Halley shook her head. Her perspiration matted hair slipped over her eyes and she pushed it out of the way. "They're sure to hear us this close to Glasgow. Maybe we should wait a few days and let the winds work."

Sands nodded. Since Saturn was not solid, different parts rotated at different speeds. Wind speeds in the Equatorial Zone approached 1800 kilometers per hour, compared to a mere 600 kph in the North Temperate Belt. Every day they rode the winds, they put 36,000 additional kilometers between themselves and the Alliance. The only question was whether they could afford to wait.

"Why not call Titan and have my father send a ship?" Kimber asked. "We don't have to give away our identity any longer."

Sands was about to explain that the comm sender had gone down with the ship when he stopped and thought a moment. "I suppose we could jury rig the emergency beacon to send on the comm frequencies."

"What about our location, Lars? Saturn is a big place. How are we going to know our position close enough for a ship to find us in these clouds?"

"As soon as we break into the intercloud layer, we ought to be able to see the sky through gaps in the ammonia clouds overhead. We can give Kimber's people rough bearings to the moons as they appear.

That will allow them to calculate roughly where we are. When they get close, we will set the beacon to broadcasting on low power. The rescue ship can use that to home on."

"Then it will work?" Kimber asked, her mood improving noticeably.

"I won't know until I can get a comm unit rigged. Still, I can't see any show stoppers. It looks like you'll be going home soon."

"And you with me, of course."

Sands had been pulling open panels to get at the remains of the ship's intercom. He had not really thought about what he would do with his ship gone. Upon a moment's consideration, he realized that he had no other choice. With the whole of the Alliance Navy after him, Saturn was no longer safe.

"I guess you're right," he said. "We're going to Titan."

Chapter 14: Rescue.

It took Sands the better part of a day to tie the surviving communicator set into the rescue beacon, then tune the jury rigged apparatus to a useable frequency. The latter task proved to be the hard part. He had to guess at the clock speeds and sampling rates required to synchronize his makeshift radio with the general communications bands. The only way to test the transmitter was to send a test message, then wait for an answer. Several times, he tore his collection of mismatched hardware apart and started over.

Eventually he attracted the attention of one of the automated communications stations that orbited Saturn just inside the rings. The attention came in the form of a warning to cease all unauthorized transmissions under penalty of fine. Sands informed the robot guardian what it could do with its regulations, and lessthan a minute later, found himself speaking with a live human being. He explained his difficulty and the comm technician patched him directly through to Titan.

The factor and his daughter had a tearful reunion, after which Sands gave Crawford their position as best he could estimate it. As they had hoped, convection cell cross currents had swept them south toward the equator. When they'd finally broken out into the intercloud layer, they had been surprised to see hazy blue sky all around the edges of their rescue balloon. The Arch, so prominent in the temperate latitudes, had shrunk to a bright pencil line in the sky. The sight was absolute proof, if any were needed, of the two dimensional nature of Saturn's rings. Magnificent though they were, the vast circling mass of ice crystals was less than a kilometer wide at its thickest.

They had spent the better part of a day floating beneath the break in the upper cloud layers. From space, the hole would appear as an insignificant blue oval, one of thousands dotting the Equatorial Zone. To the three in the escape pod, it was as though they had fallen down a deep well filled with mist.

Sands spent all of First Dark peering around the bulk of the rescue balloon, recording the times and angles at which various moons and stars appeared. He used that data to estimate their position to within a few thousand kilometers.

Crawford had taken Sands's information and told them that he would have a ship on its way within the hour. The ship would come direct from Titan. Not only would it arrive as fast as would one of the Titanian freighters already on Saturn, it would raise fewer suspicions. If the Northern Alliance suspected anyone had survivedSparrowHawk 's destruction, they would be watching for a Titanian ship to interrupt its schedule. They might even follow it to the rescue pod.

After that first conversation, the castaways made periodic contact with Titan over the next three days.

Late on the third day, Sands disassembled his makeshift communicator and returned the rescue beacon to operation. He then transmitted short distress calls every fifteen minutes or so. A minute after his sixth such transmission, Halley reported a winged spacecraft coming toward them from out of the haze. Her news was met with whoops of joy that set the pod to rocking at the end of its long pendulum.

The rescue ship slowed and balanced on its underjets as it approached the pod from below. The ship's captain proved a virtuoso at ship handling. He slid his craft smoothly beneath the pod, and then slowly raised it until the gap between the two was only three meters. He then balanced the freighter on her underjets while two spacers clambered out onto the upper fuselage to assist in the transfer.

Sands braced himself in the short corridor at the back of the cockpit fragment, grabbed Kimber's wrists, and lowered her into the spacers' waiting arms. He then repeated the operation with Halley. As soon as both women had disappeared through the ship's dorsal airlock, he inhaled deeply and removed his own breather. Bending down, he took firm hold of the hatch coaming, and then jackknifed forward. A moment later, his outstretched toes swung free thirty centimeters above the freighter's hull. He hung on until strong arms wrapped themselves around his thighs. He then let go and allowed himself to be lowered to the rescue ship's fuselage, where other hands forced a breather over his nose.

The spacers led him to the airlock and helped him inside. The lock was a small one. He crouched alone in the dark, inhaling deeply through the breather while an oxy-helium breathing mixture displaced the hydrogen-helium around him. With each breath, his exhilaration at being rescued ebbed, to be replaced by remorse. It was as though safety had freed his conscience to think about all that had gone wrong.

The tally of disaster was a long one. Ross Crandall, dead;SparrowHawk , destroyed; the rest of his crew, probable prisoners of the Alliance, or worse! Nor had his intimates been the only ones to suffer.

Because of him, three innocent cities were now subjugated to the tyranny of the Alliance. Even thetreasure they had won had been lost, dropped into the depths whenSparrowHawk had been sundered by explosive charges. All Sands owned he now wore on his back or had stuffed into the pockets of his shipsuit.

The lower airlock hatch opened and Sands let other hands help him down a short ladder into the interior of the space freighter. He barely noticed when Kimber introduced him to Captain Brock Thalman, commandingEarthhome . He let them lead him to a spare cabin where they strapped him into an acceleration couch. Minutes later, he watched listlessly as Captain Thalman played his ship's underjets across the surface of the rescue balloon, rupturing it and sending the pod into the depths. Then Earthhome accelerated to begin its long climb back to orbit.

An hour later, they were in microgravity and Sands no longer had time to feel sorry for himself. It was all he could do to concentrate on being spacesick.

Saturn was a vast swirl of color in the ebon sky with a necklace of translucent diamonds encircling its waist. Directly opposite the sun, the planet's shadow fell across the ring to form the region of darkness that Saturnians knew as The Notch. Sands hung in midair at the viewport and gazed at the world he had left behind. The view was spectacular. Sands only wished that his stomach would cease its slow heaving long enough to let him enjoy it.

"Look!" Kimber said from beside him. "They're turning the ship. We'll be able to see Titan now."

Sure enough, the universe had begun a slow dance in response to Captain Thalman's commands. A crescent moon swam slowly into view. It was nearly as large as Saturn. Like a miniature Venus or Earth, Titan was a world shrouded perpetually in cloud. Unlike the white worlds of the inner system, however, the clouds that covered Titan were frigid. The average surface temperature on the moon was -180C -- cold enough that the moon's solid mantle of water ice was dotted with lakes and seas of liquid methane.

"Can you see Saturn at all from the surface?" Sands asked, trying to take his mind off his discomfort.

Kimber shook her head. "Only as a generalized glow."

As she spoke, Sands marveled at the change in her appearance. When they had been rescued, all of them had sported perspiration-matted hair and stained clothing. Sands had had the beginnings of a full beard. The breathers had kept them from smelling one another in the escape pod, but once aboard Earthhome , it had become obvious that all of them could use a bath.

Captain Thalman had loaned them the use of his cabin and its private shower stall. Sands had been the last to shower. The feeling of warm water running down his flanks had gone far to relieve his depression and had nearly taken his mind off his stomach. He still had an emptiness inside him, but it was no longer the gaping hole it had been in the dark confines of the airlock.

Their sightseeing was interrupted by an announcement thatEarthhome would be entering Titanian atmosphere within another half-hour.

"That's our cue to return to our cabins," Kimber said. "Do you need any medication?"

Sands shook his head. It embarrassed him that he had been sick for most of his first space journey. After three days, he was beginning to recover. It did not help that Halley, who had also never been outside Saturn's atmosphere, handled microgravity like a professional spacer. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? I can order up something from the shipdoc.""It's not needed. A few hundred more hours of this and I might be able to look at food again. How long before we arrive at Titania?"

"The reentry is tricky. The captain will have to go twice around to shed his orbital velocity. Touchdown will come ninety minutes after the sound of atmosphere outside the hull."

"Will there be anything to see?"

"Not much. We will be in cloud most of the time. You'll get a good look at the Frost Sea during our landing approach."

"Does anyone ever undershoot and go into the sea?"

Kimber laughed. "If we do, we'll be well preserved for posterity. It doesn't take a human being long to freeze solid at minus 180!"

"Thanks. Something else to worry about while staring at the overhead."

The clouds of Titan were tinged with orange, the result of a complex photochemical reaction in the upper atmosphere. Sands watched that orange haze on the viewscreen for more than an hour as the ship grew warm from the heat of its entry into atmosphere. Eventually, the haze cleared and the many-domed city of Titania appeared in the distance. The domes grew precipitously as the spacecraft homed on its landing field. For some reason Sands had expected the ship to land like an ancient aircraft, touching down on a runway amid the screech of tires. If he'd thought about it, he would have realized that any ship able to hover in Saturn's gravity would have no trouble doing the same in Titan's one-sixth gee.

After landing, the ship was towed through an oversize opening into the large nearby dome. The workers Sands saw were clad in environmental suits similar to those he was used to. They provided a familiar backdrop against which to judge the scale of the new world. The illumination level was dimmer than that found in the flyways, but brighter than when beneath the multiple layers of clouds on Saturn. The sight of solid ground as far as the distant horizon was strangely unnerving, even when softened by mist. For one used to the vast vistas of the ringed planet, so much solidity was alien indeed. He wondered if this was what Earth had looked like before the change in the sun.

The distant horizon was cut off as the ship moved inside the city dome. As the hangar door closed behind them, Captain Thalman announced that passengers were free to disembark. Sands removed the straps that restrained him and moved into the space freighter's passageway. There he met Halley. She, too, seemed to have been slightly unnerved by the scale of the landscape outside.

"Funny," she said. "I always thought of Titan as being tiny."

He laughed for the first time in days. "Even a small planet is a big place."

At that moment, Kimber strolled toward them. She moved with the unconscious grace of someone who grew up in low gravity. She did not so much walk as glide down the central passageway of the ship.

"Ready to disembark?"

"Ready," Halley replied. She held a small bag aloft. "I've even got my possessions with me."

Sands, too, had been given clothing fromEarthhome 's stocks, as well as a toiletry kit. That which he had taken away from the escape pod had been packed in a bag like Halley's. It was not much to showfor a lifetime of dangerous work.

"Come on, I want you to meet my father!"

Kimber led them to the starboard airlock, which was substantially larger than the one through which they had entered the ship. Both doors were open, allowing them to step out into a large cavern lit by overhead flood lamps. Large heaters glowed cherry red around the cavern's perimeter as they fought the cold.

The cavernous space was empty save for a single elderly man who stood at the foot of the disembarkation stairs. The workers who normally swarmed around newly arrived ships had been excluded for reasons of security.

Kimber flew down the embarkation ladder and into the waiting man's arms. The two embraced with a fervor that was more than a simple homecoming gesture. It was the hug of a father who had thought he might never see his child again. Sands and Halley descended the ladder and waited for the embrace to end. Finally, Kimber unwrapped herself and turned to gesture them forward.

"Father, may I present Captain Larson Sands and Halley Trevanon? It was they who rescued me from Cloudcroft."

Envon Crawford was a gaunt man with hollow cheeks and a fringe of white hair. He turned to the two privateers and bowed deeply.

"Captain Sands, Miss Trevanon, I will be forever in your debt. I understand that you lost a great deal bringing my daughter to safety. Rest assured that Titan will show its gratitude."

"Thank you, sir," Sands replied. "Is there any news from Glasgow?"

Envon Crawford shook his head. "Only Alliance propaganda. I understand you left crewmembers aboard Glasgow Prime."

"The laird said he would try to protect them."

"Whether he was able to do so is anyone's guess at the moment."

"What of Ganth Bartlett and our other people aboard Cloudcroft?" Kimber asked.

This time Crawford smiled. "Ganth reports that he received a full apology, and that they've told him he can leave any time. Dalishaar said that it was a mistake for you to go with these pirates, and that he would rescue you from their clutches if he could."

"We encountered some of those 'rescuers,'" Halley muttered. "That's why we spent five days in a rescue pod."

"The First Councilor has offered to pay a substantial indemnity for the 'misunderstanding' that caused all of the trouble, and asked Ganth to stay and negotiate a new trade agreement."

"Ganth refused, of course."

"No, he accepted."

"What?"

Crawford seemed unmoved by his daughter's shriek. When she regained her composure, he said quietly, "It isn't in Titan's interest break with the Alliance just now. Their fleets are swarming all over theNorthern Hemisphere. What do you think will happen to our trade if they start attacking our ships?"

"But they held me hostage!"

Crawford nodded. "For which they will pay. I've instructed Bartlett that he is to settle for nothing less than a fifty percent surcharge on all services."

"You can't deal with a man like that!" Kimber insisted.

"In the short run, we have no other choice. Now, enough of this. We do not want our guests to get the wrong opinion of us, do we? Also, we have to get you out of here. We've got crews standing by to service this ship."

"Why such tight security?" Sands asked as his eyes swept the empty cavern.

"To keep Dalishaar from learning that my daughter has come home. So long as she is presumed missing, our negotiators will have an easier time of it. You intimated on the radio that the Alliance would stop at nothing to silence you. Was that an overstatement?"

"No, sir. With what we know, we're a serious risk to someone."

Crawford nodded. "You have nothing to fear here. We will make sure that you have round-the-clock security. Also, with your permission, our people would like to discuss what it is that makes you such a threat to the Alliance."

"Certainly."

"Good," Crawford said. His smile had a wicked component to it. "Once we've got the trade agreement signed, we'll make Dalishaar wish he'd never laid a hand on my daughter!"

Chapter 15: Interlude on Titan.

The lift dropped with a speed that reminded Sands of the long fall into the depths following SparrowHawk 's destruction. It was a comparison he did not particular care for, but one his brain insisted on making.

"How far down are we?"

"Just passed twenty kilometers," his guide responded. "Won't be long now."

"Why so deep?"

The mine foreman shook his head. "Hell, this ain't deep! The ice is two thousand kilometers thick hereabouts. This little hole of ours bottoms out a mere thirty klicks down. We're quarrying an ore body suspended near the surface, the remnant of a big meteor that landed here three billion years ago."

"I wouldn't think a meteor would be large enough to make mining worthwhile."