How are you, Austin?”

“Oh, getting along. How have you been?”

“Just fine. Alive. Saner than you’d like. I just wanted to call and thank you.”

“That’s nice.” You wondered where she’d planted the bomb. Or if she knew they had her kid. “Did you have something more in mind? It’s been a few years, Marie. Things got a little out of hand. I apologize for that.”

“You’re senior captain now. Congratulations. And a—is she your wife?”

“Nothing official. It’s just not our style.”

“Beatrice Perrault.”

What in hell was the woman after?

Beatrice at least was safe, on duty. Christian was below, inside the ship.

“Beatrice, yes. I hear you’ve moved up to cargo officer. Congratulations. How do you like the work?”

“Love it. I owe you so much. My start in life. My son.”

Did she know? He had no idea.

“Would you like to come aboard, Hawkins? Have a drink, discuss mutual interests?” He didn’t think so. Possibly she was taping the call, for playback to authorities. He didn’t expect an acceptance. “There’s time before undock. You’ve noticed we are pulling out.”

“I’ve noticed,” Marie Hawkins said.

“So what about the drink? Apologies?”

“I don’t think so.”

She hung up. He shouldn’t have pushed.

“Captain, we—”

“—didn’t have time. Damn it, watch the frontage! If she’s calling from one of the bars, we can still catch her. Haul her in, if you can do it without a fuss. Relay that.”

“We’re looking.”

Damned crazy woman. Mischa Hawkins probably didn’t know where she was, or they’d cheerfully reel her in. Sprite was on warning with station authorities, and Hawkins had sent one terse message: Call us if you have any contact with any Sprite crew. Neither of us can afford this.

Nobody’d raised hell with station offices yet about the missing son—so they hadn’t figured where Thomas Hawkins was, yet. Probably they thought he was keeping company with Marie.

Which meant if they didn’t find Marie, they couldn’t know to the contrary; Marie probably thought her kid was with the group the cops had turned back to Sprite and told stay off the docks—Marie wasn’t interested in being found, and so long as Marie stayed out of Sprite’s reach, nobody was going to know Thomas was missing.

If they couldn’t catch her—she was still doing Corinthian a favor, just staying out there. Best hope they had of getting out of here.

—iv—

“CHRISTIAN.”

Christian cut his eyes toward the overhead and leaned his back against the wall. Where it figuratively was, already, with Austin.

“Sir.”

“You stay inside the ship. That’s an order, boy.”

“I was just going…”

“Maxie’s seeing to it. I want a double-check on the warm-hold count. Get on it.”

“That’s Maxie’s job!”

“See to it, damn you! I’m fall up with your excuses!”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and when he heard the com click out, pounded the paneling with his fist.

Saby put her head out of ops and stared.

“What?”

“What, what, Austin’s what, he’s on my case, is what.” He stalked to the office, shoved past Saby and sat down at the console.

Punched keys. Not his favorite job. Maxie’s job, and, thanks to brother Thomas and his crazy mother, no last tour on dock-side, no chance to slip back to the shop for the earrings Capella had lusted after, no chance to go back to the vid shop for the tapes he’d eyed… you didn’t load up on stuff while you were on liberty, you waited till the last minute, if you didn’t want to pay delivery.

Cheap cost, on this occasion.

Saby shot him a feed from her terminal. Lots and lots of boring serial numbers and clearances.

“So is anybody asking about this kid?” Saby asked.

“How would I know? Austin’s not talking. Beatrice is hung over as hell and on station. Damned Family-ship prig.”

“I’d be scared,” Saby said. “In his place, I’d be damned scared.”

“He’s a Family Boy. Ship-share, all the best, don’t you know. I wish I’d left him. Say he must’ve hid out after the fight, we wouldn’t have this problem.” He set the computer to scan for WH’s and location, the sole intellectual function the job needed for the pass.”His mother’s out there looking for

Austin, Austin’s hiding aboard, hauls the whole damn crew in, it’s damned ridiculous. Now my half-brother’s gone poking about in Miller’s and we’ve got ourselves a problem,”

“What was he doing in Miller’s?”

“Looking for his mama, what else?”

“I’d like to know what mama was looking for. It wasn’t Austin.”

Cousin Sabrina had a brain. Cousin Sabrina was using it. He shoved back from the console, turned the chair and looked at her, rethinking, absent temper, what Thomas Bowe-Hawkins had been doing scraping labels.

“What’s her source?” he asked Saby. “Since you know so much.”

“I don’t know what her source is. He might.”

Saby’d wiped his nose when he was a brat—till he got older and Saby had justly told him go to hell. Now he ran with Capella, Saby supered the computer techs, handled Hires, trouble-shot cargo functions at need, and took her lovers on dock-side. With all the dockside willies to choose from, she hadn’t hired or slept with a psych-case yet.

Better than Austin could claim. Austin listened, when Saby said who was crazy and who wasn’t.

So where did she always see that far ahead of him, damn her?

The computer came up with a Warm-Hold headed for the wrong hold, and beeped.

Damn, damn, and damn. “Who in hell checked that through? Can anybody in our crew read, or just maybe use the laser, God! I don’t believe this.” He punched through to the dock chief. “—Connie, Connie, do you hear? I want a number pulled off the list, fast, 987-7. Get that mother upside into warm 2 before they load it in, that’s not for deep cold.”

Connie took his time writing it down. Connie said they’d look for the number. Christian ran his hand through his hair and wondered how long it had been since he’d slept.

Half-brother. With a mother out there looking for Austin’s hide. And a real interest in the cans.

Yeah.

Tom Hawkins knew.

“If the program finds another mis-route, handle it, will you?”

“Where are you going?—You better not go out there.”

“I’m not going any damned where. It’s a good question.” He put in a call for Austin’s office, the direct link. “Austin?”

“What’s the problem?” came back, not patiently.

“Austin? My half-brother down here? Saby’s got a real interesting idea. Marie Hawkins being onto something… half-brother knows how, and who, and if there’s cops mixed up in it.”

Silence from the office.

“So we should ask him,” he said, since Austin didn’t draw the conclusion.

“Are you finally figuring that out?”

“I’m not fucking stupid, sir!”

Which wasn’t the brightest thing to do with Austin when Austin was looking for a fault. He heard the com cut out. He tried the re-call.

Ignored. Ignored, ignored and ignored.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, at no one accessible, and slammed his fist onto the console.

Connie came back on with, “I think it already went in, Chris. We got to reverse the loader to get it back.”

“Get it out,” he said. And when Connie came back on with, Can we wait till we’re finished loading? he checked the contents, only about 50,000 credits worth of fancy liquor that didn’t like freezing, and said, kindly, nicely, “No, you get the sod that passed this list, have him find two volunteers, and you have him hand-carry that mother topside through the lift.”

“That’s against union—”

“You carry it, Connie, or you get it carried! Those are your choices! Hear me?”

“Yessir.”

He cut the connection. He sat glaring at the computer screen, and felt Saby staring at him, a rational, too-damned-superior presence prickling at his shoulder-blades.

So he wasn’t reasonable. So was Austin? So was Beatrice? So was anybody in the upper end c-oh-c, reasonable? It wasn’t a job requirement.

—v—

ANESTHETIC AFTEREFFECTS DIDN’T make a body feel at all good, Tom decided. He’d never had anesthetic before, assuming it was something medical and not outright illicit—but once he’d decided that he couldn’t get the bracelet off, that he couldn’t reach any useful switch panel and he couldn’t do anything, in general, except wait, sweat, and nurse his headache, he figured he could just as well do that flat on his back on the bunk. There was a white-diamond patch on a let-down on the wall over the bunk—universal symbol for deep-space emergency supplies. He flipped it in idle curiosity and it was stocked with trank and nutri-paks. He was tempted, about the trank—just time-out and let the hours pass. But you didn’t abuse the stuff. And the packs were for emergency—you left them for that. You toughed it out, that was all, though, please God, he wasn’t going to need them, they’d get him out of here.

His stomach was upset, his head hurt more than the wrist did—that he was outright scared might account for a good part of the upset, but he kept trying to keep a reasonable attitude. Corinthian, in his best theory, was hanging on to him as insurance for Marie’s good behavior. Corinthian didn’t want him. It was going to be all right. Somehow the captains would sort it out and get Marie back and him back and Corinthian would leave Viking port before anybody got hurt.

Or Marie would figure the game, notify the cops, call the lawyers and get him out of this herself. Beat out Austin Bowe for good and all, and maybe after that, please God, get her life turned around.

Make her peace with him, and Mischa, and the universe in general.

Yeah. And Viking would reverse its spin and the sun would burn black. He couldn’t even recognize the Marie that scenario would ask to exist.

Meanwhile the thump in the guts of Corinthian kept up, regular as a heartbeat. Nobody interrupted the loading, no contingent of police came looking. Wherever Marie was, she couldn’t or wouldn’t stop the flow of goods into Corinthian.

A man passed the cell and stopped. Tom lifted his head, stared at the man between his feet, the man looked at him as if he was a museum exhibit, and walked on. Skuzzy-looking bastard, Tom thought with a prickling of defensive instincts. Wouldn’t like to meet that one on dockside, and that was walking the corridors out there.

That was the first.

Then others, not much better—older guys, a few in green coveralls: the rest in the skintights that were getting to be popular, earrings, glitz-stripes on the skin, jewelry… not a real tidy lot, he said to himself, a few of them worse than others—and with no front wall and no privacy in the cell he was sitting there for all of them to stare at.

Most did. Some laughed, as if it was funny he was there. He didn’t get the point. “Well, well, well, who’s this pretty thing?” a guy asked—a guy with his hair in braids, a tattoo around his neck, and so many tattoos on his bare arms he was green and purple, all snakes.

Tom stared. He would have stared on dockside. He’d not seen that many tattoos. “You want a chocolate?” the tattooed man said. He was drunk. Extremely. Others grabbed him away.

He didn’t know what to think. He got to his feet and went to the bars to look after the group and see what was going on in the corridor, wondering whether that was an authorized entry or were dock-crawlers taking a drunken tour of the ship while the cargo ports were open. He heard shouts in the corridors, the usual noises of meetings and comparisons of stories, after a liberty.

Crew, he decided.

Suddenly the noises weren’t friendly. He heard angry shouts, guessed from chance words he could pick up that two of the crew had had a prior set-to on dockside, and heard other voices trying to break it up, some woman yelling there were going to be officers.

“He’s got a knife!” somebody yelled. Somebody hit the paneled walls, he heard the thump. And someone yelled, “Get him, get him, get him!”

Another thump, a lot of shouting. He couldn’t see anything. Then:

“Damn, it’s Michaels,” he heard, and by everything he heard, some officer had come in on it, was asking questions, who’d started it, who’d flashed a weapon. A man got hauled off to infirmary on this Michaels’ orders, and then…

Then a deal of cursing, a thump again against the paneling, and a measured, meaty thud, of something meeting flesh, not just the once or twice he thought might be justified, but it went on, and on, and on, until the screaming stopped, and something heavy hit the deck.

“Get him out of here,” somebody said. The voices after that were all quiet.

He found himself with a death-grip on the bars, shivering in a cold more inside than out, and more than ever wanting out of this cell.

Not a Family ship. He’d just had a demonstration what the penalties were, and how they were dealt out. No word with the captain, nothing of the sort.

He’d thought he’d had a hard life. Now Sprite seemed a sheltered, protected existence, where Mischa’s frown was a reprimand, where crew didn’t carry knives against their shipmates. He’d never heard the sounds he’d just heard, out of any human being, sounds that had gone straight to his nerves, and brought a quiet over the whole ship.

He heard other traffic in the corridor and retreated from the gridwork, went back to his bunk and sat down with his back to the face of the cell, so he wouldn’t have to deal with anybody. Wherever he went the cable trailed, and reminded him that even if the door opened he hadn’t a chance at escaping… or putting up damn much of a fight against anybody with a key and access to the cable switch.

Ransom wouldn’t work. He’d been in a place he shouldn’t have been and they knew he knew, and if the station cops came asking, he didn’t know what Corinthian might do, but he didn’t think they were going to turn him loose to tell the police or the merchant trade at large what he’d been doing or what he’d seen and not seen.

Not if gossip was right about Corinthian’s business.

Traffic came and went outside.

And it had to be board-call, Corinthian calling in its crew, even while the loading was still going on. You didn’t ordinarily crowd up the ship with crew underfoot until they had something to do—unless they’d for some reason had to get off the docks.

Unless they were shortening their dock time and planning to pull out.

In which case he didn’t see a thing Mischa or Marie could do about it. Station police could say Stop, and demand to search the ship, but only if they could come up with plausible evidence: a merchanter deck was the same as foreign territory, merchanters didn’t allow boarders as a matter of principle, while stations depended so much on ship traffic they just wouldn’t push that point unless they had very clear evidence of a customs crime.

That left him nothing to do but sit and worry at the lock. He searched the bath for anything he could use for a pick, but he couldn’t find anything—there weren’t any drawers, and he tried bashing it with the butt of the wall-mounted razor.

But it didn’t do any good.

Just after that spate of noise-making, the loading stopped.

The whole ship sat in silence, except the rush of air in the vents.

He went to the bars again, trying to see something, anything to tell him what was going on.

Then came the unmistakable thump as the hatch sealed. A moment later the louder thump as the lines closed down and detached, and a siren sounded throughout the ship, no word from the captain, just that lonely, warning sound that said hazard, hazard, take stations, the ship is moving.

It was a nightmare. The misjudgment. The mistakes he’d made, that led this direction, step by step. Thinking that he’d win Marie’s… acceptance, if no more than that. He’d gambled his safety. Thought he might win Marie’s acceptance—and her sanity. And he’d lost.

He hoped Marie was free, and safe. He hoped nobody had gotten hurt on his account.

But it was decidedly time to sit down and take hold. Which he did, with a lump gathering in his throat. He located the safety restraints on the bunk and sat down, cross-legged, not expecting but a short zero g, and a gentle shove, not worth belting in for.

It was far more than a gentle shove. He grabbed the frame of the bunk and the safety hold on the wall, and braced his feet, one on the deck and one on the mattress—thinking he’d just made a serious mistake.

He didn’t know how long the acceleration was going to last. He dared not let go the handholds he had to get the safety restraints fastened. His heart was going doubletime.

He didn’t like the ship putting out like that. He didn’t like a pilot who skirted the regs and a bridge that didn’t warn people when they were moving.

It struck him then that there couldn’t be kids or seniors aboard. It just wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t a Family ship, never mistake it again, and if he didn’t lose his grip and break his neck during launch, he’d be luckier than he deserved for trusting anything about it.

They went inertial then, a moment of float, and he snatched the restraints across and jammed the first and the second clip shut with shaking hands.

After that he lay flat on his back and felt the stomach-jolting g-shifts of maneuver of a ship that didn’t care about crew comfort, and didn’t engage the ring for crew safety, or warn anyone beyond sounding the siren.

In a hurry to leave and doing a show-off bit of maneuvering, he could read it—screw you all, the pilot was saying to Sprite, and to Viking, and maybe to all civilized places, maybe just because Austin Bowe was pissed, who knew?