He had had time in the hours shut in his cabin—in the cabin that had been Papa Lou’s, amid the remnant of things that he and Ross and Mitri had not sealed away under the plates, taking everything that might have identified the Kreja name to customs —he had had time to reckon what had happened. He might have hated them. He reckoned that But it was too tangled for hate. It was survival, and maybe it had started out as something better than that.
He understood Allison, he reckoned: generous sometimes, and where it touched her Name, hard enough to cut glass. She would not have come to him in worthlessness, the way he would not have left Lucy and gone to her penniless; she came with her 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. Relinquishing things this way, he was in command of all of them… and Allison Reilly had failed another prediction. He sensed her anger at him; and Curran’s hate; and the perplexity of the rest—smiled a trank-dulled smile as they flashed toward their departure—
“Five minutes,” he said, on mark. Allison gave him another look, as if to judge his sanity, diverted her attention back to the board.
The seconds ticked off. His Dubliners, he thought. Possibly they would begin it all again where they were going. Maybe they would do more than they had already done. In one part of his soul he was cold afraid. But he was always afraid. He was used to that. He knew how to adjust to things he was afraid of, which was to grin and bluff—and he had that faculty back again.
“Minus forty-five seconds.”
“All stable,” Curran said.
“We’re going,” Allison said, and that was that: she had uncapped the switches.
(Ross… it’s not me this time. But she knows what she’s doing. In most things. Let’s go, then. The first time—without my help. She’s good, Ross… they all are. And I don’t know where we go from here. They don’t know either. I’m sure of that. And I think they’re scared of what I’ll make them be…)
The vanes cycled in, Lucy tracking on the star that gave them bearings, and they went—
—in again, a pulse down that made itself felt all along the nerves…
And no need to move, no need: Allison was there, giving orders, doing everything that ought to be done. “Dump,” she ordered: comp, on silent, was blinking alarm. Sandor performed the operation, neat pulses which slipped them in and out of here and now, loaded as they were, shedding velocity into the interface, while the dark mass lent them its gravitation, pockmark in spacetime sufficient to hold them… friendly, dangerous point of mass…
They made it in, making more speed than they had used at the last point… Allison’s choice. “Will she handle it?” she asked on that account.
“Ought to,” Sandor said. “In a hurry, Reilly?”
No answer.
“It’s lonely here,” Curran said. “Not a stir anywhere.”
“Lonelier than the average,” Allison said. “Didn’t they say they were monitoring all the points?”
No answer from any quarter. Sandor took the water bottle from beside the console, took a drink and set it back again. He unbelted.
“Going back to my quarters,” he said. “Good luck with her, Reilly.”
“Alterday watch to controls,” Allison said. “Change off at one hour.”
Maybe there was something she wanted to say. Maybe—he thought, in a moment of hope—she had come to her senses. But there was nothing but fatigue in her face when she had gotten up from controls. Fatigue and a flushed exhilaration he understood. So she had gotten the ship through: that was something to her, He had forgotten the peculiar terror of a novice; had taken Lucy into jump for the first time when he was fourteen. Then he had been scared. And many a time since then.