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Chapter Nine

The drizzle gave way to a sheet of rain which thundered on the hull of the Princess Cecile and lashed the surface of Bay Ten, the ready slip to which the corvette had been transferred at the completion of her refit. Lightning pulsed continuously, backlighting the thunderheads without ever striking in the cone of Daniel's vision through the open main hatch.

"Like a cow pissing on a flat rock," Hogg muttered, though he didn't sound especially unhappy about it. The rain was blasting itself to mist on the canopy over the walkway from the edge of the pool to the corvette. Watching it, Daniel could imagine he was in one of the metal-roofed hunting cabins deep in the interior of Bantry—

Instead of waiting for the arrival of the courier whom the Navy Office had an hour ago alerted them to expect.

Apparently thinking in the same track, Ellie Woetjans said, "If the RCN don't teach you nothing else, it'll teach you to wait." There was a chorus of, "Amen!" and "Too right!" from the half dozen spacers in the the Princess Cecile's entranceway.

Woetjans was a rangy, powerful woman who was taller than Daniel by six inches. As bosun she rapped helmets with a length of electrical cord to get the attention of landsmen she was turning into riggers. No need of that with the present crew, of course.

Woetjans was soaking wet, having just come in with the team which had changed out the main hinge of Dorsal 3. The antenna had stuck a few degrees short of closure twice during testing. Daniel had been willing to lift with it—joints loosened in service, after all—but since there were a few minutes unexpectedly available, the bosun had taken five riggers out despite the rain. She hadn't bothered to change when she returned in case the courier with the Princess Cecile's orders arrived during those few moments. The crew was even more excited about the corvette's next deployment than her captain was.

Well, make that as excited. Admiral Anston had called Daniel in personally, after all. He wouldn't have done that if he'd planned to send the Princess Cecile to the Home Squadron protecting Cinnabar against Alliance raiders—who had last attacked some seventeen years ago. There was every chance that Lt. Leary's first operational command would be an independent one.

"Daniel?" said Adele's voice through the earphones of the commo helmet Daniel was wearing along with his utility uniform. "A car and truck have just cleared the main gate with Bay Ten as their announced destination. Over."

He should have guessed that Adele would be monitoring not only ordinary communications traffic but also intercepting limited-distribution messages that she and her software thought might be of interest to the Princess Cecile. A truck, though? Why on earth would the courier have a truck with him?

"Adele," Daniel said, "we're only about three minutes from the gate here. Why don't you come join me for the courier's arrival? You can monitor the console through your helmet, you know. Over."

Adele sniffed. "Can I really?" she said, not angrily but with enough of an edge to remind Daniel who he'd been talking to. "Perhaps I'll print out the instruction manual for my equipment to read while I'm waiting with you. Signals out."

Smiling faintly but tense all the same, Daniel said, "He's on his way from the gate," loudly enough to be heard by those with him in the entrance. He lifted his equipment belt with his thumbs to settle it more comfortably over his hipbones.

The rain had slackened again, though that was hard to tell because of the water still dripping from the antennas through the flare of the area light above the Princess Cecile's hatch. Headlights swept down the curving roadway toward Bay Ten in Vs of spray. The lead vehicle, illuminated by the following one, was one of the enclosed two-place scooters used by the Navy Office message service.

Adele came down the companionway from C Level and the bridge. Unconsciously her hand brushed the right cargo pocket where her personal data unit rode. She had no need for special tailoring when wearing a utility uniform.

The vehicles pulled up at the shelter for visitors to Bay Ten. A figure in a close-drawn rain cape got out of the scooter and started down the walkway toward the corvette's hatch, hunched over against the weather. The rain was coming down harder again. It wasn't the downpour of minutes earlier, but it still blew under the canopy.

"There's a driver in the car," Hogg noticed aloud. "Since when do couriers get drivers?"

Adele frowned, then flipped down the jump seat intended for a sentry at the airlock and took her data unit out. Daniel glanced at her, wondering what in the world she was doing.

The wands flickered. Without looking up Adele said, "I'm finding what department the truck is assigned to. Its vehicle number went into the records when it passed the gate."

Daniel opened his mouth to say, "Well, we'll know in a moment. . . ." But it wasn't certain that they would learn in a moment; and anyway, that probably didn't make any difference to Adele. She had more faith in data that she uncovered herself than she did in what somebody from the Navy Office told her; and thinking about it, Daniel too had more faith in what Adele learned in her own fashion. He swallowed his comment unspoken.

The courier reached the hatch and stepped into the entryway, out of the weather. The trousers of his 2nd Class uniform were darkened several shades from the original dove gray where the rain had soaked them.

"Orders for the officer commanding RCS Princess Cecile," the man said, his voice rough. He coughed to clear his throat.

Daniel stepped forward. "I'm Lieutenant Leary, commanding RCS Princess Cecile," he said.

The stiffened bill of the courier's cowl shadowed his face. He brought from beneath his cape a packet closed with the Republic's seal, a winged sandal, over an embossed RCN.

Daniel broke the seal with his index finger, watching the holographic wings flap three times. If the envelope had been opened before it reached him, the charge would have dissipated whether or not the seal itself were damaged. There was no reason to suspect forgery, but the Matrix makes people—those who survive—careful about details.

He drew out the document and read:

Navy Office, 16 xi 45
Lt. D. O. Leary,
Comdg. RCS Princess Cecile, Harbor Three.

Lieutenant: So soon as the Republic of Cinnabar corvette which you have been appointed to command shall be in all respects ready for space, you will proceed to the Strymon system, touching at such ports as you may think proper.

If possible you will meet at Sexburga the squadron under Commodore Pettin, already en route to Strymon, and place yourself under his command for the remainder of the cruise. If you do not join Commodore Pettin en route, you will report to him in the Strymon system.

During your presence at Strymon you will do all in your power to cherish, on the part of their government, good feelings toward the Republic of Cinnabar. In addition you will carry out such other duties as are placed on you by competent authorities. You will return to Cinnabar in accordance with the directions of Commodore Pettin.

The courier bearing these orders will provide additional oral instructions which you will carry out as a part of your duties.

You will communicate to all the officers under your command the orders of this Office that no one be concerned in a duel during the course of this cruise.

Commending you and your ship company to the protection of Divine Providence, and wishing you a pleasant cruise and a safe return to your planet and friends, I am,

Very respectfully,
Anston

Frowning slightly, Daniel handed the dispatch to Adele to read. To the courier he said, "You have oral instructions for me?"

The courier undid his cape's throat catch and shrugged the garment off. It fell on the deck behind him. He was Delos Vaughn. He said, "Indeed I do, Lieutenant."

Daniel's face didn't change. He said nothing while his mind shuffled through possibilities.

"And I have a reserve naval commission," Vaughn continued in the silence; sharply, a little nervous in the face of Daniel's lack of reaction. "I have a perfect right to wear this uniform."

The others present were taking their cue from Daniel. Apart from Adele, none of them saw anything remarkable in the situation.

"All right, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said. "Come into my cabin and you can deliver your instructions."

He turned, catching Adele's eye. She'd risen to her feet when the courier arrived, but the data unit was still in her hand. She gave a minute shake of her head, her expression guarded.

"There's no need for privacy, Lieutenant," Vaughn said. "The further instructions are that you carry me to Strymon aboard your vessel, and that you provide me with such assistance as is commensurate with your duties as an officer of the Republic."

"Mr. Vaughn . . ." Daniel said. The storm had resumed in all its elemental fury. Its thunder and actinic glare were anchors for Daniel's mind, underscoring how trivial human concerns were against the majesty of nature. "An RCN corvette is not a pleasure yacht. Perhaps—"

"You have your orders, Mr. Leary," Vaughn said, momentarily the aristocrat to a servant. "They are clear, are they not?"

Daniel felt his face tighten and grow warm with the blood rising to the skin. "Quite clear, Mr. Vaughn," he said.

"As for the comfort of a yacht," Vaughn said, a gentleman to a peer again, "I don't require anything excessive for the few months the voyage will require. The van there—"

He twisted his head, sketching a gesture toward the vehicles waiting at the poolside.

"—holds my baggage. We can store it here in the entryway for the moment. As soon as we've reached orbit, you can expend a missile and then put the baggage in the emptied missile rack. And you'll need to find accommodation for my two servants, though they can sleep with the common spacers."

He beamed at Daniel in open-faced enthusiasm.

Daniel had a sudden vision of himself as a cog in a vast machine which stretched away in all directions. Parts whirring, trembling; wheels and pistons and slides in vibrant motion, and somewhere a control board at which a faceless figure sat. He thought, I am Daniel Leary, officer by grace of God and the will of the Senate. I am not a cog in anyone's machine! 

"I see, Mr. Vaughn," he said aloud. "As you say, my orders are clear. You may board with the clothes you're standing in. We won't be making room for your traps by lessening our combat effectiveness in time of war; but as you say, the first leg of the cruise shouldn't be too long. And we haven't room to accommodate servants for supernumeraries, I'm afraid. This is a corvette, not a battleship."

The first leg would be no more than eighteen days or he'd know the reason why!  

"We can find you utilities to wear, I'm sure, until you can buy civilian kit at our first planetfall."

He nodded to Adele. "Since Officer Mundy," he said, "has moved into the captain's lounge—"

One of the two small cabins of Daniel's suite off the bridge, intended for entertaining non-RCN guests where they wouldn't have access to a console tied into the corvette's data bank.

"—then we can put the passenger in that cabin." He smiled at Vaughn. "Which you will be sharing, sir, with the infirmary and Medic; if you're determined to take passage with us."

"You know I don't care where I sleep, Daniel," Adele said with a moue of irritation.

"Nor do I, Lieutenant Leary," Vaughn said, grinning—to Daniel's surprise—in satisfaction. "But if it hasn't become a point of honor with you, I have two small cases waiting in the car that brought me. In total they amount to the one and a half cubic feet permitted a midshipman under naval regulations. And I'll hire a spacer to do for me on board, as I believe is customary?"

Aren't you a clever devil? Daniel thought. Trying me on to see if I'd let you have whatever you wanted. A Leary of Bantry kowtowing to a foreigner! 

"Yes," Daniel said aloud. "That should be workable."

He checked the time on the flat multifunction card he wore on a wrist clip while in utilities, then looked up again. "You have five minutes to get your two cases aboard, Mr. Vaughn."

He smiled and felt the thrill of the words as he added, "We're to lift ship as soon as we're ready, you see. And the Princess Cecile is ready for her first operational cruise now!"

As the Princess Cecile trembled, white rings became blue solids on the sidebar to Adele's communications display. One at a time, eight of them: the plasma thrusters switching from standby to live, expelling minute streams of white-hot ions into the pool. Very shortly Daniel would slide his linked throttles forward and the thrusters would lift the corvette to transatmospheric orbit.

Adele was detached, unaffected by the tense bustle of the bridge around her. She had duties at this moment, though they were of the negative variety: to block all incoming messages unless they directly concerned the vessel's liftoff. The operation was complex and potentially dangerous if botched, though there was more risk of the sun going dark in the next minutes. Between the time the liftoff sequence began until the Princess Cecile reached orbit, even Admiral Anston could wait.

Betts, the Chief Missileer, and Sun, the gunner's mate—a corvette was too small to rate a master gunner—were taut at their consoles to the left of Adele's, though neither of them had as much to do with the process of liftoff as the Signals Officer did. Woetjans and a team of riggers waited in the corridor. They would climb onto the hull after the Princess Cecile reached an altitude at which the antennas could be deployed. That would be at least ten minutes and might be thirty, but the riggers already wore their suits with the faceplates hinged open.

They were all spacers, feeling a responsibility to the ship and its performance. To Adele, the Princess Cecile was the metal box in which she happened to ride at the moment. She would do her job and whatever else Daniel or another asked of her, but she couldn't even pretend to care whether the ship rose to orbit—as it would, as surely as the sun would rise—or instead exploded here in Harbor Three.

The hatches were closed, the thrusters lighted; the fusion bottle that provided both plasma and auxiliary power was a green sphere in Adele's holographic display, and the High Drive a hollow green-edged bar indicating that the antimatter converter was on standby but fully functional. Adele didn't need to echo the ship's indicators on her screen; she did so merely from a desire to show solidarity with the rest of the crew to whom they were important.

A smile touched the corners of her lips. If the ship blows up here, who will Mistress Sand get to replace me? Not that the answer was of any real consequence to Adele. She just liked information.

Daniel spoke tersely, authoritatively. The console's dynamic suppressor cancelled the sound of the words even a few inches away. Adele could have listened to the conversation on a dedicated line to the power room, but there was no need to. Lt. Leary was receiving oral confirmation from Chief Pasternak of what the instruments showed: the Princess Cecile was ready to lift.

Daniel grinned through his holographic display which was only a haze of light except to the eyes of the person seated at the console. His hand touched a switch and an electronic alarm whistled three times on a rising note. Signal lights pulsed red to orange, warning the crew during times that sound wouldn't carry because the ship was depressurized.

Daniel brought the throttles forward in a smooth motion. The linkage was physical rather than virtual so that the captain had feedback through his own flesh instead of just a gauge to watch.

Adele flexed her fingers, imagining the control wands between them. The trained human body is capable of wonderful subtlety. Unexpected, unwanted, she remembered a boy's face bulging as the bullet from her pistol punched through the bridge of his nose. That had required only a few ounces' pressure, expertly applied by a trigger finger trained in the gallery in the basement of Chatsworth Minor.

The thrusters roared to full power, squeezing Adele down in her seat. It was a gentle pressure; even with the antennas folded at minimum length along the hull and the sails furled tightly to them, a starship wasn't stressed for high accelerations.

Ships covered interstellar distances by entering bubble universes where physical constants differed from those of the sidereal universe, but velocity was conserved during the passage. There was no need of high accelerations when you could leave the universe for one in which distances were logarithmically shorter and the pressure of Casimir radiation drove vessels across light-years in a matter of hours. The High Drive, though very efficient, was needed only for maneuvering over distances too short for the captain to trust her astrogation.

The Princess Cecile bucked and started to yaw. Daniel's hands danced on the throttles. Adele snapped her eyes to her own display. The indicator for the third thruster in the upper bank—starboard—was quivering. It dropped to a hollow gray circle at the same time as the indicator kitty-corner—Port Two—became a white standby circle.

The Princess Cecile steadied. Adele thought she felt a minuscule vibration that hadn't been present before, but she might be imagining a change because her mind knew something had happened.

Her fingers touched a key with the same precision as Daniel had shown in juggling the throttles. Through her helmet Chief Pasternak was shouting, "—ing bloody bracket gave and the feed line started thrashing like half an earthworm! Henning's got a loop of cargo tape on the whore, and we'll have her welded in numbers three minutes. Over!"

"Carry on, chief," Daniel said calmly. She glanced at him again. His face wore an absent-minded smile as he tweaked a throttle—no longer linked to the other seven—and the vibration smoothed to glassy perfection. "After all, this is a shakedown cruise. Needs must we can reach altitude on four thrusters. Bridge out."

"Engineering out."

Instead of concentrating on his display as Adele expected, Daniel stabbed the public address switch as forcefully as if he were trying to dent the plate beneath his virtual keyboard. Adele smiled: a control was never in doubt when Daniel activated it. He left delicacy for others.

"Captain to ship," speakers said, the words echoing themselves from the ceiling of every compartment. "The waterline feeding Starboard Three came adrift. Engineering has it jury-rigged, and it'll be at a hundred percent in a few minutes. Bridge out."

As Daniel switched off, he saw Adele watching him from the other side of his display. He grinned and made an O from his right thumb and index finger, then went back to his controls.

Adele did the same. Of course Daniel wouldn't forget that the crew would worry—or at least wonder—because the Princess Cecile's thrust had gone ragged. His duty was even more to the personnel than it was to the vessel's hardware.

Spacers shouted to one another. Under normal circumstances only the officers had communications helmets. When ordinary crewmen spoke to one another, they had to make themselves heard over the thrusters. The pulsing thunder muted as the corvette rose through ever-thinner layers of atmosphere, but even in hard vacuum the fabric of the ship shivered in a kind of low moan.

Two crewmen ran along the corridor carrying a rope-handled footlocker between them. They disappeared down the companionway, undeterred by the weight and awkwardness of their burden. Adele hadn't any idea what they were doing, whether it was a problem or simply personal belongings that somebody had forgotten to stow before liftoff.

The whistle called a two-note signal; the emergency lights glowed blue for a moment. Adele remembered the call from when the Princess Cecile left Kostroma: atmospheric density had fallen to the point that the captain could switch power to the High Drive at will.

Daniel engaged the PA system again. "Engaging the High Drive," he announced in a tone so emotionless as to sound bored. He waited still-faced for five beats of the second hand, backed the throttles to quarter power, and with his right hand threw the toggle that shut off fuel to the plasma thrusters at the same time as it engaged the matter-antimatter power plant.

The Princess Cecile shuddered. A high-pitched keen replaced the tremble of the plasma motors. Any change in acceleration was too subtle for Adele to sense, but she did feel a slight queasiness, familiar from her previous experience.

The High Drive delivered its thrust from a multithroated central port rather than eight—six during most of this liftoff—widely separated plasma nozzles. It was as though the Princess Cecile were balancing her thirteen hundred tons on the point of a needle. The controls kept the corvette aligned by minute changes in the thrust vector. The direction of "down" changed many times a second.

Adele smiled wryly. In this case, the delicate measuring ability of her inner ear was a detriment to her well-being.

On a sudden whim, she filled her display with a holographic image of the planet beneath. The first time she'd left Cinnabar, she'd sat in the passenger lounge and watched her world shrink on the display. She hadn't found it particularly interesting. Being who she was, she'd watched a perfect simulation of the process as soon as she decided to continue her schooling on Blythe.

Fifteen years ago, Adele had expected to return home. More accurately, it had never crossed her mind that she wouldn't return home, much less that her home would cease to exist. Now . . .

Adele turned from the image of a planet, the lines of its continents softened by the blue haze of atmosphere, and looked at the spacers around her. They were intent, ready for an emergency but cheerful nonetheless. Betts and Sun slapped hands in acknowledgment of a successful liftoff, and the riggers joked in the corridor.

Adele laughed aloud. She didn't worry about coming home again this time either.

Because this time she was taking her home with her.

Daniel rose from his console and stretched, a full-bodied exercise that ended with him leaning backward and bracing his hands on the seatback with a deck sandal locked around the chairpost. Liftoffs—and landings, even more so—were so all-involving that tension drew his muscles up like drying rawhide until the job was complete.

Delos Vaughn walked onto the bridge, smiling pleasantly. He wore a set of fawn coveralls which were utilitarian in cut, though grease stains would show as they didn't against the gray-on-gray mottling of RCN utilities. Over his left breast pocket was a tape with his name in glowing gold letters.

"Allow me to be the first to congratulate you, Lieutenant," Vaughn said. "Your recovery was so quick that I scarcely noticed the systems failure."

You have no business on my bridge! Daniel thought. A bracket snapping on liftoff is no more a systems failure than you're an RCN officer! 

"Thank you, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said aloud, "but I'd appreciate it if you'd consider the bridge off-limits unless I inform you otherwise. This is a warship on active service."

Turning his attention immediately to his console so that the comment would appear trivial rather than an angry dressing-down, Daniel keyed the Battle Direction Center channel. "Mr. Mon?" he said. "Come to the bridge please and take the conn. I'm going topside."

"On the way, Mr. Leary," Mon replied immediately. There was no need to go through full communications protocol on a dedicated line, any more than there was when dealing with one's fellows face-to-face.

Daniel straightened and again glanced around him. Vaughn had retreated into the corridor. He was watching with the bright interest of a bird but was careful not to interfere with the team of riggers preparing to go onto the hull. He must have felt Daniel's glance, for he waved an index finger in friendly greeting.

"Officer Mundy," Daniel said in a carrying voice, "we're preparing our initial entry into the Matrix. I'd appreciate it if you'd join me on the hull."

As he spoke, Daniel felt a flash of resentment, an uncommon emotion for him. Having a passenger like Vaughn was almost as bad as—indeed, perhaps worse than—carrying a senior officer. He couldn't feel that the Princess Cecile was really his, the way the officer commanding should be able to do. Although now that Daniel analyzed his feelings, he couldn't see why he should react that way to a foreign civilian.

"Why yes, thank you, Daniel," Adele said in pleasant, cultured impropriety. She rose from her console. "I suppose I should have that experience. Now that I'm an RCN officer, that is."

A valued member of the RCN, Daniel thought, letting the grin reach his lips. RCN officer in the sense that instructors at the Academy would understand it, though . . . that would be going a little far. 

Woetjans gave Daniel a thumbs-up. He nodded. The bosun tongued a control in her helmet and the cheery, four-note Riggers Aloft call rang from the PA system as the signal lights pulsed yellow.

Lt. Mon—dark, wiry and professional—was striding down the corridor, dodging obstacles both human and inanimate, mostly equipment stored there for lack of a better place. Daniel nodded to him at the hatchway, said, "You have the conn," and slipped past with the ease of long practice.

Adele shifted left when she should have gone right and bounced off Mon's arm, then bumped Daniel from behind. It was amazing that a person with the physical dexterity Adele showed at a console—or with a pistol—could so consistently move in the wrong direction when she had to get from one point in a starship to another.

And of course when she was on a starship it was worse. Daniel reminded himself to attach her safety line personally.

The Bow Dorsal airlock was cycling, sending Woetjans and five riggers onto the hull. Six more crewmen waited to follow the first watch: the initial deployment of antennas and sails employed all the riggers rather than merely the port or starboard watch.

Burridge, one of the waiting riggers, tossed Daniel a suit from the open locker. He slid into it like a body stocking, then glanced at Adele to help her if she was having difficulty.

She wasn't: Dasi and Jonas held Adele by the arms while Burridge pulled the suit over her limbs and torso with as little ceremony or trouble as a cook has stuffing a sausage. From Adele's expression of mild disinterest, the process wasn't one that disturbed her. Vaughn, squeezed against the opposite bulkhead to keep out of the way, watched with a frown.

The light over the airlock glowed green, indicating the outer door was sealed. Dasi, the team's senior man, slammed the crash bar with a gloved hand and led his riggers into the lock. Daniel latched Adele's faceshield, drew her with him into the lock—it would hold a dozen in a pinch, times when speed was more important than comfort—and locked his own shield closed.

The world was silence except for Daniel's own breathing, heavy and echoing until he caught himself and consciously slowed it. He met Adele's eyes through the faceplates of optical-grade moissanite and grinned. She wouldn't be able to see his lips, but the muscles around her eyes crinkled in an answering grin.

The outer lock opened. The first result of air venting into space was that the light went flat: there was no longer a diffracting atmosphere to soften and spread the illumination.

The riggers surged out of the lock, each one going to a predetermined post. Daniel followed, shuffling forward so that one electromagnetic boot was always flat against the steel hull. He kept his right hand on Adele's equipment belt.

The Princess Cecile was spreading her antennas as quickly as the riggers could unlock them from their cradles along the hull. Hydraulic pressure extended and telescoped the masts and yards. Daniel noticed a dozen places where starlight blurred into iridescent fog. Some leakage was inevitable where new gaskets hadn't worked in or old gaskets had worn, and the vacuum of space emphasized the flaws. A trained eye—and Daniel's was—could tell the difference between a trivial seepage and a potential problem.

He leaned to touch his helmet to Adele's. "Look at Port Two," he said, pointing forward toward the second mast on the corvette's port side. "If that leak doesn't slow by tomorrow, we'll have to do something about it. The main joint is new, and the seal may have been pinched when it was being replaced."

Adele turned to follow the line of Daniel's fingers, taking her helmet out of contact with his. Riggers' suits weren't normally fitted with radios. An accidental transmission in the Matrix could have incalculable—literally—effects on a ship's velocity and location in regard to the sidereal universe.

The riggers didn't adjust the sails: hydraulics controlled from the bridge did that. But the pumps, the joints, the parrels—even the gossamer fabric—were machines and worked the way good machines do: most of the time.

The riggers patched and stretched and replaced. If an antenna was beyond quick repair they signaled the problem through the hull, using a hydromechanical semaphore with a keyboard for unusually complex problems. The captain and navigation computer could then choose another solution to the astrogation task.

It wasn't a handicap for a trained crew to operate by semaphore and hand signals even while the ship was in normal space. Riggers as experienced as those of the Princess Cecile's present crew could put a ship through her paces with no direction at all. Stiction, leaks, breakage—all were as obvious to the crewmen as they were to Woetjans or Daniel, and they could do the repairs in their sleep.

The riggers didn't need to talk. Daniel needed to be on the hull to talk to Adele without risk of being overheard. For this too the lack of a radio was an advantage, so long as both parties remembered they had to keep their helmets touching to hear one another.

Which Adele now did, a moment late, clanking her head back against Daniel's. He winced, more at the thought than from the shock itself. Riggers' gear had to be able to take a hammering, but the very violence of the environment meant spacers learned to be as gentle as a nurse handling infants.

"Sorry, Daniel," she said contritely. Adele had the saving grace of knowing she was clumsy on shipboard. The dispatch vessel Aglaia from which most of the Princess Cecile's crew were drawn had often carried high-ranking civilians. Some of them insisted on coming out on the hull but because of pride refused to wear a safety line like the one which joined Adele to Daniel. Woetjans told of leaping between masts to snag a treasury official who was on his way toward Canopus if she hadn't caught him.

"Adele, I'd asked an acquaintance in Foreign Affairs about Delos Vaughn," Daniel said, holding his friend tight so that she wouldn't absentmindedly pull away. "I was told that for reasons of state Vaughn would never be allowed to leave Cinnabar. Ah, I don't want to be privy to any matters that aren't my business to know, but if there's anything you can in good conscience tell me . . . ?"

Adele turned to face him, then caught herself and brought her helmet back in contact temple to temple. "My information was much the same as yours, Daniel," she said. "Though I should emphasize that I wasn't specifically told anything about Vaughn."

There was a pause; Daniel knew his friend well enough to visualize her frowning as she chose words with her usual precision. "The thing is," she said, her voice robbed of all overtones by the method of transmission, "I would have expected that I would be told, especially if Vaughn were to be travelling on the same vessel as me. Even though his affairs have no direct connection with mine or those of the RCN."

Daniel didn't know what other duties Adele had to the Republic, but he knew there had to be a connection well above that of the Personnel Bureau in the Navy Office. Her skills made her a marvelous addition to the Princess Cecile's crew, but there was no way in Hell that a faceless clerk would have approved a signals warrant for someone with Adele's deficiencies on paper.

Daniel had been prepared to use what influence he had. The "Hero of Kostroma" business didn't gain him much ground in the RCN directly, but there were admirals' wives to whom he might seem a romantic figure. All the more so, because young Leary was trying to get his ladyfriend aboard his ship despite a hard-hearted bureaucracy.

He might have succeeded, but he hadn't had to try. Adele's warrant whisked through the Navy Office like grass through a goose. It was delivered to the Princess Cecile before the port commander decided which bay the corvette would refit in.

Daniel grinned. Adele was his friend, and she was a lady in every sense of the word; but for romance, Daniel preferred something younger, rounder and, frankly, not so smart. Besides which, so far as Daniel had been able to tell, Adele had no interest in romance whatever.

The sails were stretching the length of the yards. The electrostatic fabric was so thin that bright stars were visible through it. For this initial deployment Mon was running everything out to its maximum extent. The antenna and sail mechanisms had been tested thoroughly on the ground, but vacuum and the vibration of liftoff could expose flaws that would only appear in real service.

"Aren't they beautiful?" Daniel said, speaking more to himself than his companion. A warship's enormous suit of sails spreading to shadow the universe was a sight to move a dead man.

"What is, Daniel?" Adele said. "Cinnabar from up here, you mean?"

A dead man, but not necessarily a librarian. "Ah," Daniel said aloud. "I was thinking of the arrangement of the sails fully set. Imposing their own order on the universe, so to speak."

Cinnabar was "rising" beneath them as the Princess Cecile rotated slowly on her axis, though that wasn't a sight Daniel would ever have called attention to. Planets were very interesting places—when you were on the ground. From low orbit, they were simply a difficult problem in shiphandling.

Before he left the bridge, Daniel had programmed a rotation to introduce a slight angular strain on the rig. The purpose of a shakedown cruise was to find anything that might have gone wrong during a refit. Daniel appreciated the compliment implied when Admiral Anston ordered the Princess Cecile into operational service immediately, but he still intended to wring out the corvette while he had the leisure of no one shooting at them.

"Ah," said Adele in turn. She shifted slightly in an obvious attempt to feel what Daniel felt.

The rig had reached its fullest extent; now its elements began to retract to the setting programmed for entry into the Matrix. Masts and yards telescoped, rotating on their axes and occasionally tilting to bring the sails into precise alignment.

"Daniel," Adele said. She'd lowered her voice reflexively so that Daniel could barely make out the words vibrating from her helmet to his. "Vaughn being sent back to Strymon means either that there are factions in the government working outside the knowledge of . . . the people who talk to me. Or that when they talk to me, they conceal as much as they tell. Unfortunately, both of those options are quite possible."

"Yes," Daniel said, pursing his lips in a look of frustration. He thought of his own interview with Admiral Anston: what he'd been told—virtually nothing—and what he hadn't. "The same's true within the RCN, of course. Well, we'll make do, won't we?"

The Princess Cecile was about to enter the Matrix: Daniel felt the charge building. He'd never been sure whether it was a real sensation or something his soul recognized. Engineers had sworn to him that a rigger's suit was completely insulated, even if the minute potentials being bled into the sails could be sensed at all.

It happened. The charged fabric of the sails formed a series of precisely calculated barriers against the Casimir radiation that flooded the cosmos. Pressures that could not be relieved in the sidereal universe built up, shifting the Princess Cecile—

Golden light suffused the corvette, throwing her rig and outside crew into silhouette as though against an angel's wing. Daniel shivered with anticipation.

Palpable energy flared. The Princess Cecile slipped from the universe of her creation into the greater glowing infinity that would take her to Strymon . . .  under the command of Lt. Daniel Leary.

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Contents
Framed

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Contents

Chapter Nine

The drizzle gave way to a sheet of rain which thundered on the hull of the Princess Cecile and lashed the surface of Bay Ten, the ready slip to which the corvette had been transferred at the completion of her refit. Lightning pulsed continuously, backlighting the thunderheads without ever striking in the cone of Daniel's vision through the open main hatch.

"Like a cow pissing on a flat rock," Hogg muttered, though he didn't sound especially unhappy about it. The rain was blasting itself to mist on the canopy over the walkway from the edge of the pool to the corvette. Watching it, Daniel could imagine he was in one of the metal-roofed hunting cabins deep in the interior of Bantry—

Instead of waiting for the arrival of the courier whom the Navy Office had an hour ago alerted them to expect.

Apparently thinking in the same track, Ellie Woetjans said, "If the RCN don't teach you nothing else, it'll teach you to wait." There was a chorus of, "Amen!" and "Too right!" from the half dozen spacers in the the Princess Cecile's entranceway.

Woetjans was a rangy, powerful woman who was taller than Daniel by six inches. As bosun she rapped helmets with a length of electrical cord to get the attention of landsmen she was turning into riggers. No need of that with the present crew, of course.

Woetjans was soaking wet, having just come in with the team which had changed out the main hinge of Dorsal 3. The antenna had stuck a few degrees short of closure twice during testing. Daniel had been willing to lift with it—joints loosened in service, after all—but since there were a few minutes unexpectedly available, the bosun had taken five riggers out despite the rain. She hadn't bothered to change when she returned in case the courier with the Princess Cecile's orders arrived during those few moments. The crew was even more excited about the corvette's next deployment than her captain was.

Well, make that as excited. Admiral Anston had called Daniel in personally, after all. He wouldn't have done that if he'd planned to send the Princess Cecile to the Home Squadron protecting Cinnabar against Alliance raiders—who had last attacked some seventeen years ago. There was every chance that Lt. Leary's first operational command would be an independent one.

"Daniel?" said Adele's voice through the earphones of the commo helmet Daniel was wearing along with his utility uniform. "A car and truck have just cleared the main gate with Bay Ten as their announced destination. Over."

He should have guessed that Adele would be monitoring not only ordinary communications traffic but also intercepting limited-distribution messages that she and her software thought might be of interest to the Princess Cecile. A truck, though? Why on earth would the courier have a truck with him?

"Adele," Daniel said, "we're only about three minutes from the gate here. Why don't you come join me for the courier's arrival? You can monitor the console through your helmet, you know. Over."

Adele sniffed. "Can I really?" she said, not angrily but with enough of an edge to remind Daniel who he'd been talking to. "Perhaps I'll print out the instruction manual for my equipment to read while I'm waiting with you. Signals out."

Smiling faintly but tense all the same, Daniel said, "He's on his way from the gate," loudly enough to be heard by those with him in the entrance. He lifted his equipment belt with his thumbs to settle it more comfortably over his hipbones.

The rain had slackened again, though that was hard to tell because of the water still dripping from the antennas through the flare of the area light above the Princess Cecile's hatch. Headlights swept down the curving roadway toward Bay Ten in Vs of spray. The lead vehicle, illuminated by the following one, was one of the enclosed two-place scooters used by the Navy Office message service.

Adele came down the companionway from C Level and the bridge. Unconsciously her hand brushed the right cargo pocket where her personal data unit rode. She had no need for special tailoring when wearing a utility uniform.

The vehicles pulled up at the shelter for visitors to Bay Ten. A figure in a close-drawn rain cape got out of the scooter and started down the walkway toward the corvette's hatch, hunched over against the weather. The rain was coming down harder again. It wasn't the downpour of minutes earlier, but it still blew under the canopy.

"There's a driver in the car," Hogg noticed aloud. "Since when do couriers get drivers?"

Adele frowned, then flipped down the jump seat intended for a sentry at the airlock and took her data unit out. Daniel glanced at her, wondering what in the world she was doing.

The wands flickered. Without looking up Adele said, "I'm finding what department the truck is assigned to. Its vehicle number went into the records when it passed the gate."

Daniel opened his mouth to say, "Well, we'll know in a moment. . . ." But it wasn't certain that they would learn in a moment; and anyway, that probably didn't make any difference to Adele. She had more faith in data that she uncovered herself than she did in what somebody from the Navy Office told her; and thinking about it, Daniel too had more faith in what Adele learned in her own fashion. He swallowed his comment unspoken.

The courier reached the hatch and stepped into the entryway, out of the weather. The trousers of his 2nd Class uniform were darkened several shades from the original dove gray where the rain had soaked them.

"Orders for the officer commanding RCS Princess Cecile," the man said, his voice rough. He coughed to clear his throat.

Daniel stepped forward. "I'm Lieutenant Leary, commanding RCS Princess Cecile," he said.

The stiffened bill of the courier's cowl shadowed his face. He brought from beneath his cape a packet closed with the Republic's seal, a winged sandal, over an embossed RCN.

Daniel broke the seal with his index finger, watching the holographic wings flap three times. If the envelope had been opened before it reached him, the charge would have dissipated whether or not the seal itself were damaged. There was no reason to suspect forgery, but the Matrix makes people—those who survive—careful about details.

He drew out the document and read:

Navy Office, 16 xi 45
Lt. D. O. Leary,
Comdg. RCS Princess Cecile, Harbor Three.

Lieutenant: So soon as the Republic of Cinnabar corvette which you have been appointed to command shall be in all respects ready for space, you will proceed to the Strymon system, touching at such ports as you may think proper.

If possible you will meet at Sexburga the squadron under Commodore Pettin, already en route to Strymon, and place yourself under his command for the remainder of the cruise. If you do not join Commodore Pettin en route, you will report to him in the Strymon system.

During your presence at Strymon you will do all in your power to cherish, on the part of their government, good feelings toward the Republic of Cinnabar. In addition you will carry out such other duties as are placed on you by competent authorities. You will return to Cinnabar in accordance with the directions of Commodore Pettin.

The courier bearing these orders will provide additional oral instructions which you will carry out as a part of your duties.

You will communicate to all the officers under your command the orders of this Office that no one be concerned in a duel during the course of this cruise.

Commending you and your ship company to the protection of Divine Providence, and wishing you a pleasant cruise and a safe return to your planet and friends, I am,

Very respectfully,
Anston

Frowning slightly, Daniel handed the dispatch to Adele to read. To the courier he said, "You have oral instructions for me?"

The courier undid his cape's throat catch and shrugged the garment off. It fell on the deck behind him. He was Delos Vaughn. He said, "Indeed I do, Lieutenant."

Daniel's face didn't change. He said nothing while his mind shuffled through possibilities.

"And I have a reserve naval commission," Vaughn continued in the silence; sharply, a little nervous in the face of Daniel's lack of reaction. "I have a perfect right to wear this uniform."

The others present were taking their cue from Daniel. Apart from Adele, none of them saw anything remarkable in the situation.

"All right, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said. "Come into my cabin and you can deliver your instructions."

He turned, catching Adele's eye. She'd risen to her feet when the courier arrived, but the data unit was still in her hand. She gave a minute shake of her head, her expression guarded.

"There's no need for privacy, Lieutenant," Vaughn said. "The further instructions are that you carry me to Strymon aboard your vessel, and that you provide me with such assistance as is commensurate with your duties as an officer of the Republic."

"Mr. Vaughn . . ." Daniel said. The storm had resumed in all its elemental fury. Its thunder and actinic glare were anchors for Daniel's mind, underscoring how trivial human concerns were against the majesty of nature. "An RCN corvette is not a pleasure yacht. Perhaps—"

"You have your orders, Mr. Leary," Vaughn said, momentarily the aristocrat to a servant. "They are clear, are they not?"

Daniel felt his face tighten and grow warm with the blood rising to the skin. "Quite clear, Mr. Vaughn," he said.

"As for the comfort of a yacht," Vaughn said, a gentleman to a peer again, "I don't require anything excessive for the few months the voyage will require. The van there—"

He twisted his head, sketching a gesture toward the vehicles waiting at the poolside.

"—holds my baggage. We can store it here in the entryway for the moment. As soon as we've reached orbit, you can expend a missile and then put the baggage in the emptied missile rack. And you'll need to find accommodation for my two servants, though they can sleep with the common spacers."

He beamed at Daniel in open-faced enthusiasm.

Daniel had a sudden vision of himself as a cog in a vast machine which stretched away in all directions. Parts whirring, trembling; wheels and pistons and slides in vibrant motion, and somewhere a control board at which a faceless figure sat. He thought, I am Daniel Leary, officer by grace of God and the will of the Senate. I am not a cog in anyone's machine! 

"I see, Mr. Vaughn," he said aloud. "As you say, my orders are clear. You may board with the clothes you're standing in. We won't be making room for your traps by lessening our combat effectiveness in time of war; but as you say, the first leg of the cruise shouldn't be too long. And we haven't room to accommodate servants for supernumeraries, I'm afraid. This is a corvette, not a battleship."

The first leg would be no more than eighteen days or he'd know the reason why!  

"We can find you utilities to wear, I'm sure, until you can buy civilian kit at our first planetfall."

He nodded to Adele. "Since Officer Mundy," he said, "has moved into the captain's lounge—"

One of the two small cabins of Daniel's suite off the bridge, intended for entertaining non-RCN guests where they wouldn't have access to a console tied into the corvette's data bank.

"—then we can put the passenger in that cabin." He smiled at Vaughn. "Which you will be sharing, sir, with the infirmary and Medic; if you're determined to take passage with us."

"You know I don't care where I sleep, Daniel," Adele said with a moue of irritation.

"Nor do I, Lieutenant Leary," Vaughn said, grinning—to Daniel's surprise—in satisfaction. "But if it hasn't become a point of honor with you, I have two small cases waiting in the car that brought me. In total they amount to the one and a half cubic feet permitted a midshipman under naval regulations. And I'll hire a spacer to do for me on board, as I believe is customary?"

Aren't you a clever devil? Daniel thought. Trying me on to see if I'd let you have whatever you wanted. A Leary of Bantry kowtowing to a foreigner! 

"Yes," Daniel said aloud. "That should be workable."

He checked the time on the flat multifunction card he wore on a wrist clip while in utilities, then looked up again. "You have five minutes to get your two cases aboard, Mr. Vaughn."

He smiled and felt the thrill of the words as he added, "We're to lift ship as soon as we're ready, you see. And the Princess Cecile is ready for her first operational cruise now!"

As the Princess Cecile trembled, white rings became blue solids on the sidebar to Adele's communications display. One at a time, eight of them: the plasma thrusters switching from standby to live, expelling minute streams of white-hot ions into the pool. Very shortly Daniel would slide his linked throttles forward and the thrusters would lift the corvette to transatmospheric orbit.

Adele was detached, unaffected by the tense bustle of the bridge around her. She had duties at this moment, though they were of the negative variety: to block all incoming messages unless they directly concerned the vessel's liftoff. The operation was complex and potentially dangerous if botched, though there was more risk of the sun going dark in the next minutes. Between the time the liftoff sequence began until the Princess Cecile reached orbit, even Admiral Anston could wait.

Betts, the Chief Missileer, and Sun, the gunner's mate—a corvette was too small to rate a master gunner—were taut at their consoles to the left of Adele's, though neither of them had as much to do with the process of liftoff as the Signals Officer did. Woetjans and a team of riggers waited in the corridor. They would climb onto the hull after the Princess Cecile reached an altitude at which the antennas could be deployed. That would be at least ten minutes and might be thirty, but the riggers already wore their suits with the faceplates hinged open.

They were all spacers, feeling a responsibility to the ship and its performance. To Adele, the Princess Cecile was the metal box in which she happened to ride at the moment. She would do her job and whatever else Daniel or another asked of her, but she couldn't even pretend to care whether the ship rose to orbit—as it would, as surely as the sun would rise—or instead exploded here in Harbor Three.

The hatches were closed, the thrusters lighted; the fusion bottle that provided both plasma and auxiliary power was a green sphere in Adele's holographic display, and the High Drive a hollow green-edged bar indicating that the antimatter converter was on standby but fully functional. Adele didn't need to echo the ship's indicators on her screen; she did so merely from a desire to show solidarity with the rest of the crew to whom they were important.

A smile touched the corners of her lips. If the ship blows up here, who will Mistress Sand get to replace me? Not that the answer was of any real consequence to Adele. She just liked information.

Daniel spoke tersely, authoritatively. The console's dynamic suppressor cancelled the sound of the words even a few inches away. Adele could have listened to the conversation on a dedicated line to the power room, but there was no need to. Lt. Leary was receiving oral confirmation from Chief Pasternak of what the instruments showed: the Princess Cecile was ready to lift.

Daniel grinned through his holographic display which was only a haze of light except to the eyes of the person seated at the console. His hand touched a switch and an electronic alarm whistled three times on a rising note. Signal lights pulsed red to orange, warning the crew during times that sound wouldn't carry because the ship was depressurized.

Daniel brought the throttles forward in a smooth motion. The linkage was physical rather than virtual so that the captain had feedback through his own flesh instead of just a gauge to watch.

Adele flexed her fingers, imagining the control wands between them. The trained human body is capable of wonderful subtlety. Unexpected, unwanted, she remembered a boy's face bulging as the bullet from her pistol punched through the bridge of his nose. That had required only a few ounces' pressure, expertly applied by a trigger finger trained in the gallery in the basement of Chatsworth Minor.

The thrusters roared to full power, squeezing Adele down in her seat. It was a gentle pressure; even with the antennas folded at minimum length along the hull and the sails furled tightly to them, a starship wasn't stressed for high accelerations.

Ships covered interstellar distances by entering bubble universes where physical constants differed from those of the sidereal universe, but velocity was conserved during the passage. There was no need of high accelerations when you could leave the universe for one in which distances were logarithmically shorter and the pressure of Casimir radiation drove vessels across light-years in a matter of hours. The High Drive, though very efficient, was needed only for maneuvering over distances too short for the captain to trust her astrogation.

The Princess Cecile bucked and started to yaw. Daniel's hands danced on the throttles. Adele snapped her eyes to her own display. The indicator for the third thruster in the upper bank—starboard—was quivering. It dropped to a hollow gray circle at the same time as the indicator kitty-corner—Port Two—became a white standby circle.

The Princess Cecile steadied. Adele thought she felt a minuscule vibration that hadn't been present before, but she might be imagining a change because her mind knew something had happened.

Her fingers touched a key with the same precision as Daniel had shown in juggling the throttles. Through her helmet Chief Pasternak was shouting, "—ing bloody bracket gave and the feed line started thrashing like half an earthworm! Henning's got a loop of cargo tape on the whore, and we'll have her welded in numbers three minutes. Over!"

"Carry on, chief," Daniel said calmly. She glanced at him again. His face wore an absent-minded smile as he tweaked a throttle—no longer linked to the other seven—and the vibration smoothed to glassy perfection. "After all, this is a shakedown cruise. Needs must we can reach altitude on four thrusters. Bridge out."

"Engineering out."

Instead of concentrating on his display as Adele expected, Daniel stabbed the public address switch as forcefully as if he were trying to dent the plate beneath his virtual keyboard. Adele smiled: a control was never in doubt when Daniel activated it. He left delicacy for others.

"Captain to ship," speakers said, the words echoing themselves from the ceiling of every compartment. "The waterline feeding Starboard Three came adrift. Engineering has it jury-rigged, and it'll be at a hundred percent in a few minutes. Bridge out."

As Daniel switched off, he saw Adele watching him from the other side of his display. He grinned and made an O from his right thumb and index finger, then went back to his controls.

Adele did the same. Of course Daniel wouldn't forget that the crew would worry—or at least wonder—because the Princess Cecile's thrust had gone ragged. His duty was even more to the personnel than it was to the vessel's hardware.

Spacers shouted to one another. Under normal circumstances only the officers had communications helmets. When ordinary crewmen spoke to one another, they had to make themselves heard over the thrusters. The pulsing thunder muted as the corvette rose through ever-thinner layers of atmosphere, but even in hard vacuum the fabric of the ship shivered in a kind of low moan.

Two crewmen ran along the corridor carrying a rope-handled footlocker between them. They disappeared down the companionway, undeterred by the weight and awkwardness of their burden. Adele hadn't any idea what they were doing, whether it was a problem or simply personal belongings that somebody had forgotten to stow before liftoff.

The whistle called a two-note signal; the emergency lights glowed blue for a moment. Adele remembered the call from when the Princess Cecile left Kostroma: atmospheric density had fallen to the point that the captain could switch power to the High Drive at will.

Daniel engaged the PA system again. "Engaging the High Drive," he announced in a tone so emotionless as to sound bored. He waited still-faced for five beats of the second hand, backed the throttles to quarter power, and with his right hand threw the toggle that shut off fuel to the plasma thrusters at the same time as it engaged the matter-antimatter power plant.

The Princess Cecile shuddered. A high-pitched keen replaced the tremble of the plasma motors. Any change in acceleration was too subtle for Adele to sense, but she did feel a slight queasiness, familiar from her previous experience.

The High Drive delivered its thrust from a multithroated central port rather than eight—six during most of this liftoff—widely separated plasma nozzles. It was as though the Princess Cecile were balancing her thirteen hundred tons on the point of a needle. The controls kept the corvette aligned by minute changes in the thrust vector. The direction of "down" changed many times a second.

Adele smiled wryly. In this case, the delicate measuring ability of her inner ear was a detriment to her well-being.

On a sudden whim, she filled her display with a holographic image of the planet beneath. The first time she'd left Cinnabar, she'd sat in the passenger lounge and watched her world shrink on the display. She hadn't found it particularly interesting. Being who she was, she'd watched a perfect simulation of the process as soon as she decided to continue her schooling on Blythe.

Fifteen years ago, Adele had expected to return home. More accurately, it had never crossed her mind that she wouldn't return home, much less that her home would cease to exist. Now . . .

Adele turned from the image of a planet, the lines of its continents softened by the blue haze of atmosphere, and looked at the spacers around her. They were intent, ready for an emergency but cheerful nonetheless. Betts and Sun slapped hands in acknowledgment of a successful liftoff, and the riggers joked in the corridor.

Adele laughed aloud. She didn't worry about coming home again this time either.

Because this time she was taking her home with her.

Daniel rose from his console and stretched, a full-bodied exercise that ended with him leaning backward and bracing his hands on the seatback with a deck sandal locked around the chairpost. Liftoffs—and landings, even more so—were so all-involving that tension drew his muscles up like drying rawhide until the job was complete.

Delos Vaughn walked onto the bridge, smiling pleasantly. He wore a set of fawn coveralls which were utilitarian in cut, though grease stains would show as they didn't against the gray-on-gray mottling of RCN utilities. Over his left breast pocket was a tape with his name in glowing gold letters.

"Allow me to be the first to congratulate you, Lieutenant," Vaughn said. "Your recovery was so quick that I scarcely noticed the systems failure."

You have no business on my bridge! Daniel thought. A bracket snapping on liftoff is no more a systems failure than you're an RCN officer! 

"Thank you, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said aloud, "but I'd appreciate it if you'd consider the bridge off-limits unless I inform you otherwise. This is a warship on active service."

Turning his attention immediately to his console so that the comment would appear trivial rather than an angry dressing-down, Daniel keyed the Battle Direction Center channel. "Mr. Mon?" he said. "Come to the bridge please and take the conn. I'm going topside."

"On the way, Mr. Leary," Mon replied immediately. There was no need to go through full communications protocol on a dedicated line, any more than there was when dealing with one's fellows face-to-face.

Daniel straightened and again glanced around him. Vaughn had retreated into the corridor. He was watching with the bright interest of a bird but was careful not to interfere with the team of riggers preparing to go onto the hull. He must have felt Daniel's glance, for he waved an index finger in friendly greeting.

"Officer Mundy," Daniel said in a carrying voice, "we're preparing our initial entry into the Matrix. I'd appreciate it if you'd join me on the hull."

As he spoke, Daniel felt a flash of resentment, an uncommon emotion for him. Having a passenger like Vaughn was almost as bad as—indeed, perhaps worse than—carrying a senior officer. He couldn't feel that the Princess Cecile was really his, the way the officer commanding should be able to do. Although now that Daniel analyzed his feelings, he couldn't see why he should react that way to a foreign civilian.

"Why yes, thank you, Daniel," Adele said in pleasant, cultured impropriety. She rose from her console. "I suppose I should have that experience. Now that I'm an RCN officer, that is."

A valued member of the RCN, Daniel thought, letting the grin reach his lips. RCN officer in the sense that instructors at the Academy would understand it, though . . . that would be going a little far. 

Woetjans gave Daniel a thumbs-up. He nodded. The bosun tongued a control in her helmet and the cheery, four-note Riggers Aloft call rang from the PA system as the signal lights pulsed yellow.

Lt. Mon—dark, wiry and professional—was striding down the corridor, dodging obstacles both human and inanimate, mostly equipment stored there for lack of a better place. Daniel nodded to him at the hatchway, said, "You have the conn," and slipped past with the ease of long practice.

Adele shifted left when she should have gone right and bounced off Mon's arm, then bumped Daniel from behind. It was amazing that a person with the physical dexterity Adele showed at a console—or with a pistol—could so consistently move in the wrong direction when she had to get from one point in a starship to another.

And of course when she was on a starship it was worse. Daniel reminded himself to attach her safety line personally.

The Bow Dorsal airlock was cycling, sending Woetjans and five riggers onto the hull. Six more crewmen waited to follow the first watch: the initial deployment of antennas and sails employed all the riggers rather than merely the port or starboard watch.

Burridge, one of the waiting riggers, tossed Daniel a suit from the open locker. He slid into it like a body stocking, then glanced at Adele to help her if she was having difficulty.

She wasn't: Dasi and Jonas held Adele by the arms while Burridge pulled the suit over her limbs and torso with as little ceremony or trouble as a cook has stuffing a sausage. From Adele's expression of mild disinterest, the process wasn't one that disturbed her. Vaughn, squeezed against the opposite bulkhead to keep out of the way, watched with a frown.

The light over the airlock glowed green, indicating the outer door was sealed. Dasi, the team's senior man, slammed the crash bar with a gloved hand and led his riggers into the lock. Daniel latched Adele's faceshield, drew her with him into the lock—it would hold a dozen in a pinch, times when speed was more important than comfort—and locked his own shield closed.

The world was silence except for Daniel's own breathing, heavy and echoing until he caught himself and consciously slowed it. He met Adele's eyes through the faceplates of optical-grade moissanite and grinned. She wouldn't be able to see his lips, but the muscles around her eyes crinkled in an answering grin.

The outer lock opened. The first result of air venting into space was that the light went flat: there was no longer a diffracting atmosphere to soften and spread the illumination.

The riggers surged out of the lock, each one going to a predetermined post. Daniel followed, shuffling forward so that one electromagnetic boot was always flat against the steel hull. He kept his right hand on Adele's equipment belt.

The Princess Cecile was spreading her antennas as quickly as the riggers could unlock them from their cradles along the hull. Hydraulic pressure extended and telescoped the masts and yards. Daniel noticed a dozen places where starlight blurred into iridescent fog. Some leakage was inevitable where new gaskets hadn't worked in or old gaskets had worn, and the vacuum of space emphasized the flaws. A trained eye—and Daniel's was—could tell the difference between a trivial seepage and a potential problem.

He leaned to touch his helmet to Adele's. "Look at Port Two," he said, pointing forward toward the second mast on the corvette's port side. "If that leak doesn't slow by tomorrow, we'll have to do something about it. The main joint is new, and the seal may have been pinched when it was being replaced."

Adele turned to follow the line of Daniel's fingers, taking her helmet out of contact with his. Riggers' suits weren't normally fitted with radios. An accidental transmission in the Matrix could have incalculable—literally—effects on a ship's velocity and location in regard to the sidereal universe.

The riggers didn't adjust the sails: hydraulics controlled from the bridge did that. But the pumps, the joints, the parrels—even the gossamer fabric—were machines and worked the way good machines do: most of the time.

The riggers patched and stretched and replaced. If an antenna was beyond quick repair they signaled the problem through the hull, using a hydromechanical semaphore with a keyboard for unusually complex problems. The captain and navigation computer could then choose another solution to the astrogation task.

It wasn't a handicap for a trained crew to operate by semaphore and hand signals even while the ship was in normal space. Riggers as experienced as those of the Princess Cecile's present crew could put a ship through her paces with no direction at all. Stiction, leaks, breakage—all were as obvious to the crewmen as they were to Woetjans or Daniel, and they could do the repairs in their sleep.

The riggers didn't need to talk. Daniel needed to be on the hull to talk to Adele without risk of being overheard. For this too the lack of a radio was an advantage, so long as both parties remembered they had to keep their helmets touching to hear one another.

Which Adele now did, a moment late, clanking her head back against Daniel's. He winced, more at the thought than from the shock itself. Riggers' gear had to be able to take a hammering, but the very violence of the environment meant spacers learned to be as gentle as a nurse handling infants.

"Sorry, Daniel," she said contritely. Adele had the saving grace of knowing she was clumsy on shipboard. The dispatch vessel Aglaia from which most of the Princess Cecile's crew were drawn had often carried high-ranking civilians. Some of them insisted on coming out on the hull but because of pride refused to wear a safety line like the one which joined Adele to Daniel. Woetjans told of leaping between masts to snag a treasury official who was on his way toward Canopus if she hadn't caught him.

"Adele, I'd asked an acquaintance in Foreign Affairs about Delos Vaughn," Daniel said, holding his friend tight so that she wouldn't absentmindedly pull away. "I was told that for reasons of state Vaughn would never be allowed to leave Cinnabar. Ah, I don't want to be privy to any matters that aren't my business to know, but if there's anything you can in good conscience tell me . . . ?"

Adele turned to face him, then caught herself and brought her helmet back in contact temple to temple. "My information was much the same as yours, Daniel," she said. "Though I should emphasize that I wasn't specifically told anything about Vaughn."

There was a pause; Daniel knew his friend well enough to visualize her frowning as she chose words with her usual precision. "The thing is," she said, her voice robbed of all overtones by the method of transmission, "I would have expected that I would be told, especially if Vaughn were to be travelling on the same vessel as me. Even though his affairs have no direct connection with mine or those of the RCN."

Daniel didn't know what other duties Adele had to the Republic, but he knew there had to be a connection well above that of the Personnel Bureau in the Navy Office. Her skills made her a marvelous addition to the Princess Cecile's crew, but there was no way in Hell that a faceless clerk would have approved a signals warrant for someone with Adele's deficiencies on paper.

Daniel had been prepared to use what influence he had. The "Hero of Kostroma" business didn't gain him much ground in the RCN directly, but there were admirals' wives to whom he might seem a romantic figure. All the more so, because young Leary was trying to get his ladyfriend aboard his ship despite a hard-hearted bureaucracy.

He might have succeeded, but he hadn't had to try. Adele's warrant whisked through the Navy Office like grass through a goose. It was delivered to the Princess Cecile before the port commander decided which bay the corvette would refit in.

Daniel grinned. Adele was his friend, and she was a lady in every sense of the word; but for romance, Daniel preferred something younger, rounder and, frankly, not so smart. Besides which, so far as Daniel had been able to tell, Adele had no interest in romance whatever.

The sails were stretching the length of the yards. The electrostatic fabric was so thin that bright stars were visible through it. For this initial deployment Mon was running everything out to its maximum extent. The antenna and sail mechanisms had been tested thoroughly on the ground, but vacuum and the vibration of liftoff could expose flaws that would only appear in real service.

"Aren't they beautiful?" Daniel said, speaking more to himself than his companion. A warship's enormous suit of sails spreading to shadow the universe was a sight to move a dead man.

"What is, Daniel?" Adele said. "Cinnabar from up here, you mean?"

A dead man, but not necessarily a librarian. "Ah," Daniel said aloud. "I was thinking of the arrangement of the sails fully set. Imposing their own order on the universe, so to speak."

Cinnabar was "rising" beneath them as the Princess Cecile rotated slowly on her axis, though that wasn't a sight Daniel would ever have called attention to. Planets were very interesting places—when you were on the ground. From low orbit, they were simply a difficult problem in shiphandling.

Before he left the bridge, Daniel had programmed a rotation to introduce a slight angular strain on the rig. The purpose of a shakedown cruise was to find anything that might have gone wrong during a refit. Daniel appreciated the compliment implied when Admiral Anston ordered the Princess Cecile into operational service immediately, but he still intended to wring out the corvette while he had the leisure of no one shooting at them.

"Ah," said Adele in turn. She shifted slightly in an obvious attempt to feel what Daniel felt.

The rig had reached its fullest extent; now its elements began to retract to the setting programmed for entry into the Matrix. Masts and yards telescoped, rotating on their axes and occasionally tilting to bring the sails into precise alignment.

"Daniel," Adele said. She'd lowered her voice reflexively so that Daniel could barely make out the words vibrating from her helmet to his. "Vaughn being sent back to Strymon means either that there are factions in the government working outside the knowledge of . . . the people who talk to me. Or that when they talk to me, they conceal as much as they tell. Unfortunately, both of those options are quite possible."

"Yes," Daniel said, pursing his lips in a look of frustration. He thought of his own interview with Admiral Anston: what he'd been told—virtually nothing—and what he hadn't. "The same's true within the RCN, of course. Well, we'll make do, won't we?"

The Princess Cecile was about to enter the Matrix: Daniel felt the charge building. He'd never been sure whether it was a real sensation or something his soul recognized. Engineers had sworn to him that a rigger's suit was completely insulated, even if the minute potentials being bled into the sails could be sensed at all.

It happened. The charged fabric of the sails formed a series of precisely calculated barriers against the Casimir radiation that flooded the cosmos. Pressures that could not be relieved in the sidereal universe built up, shifting the Princess Cecile—

Golden light suffused the corvette, throwing her rig and outside crew into silhouette as though against an angel's wing. Daniel shivered with anticipation.

Palpable energy flared. The Princess Cecile slipped from the universe of her creation into the greater glowing infinity that would take her to Strymon . . .  under the command of Lt. Daniel Leary.

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