"Precisely," Tsien agreed. "They undoubtedly had some plan for its use, either actual or threatened, else they had not stolen the plans, but what that use may be eludes me. The conspirators must be human—there were far too few Narhani contacts with humans for any of them to have penetrated our security so deeply so long ago—so the destruction of Earth would be an act of total madness. If, on the other hand, their target is here on Birhat, any of our much smaller gravitonic warheads or even a simple thermonuclear device would satisfy their needs. Nor is a weapon of this power required to destroy any conceivable deep space installation."

"What about Narhan?" Ninhursag asked quietly, and Tsien frowned.

"That, Ninhursag, is a very ugly thought," he conceded after a moment. "Again, I can see no sane reason to destroy the planet—that sounds much more like something the Sword of God would wish to attempt—yet Narhan would seem a more likely target than either Earth or Birhat."

"God, all we need is for Mister X to be tied in with a bunch of crazies like the Sword of God!" Colin groaned.

"On the surface, that appears unlikely," Dahak said. "The pattern of 'Mister X's' operations indicates a long-term plan which, while criminal, is rational. The Sword of God, on the other hand, is fundamentally irrational. Moreover, as Admiral Hatcher has pointed out, they have had ample time to destroy Narhan if they possessed the weapon. It is possible 'Mister X' might attempt to capitalize upon the activities of the Sword of God or even to influence those activities, but his ultimate goals are quite different from their xenophobic nihilism."

"Then what do you think he's going to do with it?"

"I have no theory at this time, unless, perhaps, he intends to use it as a threat to extort concessions. If that is the case, however, we are once more faced by the fact that he has had ample time to build the device and thus, one would anticipate, to make whatever demands he might present."

"Maybe Vlad has a point, then," Colin mused. "Maybe they have hit a snag that's kept them from building it at all."

"I would not depend upon that assumption," Dahak cautioned. "I believe humans refer to the logic upon which it rests as 'whistling in the dark.' "

"Yeah," Colin said morosely. "I know."

Chapter Fourteen

The fist in his eye woke Sean MacIntyre.

He twitched aside, one hand jerking up to the abused portion of his anatomy, even before he came fully awake. Damn, that hurt! If he hadn't been bio-enhanced himself, the punch would have cost him the eye.

He wiggled further over on his side of the bed and rose on one elbow, still nursing his wound, as Sandy lashed through another contortion. That one, he judged, could have done serious damage if he hadn't gotten out of the way. She muttered something even enhanced hearing couldn't quite decipher, and he sat further up, wondering if he should wake her.

They'd all had problems dealing with the reality of Imperial Terra's loss. Just being alive when all those others were dead was bad enough, but their conviction that Terra had been destroyed in an attempt to kill them made it worse, as if it were somehow their fault. Logic said otherwise, but logic was a frail shield against psyches determined to punish them for surviving.

Sandy twisted in her nightmare, fighting the sheet as if it had become an enveloping monster, and it ripped with a sound of tearing canvas. Her breasts winked at him, and he chastised himself as he felt a stir of arousal.

This was hardly the time for that! He wished—again—that even one of them had been interested in a psych career. Unfortunately, they hadn't, and now that they needed a professional, they were on their own. The first weeks had been especially rough, until Harriet insisted they all had to face it. She didn't know any more about running a therapy session than Sean did, but her instincts seemed good, and they'd drawn tremendous strength from one another once they'd admitted their shared survival filled them with shame.

Sandy twisted yet again, her sounds louder and more distressed. She was the most cheerful of them all when she was awake; in sleep, the rationality which fended off guilt deserted her and, perversely, made her the most vulnerable member of their tiny crew. Her nightmares had become blessedly less frequent, yet their severity remained, and he made up his mind.

He leaned over her, stroking her face and whispering her name. For a moment she tried to jerk away, but then his quiet voice penetrated her dreams, and her brown eyes fluttered open, drugged with sleep and shadowed with horror.

"Hi," he murmured, and she caught his hand, holding it and nestling her cheek into his palm. Fear flowed out of her face, and she smiled.

"Was I at it again?"

"Oh, maybe a little," he lied, and her smile turned puckish.

"Only 'a little,' huh? Then why's your eye swollen?" The tattered sheet fell about her waist as she sat up and reached out gently, and he winced. "Oh, my! You're going to have a black eye, Sean."

"Don't worry about it. Besides—" he treated her to his best leer "—the others'll just think you were maddened with passion."

His heart warmed at the gurgle of laughter which answered his sally, and she shook her head at him, still exploring his injury with tender fingers.

"You're an idiot, Sean MacIntyre, but I love you anyway."

"Uf course you do, Fräulein! You cannot help yourzelf!"

"Oh, you creep!" Her caressing hand darted to his nose and twisted, and he yelped in anguish and grabbed her wrists, pinning her down—not without difficulty. He was sixty centimeters taller, but she wiggled like a lithe, naked eel until a final shrewd twist toppled him from the bed. He sat up on the synthetic decksole, then stood, rubbing his posterior with an aggrieved air while she laughed at him, the last of her nightmare banished.

"Jeez, you play rough! I'm gonna take my marbles and go home."

"Now there's an empty threat! You can't even find your marbles."

"Hmph!" He took a step towards the bed, and her fingers curved into talons. Her eyes glinted, and he stopped dead. "Uh, truce?" he suggested.

"No way. I demand complete and unconditional surrender."

"But it's my bed, too," he said plaintively.

"Possession is nine points of the law. Give?"

"What'll you do with me if I do?"

"Something horrible and disgustingly debauched."

"Well, in that case—!" He hopped onto the bed and raised his hands.

Brashan looked up from the executive officer's station and waved without disconnecting his feed from the console as the others stepped through the command deck hatch. With Engineering slaved to the bridge, one person could stand watch under normal conditions, though it would have taken at least four of them to fight the ship effectively.

Sean dropped into the captain's couch. Harriet and Tamman took the astrogator's and engineer's stations, and Sandy flopped down at Tactical. She looked into the display at the star burning ever larger before them, and the others' eyes followed hers.

Their weary voyage was drawing to an end. Or, at least, to a possible end. They didn't talk a great deal about what they'd do if it turned out that blazing star had no reclaimable hardware, but so far they'd detected no habitable world which might have provided it.

Sean glanced at the others from the corner of an eye. In many ways, they'd made out far better than he'd hoped. It helped that they were all friends, but being trapped so long in so small a universe with anyone made for problems. There'd been the occasional disagreement—even the odd furious argument—but Harriet's basic good sense, with a powerful assist from Brashan, had held them together. Solitude didn't really bother Narhani much, and Brashan had spent enough time with humans—especially these humans—to understand their more mercurial moods. He'd poured several barrels of oil on various troubled waters in the past twenty months, and, Sean thought, it helped that he still regarded sex primarily as a subject for intellectual curiosity.