“I’ll take the locks off when I know who I’m working with.” He thrust his hands
into his pockets, started away, to break it off. Instinct turned him about
again, a peace offering. “So I’m a bastard. But Lucy’s not what you’re used to,
in a lot of senses. I haven’t nursed her this far or got you out here to die
with, no thanks. I’m asking you—I want you all on the bridge when we go into
jump.”
“All right,” she said. A quiet all right. But there was still that reserve in
her eyes. “You watch us. You see how it is. Sims, yes.”
“And backup bridge. But you catch me in a mistake, you do that.”
“I don’t think I will,” he said softly. “I don’t expect it.”
“Only you’re careful, are you?”
“I’m careful.”
They approached jump, a sleep later, a slow ticking of figures on the screen—a
calm approach, an easy approach. Sandor checked everything twice, asked for data
from supporting stations, because jumping loaded was a different kind of
proposition. Full holds, an unfamiliar jump point—there were abundant reasons to
be glad of additional hands on this one, “Got it set,” he said to Allison, who
sat number two. “Check those figures, will you?”
“Already doing that,” Allison said. “Just a minute.”
The figures flashed back to him.
“You’re good,” he said.
“Of course.” That was the Dubliner. No sense of humility. “We all are. We going
for it?”
“Going for it.—Count coming up. Any problems?—Five minutes, mark. Got our
referent.” He reached for the trank and inserted the needle. There was no
provision on this one but a water bottle in the brace, for comfort’s sake. No
need. They would exit at a point named James’s, and laze across it in honest
merchanter fashion; and then on to Simon’s Point, and to Venture.
The numbers ticked on.
“Message from Pell buoy,” Neill said, “acknowledging our departure.”
No reply necessary. It was automated. Lucy went on singing her unceasing
identification, communicating with Pell’s machinery.
“Mark,” Sandor said, and hit the button…
Chapter XII
… Down again, into a welter of input from the screens, trank-blurred. Sandor
reached in slow motion and started to deal with it. Beside him, the others—and
for a moment his mind refused to sort that fact in. There was the mass which had
dragged Lucy in out of the Dark… they were at James’s Point, Voyager-bound; and
Ross’s voice was silent.
“Got it,” Allison was saying beside him, icy-cold and competent. “Just the way
the charts gave it…”
He was still not used to that, a stranger-voice that for a moment was
desolation… but it was her voice, and there was backup on his right, all about
him. “Going for dump,” he said.
And then Curran’s voice: “We’re not alone here.”
It threw him, set his heart pounding: his hand faltered on the way to vital
controls. Velocity needed shedding, loaded as they were, tracking toward the
mass that had snatched them. Things happened fast in pre-dump, too fast—
“Standing by dump,” Allison said.
“That’s Norway,” Neill said then.
He hit the dump, kicked in the vanes, shedding what they carried in a flutter of
sickening pulses. “She still with us?” he asked, meaning Norway. Sensor ghosts
could linger, light-bound information on a ship which had left hours ago. No way
to discern, maybe—but he wanted his crew’s minds on it Wanted them searching.
Hard.
“Better set up the next jump in case,” Allison said. “I don’t trust this.”
“Outrun that?” Sandor focused on the question through the trank haze. “You’re
dreaming, Reilly.” They kicked off velocity again, a numbing pulse that
scrambled wits a moment He blinked and reached an unsteady hand toward comp,
started lining the tracking up again.
“We’re in,” Allison said. “That’s got us on velocity.”
“Getting nothing more than ID transmission,” Neill said.
“Got a solid image,” Curran said. “They’re close. That’s confirmed, out there,
range two minutes.”
The image hit his screen, transferred unasked. “Should I contact them?” Neill
asked. “I’m getting no com output”
“No.” He blinked, the sweat running on his face, concentrated on the business in
front of him—and that ship out there, right on them as a warship reckoned speed,