“Thank you.” Ferrol seemed to brace himself. “So. Do I get a formal hearing before I’m confined to quarters? Or are we going to hold off on such formalities until we get back to Earth?”

Roman studied him. The semi-genuine respect was still there, and the righteous innocence too… but there was no real worry. Which seemed just a little odd, considering how much a man in Ferrol’s position should have to worry about.

“You assume,” he said, “that I’ll be leveling charges.”

Ferrol frowned, a touch of uncertainty flicking across his eyes. “Aren’t you?”

“Depends partly on why you did it, I suppose,” Roman said evenly. “Motivation is a relevant part of action, wouldn’t you say?”

“Depends on whether you’re talking ethics or legalities,” Ferrol countered.

Roman shrugged. “Perhaps. At any rate, I had a chance to speak briefly to Wwiskhaa while you were helping transfer your specimens aboard, before he and the lander took Epilog and headed for home. He told me you were looking for some sort of flying sheep dog to help the Tampies protect their space horses.” He cocked an eyebrow.

“And you, obviously, don’t believe that,” Ferrol said, an edge of challenge in his voice.

“You were talking to a Tampy,” Roman reminded him.

“So naturally you assume I was lying through my teeth.”

Roman just waited; and after a moment Ferrol snorted. “As it happens, I was more or less telling the truth,” he growled. “Once we knew space horses weren’t just some isolated evolutionary accident, it stood to reason that they had to be part of a complete space-going ecosystem. Any ecosystem worth its salt ought to have several different varieties of predators, so I went off to hunt for them.”

“Without any scrap of discussion or authorization,” Roman pointed out.

“True,” Ferrol admitted. “On the other hand, Rrin-saa had already said he and the other Tampies were going to collect their marbles and go home when we got back to Solomon. If I hadn’t taken the opportunity Epilog presented, we might never have gotten another chance.” A half-smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“Besides, if I’d told you in advance your head would be on the block beside mine now.”

“Not if I’d simply locked you in your cabin in the first place,” Roman said coldly.

Ferrol raised his hands, palms upward, all innocence again. “If you had, we’d never have found the black hole ecology.”

For if it prosper, the old cynicism ran through Roman’s mind, none dare call it treason. The politics of convenience and end result… the politics on which the Cordonale seemed to run these days. “You said what you’d told Wwis-khaa was more or less the truth. I presume from that that you had something other than guard duty in mind for these theoretical predators of yours?”

Ferrol leaned forward, a sudden earnestness in his face. “We can train them, Captain,” he said, a quiet fire beneath the words. “Train them like the Tampies have trained space horses; only these would be ours. Ours. With our own space—whatever; wolves, maybe—with space-wolf ships the universe would be open to us. We could explore and colonize—we could do whatever we damn well pleased, and all of it without the Tampies interfering and hand-wringing us to death.”

“Including the building of your warhorse fleet?” Roman asked.

“Including any—” Ferrol broke off, his eyes narrowing as his mind belatedly caught up with his ears. “What did you say?”

“Your warhorse fleet,” Roman repeated quietly. “The one you’ve been trying to sell to your Senate backers for quite some time now. Since before Amity’s first calving, anyway; possibly as far back as your escape from the Dryden and me in the Cemwanninni yishyar system.”

Ferrol stared at him. “Where did—?” He swallowed visibly, took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, clearly striving for an indignant tone.

“I’m talking about you,” Roman said, watching the other carefully. “A man who lied under oath and misappropriated Senate funds for the purposes of poaching space horses from the Cemwanninni system. And who then—”

“I never appropriated anything,” Ferrol protested. The dazed look was still there…

but behind it was a growing sense of horror. “Ever. None of that was on my own—they recruited me for that, damn it.”

“As a matter of fact, I believe you,” Roman told him. “But the official story that’s begun to make the rounds says otherwise. My guess is that your former supporters are laying the groundwork to discredit anything you might possibly say against them in the future.”

Slowly, Ferrol’s gaze slipped from Roman’s face and drifted to the port, and for a long minute he stared silently out at the stars. Roman watched the play of emotions across the younger man’s face, feeling a pang of guilt at having had to be the one to drop the hammer on Ferrol’s head.

And yet, even as he watched, he found his guilt unexpectedly dissipating, replaced by interest and a growing sense of respect. Ferrol had always had a rather brash confidence in himself and his opinions, an arrogance Roman had put down to the combination of youth plus the heady political power unofficially backing him from the shadows. But now, with that power suddenly turned against him, Roman realized it hadn’t been nearly as major a part of Ferrol’s internal support as he’d thought. The shock of realizing he was being thrown to the wolves was already changing into a hard and icy anger… and when he again turned to face Roman he was back in control. “How long since this official story came out?” he asked.

“I heard it first during the Defiance debriefings,” Roman told him. “I’d tried to dig into your record a few times before that, but your friends had done too good a job of burying it.”

Ferrol nodded grimly. “And now it’s suddenly accessible again,” he growled.

“Suitably modified, of course.”

“So it would appear,” Roman agreed. “So. What are you going to do now?”

Ferrol exhaled thoughtfully. “Try to interest someone else in the idea of taming space predators, I suppose. Maybe the Sinshahli Psych Institute—that place Demothi came out of.”

“You may find it hard to get a hearing,” Roman warned. “No telling how far afield they’ll let the story circulate.”

“They won’t let it get too far,” Ferrol shook his head. “If too many people heard it, they might wind up having to bring charges against me. The last thing they’ll want is for me to tell my side of it in a public forum.”

“So. Stalemate.”

Ferrol shrugged uncomfortably. “Providing I don’t do anything to shake the tree.

Probably one reason they made sure you knew about it, A good way to deliver the message.” He looked at Roman sharply, as if something had just registered. “But if you’d already heard the official version… why did you let me take the Epilog calving?”

Roman locked eyes with him. “As I said, I didn’t believe the critical parts of it.

You learn a great deal about a man when you spend a year serving with him, Ferrol—you learn about his character, and about his judgment, and which you can trust and under what circumstances.”

Something might have passed over Ferrol’s eyes; Roman wasn’t sure. “Yes, sir,”

Ferrol said, his voice carefully neutral. “I… thank you for your trust, sir. If you’ll excuse me now, it’s been a very tiring few days. With your permission, I’d like to go to my cabin and rest.”

“Certainly,” Roman nodded. “Kennedy’s projection puts us at Kialinninni in about twelve hours; I’ll want you available for bridge duty then.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, getting to his feet.

“And Commander…?”

Ferrol paused at the door. “Yes, sir?”

“Welcome home.”

This time something did indeed pass over Ferrol’s eyes. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and left.

Something, it seemed to Roman, that had looked a great deal like pain.