mine will be the only excuse we have to offer at our defense briefing.'

    'And may you shrivel in front of the ladies for that,' snapped Harris. He wanted a drink, and a chance to take a leak in real gravity. What began as a lark had turned seriously sour; until the sensors signaled Marity's transit from FTL, nothing remained but to wait and brood, because certainly no sane man was going to fathom the intentions of Lieutenant Jensen.

The transit lasted days. Harris slept, or banged about in the chaser's tiny galley unearthing the beer he had stashed where he swore no Fleet inspector would check, never mind that access to his cache took most of his off-watch time. He needed his comforts. A man couldn't get booze in detention; to Harris's thinking that was precisely where Shearborn's hare-brained officers would be headed.

      'Autolog won't lie for us,' he carped when the lieutenant in

command crossed paths with him at meal time.Jensen refused to debate.

    Harris parked the heels of his boots on the table and cradled his mug, which untruthfully read c o F F E ~, between his knees. But even a barbarity of this magnitude provoked no reaction. Nettled by the lieutenant's secretive silence, the pilot added, 'A leap this long could send us clear to Halpern's.' Which was about as far from Khalian raid sites as a ship could go, and stay within charted Alliance space. 'You better think up a very fancy alibi.'

    Jensen sat down opposite, drank his orange juice in chilly stillness. His uniform looked as if he had just stepped off parade. No stubble shadowed his chin. Just when had he taken time to groom? Harris wondered. Since the jump to FTL, the man had done little else but pace before the analog's blank screen, brooding over the unguessable motives of Marity's skip-runner captain.

Despite such fanatical vigilance, the tracking alarm caught Shearborn's crew of two napping. Harris shambled from his bunk, stretching like a bear and complaining of a hangover. As always, he slept in his uniform. Jensen had not. He bolted without ceremony