Jensen's shot crashed into the bridge-side bulkhead. Padding exploded into fluff where the intruder's head had been but a fraction of an instant before. Cursing, the lieutenant shoved another round into the breech. He hastened forward, skidding over the puddle of alcohol and glass. The cold portion of his mind wondered why the intruder had fled. A second blow, better placed, might have killed him in that instant before surprise kicked into adrenaline surge.

    Jensen whipped around the innerlock, slammed shoulder first into a stowage locker. He trained his pistol squarely upon his quarry, only to flinch the shot wide. His curse of white hot anger blended with the clang as the pellet hammered harmlessly into high impact plastic.

    Over the heated end of his gun barrel, Jensen beheld the limp form of Harris, gripped like a shield in a pair of coilscarred hands.

The name left his lips, unbidden. 'Mac James!'

    'Godfrey,' came the muffled reply. 'Tired of the party early, did you?'

    The face, with its icy gray eyes, stayed hidden. Jensen was given no target for his murderous marksmanship, which was a feat. Mac James outweighed his unconscious hostage by a good sixty pounds. As to how the skip-runner had stowed away, Jensen recalled with sinking recrimination that the Marity had passed close enough to plant a boarder on the Shearborn's hull. The stowaway's life-support of necessity would have been limited to the capacity of his suit pack, which meant that Mac James had gambled his life on the lieutenant's subsequent behavior. Had the $1;earborn's crew backed down, returned through FTL to Dead Star, the skip-runner would have been fried in the coil field. Instead, the heroics which had preserved the station's integrity and the lives of two children had earned the Shearborn a warm invitation, without security screening, into a classified research installation. With a dawning stab of outrage, Jensen understood. He had been nothing more than a pawn. His triumph over the terrorists had provided the linchpin of a plot for MacKenzie James.

    'I could kill Harris to see you dead,' Jensen said thickly. Certainly he was ruthless enough, MacKenzie James should recall.

But with insight that bordered the uncanny, the skip-runner

I59