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CHAPTER FIVE

Raeder had grown used to eating in solitary splendor in the officers' mess while the Invincible was in Transit. Peacetime luxuries like steward service were left to admirals and other Echelons Beyond Reality these days, but the mess was really quite nice—someone had already put in a series of murals, pleasantly old-fashioned stuff, lunar landscapes and views of Saturn's rings. On a new ship the smells of food and coffee were just beginning to overpower those of drying sealant and synthetics, both enjoyable to a spacer. He was used to tucking away more than his share of the better-than-average chow. He smiled, remembering yesterday, nodding benevolently at a neighbor as he loaded his plate with sausage, ham, eggs, shiny fried potatoes. . . .

The neighbor shut her eyes and tried to stop breathing, a piece of dry toast halfway to her lips.

It must be awful, he'd thought at the time, to have to cook for hundreds when the very thought of food makes you ill. Especially since all anyone else wanted was maybe some dry toast.

Not this morning though. They'd come out of Transit last night and today everyone was making up for lost meals. Almost the only thing left was dry toast, and the tables were packed elbow to elbow. The dispensing line was empty because everyone had already been through.

Peter sighed and took some toast—not even whole wheat—as well as a desiccated sausage patty and the teaspoonful of scrambled eggs he'd managed to scrape out of the warming pan. I should have come earlier, he thought sadly. It stood to reason that everyone would be hungry. And I don't think I'll get much sympathy if I complain. 

He sat down beside the quartermaster, who looked at his plate and smirked. "I was going to take that, but thought I ought to leave you something."

"Y'know, John," Peter said, looking at the three juicy patties on Larkin's plate, "it's not a good idea to eat such rich food after a fast."

"Get your eyes off my plate, Raeder," Larkin growled, moving his tray a little further from Peter's. "You've had first, second, and third pick for the last two days. Now it's back to every man for himself."

Peter glanced across the table at Ashly Luhrman, who looked up from her cloud of scrambled eggs with the eyes of a tigress defending her young.

"The same goes with me," the young astrogator said, "only double."

"Good morning, Lieutenant," Raeder said mildly.

She returned her attention to her plate with a soft, feline warning sound.

"Jeeez, guys, I'm not going to try to take the food off your plates," Peter said, wide-eyed. But I am gonna be here first for lunch. Which shouldn't be hard since the rest of Invincible's officers had a strenuous day ahead of them, while all he had to do was monitor everyone else and keep his Speeds in a state of perfect readiness.

Their two-day Transit had brought them to the Commonwealth's main firing range. Today Invincible's weapons would be live-fired for the first time, and given the extraordinary failure rate of much of their equipment, the tension in the mess was thick enough to chew.

In fact, Raeder thought, forlornly watching the champing jaws of his fellow officers, it's about all there is to chew. 

"So," he said cheerfully, "everybody ready?"

"Ready as we'll ever be," Augie Skinner said laconically, not even interrupting the rhythm of his eating.

"Easy for you to say," Truon Le commented with a grin. "The hardest part's over for you," he said, referring to their high-speed cruise through the Antares System and their Transit jump to the firing range. "It's tactical that'll be getting a workout today."

Augie pointed his fork at the tactical officer. "An engineer's work is never over. Right, Raeder?"

"Absolutely, Skinner."

"Anytime I tell you my work's finished," the chief engineer went on to Truon Le, "it means I'm retiring."

"Gotcha," Truon Le said, smiling.

"Sometimes I think that guy's from another dimension," Larkin whispered to Raeder. He shook his blond head. "I mean, I like to think I'm dedicated, but I can get up from my desk and say, that's it, day's over."

"Yeah," Raeder said softly. "But the crew's not endangered if you forget to order fava beans."

"Well, I'd like to agree with you, but unless you've ever faced a frustrated fava bean aficionado, well," Larkin shrugged his shoulders eloquently, "there's just no way to describe the carnage."

"I'm off," Truon Le said, rising. "Good luck, everybody."

"Luck," they all said. One by one they finished their massive breakfasts and left to prepare for the day, until only Raeder and Larkin were left.

"I feel guilty," Larkin said. "The hardest part of my job is done."

He was referring to the massive job of ordering and storing the thousands of items needed to run a ship the size of Invincible. Outside of a combat situation, dispensing them was nearly automatic.

"While mine probably won't really begin until tomorrow," Raeder agreed. "But we both have to be on standby."

The quartermaster snorted derisively. "Yeah, you never know what the Old Man will do. I just don't see him calling for an emergency inventory in the heat of battle."

"We also serve who only stand and wait," Raeder quoted. He gave the quartermaster a sideways look. "You do have fava beans, I trust."

"Not only do we have fava beans," Larkin said rising, "we have the new, improved, laser-guided, homing fava beans. A bean so explosive it will bring the Mollies to their knees!"

"I take it these are a weapon of last resort?" Peter asked in mock awe, pressing his napkin to his chest.

Larkin looked him in the eye with holovid seriousness. "Who knows what the Old Man might call for."

"Gosh," Raeder said, and gulped the last of his coffee, "I'm sure glad I'm on our side."

* * *

Down on Main Deck, Lieutenant Robbins was having a coot; dancing around and swearing, tugging at something on her overall. Raeder called up a closer view on his office monitor and grinned. Well, that's a classic. Someone had put a dab of hull sealant in the bottom of one of the tool pouches clipped to her working uniform and wrapped it in thinplas. Standard procedure—for which Robbins was a known stickler—was to slide every tool in and out of its holder at the beginning of a watch. The point of a multitool had punched the thinplas, and now it was indissolubly bound to the fabric . . .

And Robbins would have to run back to her quarters and change. No real damage, of course. He had to back her up, of course. Peter touched a relay on the control surface in front of him.

"Arap Moi! I want the name of the person responsible for this and put them on report. No skylarking in wartime!"

Actually it was a welcome sign of good morale.

The office above Main Deck had a feed slaved to the bridge; he keyed it back and sat, his eyes glued to the monitor showing the bridge's activities, while his own people worked without his supervision. He watched and listened tensely as the Invincible came up on her first target, an irregularly shaped asteroid a good twelve hundred meters long. It's almost ship-shaped, Raeder thought. He wondered just how they were going to attack it. They were a little too close to use missiles without risking at least some damage to the ship's sensors. Though it would make a beautiful explosion, he thought.

"Target acquired," Truon Le intoned.

"Fire on my mark," the captain said. "Mark."

Suddenly the ship's forward laser stabbed at the target. The beam was invisible in vacuum, but as nickel-iron sublimed away into space, it glared red through the scattering mist; even reduced by filters it was still hard to look at as it neatly sliced its way down the center of the asteroid. The two halves drifted slowly apart, the molten rock down their lengths cooling to gray almost instantly.

"Following vector, Mr. Goldberg," the captain ordered.

"Vector entered, aye," the helmsman answered.

"Targets acquired," Truon Le said again.

"Fire on my mark," Captain Knott said quietly.

The two sides of the asteroid were already a hundred kilometers apart by now, though on the screen they appeared to be separated by only a few yards. The captain held his peace, doubtless waiting for a more significant separation to see if his people could hold their targets.

Finally, Knott said, "Fire." And all twelve of the starboard antiship lasers fired simultaneously, hitting the two long pieces of asteroid crosswise. Twelve red lances struck cold rock and sliced through it like butter, and the pieces tumbled apart as spurting gas gave them unpredictable trajectories along the asteroid's former orbit.

"Stand by to reverse vectors," the captain ordered.

"Aye, sir," Helm answered.

Raeder watched the corner of the screen showing the target, anticipating a change of viewpoint as the Invincible swung around to bring her larboard laser cannon to bear.

"Reverse vectors," Knott said.

"Reversing vectors, aye," Goldberg announced.

Raeder noticed a brief lull in the background noise that the ship's engines provided as they cut power to everything but the thrusters which would turn her as she coasted. On the screen he saw a constantly shifting perspective of the massive, broken asteroid as external cameras compensated for the ship's change of position relative to its target. Finally the angle stabilized, but they continued to drift away from the asteroid and it grew steadily smaller. Then a surge of the engines stopped Invincible's backward motion and with the briefest of pauses pushed her forward again.

I always think I should feel something when we do that, Peter thought. In a Speed, which lacked the Invincible's gravitational compensators, he would have. Something annoyingly lacking in the tactile department here, Raeder mused, and he shook himself hard to make up for it. On the other hand, nothing big enough to mount compensators could rival a Speed's power-to-weight ratio.

As they approached the target, Knott calmly said, "Larboard laser cannon, prepare to fire. Fire," he said immediately.

Raeder chuckled. He was willing to bet there was at least one gunner who'd been expecting a long pause. In fact, one of the shots was so wild you'd have thought whoever manned it was out of their chair.

"We appear to have a misfire," the captain drawled.

We do, indeed, Raeder agreed.

"Sir," said a woman's voice, which, though calm, fairly bled with embarrassment. No doubt she was one of the gun maintenance crew. "We've found the problem in laser placement eighteen. A part of the targeting sensor was put in backwards. It passed the sims, and didn't show in the diagnostics because it wasn't interfering with the gun's function. We've replaced the board."

"Why don't we test it one more time," the captain said after a pregnant pause. "Choose your target."

"Yessir." There was the briefest of pauses, then, "Target acquired, sir."

"Fire," Knott barked.

Red light flashed out and sliced a chunk of asteroid in half.

"Fire," the captain said again. And again the laser cannon hit its target squarely. "Fire," Knott snapped. Another chunk of asteroid was reduced. "Looks like you've got that puppy under control," the captain drawled, the barest trace of satisfaction in his voice. "Now let's give our missile batteries a workout."

They kept at it until that asteroid was sand.

Whew! Raeder thought. Show no mer-say. 

He grinned in appreciation. Through the whole, long afternoon they'd maneuvered and attacked, firing until Raeder could have sworn the whole ship felt hotter. Well, we are hot. Hottest shots this side of the galaxy. He slapped his desk, still smiling. Damn if we're not. At least when it came to defenseless asteroids, he had to admit. The only glitch in the whole exercise had been that one laser miss. He shook his head. This is one hell of a fine crew, he thought, eyes shining. Then he pulled a wry expression. And tomorrow will bring me the opportunity to show what my people are made of. This was a carrier, after all. The beam weapons and missiles were backup; the main striking force was the Speeds.

Okakura's death and Cindy's harangues had brought his bunch to the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. They were jumpy and grim when she was around, and jumpy and given to the blackest of humor when she wasn't.

To her credit, the lieutenant seemed obsessed with solving the many problems the unit was facing, rather than simply throwing her weight around. But good intentions didn't go far in mitigating the effects of her constant criticism. Morale was in the cellar in Flight Engineering Section, and that was a tenth of Invincible's crew; pilots aside, perhaps the most important tenth.

Raeder had made a point in his first week of memorizing the names, faces, and functions of his people to the confusion and amazement of his second.

"Did you serve with all of these people?" Robbins had asked, after he'd greeted the fourth person she hadn't yet introduced him to by name.

"No," he'd said with a deprecating laugh. "I got it from the personnel files."

"You memorized their names?" she'd exclaimed, as astonished as if he'd told her he'd read their minds.

Raeder shook his head at the memory. Here's a woman who can name every part of a Speed off the top of her head. And she doesn't know the names of more than four of the people she works with. In fact, as far as he could tell, to Cynthia Robbins the entire crew were interchangeable parts, as individual as a pound of penny nails. And about as human. 

He sighed. There'd been definite progress, he allowed. Morale had improved perceptibly since his arrival and Cindy herself had become marginally less grumpy and reclusive. Raeder had also made his people go through the mountain of discarded parts that had accumulated and repair those they could. A depressingly small number, given the state of his department's budget. Fractures and curiously mangled components had been the main problems, most of them near invisible to the naked eye.

Another reason to respect the lieutenant's skill, he reflected. Or to doubt her integrity, if that's your pleasure. And truth to tell, he honestly couldn't decide.

Anyway, he thought shutting down his terminal, the squadron is as ready as she'll ever be. Every Speed checked and rechecked, his people drilled to a fare-thee-well. There's always the unexpected to watch out for, he thought, knocking on the little piece of wood he kept on his desk for luck, but we've covered all the bases we can. 

Today was going to be a hard act to follow, though, particularly coming from behind as they were. But, y'know, I think we're gonna surprise everybody, Raeder thought confidently. We're gonna blow 'em away. 

The Invincible's first operational cruise had been easy street for Raeder and his people until now. The captain's anxiously awaited order to fly the squadron had finally been given, and the flight deck was so palpably relieved you could practically see a giant happy face manifesting. Men and women scrambled to and fro at top speed, creating a scene of polished efficiency combined with total chaos, each of them behaving as though they were alone on the deck. Yet by some miracle, no collisions took place, no one tripped and fell, everyone reached their preordained place and performed their task, moving on to the next as though they were more than human. Carts and overhead cranes rumbled, and there was a faint scent of ozone and sealant in the air.

Even so, Speeds were fueled in less than record time, Raeder noted with displeasure as he watched a crew leaping balletically as they attached the restraints and hoses. But the work was competently done, and while not as fast as he would have liked, it certainly wasn't a disgrace to the outfit. Not that he'd tell the petty officer in charge that. After all, this is why they had drills—to put the crew through their paces to measure performance against expectations.

Truth is, Raeder thought happily, my expectations were too low. I have got some top people here. And they could and would be better next time.

Raeder was in his cubby overlooking the flight deck, watching his monitors and listening to and advising various sections as they went about their business, growing more smug by the minute. Until the squadron leader patched himself through with the solemn announcement, "She's doing it again, Raeder."

"On my way," Raeder replied.

No need to identify who "she" was.

A few minutes later he approached the eye of this minor tempest to hear Robbins bellow, "My machinery is calibrated!"

Robbins, shouting at an officer? Peter thought in disbelief. "What's going on?" Raeder asked calmly.

Three red faces and arap Moi's black one turned to him with varying expressions of appeal.

"Your second is refusing to let Givens fly," Squadron Leader Sutton growled. "Not that there's anything specifically wrong, mind you. It seems there's a mysterious `spike' on her monitor."

"Y'ask me, the only spike around here's the one in her head, Commander. She just doesn't like me for some reason." Givens looked from Robbins to Raeder with a glowering sneer.

What a weird expression, Raeder thought. Doubles the offense without actually looking demented. He gave Sutton a meaningful look, one that demanded he rein in his boy.

Sutton, with rather ill grace, muttered, "Mind your manners, Givens. We're all Space Command here."

"Sorry, sir," Givens said politely, simultaneously directing a sneer at Lieutenant Robbins. "But the two times there has been something wrong with my Speed it showed clearly on the diagnostics. Every time I was grounded for some mystery reason nothing was ever wrong, even after they tore my machine apart. So if I'm a little unimpressed by the lieutenant's instincts and diagnostic flukes, I don't think you can really blame me."

Then both pilots turned accusing eyes on Raeder, while Robbins simply looked at the deck, obviously expecting to be overridden.

Oh, great, Peter thought. I feel like a single father whose two sons are mad at their sister. Of course, Robbins does keep taking their toys apart, so it could be a male psychology thing. Hmmm. 

"The lieutenant raises a good point, Commander," Sutton said. "Six out of eight times that Givens has been denied the use of his Speed, tearing it apart down to the shell revealed no hardware or software problems at all. And to make it even more peculiar, these mystery problems only indicate themselves in the half hour before we're to fly a mission. Now," Sutton adjusted his stance, his eyes never leaving Raeder's, "I'll just say that something isn't right here, and that I don't think it's mechanical."

Raeder was taken aback. Givens was obviously a jackass, but Sutton had impressed him as being rather a stable type. Certainly not the kind who made rash statements in front of witnesses.

"We obviously have things to discuss," Peter conceded, "but I don't think this is the appropriate time."

The squadron leader closed his eyes slowly, as though hanging on to his temper by a thread.

"You're absolutely right, Commander Raeder, this is a poor time for a debate. So I won't give you one. But if Givens doesn't fly with us today, I don't see how we can fly at all."

"What?" Raeder couldn't believe his ears. Sutton was carrying this thing much too far; he couldn't not fly the squadron because one Speed was down. That was like volunteering to be court-martialed. What is this, some kind of test? This was another thing he hadn't expected from Sutton, the kind of macho brinksmanship stupidity that forced a bad choice on someone.

"I mean what I say," Sutton said quietly. He looked like he meant it, too. In the background, Givens looked like a gaffed fish.

"Well, Squadron Leader," Raeder said, leaning in close, "what I'm going to do is check out this craft. And if there's anything wrong with it, this bird will not fly. What you choose to do about that is up to you. But my conscience will be clear." Sutton thinned his lips, but said nothing. "Show me what the problem is, would you, Lieutenant?" he asked Robbins.

She immediately scrambled up the steep, narrow ramp that led inside the Speed. Looking at their smooth, melted shapes maneuvering in space you forgot the hulking, massive menace they had at close range. This one was still factory-burnished, the cermet synthetic of the skin without the minuscule pitmarks that came from high-speed maneuvers through the "dirty" vacuum near large ships with their inescapable, multitudinous microleaks.

"It's in the cockpit," she said over her slender shoulder.

He followed her up and crouched beside her where she sat in the pilot's seat, stifling a touch of envy over her easy assumption of that chair. The little pang of grief never seemed to go away.

"It appears to be in the master AI," she was saying. The lieutenant pulled out her diagnostic unit. "When I set up a combat simulation situation, such as Givens will be flying—" she showed him the simulation program she'd chosen, and when he nodded she started it running "—I get this."

Raeder took the unit she offered, and on one of its screens there was a sudden spike in an area that should have been dormant. There was a flat line across the screen and the spike had been a bright spark gone almost before he could register what it was. Had not Robbins pointed it out to him, Raeder knew he probably would have missed it.

"What does the AI say about it?" he asked.

"That it's unaware of any problem," she said. "But you know what they're like—they're intelligent only in the narrowest possible definition of the word."

Like some . . . like a lot of people I've known, Raeder thought gloomily.

"Frankly," she continued, "I think it's a software problem that's going to take a specific set of circumstances to bring to light. Since I don't know what that spike represents, my inclination is to treat it as dangerous." And she looked at him expectantly.

Almost as though she's forgotten to be wary, Raeder thought. That had been the most she'd said to him in the time he'd known her. Or maybe she's trying to make me forget to be wary. Though she always seems to feel a lot more in control when she's discussing Speeds. Well, he could understand that. Still. This isn't the Cindy I've come to know and wonder about. 

"Have you checked your instrument?" he asked.

"That's the CPO's unit," she said, a stiff defensiveness creeping back into her voice. "The first thing I did was cross-check with someone else."

Raeder grimaced. There'd been so much to do this week. He'd wanted to have the machines that calibrated the diagnostic units checked, but there'd been no time.

"I've been wondering about these," he told her. "If the main unit we check them against is flawed, then they're all skewed the same way. It's possible that what we're seeing here is a fluke in our units instead of in the Speeds or their parts."

Robbins shook her head a couple of times, then stopped and looked at him, started to say something, then shut her mouth and looked away.

"If you send Givens out in this Speed, sir, I want it on record that it was done over my protest."

Raeder blinked at that. That's coming at it a little strong, he thought. What is it with everybody today? Is this lay your career on the line day and nobody told me? Then he felt a brief chill at the back of his neck. Did she know something? Did she do something? Now I'm worried. If he had another Speed to send Givens out in he'd do it in a flash, but there wasn't one. This was a full scramble and every Speed had a pilot. Although at the moment, thanks to this, it's a scramble going forward in slow motion. In fact, I think it's going backwards. 

"Noted," he said sharply. "But based on a single spike that doesn't seem to lead anywhere I can't justify grounding this Speed. Get me arap Moi, please, I want to check this out myself and I want to check it with your unit." With that he turned awkwardly in the small space and duck-walked to where he could stand. Robbins brushed past him and left the Speed, and Peter instantly hustled himself into the pilot's chair.

He ran through the Speed's internal diagnostics while he waited for the CPO, even his right hand flashed through the familiar motions without mishap.

"Sir," arap Moi said as he fitted himself into the small cockpit to kneel at Raeder's side.

"Have you seen this spike the lieutenant found?" Raeder asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What do you make of it?"

The CPO chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then shook his head. "I honestly don't know, sir. As the lieutenant says, it's probably a software problem, but whether it's dangerous or not . . ." He shrugged, his expression perplexed. "Until we've tested it, we can't know for sure."

Raeder rested his chin on his left hand and thought. Was this extreme caution just the same paranoia he'd been getting since he arrived, particularly in relation to the comps? Considering the previous commander's crispy end as a result of a faulty AI, it was understandable, but dammit it was getting in the way.

"Have you ever seen anything like this before, Chief?"

"Uh . . . yes, sir, I have."

Raeder just looked at him expectantly. "And?" he prompted after a moment.

"And it was just a little glitch that made a jig in the diagnostic," arap Moi admitted. "It happened every time we booted a combat sim." He grinned. "I sorta thought it was like an adrenaline spike," he said.

"Chief, you're—"

"Anthropomorphizing, I know. But that Speed had a very excitable pilot. I sort of thought the AI was imitating her."

"You think Givens is that excitable?" Raeder raised a dubious brow.

The chief rubbed his chin briskly and shook his head. "Well, he's no bandicoot, but he ain't no nun, either. And, anyway, that doesn't mean—"

"That this spike means the same thing," Peter finished for him. "Still, we've checked it out on two diagnostic units, we checked the AI, we've run the ship's internal diagnostics, and all we've got is a little hop in a sine wave." He tapped his fingers on his armrest impatiently. "Is there anything else you can think of short of a major overhaul?"

"No, sir," the CPO said.

"Neither can I." Raeder firmed his lips. Decision time. There really didn't appear to be anything significant wrong with this machine. Significant, hell. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it at all. On the other hand, Cindy was acting all spooky. And on the third hand, it looked like the whole fighter squadron would rebel if he grounded the lieutenant for this reason. And he was pretty sure that further tests would show nothing wrong. Just like Lieutenant Givens says they always do. Maybe this was Robbins' way of showing she liked the guy. Raeder suppressed a snort. He gave the girl credit for better taste. Her interest was in his Speed, not the lieutenant.

"Let Givens have it," he decided, and slid out of the pilot's seat.

Sutton and Givens were crowded around the base of the ramp wearing the grim, defiant expressions of men determined to have their own way. Raeder paused. Sort of makes me want to disappoint them, he thought.

"Well?" Sutton said icily.

"There's definitely something there," Raeder told them. Givens rolled not only his eyes, but rotated his whole head in silent exasperation. "It appears to be a glitch in the AI programming." Peter watched Givens with a gimlet eye. "But we won't be able to tell what it means without extensive tests."

"Aw! Maaaann!" Givens exclaimed. "She set it up, man!"

"Don't whine at me, Lieutenant!" Raeder snapped. "And in case no one has ever informed you, there is no branch of the service where a lieutenant may address a superior officer as `man.'"

Givens' head snapped back as if he'd been slapped.

"Heat of the moment," the squadron leader murmured.

"Lack of discipline," Raeder countered precisely. "Just because I've been a pilot doesn't mean I'm going to forget my rank. And I'll tell you both something right here, right now. If I had a thread to hang it on I wouldn't let this Speed out of here. But I don't. Even so, it's going out under protest. I strongly advise you to let us hold this Speed back," he said to the squadron leader.

"Ridiculous!" Sutton exclaimed. "Three of you experts have looked it over and you can't find anything actually wrong, can you?"

Raeder shook his head reluctantly.

"Well, then, very likely, as in all the other cases of phantom problems with this particular Speed, closer examination will reveal nothing wrong. I say she flies," Sutton said, and set his jaw in a stubborn line.

"It's on your head, Sutton, and yours," Raeder said turning to Givens, "if something goes wrong."

Sutton simply gazed back at him, tight-lipped.

"Except nothing is going to go wrong, sir," Givens said in a carefully modulated voice. He brushed around Raeder and sneered down at Robbins, who stood at the commander's shoulder.

"There is something wrong with this Speed," she said impulsively, and her brown eyes pleaded for him to believe her.

"The only thing wrong with this Speed, Lieutenant, is that it's going out when you don't want it to." Givens awarded her a disgusted look, then climbed into the belly of his Speed.

"Not good form," Sutton muttered to Raeder, his eyes bright with anger, "to castigate a brother officer in front of one of his men."

True, Raeder thought, not that I'm prepared to admit it. 

"We should discuss this later," he said coldly. Like the day donkeys fly out of your butt. "When we have less to do," he added significantly.

Sutton nodded, spared a glare for Robbins, and trotted off to his own Speed.

"Thank you for backing me up, sir," Robbins said shyly.

Raeder froze the expression on his face before his shock could show.

"I'd have grounded him if we'd had more evidence, Lieutenant," he said, and was a little surprised to find he meant it. "But Givens was right. All but two of the times you've held him back based on something this slight nothing was ever found to be wrong. And given his insistence that you were only doing it to persecute him . . ." He shrugged. "Those are conditions that are ripe for a board of inquiry."

He looked around at the bustle in the cavernous launching hangar and shook his head. "We've lost this one, but it's sure not your fault."

"I hope I'm wrong," she said, looking sorrowful. "But I don't think I am, sir."

The way she said it gave Raeder the willies.

"In any case," he said briskly, "we have a lot to do right now. But as soon as possible we're going over the diagnostic machines."

"Yes, sir."

The klaxon rang to clear the deck for launch and everyone swept into motion, diving for the crash doors, hauling their portable equipment with them.

Then they were gone and the giant room seemed to hold its breath, the huge machines the men and women of Space Command had labored over stood poised for action. Another klaxon sounded and the great doors in Invincible's side slowly lifted, opening Main Deck to the cosmos. The Speeds in their rows began to tremble as their pilots powered up, almost expectantly, like thoroughbreds at a starting gate.

Paths of lights rippled across the decking. Magfields gripped and thrust, and the first wave of three Speeds were hurled forward with shocking force, dwindling from full size to dots in less time than it took to draw a full breath, then vanishing. Another wave and another, soundless and all the more intimidating for that. Raeder felt his eyes prickle at the glory of it, at the memory of acceleration crushing him back and the universe opening before him in a cold splendor of multicolored stars.

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