CHU LI HAD EXPERIENCED ONE BIG SCARE ON THE way to the spaceship.

Just before boarding, they were all required to clear security by placing both hands on a plate and looking through a binocularlike eyepiece. He had been sure that the other three would leave without him once the machine, which was definitely linked to Master System, identified him not as Chu Li but as Song Ching.

But the machine had not. Incredibly, it positively matched eye- and fingerprints with Chu Li and showed a picture of the disguised Song Ching on the security monitor. The success at the checkpoint was as startling and disturbing as failure would have been. He knew that the system was hardly infallible, but nobody could fool Master System to this degree. It was unthinkable. The only explanation possible was that the gods themselves had intervened.

Captain Sabatini was correct that the ship was not intended to take off from the ground except in emergencies; it was impossible to imagine how it had ever landed there. The passenger cabin was boarded by going sideways through an open air lock, then into a room that contained twelve huge, plush chairs with oversized backs in three rows of four each. The ship was not completely vertical but at a forty-five-degree angle that was certainly as unmanageable. A network of planks was laid inside so that people could enter.

Chu Li was carried in by a very large guard who looked like a retired wrestler, then placed in one of the far chairs in the front row. He sank so deeply into the chair that he feared being smothered, and the network of belts and webbing that strapped him in made it impossible even to move.

Deng was carried in next, placed in the rear seat farthest from the door, and similarly fastened in. The two girls were placed in the front and rear seats nearest the air lock, but so restricting were the bonds that Chu Li could not turn to see which one was in his row.

Sabatini entered, managing the entire mess with acrobatic skill that made it look not only easy but normal. He went down-back-beyond the last row and vanished; they didn't know where and could not look to see.

The captain was in one of the two rooms that were in the rear of the compartment, seated in a chair that could be maneuvered electrically by controls at his fingers and was surrounded by screens and instrumentation. His own webbing would hold his body tight but allowed his arms total freedom. There were straps through which he could slip his hands for total security when necessary.

He put on a small, light headset that had a tiny microphone on a rigid loop in front of his mouth.

"Captain to pilot. Prepare to clear and close all outer doors. Internal systems on," he instructed calmly.

Up front there was the distant sound of warning sirens. As the planks were hastily withdrawn, the air locks-first the outer, then the inner-were closed and sealed automatically, and the passengers were left with only the light of the red signal above those doors and the very dim emergency lighting system to see by. Not, of course, that there was anything to see.

Then, with a whine, the lights came on full inside, restoring some sense of normalcy. There was a sound of air blowing in from all sides, and they felt their ears pop several times.

"Switch to passenger intercom, then prepare for launch," the captain ordered.

Then he changed his tone, and his voice blared from the overhead speakers.

"Good evening. I know you're uncomfortable, but this will last only a short while. We are now eleven minutes from launch, and it will take us about forty minutes to reach orbit and activate the gravity. We'll then have a little time to get comfortable for the long haul. There will be a second sustained engine firing from orbit, but that won't feel like very much in here, and all it will really require is that you sit down and keep a seat belt on. This is the rough part. You'll feel at first like some big hand is pushing you completely through the seat until you can't bear it anymore, and it'll sound and feel like the whole ship's shaking to pieces, but don't worry. That's normal. After a little bit, you'll suddenly find that pressing weight gone, and you'll feel like you don't weigh anything at all, which will be more or less true. There's a monitor hanging from the ceiling up front and center which will show a view from the stern. Enjoy it. This is the only planetary lift-off you're ever likely to experience."

He switched back to his business channel. The computer took readings on the prisoners and showed the results on a screen to his right, but he didn't pay attention. If their blood pressure didn't go through the roof, they'd be all right.

"Chu Li!" called the girl three seats to his right.

"Here. Is that you, Chow Dai?"

"Yes. Chu Li-I am frightened. I do not like this kind of flying ship."

He tried to reassure her. The fact was, he wasn't the least bit frightened of the ship or the takeoff. It was what would come after, on the days out there, that caused real fear.

"It is just a ship, in many ways like the ones that sail the rivers."

"I am far more worried by his saying that it was the only such experience we'll ever have," Deng Ho shouted from the back. "This will be just a lot of shaking and noise."

"It is the waiting!" Chow Mai added from her rear seat. "I wish they would just do whatever it is they will do!"

Suddenly the ship trembled, and they found themselves being raised so that their backs were down and their feet were forward. It was most uncomfortable. Then the lights and power switched briefly off, then on again, and there was a tremendous whine from somewhere deep inside the ship that grew in pitch and intensity. The whole world seemed suddenly to begin shuddering and shaking; there was vibration but no real sensation of moving. Chu Li's eyes went to the monitor, and with a start he saw the entire spaceport complex framed there, growing smaller by the second, until it was lost in a view of steppe and desert. Only then did the great invisible hand Sabatini had warned about really begin to come down on them.

The weight was crushing and terrible, and the two girls screamed. It lasted only a few minutes, but it seemed like hours. All four felt as if all the air was being squeezed out of them.

The pressure ceased so abruptly that the transition made them dizzy with relief.

They experienced no real discomfort except some popping ears, but when Chu Li again had the wits to look at the monitor, he saw nothing familiar there, only a vast expanse of blue and white. Within a few minutes there were browns and grays down there as well; it was almost as if they were looking at some model, some relief map of a strange place. Chu Li had expected something more dramatic, such as the world as a ball growing ever smaller, but this was just indistinct nothingness.

The ship shuddered a few times as it made small mid-course corrections, but these were brief and caused no real sensations at all, just a steady vibration throughout the ship and a low whine coming from somewhere in the rear.

At least they were sitting upright again, Chu Li thought with some relief.

Still, it had been somewhat of an anticlimax to him; he had expected lift-off to be longer and far more extreme.

Now there was a gentler sense of acceleration that slowly built but did not grow very far. A buzzer sounded in the rear, then Captain Sabatini was walking comfortably forward, still wearing the headset. He checked each of them in turn, finally reaching Chu Li.

"All right, we have only a short time to do this, so listen closely and do just what I tell you," he said loudly. "I'm going to release the restraints on you one at a time and put on more comfortable ones. I don't want anyone trying anything. With this headset I can control a good deal of what it's like in here, and I do it in a language none of you know, so don't think you can grab it and start shouting orders. It will go very hard with anyone who gives me any trouble at all."

He pressed something between Chu Li's legs, and the intolerable belts and webbing loosened, then were reeled into the seat. For a brief moment, Chu Li was free and unrestrained, but he knew this was not the time to try anything. They didn't know enough yet, and there were many aspects of this ship that didn't fit the model and schematics in his brain.

"Stand up," the captain ordered, and Chu Li did, feeling oddly light and slightly off balance. Sabatini gave a command in some very strange sounding tongue, and a small compartment in the wall opened. Removing what looked like a belt fastened to a thin but tough chain, he attached it around Chu Li's waist under his tunic. He repeated the procedure with each of the others in turn, then passed out some prewet towels to the two girls, both of whom had thrown up on takeoff.

Chu Li examined the restraint. The chain held him and would not slip either up or down more than a few centimeters, yet it was not tight or particularly uncomfortable. At the back was a small box that was both a lock and a piece of electronics which adjusted for comfort but also tightened in response to any attempt to move the chain too far. There was even enough give to pull out some chain and actually rotate the body loop, bringing the box around to the front, but it still could not be removed.

"All right, now, here's the situation," Sabatini said. "The restraint you each wear contains a length of chain sufficient for you to reach all the parts of the cabin you need to get to. It is smart and will automatically adjust in or out depending on where you want to go. The one thing you have to remember is that the chains will not allow themselves to be crossed. That avoids tangles but will take some getting used to. Any problems and I can have those chains drag you all the way to the wall and hold you there. You can't imagine how fast you can find yourself slammed against the wall. Right now, just bring out a little chain and bring the box forward, then sit down. We can't get comfortable yet.

"Now, I want to run through a few basics. You have gravity here, but it is only seventy percent of what you've been used to, so you're going to find maneuvering difficult at first. Just remember that if you weighed fifty kilos on Earth, you weigh only thirty-five here. You also fall at seventy percent the usual speed if you happen to trip. Questions?"

There were many, but none were asked.

"All right, then. If we all do our part to be nice, then those chains will be all that is needed. You'll get so used to them that in a day or two you won't even think about them. You'll sleep with them, eat with them, go to the bathroom with them. However, rest assured I have other restraints if you cause me troubles, many of which are neither smart nor comfortable. Later I'll have clean clothes for you, and I'll show you how to get rid of your body wastes and where and how showers are done here. For now, I want you to use the regular lap and shoulder belts on your seats and remain there. We have another boost coming up, although nothing like the last one, and then it'll be smooth as silk for the rest of the journey."

The second burst, when it came, was accompanied by the same noise and vibration as the takeoff, but the giant's hand was a pale shadow of its old self, nor did it seem so long.

Still, Chu Li worried. What sort of new clothing? Would his secret have to come out right away, before he'd had time to prepare the others? And, of equal concern, what sort of man would they send who could nursemaid four condemned prisoners for forty-one days in close quarters? So far he had been almost too nice and polite. They were, after all, not paying passengers, and this was no luxury cruise.

The passenger cabin, as Sabatini called it, was a marvel in itself. With a few commands in that strange tongue and the manipulation of some hidden controls, the chairs vanished deep into the floor and were replaced by large reclining leather seats that could go all the way down to become quite comfortable beds.

These chairs swiveled a full hundred and eighty degrees and were placed at equal distances around a polished laminated table. The rear of the cabin was empty, providing perhaps six by nine meters that could be used for walking or other exercise, and there were three doors in the back wall. From watching Sabatini's comings and goings, the passengers guessed that the center door led to the next area back in the ship, the right-hand door led to Sabatini's own private cabin, and the left-hand one opened on a room that seemed to be filled with complex electronic gear. A thick red line was painted on the floor about a meter in front of the doors, and past that the chain would not go.

Forward of the table and chairs there were also three doors. The center one, they were told, led forward to the next area and was doubly dangerous, since it opened onto an inner air lock and seal, and no areas forward now contained air.

A red circle on the floor in front of the door again proved to be the chain's limit. The door on the left, however, was the toilet, and that they could enter.

The other door led to a shower, or at least what Sabatini called a shower. There was a small outer area for putting down clothing, then what looked like a huge plastic tube with one side cut away. When one stood in the center of the tube, the open side closed, and one was almost engulfed by a tremendous stream of liquid. The shower had three cycles, which left the bather dry and very clean.

For the first two days out the boredom was broken only by occasional explanations from Sabatini. The new clothing-white, loose-fitting cotton pajamas-allowed Chu Li to maintain his fiction a while longer, although Deng Ho was beginning to look at him curiously. Chu Li knew that the time was coming when he could not avoid revealing his secret, but he could not bring himself to do it-not yet.

Sabatini was generally not in the passenger cabin, occupying himself elsewhere.

This gave them some initial breathing room and allowed for some expert examinations. Chu Li could find no routine visual monitoring devices in the cabin, though it appeared that Sabatini could watch them from either of his rooms through some special plates. The speakers were certainly two-way, but there were only two of them, and they were easily avoided. It was possible to have private conversations by having one pair talk loudly near the speakers while the other pair spoke in whispers.

"You have seen the place now. What do you think?" Chow Dai asked Chu Li in such a circumstance.

"This room is customized far beyond what this ship usually has," he told her.

"It is possible that it is used to carry important people as well as prisoners.

That might also explain the lack of monitors and recorders. Both of the rooms in back are also not standard. I particularly do not understand that room full of gear or that headset he wears. This ship is totally automatic, with a self-aware computer for a pilot. What could he be doing from that room? And what is forward? I do not know how far up we are in the ship, but if that middle door is an air lock, then it shows no indicators like the ones on the sides and no seals, either. There is air up there, at least for one more room. I know there is. Why? And where are the space suits? They should be in a compartment off this room, yet there seem to be no compartments except the small ones that manage these chain devices and the ones that deliver our food and drink on the little trays and dispose of the waste. Much of this does not make sense."

"The food is strange, too," she noted.

"It is foreign devil food, but it serves. This is not a Chinese ship. What about these chain things?"

"The box is easy to fool. Chow Mai and I have already found two ways to make it loosen up enough to slip the whole thing off. The doors have simple electrical locks. I know the combinations now from just observing the captain, but they are almost identical to the locks on the toilet and shower. We could break them if we had to."

"I thought you'd need some tools for that."

"We have them. He never missed the two we required when Chow Mai took them from his pack. The problem is his headset. It really can override-we have watched him-and the tongue is impossible."

He nodded. "I must know more about the ship. When he sleeps, you must show me how to slip this bond and help me enter that mystery room with all the electronics. We must know everything before we move,"

They were all supposed to sleep at the same time, but their chains were left free in case they needed to use the toilet. No matter how hard he tried, Chu Li could not manage the simple maneuver to fool the box, but Chow Dai slipped hers and then freed him. Chow Mai and Deng Ho remained in their beds, quietly on watch.

Chu Li would have liked to explore the rest of the ship, but whenever Sabatini had opened the rear door, a distant bell had sounded; until they could somehow mask that alarm, they couldn't risk it. In any case, the mystery room was their primary target.

Chow Dai did not want to chance using the combination. Instead, she skillfully bypassed the combination board and sprang the lock with two small and nearly silent pilfered electronic tools. When the door swung back, Chu Li kissed her and entered the room.

The place was an electronic wonderland situated around a single command chair.

Much of the equipment was unfamiliar, though he recognized some machines and could guess at the functions of others. There was a small mind-print machine and a large number of cartridges, which were numbered in the Arabic system rather than labeled. The machine itself was far too simple for psychosurgery; more than likely it was there so that Sabatini could instantly learn other languages he needed or be updated on ship changes and modifications. Monitors showed schematics of the ship at this level and probably could display other levels in response to the correct commands. One thing was certain: The areas of pressurization and atmosphere, which were outlined in blue, extended far aft as well as forward of the cabin they were in. The artificial gravity, however, appeared limited to the passenger compartment and a much larger compartment immediately behind it-almost certainly the live animal transport area of which the captain had spoken.

Unfortunately, too much of the information on the monitors and even the labels was useless, written again in that unknown script. Chu Li looked longingly at the mindprint machine and cartridges. Somewhere there was probably the language he needed, but which one? He certainly didn't have the time to learn them all.

Still, there was far more equipment here than any human companion on this ship would require, even more than would be needed for any conceivable human intervention. It was more like the kind of compartment required for someone to run the whole ship-but that was done by computer.

The only logical explanation struck him with the force of a blow. Song Ching's father had already known that there was a human override built into the ships.

Suppose Sabatini really was the captain? Suppose the computer pilot was not independent but his subordinate, subject to him? He remembered the complex helmets in the illegal tech cult's fortress laboratories. They had built them from scratch and had assumed that they would have to hardwire the connection.

Suppose that was what the omnipresent headset was really for? Sabatini was running his own ship!

He turned back toward the door only to see it suddenly shut with a speed and force he'd never before seen on a door. He tried to open it but could not. He was stuck in there!

"You just stay right there and don't touch a thing!" Sabatini's voice came over a small speaker in the console. "I will tend to you as soon as I have tended to your friends, and I will be far gentler to them if you just sit in the chair and relax until I come for you."

There was no malice in his tone, but Chu Li had no doubt that the captain would not hesitate to carry out his implied threat. There was nothing to do but sit and try to figure out as much additional information as he could from what he could see.

After an eternity, the door opened and the full cabin lights flooded the compartment. Sabatini, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, stood there with a small weapon in his hand. He had his small headset on as well. "All right-time to get out now," he said casually. "And I was beginning to wonder if this would be a boring trip. All right-out! Now!"

When Chu Li emerged, he found both the girls kneeling on the floor, their chains reattached, their hands bound behind their backs, and their ankles secured. Chow Dai gave him an expression that was filled with both hurt and apology. Deng Ho was still in his chair, strapped to it by hand and leg cuffs and unable to move.

Chu Li looked at the weapon in Sabatini's hand. It was a very small thing of red plastic with a gauge on its handle, a small button for a trigger, and a metallic point where the barrel ended.

"I've already demonstrated the stinger to your girl friends," the captain warned. "If you'd like one, I'll be happy to give it. This little line here shows the amount of power it'll put out in a room this size. Right now it's set for a debilitating shock. Halfway and it'll knock you out for a couple of minutes. All the way up and it might stop your heart."

"I believe you," Chu Li responded hollowly.

"All right, then-over here. Chain on. That's it. Now- hands behind your back.

Good." Chu Li felt pressure and found his hands held by very firm handcuffs that allowed no real give or play at all. "Now-on your knees." He did so, and two stiff leg cuffs were also locked into place. He faced the two girls on the opposite side of the open space.

Sabatini relaxed. "Now, I told you I could be mean if somebody tried to take advantage of me. I figured you might be pulling something, covering talks with other talks and whispering campaigns, and I knew from the records that the girls were experts at locks. When I sleep, I put the alarms on all these doors so they sound in my cabin. I just decided to see what you were up to."

Chu Li understood now how it worked. The captain switched on the alarm, and when it rang and awakened him, he had merely to grab his headset to find where the trouble was and who was causing it. He then simply commanded the door to shut, overriding the lock, then took the others with his weapon.

"All right-it was one slip," Sabatini said almost kindly. "If I was mean and nasty or even smart, I'd just leave you all like that for the next thirty-nine days but pull you all to the wall with the box behind your back like your hands and feed you like animals from trays. Or send you back to the animal cages, maybe. But that's only because this sort of stuff puts me in a real bad mood.

Now, if somebody got me in a better mood, I might actually forgive and forget."

He walked back over to his open cabin door, reached in, and brought out a rather nasty-looking straight knife. Then he muttered something into his headphone, and abruptly both women were jerked back to the wall and slammed against it. Since the chain emerged from a point in the bulkhead above their waists, it had the effect of suspending them slightly, leaning forward because of their bound hands, barely touching the floor with their toes.

Sabatini went over to Chow Dai. "You've got an ugly face," he told her, "but I'm curious about the rest of you." Using the knife, he cut away her pullover and her pants and flung them to one side, leaving her hanging there by the chain, naked. She did, in fact, have quite a nice body, but something made the captain stop and command the chain to come out a bit. He caught her and turned her around to face the wall.

Chu Li gasped, and Sabatini was almost equally appalled. Chow Dai's back was a mass of welts and scar tissue almost from the shoulders to the buttocks. "Holy- somebody really did a job on you, didn't they, beautiful?" he commented. He lifted her up, then put her back on the floor in the kneeling position. "You stay there. Let's see if your sister got the same treatment."

She had. If anything, Chow Mai's scars were worse. The evident brutality was so gross and unexpected that even Sabatini hadn't been prepared for it. He put the sister back down in the kneeling position on the floor as well.

"Well," the captain muttered. "Nothing about that in the record. Damn it, you girls wouldn't be any fun at all." He paused a moment. "But then, hope springs eternal, doesn't it? There's lots of things not in the official record." He turned and stalked back across the room. "Isn't that right, Mister Chu?"

Now it was Chu Li's turn to be suspended against the wall and slowly have the clothing cut away as the others watched. Everyone except the captain seemed shocked, surprised, and amazed at what was revealed. Song Ching, after all, had been genetically designed for perfection. Nor were there any marks on this body, not so much as a scar or blemish.

"Now, that's more like it," Sabatini proclaimed lustfully as he put Chu Li back down in the kneeling position.

Chow Dai's mouth seemed permanently open in amazement, all embarrassment from her own exposure pushed aside. "Chu Li-you are a girl! But-how is that possible?"

"I'd like to know that one myself," Sabatini put in. "My manifest says you're a boy, you've got a voice to match that, and you passed a Master System identity check as a male."

So here it was. He knew he could not be mystical; the Chow sisters would accept it, but Deng Ho-who could only stare in wonder, not a little lust on his face as well in spite of his bindings-and the captain would never buy it. He had worked out a story, though, that explained the facts even if he didn't know if it was really possible. He'd been refining it for days.

"It is none of my doing," he lied. "They-changed me. A surgeon and a psychochemist. But they never completed the job. They changed me from a boy to a girl, but you can tell from my voice, my ways, that they never changed me inside."

"The outside does just fine by me," Sabatini noted.

"But why would they do such a thing?" Chow Dai asked him.

"They were remaking me to replace somebody. Somebody important who was sent down for work but who had power enough to fake it. Song Ching, the daughter of the chief administrator. They had no other use for me, and they decided I was about her size. I had no choice. But they were fooled near the completion of their goal. Orders came from somewhere that I was to be sent here. They could not change the orders, and they could not give someone else my prints and patterns, so they had to send me."

"Rat-is that really you?" Deng Ho asked in wonder.

"Deep inside, my cousin. I am sorry. They fixed me so I would not know myself what had been done until the day I left, when it wore off."