crew-mates about her, her wealth, her substance in the account of things. And he
could not blame her for that.
Even—he had reckoned, with more painful slowness—there was worth in Curran
Reilly, if he could only discover what it was. He believed that because Allison
believed it, and what Allison valued must be worth something. He took that on
faith. There was worth in all of them.
But he meant to break Curran Reilly’s arm at next opportunity.
And meanwhile he had come out of his cabin, nodded a pleasant good day, sat down
at controls and proceeded with jump prep as matter of factly as if he were only
coming on watch.
“Set it and retire?” he had asked of Allison, as blandly innocent a face as he
knew how to wear, his customs-agent manner. “Or shall I take her through?”
“You’ll take her,” Allison had to say. There was no safe alternative, things
being as they were with comp. And Curran’s face, a twist of his head and a look
in his direction, had had the look of a man with a difficult mouthful going
down.
No word to him yet of warnings. Maybe they felt threats superfluous. They were.
Data came to him on schedule, to screens, to his ear, quiet voices and
businesslike.
“Two minutes to mark.”
“All stable.”
“M/D to screen three. All on mark.”
“Scan to four, Norway’s moving.”
His heart did a turn. The image came up on screen four, Mallory was underway—had
been, for some lightbound time.
“Message incoming,” Neill said. “Acknowledge?”
“Put it through,” he said… he said, and not Allison. The realization that the
moment was thrown in his lap and not routed to Allison shocked him. But they had
to: the military would expect him. ‘That’s a tight transmission,” Neill said.
“Same mode reply… We’re receiving you, Odin”
“This is Odin command,” the answer came. “Captain Mallory sends her compliments
and advises you there are hazards in the Hinder Star zones. Wish you luck, Lucy”
That was polite. The tone surprised him. He punched in his own mike. “This is
Stevens of Lucy: do we expect escort at our next point?”
A silence. “Location of Alliance ships is restricted information. Exercise due
caution in contacts.”
“Understood, Odin command.” On the number four screen, Norway was in decided
motion, gathering speed with the distinctive dopplered flickers of a military
ship on scan.
“Odin’s just braked,” Curran said. “Losing them on vid.”
“Up on scan,” Deirdre said, and that was so: the image was there, the gap
between them widening.
“Twenty-four seconds to mark,” Allison said. “Jump point minus fifteen minutes
twenty seconds.”
He checked the belts, the presence of the trank on the counter. His eyes kept
going back to that ominous and now closer presence coming up on them. Norway
could lie off and make nothing of their days of passage when she woke up and
decided to move. He tried to ignore that monumental fact, bristling with
weapons, bearing down by increments scan was only guessing. He went about his
private preparations as his crew had begun to do: settling in, being sure of
comfort and safety for the jump to come.
“Minus ten minutes,” Allison murmured. “Hang, what’s Mallory up to?”
“She won’t crowd us,” Sander said. “She’s not crazy, whatever else.”
He put the trank in. Began to glaze over… His concern for everything diminished.
He stared at the scan image for an instant, hyper and fascinated, recalled the
necessity to track on other things and focused his mind down the tunnel it
required. “Take her through,” he said to Allison—caught the roll of a dark eye
in his direction… suspicion; question—’Take her,” he said again, as if nothing
else had happened, as if it were only the next step in checking out his novice
crew. Allison’s face acquired that panic the situation deserved, one’s first
time handling jump. He shunted control to her board and she diverted her
attention back where it had to be. “Eight minutes,” he said, reminding her. He
was crazy: he knew so. The trank had blurred all the past, created a kind of
warmth in which he was safe with them simply because they had no alternatives.