"Sure you can," Trent said briskly. "You don't have time to do anything else, your yacht is leaving in four minutes. And I have less time thanthat."

I took a deep breath. "Okay. Thank you-I think."

"You're welcome." Trent the Uncatchable's voice softened. "Good luck. It's not easy being a legend, is it?"

"No. I never really got used to it myself. And you're going to have it worse."

"I know." He shrugged, changed the subject. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, but I have no time."

He paused a second, a distant expression flickering across his face. "Here they come. s.p.a.ce Force is on its way already. We're going to have us a chase for sure; you might. We'd probably be dodging laser fire from theUnity all the way back to Venus if I hadn't knocked out their weapons control last night."

I simply stared at him. "You took out theUnity's laser cannon?"

"No, just the targeting mechanisms."

"How did you-"

Trent grinned at me. "Monofilament fineline. It's a neat trick, I'll tell you all about it someday."

"You are the most amazing person I've ever met."

Trent blinked. "A Peaceforcer said that to me once. Then he tried to kill me. Good-bye, Neil." Trent turned away without looking back; the big clown paused a moment.

"Just 'amazing'?" It was the first time I ever remember hearing anybody call Trent the Uncatchable this, and I think the big clown who did it was joking. "Don't you know? The man is G.o.d." The clown grinned at me. Trent was gone, out of sight around the corridor bend. "Have a good flight."

Jay and Sh.e.l.l were inside the yacht, snakechained to the seats.

Theyboth glared at me as I strapped into the pilot's seat and stowed my briefcase in the webbing beneath it. "He couldn't very well leave you behind, now could he? And you certainly didn't want to go withhim, Sh.e.l.l in particular, I imagine."

Neither of them said a thing. Couldn't, really, with their mouths taped shut.

I'm not much of a pilot; I pulled up Trent's reentry path, scanned the quick and slow versions, and said, "Command,launch. Let's go home."

The shipcomp said quietly, in Trent the Uncatchable's voice, "Launching. Someday again, Neil Corona."

The rockets kicked me in the back.

No one came after us, and shortly Earth's horizon opened up and swallowed us.

- 18 -.

Threedays at Halfway, cooped up with a group of totally humorless s.p.a.ceFarers, sharing a cabin with EX. Chandler, who, for all he might have been a wild "heavy metal" musician once an infinity ago, was today a f.u.c.king old man and kept acting like it.

Early on the morning of July the Fourth, the TriCentennial, a young black man in civilian clothes-black jeans, magslips, a T-shirt with a holo of the singer Mahliya Kutura on it-came for Jimmy. "You're Jimmy Ramirez, aren't you?"

Chandler was asleep in the other bed, webbed in, floatchair folded up at his side. Jimmy looked up at the opening of his cabin door. "Yeah. Who are you?"

"Do you want to come up to the bridge with me? We're leaving orbit in a couple of minutes and I think you might find it interesting."

Jimmy shrugged. "Sure."

"Great." The man raised his voice. " 'Sieur Chandler?"

The old man stirred, sat up, and said in a rusty voice, "We're boosting in five minutes. It'll be announced, but you'll want to be awake for it."

Chandler nodded, spoke around a yawn. "Okay. Thanks."

"In case we go above three gees, you know how to use your stasis bubble?"

"Yes. Thank you."

On the way up to the bridge-a trip in itself, the ship was large-the young man keptlooking at Jimmy.

Finally, in annoyance, Jimmy said, "The answer isno."

"What was the question?"

"You're gay, right?"

"Well, no. I mean, not very." The young man seemed to consider it. "I don't think so."

"What the h.e.l.l are youlooking at?"

The young man glided steadily forward, magslip-covered feet drifting bare centimeters over the deck.

Jimmy had the feeling that he could have moved much faster if he had not had to wait for Jimmy, hampered as he was by both an unfamiliar prosthesis and free fall. The man glanced at Jimmy yet again.

"Been a while, my man. You've put on some weight, lost some muscle." He chuckled. "Become alawyer.

Want to hear agood joke?"

Jimmy shook his head. "Look, I don't know you and I don't-" and then his voice trailed off.

His guide glided to a stop at the entrance to the bridge, and turned around to face Jimmy. "Don't you?"

Jimmy had to put a hand out to the bulkhead to stop his progress; he was learning to dislike free fall.

After he bounced off the wall once he managed to get himself turned around, facing the black man.

"What?"

"Scenes like this," the man said, "should be played under gravity. So that you can run in slow motion down the beach. It's kind of hard to do in free fall. Actually."

For a long moment Jimmy did not breathe at all. He thought his heart had stopped. "Is-Trent?"

The impossible brown eyes held him. "Want to go share a blanket and find out?"

"You-Trent?"

"Not that you were any good."

Jimmy Ramirez said slowly, "I've had better, myself."

"Hey, bro. I'd give you a hug or something, but you used to have problems with that."

Jimmy Ramirez stared at him, then stepped forward, wrapped Trent in a bear hug, and whispered fiercely in his ear, "My man."

The bridge door curled aside. The woman who stepped through, elderly and white-haired, in a Collective uniform with a patch that said Captain Saunders, said mildly, "Sweet. But you're blocking the door."

Jimmy let go of Trent abruptly, left Trent drifting in midair. Trent grinned at Jimmy, grabbed the frame of the door and pushed himself back into contact with the deck, and went inside to the bridge.

Jimmy Ramirez followed, aware that everyone on the bridge was watching them as they entered.

It is virtually impossible for even a light-brown-skinned man to blush convincingly. Jimmy Ramirez managed it.

"They're the cheap seats," Trent commented, "but they're still the best in the house if you're a civilian."

They had strapped into a pair of seats off to the far right of a rather largish bridge. At least Jimmy thought it was a large bridge; he didn't have much to compare with.

"Large," Trent said briefly in response to his question. "Everything about the ship is. Crew of thirty-five, pa.s.senger capability of about two hundred fifty. Andfast, though she doesn't look it; chameleon polypaint, radar quiet, the works. We're going to heed it all; there's a s.p.a.ce Force task force headed for us; left L-Four about sixteen minutes ago. s.p.a.ce Force is boosting at three gees. If they put all their people in stasis bubbles-and theywill have them on board-they can get up to fifteen."

"We're going to boost out of here atfifteen gees?"

"No, of course not," Trent said mildly. "This is a civilian ship. We don't have nearly enough stasis bubbles to do something like that. We have to arrange to get lost instead. A Collective escort is waiting for us at Venus, but first we have tomake Venus. Then we'll slingshot in around the sun, and then head for the Belt."

"But first we have to get away from Earth-Luna."

The Captain returned, moved forward to her seat. "That's the general idea, 'Sieur Ramirez. Now, if you please, will both of you shut up?"

Trent held a finger up to his lips, whispered in a stage whisper, "She means it."

Captain Saunders did not glance at Trent."Command, outspeakers." Her voice boomed out across the length of the ship. "BOOST IN TEN SECONDS, NINE HUNDRED EIGHTY CENTIMETERS PER SECOND SQUARED. THAT'S ONE GEE TO DOWNSIDERS. SUCK IT IN.".

Gravity came up slowly; suddenly forward wasup. It took a couple seconds to reach full boost. In the viewholos, the vast bulk of Halfway seemed to drift slowly away, to their left.

Jimmy's earphone came alive. Trent's voice; notthis voice, which had a deeper timbre, but the tenor he remembered from their childhood."Really don't talkuntil we're out of danger; she'll get seriously upset. She has no sense of humor. Of course s.p.a.ceFarers don't."

The viewholo split into three separate perspectives; behind them, Halfway fell away, slowly turning from a ma.s.s that covered half the sky, to something that was merely as large as the Earth; and then smaller yet.

Before them, an optically enhanced image showed five bright sparks against a star-speckled background.

"s.p.a.ce Force; the task force that's going to try chasing us."

Jimmy glanced over at Trent, found Trent staring at the viewfields, a faint grin playing across his lips, coming and going; clearly vastly entertained."This is my favorite part," Trent said."Please accept my apologies now in case we die doing this."

The third segment of the holofield showed a map, not to scale, of the Earth-Luna system. Their ship was a bright yellow triangle, moving away from a stylized Earth that was being devoured by a swarm of gnats.

Bright red patches marked the remains of destroyed ships; the map showed eight. Green dots were laser cannon, about forty of them; blue dots were craft whose beacons identified them as s.p.a.ce Force. There were no rebel craft shown in the field; that was to be expected. It didn't mean there were no rebel craft in orbit-highly unlikely-merely that the rebels wouldn't be identifying themselves to anyone who asked.

Toward the far edge of the map holo, five blue arrows moved slowly toward theLew Alton. Luna, L-4, and L-5 were visible."They'll have realized by now that we're moving away from Halfway. In another minute or two they'll realize wherewe're headed."

Jimmy lifted an eyebrow.

Trent grinned at him."L-Five. Peaceforcer Heaven."

"Very strange behavior, of course. They're pretty sure who we are, the s.p.a.ceFarers who've been pretending to be s.p.a.ce Force." Trent shrugged."They do have the same initials. Start with the same wordyet. You'd think that one of them would have sued the other by now. Trademark infringement or something. So anyway, we're Bad Guys. But we're heading toward s.p.a.cebase One, PKF territory. Why? Why, oh why? Can youguess?"

Jimmy shook his head.

"We're going to hide behind it for most of a second, if things work out. Also it's confusing. The folks at L-Four won't understand it at all. We're Bad Guys, but we're not running. Maybe we're not Bad Guys, maybe we're Good Guys. Or innocent bystanders. We're heading toward s.p.a.cebase One; maybe we'rePeaceforcers?What could possiblybe going on?" Trent chuckled aloud, got a glare from the Captain."Look at the holo, Jimmy."

In the central panel of the viewholo, the dwindling image of Halfway vanished. In its place a holo of the Lew Alton appeared."Now, this is the interesting thing about the Lew Alton.It looks normal enough, landing fins, needle nose, silver hull for heat dissipation, obviously intended for use in atmosphere; but it uses ma.s.s drivers instead of a torch, and the silver on the hull is a mirror that can be turned off." Three long, slender tubes ran down the length of the ship, flaring open at each end.

"The ma.s.s drivers boost in both directions too. The Lew Altoncan accelerate and brake without undergoing turnover; you just change the direction of thrust through the ma.s.s drivers."

The viewfield returned to its prior view."We're mildly stupid, we don't know yet that there's a bunch of bada.s.s s.p.a.ce Force commandos headed our way. Now we're sweeping with radar, really ugly radar signature, we had to make up a special radar antenna to get it: boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.Wait, what's this? On our radar we get back the signature of five s.p.a.ce Force craft headed our way. Now we get a little scared and we check it out, maybe our radar's not very sensitive, so we sweep them again, a signal so loud it's like we're shouting in their face. d.a.m.n, we're amateurs.

Stoopid stoopid.

"Now we're thinking it over. Should we run away?"

"Outspeakers," said Captain Saunders. "PREPARE FOR TURNOVER IN TEN SECONDS."

"Wait, what's this? The ship full of Bad Guys is going into turnover!"

Thrust ceased, and the ship hung in free fall for several seconds before beginning a long, slow, 180-degree tumble. The bridge seemed totwitch; it made the muscles in Jimmy's stomach twitch in sympathy."The bridge floats free inside the ship; all the pa.s.senger compartments do, and they turn to face into the direction of thrust. Otherwise you could end up hanging on your seat belt at eight gees."

It took most of a minute before the ship had completely turned around. The Captains voice: "THREE THOUSAND CEPSSA IN TEN SECONDS.".

"Now we're panicking,"Trent announced."Turning tail and running away."

After a brief pause, Captain Saunders said in a conversational voice, "There they go. They just"-She fell briefly silent as acceleration kicked up to three gees-"just pumped it up to fifteen gees acceleration."

"Trent?"

"Hang tight, Jimmy. They'll figure it out in a bit, and when they do, they'll probably send missiles."

Jimmy said very quietly, "I don't understand."

"They can't catch us now. We're runningtowardthem, but they think we're running away; they're so far away from us all they could make out by telescope was the fact that we went through turnover. So right now we're accelerating toward each other; shortly they're going to notice that the Doppler signature on our radar is wrong. It might be a bit before that happens, they might notice real soon."

Four minutes pa.s.sed. Five. Six. The silence on the bridge was thick with shared tension.

One of the crew said, "They just cut acceleration."

"They just realized. They're never going to catch us now; they've already picked up so much velocity that by the time they've gone through turnover, decelerated to zero, and headed back after us, well be having tea at Venus. The only chance they have is to send missiles after us. If they do that right now we're in bad shape, so first we try and talk them into chasing us some more."

Trent grinned cheek to cheek, said aloud, "Captain, have they beamcast to us?"