“No, sir.” He stared fixedly at that spot on the desk, wondering if they might search his room and bleed his datacard for it, next use he made. Maybe they already had. “Not recently. —I’ve got about four, five k I’d like to send over to her account. If I could do that. She’s not working, she’s going to need the money.”

“I’ll talk to Legal. See what the procedures are. —As I said, we’re going to be looking into the case. If mere are strings to be pulled, maybe we can pull them.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“Are you ready to get back to work?”

“Yes, sir.”

Graff keyed something on the deskcomp. Glanced at it. “I don’t know if they can get your friends back to quarters this watch. But you’re their unit commander, you have access there on any shift, if you want to check up on them.”

Not back to quarters? Not in this watch? His heart did a tic and a speed-up. He looked at Graff, met a level, I-can’t-tell-you kind of stare.

“What are they doing?” he asked Graff. “They’re hi there for Aptitudes—it’s a four-hour test, for God’s sake...”

“You have access there.”

“I’ve been over there. They wouldn’t tell me a damn thing!”

Graff had never been one to hold back information, not under Keu, and not under his own administration. Now...

“I suggest you go over there,” Graff said. “That’s all I can say.”

Didn’t like the damned drugs. Didn’t effin’ like the floating feeling. Told you stuff you didn’t want to hear. Told you you’d effin the if you screwed it... and Ben didn’t want to the, he sincerely didn’t want to the...

“Fire!”

His heart took a jump, he felt neg g, he went spinning away—you should feel blood pooling in your head and your feet and he didn’t, didn’t feel anything right except cold breeze on his face and his lungs getting air again—

He could see light. Felt somebody holding his sleeve. He was fiat on his back in g and Dekker was holding on to him, saying, “It’s all right, it’s all right, Ben—”

Wasn’t who he wanted to wake up in the arms of. He stared at Dekker, with his heartbeat still thumping away like explosions, and recalled they were surrounded by dots all but six of which were trying to kill him— except he was in bed and Dekker wasn’t flying the ship.

He took slow assessment of this fact. He took a look around the ceiling of a disgustingly barren room, recalled signing his name, and them telling him Sal was in, and him talking to the tech and screwing with the sim, because he’d been mad as hell and wanting to get court-martialed and wanting to go to bed with Sal Aboujib if he had to get shot at to do it—only viewed backwards, as he had to see it now, that sequence didn’t highly make sense.

Neither did Dekker sitting on his bedside. He’d come here to sit with Dekker. He wasn’t in the hospital. He was in the sims lab and Dekker, with this scared look on his face, was holding him by the wrist.

“Ben.”

“Yeah?” He began to think he’d better wake up.

“Ben. You all right?”

Dekker asking really worried him.

“Don’t agitate him,” somebody else said. “You know the rules.”

“Trying to give him a heart attack, what’s the damn hurry?”

There wasn’t any answer. Dekker took hold of his hand. Said, “Shit...”

Dekker holding his hand? He’d really rather not. Unless he was dying. He didn’t feel like he was dying. He stared at Dekker, made his fingers bend and his hand draw back and decided in this moment of clarity that he wanted his foot on the floor.

“Ben. Ben, —don’t do that.”

Froze right there. Face down in the bend of Dekker’s arm. And couldn’t think how to get out of that situation.

“Skuzzed,” Dekker said. Light came back. Dekker swore at nothing in particular. That was all right. Saved him the bother.

“Aboujib did pass,” he wanted to know.

“Yeah.”

“Meg?”

“Yeah. I got three of you. Same condition.” With which Dekker got up and stalked out.

That was Dekker, all right. Boy had a lousy temper.

“Shit!” he heard from the hall.

CHAPTER 11

2345H and all Dekker wanted was his own bed, didn’t want to talk to anybody, just skuzzed through the door into a darkened barracks, went straight to his quarters around the corner and down the corridor, and got undressed on autopilot—wasn’t even thinking clearly when he heard the stir outside. A knock came at his door and he stared at it and blinked.

Second knock. He thought, What in hell? and opened it, on Mitch and Pauli and Trace and God-only who else the shadows behind them were.

“Want to talk to you,” Mitch said, and Dekker leaned his forearm on the doorframe and reasoned that even if he could talk them into leaving him alone now, it was too late, the adrenaline he thought he’d run out of was up again, sleep was gone, leaving just caffeine-ragged nerves and a body shaking with chill and exhaustion. Didn’t have a shred of embarrassment left, Trace there and all—he just said hoarsely, “What?”

“The rest of your guys didn’t come in?”

“No.”

“Dek. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know any more than the rest of you guys.” Struck him then, though, that a lot of the aforesaid guys had risen to his defense in the messhalI, a couple of them had gone to hospital and a lot of them had suffered serious inconvenience on his account—so they had some right to knock on his door in the middle of his sleep and want a piece of his hide.

Mitch asked: “Is it true they’re going to bust your guys right into active? They’re going to put Pollard and Kady and Aboujib straight in?”

Wasn’t hiding any damn thing around here. He’d been trying to get the same admission out of Testing and he couldn’t do it, or find out who the order came from that had shoved his crew straight out of Aptitudes into the board-sims—he stared at Mitch a beat or two, muttered, “Something like.”

“ ‘Something like.’ They’re going to take Kady’s hours for legit?”

“Mitch, I don’t know what they’re taking for anything, nobody’s told me a damn thing, I don’t know what your source is, but it’s more than I know...”

“So where are they right now?”

“In the labs sleeping it off. They started in at 0600 and they got through somewhere around 2200, that’s all I know, except they’re Aptituded in, that’s the only official word I have on anything.” He got short. His temper was on the edge. But he hadn’t reassured anybody. And maybe they’d heard something: he hadn’t been in the rumor mill all day, he’d been chasing around in places rumors didn’t get to— back and forth between offices and Evaluations. And rumor was evidently saying for fact what he suspected and couldn’t get the labs or the techs to admit to....

Shove them up into Mission Ready, with him?

God, Porey wouldn’t do that. Porey’d said himself that he wouldn’t lose another ship: the Fleet couldn’t afford it. They weren’t going to do that.... They couldn’t do that....

“Rumor is,” Jamil said, “the Fleet thinks your guys have the stuff, so they’re just going to go with them, put them right in on the pods—”

“They can’t do that,” Dekker said. It came out a thin, helpless kind of voice. “No way. They haven’t got ships to throw away on a notion like that—”

“Rumor is,” Mitch said, “they were running some kind of new tape off Pete and the guys during the mission, rumor is the Fleet thinks they can take that tape and sub it for the whole damn training sequence—”

Legs nearly went out from under him.

“Seems,” Jamil said, “they wanted crew that hadn’t been biased by all this prior training—”

“Shit, no....” He couldn’t feel anything below the gut. He got a couple of breaths and managed to stay on his feet. “This is shit, guys, I don’t know where you got this, but this is shit. No way are they going to do that...”

Trace said, “First we got Tanzer, now we got a guy thinks he can program us like computers?”