“Amen to that. But those shields go, and I’m going to have more down here than I can handle.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Garrett punched off at the same moment that Glemoor looked up.

“Got it,” he said.

Garrett was aware that all activity had ceased around the bridge; all eyes were on Glemoor. “And?”

“Life signs,” Glemoor said. He broke into a huge grin, and Garrett thought he looked just exactly like the Cheshire Cat. “A lot of them. Humanoid. I estimate forty, perhaps sixty individuals. And they are just where Lieutenant Commander Bat-Levi said they would be: engineering.”

Garrett clenched her fist in savage triumph. “Yes! Mr. Bulast, can you hail them?”

“Trying, Captain. Once we went into the plasma jet, things went downhill in a hurry. I can tell that this is an old ship, though. Their subspace bands are all concentrated on the low end of the spectrum. I’m amazed I can hear anything. Right now, all I’m getting is the automatic beacon from the ship itself. But I do have a place of origin. They identify themselves as Atawhean and…” Bulast tilted his head to one side, trying to filter meaning out of a wash of static. Then his dark eyes went wide. “It’s a colonyship, Captain.”

“Aw, hell,” muttered Castillo.

“Children, Captain,” said Bat-Levi. “Families.”

Garrett punched at her companel. “Transporter room, can you get me a lock?”

“Negative,” said the voice—a woman’s—that issued from the speaker. “There’s too much ionization effect from all that radiation. Even if I could grab a piece of them, the pattern enhancers can’t compensate. I’d end up killing them for sure.”

The whistle of a hail pierced the air, and Garrett jabbed her companel. “Bridge, Garrett.”

“Kodell, Captain. Shields are seventy-two percent. I’ve robbed power from every available place on this ship without touching environmental. The next step is to evacuate crew from nonessential areas and shut down life support to those decks.”

“How much power will that buy us?”

“We’ll maintain status quo, Captain.”

“What about if we engage tractor beams?”

There was a very long pause. Then Kodell said, “If that’s what you order, Captain, I’ll do the best I can.”

“As I just said to Glemoor, do better.I want two tractor beams on that vessel, and get our shields around her. And keep those impulse engines on line. We’ve got to keep this ship moving, even if you have to go out and push.”

“Well, I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that, Captain,” said Kodell, though Garrett didn’t detect a whiff of sarcasm. “Tractor beams on. Extending shields.”

“We’ve got them, Captain,” said Glemoor. “Barely.”

“Bat-Levi, go to red alert.” As the klaxons sounded and the bridge lights shaded to crimson, Garrett turned to the helm. “Castillo, get us out of the jet and then plot us a course out of here, best possible speed. Straight line, don’t waste any time.”

Castillo glanced back once, nodded, and then executed the command.

Now with the extra power drain, Garrett felt the ship working hard. The engines didn’t grind and groan as they’d done in starships from years past, but she could tell from the vibrations coming up through the floor and into her chair that she was pushing the ship to its limit. Ironically, it was at times like this—when there was nothing to do but give orders that her crew executed and her ship strained to make good—that she felt the most superfluous, with nothing to do but wait and pray.

Come on, girl, just hold together. Just hold together long enough for us to get out of here in one piece, and then we can all take a vacation.

Her ship couldn’t answer her, not in words. But she felt Enterprisestraining to do her bidding, and for not the first time, she found herself urging her ship on, gripping the arms of her command chair as if she could infuse the very force of her will. For the briefest of instants, she believed that she and her ship were one, and she imagined it was the same way that ship captains throughout time had felt, or fighter pilots before a battle, rocketing in their planes across an azure sky. The difference, of course, was there was no sea for her and her ship to fight here, no real air in which to bank and sideslip, to roll and spiral, and no enemy dogging her tail—nothing but a howling maelstrom of supercharged particles ready to destroy them.

Come on, girl, come on.Garrett felt a thin line of sweat trickle down her right temple. Go,go.

As if in defiance of her prayers, the ship lurched. The lights on the bridge stuttered. She heard a circuit blow somewhere behind and to her right. “What was that?”

“Gravity wave, Captain,” said Bat-Levi. Her black hair had come loose of its braid and brushed her shoulders. With an impatient gesture, she used her right hand—the good one—to push a shock out of her face. “When we weren’t pulling the other ship, we didn’t feel them as much. But there are gravity wavefronts emanating from those protostars.”

Alarmed, Garrett snapped her attention to Castillo. “How’s our speed?”

“Dropping. Down to one quarter impulse.”

“That won’t be enough, Captain,” said Bat-Levi, “not to get us out. It’s the additional mass. We need more speed.”

“No can do, Captain,” said Castillo, before Garrett could ask. “That’s all I can get out of her.”

A hail: Kodell again. “I know you don’t have good news,” said Garrett.

“No. Shields at sixty-seven percent. Our impulse engines are starting to overheat, and starboard tractor beam is down to seventy percent. It’s the extra load, Captain. I can’t steal enough power to keep our shields up andextended andtractors at full andengines.” A pause. “Believe me, Captain, if it would help for me to go out and push, I would. But it won’t.”

“Starboard tractor beam now sixty-eight percent,” reported Bat-Levi. “Port tractor beam eighty-five percent. Rate of power drop isaccelerating.”

“Captain, we’re starting to lose ground. It’s one or the other,” said Kodell.

Garrett’s jaw firmed. “Unacceptable. Now we’ve got them, we’re not letting that ship go. You keep two tractor beams on that ship. Shut down life support on Decks 12 to 22, if you have to, but keep those tractor beams going.”

“I can do that. But I can’t manufacture more speed. Simple physics, Captain. We don’t have the power. So, if we don’t let that other ship go, we’ll fall back into the star together.”

“Captain.” It was Glemoor. “Why not jet our way out?”

Garrett’s brows met in a frown. “You mean, go backinto the plasma jet?”

“No, create our own. There’s all this gas and ionized plasma,” Glemoor waved a hand toward the viewscreen, “plenty of fuel all around us. All we have to do is to detonate strategically placed charges behind the Enterpriseand then ride the jets we create. The pressure waves will push us out.”

“A good idea, Glemoor, but we can’t contain the explosion. There’s no way to direct the charges so we don’t take out the entire region. Even if we could, our shields wouldn’t hold for that other ship, and not compensate for the sheer from our tractor beams. Either they or we—or maybe both—would rip apart.”

“Starboard tractor beam fifty-five percent,” Bat-Levi reported. “Shields at forty-five percent. Project shield failure in twenty-point-seven minutes.”

“Kodell?”

“I see it, Captain. Permission to shut down life support, Decks 12 to 22.”

“Go. Bat-Levi, get me more power to that starboard tractor beam.” Garrett stabbed at her intercom. “Jo, our shields…”

“Way ahead of you. Evacuating from the more exposed areas of the ship now. But, like I said, fifty minutes, maybe an hour, Captain. Then it won’t matter if we get pulled into a protostar, or drift over to that black hole and trip over that event horizon out there, we probably won’t…”