"Why didn't you tell us this at the start?"

The old captain shrugged. "What? That them girls is three witches with supernatural powers who can do all sorts of mysterious stuff? You don't even believe my story now, Commander. But looks like you will soon. When they start them chants and trance stuff, they're up to somethin'. Just what I can't say, but you're gonna have a hard time figurin' it out or dealin' with it. Then you'll see."

Commander Sittithong sighed. "I sincerely doubt this, Captain. You might be so suggestible or gullible, but this is a star cruiser capable of eliminating whole planets if such a drastic action were ever needed. There's more military might, and military safeguards, on this vessel than in any of past history's entire navies, all under the ultimate command and control of cybernetic minds who themselves share power and must agree on an action. No, Captain, they're just going to sit there and chant themselves all the way home."

Murphy's head shot up, suddenly wide awake. "Home? You're takin' 'em home?"

"There is no other legal, moral, or ethical choice," the exec told him. "It has been approved all the way to the Admiralty. We'll be within their home sector in just a few weeks, and then we'll shuttle them back in. You, too, unless we find somewhere before that you can be put off at. Then none of you are our problem any longer."

"You're takin' 'em home?" Murphy repeated, barely hearing the rest. "My God, Commander! And you told them this?"

"We had to. Regulations require-"

"Damn your regulations! Any way I can be moved off to one of your destroyers? Or at least close to a disaster escape pod?"

"You're being overly dramatic, aren't you?"

"Just you wait," Murphy responded, wagging a finger at the officer. "Just you wait and see. At least you oughta break that up. Break all three up and put 'em in different areas of the ship so far apart they can't even find each other. I think they need to be together to exercise this power."

"I've indulged you this far, Murphy, but no farther. There is no reason to split them up. The very thought that such as they could be any danger to this ship or anyone on it is ludicrous! Now, go back to your quarters and pray to your primitive god if that makes you feel any better, but let's have no more of this nonsense!"

"You wouldn't happen to have some whiskey on this tub, would you?" Murphy asked her.

"Of course not!"

"Well, could you send one of them big marines in to my old ship and have him fetch a bottle from me secret compartment in the galley? Surely you can't deny an old man that."

"We found that stash of cleaning fluid you call whiskey earlier today," the exec told him. "It is marked for disposal, but I don't see why, if you want to kill yourself slowly, you shouldn't have at least one bottle of it if it keeps you calm."

"Oh, I don't want it to keep me calm," the old captain replied. "I want it to keep me nicely blotto for a while…"

Lieutenant Commander Mohr, the head of ship security, was an even meaner and bigger figure of a man than most of the marines on board, yet right now he looked like a small child caught with his hand in the candy jar.

"What do you mean, 'They're missing'?" Commander Sittithong thundered. "How in hell could anyone be missing on this ship?"

Behind them on the viewing screen was a full view of the "guest" cabin where the young women or whatever they were had been sitting and chanting for hours. Now it still showed the strange pentagram in which they'd been sitting, but there was no sign of them or of any life whatsoever in the place.

"I-I have no explanation, Commander. None. One moment they were there, the next they weren't. You can play back the recording yourself. The alarm went off as soon as the subjects vanished from the surveillance. We immediately did a visual of the entire cabin area and found no signs of life, and the guards were still in place outside the door. We immediately ordered the lead guard in with the other blocking the door with weapon drawn. The marine went through every centimeter of the cabin. They weren't there. We immediately initiated a shipwide comparator search. No unknowns or unauthorized persons came back. None of the three showed up in a general search, either. It's as if they vanished into some other dimension or something."

"Bullshit! Those girls couldn't spell 'dimension,' let alone find a new one. Has the captain been notified?"

"Not yet. We were waiting for you."

The exec nodded. "Yes, well, I'll notify him in a bit. He's sleeping at the moment and it won't do any good to wake him until we have something to tell him beyond the fact that these girls pulled a magic trick on the most secure location in what's left of the known galaxy. What about Murphy?"

"Murphy, sir?" Because the sexes were so irrelevant to this crew, all officers were "sir."

"The old freighter captain."

"Oh, him. He's still in his cabin, sleeping off the effects of whatever that horrible crap he swallowed so eagerly was."

"Hmmm… We may have underestimated his story, or at least his fears. What about the freighter? We don't have sensors everywhere on it."

"We thought of that, sir, but we do have visuals on every pressurized area on it as well as constantly monitored seals on the entrance. All show no activity."

The exec thought frantically for a minute. Finally, she asked, "Who is your best security analyst aboard? Someone who can figure these kinds of problems out if need be?"

"I'm not sure anyone has ever had any experience with this sort of thing, but Sergeant Maslovic has been excellent at solving the most subtle security breaches. He's the one who found the missing neutronium, or at least accounted for it."

"An enlisted man? And a marine at that? Very well, I'll go along with you on this, but he better be good. Get him up here now, with every bit of data and clearances he requires to start on this right away. And bring Captain Murphy up here as well. Sober him up as best you can-check with Medical, they should have something. On the double!"

Both Captain Murphy and Sergeant Maslovic had at least one thing in common. Neither of them wanted to be there and stuck with this knotty problem, and neither of them had the slightest idea where to start. Still, Murphy, who was the most sour not only from the news that his "witches" had flown the coop, as he called it, but also that he was suddenly as sober as he'd ever felt in his adult life, was probably in the worse frame of mind.

Still, he had that deep-down sense of "told you so" satisfaction that he was more than willing to shove up these robotic martinets' noses. He looked at Maslovic with a familiar nod, recognizing him from the squadron that boarded the freighter. Clearly the man was more than just a mere guard if he was here.

"So the little girls took a powder and now the whole navy's in a panic," he said with a wry smile. "And old Murphy's been called up to help pull you out of the mess you made when you didn't listen to him in the first place!"

"And you did so much better with them, by your own account," Sittithong shot back.

"Well, you got a point there," the old man admitted. "But if it wasn't for you buttin' in like you did, they'd be where they wanted to be and I'd be rid of them by now. Even I had no idea that they could do this!"

Maslovic was less inclined to trust the old captain. "This is quite a level of sophistication for three airheaded young things who can hardly walk, isn't it?"

" 'Sophistication' he says! 'Tis the black arts, m'boy! Nobody can teleport themselves off a ship by chantin' usin' some kind of gizmo!"