'Dearie,' he said in a tone of deceptive gentleness. 'I'm running out of time. That means you talk, or I embarrass the brass higher up.'

    In the closet, Jensen frowned; and Kaplin's tremulous silence became underscored by James's quick tread, then the tap of fingers over the keys on what had to be the command alcove console.

    'What are you doing?' Kaplin asked in a blend of fear and suspicion.

    'Canceling our course coordinates,' MacKenzie James replied. 'We're going to stay in the Chalice system until a battle cruiser comes to investigate.'

    'You'll get us all blown to hell,' said Kaplin with the acid bite she used to admonish her senior lieutenant.

    'Very likely you're right.' James left the command chair, and by the squeals of outrage that followed, Jensen judged that the skip-runner tied Del Kaplin to the pilot's station with his usual ruthless style.

    There followed a wait, in which the skip-runner fixed himself coffee. In the protocols manual under the console, he found Sail's security code schedule and ascertained the time for her next check-in. Then, with a style more flamboyant than Harris's, he spun the scout craft on a trajectory that blended with the expanding debris from the explosion.

    Nauseated by vertigo, and jammed in the suffocating closet, Jensen felt a horrible, hollow lurch in his abdomen as the artificial gravity was switched off. More controls clicked in the cockpit as the skip-runner adjusted Sail for total shutdown, making her invisible to all but a tight-focus scan.

    An hour passed, then two. $ail's call-in was due in thirty minutes. Jensen sat, ears straining, to hear how MacKenzie James planned to handle the Fleet cruiser that was sure to arrive at any moment.

    Kaplin must have been left facing the screens, because when the battle cruiser arrived, she spoke with tense satisfaction. 'That's the New Morning. She's a flagship with an admiral aboard, and an escort fleet of six.'

    'Eight,' James corrected. 'Chalice got off a distress torp.' He did not sound upset, but crossed to the corn console and rapidly began punching keys.

    'You're going to beg amnesty?' Kaplin said, just missing her usual sarcasm. 'No. Personal phone call,' James qualified. 'To your senior,

~o7