"Josh was right," Angela said, "you're quite the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

"Hey," Sheba said, "it takes one to know one. It's easy to see why my formerly fickle brother chose you."

"Hush," Angela said, "or you'll have me wondering if I should ask you to get me a part in a holofilm."

"The cameras would like you," Sheba said, and when Angela laughed,

"really."

Sheba leapt to her feet, slipped into a shimmering shift, pushed her feet into designer heels. "Let's go find the handsome one and sort out some food."

"You could talk me into that," Angela said.

Vinn Stern was in the cafeteria. He waved at Sheba and she called him over to the table, introduced him to Josh and Angela, and asked him to join them. Angela nudged Josh, calling his attention to the way that Sheba looked at Vinn. Vinn expressed admiration for the Erin Kenner. Thus cued, Josh launched into a glowing paean of praise for the ship.

"Hey, we get the idea," Sheba said. "You love your ship. If I were Angela, I'd feel jealous."

"I'm afraid I'm guilty of the same fault," Angela said. "The ship's performance was flawless. We're both looking forward to taking her on big jumps into the far and away."

"Need a slightly used scientific adviser?" Vinn asked.

"We could use you, Vinn," Josh said, "but the ship's organizational chart doesn't call for one. One navigator doubles as science officer."

"How about civilian sisters?" Sheba asked.

"That would be frowned upon," Josh said.

"Discrimination," Sheba muttered. "You're going out to look for the Old Folks, and for David and Ruth, aren't you?"

"We're going to explore the sector of space that both ships entered when they left established blink routes," Josh said.

"I've been thinking about Mom and Dad a lot," Sheba said. "They're not dead, Josh."

Josh didn't speak immediately. "I hope not, Queenie." He forced a smile. "There are still plenty of provisions aboard their ship. They haven't even been forced to go into space rations yet."

"They're alive," Sheba insisted. "And David and Ruth, too."

The Erin Kenner stayed two days on the wilderness planet. Sheba and Vinn were given a grand tour of the ship. Angela and Sheba found time for some girl talk and established a warm friendship. Vinn was busy stowing the computers, cameras, and other sensitive equipment for the trip backto the studio. He had managed to get a berth on the most luxurious of the transport ships with Sheba. The company's equipment was stowed aboard the freighters. The temporary living cubicles, too, were packed away in the holds of the ships and the company had moved to their berths aboard the transports. The environmental police were at work, carefully erasing all signs of the company's presence on the park planet.

Vinn and Sheba told Josh and Angela good-bye. Vinn left the three of them together and went back to his final check of the stowed equipment.

A couple of hours later he stood outside the freighter and watched the Erin Kenner lift fluidly and disappear into the vault of blue. Within seconds a chunky freighter's flux drive hummed and she followed the more graceful ship into near space. By the time the freighter had attained orbit and the navigator was setting the generator for the first blink, the much quicker X&A ship was light-years away, making multiple jumps along well-charted blink routes before having to rest for recharging.

Vinn buttoned up the locks of the equipment ship, watched it float upward to begin the journey home, boarded his assigned transport.

"Where in blazes is Sheba?" the director demanded as he entered the lounge. "The captain is losing his mind."

"She came aboard at least three hours ago," Vinn said. "She said she was a bit tired. I imagine she's in her cabin."

"Do you think we're so stupid that we didn't check her cabin?" the director asked, lifting his hands in supplication to unknown deities.

Vinn went to Sheba's cabin. It was in perfect order, a condition which told him that Sheba had not spent much time there. He opened the closet.

Her wardrobe was arrayed on racks. Her luggage was in place on the upper shelf. He turned to leave just as Sheba's secretary appeared in the open door.

"Have you found her?" Vinn asked.

"No," the secretary said.

"Well, you know Sheba. She probably decided that she wanted to have one last walk in the forest."

"I don't think so, Mr. Stern," the secretary said. "Her survival kit is missing."

Vinn raised his eyebrows in question.

"A small bag. It contains her makeup, toothbrush, sleeping pills, a change of lingerie. Things like that. Things that if you have you can get along without the bags containing clothes and the rest of it."

"You're sure?"

"And her jewelry, too. A small box that fits into the travel kit."

"This is probably the dumbest thing you ever did, Queenie," Sheba told herself in a whisper as she sneaked out of the transport's cargo lock and ducked around behind the landing struts. From a short distance the sound of a flux engine came, purring softly as a cargo vessel prepared for liftoff.

She peered around the struts. The Erin Kenner sat with open locks.

Airvans from local ship's chandlers were parked near the open ports and as Sheba watched a man carried a crate of fresh greens into the ship. She waited until the greengrocer's van lifted away and another supply van was being moved next to the cargo lock.

With her little survival kit in her hand she walked to the open lock and entered. A worker came in directly behind her with a crate of fruit on his shoulder. On a wilderness planet there were no automatic conveyors to make resupply of a ship effortless. In the small space inside the lock a man in Service blues was checking off the crates of vegetables and fruit as they were loaded into the ship's chefmaster where they would be processed and stored. She ducked through a hatch. She had memorized the layout of the ship during the tour that Josh and Angela had conducted.

She ran through a tiny corridor that passed the entrance to the generator room, opened another hatch, ducked into the ship's gym.

"This is the dumbest thing you've ever done," she told herself as she settled down into a hidden nook behind a treadmill. The ship's climate conditioner was being affected by the open locks. It was working just a bit too efficiently, making for a slight chill in the air of the gym. She removed a tightly folded thermal sheet from her travel bag and wrapped it aroundher. Soon she was comfortable. Still convinced that she was doing the dumbest thing she'd ever done, she dozed.

Movement woke her. The ship was soaring. She could hear the distant hum of the flux drive. Her stomach lurched as outward acceleration ceased and ship's gravity cut in. In a matter of minutes she felt the peculiar sliding sensation inside as the blink generator was activated and the Erin Kenner was vaulted into nonspace for eternal microseconds. After the third jump she put the thermal sheet back into the survival kit and helped herself to water from a dispenser near the gym's entry door. She was getting hungry. Twice more she felt the eerie internal slide of a blink and then the ship was at rest.

She could hear the whisper of the ventilation system, and from deep within the metal bulkheads of the gym a series of tiny clicks.

She sat on a weight lifting bench and checked her watch. It seemed that she'd been in the gym for ages, but only four hours had passed since the last jump. She didn't know how long it would take for the Erin Kenner's generator to recharge, but she was getting not just hungry, but very damned hungry. She was preparing herself to open the door and exit the gym when the door opened and a husky young man in shorts stepped in, nodded at her, did a double take.