You’re not immobilizing me… “What is the procedure?”

“It won’t hurt, and will do you no harm at all. Come on over, now.” He smiled, and tapped the shield unit, which folded out from the wall.

“What?” repeated Claire, not moving.

“I can’t discuss it. It’s—classified. Sorry. You’ll have to ask—Mr. Van Atta, or Dr. Yei, or somebody. Tell you what, I’ll send you over to Dr. Yei right after, and you can talk to her, all right?” He licked his lips; his smile grew steadily more nervous.

“I wouldn’t ask…” Claire groped after a phrase she had heard a downsider use once, “I wouldn’t ask Bruce Van Atta for the time of day.”

Dr. Curry looked quite startled. “Oh.” And muttered, not quite under his breath, “I wondered why you were second on the list.”

“Who was first on the list?” asked Claire.

“Silver, but that engineering instructor has her on some kind of assignment. Friend of yours, right? You’ll be able to tell her it doesn’t hurt.”

“I don’t care—I don’t give a damn if it hurts, I want to know what it is.” Her eyes narrowed, as the connections clicked at last, then widened in outrage. “The sterilizations,” she breathed. “You’re starting the sterilizations!”

“How did you—you weren’t supposed—I mean, whatever makes you think that?” gulped Curry.

She dodged for the doorway. He was closer and quicker, and sealed it in front of her nose. She caromed off the closing panel.

“Now, Claire, calm down!” panted Curry, zigzagging after her. “You’ll only hurt yourself, totally unnecessarily. I can put you under a general anesthetic, but it’s better for you to use a local, and just lie still. You do have to lie still. I have to do this, one way or another—”

“Why do you have to do this?” cried Claire. “Did Dr. Minchenko have to do this—or is that why he isn’t here? Who’s making you, and how, that you have to?”

“If Minchenko was here, I wouldn’t have to,” snapped Curry, infuriated. “He ducked out, and left me holding the bag. Now come over here and position yourself under the steri-shield, and let me set up the scanners, or I’ll have to get—get quite firm with you.” He inhaled deeply, psyching himself up.

“Have to,” Claire taunted, “have to, have to! It’s amazing, some of the things downsiders think they have to do. But they’re almost never the same things they think quaddies have to do. Why is that, do you suppose?”

His breath woofed out, and his lips tightened angrily. He plucked a hypodermic off his tray of instruments.

He laid it out in advance, Claire thought. He’s rehearsed this, in his mind—he made his mind up before I ever got here…

He launched himself over to where she hovered, and grabbed her left upper arm, stabbing the needle towards it in a swift silver arc. She grabbed his right wrist, slowing it to a straining standstill; so they were locked for a moment, muscles trembling, tumbling slowly in the air.

Then she brought up her lower arms to join her uppers. Curry gasped in surprise, and for breath, as she parted his arms wide, overpowering even his young male torso. He kicked, his knees thumping her, but with nothing to push against he couldn’t drive them with enough force to really hurt.

She grinned in wild exhilaration, brought his arms in, out again at will. I’m stronger! I’m stronger! I’m stronger than him and I never even knew it…

Carefully, she locked her power-gripping lower hands around his wrists, and freed her uppers. Both hands working together easily peeled his clutching fingers from the hypodermic. She held it up, and crooned, “This won’t hurt a bit.”

“No, no—”

He was wriggling too much for her inexperience to try for a swift venous injection, so she went for a deltoid muscle instead, and went on holding him until he grew woozy and weak, which took several minutes. After that, it was easy to immobilize him under the steri-shield.

She looked over his tray of instruments, and touched them wonderingly. “How far should I carry this turnabout, do you think?” she asked aloud.

He whimpered in his wooziness and twitched feebly against the soft restraints, panic in his eyes. Claire’s eyes lit; she threw back her head and laughed, really laughed, for the first time in—how long? She couldn’t remember.

She put her lips near his ear, and spoke clearly. “/ don’t have to.”

She was still laughing softly when she sealed the doors to the treatment room behind her and flew down the corridor toward refuge.

Chapter 11

It had been a mistake to let Ti insist on docking to the Superjumper, Silver realized, as the crunch and shudder of their impact with the docking clamps reverberated through the pusher. Zara, hovering anxiously, emitted a tiny moan. Ti snarled wordlessly over his shoulder at her, returned his fraying attention to the controls.

No—her mistake, to let his downsider, male, legged authority override her own reason—she knew he wasn’t rated for these pushers, he’d told her so himself. He was only the authority after they got inside the Superjumper.

No, she told herself firmly, not even then.

“Zara,” she called, “take the controls.”

“Dammit,” Ti began, “if you’d just—”

“We need Ti too much on the comm channels to spare him for piloting,” Silver inserted, hoping desperately Ti would not spurn this offered sop for his pride.

“Mm.” Grudgingly, Ti let Zara shoulder him aside.

The flex tube docking ring wouldn’t seal properly. A second docking, and all the hopeful jiggling the auto-waldos could supply, couldn’t make the locking ring seal properly. Silver either feared she would die, or wished she could, she wasn’t sure. All her palms sweated, and transferring the laser-solderer from one to another only made the grip clammier.

“See,” said Ti to Zara, “you can’t do any better.”

Zara glared at him. “You bent one of the rings, you dipstick. You better hope it’s theirs and not ours.”

“That’s ‘dipshit,’ “ John, laboring back by the hatch trying to make it seal, corrected helpfully. “If you’re going to use downsider terminology, get it right.”

“Pusher R-26 calling GalacTech Superjumper D620,” Ti quavered into the comm. “Von, we’re going to have to disengage and come around to the other side. This isn’t working.”

“Go ahead, Ti,” came the jump pilot’s voice in return. “Are you sick? You don’t sound so good. That was a miserable docking. Just what is this emergency, anyway?”

“I’ll explain when we’re aboard.” Ti glanced up, got a confirming nod from Zara. “Disengaging now.”

Their luck was better on the starboard hatch. No, Silver reminded herself again. We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad.

Ti pushed through the flex tube first. The Jumpship’s engineer was waiting for him on the other side. Silver could hear his angry voice, “Gulik, you bent our portside docking ring. You wireheads all think you’re Mr. Twinkletoes when you’re plugged into your sets, but on manual you are, without exception, the most ham-handed—” he broke off, his voice thinning out in a little hiss, as Silver flitted through the hatch and hovered, her laser-solderer pointed sturdily at his stomach. It actually took him a moment to notice the weapon. His eyes widened and his mouth opened as Siggy and Jon backed her up from behind.

“Take us to where the pilot is, Ti,” said Silver. She hoped the fear that edged her voice made her sound angry and fierce, not pale and weak. All her strength seemed washed out of her, leaving her limp-stomached. She swallowed and took a tighter grip on the solderer.

“What the hell is this?” began the engineer, his voice a taut octave higher than before. He cleared his throat and brought it back down. “Who are you… people, anyway? Gulik, are they with you—?”