Eubeleus waved a hand impatiently. “Oh… go back and tell them to sing a few more hymns or something,” he replied.

Duncan and Sandy were sitting together among the group of security guards, Ganymeans, and other captives inside PAC.

“How’s that for a bummer?” Duncan said. “We come all this way, to a new city and a totally different culture, and we end up like this.”

“We never even got to see the town,” Sandy agreed dismally.

Duncan looked idly around at the others sitting around the room, not saying much, waiting. “What do you like to do when you get to go out?” he asked.

“Go out? What’s that? I work for Chris Danchekker, remember? A vacation is eating lunch that didn’t come out of a paper bag.”

“Guys like that ought to get married,” Duncan said.

“Maybe he did, years ago, and forgot all about it. I’ve seen him show up at the lab in odd shoes.”

“How about San Francisco?” Duncan said. “Ever get out that way? Fisherman’s Wharf, Enrico’s Coffee House? Do you know, I reckon that if they handed this city over to the people who run Chinatown in S.F., they’d have the place up and running in a month without ever needing JEVEX.”

Sandy stretched and thought about it. “I think I’ll take the south,” she said. “New Orleans, some places out along Texas. Maybe I’m just cut out for the slow, lazy life.”

“Tell you what,” Duncan said. “When we get back after this, we’ll go off on a tour and see all of it. Thinking back, I’d say I’ve spent too much of my time shut up in labs, too. Vic’s always saying, Why change your job? It’s just more of the same. Change your life. What do you think? Does that sound good?”

Sandy looked at him sideways. “Are your intentions strictly honorable, Mr. Watt?”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s a deal.”

Some police came into the room and started talking to the ones who had been standing guard. The newcomers seemed excited, with a lot of waving and gesticulating. The captives watched and waited with mixed reactions. While it was going on, Del Cullen moved over to where Sandy and Duncan were sitting. “Looks like the war’s not over yet,” he murmured.

“Why? What’s happening?” Duncan asked.

“I only caught pieces of it, but it sounds like something’s just come down through the roof of the city. I think one of them said it was the Shapieron.”

Sandy looked aghast. “You mean it crashed?”

“Hell, no. It took off again… But there’s still something going on out there. The others are up to something.”

Then the police who had entered came over and pointed to the three of them. The guards motioned for them to get up and follow. In the background, Koberg and Lebansky started objecting, but held back when other guards lowered their weapons threateningly. Cullen shrugged. “I guess we don’t have a lot of choice,” he said. The prisoners left, accompanied by the escort that had been sent for them.

They were taken up to the communications room, where Garuth was standing with Langerif and a group of other Jevlenese in front of a screen showing Eubeleus. On another screen they saw Hunt, Danchekker, and a mixed group of others in brightly lit surroundings of display consoles and control stations, which Duncan guessed to be the inside of the Shapieron.

“It’s them!” he exclaimed. “They got out! They’re-”

“Quiet!” Langerif snapped.

On the other screen, Eubeleus was speaking. “We do indeed have all of them as you can see for yourselves. I’m not in a mood to make long speeches. The implications are too obvious to require spelling out. My instructions are that-”

“Don’t listen,” Garuth broke in. “Do whatever-”

“Remove him,” Langerif ordered. Two armed guards ushered Garuth away, out of range of the screen.

Eubeleus resumed. “You will take your ship away from Jevlen immediately at maximum speed, and out of Athena’s planetary system completely. The Thuriens will project a toroid to remove it from this region.” He raised a hand, seeing the protest start to form on Torres’s face. “There is nothing to negotiate. You will commence at once.” Sandy was ebullient at seeing that the others were safe, and for the moment she wasn’t worried about what would happen next. Gina, standing in the forefront of the group behind Torres, was looking especially crestfallen. “Don’t worry, Gina,” Sandy called, as if she could direct the words only at her. “Things will work out. Maybe it’s all just happening in our heads.” A private joke. Gina caught it and smiled back.

“Glad you made it, chief,” Duncan called out from beside Sandy. Hunt acknowledged with a nod and a faint grin.

Eubeleus paled with anger. “Take them all away!” he shouted. “They’ve served their purpose. The Ganymeans know we have them.” He looked back at the view of Torres. “Don’t let their frivolity mislead you, Captain. Take your ship outward immediately. Otherwise, I don’t have to tell you what will become of your precious friends there.”

Torres could only nod numbly. But behind him, Danchekker’s face had taken on the enraptured expression of somebody who had just seen a light, as if he had only just realized something that should have been obvious long before.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Eubeleus’s face vanished from the screen on the Shapieron’s command deck. Calazar and Eesyan were left on another, staring gloomily from their capital on Thurien, and Caldwell, in Washington, was still showing on the one adjacent. But Danchekker was already hopping about in the center of the floor, gesticulating excitedly first one way, then another, at the Terrans and Ganymeans around him.

“She just said it! Sandy just said it, on the screen there! In their heads!” He pointed wildly at Keshen, who pulled back in alarm. “He’s still got them!”

Hunt raised a restraining hand. “Chris, calm down, stop dancing about like that, and say whatever the hell it is you’re trying to say.”

Danchekker regained most of his composure, but was still unable to prevent his finger jabbing repeatedly in Keshen’s direction. “The activation codes! Don’t you see? He entered them into the touchpanel in the club! He still has them, subconsciously, inside his head. VISAR can get them out again!”

Hunt stared for a full five seconds. “Is that right?” The question was mechanical. He already knew enough to have little doubt of the answer.

“Yes… with Keshen’s permission, naturally,” VISAR said.

“Of course,” Calazar whispered numbly. It was so unheard of that no Thurien would have thought of it-or a Thurien-oriented computer.

Hunt looked at Keshen. “Is it okay with you?”

Keshen shrugged, still taken aback at having suddenly become the center of things. “Well, I guess so… Sure.”

Hunt turned to Torres. But the Ganymean was shaking his head. “But is there any point? The Jevlenese will be watching our every move. If we so much as take the ship anywhere near a redirector satellite…” He made a helpless gesture and left the sentence unfinished.

A silence fell, broken by the humming and pulsating of distant machinery buried in the ship.

Then Caldwell said, “Maybe there is a point. If the Jevlenese are going to have all their attention fixed on the Shapieron, that might make it an ideal decoy while something else tries for the satellite-one of the ship’s probes, maybe. Some of those probes are fitted with i-space gear and can talk to VISAR. If Keshen says he can get into the planetary net from the satellite, you’d just have to bridge a connection across. How many guys would it take to do it?”

Everyone looked at Torres and the Ganymean crew officers. They were the only ones who could answer that.

“It’s got a chance,” Rodgar Jassilane said at length. “When the stress field breaks down under main-drive acceleration, the entire external electromagnetic environment of the ship is disrupted. If a probe were ejected at the right moment, it might well get away undetected against the background… and there’s nothing else we can try.”