"Sounds fine." She looked at her wrist chrono. "A little less than three hours. I'll be back here then, to observe." Kobolak nodded, and with a brief smile to Lisele, Captain Delarov left Control.
Lisele greeted Anders, and Alina Rostadt who had the comm panel, then sat down to her aux position and opened the circuit to Tinhead. On this ship they didn't call the computer that, but Tregare always had.
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For the next two hours she ran navigation sims, including several of Tregare's favorites.
As a trainee without real watch duties, at break time Lisele had the option of going down to the galley. Of course she observed the formality of asking Kobolak's permission. "Sure." He shook the coffee pot; it sounded nearly empty. "Bring back a refill, would you please?"
"Freshest I can find." She took the utensil and went downship; in the galley she turned it in, got a fresh cup for herself and picked up a slice of toast to go with it, then looked around the place. No one she knew was there, except Melaine Holmbach, the Drive Tech from Inconnu Deux, sitting alone as usual. Well, maybe it was time Lisele found out what was eating on that one, so she went over to the table.
"Hi. Could you use some company?"
Holmbach looked up, and for long seconds Lisele thought she wasn't going to get any response at all, but then the woman said, "Do sit down. Excuse me; I was thinking."
"What about, if it's any of my business?"
A tentative smile lit the pale, round face. Melaine pushed back curly brown hair that hadn't been combed recently. "Your business? Maybe; I'm not sure. Ivan Marchant was your uncle; he's the one I was thinking about."
"Yes, of course. You were on the Deux when he brought it back to Shaarbant, stuck with STL and chewing time."
"And blind," said Holmbach. "Blind-helpless, some thought-and yet he ran that ship. And in the end, saved it. For Bran Tregare, as he d promised to do."
Tears welled in the woman's eyes. Not only for that reason, Lisele gave no voice to her disagreement with Holmbach's view. Uncle Ivan had thought he was saving Tregare's ship, so why pick nits? She said, "He was important to you? But I thought-"
"Oh, Dacia Kobolak was his woman. The Second Hat's sister. But there was a time, he seemed so forlorn and discouraged-" The smile again, now full of tenderness. "So I sneaked in when he was asleep, woke him without saying who I was, and we made love."
The smile twisted. "But afterward it went wrong. When he learned he'd been fooled, it made him angry. He did
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forgive me later, and we had each other once again. But no more, he said." Holmbach shrugged. "So I took up Ranee Peleter's offer. You remember him? Second Engineer, a black man, soft-spoken? Shorter than me, but I didn't mind that; a strong gentle man can be any height he pleases!"
Partly, Lisele began to see Holmbach's problem. "But he's not here now."
The tears spilled down. "No. Ivan, Ranee, neither one. I think I nearly worshiped your uncle; when he died I felt it killed half of me. But Ranee was so good a man, I could manage."
"Why, then-?"
"The Tsa, is why. If the Deux had gone back to Earth I'd still be on it. But they had to go off to a Tsa world. I'm one of those who can't be within mind-range of those aliens. Ranee can, and Tregare needed him. So I'm alone now."
There were other questions Lisele could have asked: four Tsa-phobic persons had stayed with Deux, so why-? But she decided not to raise that issue; all she did was reach and pat Melaine's hand. "Never mind; we'll be on Earth soon. No Tsa there-but lots and lots of people."
Leaving things at that, she went to get a coffee pot filled from a freshly-brewed urn, and climbed upship to Control.
Waiting, as the time for subcee breakout neared, Lisele wondered why she couldn't shake her mind free of Holmbach's trouble. Objectively she could see the woman's problems, but couldn't identify with them. Why?
Eventually the answer came. Melaine Holmbach needed someone else-specifically, a man-to be real. Taking a good look at her own feelings, Lisele decided what the difference was: she felt complete, all by herself.
Hmmm-maybe not entirely. All her life she'd had the support of Rissa and Tregare; her parents were the pillars of her stance with the universe. All through the years-long trek on Shaarbant she'd pushed herself, not to let them down. But they'd never let her down, either; always, in the worst times, they were there. Well, except when Elzh the Tsa found her on a hillside and took her to his alien ship. But then, she'd had to focus so hard on her own deadly peril that only later
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did she realize she was operating solo, no help at hand.
Well, it had worked, hadn't it?
Even now, light-years from her parents, she didn't feel alone or deserted. And why not? Well, maybe because the separation was both deliberate and temporary; she'd be on Earth for some time, probably, before Rissa and Tregare got back from the Tsa-Drin world, but on Earth she had friends and family. So she wouldn't feel alone, not really.
And for now? She smiled; what's wrong with a vacation?
Captain Delarov's entrance into Control broke Lisele's reverie. A quick glance at her panel's chrono showed that scheduled breakout time was only minutes away. Taking a seat beside Anders Kobolak, the captain said, "Everything's checked out, I assume?"
"Right, captain. The Chief Engineer's handling this part himself."
"Good. Anything else?"
"One item, I guess. You haven't said whether you want to do Turnover immediately, or coast for a while first, observing through the forward viewers."
Delarov nodded. "Good question; I hadn't considered it. Yes, let's do coast, before turning and applying decel. We might see something useful."
For Lisele, the last minutes of waiting went very slowly. Finally the chrono came up to mark. With a nod toward Katmai Delarov, Anders opened the intercom to the Drive room. "You there, Chief? And ready?"
"Ready, Second Hat," came Pope's voice.
"Then cut FTL-now."
She'd been through breakout once before, when the Deux was nearing Shaarbant, but still the sense of plunging lurch, the grinding shudder that made no sound but hurt the ears anyway, caught Lisele unprepared. Her stomach jumped, not with nausea but just trying to get back where it belonged. When she got her eyes unsquinched and her ears listening, what she saw and heard was big trouble.
"That ship!" Katmai Delarov's voice came hoarse. "What is it? What's its course? Intercept?"
Automatically, while no one answered, Lisele checked her screen. Not intercept, but a skew meeting: two ships passing at an angle in different planes. Before she could say so, which probably wasn't her place anyway, Anders
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Kobolak told the same thing. But said, "Whose ship?" And that answer, Lisele did know. "The Tsa."
V
Lisele cranked her screen to highest-mag. The other ship's markings meant nothing to her, except that she hadn't seen the pattern before. She said, "All I can tell is, it's not Elzh's ship."
To Kobolak, the captain said, "How close will it come? Within their mind-attack range?"
Pale, tense and almost shaking, the Second Hat said, "On present course, I'm not sure. But it could turn, and-"
