Hawks checked a couple. "Seem to be," he agreed.

"But they are not tied in to the station computers," the pilot noted. "Instead, they are tied in to the medical and analytical circuitry. To me, yes, but not directly. They are data read only."

"Now, yes," she agreed. "But it's not what they were designed for. I suspect that much work is going on to learn how to connect these directly once again.

The next modification." She felt along the connector. "I wonder if all ships, even the huge ones, use the same plug interface as a standard."

"I do not know, but every one I do know about is the same, and the design on interplanetary vessels has never altered in my existence."

"Good. We have come a long way already, but there is much yet to do. In addition to avoiding detection, we have only the time of this voyage to solve how to gain admittance to the big ships and avoid Master System. When will we arrive at the fleet?"

"Sixty-one days."

The ship was relatively crowded, but they got used to it, the common threat and impending action minimizing tensions. Reba Koll, Manka Warlock, and China remained mostly on the bridge, as the big chairs were fine for sleeping. They were working out the potential problems of getting into a universe ship and taking it, and what they would do with it if they could take it, and other logistical problems that experienced spacers and computer people would understand best.

Hawks sat in the passenger cabin and watched Raven light half a cigar. "Some day you'll have to tell me how you do that," he commented.

"Huh?" the Crow responded. "What?"

"How you come up with an inexhaustible supply of cigars, even out here on a ship like this, and how they always seems to be half smoked."

Raven chuckled. "Well, I'll tell you half of it. The internal ship's system includes an energy-to-matter synthesizer. That's what makes the meals we eat, among other things, but it can duplicate anything you tell it to. All I needed was one cigar."

"You like telling half of things, don't you?"

"What do you mean 'by that crack?"

"Well, isn't it just a wonderful coincidence that we just lucked out having a computer genius aboard with the schematics for this ship? And isn't it just amazing that this ship is not only a willing and eager rebel but just happens, by the merest of coincidences, to be programmed with all the information we need for the getaway?"

Raven shrugged. "Okay, it was a setup. You might have guessed that from the start. That China girl wasn't in the original plans, but considering I had Melchior's population to choose from, we knew we'd get somebody who could handle it. Frankly, I'm uneasy with her for the long haul, but she was the easiest to snatch and definitely the smartest, and she had intimate knowledge of this ship, considering she'd taken it once before. The same goes for Koll. Experienced deep spacer, former captain, knows the underground and the interstellar ropes. She also has other, ah, qualities that she don't know that I know, which are vital.

Chen had it pretty well worked out. I had to improvise, I admit, but it came off-so far. That doesn't mean it'll work all the way. Nobody's ever done what we're about to try."

"And we still work for Chen in the end."

"Hey, Chief! Easy! I don't work for him, and neither do you. I meant what I said, and if you think it through, you'll see that we couldn't have done this even this far without him. We use him, he uses us, until we get the rings. Then all bets are off with him."

"You really believe that a mind devious enough to get us this far will let us double-cross him? That he hasn't planned for that?"

"Sure he has. That's part of my job in the time ahead. I got to find the human bomb and somehow defuse it. You figure-only you and me, pal, didn't get treated in that Institute. Only us two. Everybody else here got put through the mill, in private. Manka, Koll, your wives, and China and her girl friends-all put through. Somewhere there, buried so deep we won't find it with a mindprinter, is our bomb. Our betrayer. Maybe two. I'm not even completely exempting you-or me.

You can be made to forget a session, and records are made to be faked. It's a long way off. It doesn't bother me now."

Hawks frowned. "I'd think it would. Why not all of us?"

"No, too risky. He don't want robot people out there. The thing is, we have to have all four outstanding rings before it's even a problem. If we lose one, we sure as hell ain't gonna go after the rest until we get it back. There's plenty of time. I'll still believe we even get away when we get away."

Hawks stared at him. "You have reasons for the others, but why me? Why did Chen so specifically want me? I'm not a warrior, not a computer expert, not a spy or a thief or a spaceship captain. I'm a historian. Why me?"

Raven sat back and blew a smoke ring. "It's for something you know. Something you know that maybe nobody else does."

"Me? What? I am a historian relating information on ancient and irrelevant cultures."

"Chief-in what part of the world did Master System come to be?"

"Uh-why, North America. Over eight hundred years ago."

"Uh huh. And who's probably the foremost expert on that period and culture around today?"

"Well, I might be one, but there are many, and most of my interests are even earlier."

"Still, somewhere in your head is how the rings work, and how to make them work, and where to use them. I'd bet on it. Chen's betting on it. Something you know that you don't even know you know. Something that'll have to be put together when you have all the evidence, all the rings, before you. Some time out, if we manage any of this at all, will be your turn. Some time out, if and when the rings are brought together, you'll be center stage, the man who knows. Don't fret about it, but bet on it. Old Chen always plays the best odds."

"They are crude, but I have the splices in and the jumpers installed," Manka Warlock said. The whole forward area of the bridge was a wreck, a mass of disassembled panels and disconnected devices out of which snaked a thick coiled cable leading to a mindprinterlike helmet. "I believe we are ready to try."

China sat in the captain's chair and licked her lips nervously. "Put the thing on my head and energize, then. Let's see if it works."

"Applying circuit power," the voice of the pilot told them. "Two-way flow is established, although I cannot guarantee how long those splices will stand up.

It is as ready as it can be."

China took the helmet and put it on, then sat back in the chair relaxed, although her hands twitched nervously. "Activate interface," she said dryly.

There was an explosion inside her head, and suddenly she was growing, expanding, filling out, running along wondrous circuits and feeling a new, greater body.

More than that, she could see, although not as mere humans saw. Every detail as fine and as microscopic as she wished it to be, across a spectrum that included colors the human eye could never detect or the unaugmented brain comprehend.

She was the ship, a small universe, and everything it contained. There remained only one part reserved, one part that was the key part, for that was the power, the control, of this universe. It was a blinding ball of light, infinite quadrillions of electrical relationships changing too fast to comprehend. At first it shied away from her, resisted her tentative approach, then it suddenly seemed to decide and rushed toward her own core and enfolded her in its warmth and majesty.

In an instant, there was, for now, no China Nightingale, no Star Eagle-there was only One, greater than its parts, and that One was The Ship. All that she ever was, all that she ever knew or thought or felt, was integrated into the whole.

What was created was beyond the experience of human or machine and incomprehensible to any of those within the ship, yet it contained a human, and because it contained a human, it knew the need for an effective communications shell.

It was shocking how slow the human mind was, how limited in its data storage and how illogical and inefficient in its data retrieval, how subject to biochemical-based emotions and how subject to sensations-pain and pleasure, love and hate, honor and betrayal. Yet, too, these were exhilarating things, unique factors producing a strange and exotic new way of perceiving the world and the universe.

Problems, once stated, could take endless time to run through, yet by the clock so little time elapsed that no one on the bridge had taken a single step or fully blinked an eye. The pilot gained a new perspective, a new subjectivity; the girl acquired a newer, faster, more efficient added brain.

The potential codings used by Master System for the universe ships' defense came to more than fourteen quadrillion to the fortieth power; it took almost nine seconds to come up with the proper algorithms that, matched with the potential send speed of the ship-to-ship communications devices, would cover better than ninety-seven percent of all possibilities. They were complementary: She could formulate and state the problem; it could then solve it.

She still was humbled, knowing that she was less than nothing.

The pilot was humbled, knowing now what it had always been denied and might always be denied.

But it was the computer part that mandated the severing of the connection after a matter of hours. The core commanded it, for no human and no pilot could ever sever that connection voluntarily once it had been made. They were separated, and she felt herself drawn, much against her will, back to a tiny figure seemingly asleep in the captain's chair. Her consciousness, her ego, was read back in, along with all of that unified experience that her mind could handle, to be sorted, reclassified, reinterpreted, and reprocessed.

She came to with a mixture of wonder and despair inside her. She felt terribly humble, insignificant, a worm in a universe led by a giant she could know so intimately only for brief intervals. She loved-she worshiped-that blinding light. Moreover, Star Eagle loved her as his link to humanity, his taste of his ultimate Creator. What she had, it could never know any way but vicariously, and it envied her that and craved more. He could live through her; she could touch and tap the power only through him. In many ways it was the perfect marriage.

"Look at them! Floating cities, each one!" Hawks could hardly contain himself as they watched the fleet come into view on the long-range viewer.

"I think they are ugly, fat tumors," Cloud Dancer commented.

"You have no appreciation of scale," her husband noted dryly. "Each of those ships is farther than from the Four Families' lodge to the village of the Willamatuk. They do not need outside beauty. They are wonders of creation."

"Still, you got to admit, they look like long black sausages with lots of warts," Raven put in, chewing on a cigar. "I hope they're more comfortable inside. They didn't ship out all those folks in luxury."

"Fully one-third is the engines alone," Manka Warlock noted, sounding a bit awed for the first time in her life. "The center is a cargo bay so large that even this ship would be dwarfed, a flyspeck so tiny we could hardly see it at this distance. I must admit, to steal something of this magnitude will make history."

"We are being challenged," came the voice of Star Eagle. The voice was far different from what it had been in the beginning-expressive, emotive, and very human. It was, in fact, China's voice exactly a half octave down. When she was united in the captain's interface with him, the voice became totally hers.

"Thirty-six fighters have been activated ahead of us and to our flanks. They will be up to launch power in under a minute."

"Send them the damned algorithms!" Warlock snapped.

"I'm sending, I'm sending! It will take almost sixteen minutes to send them all the maximum transmission rate." He paused. "First set of fighters is launched."

"How long until they're within range of us?" Raven asked nervously.

"Fourteen minutes."

Raven didn't need to be a mathematical genius on that one. "Uh, oh! Strap in, everyone! All of you! Strap in and brace yourselves! Activate ground takeoff restraint systems as soon as possible!"

Between the bridge, the passenger cabin chairs, the command chair amidships, and the bed in Sabatini's quarters, there were enough spaces to go around. Not, of course, counting Sabatini, who, locked in one of the big cages, would simply have to rough it.

'They look like bird sketches," Cloud Dancer said, eyes still on the screen as she strapped herself in. The fighters, the first of which were now launched and coming at them, were so small, they had been invisible with the overview shot, but now Star Eagle focused only on them.

They were like great, stiff birds with wings curved down at the tips so that they ended below the main body, forming a stylized V of black and silver, a tiny but deadly body suspended between. Totally automated and run by Battle Control on the mother ship, they did not need to take any precautions to protect fragile humans inside.

Star Eagle didn't have that luxury. "I estimate three hits on the first pass, first wave," he told them.

"On them or us?" Raven asked.

"On us, of course. I will probably not be able to take out more than four of the first wave. The second wave should disable at least one of my turrets."

"Find the damned code!" the Crow shouted.

"Deactivating artificial gravity. Battle mode," the pilot responded. "Uh, oh.

More trouble. My sensors show a force consisting of one armed freighter, Assim Class, and four detached and fully operational and interfaced fighters, class and origin unknown. They are activating their weapons systems and closing rapidly. Estimated to be in range in twelve point four minutes."

"Who the hell is that?" Hawks shouted to Raven. "Master System?"

"Uh, uh. Old M-S is what's ahead. Nagy. It's got to be Nagy. That son of a bitch is chasing us from the other side. Why? Sheer professional pride? Or does he think we can do it?"

"Who's this Nagy?" Cloud Dancer asked.

"Security chief on Melchior. They want us bad, Chief. If we can't figure a way around him, better hope those fighters ahead get us first!"

Forward on the bridge, China released her restraints after some fumbling and with difficulty found the helmet, then sat back, refastened the belts as best she could, and put on the interface. "Star Eagle-activate the interface, I beg you!"

At the pilot's request, she had not connected up at the start of the battle. She had no fighting experience, and the resources used to support the interface might well be needed to divert instantly to vital areas. The pilot, however, was above all else a computer, and it could count. Even if it hit the safe code for the universe ships, it was no match for the four battle cruisers closing on it.

In fact, the pilot had no real experience against a shooting enemy, either; it had only simulations "to go by. Such a need had not been contemplated by its programmers for just such a reason as they now faced: The ship was hopelessly outmatched in any fight against anything that might attack it.

Merged and in control, though, the China-Star Eagle combination went to work on the problem while continuing to send the stream of codes inward toward Jupiter.

Curiously, it was China's memories of her humiliation at the hands of Sabatini that motivated her most of all. They- the whole ship-were in the hands of onrushing Sabatinis with about the same relative strength as he had over her.

Star Eagle was at the core a creature of logic; it might surrender or die, choosing one over the other on the basis of the facts and the odds, but it would not contemplate anything in between.

The erstwhile Song Ching was, at her core, not a creature of logic at all but one of emotion and strong will. This tendency dominated in an unprecedented situation like this. She was in control.

The four Melchior battle cruisers were closing fast, and time was running out.

They were leveling off for their attack run and spreading their formation. Star Eagle's sensors showed life forms aboard each, and in spite of the fact that both pilot and woman had only recently discovered this sort of interface, clearly Melchior was far ahead of them. Still, how much practice could those pilot-fighters have had?

Carefully she shifted course and speed so that the computer-controlled fighters behind would be forced to line up horizontally and re-form along the proper angle. The escapees were four minutes from being in range of the Melchior ships, four minutes and forty seconds to first in-range contact with the defense system of the mothball fleet. Once locked on, neither side would be fooled for more than a second or so by crazy course changes. All the attack angles showed that any evasive maneuvers would wind up just as bad. The odds on finding the correct code for the fleet attackers were now split evenly into thirds-they would find it in time, they would find it too late, or their entire supposition on the mathematical algorithms was wrong and they didn't have the codes. That put any odds of survival at thirty-three percent or less. The China aspect of the pilot proceeded to ignore those odds. The computers in all the attacking ships were also figuring that out and expecting a logical response.

To the demons of darkness I give logic!

The ship accelerated at maximum thrust right into the attacking fleet fighters.

Startled, the Melchior ships sped up to keep to their overtake position. They closed rapidly, but not as rapidly as their quarry was closing on the fleet fighters.

Suddenly all power was shut down, but only for a moment. Then full reverse thrusters were applied. The people inside the ship were twisted and contorted against their restraints, and loose objects began shooting through the air and off the walls. Hull plates groaned, and cargo fasteners were torn free in the cargo compartments. There had been, in fact, a sixty percent chance that such a sudden and dramatic move would cause the ship to break apart, but forty percent was better than thirty-three percent any time.

The four Melchior fighters shot right past them in the act of slowing themselves and ran straight into the first wave of fleet fighters.

The reverse thruster tubes on the ship were almost white hot, and the lining that protected them was beginning to give way under the intense heat. It was nothing, however, compared to the attack the four Melchior fighters were facing from the fleet defenses. Attacking automatically, the fleet fighters swooped and dived and fired with deadly accuracy in and out and all around the Melchior ships, ignoring the larger ship that had been their first challenger. They could always take care of that later.

Even as the last of the Melchior ships was being blown to atoms, there came a weak but steady acknowledgment code from the fleet itself to the ship, which cut all reverse thrust and forward-thrusted to stabilize. As the reverse thrusters cut, there was a groan and a set of horrible clanging sounds throughout the forward area of the ship. The thrusters would be useless now.

The ship applied light forward thrust, then cut and began moving back toward the fleet, but the fighters did not challenge it. They were already returning to their respective ships.

In the chairs, men and women groaned, bruised and battered but otherwise all right. The ship checked on them, then focused on Reba Koll.

"We have eliminated the rear enemy and gotten the code to proceed in to the fleet, Captain Koll," China's voice informed her. Of all the people aboard, Koll was the one with the experience who should have merged and been at the helm, a fact neither China nor Star Eagle had really found appetizing but one they hadn't been able to deny. Curiously, Koll had adamantly refused, although she would not explain it. Now, however, she was more than willing to give advice.

"In the process, however, we burned out the rear thrusters completely. We are proceeding in on course and schedule, but we have no way of stopping the ship."

Koll thought about the problem. "Are you in contact with that big mother?"

"Establishing now. We have explained that we were ordered to do this by Master System for a special project. It is torn between being puzzled at our inability to immediately transmit the correct code and its desire to be reactivated. We think it wants to trust us, and we will come up with something convincing to cover ourselves. Why?"

"Those babies were never designed to land. They were built in space, and that's where they always will be. They should operate much like major interstellar traders, I bet. That means tractor beams to manipulate and reorder cargo. Tell it you were damaged in the fight, explain the problem, and request it hook you with beams. It'll be a real bump, but how much worse can it be than what we just went through?"

"We have informed it of the problem. It is reactivating and reawakening its systems now. It will be several hours before we reach the contact point at this speed, and we dare not increase speed and hope for a tractor catch. We suggest that everyone now move about, tend to wounds and damage as best they can, and we will notify them when to brace. The medical robot has been dispatched to the passenger cabin in case it is needed."

The core disengaged China from Star Eagle. It was as close to a voluntary separation as could be attained, one based on sheer force of logic. Shifts for human interfacers were strictly limited; if she hoped to interface again at the critical point, she could not remain there now.