I bristled. "Plus the chance of having your whole scheme unraveled."

His smile remained as he locked eyes with me. "It was for that possibility," he said softly, "that I brought my own ship."

A shiver went up my back. In his own, quietly confident way, Orlandis had just sentenced the Dancer to death. "Well, I hope you enjoy the trip," I said as casually as I could. "Going to be a rather long haul for you, though. Unless you just want to hop down to Baroja and start the whole trip over."

His smile vanished. "What are you talking about?"

His lip curled. "So you didn't find anyone in Shlomo Pass to send a message with. I suspected as much when Ms. Keal began avoiding me right after the last cascade point. I'd hoped you weren't actually foolish enough to leap on your white horse and come out looking for the Angelwing."

"Not looking, Orlandis," I corrected. "Finding."

He stared at me in disbelief, and in the momentary silence I leaned forward and flipped on the radio speaker. Clearly audible over the background static came the zhuUUP zhuUUP zhuUUP of a distress buoy. "We picked up the first signal right after we turned off the Colloton field an hour ago," I told him quietly. "Our estimate of their position turns out to have been no more than a light-hour or two off, and we hit our target position pretty accurately, too. Another fifteen minutes or so and we'll be close enough to raise them with our comm laser."

He glanced quickly at the bridge viewport, as if he thought he'd actually be able to see the liner. "But...

how-?"

"How did we know? Simple. There was really only one place they could be." I reached over and turned off the radio, then hit the switches that put the control systems and computer into neutral/standby. "You see," I continued, "we had your duplicate of the rigged Autotorque to study and we knew quite a lot about the Angelwing. And we had Alana."

Orlandis's eyes swung back to me, and I could see by their expression that he'd suddenly realized what our being in communication with the Angelwing would mean. His right hand dipped into his tunic pocket, emerging with a tiny summoner. "I'm afraid I can't allow you to talk with them," he said softly. "You understand."

"Of course," I nodded. "You're welcome to try and stop me." And with that, I flipped open the Colloton generator safety cover and twisted the Knob.

Orlandis actually gasped as the first cascade images appeared around us. "What the hell-?"

"Oh, we're not going anywhere," I assured him. "As long as the Dancer doesn't rotate we'll come back out in more or less the same position we left. But I was telling you how we found the Angelwing. Your assassin friends didn't reckon on Captain Grandy's being awake during the maneuver-and they certainly didn't expect him to shut down the flywheel before the Autotorque had time to blow the generator. We knew Alana would have been killed if she'd been there instead of Grandy, so we set up a similar test last cascade point to see how she'd react, and she did so exactly as I've just said. QED."

"Pretty far-fetched assumption," Orlandis said with some difficulty. He threw a quick glance at the bridge door, then resumed his apprehensive gaze at his cascade pattern.

"Perhaps," I admitted. "But he had to have brought the ship to a halt before the timer wound down, else all of Alana's Angelwing cascade images would have vanished. You following all this?"

He nodded, a short jerk of his head. Again, his eyes darted to the door.

"And finally, the really critical factor: we found out how the Autotorque was supposed to destroy the Colloton generator and how long its timer was set for. Once we knew the ship itself was safe, there were only two possibilities: one, that Grandy had gotten the Autotorque out of the circuit in time to protect the generator-possibly being electrocuted himself in the process, as Alana would have been-or two, that he'd started to take it out, got electrocuted, and still lost the generator. Only in the second case would the Angelwing be stranded. So all we had to do then was figure out how far the ship would have rotated in the time available, remembering that Grandy had to rev the flywheel up, rev it back down, and get the Colloton field shut off just before the time ran out. That's a pretty tight scenario, and with the relatively small distances you get with small rotation angles it let us calculate precisely how far the Angelwing had gotten. Turns out we were right."

"And finally, the really critical factor: we found out how the Autotorque was supposed to destroy the Colloton generator and how long its timer was set for. Once we knew the ship itself was safe, there were only two possibilities: one, that Grandy had gotten the Autotorque out of the circuit in time to protect the generator-possibly being electrocuted himself in the process, as Alana would have been-or two, that he'd started to take it out, got electrocuted, and still lost the generator. Only in the second case would the Angelwing be stranded. So all we had to do then was figure out how far the ship would have rotated in the time available, remembering that Grandy had to rev the flywheel up, rev it back down, and get the Colloton field shut off just before the time ran out. That's a pretty tight scenario, and with the relatively small distances you get with small rotation angles it let us calculate precisely how far the Angelwing had gotten. Turns out we were right."

"True, but there'll be enough time for that later." I waved toward the door. "And incidentally, I wouldn't expect your two bodyguards to show up any time soon. They'll be lucky if they don't break their necks falling down the stairs. If they manage to get that far."

Orlandis stared at me, the uneasiness on his face giving way rapidly to fury. "What-?"

"Eiser and Trent, of course. Once we realized how rich you were, we noticed that one or the other of them always seemed to be hanging around you somewhere in the background. No, cascade point vertigo will have them well out of the game by now. If you want to stop me, you'll have to do it yourself."

"Damn you-" Orlandis thrust himself out of his seat toward me, hands outstretched like killing weapons even as he piled headfirst into the floor. He staggered to his knees, lunged another half meter before falling again. I stayed where I was as he gathered himself for another try... and as he rose up and crawled forward I let my anger boil up within me; my anger at what he'd done to the Angelwing and planned to do to the Dancer. He reached out an unsteady hand, clutched at my left knee... and with my right foot I kicked him as hard as I could. He flipped over backwards, hitting his head on the padded seat he'd just left, and lay still.

Fifteen minutes later, when I judged it was safe enough, I turned off the Colloton generator and went out hunting. Eiser and Trent were easy to find, lying unconscious on the floor halfway from the stairs to the bridge. Close, but not too bad: their tiny guns were still at the bottom of the stairs, where they'd apparently been dropped.

And a half hour later I was talking to an extremely relieved duty officer on the Angelwing.

What with all the electronic equipment that got singed by my unscheduled cascade point, the Dancer was in pretty poor shape by the time we rendezvoused with the Angelwing. But Matope and Tobbar were able to make running repairs, and with the computer intact none of us was especially worried about making the short trip back to Baroja. If worse came to worst, we still had that little backup in our hold.

The passengers were somewhat more troubled. They started out furious at having had to actually experience a cascade point; shifted to astonished and only slightly less angry to find we were nowhere near Earth; and finally turned to shock at finding out the truth about Orlandis and company. I decided not to strain them further with pessimistic reports of the Dancer's spaceworthiness, but dropped our three prisoners off with the Angelwing for safekeeping and headed to Baroja to whistle up the cavalry.