The new arrival is moving away from us, into the nether reaches of the system. Westhause hits hyper and runs.

Five minutes pass. Fisherman reports, "She's turning, Commander."

"Very well. Weapons, stand by to launch. Mr. Westhause, stand by to Climb."

The minutes roll away. The hunter gains slowly. "She's close enough, Commander," Canzoneri says.

"Thank you. Weapons? Ready?"

"Aye, Commander." I quickly hammer orders to the missile. The destroyer will recognize the fake if the weapon tears away too fast.

"Ready, Mr. Westhause? Go, then."

I launch. My surroundings ghost. The Commander directs Westhause onto a new course. This should work. It's a new trick.

The missiles can run for hours in hyper. I programmed its translation ratio high. Hopefully, we'll get a good start before the destroyer gets close enough to unravel the deception.

Fearless Fred will roar like a wounded bull when he hears about this.

The Commander no longer gives a damn what Command thinks. He wants to bring his people home alive.

We drop back to norm as soon as the destroyer has time to pass the limits of detection. We drift for hours, on minimum power, still venting heat. That's a laborious process. We can't use the energy weapons for fear of giving ourselves away. The hunt should be gathering again.

Normal cruising temperature feels incredibly cold. I'm in pain when it hits a pre-Climb level.

We have twenty-three men effective when, after three hours, the Commander takes us up again.

We leave three men behind, buried in space, eulogized and mourned only after the vessel is safely in Climb. Picraux and Brown from Ops, and Alewel. They were luckier down below.

"It's criminal," Fisherman mutters. "Out the garbage lock. It's criminal."

"You maybe want to keep them aboard?" Yanevich demands.

Fisherman doesn't answer. Heat and bacteria would work horrors during an extended Climb. The bodies got a gross enough start as it was.

I remember that story about the Commander who insisted on coming home with his dead.

Funny. My threshold for smell seems to adjust as the ship grows more fetid. Our atmosphere is only mildly annoying, though it would gag somebody plucked off a ranch on Canaan.

Lieutenant Diekereide has been running Engineering while his boss is indisposed. Varese recovers suddenly. With a howl. "Get out of the fucking way, Diekereide. Goddamnit, Commander, what the fuck did you do to my CT stores? You jackass..."

"Shut your mouth, Varese. Thank me for the chance to bitch."

Varese succumbed early. The more thoughtful Diekereide kept himself in action by donning our one remaining suit and using its cooling capability.

The squabble goes on. Pure stress talking. Will the Old Man press it? He'll have the evidence on the Mission Recorder. Varese is insubordinate. I take no notes, wanting nothing on paper that might be subpoenaed.

"We're down to a cunt hair over four hours of Climb time," Varese rages. "With that and some luck, we'll only get our asses blown off, not baked."

Yanevich takes over for the Old Man. "Be glad you're alive. Now tend to your knitting. Don't give me any of your shit. Understood, mister?" - Varese has sense enough to shut his mouth. He sulks instead.

Time to get some sleep.

I waken with a heightened sense of fatalism. I'm not alone. The CT is practically gone. The missiles have flown. The graser could be one shot from failing. The other energy weapons are unreliable. Only the magnetic cannon can be used for any length of time. We won't show much in a fight.

I paid my dues. I hung in there. I did my job while the others fell. I can be proud of myself.

Maybe they'll give me a medal.

We're still a long way from home. It'll be a tough, hungry trip. Then we'll have to run the steel curtain around Canaan. Do we have enough CT?

In Weapons everyone is at war with the mold. "Looks like a victory for mold," I say to a slightly shy Kuyrath.

"Got a good hold this time, sir. The paint's ruined. Some of the plastic, too." He tears the protective wrapping off a roll of electrician's tape. Two empty cores lie beside him already. "Had to let it ride, though."

"Yeah. What can you do?"

"Wouldn't it be the shits if this crap did us in? I mean, they gave it their best shot. The Executioner. But the Old Man pulled us through. So we got mold. What do you do about fucking mold?

You can't outthink it."

"It would be an ironic end," I agree. And don't count the other team out. They're still looking, my friend.

Piniaz drifts over. "Understand you did some first class shooting, Lieutenant."

"Uhm." His attitude has mellowed. "It really happened? Seems like a dream."

"You took notes the whole time. Interesting. I put them in Bath's hammock for now."

"Don't remember any notes. Be like reading somebody else's report." I snort. "Gunners. No respect for anybody but the fastest draw."

Piniaz frowns, perplexed. "I was offering the olive branch, Lieutenant. I didn't figure you'd bite my hand."

"Sorry. Thanks. Just lucky, I guess. What's happening?"

"We lost them. Or they let go. Something funny about it, if you ask me. Shouldn't have been this easy."

"Maybe it wasn't."

"They had to know our CT was about gone. That gets them excited." He shrugs. "The Old Man will take what they give him."

"For instance?"

"First we make an instelled beacon. Let Command know we're alive."

"Uhm. Think Tannian will be disappointed?" Sometimes I think he wants us dead.

Piniaz is capable of his own paranoid reasoning. "I'd guess the Old Man is gambling. People will hear we're alive before the news reaches the top."

Could it be true?... No. Not even Tannian... Crazy thinking. I've been out too long. "You figure Fred will have to pull all the stops to bring his heroes in?"

"Exactly."

Ito's strained, dark little face reveals a truth. He believes there's a plot. The upcoming leave best be long. These men are all out of their minds. I wouldn't want to space with them again.

I won't have to. I smile to myself. One patrol is all I have to survive.

Get me home, Commander. Get me home.

We've made our beacon. The Commander reported yesterday. After putzing around for hours, Command told us to come on home, following normal patrol routine, beacon to beacon. They showed no inclination to gossip.

We've scrounged a little water and food. Pity we can't get any CT. Going to be rough if we hit unfriendly territory.

Lunch with the Commander; He's near the end of his tether, yet remains as inaccessible as ever.

How do I reach the man? How do I reassure him? I don't think it can be done now.

He speaks of the pursuit as though it were normal patrol routine.

Six days gone. Six days closer to home. The Old Man is avoiding routine, rather than pursuing it.

He doesn't want to give potential watchers anything they can use. We're proceeding in short hyper flies separated by extended periods in norm. We do a lot of listening. Paranoia has become a norm.

The computer people winnow every bit of information gathered from the beacons, hunting a clue, believing Command an enemy more deadly than the other firm. I can unearth no rational reason for the attitude. I occasionally succumb myself.

This is dangerous. Too much time wasted on speculation. We could get so spooky we turn into our own worst enemies. This could create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

More time gone. I've lost track of the days. We're close. I'm not sure how close, but near enough that Canaan seems real again. Here, there, men are talking like there's a human universe outside the Climber.

Space here is crowded. We have frequent contacts. Hardly a watch slides by without Fisherman's being startled into a croaking panic. Curiously, none of the contacts are interested in us.