Akim swore under his breath. "We can't let him escape," he said. "With those alien computers he'll be able to set up somewhere else in the Great Arc and continue his treason."

"I know." For a half dozen heartbeats Jin watched the display, trying to think.

"All right," she said at last. "Wait here; I'm going back to get Daulo Sammon."

"And then what? Everyone out there is armed; and even if we could get past them all, there's still no way we could call for reinforcements in time."

"I know." Stepping to the door, she slid it open and glanced out. Again, no one was in sight. "We'll have to do something else. Like take over the ship."

Daulo was waiting when she reached the pumping room, pacing restlessly around the cramped space. "What's going on?" he demanded as she slipped back into the room.

"It looks like Obolo Nardin's preparing to leave," she told him, giving him a quick once-over. "How are you feeling?"

"I can make it. What do you mean, leaving?"

"Just what I said. He's got his people loading stuff onto this ship right now."

"And the aliens aren't stopping him?"

"Hardly. They're helping him. Shh!"

A double set of hurrying footsteps passed by out in the corridor. "But how are we going to get off before they leave?" Daulo hissed.

"We're not." The corridor was quiet again. Sliding it open a crack, Jin looked out. "Okay, looks clear. If we meet any Trofts, let me handle them."

They slipped out and headed forward. "Where are they all?" Daulo hissed, glancing around as they jogged.

"A lot of them are probably in the stern, helping with the loading," Jin murmured back. "Most of the rest will be busy back in the engineering rooms or up front in the command module."

The latter being where they were headed. It didn't seem a good idea to worry him with that.

They reached the port drive monitor station without incident, collected Akim, and continued on. "Stay at my sides," Jin warned the two men as they neared the end of the neck. "If I have to shoot it'll probably be straight ahead or behind, and I don't want you getting in the way."

They left the neck and entered the flat-steeple command module beyond it. Jin had been braced for an immediate battle; to her mild surprise, again there was no one in sight. "How many aliens are we going to be up against?" Akim muttered.

"Probably thirty to fifty in a ship this size," Jin told him, trying to remember what little she knew about Troft ship layouts. The bridge ought to be near the top of the command module, just below the sensor blister. A collision door slid open at their approach-

And they found themselves in a spacious monitor intersection.

It was a design, Jin remembered, peculiar to Troft ships. A circular area seemingly carved out of the intersection of two major corridors, its walls were covered by monitor screens and displays. In its center, a wide spiral stair led to the level above. "I think we're here," Jin murmured to the others. "Now stay behind me and-"

"Stop, humans!" a flat, mechanical voice shouted in Qasaman from behind them.

Jin spun around, dropping into a crouch at the base of the stairway and shoving

Akim and Daulo to either side. A flash of light and heat sliced the air above her, and an instant later her nanocomputer had thrown her in a flat dive to the side. She rolled up onto her right hip, left leg sweeping toward the Troft as he swung his own weapon toward her. She won the race, barely, and the corridor lit up with the blaze of her antiarmor laser. She was on her feet in an instant, sprinting back to the stairway. "Follow me up," she snapped at Akim and Daulo, leaping onto the stairs and starting up them five at a time. Whoever was up there couldn't possibly have missed hearing the ruckus, and she had to get to them before they sealed off the bridge.

And for one heart-stopping second it looked like she was going to be too late.

Even as she came around the last turn of the staircase she looked up to see a heavy blast hatch starting to swing down over the opening.

Her knees straightened convulsively, hurling her in a desperate leap straight up. Her hands caught the rim of the opening, barely in time-

And she gasped with pain as the rubberine rim of the hatch slammed down on her fingers.

For a long second she hung there, vision wavering with the agony in her hands, mind frozen with the realization that she was completely and utterly helpless.

The triggers to her fingertip lasers were out of reach, her sonics useless with a metal hatch blocking them, her antiarmor laser impossible for her to aim.

Servo strength... Pressing upward with the back of one hand did nothing but send a fresh wave of pain through her fingers like an electric shock-

Electric shock!

Her mind seemed to catch gears again; and, gritting her teeth, she fired her arcthrower.

There was no way to tell if the random lightning bolt actually hit anything; but the thunder was still echoing in her ears when the pressure on her hands abruptly eased a little. Again she shoved upward, and this time it worked. Arm servos whining against the strain, the hatch swung open; simultaneously, she pulled down hard on her other hand, launching herself up and through the opening.

They were waiting for her-or, rather, those who hadn't been leaning on the hatch in the path of the arcthrower blast were waiting for her-but it was clear they didn't really understand what it was they were facing. Even as she shot out of the hatchway like a cork from a bottle, the room flashed with light as a crisscross of laser fire sliced through the air beneath her.

There were five of them in all, and they never got a chance to correct their aim. Jin reached the top of her arc, head coming perilously close to banging against the ceiling, and her left leg swung around in a tight crescent curve across the crouching Trofts, antiarmor laser spitting with deadly accuracy.

By the time she landed, stumbling, on the deck, it was all over.

For a moment she just sagged there, teeth clenched against the throbbing pain in her fingers. The ceramic-laminated bones were effectively unbreakable, but the skin covering them had no such protection, and it was already turning black and blue with massive bruising.

"Is it all right?" a muffled voice called tentatively from behind her.

She turned to see Akim poke his head cautiously over the level of the deck.

"Yeah," she grunted. "Come on, hurry up. We've got to close this place off."

Akim came all the way in, followed closely by Daulo. "What happened to your hands?" Daulo asked sharply, stepping forward to take one of them.

"They tried to slam the door on us. Never mind that; you two get that hatch closed and sealed, all right?"

They moved to obey, and she moved past the line of smoldering Troft bodies to give the control boards a quick scan. A dull thud from behind her signaled the closing of the hatch, and a moment later Akim stepped to her side. "I don't hear anything that sounds like an alarm," he commented quietly. "Is it possible they didn't have time to call for help before they died?"

Jin frowned at one of the displays, which was showing the same outside scene she and Akim had watched earlier from the port drive monitor station. She wouldn't have thought it possible... but on the other hand, this craft was clearly built more along the lines of a small freighter than a warship. If there hadn't been laser alarms built into the corridors, perhaps there weren't any on the bridge, either. "It looks like they didn't," she agreed, gesturing to the display.

"They're certainly not showing any signs of panic out there."

"Which means we have some time," Akim nodded. "That's something, at least."

"Only if we move fast," Jin said grimly. "I doubt that hatch will hold them for very long once they realize what's happened." A vague, half-formed plan was beginning to take shape in her mind... and unfortunately, she wasn't going to have enough time to work out all the details in advance. "You two stay here;