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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

_The Achilles looked to be a dumpy little vessel at present
because her rig was stowed. Even when fully telescoped, the masts of the first and last of her four rings stuck out beyond the yacht's short hull. Extended and wearing a full suit of sails, those masts would give her an area-to-mass ratio equalled by few if any other ships of Daniel's acquaintance. To him, that was a mark of great beauty.

The scale of the image was too small to show the boarding line connecting the yacht to the Princess Cecile, though Daniel could have directed the console to emphasize it if he'd had any reason to. Vaughn had asked to board via a tube and to bring several of his aides with him. Daniel had granted neither request.

The outer airlock dogged home; a moment later the inner valve opened. Woetjans, her faceshield flung open, half dragged, half guided, Delos Vaughn into Corridor C. Vaughn's expression through the synthetic sapphire of his visor was both irritated and frightened.

Daniel glanced again at the image of the Achilles. To Adele across the bridge he said, "That yacht's far too fine a vessel to be used for an orbital ferryboat the way our guest just did. They could've found a cargo lighter easily enough."

Adele shrugged. "You can't hold a landsman to a spacer's standards, Daniel," she said. With the bosun's help, Vaughn was struggling out of a rigging suit meant for someone a size larger, shooting frustrated looks toward her and Daniel but for the moment unable to join them. There was too much ambient noise for him to overhear. "I doubt whether he could, let alone does, understand that he's done anything questionable."

"Yes," said Daniel, "but that's rather a picture of his life, don't you think? The ability to do whatever's expedient without knowing or caring about anyone else's viewpoint?"

Vaughn kicked out of the suit's right leg and stepped to the hatchway. "Permission to enter the bridge, Captain Leary?" he said in a clear voice.

"You may enter the bridge, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said. Then, because he didn't want to seem petty, he corrected himself: "President Vaughn, that is."

" `Mister' is quite sufficient between old shipmates," Vaughn said with his familiar engaging smile as he strode forward. "And present allies, I'm pleased to say."

Sun looked over his shoulder, then went back to his display; Betts never paused in obsessively computing missile courses. Adele continued to listen to the snips of intership and surface communications which her software culled out for her, but her eyes and her primary attention were on Delos Vaughn.

"I didn't expect to see you again, sir," Daniel said. "Not after the way you left us on Sexburga."

Facing Vaughn, he found it hard to be sure of how he felt about the man. Not hatred, certainly, nor even anger. There was a sort of admiration, Daniel had to admit, for a person who was so pure an example of the thing he was; and disgust as well, at what that thing was.

"I won't bother to apologize for the way I tricked you, Captain," Vaughn said, bluffly disarming. "Nothing I could say would be enough, and you wouldn't accept it anyway. I'll make up for the trouble in every way possible, however. One of the estates Nunes confiscated has been put in your name already. You may well want to spread the largess among those of your servants who were left on South Land with you. You'll be able to make them very happy without noticing the cost, I assure you."

Tovera watched from just inside the captain's suite; her right hand rested lightly on the grip of her submachine gun. Hogg was in the bridge hatchway, toying with a loop of fishing line and grinning.

"I'm a Leary of Bantry, sir," Daniel said quietly. "We understand cost very well, but the term rarely has anything to do with money when we use it."

"I take your point, Captain," said Vaughn; and he did, the tightness around his nostrils showed that clearly. "I've come for help clearing up the final patches of resistance to my assumption of the presidency. The two sons of the usurper Nunes are forted up in the family residence in the Tatrig Mountains. They'll require heavy weapons to blast them out, and—"

"President Vaughn," Daniel said. "I'm aware of your claims that the Republic backed your rebellion. You and I both know there's no truth to that. I won't become involved in what is clearly an internal Strymonian matter."

Vaughn's smile was crystal hard. "Well, Lieutenant, so far as Strymon knows, your Observer Mariette included," he said, "you're already involved. Pleyna Vaughn came out of Palia to discuss settlement terms because my military liaison, Lieutenant Daniel Leary of the RCN, guaranteed her safety. Of course I'll be able to correct this misapprehension as soon as you—"

Sun rose from his console in a fluid movement. His face was red. Adele grabbed his wrist. Sun jerked loose, but Hogg now stood between the spacer and Vaughn, and Tovera was behind him with her gun's muzzle a millimeter from his spine.

Everyone was looking at Daniel. "I'm not concerned with the lies of foreign rabble, Officer Sun," he said mildly. "Return to your duties, please. The Winckelmann's lighted her thrusters, so we can expect further orders shortly."

Vaughn was a brave man to have boarded the Princess Cecile now. Despite that, he wasn't a fool, so he must need Daniel's help very badly.

"A combination of those who oppose the new president . . ." Adele said. Her left hand came out of her pocket; Sun was at his console again and the two servants had backed off the bridge.

" . . . and the large percentage of the population who resent their president being chosen by Cinnabar," she continued, her eyes on something far distant in time, "will make it difficult for the regime to stay in power if there's a center of armed resistance."

She looked at Daniel, then at Vaughn. She added, "We on Cinnabar know something of conspiracies also, Mister President."

Vaughn swallowed. He said, "All I want from you, Captain, is a word to the frigates who've surrendered to you. The Fleet was thoroughly in Nunes's camp—and intriguing with the Alliance as well, that's no fable. If those ships enter the atmosphere and use their rockets against the Nunes positions, my mercenaries will have no difficulty in mopping up what remains. I don't trust the captains to obey me, however, and there're no other Fleet elements on Strymon. They all lifted for Tanais when your commodore landed."

Adele looked at Daniel sharply. He nodded. Vaughn knew his rivals had plotted with the Alliance, but he didn't realize that Admiral Chastelaine had reached the Strymon system.

"President Vaughn," he said, "you've entered a realm of politics that's properly the business of the Cinnabar Observer. If you prefer to raise the matter with Commodore Pettin, my superior, feel free to do so—his flagship will be in orbit shortly. For my part, I must request you return to your own vessel immediately, because I have—"

"Daniel!" Adele said. She'd rotated her seat to face her console again. "I'm cuing this to you!"

Vaughn's mouth opened, probably to protest. He was suddenly between Hogg and Tovera, backing quickly to the hatchway. Woetjans and the riggers with her in the corridor watched in amusement, but they didn't get involved where they would so clearly be superfluous.

"RCN, this is Kelburney," said the Astrogator's voice. "I left the cutters where the relay satellites used to be, just in case something came through that I'd like to know about. Ten minutes back, Strete outside Tanais Base picked up a transmission saying that Admiral Chastelaine was lifting for Strymon with his whole squadron. I guess you know more about what that means than we do, but we know it means we're headed back home soonest. If you're smart, boy, you'll do the same. Kelburney out."

Daniel glanced at the Plot Position Indicator. The pirate cutters were beginning to vanish like dewdrops in the sunlight. Captain Strete had brought word through the Matrix to his fellows, then fled only moments ahead of them. Daniel really couldn't blame the Selmans; not that it would have mattered if he had.

He hit the alarm button. "Ship, general quarters," he ordered. "All riggers topside. Riggers will remain on the hull during transitions until recalled. Captain out."

The Winckelmann's plasma thrusters covered the RF frequency with thunderous white noise, but the laser communicator should punch through the exhaust iridescence clearly enough to get the point across. Another hour would have been enough; but the RCN didn't depend on luck or prayer, either one.

"Adele," Daniel said. "Give me maximum emitter output and a tight focus to the flagship."

He cleared his throat and continued, "Princess Cecile to Squadron. We have an emergency. . . ."

Somewhere behind Adele, Delos Vaughn squealed briefly. She'd guess that Hogg was trussing and gagging the president rather than cutting his throat. Hogg being Hogg, you couldn't be sure; nor was it a question about which she could raise much concern.

Both Strymonian frigates were sending increasingly shrill questions toward the Princess Cecile as they watched the pirate cutters disappear into the Matrix. The Achilles's captain sounded querulous also, but since the yacht was unarmed—Adele had looked up the registry description—that wasn't a matter for present concern.

The patrol vessels were. Daniel and the officers in the Battle Direction Center were concerned with the ship and Commodore Pettin; but Adele was the signals officer, after all.

"Strymonian vessels Two-Oh-Four and One-Twenty-Seven," she said, using microwave because Daniel was on the modulated laser. "This is RCN Flagship Princess Cecile. You have your orders. If you violate them, we will destroy you without compunction! Ah, out!"

Were you supposed to say "flagship" if you were claiming to be a flagship? She'd ask when there was leisure, so she'd know the next time the question arose. For now, the terrified babbling of the Strymonian officers was sufficient.

"—the Princess Cecile will therefore proceed to the neighborhood of Tanais," Daniel was saying, "and screen the remainder of the squadron while your crews board. Leary over."

The corvette shivered as hydraulic jacks extended the antennas and spread the sails. For a moment Adele heard clang-clang, clang-clang. Riggers on the hull were freeing a jammed tube with their mauls.

"Leary, this is Pettin," a voice replied on a laser beam from the Winckelmann. Despite the initial tight focus and the voice sharpening provided by the Princess Cecile's communications suite, static roared through the commodore's words. "You are not, I repeat, not to engage the enemy. You will proceed with utmost dispatch to Cinnabar and warn the authorities there of the situation in the Sack."

Adele glanced at the image of Daniel inset at the top of her screen. His fingers hammered at his virtual keyboard while his eyes flicked back and forth at the data appearing on the display before him. Daniel was a sure and reasonably fast typist, but he put as much effort into his keystrokes as he would in splitting logs.

"Leary, there's nothing a corvette can do to affect a squadron of that weight," Pettin continued. "You've shown how fast you can push your Princess Cecile. Get home, get help, and tell Anston to get back here before the Alliance has the Sack sewed up. Acknowledge and get moving! Pettin over."

"One minute to entering the Matrix," Midshipman Vesey's voice warned over the PA system. The signal lights pulsed.

"Princess Cecile to squadron," Daniel said. His fingers and eyes continued to move as though controlled by an entity outside the person who responded to Commodore Pettin. "Sir, your transmission is breaking up. I'm therefore maneuvering as previously described. Princess Cecile out."

He broke the connection. The eyes of his image met Adele's.

"Daniel?" she said. "I've downloaded a report on the Strymon system into both our message cells. If you set them for Sexburga, there's a sixty percent chance one will arrive. The authorities there can send a courier vessel to Cinnabar."

"Thank you, Adele," Daniel said, calling across the noisy bridge so that the other officers could hear as well. "But that'd mean shifting the ready-use missiles out of their tubes. I believe we're going to have more use for them than Cinnabar has for a message."

"Entering the—" Vesey said, and Adele's world everted itself in what was becoming a familiar fashion.

"Lieutenant Mon," Daniel said, "I'm going topside. Please take the conn. Out."

He stood, feeling the Princess Cecile heel through the soles of his feet. The ship was a living apex of the infinite directions and forces of the Matrix. Adele turned from her console and said in a tone of inward-directed anger, "There's nothing to add to the bare message! If Captain Strete had any imagery of the Alliance fleet, he didn't transmit it to the Astrogator; and now he's gone."

"Come up on deck with me if you would, Adele," Daniel said. "We have twenty minutes before the next exit, and the Sissie's wearing almost her full suit of sails. It's not something you'll often have a chance to see."

"For a variety of reasons, perhaps," he added. He tried to sound solemn, but he didn't manage very well. "Regardless, it's a lovely sight."

"Captain?" Betts said, looking over his shoulder as Daniel followed Adele toward the suit locker. "You'll be taking down Four Dorsal and Four Ventral to clear the tubes, right?"

"I won't know till we have a plot of the enemy formation, Betts," Daniel said. Tovera and Hogg were in the corridor, readying Adele's rigging suit. Hogg's face was a thundercloud; Tovera seemed, as usual, mildly amused. "I will say that I'll launch through a sail if necessary, though. Make your solutions regardless of the rig."

"You've got no business going out right now!" Hogg snarled to Daniel, his face turned aside as he lifted Adele without ceremony for Tovera to pull on the legs of the suit. "That's Woetjans's job. You're just full of yourself 'cause you spit in Pettin's face, you know. You're going to take a chance too many one of these days, young master!"

"I'm checking the rig, Hogg," Daniel said quietly as he donned his suit in a practiced reflex: legs, arms, and then close the plastron; three simple movements that he could do in the dark or so hungover that he could scarcely stand. "Which is my business."

He cleared his throat and added, "You'll recall that I stopped telling you where we should place our snares before I turned six."

"You didn't stop being a smart aleck then, though," Hogg said. He squeezed the rigid shoulder of Daniel's suit before turning away again. He muttered, "Wish there was some fucking thing I could do."

"You've already done it, Hogg," Daniel said. "You raised me to be a man."

He gestured Adele into the airlock, then stepped through and dogged the hatch.

Daniel started to clamp Adele's helmet for her. She raised her hand. "Daniel?" she said. "Why aren't you plotting missile courses now? And don't tell me because that's Betts's job, competent though I'm sure he is."

Daniel shrugged and pursed his lips. There was no reason she shouldn't know, after all.

"We're going to be too close for the missiles to course-correct after they're launched," he said. "The ship's vector and attitude are going to determine whether the rounds hit or miss, not whatever we program into the attack console. But Betts is very good at his job, and he'll be more comfortable if he's able to focus on it."

Adele gave him an odd smile. "Yes," she said. "And I dare say I'll be more comfortable trying not to fall off the hull than I would staring at the fact I completely failed to gather useful information."

Daniel chuckled. He closed her helmet, closed his—ordinarily a pair of spacers going topside would check each other's fittings, but that wasn't going to work here—and opened the outer hatch onto the hull.

Daniel paused a step from the coaming. As always, the beauty of the Matrix brought a lump to his throat.

The Princess Cecile trembled through veils of light more delicate than spiderweb, bathed in colors that had no name in the world of landsmen, and formed patterns that reproduced themselves all the way to an infinity not of one universe but all universes. Daniel Oliver Leary was a part of this splendor!

He handed Adele onto the hull and touched helmets with her. He said, "What do you see when you look out, Adele?"

Daniel felt her suit stir against his; she'd probably shrugged. "The light, you mean?" she said. "It seems gray where I look, but at the corners of my eyes it seems . . . pastel? I couldn't put it more clearly than that."

Ah, well; she found an excitement in databases that seemed likely to continue eluding him.

Daniel hooked Adele's safety line to a staple, then closed the hatch behind them. The Princess Cecile's twenty-four masts were at their full extension; topsails shimmered on all of them, and the huge lower courses were set on the dorsals as well.

He and Adele stood silent—he entranced, she . . . well, polite and docile might be the correct description of her feelings, but in the shrouded anonymity of the suits he could at least imagine that some of the wonder reached her below the level of awareness. The riggers were scarcely noticeable even when they were in direct view. The sails were huge and alive with the energy of the cosmos pressing them, while the humans who walked the yards to make final adjustments in the spread and lay were mere shadows against the effulgence.

The mainsails on rings C and D shifted clockwise. The Princess Cecile trembled, then sank from one bubble universe to another. The astrogation computer had chosen the latter's physical constants as most suitable for this stage of the voyage. To Daniel it was as if the heart of a sun had opened momentarily, blinding in its beauty.

Whatever Adele felt or saw caused her to snatch at him so violently that her boots lost their magnetic grip on the hull. Daniel's arm encircled her and guided her back to firm footing.

"We'll make three more shifts before we exit for a look at our colleagues from the Alliance," Daniel said. "We'll be three light-seconds sunward of Tanais; a quick in-and-out, the way we set up for the Falassan guardship."

Daniel cleared his throat, lifting his helmet away from Adele's momentarily so that the sound wouldn't pass. "I want to get the feel of the region we're sailing in before I set up the attack," he went on. "The most precise calculations in the world will leave you fifty miles out if the Matrix is slow. . . ."

He frowned, thinking about the way Adele had tried to describe the sensation of Casimir radiation on human retinas as gray or pastel. "Slow" was a word whose normal meaning had nothing to do with the interplay of forces between the universes; but Daniel had no better word, so he used what there was to give false meaning to a concept that even many astrogators wouldn't have understood. There were things that you could only explain to someone who already knew.

"Fifty miles isn't important if you're making planetfall," Daniel went on with a sigh. "You start your braking effort a little sooner, a little later. But for our present purposes . . ."

The topsails of E Ring furled forty percent. On Dorsal, the sail fluttered but jammed well short of the programmed amount. Daniel took a step forward—and caught himself, feeling silly, because with both watches on duty there was someone at the antenna already.

He watched the rigger climb stays hand over hand, throw a leg over the yard, and then kick the parrel with his other foot. The sail's taut fabric fluttered loose, then drew tight again as the jack hauled it into position.

"Beautiful," Daniel whispered. "Just beautiful. Any captain would give an arm to have a crew like mine."

"Daniel," Adele said, all expression squeezed out of her voice by the helmet-to-helmet contact. "Thank you for making me a part of your crew, part of your family. Regardless of what happens next."

By reflex Daniel opened his mouth to say, "Now, don't count us out yet . . ." but that wasn't the right response for a friend.

"Yes, well," he said. "I expect the Sissie to give a good account of herself. Beyond that, the future's rather in the lap of the Gods. There's some reason to hope that Chastelaine's crews won't be in the best condition after what must have been an unusually difficult voyage."

He stepped slightly apart to stare at the Matrix between the sails of the corvette's A and B rings. All time and space danced in that shimmering wonder.

Helmet to helmet again with Adele but speaking as much to himself, Daniel said, "I suppose I came out here for a . . . for another, let's not say last, look at the Matrix before I set up the next series of maneuvers. Quite wonderful, don't you think?"

"I too think my present situation is wonderful, Daniel," Adele said with the understated precision that was even more a part of her than the personal data unit.

Daniel laughed and hugged her through the rigid bracing of their suits. "Let's go below," he said. "We'll have business with the Alliance very shortly. And by God, the Alliance has business with us!"

Lt. Mon came up Corridor C from the Battle Direction Center, moving like an angry boxer. Somebody called to him from a compartment—Hoagland, the technician who was going over the Medic again before it might have to be used. Mon ignored him and glared at Adele when she looked up to watch his approach.

"Permission to enter the bridge!" Mon said loudly. He didn't use his knuckles but slapped the hatch flange twice with his fingertips to make it ring.

"Granted, Lieutenant," Daniel said, muting his holographic display to only a shimmer like dust motes between him and Mon. Daniel's face showed very little, but to Adele he appeared as puzzled about what Mon was doing here as she was herself.

"Captain," Mon said. Even Betts turned briefly from his console before going back to his fantasy of missile tracks. "We won't have much time after we exit for observations so I thought I'd say this now. Goddam little in my life went the way I'd have liked it to, not till I met you. I guess on average I've come out ahead."

Mon thrust his hand through the display area of the command console. Daniel leaned forward and lifted slightly from his seat to clasp arms with his second in command.

"It's a mutual pleasure, Mon," he said. A familiar smile lit his eyes and made the right corner of his mouth quirk upward. "I hope, however, that the association won't continue on the atomic level after today."

Mon looked blank, then guffawed. He slapped his left hand over Daniel's right, sandwiching it against his biceps muscle, then unclasped and stepped away.

"Sun, all of you?" Mon said. "I always figured I'd die in bed with my wife. Thanks to God and the RCN, I may be spared that. Good luck to all of you!"

He turned and strode back the way he'd come; an angry little man who always saw the worst in a situation and who never did less than his duty. Adele felt a surge of, well, friendship for him.

Daniel started to bring up his display, then grinned more broadly at Adele and activated the PA system instead. "Fellow spacers!" he said. "We've shown the RCN how to sail and the Selma pirates how to navigate the Matrix. Now we're going to show the Alliance how to fight. Three cheers for the Princess Cecile! Hip-hip—"

"Hooray!" the ship answered. Unaided voices, several shouting on the intercom, and Midshipman Dorst using the PA system itself from the Battle Direction Center.

"Hip-hip—"

"Hooray!"

"Hip-hip—"

Everyone aboard the Princess Cecile was cheering. Illiterate engine-wipers, women whose families had been RCN for every generation in living memory, men whose idea of patriotism was that anyone not from Cinnabar was a wog with no honor and no rights.

All those people cheered; and so did Mistress Adele Mundy, the scion of Chatsworth, a woman whose culture was as broad and deep as all human history.

"Hooray!"

Lt. Mon, returned to the Battle Direction Center, announced, "One minute to reentry to normal space!"

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Framed

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

_The Achilles looked to be a dumpy little vessel at present
because her rig was stowed. Even when fully telescoped, the masts of the first and last of her four rings stuck out beyond the yacht's short hull. Extended and wearing a full suit of sails, those masts would give her an area-to-mass ratio equalled by few if any other ships of Daniel's acquaintance. To him, that was a mark of great beauty.

The scale of the image was too small to show the boarding line connecting the yacht to the Princess Cecile, though Daniel could have directed the console to emphasize it if he'd had any reason to. Vaughn had asked to board via a tube and to bring several of his aides with him. Daniel had granted neither request.

The outer airlock dogged home; a moment later the inner valve opened. Woetjans, her faceshield flung open, half dragged, half guided, Delos Vaughn into Corridor C. Vaughn's expression through the synthetic sapphire of his visor was both irritated and frightened.

Daniel glanced again at the image of the Achilles. To Adele across the bridge he said, "That yacht's far too fine a vessel to be used for an orbital ferryboat the way our guest just did. They could've found a cargo lighter easily enough."

Adele shrugged. "You can't hold a landsman to a spacer's standards, Daniel," she said. With the bosun's help, Vaughn was struggling out of a rigging suit meant for someone a size larger, shooting frustrated looks toward her and Daniel but for the moment unable to join them. There was too much ambient noise for him to overhear. "I doubt whether he could, let alone does, understand that he's done anything questionable."

"Yes," said Daniel, "but that's rather a picture of his life, don't you think? The ability to do whatever's expedient without knowing or caring about anyone else's viewpoint?"

Vaughn kicked out of the suit's right leg and stepped to the hatchway. "Permission to enter the bridge, Captain Leary?" he said in a clear voice.

"You may enter the bridge, Mr. Vaughn," Daniel said. Then, because he didn't want to seem petty, he corrected himself: "President Vaughn, that is."

" `Mister' is quite sufficient between old shipmates," Vaughn said with his familiar engaging smile as he strode forward. "And present allies, I'm pleased to say."

Sun looked over his shoulder, then went back to his display; Betts never paused in obsessively computing missile courses. Adele continued to listen to the snips of intership and surface communications which her software culled out for her, but her eyes and her primary attention were on Delos Vaughn.

"I didn't expect to see you again, sir," Daniel said. "Not after the way you left us on Sexburga."

Facing Vaughn, he found it hard to be sure of how he felt about the man. Not hatred, certainly, nor even anger. There was a sort of admiration, Daniel had to admit, for a person who was so pure an example of the thing he was; and disgust as well, at what that thing was.

"I won't bother to apologize for the way I tricked you, Captain," Vaughn said, bluffly disarming. "Nothing I could say would be enough, and you wouldn't accept it anyway. I'll make up for the trouble in every way possible, however. One of the estates Nunes confiscated has been put in your name already. You may well want to spread the largess among those of your servants who were left on South Land with you. You'll be able to make them very happy without noticing the cost, I assure you."

Tovera watched from just inside the captain's suite; her right hand rested lightly on the grip of her submachine gun. Hogg was in the bridge hatchway, toying with a loop of fishing line and grinning.

"I'm a Leary of Bantry, sir," Daniel said quietly. "We understand cost very well, but the term rarely has anything to do with money when we use it."

"I take your point, Captain," said Vaughn; and he did, the tightness around his nostrils showed that clearly. "I've come for help clearing up the final patches of resistance to my assumption of the presidency. The two sons of the usurper Nunes are forted up in the family residence in the Tatrig Mountains. They'll require heavy weapons to blast them out, and—"

"President Vaughn," Daniel said. "I'm aware of your claims that the Republic backed your rebellion. You and I both know there's no truth to that. I won't become involved in what is clearly an internal Strymonian matter."

Vaughn's smile was crystal hard. "Well, Lieutenant, so far as Strymon knows, your Observer Mariette included," he said, "you're already involved. Pleyna Vaughn came out of Palia to discuss settlement terms because my military liaison, Lieutenant Daniel Leary of the RCN, guaranteed her safety. Of course I'll be able to correct this misapprehension as soon as you—"

Sun rose from his console in a fluid movement. His face was red. Adele grabbed his wrist. Sun jerked loose, but Hogg now stood between the spacer and Vaughn, and Tovera was behind him with her gun's muzzle a millimeter from his spine.

Everyone was looking at Daniel. "I'm not concerned with the lies of foreign rabble, Officer Sun," he said mildly. "Return to your duties, please. The Winckelmann's lighted her thrusters, so we can expect further orders shortly."

Vaughn was a brave man to have boarded the Princess Cecile now. Despite that, he wasn't a fool, so he must need Daniel's help very badly.

"A combination of those who oppose the new president . . ." Adele said. Her left hand came out of her pocket; Sun was at his console again and the two servants had backed off the bridge.

" . . . and the large percentage of the population who resent their president being chosen by Cinnabar," she continued, her eyes on something far distant in time, "will make it difficult for the regime to stay in power if there's a center of armed resistance."

She looked at Daniel, then at Vaughn. She added, "We on Cinnabar know something of conspiracies also, Mister President."

Vaughn swallowed. He said, "All I want from you, Captain, is a word to the frigates who've surrendered to you. The Fleet was thoroughly in Nunes's camp—and intriguing with the Alliance as well, that's no fable. If those ships enter the atmosphere and use their rockets against the Nunes positions, my mercenaries will have no difficulty in mopping up what remains. I don't trust the captains to obey me, however, and there're no other Fleet elements on Strymon. They all lifted for Tanais when your commodore landed."

Adele looked at Daniel sharply. He nodded. Vaughn knew his rivals had plotted with the Alliance, but he didn't realize that Admiral Chastelaine had reached the Strymon system.

"President Vaughn," he said, "you've entered a realm of politics that's properly the business of the Cinnabar Observer. If you prefer to raise the matter with Commodore Pettin, my superior, feel free to do so—his flagship will be in orbit shortly. For my part, I must request you return to your own vessel immediately, because I have—"

"Daniel!" Adele said. She'd rotated her seat to face her console again. "I'm cuing this to you!"

Vaughn's mouth opened, probably to protest. He was suddenly between Hogg and Tovera, backing quickly to the hatchway. Woetjans and the riggers with her in the corridor watched in amusement, but they didn't get involved where they would so clearly be superfluous.

"RCN, this is Kelburney," said the Astrogator's voice. "I left the cutters where the relay satellites used to be, just in case something came through that I'd like to know about. Ten minutes back, Strete outside Tanais Base picked up a transmission saying that Admiral Chastelaine was lifting for Strymon with his whole squadron. I guess you know more about what that means than we do, but we know it means we're headed back home soonest. If you're smart, boy, you'll do the same. Kelburney out."

Daniel glanced at the Plot Position Indicator. The pirate cutters were beginning to vanish like dewdrops in the sunlight. Captain Strete had brought word through the Matrix to his fellows, then fled only moments ahead of them. Daniel really couldn't blame the Selmans; not that it would have mattered if he had.

He hit the alarm button. "Ship, general quarters," he ordered. "All riggers topside. Riggers will remain on the hull during transitions until recalled. Captain out."

The Winckelmann's plasma thrusters covered the RF frequency with thunderous white noise, but the laser communicator should punch through the exhaust iridescence clearly enough to get the point across. Another hour would have been enough; but the RCN didn't depend on luck or prayer, either one.

"Adele," Daniel said. "Give me maximum emitter output and a tight focus to the flagship."

He cleared his throat and continued, "Princess Cecile to Squadron. We have an emergency. . . ."

Somewhere behind Adele, Delos Vaughn squealed briefly. She'd guess that Hogg was trussing and gagging the president rather than cutting his throat. Hogg being Hogg, you couldn't be sure; nor was it a question about which she could raise much concern.

Both Strymonian frigates were sending increasingly shrill questions toward the Princess Cecile as they watched the pirate cutters disappear into the Matrix. The Achilles's captain sounded querulous also, but since the yacht was unarmed—Adele had looked up the registry description—that wasn't a matter for present concern.

The patrol vessels were. Daniel and the officers in the Battle Direction Center were concerned with the ship and Commodore Pettin; but Adele was the signals officer, after all.

"Strymonian vessels Two-Oh-Four and One-Twenty-Seven," she said, using microwave because Daniel was on the modulated laser. "This is RCN Flagship Princess Cecile. You have your orders. If you violate them, we will destroy you without compunction! Ah, out!"

Were you supposed to say "flagship" if you were claiming to be a flagship? She'd ask when there was leisure, so she'd know the next time the question arose. For now, the terrified babbling of the Strymonian officers was sufficient.

"—the Princess Cecile will therefore proceed to the neighborhood of Tanais," Daniel was saying, "and screen the remainder of the squadron while your crews board. Leary over."

The corvette shivered as hydraulic jacks extended the antennas and spread the sails. For a moment Adele heard clang-clang, clang-clang. Riggers on the hull were freeing a jammed tube with their mauls.

"Leary, this is Pettin," a voice replied on a laser beam from the Winckelmann. Despite the initial tight focus and the voice sharpening provided by the Princess Cecile's communications suite, static roared through the commodore's words. "You are not, I repeat, not to engage the enemy. You will proceed with utmost dispatch to Cinnabar and warn the authorities there of the situation in the Sack."

Adele glanced at the image of Daniel inset at the top of her screen. His fingers hammered at his virtual keyboard while his eyes flicked back and forth at the data appearing on the display before him. Daniel was a sure and reasonably fast typist, but he put as much effort into his keystrokes as he would in splitting logs.

"Leary, there's nothing a corvette can do to affect a squadron of that weight," Pettin continued. "You've shown how fast you can push your Princess Cecile. Get home, get help, and tell Anston to get back here before the Alliance has the Sack sewed up. Acknowledge and get moving! Pettin over."

"One minute to entering the Matrix," Midshipman Vesey's voice warned over the PA system. The signal lights pulsed.

"Princess Cecile to squadron," Daniel said. His fingers and eyes continued to move as though controlled by an entity outside the person who responded to Commodore Pettin. "Sir, your transmission is breaking up. I'm therefore maneuvering as previously described. Princess Cecile out."

He broke the connection. The eyes of his image met Adele's.

"Daniel?" she said. "I've downloaded a report on the Strymon system into both our message cells. If you set them for Sexburga, there's a sixty percent chance one will arrive. The authorities there can send a courier vessel to Cinnabar."

"Thank you, Adele," Daniel said, calling across the noisy bridge so that the other officers could hear as well. "But that'd mean shifting the ready-use missiles out of their tubes. I believe we're going to have more use for them than Cinnabar has for a message."

"Entering the—" Vesey said, and Adele's world everted itself in what was becoming a familiar fashion.

"Lieutenant Mon," Daniel said, "I'm going topside. Please take the conn. Out."

He stood, feeling the Princess Cecile heel through the soles of his feet. The ship was a living apex of the infinite directions and forces of the Matrix. Adele turned from her console and said in a tone of inward-directed anger, "There's nothing to add to the bare message! If Captain Strete had any imagery of the Alliance fleet, he didn't transmit it to the Astrogator; and now he's gone."

"Come up on deck with me if you would, Adele," Daniel said. "We have twenty minutes before the next exit, and the Sissie's wearing almost her full suit of sails. It's not something you'll often have a chance to see."

"For a variety of reasons, perhaps," he added. He tried to sound solemn, but he didn't manage very well. "Regardless, it's a lovely sight."

"Captain?" Betts said, looking over his shoulder as Daniel followed Adele toward the suit locker. "You'll be taking down Four Dorsal and Four Ventral to clear the tubes, right?"

"I won't know till we have a plot of the enemy formation, Betts," Daniel said. Tovera and Hogg were in the corridor, readying Adele's rigging suit. Hogg's face was a thundercloud; Tovera seemed, as usual, mildly amused. "I will say that I'll launch through a sail if necessary, though. Make your solutions regardless of the rig."

"You've got no business going out right now!" Hogg snarled to Daniel, his face turned aside as he lifted Adele without ceremony for Tovera to pull on the legs of the suit. "That's Woetjans's job. You're just full of yourself 'cause you spit in Pettin's face, you know. You're going to take a chance too many one of these days, young master!"

"I'm checking the rig, Hogg," Daniel said quietly as he donned his suit in a practiced reflex: legs, arms, and then close the plastron; three simple movements that he could do in the dark or so hungover that he could scarcely stand. "Which is my business."

He cleared his throat and added, "You'll recall that I stopped telling you where we should place our snares before I turned six."

"You didn't stop being a smart aleck then, though," Hogg said. He squeezed the rigid shoulder of Daniel's suit before turning away again. He muttered, "Wish there was some fucking thing I could do."

"You've already done it, Hogg," Daniel said. "You raised me to be a man."

He gestured Adele into the airlock, then stepped through and dogged the hatch.

Daniel started to clamp Adele's helmet for her. She raised her hand. "Daniel?" she said. "Why aren't you plotting missile courses now? And don't tell me because that's Betts's job, competent though I'm sure he is."

Daniel shrugged and pursed his lips. There was no reason she shouldn't know, after all.

"We're going to be too close for the missiles to course-correct after they're launched," he said. "The ship's vector and attitude are going to determine whether the rounds hit or miss, not whatever we program into the attack console. But Betts is very good at his job, and he'll be more comfortable if he's able to focus on it."

Adele gave him an odd smile. "Yes," she said. "And I dare say I'll be more comfortable trying not to fall off the hull than I would staring at the fact I completely failed to gather useful information."

Daniel chuckled. He closed her helmet, closed his—ordinarily a pair of spacers going topside would check each other's fittings, but that wasn't going to work here—and opened the outer hatch onto the hull.

Daniel paused a step from the coaming. As always, the beauty of the Matrix brought a lump to his throat.

The Princess Cecile trembled through veils of light more delicate than spiderweb, bathed in colors that had no name in the world of landsmen, and formed patterns that reproduced themselves all the way to an infinity not of one universe but all universes. Daniel Oliver Leary was a part of this splendor!

He handed Adele onto the hull and touched helmets with her. He said, "What do you see when you look out, Adele?"

Daniel felt her suit stir against his; she'd probably shrugged. "The light, you mean?" she said. "It seems gray where I look, but at the corners of my eyes it seems . . . pastel? I couldn't put it more clearly than that."

Ah, well; she found an excitement in databases that seemed likely to continue eluding him.

Daniel hooked Adele's safety line to a staple, then closed the hatch behind them. The Princess Cecile's twenty-four masts were at their full extension; topsails shimmered on all of them, and the huge lower courses were set on the dorsals as well.

He and Adele stood silent—he entranced, she . . . well, polite and docile might be the correct description of her feelings, but in the shrouded anonymity of the suits he could at least imagine that some of the wonder reached her below the level of awareness. The riggers were scarcely noticeable even when they were in direct view. The sails were huge and alive with the energy of the cosmos pressing them, while the humans who walked the yards to make final adjustments in the spread and lay were mere shadows against the effulgence.

The mainsails on rings C and D shifted clockwise. The Princess Cecile trembled, then sank from one bubble universe to another. The astrogation computer had chosen the latter's physical constants as most suitable for this stage of the voyage. To Daniel it was as if the heart of a sun had opened momentarily, blinding in its beauty.

Whatever Adele felt or saw caused her to snatch at him so violently that her boots lost their magnetic grip on the hull. Daniel's arm encircled her and guided her back to firm footing.

"We'll make three more shifts before we exit for a look at our colleagues from the Alliance," Daniel said. "We'll be three light-seconds sunward of Tanais; a quick in-and-out, the way we set up for the Falassan guardship."

Daniel cleared his throat, lifting his helmet away from Adele's momentarily so that the sound wouldn't pass. "I want to get the feel of the region we're sailing in before I set up the attack," he went on. "The most precise calculations in the world will leave you fifty miles out if the Matrix is slow. . . ."

He frowned, thinking about the way Adele had tried to describe the sensation of Casimir radiation on human retinas as gray or pastel. "Slow" was a word whose normal meaning had nothing to do with the interplay of forces between the universes; but Daniel had no better word, so he used what there was to give false meaning to a concept that even many astrogators wouldn't have understood. There were things that you could only explain to someone who already knew.

"Fifty miles isn't important if you're making planetfall," Daniel went on with a sigh. "You start your braking effort a little sooner, a little later. But for our present purposes . . ."

The topsails of E Ring furled forty percent. On Dorsal, the sail fluttered but jammed well short of the programmed amount. Daniel took a step forward—and caught himself, feeling silly, because with both watches on duty there was someone at the antenna already.

He watched the rigger climb stays hand over hand, throw a leg over the yard, and then kick the parrel with his other foot. The sail's taut fabric fluttered loose, then drew tight again as the jack hauled it into position.

"Beautiful," Daniel whispered. "Just beautiful. Any captain would give an arm to have a crew like mine."

"Daniel," Adele said, all expression squeezed out of her voice by the helmet-to-helmet contact. "Thank you for making me a part of your crew, part of your family. Regardless of what happens next."

By reflex Daniel opened his mouth to say, "Now, don't count us out yet . . ." but that wasn't the right response for a friend.

"Yes, well," he said. "I expect the Sissie to give a good account of herself. Beyond that, the future's rather in the lap of the Gods. There's some reason to hope that Chastelaine's crews won't be in the best condition after what must have been an unusually difficult voyage."

He stepped slightly apart to stare at the Matrix between the sails of the corvette's A and B rings. All time and space danced in that shimmering wonder.

Helmet to helmet again with Adele but speaking as much to himself, Daniel said, "I suppose I came out here for a . . . for another, let's not say last, look at the Matrix before I set up the next series of maneuvers. Quite wonderful, don't you think?"

"I too think my present situation is wonderful, Daniel," Adele said with the understated precision that was even more a part of her than the personal data unit.

Daniel laughed and hugged her through the rigid bracing of their suits. "Let's go below," he said. "We'll have business with the Alliance very shortly. And by God, the Alliance has business with us!"

Lt. Mon came up Corridor C from the Battle Direction Center, moving like an angry boxer. Somebody called to him from a compartment—Hoagland, the technician who was going over the Medic again before it might have to be used. Mon ignored him and glared at Adele when she looked up to watch his approach.

"Permission to enter the bridge!" Mon said loudly. He didn't use his knuckles but slapped the hatch flange twice with his fingertips to make it ring.

"Granted, Lieutenant," Daniel said, muting his holographic display to only a shimmer like dust motes between him and Mon. Daniel's face showed very little, but to Adele he appeared as puzzled about what Mon was doing here as she was herself.

"Captain," Mon said. Even Betts turned briefly from his console before going back to his fantasy of missile tracks. "We won't have much time after we exit for observations so I thought I'd say this now. Goddam little in my life went the way I'd have liked it to, not till I met you. I guess on average I've come out ahead."

Mon thrust his hand through the display area of the command console. Daniel leaned forward and lifted slightly from his seat to clasp arms with his second in command.

"It's a mutual pleasure, Mon," he said. A familiar smile lit his eyes and made the right corner of his mouth quirk upward. "I hope, however, that the association won't continue on the atomic level after today."

Mon looked blank, then guffawed. He slapped his left hand over Daniel's right, sandwiching it against his biceps muscle, then unclasped and stepped away.

"Sun, all of you?" Mon said. "I always figured I'd die in bed with my wife. Thanks to God and the RCN, I may be spared that. Good luck to all of you!"

He turned and strode back the way he'd come; an angry little man who always saw the worst in a situation and who never did less than his duty. Adele felt a surge of, well, friendship for him.

Daniel started to bring up his display, then grinned more broadly at Adele and activated the PA system instead. "Fellow spacers!" he said. "We've shown the RCN how to sail and the Selma pirates how to navigate the Matrix. Now we're going to show the Alliance how to fight. Three cheers for the Princess Cecile! Hip-hip—"

"Hooray!" the ship answered. Unaided voices, several shouting on the intercom, and Midshipman Dorst using the PA system itself from the Battle Direction Center.

"Hip-hip—"

"Hooray!"

"Hip-hip—"

Everyone aboard the Princess Cecile was cheering. Illiterate engine-wipers, women whose families had been RCN for every generation in living memory, men whose idea of patriotism was that anyone not from Cinnabar was a wog with no honor and no rights.

All those people cheered; and so did Mistress Adele Mundy, the scion of Chatsworth, a woman whose culture was as broad and deep as all human history.

"Hooray!"

Lt. Mon, returned to the Battle Direction Center, announced, "One minute to reentry to normal space!"

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