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Chandra made her way to them, hand over hand along the

STARFARERS

245

transport wall. "Thanks for leaving me hanging like that. Is that your idea of gratitude?"

"This is Chandra. Chandra, I forgot my new name."

"It doesn't matter. You can go back to being Zev."

"What happened?" J.D. cried. "I don't understand any of this!"

Zev laughed and hovered above them. "What does it matter? We're here now."

Chandra answered her. "It's like Zev said. He's my grad student in the art department. My agent got him a temporary new identity."

"Your agent must be pretty extraordinary."

Zev swooped between them, pushed off gently from the surface beyond their feet, and passed behind J.D.

"She is. She knows some amazing people. She even knows people who can make publishers pay them their royalties on time."

"That is amazing. Zev, stop, slow down!"

"I cannot help it, this is exciting."

She took his wrist as he passed, and drew him toward her.

She had forgotten how warm his skin always felt. In the sea, heat radiated from him, perceptible a handsbreadth away.

"Come here, let me hug you."

"But you said, about being on land—"

"Never mind what I said. For a minute, we can be divers again."

Zev smiled his luminous smile and pulled himself to her and hugged her tight- He hid his face against her neck. His breath whispered against her collarbone. J.D. felt as if she had been dying of starvation and thirst and loneliness without knowing it, until this moment, and now it did not matter because she was no longer dying.

Victoria hovered nearby while J.D. and Zev hugged each other, floating upside down in relation to Victoria's orientation.

The artist grabbed onto a handhold. She clung tight, her

eyes shut, the weird swellings on her face and hands dark with increased circulation.

She opened her eyes. They were a dull silver-gray. She seemed to look directly at Victoria.

246 Vonda N. Mclntyre

"I have to hook into the computer!" she said. She thrust her chin toward Victoria, arrogant, desperate. "Otherwise I'm going to start losing stuff. Why isn't it responding?*'

"The web's been disrupted," Victoria said. "We're in a lot of trouble here—are you sure you want to stay?"

"Of course. How long before you've got a functional web?"

"I don't know."

"I can't afford to wait—do you have portables? Backups?

A hard-link?"

Victoria almost snapped at her, almost said, I have better things to do than worry about art.

But the truth was that she did not have anything better to do, with Iphigenie capable of watching the course, and also being watched over to be sure she did not slip into shock. Victoria had nothing better to do than worry. She might as well worry about something.

'''•Where did you get that suit?" J.D. was asking.

"Chandra had it made for me."

"It fit him better," Chandra said, "before he decided he ought to be able to swim in it."

"She says it should fit more closely, but I like it this way.

Is it good space clothes?"

"It's unique," J.D. said. "And so are you."

Victoria smiled. "Come on," she said to Chandra. "I'll get you to a link." She reached out to lead the artist, who ignored her hand and pushed off past her, dog-paddling.

"I'm not blind, you know."

Victoria kicked off after her, nonplussed, but relieved to know that Chandra had not chosen some form of altered sight, even blindness, in pursuit of her art.

Instead of ricocheting toward the hatchway, Victoria grabbed a handhold and stopped herself, her attention caught by a change in the familiar tones of the conversation between the transport pilot and Starfarer's traffic controller. Chandra reached the hatch, turned to look for Victoria, scowled, and dog-paddled back toward her.

"Starfarer control, no go, repeat, no go. Abort undocking procedure."

"What's the trouble, transport? Your pattern's normal." STARFARERS 24 7

"EarthSpace orders. The transport isn't to disengage from the starship."

Victoria cursed softly. If the pilot followed orders, if the transport remained with Starfarer. the expedition would have the choice of aborting transition, or vanishing with a transport full of people who did not want to go. At worst, hostages, kidnapping victims; at best, a bunch of very hostile individuals.

Chandra reached Victoria, still dog-paddling, slow but steady. She clutched Victoria's arm and pulled. They tumbled until Victoria grabbed the wall and stopped them.

"Come on!" Chandra sounded as desperate as a child who badly needed a bathroom. For all Victoria knew, the sensation of full sensory recorders was the same as full bladder and bowels.

"Just a second, this is serious."

The discussion between pilot and controller frayed around the edges, the pilot's voice losing some of its good-old-boy, feminine version, self-confidence, while the controller held desperately to the precise, rigorously unaccented EarthSpace communications English.

"Transport, you are cutting your window very thin. Starfarer will not, repeat not, approach another before transition. You will be at risk of needing a tow.''

A transport pilot would never live down making a mistake that required a tow, but this pilot's actions were deliberate.

"Hurry!" Chandra wailed.

"Shut up!" Victoria whispered, out of practice with doing the math in her head, hampered by being cut off from Arachne. Just how long did Starfarer have, to persuade the pilot to change her mind and disobey EarthSpace orders? If Chandra felt uncomfortably full, Victoria felt desperately empty.

J.D. and Zev swam over to her, Zev already smooth and graceful in freefall. He had taken off the suit coat, but still gave the impression of swimming within his clothing.

"Will they be stranded?" J.D. asked. "If they undock late—will anyone rescue them?"

"They're probably coordinated with the earner, hoping to stop us. The real question is, what if they don't undock? I don't want to go into this as kidnappers."

248 vonda N. Mclntyre

"That's what they're counting on," J.D. said. "It must be." "No'" the pilot shouted at the controller. Her angry voice sounded even more startling coming through a speaker which ordinarily transmitted the most civilized of exchanges. "I've got my orders. We're staying."

The controller replied. "I hope you are all prepared for a very long trip.''

Abandoning the sensory artist, Victoria headed for traffic control.

Griffith retraced the route he had followed with Nikolai Cherenkov, to the outer skin of the starship's campus cylinder. He had no need of Arachne's guidance, for he never permitted a computer hookup to substitute for his acute memory. He moved with quick caution. Everyone still on board must have plenty of things to worry about, but he did not trust their preoccupation to protect him from their anger. He doubted he would have time to explain if he were cornered by an infuriated mob; he doubted anyone would believe him anyway.

He wished he had made time to go through spacewalk orientation. A line through to Arachne would have helped make up for that deficiency, but the web was still down. He wondered who had crashed it, and why he had not been told of an ally on board the starship.

The tunnels grew increasingly dim, increasingly rough. He reached the tumoff to the airiock.

A dozen spacesuits hung in the access room. He touched Cherenkov's, but left it in its place. Even if it might have fit him, he lacked the gall to wear it.

I've lost a lot of gall in the last couple of days, he thought. Maybe now is where I get it back.

He picked a suit from its hanger and inspected it carefully, checking how the fittings worked. It was no more complicated than a radiation suit. He climbed into it.