"Ah. Administrative details," he said, his voice smooth as swanhawk grease. "I'm afraid we still need some more information, Pride of Vorvian. This will only take a few minutes. Please continue to slow your thrust."
"He's lying," said Hantis abruptly, looking at the officer on the screen.
Captain Pausert grit his teeth. "We're going to need the Sheewash Drive, then. We'll have to turn and run again. We can't possibly break through."
He took the microphone from the Leewit, who hurried to join Goth at the tangle of wires. "We've just discovered we have an outbreak of severe gaspartis on board. We are going to have to return to our last port."
"Wait, Pride of Vorvian. We have medics on board . . ." The Imperial smoothness disappeared. "Halt or be fired on! Pirate vessel Venture. Halt or be fired on!"
But the Venture was already heading away, back where she'd come from, before the two flanking cruisers could come within range.
* * *
"They must have our engine's signature keyed into their detectors, Captain," said Vezzarn. "I don't know how they managed that, though. These engines were installed on Uldune, and the Daal certainly didn't pass along the information to them. But I can't see any other explanation."
Pausert sighed. "If that's the case, short of hauling the Venture's engines out and putting new engines in—which we just don't have the time for—the Imperial Navy will spot us no matter what we do with the light-shift."
"I guess it'll have to be the Egger Route, then," said Goth, her face even more expressionless than usual.
The Leewit scowled, bit her thumb. "Guess so. But—" She jerked a nod at the captain, the grik-dog and the Nartheby Sprite. "Can they do it? Old Vezzarn can't, that's for sure."
Hantis shook her head. "Alas, no. It is not a klatha power that Sprites can harness."
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter then, that I can't do it either," said Pausert. "As the point is to get Hantis and Pul through to the Empress before the Winter Carnival, we'll have to try some other form of disguise. Maybe we can sneak past on the Sheewash Drive."
"No good," said the old spacer, who was still very uncomfortable about the Sheewash Drive he'd tried so hard to steal—until he found out what it actually was. "At the speed the little Wisdoms can manage now, Captain, they're still going to detect us."
"True," agreed the captain, glumly. "And now that we've tried the light-shift, I don't think that's going to fool them anywhere."
This is not as much fun as the circus, Big Real Thing, tinkled a vatchy voice.
"Get that stinkin' little thing out of here!" said the Leewit, wrinkling her nose. You could hear the girl's tiredness and hunger in her peevish tones. Doing the Sheewash Drive had taken it out of the littlest witch. Besides, Pausert didn't doubt, she was missing the circus and the people there badly. She'd been rather spoiled by them.
The little vatch simply danced around the room, levitating things.
Captain Pausert raised his eyes to heaven. He could chase it with hooks of klatha force . . . and tickle it. Lately he'd found that the best answer was to humor it. Much the same way as he did with the Leewit, actually.
Where have you been for so long, little-bit?
Got sick. The dream-candy from the one the dog-thing bit was sour. Got to go, now. I'll find you again. G'bye.
It disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Dream-candy . . . from the Nanite-infected pirate? The universe as the vatches saw it was rather different from the universe as perceived by humans. Distance and time were fairly meaningless concepts to them. So what did they find in here that was "candy" to them?
Pausert was sure that many of the words that the vatch put into his mind were not strict translations but merely the nearest human equivalent. Well, there'd be time enough to puzzle over what was candy to a vatch, once they'd solved their present problems. The captain turned his mind back to that. "So just what is the Egger Route?"
"The way I came here, stupid," said the Leewit crossly. "Do you forget everything?"
Of course Pausert remembered the droning sound—in space, where there was nothing to transmit sound—and the abrupt and inexplicable arrival of the Leewit, and the way they'd had to wrap her in blankets because of the shaking.
He also remembered that she'd been . . . well, not breathing.
"Kind of hard to explain," said Goth. "I asked Threbus that question once, and he said that I'd have to get to understand n-dimensional math first. It's . . . well, there is a place outside this place, and times and distances aren't the same there. There's billions of Egger-spaces, and they relate to the person going into them. Even if the Leewit and I went home to Karres by the Egger Route, we wouldn't be in the same Egger Space."
"You can take someone else through your Egger Space. Or even send them through it. But that takes big power," scowled the Leewit. "Toll and Maleen could do it. Maleen could make us swim. Her Egger Space was wet. Don't know about Goth."
"Uh-huh," said Goth. "I do it pretty good, Maleen says. I can push quite a lot with me too. Or I could last time I tried. It's not something you try too often, although all Karres witches have to learn how."
Inwardly, Pausert sighed. The trouble with the Karres witches was that just as soon as you thought you had a handle on it all, they introduced new things. "If I've got this straight, the Egger Route goes through Egger Space, and Egger Space is different depending on who goes on the Egger Route. So what exactly is in this 'Egger Space'? Is it totally non-physical? What is there?"
The Leewit shrugged. "Everything."
"Anything," said Goth. "All the things you never want to meet. The details kind of blur up, Captain. It's like a defense that your mind has got against it."
"It's safe enough," said the Leewit. "Just horrid. So long as you don't meet any stinkin' vatches."
Involuntarily, Pausert looked around the room. No vatch in sight. "Why? We seem to have one we can't shake off."
By the way Goth looked around, she was also trying to rell if there were any vatches in the area. "Because vatches make what you find there real . . . here. When you come back. Threbus says they think that's where the Megair cannibals originally came from. From beyond the divide. From some Karres witch's trip through Egger Space. That's why, unless there is a real emergency we don't send any witches into Egger Space, except in a trance. That way they're protected. You still see stuff, but it's more like a nightmare than reality. If you send yourself through . . . well, it's just impossible to tell that it isn't real."
"So it's a sort of extradimensional dreamworld?" persisted the captain. He felt that if he could understand this, then he could do it. He just knew he could.
"I suppose so. It's a place. A little bit of everything in our universe is there too, and you've just got to sort of push and twist and align everything. That's what the vibration is about. You kind of bounce around until your body is back in the same dimensions as the rest of our universe. And then you come back. It's pretty bruising. But that's not the worst part of the Egger Route."
"Yeah," said the Leewit, shuddering a little. "It's bad enough when you go through someone else's Egger Space. Mostly that's just hard to remember."
"We've got another problem, Captain," interrupted Vezzarn, who had been gazing at the detector screens while all this had been going on. "I reckon those Imperials have done some calculations on our possible course, and got on the subradio. There are seven ships incoming. Looks like they're spreading out for an englobement."
They all rushed to the screens. Looking at them, Pausert thought there could be little doubt that Vezzarn was correct.