"Sa.s.sinak, can I ask you something?" Surbar, fellow ensign, was a shy, quiet young man, who nonetheless used his wide dark eyes to good advantage. Sa.s.sinak had heard, through Mira, that he was enjoying his recreational hours with a Jig in Weapons Control. Nonetheless, he'd given her some intense looks, and she'd considered responding.

"Sure." Sa.s.sinak leaned back, in the relaxed atmosphere of the second watch mess, and ran her hands through her hair. In one comer of her mind, she considered that it was getting a bit too long, and she really ought to go get it trimmed again. Tousled was one thing, but a tangled ma.s.s - which is what her hair did every chance it got - was another. The difference between s.e.xy and blowsy.

"D'you know anything about Tenant Achael?"

Sa.s.sinak barely controlled her reaction. "Achael? Not really - he was on the landing party, but I was too busy with all my stuff to talk to him. Why?"

"Well." Surbar frowned and scratched his nose. "He's been asking about you. Lia wanted to know why, and he said you were too good-looking to be running around loose. Thought you might be related to somebody he'd known."

Sa.s.sinak made herself chuckle casually. Apparently it worked because Surbar didn't seem to notice anything. "He's one of those, is he? After every new female on the ship?"

Surbar shrugged. "Lia said he made eyes at her, but backed off when she said no. Then he started asking about you - so I guess maybe he is that kind."

"Mmm. Well, then, I'll be sure to stay out of airlocks and closets and other closed s.p.a.ces if Mr. Lieutenant Achael is around."

"Meaning you're not interested?" Surbar gave her his most melting look.

"Not in him," said Sa.s.sinak, glancing at the overhead and then letting her glance slide sideways to meet Surbar's. "On the other hand ..."

"Lia's coming to play gunna tonight," said Surbar quickly. "Maybe another time?"

Sa.s.sinak shrugged. "Give me a call. Thanks, anyway, for the warning about Achael." On her way back to her compartment, she thought about it. Achael had enough seniority to cause her trouble, and as Weapons Officer he had high enough clearance to access most communications files. If he wanted to. If he thought he needed to. She wanted him dead, if he was Abe's killer, or in league with Abe's killer, but she didn't want to ruin herself in the process.

The next shift, Sa.s.sinak had her first IFTL message to process. Muttering her way through the protocol, she logged it, stripped the outer codes, and got it into the captain's eyes-only file without help. Cavery nodded. "Good job - you're doing well at that."

"Wonder what it's about."

"Ours not to know - they say your eyes turn to purple jelly and your brain rots if you peek at those things."

Sa.s.sinak chuckled; Cavery had turned out to have quite a sense of humor. "I thought ensigns didn't have brains, just vast pools of prediluvian slime - isn't that what I heard you tell Pickett, yesterday?"

"Comes from trying to decode IFTL messages, that's what I just said. Keep your mind, such as it is, on your work. You can't afford to lose more." His grin took all the sting out of it, and Sa.s.sinak went on logging in routine communications for the rest of the shift.

That night Fargeon announced in the wardroom that they were to intercept an EEC craft and pick up reports for forwarding. He spent a long time droning on about the delicate handling necessary to rendezvous in deep s.p.a.ce, and Sa.s.sinak let her attention wander. Not so far as some, though, for Fargeon's rebuke fell on a Jig from Engineering, who had been doodling idly on her napkin. For some reason, Fargeon chose to interpret this as carelessness with cla.s.sified information, and by the time he'd finished reaming her out, everyone in the room felt edgy. Of course deep-s.p.a.ce rendezvous were tricky, everyone knew that, and of course the EEC pilot couldn't be depended on to arrive at a precise location, as the cruiser would do, but this was no different from any other time, surely. If the EEC ship fouled up badly enough, and they all made a fireworks display that wouldn't be seen anywhere for fifty years or so, too bad.

Since everyone came out of dinner disgruntled, Sa.s.sinak didn't pay much attention to her own mood. But the next morning she found that Lieutenant Achael had the bridge: Fargeon, Da.s.s, and Lieutenant Commander Slachek were, he said, in conference. Sa.s.sinak glanced around the bridge, and ducked into the communications cubby. It was empty. A scrawled note on the console said that Perry had gone to sickbay: Achael had cleared it. Sa.s.sinak frowned, wondering if that's why Cavery was late - perhaps he'd gone with Perry to sickbay. But communications hadn't been uncovered long; the incoming telltales showed nothing in the queue in any system. Odd - they'd been getting regular bursts last shift, relayed position checks on the EEC ship. Sa.s.sinak pulled up the last entries in the incoming file, to check the log-in times - if they hadn't had anything coming in for awhile, it might mean trouble with the systems.

She was so intent on the idea of a systems failure that she almost didn't recognize her own initiation code when it flashed on the screen. What? Her nose wrinkled in concentration. She'd just gotten there, and yet her code was time-linked to a file query five minutes before. It couldn't be - unless someone had entered her code by mistake ... or for some other reason.

"Hey - sorry I'm late." Cavery slid into his seat, took a look at the display, and recoiled. "I thought I told you not to go poking around in the incoming message files."

"You did. I didn't. Somebody used my code."

"What!" After that first explosive word, his voice lowered. "Don't say that, Sa.s.sinak. Probably every comm posting in the universe has snooped one time or another, but lying doesn't make it better."

"I'm not lying." Sa.s.sinak laid her hand over his on the console. "Listen to me. I wasn't here at the time that was logged; I came in right on time, not early as usual. Someone logged my code five minutes before I was here."

"What'd Perry say?"

"He's in sickbay. n.o.body was here when I got here, just a note - " She handed it over. Cavery frowned.

"Hardcopy, not on the computer. That's odd. Who's got duty - ?" He craned to see around the angle, and snorted. "Oh, great. Achael. Where's Fargeon?'

"In conference, Achael said. But Cavery, the thing is - "

"The thing is, your code's on there, telling the whole world you were snooping in the IFTL files, and if you say you're not either you're a liar, which is one problem, or someone else is, which is another. d.a.m.n! All we needed, with the captain the way he is right now, is a Security glitch."

"But I didn't - "

Cavery looked at her, hard, then his mouth relaxed. "No, I don't think you would. But with your code on the file, and - what the d.i.c.kens is that?" He pointed to the realtime display, which was filling with the outgoing batch message for SOLEC transmission. "I don't suppose you put your code on that one either?"

Sa.s.sinak looked and saw the other anomaly that Cavery had missed. "Or that quad code for the Inspector General's office, either - it's the same thing we had before, only outgoing, and using my code as originator."

"That one, I will strip." Cavery froze the display, keyed in the ranking codes, and displayed the message itself, along with its initiating and destination sequences, Sa.s.sinak noticed that he was copying all this into another file, sealed with his own code. He sat back, clearly baffled by the message.

"Subject unaware; no suspicious activity. a.s.signment coincidental. Will continue observation."

Cavery looked over at her, brows raised. "Well, Ensign, are you keeping someone under surveillance, or is someone keeping you under surveillance?"

"I - don't know." Achael, she thought. It has to be Achael, but why? And who's behind it?

"Well, I know one thing, and that's where all this is going: straight to the captain."

"But - " Sa.s.sinak stopped herself; if she protested, he'd have reason to think she knew more. Yet she wasn't near ready to accuse Achael of involvement with Abe's death . . . how could she? No matter how it came out, she'd lose: ensigns don't get anywhere accusing lieutenants of murder months back and somewhere else.

Cavery waited, his expression clearly daring her to object.

"I know," she said finally, "that Captain Fargeon has to be informed. But he's not on the bridge, and I don't . . . really . . . want to involve any more officers than necessary."

"I remember whose number was on those quad-coded messages. Ensign Sa.s.sinak - " Cavery nodded toward the main bridge area. "You needn't try to be obscure."

"Sorry, sir. I wasn't trying to be obscure, I was just - " She paused, as near waving her hands in confusion as she'd ever been. Then inspiration hit. She saw by Cavery's expression that her own had changed with her idea. "Sir, if all this ties together, right now is a bad time to go charging out of here to the captain, isn't it? And if it doesn't, it would still . . . confuse things, wouldn't it?"

Cavery leaned back fractionally, considering. "You have a point." He sighed, and cleared the display. "I can't see that it would hurt to wait until midwatch break, anyway, and maybe later. Depends on the captain's schedule."

Sa.s.sinak said nothing more, but settled to her work. Thank whatever G.o.ds there were she hadn't meddled with the Personnel files or the message banks: Achael didn't know she suspected anything. a.s.signment coincidence? What else could it be, when she had no powerful family to pull strings for her ... or had that been Abe's secret, perhaps? More than ever, she needed to see Achael's file, but how was she going to do that?

The shattering clamor of the emergency alarm brought her upright. Fast as she was, Cavery's hand almost covered hers as they shut the console down for normal use and flicked on the emergency systems. After the first blast of noise, the siren warbled up, down, up twice: evacuation drill.

"Stupidest d.a.m.n drill in the book," grumbled Cavery as he fished under the console for the emergency masks. "Here - put this on. n.o.body ever evacuates a cruiser; as long as it takes to get everyone in the shuttles and evac pods, whatever it is will have blown the whole place up. Now remember. Ensign, you close the board when you leave, and that's not until the duty officer clears the bridge." His voice was m.u.f.fled, now, through the foil and plex hood and mask. Sa.s.sinak found that hers cut off all vision to the side and rear. As she fastened the tabs to the shoulders of her uniform, Cavery grunted. "Ah, good: Fargeon's taken the bridge. Soon as this d.a.m.n drill's over, we can get this other taken care of - " His voice sharpened. "Yes, sir; communications secured, sir."

Although Cavery's acid comments implied that pirates could have boarded the ship and flown it to the far side of the galaxy before their turn came, Sa.s.sinak thought it wasn't long at all before she was jogging forward along the main portside corridor from the bridge to the transport bays where the shuttles and evac pods were docked. A stream of hooded figures jogged her way, and another jogged back; once you were logged into your a.s.signed evacuation slot, you had to return to your duty post. It did seem illogical. She looked again at the strip of plastic giving her a.s.signed pod: E-40-A. Here, along a side corridor, through a narrow pa.s.sage she'd never explored. Bay E: someone in full EVA gear glanced at her a.s.signment strip and waved her to the right; section 40 was the last one at the end. Someone else, also suited up, pointed out Pod A, one of a row of hatches still dogged shut. Sa.s.sinak struggled with the hatch lock, checked to see that the telltales were all green, and pulled the heavy lid open. Inside the little brightly lit compartment, she could see the shape of an acceleration couch, shiny fittings, a bank of switches and lights.

She ducked her head to clear the hatch opening. Suddenly a sharp pain jabbed her arm, and when she tried to turn it felt like the weight of the whole cruiser landed on her head. She could do nothing but fall forward into darkness.

Commander Fargeon in a rage was no pleasant sight. His officers, ranged around his desk at attention, had no doubt of his mood. "What I want to know," he said icily, "is who dumped that pod. Who sent it out there, and what's that ensign doing in it, and why isn't the beacon functioning, and what's all this nonsense about communications security leaks."

Eyes slid sideways; no one volunteered. Fargeon barked, "Cavery!"

"Sir, Ensign Sa.s.sinak had reported an incident of duplicate transmissions with unusual initiation codes - "

"I know about that. That's got nothing to do with this, has it?"

Cavery wasn't sure how far to go, yet. "I don't know, sir: I was just starting at the beginning." He took a breath, waited for Fargeon's nod, and went on. "Today she reported that someone had used her initiation code to attempt access to a restricted file - "

"Ensign Sa.s.sinak? When?"

"Apparently it happened about five minutes before she came on duty. She reported it to me when I arrived - " Cavery went on to explain what had happened up until the drill alarm went. Fargeon listened without further comment, his face expressionless. Then he turned to another officer.

"Well, Captain Palise: what did you see in E-bay."

"Sir, we logged Ensign Sa.s.sinak into E-bay at 1826.40; she logged off the bridge on evac at 1824.10, and that's just time to go directly to E-bay. As you know, sir, in an evac drill we have personnel constantly shifting about; once someone's logged into the bay, there's no way to keep watch on them until they're into their a.s.signed shuttle or pod. When the hatches are dogged, then they're logged as...o...b..ard evac craft, and they're supposed to return to duty as quickly as possible. Within two minutes of Ensign Sa.s.sinak's bay log-in, we show fifty-three individuals logging into the same bay - about what you'd expect. Eight of them were in the wrong bay - and that's about average, too. We had two recording officers in E-bay, but they didn't notice anything until Pod 40-A fired."

"Very well. Captain Palise. Now, Engineering - "

"The pod was live, sir, as they always are for drill. We can't be shutting down the whole system just because somebody might make a mistake - "

"I know that." It had been Fargeon's own policy, in fact, and the Engineering Section had warned more than once that having evac drills with live pods and shuttles while in FTL travel was just asking for trouble. Fargeon glared at his senior engineer, and Erling glared back. Everyone knew that Erling had taken to Sa.s.sinak in her first a.s.signment. Whatever had happened, Erling was going to pick Sa.s.sinak's side, if he knew which it was.

"Well, sir, activation would be the same as always. If the hatch is properly dogged, inside and out, and the sequence keyed in - "

"From inside?"

"Either. The shuttles have to be operated from inside, but the whole reason behind the pods was safe evacuation of wounded or disabled individuals. Someone in the bay can close it up and send it off just as easy as the occupant."

"I don't think we need to worry about that," said Fargeon repressively. "My interest now is in determining if Ensign Sa.s.sinak hit the wrong b.u.t.ton out of stupidity, or did she intend to desert the ship?"

Into the silence that followed this remark. Lieutenant Achael's words fell with the precision of an artisan's hammer.

"Perhaps I can shed some light on that, sir. But I would prefer to do so in private."

"On the contrary. You will tell me now."

"Sir, it is a matter of some delicacy ..."

"It is a matter of some urgency. Lieutenant, and I expect a complete report at once."

Achael bowed slightly, a thin smile tightening his lips. "Sir, as you know I have a cousin in the Inspector General's office. As weapons officer, I have particular interest in cla.s.sified doc.u.ment control, and when that directive came out two months ago, I decided to set up such a test on this ship. You remember that you gave your permission - ?" He waited for Commander Fargeon's nod before going on. "Well, I had three hard copies of apparently cla.s.sified doc.u.mentation on the new Witherspoon ship-to-ship beam, and - as the directive suggested - I made an opportunity to let all the newly a.s.signed officers know that they existed and where they were."

"Get to the point. Lieutenant."

"The point, sir, is that one of them disappeared, then reappeared one shift later. I determined that three of the ensigns, and two Jigs, had the opportunity to take the copy. I handled the copy with tongs, and put it in the protective sleeve the directive had included, for examination later at a forensic lab. And I reported this, in code, to my cousin, in case anything - ah - happened to me."

"And you have reason to believe that Ensign Sa.s.sinak was the person who took the doc.u.ment?"

"She had the opportunity, along with several others. Forensic examination should show whether she handled it. Or rather, it would have."

"Would have?"

"Yes, sir. The doc.u.ment in question, in its protective sleeve, is missing from my personal safe. We have not only a missing pod, and a missing ensign, but a missing doc.u.ment which might have identified someone who had broken security regulations. And a non-functioning beacon on the pod. I scarcely think this can be coincidence."

"Not Sa.s.sinak!" That was Cavery, furious suddenly. He had had his doubts, but not after the pod ejected. If Sa.s.sinak had wanted to escape, she wouldn't have called herself to his attention that very morning.

"As for the outgoing message with her initiation code, I believe she may have been reporting to whomever she - er - worked with."

"The destination code was in the IG's office," said Cavery. "The same code as your incoming message."

"You're sure? Of course, she might have done that to incriminate me - "

"NO!" Erling and Cavery shouted it together.

"Gentlemen." Fargeon's voice was icy, his expression forbidding. "This is a matter too serious for personalities. Ensign Sa.s.sinak may have been ejected accidentally. Or, despite her high ratings in the Academy, she may have been less than loyal. There is her background to consider. Of course. Lieutenant Achael, it's one you share."

Achael stiffened. "Sir, I was a prisoner. She was a slave. The difference - "

"Is immaterial. She didn't volunteer for slavery, I'm sure. However, her captors would have had ample time to implant deep conditioning - not really her responsibility. At any rate. Lieutenant, your information only adds to the urgency and confusion of this situation." He took a long breath, but before he could begin the long speech they all knew was coming, Makin, the Weft Jig, spoke up.

"Begging the captain's pardon, but what about retrieval?"

Fargeon became even stiffer, if possible. "Retrieval? Mr. Makin, the pod was ejected during FTL flight, and we are en route to a scheduled rendezvous with an EEC vessel. Either of those conditions alone would make retrieval impossible - "

"Sir, not impossible. Difficult, but - "

"Impossible. The pod was ejected into a probability flux - recall your elementary physics cla.s.s, Mr. Makin - and would have dropped into sublight velocity at a location describable in cubic light-minutes. With a vector of motion impossible to calculate. Now if the beacon had functioned - which Engineering a.s.sures me it did not - we would be getting some sort of distorted signal from it. We might spend the next few weeks tracking it down, if we didn't have this rendezvous to make. But we have no beacon to trace, and we have a rendezvous to make. My question now is what report to make to Fleet Headquarters, and what we should recommend be done about that ensign."

When Fargeon dismissed them, he announced no decision; outside his office, the buzzing conversations began.

"I don't care what that sneak says." Cavery was beyond caution. "I will not believe Sa.s.sinak took anything - so much as a leftover m.u.f.fin - and if she did she'd be standing here saying so."

"I don't know, Cavery." Bullis, of Admin, might not have cared: he argued for the sheer joy of it. "She was intelligent and hardworking, I'll grant you that, but too sharp for her own good. If you follow me."

"Not into that, I won't. I - " He paused, and looked around at Makin, the Weft Jig, who had tapped his arm.

"If I could speak to you a moment, sir?"

Cavery looked at Bullis and shrugged, then followed Makin down the corridor. "Well?"

"Sir, is there any way to convince the captain that we can locate that pod, even without a beacon on it?"

"You can? Who? And how?"

"We can because Ensign Sa.s.sinak is on it - Wefts, I mean, sir. With Ssli help."

Cavery c.o.c.ked his head. "Ssli help? Wait a minute - you mean the Ssli could locate that little pod, even in normal s.p.a.ce, while we're - "

"Together, we could, sir." Cavery had the feeling that the Weft meant something more than he'd said, but excitement overrode his curiosity for the moment.

"But I don't know what I can do about the captain," he murmured, lowering his voice as Achael strolled nearer. "I'm not going to get anywhere arguing."