had aboard—anticipating him, knowing what he would need as if they were reading
his mind, because they were good.
There she goes,” Allison said, putting Dublin on vid. “That’s good-bye for a
while.”
Another voice was talking into his right ear, relayed through station: it was
the voice of Dublin wishing them well.
“Reply,” Allison said to Neill at com; and a message went out in return. But
there was no interruption: no move faltered; the data kept coming, and now they
did slow turnover, a drifting maneuver,
“Cargo secure,” the word came to him from Deirdre. “No difficulties.”
“Got that Stand by rotation.”
“Got it”
He pushed the button: the rotation lock synched in, and there began a slow
complication of the cabin stresses, a settling of backsides and bodies into
cushions and arms to sides and minds into a sense of up and down. They were
getting acceleration stress and enough rotational force to make the whole ship
theirs again. “All right,” he said, when their status was relayed to station,
when station sent them back a run-clear for system exit. “We get those systems
installed. Transfer all scan to number two and we’ll get it done.”
“Lord help us,” Curran muttered—did as he was asked and carefully climbed out of
his seat while Sandor got out of his. “You always make your repairs like this?”
“Better than paying dock charge,” Sandor said. “Hope they gave us a unit that
works.”
A shake of Curran’s head.
They had time, plenty of time, leisurely moving outbound from Pell. The noise of
station com surrounded them, chatter from the incoming merchanter Pixy II, a
Name known all over the Beyond; and the music of other Names, like Mary Gold and
the canhauler Kelly Lee. And all of a sudden a new name: “Norway’s outbound,”
Neil said.
For a moment Sander’s heart sped; he sat still, braced as he was against the
scan station cushion—but that was only habit, that panic. “On her own business,
I’ll reckon,” he said, and set himself quietly back to the matter of the
replacement module.
The warship passed them: as if they were a stationary object, the carrier went
by. Deirdre put it on vid and there was nothing to see but an approaching
disturbance that whipped by faster than vid could track it.
“See if you can find out their heading,” Allison asked Deirdre.
Station refused the answer. “Got it blanked,” Deirdre said. “She’s not tracked
on any schematic and longscan isn’t handling her.”
“Bet they’re not,” Sandor muttered. “Reckon she’s on a hunt where we’re going.”
No one said anything to that. He looked from time to time in Allison’s
direction—suspecting that the hands on Lucy’s controls at the moment had never
guided a ship through any procedure: competent, knowing all things to do, making
no mistakes, few as there were to make in this kind of operation that auto could
cany as well. He did not ask the question: Allison and the others had their
pride, that was certain—but he had that notion, from the look in Allison
Reilly’s eyes when control passed to her, a flicker of panic and desire at once,
a tenseness that was not like the competency she had shown before that
So she had worked sims, at least; or handled the controls of an auxiliary bridge
on a ship the size of Dublin, matching move for move with Dublin helm. She was
all right.
But he got up when he saw her reach to comp and try to key through to
navigation, held to the back of her cushion. “You don’t have the comp keys
posted,” she said. “I don’t get the nav function under general op.”
“Better let me do the jump setup,” he said. This time. I know her.”
She looked at him, a shift of her eyes mirrored in the screen in front of her.
“Right,” she said. “You want to walk me through it?”
He held where he was, thinking about that, about the deeper things in comp.
(Ross… Ross, now what?)
“You mind?” she asked, on the train of what she had already asked.
So it came. “Let me work it out this time,” he said. “You’re supposed to be on