“I've noticed that myself,” Stan said. Just at that moment a large brown dog came racing into the hold from a corridor. Stan had named him Mac. No one was quite sure how he had gotten aboard, but no one had gotten around to putting him off and now he was taking the voyage with them.

Mac ran to Norbert's feet and released a blue rubber ball he was holding in his jaws. The ball bounced three times and came to a rest at the monster's instep.

Stan and Julie watched to see what Norbert would do. The robot alien bent down and his long black arm, which somehow resembled an ant's chitinous appendage, brushed past the dog and picked up the ball. The monster's arm came back, then forward, and he threw the ball through the open door into the corridor. Barking furiously, the dog went chasing after it.

“All right, Norbert,” Myakovsky said, “you've had your fun. Go to the laboratory. I'll want to scan some of your response codes. And get Mac to shut up. The crew is still in hypersleep.”

“Yes, Dr. Myakovsky,” Norbert said, and walked quietly out of the room.

22

A door slid open and Captain Hoban walked through. He had a dazed look in his eyes, and Stan knew he could not have been awake for long.

“You're early out of the hypersleep, Captain.”

“Yes, sir. I had my dial set to get me up before the crew so I could pull myself together and have a talk with you.”

“I suppose it is time we had that,” Stan said. “I want to thank you again for throwing in your lot with me. I don't know where this will end up, but I'm glad to be on this adventure with you.”

“Yes, sir. Could you tell me what it is exactly we are going to tell the crew?”

Julie, seated nearby, said, “Yes, Stan, I'd like to know myself.”

Stan nodded. “We'll give a slightly altered version of what's going on.”

“Are we on course, then?” Hoban asked.

“Yes. I fed the coordinates for AR-32 into the navigational computer.”

“AR-32? I think I've heard of the place,” Hoban said. “Wasn't there some trouble there a while back?”

“There was.”

“Then why are we going there, sir?”

“We're pretty sure there's an alien super-hive on that planet, which apparently won't support anything else. A Bio-Pharm ship has been in orbit around AR-32, and my information is that they have been illegally harvesting royal jelly.”

“Yes, sir. I understand. But what does that have to do with us?”

“I have a right to my share in that matter,” Stan said. “Julie and I are going to relieve them of some of their plunder. Royal jelly is like pirate's gold, Hoban. It belongs to whoever takes it.”

“Yes, sir. I don't have much trouble with that concept, though Gill might. But what bothers me, sir, is, does that mean we'll have to kill bugs?”

“It could come to that,” Stan said, “though it is not the primary intention of our expedition.”

“And might it not involve killing Bio-Pharm people, if we have to?”

Stan stared at him. “Yes, it could come to that. I don't expect them to be too happy about our taking what they have come to regard as their own, but frankly, I don't much care what they feel. No one gives up pirate's gold easily. If they insist on making a fight of it… Well, we'll take care of ourselves.”

Hoban nodded, though he didn't look happy. “I suppose that follows, sir. But I wish you had told me all this beforehand.”

“Would you not have come?” Stan said. “Would you seriously have preferred to stay down-and-out in that crummy boardinghouse I found you in?”

“No, I don't wish to be back there,” Hoban said. “I'm just considering the situation.”

“Then think about this,” Stan said. “This situation could make you rich. Julie and I intend to share our profits with you and the crew. They'll get a small percentage for the dangers they'll run. It won't be much out of our shares, but it'll be more money than they ever saw before.”

“Sounds good, sir,” Hoban said. But he was still worried. What good was it to be rich if you were also dead?

The time was nearing to wake the crew from hypersleep. The flight was almost at an end. Their destination, the planet AR-32, was coming up on the screens, a glowing dot in the dark sky. Julie knew this would be her last time alone with Stan for a long time.

There was a lot to do, a lot of last-minute details to attend to, and she didn't know when she and Stan would get some quiet time alone. Maybe not until they had finished the expedition — or to call it by its true name, their raid. And that could take time. And if everything didn't go just right…

Julie shook her head irritably. There was no sense thinking about failure. Hadn't Shen Hui instilled that much in her?

23

When Julie came into the control room, Stan was still seated in the big, padded command chair. He had taken an ampoule of royal jelly from a dozen that were nested in the padded box on the nearby worktable. He was holding the ampoule up to one of the arc lights, twirling it between his fingers and admiring its bluish glow in the light.

As usual, Julie was both attracted and repelled by the liquid and what it could do to Stan. Yet she had been hoping they could spend this evening together, doing things together instead of thinking about them. Sometimes she thought Stan allowed himself to have real experiences only for the pleasure of reliving them later, as he was able to do with the royal jelly.

Why did he love that stuff so much? She knew it eased the pain of his disease. But it was more than just a remedy: he was using it as a drug. And Julie didn't approve of taking drugs.

She hadn't tried the stuff herself. A well-trained thief allows nothing to dull her senses. Shen Hui and life itself had taught her this lesson. And yet, much as she missed him when he launched himself into the unknown regions that the drug brought him to, a part of her went with him, because she knew how Stan felt about her.

Returning the ampoule to its case, Stan asked, “What did you think about Norbert's performance?”

“He's ready,” she said. “You've done an amazing thing, Stan. Created a robot alien good enough to fool the real ones.”

“Except for the pheromones,” Stan pointed out.

“You've taken care of that, too. With the short-range zeta fields you've developed, plus the pheromone-altering qualities of the royal jelly, the aliens will think Norbert is one of them.”

Stan nodded. “Just like it was with Ari.” Stan was referring to how his cybernetic ant, Ari, had been programmed to enter the colony of a similar-looking ant species, where the other ants accepted him as the real thing.

“How close are we now, Stan?” Julie asked.

Stan punched up the computer screen in front of him. Numbers flowed across it, and lines weaved in and out and then held firm.

“We're nearing the vicinity of AR-32,” Stan told her. “It's time to get the crew out of hypersleep.”

“The adventure begins,” Julie said softly.

“That's right.” Stan took out the ampoule of royal jelly again. “We need a lot more of this stuff, and AR-32 has it for us. It's funny how a single substance can be both more valuable than diamonds and more necessary for life than water. More necessary for my life, anyhow.”

He swirled the little glass tube and watched the liquid flow. Then he looked at Julie.

“You look very lovely tonight.”

She smiled back mockingly. “Pretty as a shot glass, as they'd say in the Old West.”

“No, I really mean it,” Stan said. “You know how I feel about you, don't you?”

“Maybe I do,” Julie said. “But it's not because you ever talk about it.”

“I've always been shy,” Stan said. Abruptly he swallowed the ampoule. “I'm going to go lie down now, Julie. Let's talk more later.”

Without waiting for her answer, Stan shambled off to his small office just to the right of the main control-room entrance. Within it a folding cot was built into the wall. He lay down on it now, without bothering to take off his glasses.