“But Major Ulak told us to assemble here,” Luthis retorted indignantly.
“What is it?” The corporal who was now the most senior of those present came across.
“The party due to go over to the Trojan with Commander Reese. We were told to come here.”
The corporal was uneasy. He hadn’t been briefed on this. “I don’t have any instructions on that. My understanding was that the list isn’t approved yet. Assembly would be in the lock area, not here.”
Vicki emerged from the throng and began heading toward where Reese was standing with some ship’s officers. “Commander, isn’t there—”
“You can’t come into the Bridge area, ma’am,” one of the guards repeated, moving across to block her.
Luthis, grumbling, edged into the space the guard had vacated. “I refuse to be run back and forth like a lab rat. Call Major Ulak.”
Flustered, the corporal produced a compad. More figures were milling in from the passage. The guards who had been left looked to the corporal for direction, but for a few vital seconds his attention was focused on making the call. Suddenly, guns appeared in the hands of the arrivals. A couple of the guards managed to raise their weapons but they were outnumbered. Luthis trained a pistol on the stupefied corporal, still with his compad raised, gun in his unbuttoned holster, and held out his other hand. “Be sensible. We’ve got you cold,” Luthis said. “Ulak and the others are all harmless and locked away, every one of them. Tell your men to stand down.”
The corporal looked from the muzzle aimed at him from a couple of feet away, then around at their hopeless situation. He nodded. “Do as he says,” he told them.
Reese emitted a sigh, finally releasing the tension he had been holding down. This last part had needed to be quick and to go without hitches. The party on the Bridge had been maintaining contact with the Trojan. “Disarm them and secure them in the officers’ day room,” he instructed the First Officer.
“Yes, sir!” The FO moved away, grinning.
Reese turned to Vicki. “He pulled it off. That’s quite a son.”
Vicki was suddenly overcome with relief, too. “I always thought it. But then, when was there a mother who didn’t? I thought I’d lost him long ago. I don’t mean when the Trojan vanished. Long before that—lost him as a person. I still don’t have the whole story. But it must have been even harder on him than it was on me.”
Robin appeared from the aft direction and joined them as the last of the Trojan’s boarding party were being led away. “The engineers are manhandling cables through from the power conversion section now,” he reported. “Wernstecki and a couple of his people are setting up their computations. He says they’ll need at least half an hour.”
Reese indicated the crew station where a channel was open to the Trojan. “It’s all yours. Stall them as long as you can,” he said.
* * *
In the Trojan’s Command Module, Valcroix paced impatiently and looked up at the clock display above the mural screens on the Control Deck. One of the screens showed the Aztec, appearing stationary as it maintained its matching course. He came back to where Grasse was standing with General Nyrom and Captain Walsh. “What’s keeping them?” he muttered. “We asked for a simple list of nominations. Wasn’t it Reese who initiated this in the first place? Why is it taking so long?”
“Could you check again, General?” Grasse said.
Nyrom turned back to the crew station where an operator was monitoring the channel to the Aztec. “Get me Ulak,” he instructed. “I want Major Ulak personally this time. Make that plain.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
But it was Lieutenant Commander Delucey’s face again that appeared on the screen.
Nyrom’s patience had worn thin. “Why are my orders not being followed?” he demanded curtly. “I asked for Major Ulak. Put him on.”
“I’m sorry, but the major is not present on the Bridge Deck at the moment, sir.”
“Connect me to his personal code.”
“We’re not getting a response on that circuit, sir. Shall I send another party to locate him?” Evasions, excuses. What was going on there?