Ferrol frowned. “What do you mean, we’ve won? Won what?”

“Our undeclared, non-shooting war with the Tempies, of course,” the other said.

“Come now; surely the implications of these sharks on space horse transport haven’t been lost on you.”

“There are implications there, all right,” Ferrol nodded, “but not the ones you seem to be thinking of. The sharks didn’t just spring up last week out of sawdust somewhere, and if the Tampies have been running space horses all these centuries without bumping into them, they must be pretty rare. At least around here.”

“Agreed; but their abundance or lack of it may not be the important factor.

According to Captain Roman’s testimony, the Tampies have a rather lopsided sense of almost contractual responsibility toward their space horses, to the extent that they’ll let the animals go free if they feel their side of the bargain has been violated. Whatever the hell kind of bargain you can make with a non-intelligent animal, that is,” he added with thinly veiled contempt.

So that was why Roman and Rrin-saa had turned Quentin loose… and perhaps why Roman had been so evasive to Ferrol about his reasons. If the mere existence of the sharks could really induce the Tampies to dismantle their space-going capability…

“So what are you going to do?” he asked. “Web a shark and drag it to the Tampies’

Kialinninni corral system?”

The Senator smiled thinly. “Give me credit for a little common sense, Chayne,” he said dryly. “Besides which, I don’t think anything that drastic or dangerous will be necessary. The sharks are predators, after all, and predators must have some way of locating their prey. In time, they’ll find Kialinninni on their own.”

“At which point we settle for a draw.”

The Senator lifted an eyebrow. “Meaning…?”

“Meaning no space horses for us or for the Tampies. They’ll be stuck inside their systems, and we’ll be stuck with our Mitsuushi snaildrive.”

The Senator’s face darkened. “At least we’ll have the stars.”

“Some of them. Not very many.”

“We’ll have enough,” the other said firmly. “All the planets we’ll ever need are within our reach right now. Provided, that is, we don’t have the Tampies standing over us telling us what we can and cannot do with them.”

Ferrol’s thoughts flashed back to the discoveries Amity had brought back from its first voyage—discoveries that had been overshadowed in both public and official minds by the excitement of Pegasus’ calving. “Oh, we’ll have enough room, all right,” he snorted. “But we’ll be giving up the rest of the universe in the process.

And maybe for nothing. Now that we know about sharks, the problems Demothi and everyone before him has had trying to control space horses make sense.”

“Yes; your ‘predator invading a non-predator’s mind’ theory,” the Senator said.

“You brought that up about every third question. So what do you suggest we do?

—web a shark and offer Demothi a chance to ride it?”

Ferrol clamped his mouth shut, the presentation he’d so carefully prepared and rehearsed over the past two days dying in his throat. The Senator was truly and totally uninterested in obtaining space horse capabilities for the Cordonale; his only interest was in robbing the Tampies of theirs. Period.

Had that always been his goal? Probably. Dimly, Ferrol wondered why he’d never recognized that. “Given your obvious disinterest,” he said tightly, “I suppose there’s really nothing to discuss.”

“As I said when you came in,” the Senator reminded him, standing up. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“I presume my commission with the Amity is still valid,” Ferrol continued, not moving. “If only because dropping me out now might attract unwelcome attention.

So. What about my ship?”

The Senator frowned. “What ship is—? Oh, you mean the Scapa Flow, What about it?”

“You told me when I signed onto the Amity that you’d be using it for private courier work,” he reminded the other. “Is that agreement still valid, or are all of my crewers officially off the payroll now, too?”

The other favored him with a long, speculative look. “I’ve never been impressed by people who try to keep their foot in the door on their way out,” he said coldly.

“I have no interest whatsoever in keeping my foot in with you,” Ferrol countered, matching the Senator’s tone. “I’m interested solely in the well-being of my crew.

You owe them some measure of financial security, at least as long as I’m still watching out for your interests aboard the Amity.”

The Senator’s lip twisted, but he nodded. “I owe them nothing; but I suppose I can go ahead and buy out their contract. If that will be satisfactory…?” he added with thinly veiled sarcasm.

“Quite satisfactory,” Ferrol nodded in return, getting to his feet. “Thank you, Senator; and for your time, as well.” He turned to go—

“Chayne?”

He turned back. “Yes?”

“If I were you,” the other said quietly, “I wouldn’t count on the Amity remaining in service for too much longer.”

Ferrol stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

The Senator smiled faintly. “You will.”

Two hours later Ferrol left the Defiance with the others and headed back toward the Amity. It was a long shuttle ride, which was fine with him. It gave him time to think.

An hour after arriving at the Amity, he was in the ship’s main communications room with a short, laboriously hand-coded message.

Even with their skyhook prices, the Cordonale’s tachyon transceivers were normally so jammed with messages that delays of twenty-four to forty-eight hours were not uncommon. But Ferrol’s status as exec of a major Starforce ship gave him an impressive priority factor, and barely thirty minutes later the central Earth transceiver relayed an acknowledgment of the message from the Scapa Flow.

The Senator might be willing to settle for a draw. Ferrol wasn’t… and if no one else was interested, then he and the Scapa Flow would just have to do it on their own.

Chapter 23

For the next four days the Amity remained in Earth orbit, waiting for orders, while conflicting rumors as to what those orders might be swept through the ship like a sequential set of gas leaks. When they finally came, it was a distinct anticlimax: Amity would return to Solomon to trade Man o’ War for its next space horse. The breeding program, apparently, would continue.

They were back in Solomon system an hour later, and within a few more had made orbit around the planet. There they were met by a Tampy ship and the cumbersome but reasonably straightforward process of switching space horses was performed.

Man o’ War and the Tampy ship left, leaving Sso-ngu and the other Handlers to settle in for a few hours of taking turns under the amplifier helmet—introducing themselves to the newcomer, Rrin-saa had once tried to explain it. The same hours on Amity’s human half were considerably less filled, with activities consisting mainly of last minute checks, idle conversation, and practice in saying “Sleipnir”

instead of “Man o’ War” when referring to the source of the ship’s main motive power.

Several days were normally allotted for the welcoming/acclimation procedure. But Sleipnir was a quick study; or else the extensive practice Amity’s assembly-line schedule had forced on its Handlers was beginning to pay off. Whichever, within a single day—less than forty-eight hours after leaving Earth—Amity was ready.

And for the next six weeks, as per orders, that was how it remained. In Solomon orbit, and ready.

“Sorry to wake you, sir,” the bridge officer said apologetically. “But the overcode on this was marked ‘urgent.’ ”

“That’s all right,” Roman assured her, rubbing the last bits of sleep from his eyes and shrugging on a robe before switching on the intercom’s visual. He keyed in to the laser comm circuit—“Solomon tachyon station, this is Captain Roman,” he identified himself. “Acceptance code follows.” He keyed the sequence into his terminal.