Derec gaped disbelievingly. “You can’t do that. You can’t just take everything a man owns.”

“It’s the judgment of the minister of finance that anyone who has assets enough to own such a ship in the first place can quite afford to pay his bills,” Jacobson said, sitting back in his chair. “If we were to let you get away with this, I’d be overwhelmed by freeloaders, all claiming to have forgotten where their funds are held.”

“Are you accusing me of making this up? Ask Dr. Galen-”

“Dr. Galen does not set policy for the station. I do.”

“At least you finally admit that this is your doing,” Derec retorted. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to charge me for rescuing me. You’d have gone out to intercept that ship whether we’d been on it or not.”

“From our point of view, that ship wouldn’t have been there endangering our facilityunless you were in it,” Jacobson said lightly.

“Just a moment,” Katherine said. “That ship is half mine. Maybe you can grab his half for payment, but you can’t touch mine. You know who I am. I authorized a draft on my account at the Auroran Exchange.”

“So you did,” Jacobson said. “Tell me, what sort of account was it?”

“A Living Share-a family trust-” Katherine’s face was beginning to go gray.

“Which is a revocable trust, is it not?”

“I-I guess.”

“I regret to inform you that on May 26, your account was closed and all funds withdrawn. Have you other assets of which we may not be aware?”

“No,” Katherine said, her expression acutely pained. “That was my Living Share. How could they take it back? How could they do such a thing?”

“I cannot say. The fact remains, they did. You are legally an adult and responsible for your own debts. Therefore we have been obliged to exercise our rights to your portion of the property as well.”

“You won’t get away with this,” Derec threatened feebly.

“It is not a question of ‘getting away with’ anything,” Jacobson replied. “We are well within our rights. You should be grateful that you’re alive, instead of fussing over a ship which I understand is not in flyable condition in any case. Since you couldn’t have paid for its repair, you would have had to try to sell it anyway, and I doubt very much you could have gotten anything near the price you were paid by us.”

“You-” Derec sputtered.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to.”

The link dissolved before Derec could reply. “Do you believe that performance?” he exclaimed, turning to Katherine. He was shocked to see how empty of spirit her eyes were.

“Performance?” she asked mechanically.

“This isn’t what it looks like. This is just a way of separating us from the ship. To pay us for it they’d have to have proof that we own it-more than our word and the fact that they found us in it. Do you know why they’re not asking us for that proof? They don’t want to know. Just like they don’t want to know whether I’m too young to be responsible for my own debts.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “None of it matters.”

Derec stared at her. “What’s bothering you?”

“My money. My family took my money-”

“Is that any great surprise? The Patrol probably reported you missing when they went out and picked over what was left of theGolden Eagle.”

“They didn’t even give me a chance to explain-” she said despairingly.

“Explain to who?” he asked gently.

But his question seemed to awaken her to her loss of control. The line of her jaw stiffened and her eyes hardened. “Frost them. Frost them all,” she said tersely. “It’s ancient history. What do we do now?”

“What are you game for?”

“I’ll tell you what I’mnot going to do. I’m not going to wait around quietly until the next freighter comes and then meekly traipse off to Nexon,” she declared. “And I’m not about to let a bunch of robots keep me away from my property, even if they are following the orders of that milkface.”

“Sounds like I’m going to need to start calling you Kate.”

Surprised, she smiled. “Maybe you’d better.”

“Good. Because I think we’re going to need her,” Derec said. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“I know. But there’s a limit to how many places you can hide a ship of that size, even in a station this large. If it’s still here, we’ll find it.”

“Probably so,” Derec agreed. “Chances are they moved it from the active dock to one of the deactivated ones-in the military wing, would be my guess. Even if the station directory won’t tell us where the other dock facilities are, we can figure it out. But that won’t help us much.”

“Why not?”

“Because the key is what matters, not the ship. Jacobson is right. We don’t have any use for the ship.”

“We find the ship, we find the key.”

Derec shook his head unhappily. “The key won’t be there. The robots have it.”

“Jacobson didn’t say anything about it.”

“Why should he take the chance of being the first to call our attention to it?” Derec asked rhetorically. “I just know that the whole time we talked to him, he was sitting there waiting for us to ask about our personal effects or give some sign we know about the key-waiting to pounce if we did. It was a test. We passed, so they’re going to let us go. If we hadn’t-”

“Why should they take any special notice of the key? It doesn’t look like anything special. They don’t know what Aranimas went through to get it. I do, and I still don’t’ know why it’s so important.”

“So you say.”

“Do you think I’m lying?”

Yes, he thought. Or at least not telling the whole truth. I’m starting to believe that everybody knows what this thing is but me-that you’re pretending that you’re just as ignorant as I am, while all the time you know exactly what it is and why it’s important.

But he said none of that. “I don’t know what to think,” Derec said, frustration thick in his voice.

“I think the key’s still hidden wherever Aranimas kept it. Jacobson didn’t mention the key because he doesn’t know anything about it. He’s just worried about the ship in general.”

“He knows. I’m sure of it,” Derec said stubbornly.

“Look, if Jacobson knows about the key and the robots found it, then it went out onFariis. Which means he has it by now. End of story.”

“Not necessarily,” Derec said, shaking his head. “The packets are contract haulers, not Nexonian nationals. Do you think he’d trust them with something that’s probably ten times more valuable than their whole fleet contract? For that matter, do you think he’d put it on an unarmed vessel with the raiders still sitting out there somewhere trying to figure out how to get it back?”

“What, then?”

“Put yourself in their shoes. First you protect your find from being disturbed, and then you get together a team to go retrieve and investigate it. As long as you’ve done the first one right, you can take your time doing the second. They’ll be here when they’ve assembled the people and the hardware they need. At the very least they’ll need to scare up a bulk freighter to carry the spacecraft back and a warship to give the raiders second thoughts.”

Katherine sighed. “What a mess. Maybe we ought to just let them have it.”

“The hell with that,” Derec spat. “As long as Aranimas doesn’t have the key, and the raiders don’t attack, and Jacobson is still on Nexon-we’ve got a chance.”

“But it’s a race.”

“Yes. It’s a race. And we can’t wait around for you to get a clean bill of health from Dr. Galen before we start,” Derec said pointedly, bracing for an argument.

The argument never came. “You’re right,” she said simply, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and feeling for the floor. “Where to?”

Before that question could be considered, there was Dr. Galen to deal with. The robot came bursting into the room before Katherine’s bare feet even had a chance to pick up a chill from the floor.