Ruth shook her head. "Not from here. I'm willing to bet that they've jury-rigged their own, independent system to do the job. Most slavers aren't real big on suicide, you know, so I doubt Felicia came equipped with a scuttling charge. If Templeton's thugs did rig their own system, it's certainly a stand-alone I can't access. And even if Felicia did have one already in place, getting to it from the outside would be virtually impossible. In a number of ways, slavers are built more like warships than cargo ships. That's especially true with their electronics. The ship control, security, and environmental systems are kept separate, instead of all being connected to a central computer. It's less efficient—much less—but it also gives you a lot more in the way of safety and internal security."

One of the Amazons shook her head. "Why here? On a slaver, I mean. They don't have large crews—it'd cut into their profits. It must be awkward as hell having to operate that way."

"You're forgetting the nature of the 'cargo,' " Thandi said with a frown. "Material objects don't resist their handlers with anything more than inertia. Livestock, not much more than that. But when you're trying to haul unwilling human beings somewhere, you've got the added problem of a 'cargo' that might revolt."

The Amazon still seemed a little puzzled, and the princess smiled crookedly at her.

"You're making a common mistake. Yana, isn't it? Most people think of Manpower slaves in terms of the types which are most notorious—sex objects, or heavy labor and combat types. But the truth is that modern slavery has to fit a modern economy. Even on a hellhole like Congo, most of the labor is highly mechanized. And computerized. Sure, the slaves designed for that work have been given a minimal education, and one which carefully steers clear of training them in any of the underlying principles. Still and all..."

Ruth pursed her lips. "You've all met Web Du Havel, I think—or know who he is, at least. He's a J-line, which is Manpower's most popular, uh, 'product.' Low-level technical workers, what you might call 'sub-engineers.' " The princess nodded at the panel she'd just been working on. "You think a man like that—some of them, anyway—would have any real problem figuring out how to crack into a ship's central control unit? Sure, they'd probably set off alarms doing it—that's really where all my extra training pays off—but so what? When people are desperate, they're not going to worry about the fine points. If nothing else, once they gained access to the central computer they could probably make sure the slaver crew went to Hell with them."

Yana's frown had been deepening as Ruth talked. "Damnation, Princess. If that's how it's set up, how do we disconnect the charge without taking the bridge, first?"

"We don't," Ruth said grimly. "And now that I've seen the setup, I'm pretty sure that is how they've done it. So." She gave Thandi an uncertain look. "Can we still manage it, Lieutenant?"

The Solarian officer gazed at her for a moment, then gave her a grin. Well, a widening of teeth, anyway. It was more like a shark's grin than a human's. That was all the answer she gave. All she needed to, really.

A moment later, Thandi and Ruth were moving down yet another passage, the Amazons in their wake.

Less than five minutes after leaving the bridge, Berry found herself ushered through a heavy—and heavily locked—entry hatch. "Ushered," in the sense that Ezekiel and the slaver crewman stepped back once the hatch was unlocked and slightly opened, and urgently motioned her to pass through it. Both of them seemed very nervous, and both of them had pulsers in their hands pointed in the direction of the hatch. To all intents and purposes, they looked like men ordering a sacrificial victim into a chamber full of demons.

Seeing no alternative, Berry pulled the hatch open a bit more and stooped through the opening. She had to stoop, because the hatch was unusually low. Obviously enough, it had been specifically designed to make it impossible for more than one human being at a time to pass through it—and then, not without some difficulty.

As soon as she passed through, the hatch was slammed shut behind her. An instant later, she heard the locks closing.

But she really wasn't paying much attention to what was behind her. She was far more concerned, at the moment, with what surrounded her.

She was in a smallish compartment, not more than five meters in any dimension. Which was crowded, at the moment. Eight men and five women, all of them armed with jury-rigged bludgeons—very primitive; torn strips of clothing weighted down with something—and all of them looking as if they were ready to tear her limb from limb.

Hurriedly, she tried to think of something to say to forestall her imminent destruction. But the effort proved needless. Not more than two seconds after she entered the chamber, one of the women gasped and exclaimed:

"It's the Princess! Herself!"

This was no time for complicated explanations. Berry drew herself up in as dignified a pose as her ridiculous skin-tight clothing permitted. She tried to put the same dignity—what a laugh!—into her voice.

"Yes. It is I."

Victor was getting desperate. Not at whether he could keep stringing along the Masadans—he was now quite confident of doing that, for at least another hour—but at how he was going to explain it all to Kevin Usher afterward.

Assuming he survived, of course.

Well, boss, then I broke another of your rules and made an already too-elaborate scheme still more elaborate by swearing to them that you were part of the conspiracy to overthrow Pritchart. But were hamstrung because you couldn't trust your own security people any longer and that—of course—is why you told me, when I got sent to Erewhon, to keep an eye out for the possibility of hiring Masadans. "Best wet work men in the galaxy," you said to me. "Look how they almost managed to nail that bitch Elizabeth and did manage to nail her tame Prime Minister."

Sure, they swallowed it. What do you expect? It wasn't even their vanity, just...

Dammit, boss, they're CRAZY. They really BELIEVE human affairs are all guided by deep and dark conspiracies. They see two dogs sniffing each other, they see Satan at work. So why shouldn't they believe in a deep and dark conspiracy which—just maybe, and with their backs to the wall—might save their own hides?

Gloomily, he could foresee Usher's sarcasm and ridicule. Still more gloomily, he tried to figure out how to respond to the next question.

"Yes, that makes sense," allowed Hosea Kubler. The leader of the surviving Masadans rubbed his chin. "But let's leave aside, for the moment, the manner in which we'd penetrate President Pritchart's security. First things first. How do you propose to get us free of this situation? As you said yourself, the Mesans won't be enthusiastic about providing us with asylum on Congo."

"To say the least," snorted Victor. "But that's only because they don't want the heat coming down on them. They'd be perfectly happy—delighted, in fact—to let Congo be used as the route through which to pass along an assassination team against Pritchart."

"Why?"

Victor took a deep breath. The way a man will, about to dive off a cliff into what he hopes is deep water.

"Well..." He put on his most ferocious glower. (Which, he had been told, was quite ferocious. And so it seemed, judging from the reaction of the Masadans around him.)

"I'll have to relax security a bit, here. I warn you, though—the slightest lapse on your part..."

The Masadans actually shrank back a little. It was all very odd. Victor had glowered at himself in the mirror, quite often, when he was displeased with his own lapses. But he'd never—alas—noticed himself shrinking back.

"Pritchart's a traitor, but she does have a few principles left. Theisman, now—the admiral who led the rebellion and is the real power today in Haven—his treachery has no bottom. The swine has agreed secretly to form an alliance with Mesa. Turn the whole Republic of Haven into a fertile new territory for Manpower slavery and exploitation. It was when my leader Kevin Usher made that discovery that he realized we could wait no longer—"

I'll never hear the end of this. "Wonderboy" was bad enough. Once Kevin finds out—maybe I could lie—no, not a chance, Ginny'll weasel it out of me, she always does—

The thought of Ginny's sarcasm almost made him shudder. Still, he pressed on fearlessly. Not much else to do, really, once a man has taken the plunge and he's sailing through the air.

God, I hope that water's deep. Really deep.

"—set himself up like a Pharaoh of old, with Manpower's bribes filling his coffers. He'll make Nero look like a saint. Whatever's left of Haven's moral fiber will be gone within a few years, the whole population given over to idleness and debauchery. The Revolution has to be saved before—"

Working their way through the passages wasn't as bad as Thandi had feared. On this, at least, Watanapongse had been wrong. The simple logic of the slaver ship's semi-obsolescent mass jettisoning design precluded complex internal passageways. The slavers couldn't afford to have slaves being driven to their death by poison gases die along the way from simply becoming lost.

So, the passage layout was simple and straightforward. Nor was there any doubt where the slaves themselves were kept. Every corridor was lined with hatches which obviously opened into the slave quarters.

The problem was opening them.

More precisely, the problem was that Thandi had no choice but to do so. She'd have preferred—this had been the plan all along—to bypass the slave quarters altogether. From a purely military standpoint, the slaves would just get in the way. Better to leave them locked down and release them after it was all over. Even then, Thandi hadn't looked forward to handling the chaos which was sure to result.

But now—

"You're sure you can't open it?" Thandi glared at the hatch at the end of one of the passages. That hatch, clearly enough, did not lead to one of the slave chambers. It would, instead, allow them to penetrate closer to the areas of the ship restricted to the crew; and, eventually, to the bridge.

Ruth joined Thandi in glaring at the recalcitrant hatch.