I could help him, was the immediate thought. Finance was never a problem for him, of all else that was. A tour boat? It was a way to go broke. The repairs, the liability…

I know you’ll say let me help, but not this time. This is all if I can talk Jill into it, and if the two of us can remember who we are, and get the world and your security people out of our bedroom. This is my trump card. It’s what we’ve always talked about.

What in hell are you going to do with the kids? he wondered. Toby, have you lost your mind? You opted for a family, the house with the garden.

About the kids, I don’t know. They’re old enough to help. Maybe take radio school. They could do that. It might be good for them.

Living on a boat? It would cut them off for good and all from normal society, he thought, right when kids were learning to think of romance and other kids, and thesekids sliding toward rebellion. They’d pitch a fair fit when they heard the plan.

And the danger, and the weather, in seas never reliable, not on a calm day with the wind fair… and those kids aboard? Their mum would pitch her own fit.

But Toby had a dream, Toby had a plan. It was safer than what his brother did for a living.

And if Toby could convince Jill to trust him, if they could manufacture some romance and honest love around those kids and give them a dose of parental romance instead of intergenerational recriminations, maybe there was a chance for the kids, too.

He didn’t know what more he could say. He wrote back: Good for you. You’ve got my whole-hearted good wishes, brother.

From Tabini, he had no word at all. He sent messages and they dropped into a black hole.

After a couple of tries at faking Tabini’s formal salutations, the captains seemed to have given up.

But given the shuttle landing, hoping to God it hadlanded safely, trust that Tabini was hearing from Kandana and possibly even from Lund, before Tom Lund boarded a plane to tell Hampton Durant and Shawn that things weren’t optimum here.

And Banichi still wasn’t back.

“Well, we’ve supplied you with supper,” he called Kroger to say. “We’re entirely bored. Not a thing moving on this forsaken station. I don’t suppose we might arrange an invitation for us to join you at your local dinery. I’m tired of the local walls.”

“Come over here,” she said, just that abruptly, not fool enough to talk in detail, nor was he; but they managed to convey, each to the other, that things weren’t just right.

Ginny Kroger punched out.

“Cl,” he said to that entity. “Send Kaplan at 1700. I’m taking a walk to the Mospheirans for a supper meeting.”

“ I’ll put through that request, ” Cl said, but by an hour later: “Sir, we haven’t any personnel available for escort at that hour.”

“And earlier or later?”

“We don’t have any personnel available for escort.”

“Maybe I’ll just wander around and see if I can find the place.”

“We can’t allow that, sir. Please stay in your section.”

“This is annoying,” he said. “I want Kaplan, and I want him or someone at 1700 hours.”

“ Let me see what I can do,” Cl said, and an hour later reported: “ You’ll have an escort, sir. I don’t know who, but someone.”

It was a stranger who turned up at their door at 1700 hours, an elder crewman, white-haired and one-handed, who gave him and Jago and Tano sullen and suspicious looks from the one eye that seemed sharp.

“Nice day,” Bren remarked midway to the Mospheirans’ section. “Fine day. Don’t you think?”

“Don’t know,” the crewman replied, with a surly glance at Tano and Jago… not knowing whether anyone aboard could tell Tano from Banichi without standing them side by side. It was what they hoped, at least. “They understand real language?”

“They don’t speak to strangers,” Bren said, knowing a hard case when he had one. He thought of adding, Or servants, but decided not to push it that far.

Algini was battened down tight in the home section with Nojana. It was their chance to familiarize Tano with the route, and he took it, with a sharp eye to either hand as they went, wondering if there might be at any point, down any corridor, some signal from Banichi.

There was not.

And Kroger was not encouraging. “We’re not getting a damned bit of cooperation out of the administration,” she said, she and he and Feldman walking, with the old man’s guidance, to the mess hall, down an utterly deserted corridor, into an utterly deserted establishment.

Not a single crew member in the place.

“Is the bar this lively?” he asked.

“The bar’s closed,” she said with a lift of the brows. “I don’t suppose you have a spare shot of vodka.”

“I think we do,” he said. “Unwarranted hardship, isn’t it? What’s that poem, Feldman?” He lapsed into Ragi doggerel:

“They would not send the ordinary guide tonight, They fake the aiji’s messages for days. If you find your safety no longer right, Come visit us and plan to stay.”

“Yes, sir,” Feldman said, and faked a nervous laugh.

Bad impromptu poetry and a young man trained enough in diplomacy and subterfuge to keep from blurting anything out. Feldman even managed a doggerel answer, half in meter:

“ No people now, no one talks.

No one we see, new guide not talk.”

“That’s very good,” Bren said with a laugh. It was amazing, for a novice. And informative. “We ought to let him practice with Jago and Banichi,” he said to Kroger. “You and I need to talk.”

They picked up their supper out of a bin, a container of something gray and something orange, and another container that held liquid.

“This is it,” Kroger said as they sat down and opened their containers. “Don’t even ask what it is. I don’t want to know.”

“I’ve sent for food,” he said. “In thirty days we should have your mission something edible.” He took a small taste, and it was bland, incredibly so. “I can send over some hot sauce. It might improve it.”

“It’s just pretty damned bad,” Kroger said. “And it generates, pardon me, physiological upset.”

“Dare I guess.” He was afraid to eat much of it, and pushed it around with his plastic spoon. “You’ve got to come over to our place. We’ll feed you.”

“If you have enough to ship us some meals, we’ll be in your debt.”

“This is inhumane,” he said. The orange had flavor, to be sure. It tasted like fish liver oil.

“I’m told you eat one and then the other. It does help. They’re supposed to have every necessary nutrient.”

“God, this is awful.”

“Oh, there’s better. But there’s been justthis stuff since Tom left.”

The Feldman-Jago-Tano conference was going on next to them at the table, with some laughter over phrases like, “We distrust extremely the least senior authority; we believe lives are in danger,” and “Have you heard anything from your offices?”

“No,” Feldman said in reply to Jago. “We are concerned, nadi.”

“What would you like?” Bren asked Kroger. “Fish? We’ve plenty of fish. Bread.”

“We’ll take absolutely anything,” Kroger said, and she surely knew as well as he did that the real information was passing in the chatter she couldn’t understand at all, that of Feldman with his security. “Our stomachs can’t take much more of this. Neither can our guts.”

“Glad to help,” he said, and wandered on to a discussion of imports, franchises and economics, enough to lull listening spies to sleep, while Feldman limped through several mistaken nouns and some half-heard assertion that green vegetables were alarmed.

No, Feldman indicated, Kroger had not been able to get messages through. They had heard nothing. They had received no indication that the shuttle had met with any difficulty.

It made some sense. The captains that had seized power dared not prevent them sending word down, but it limited the instruction they could get from the ground.