"We all hope."

Their speed bled off continuously as they climbed. When it fell to 1000 kph, Sands nosed his ship over to maintain that velocity. Two kilometers below them and still a hundred kilometers distant, the four prowlers had discovered their error. They began to climb as well.

They would never make it. Sands was gaining altitude at almost twice the rate they were. By the time SparrowHawk reached the cloud wall, the prowlers would be too far below to be a threat. Meanwhile, however, the climb had slowedSparrowHawk 's arrival at the cloud wall, allowing the ships behind to close the gap."It's going to be a dead heat," Sands said as he watched the blips on his display.

Sands watched his airspeed indicator as he climbed. Their speed was now less than 800 kph, yet still much too high to enter the cyclone. At that velocity, the first bit of turbulence would rip the wings off. To safely penetrate the Dardenelles, it was necessary to slow almost to a hover.

"Missiles in the air behind us," Halley reported simultaneous with Ross Crandall.

"Man the lasers," was Lars's only response. He had all the trouble he could handle trying to find a relatively calm spot to breach the storm. He found it in a patch of smooth cloud that grew until it seemed ready to envelop them.

"Missiles are entering their terminal dive," Crandall reported. "They fired too soon."

Ten kilometers behind them, the missiles -- designed for use a good deal higher in the atmosphere -- ran out of kinetic energy and heeled over.

"It's the last chance they'll get," Sands replied. He cutSparrowHawk 's reactors back to minimum as he fought the aircraft's controls. He pulled the nose higher as the wall of dark black clouds came up to smack him in the face.

Suddenly, they were inside the storm and a giant hand was trying to shake his brain loose inside his skull.

"R... r... rough ride," Halley said, the words burbling in her chest.

"It's going to get rougher," Sands responded. "Launch all decoys and chaff!"

He dove the ship as a series of popping noises denoted the launch of their various "spoofers," devices designed to lead the enemy astray. LikeSparrowHawk , the Alliance vessels would have to slow down to enter the storm. However, nothing would stop them from racing up to the cloud boundary and launching a full brace of missiles before turning away. If that was their choice, he wanted to give their missiles a target other than himself.

He switched his display from tactical to navigation. A schematic of the Dardenelles Cyclone came up with wind velocities denoted by small arrows of varying lengths. The obvious thing was to make directly for the cyclone's eye, cross that thousand-kilometer-wide expanse of calm air, and escape out the other side. Sands had no intention of doing the obvious. There was most likely a squadron stationed inside the eye to ambush them the moment they appeared.

Rather than cut straight across the storm, Sands plotted a course around its eastern edge. That, too, was a risk. With peak wind velocities of 1800 kph near the eye, it was impossible to buck the storm winds by taking the western route. At the maximum velocity they dared use, they would find themselves blown backwards.

They spent fifteen tense minutes wallowing through the storm before Halley said, "I think we've lost them, Lars. Mind if I take off my helmet? It's starting to chafe."

He scanned the instruments that measured his ship's health. Despite the shaking, all systems were well within safety margins. They were not about to lose a wing or anything else vital.

"Go ahead, but keep it handy." He then keyed the 'All Hands' circuit and instructed the rest of the crew to do the same.Halley removed her helmet to reveal drawn features and hair plastered down with perspiration.

Sands switchedSparrowHawk to computer control, and then reached up to remove his own helmet. He needed two attempts to get it off. Finally, he got the neck seal undone and lifted the helmet over his head.

The sudden blast of cool air was like being reborn. He glanced at Kimber Crawford as he stowed the helmet in the rack beside his seat. She too had removed her helmet and was looking at him with renewed interest.

"My savior has a face," she said as he turned. "And quite a handsome one, at that!"

Sands grinned while Halley said something uncomplimentary under her breath.

The next half-hour saw their flight turn slowly from east to north as they fought their way around the storm. Sands putSparrowHawk into a climb, until an hour later; they broke free of one layer of storm clouds and began climbing for another far overhead. It was perpetual night between the storm's cloud layers. A thick fog of ice crystals battered the windscreen, yet the obscuration and lightning of the past hour were gone.

"Is this wise?" Kimber asked as soon as she realized they were in clear air.

"It's necessary," Sands said through gritted teeth as he fought to control the ship. The higher they climbed the more sluggish the controls had become.

"What for?"

"We need to get up to the ammonia precipitation level. Our paint job is ammonia soluble. We need to wash off these incriminating markings before we can show ourselves anywhere."

As they flew, they used all of their passive sensors to listen for Alliance ships. With darkness beyond the windscreen, all they received were a few garbled radar transmissions. Though it was difficult to tell for sure, most seemed to originate at a considerable distance. Sands was just beginning to relax when Halley reminded him of the time.

"Right," he said, glancing up at the chronometer. "Time to get our next set of instructions."

He turned control over to Halley, unstrapped, and climbed carefully out of his seat. Now that they were no longer bucking the storm's winds, but rather allowing them to carry the ship along, the turbulence had quieted considerably. He squeezed past Kimber and made his way to his cabin just aft of the cockpit. He buzzed for Crandall to join him.

"What's up, Lars?"

Sands flashed the memory tile Micah Bolin had given him. "Are you curious to find out the identity of our employers?"

"Damned right!"

"Come in and lock the door."

The cabin barely allowed Crandall room to stand while Sands seated himself in front of his workscreen.

A bunk and a recessed closet for his clothes completed the cabin's furnishings. Despite its flattened lifting body fuselage and overall size -- as large as a small airliner of a previous century --SparrowHawk was cramped.Sands popped the memory tile into the proper slot and brought up a picture on his workscreen. He keyed in the first password Bolin had given him. An old-fashioned clock appeared and began to count down the seconds remaining before the information was erased. Sands keyed in the second password.

At the moment he did so, the ship bucked and caused him to hit a wrong key. He willed himself to be calm as he cleared the input and tried again.

His second attempt was successful. The clock disappeared and Micah Bolin's further instructions appeared. They were only three lines long. When he had finished reading, he turned to Crandall, whose position did not allow him to see the screen.

"It looks like we're going to visit Glasgow-in-the-Clouds."

"Are they our employers?"

Sands shrugged. "He doesn't say. I guess we'll find that out when we get there."

Chapter 9: Ammonia Storm.

SparrowHawkreentered the North Temperate Belt some 20,000 kilometers east of the Dardenelles Cyclone. As quickly as they returned to clear air, Sands sent his ship toward one of the high traffic lanes used by heavier-than-hydrogen passenger craft. The cargo carrying airships generally flew at a much lower altitude where the higher atmospheric density provided greater lift. Thus,SparrowHawk had the sky to herself save for a few distant transponder blips. As far as Sands could tell, they had left their pursuers far behind.

Sands and his crew had spent a Saturnian standard day-and-a-half making good their escape. Three times the world had cycled between pitch black and dark gray as they flew through the turbulent clouds at the northernmost boundary of Saturn's North Tropical Zone. Their flight had kept them well away from clear air to avoid being tracked from an orbiting sensor satellite.

They had flown blind for more than six hours after departing the Dardenelles Cyclone. It was only when Sands was sure they were well out of detector range that he ordered the ship's active sensors turned on.

As soon as they could "see" again, Sands sent his craft into a gradual climb in search of ammonia. Except for specially equipped tankers, most vessels avoided any form of liquid precipitation. Sands would normally have steered clear as well. Liquid entering a ship's engines could damage them by thermal shock. However, his need of the moment overpowered his fear of abusing his drive reactors. Bolin's people had used ammonia soluble paint to apply their ersatz markings. Liquid ammonia would wash away the traitor's coat the ship wore and returnSparrowHawk to her former shabby appearance.

The chemistry of the Saturnian atmosphere was complex, especially inside a major upwelling like the North Tropic Zone. Generally, however, liquid ammonia was found much higher in the sky than where the cloud cities flew. Indeed,SparrowHawk lacked the ability to climb all the way to the white clouds of ammonia ice that give Saturn its characteristic look from space. The best they could do was climb into the layer of brown ammonia hydrosulfide clouds a hundred kilometers above the cities. After that, the hydrogen-helium atmosphere became too rarified for the ship to support its own weight, despite a pressure of five standard atmospheres.

They flew for an hour before their questing radar found a region of sky where ammonia droplets were forming. Slowly, over several minutes, the radar painted a picture of an anvil-topped storm buried amongthe dark clouds of the zone. Sands altered course to send his ship into the heart of the storm. It was not long before the first droplets were splattering against the windscreen. The sprinkle turned quickly to a downpour and the sound of liquid drumming against the hull rose to a dull roar.

They spent twenty minutes flying through the storm to make sure the incriminating markings were completely washed away. Then Sands sentSparrowHawk sliding back down to a more comfortable altitude, confident that there was now no way the Northern Alliance would be able to tie his ship to the raid on Cloudcroft. However, as Halley took perverse delight in pointing out, it was no longer necessary for the Alliance to recognizeSparrowHawk to connect them to the raid. Thanks to Sands, they merely had to discover what ship it was that had Kimber Crawford aboard.

As soon as they left the storm Sands ushered his guest into Dane's empty cabin and locked the door.

Once back in the cockpit, he keyed for an "all hands" circuit.

"All right," he announced, "let's hear your comments about our passenger."

Ross Crandall was the first to speak. "How the hell did she talk you into bringing her aboard, Lars?"

Sands explained the circumstances he'd found in the Cloudcroft landing bay after agreeing to help the Titanians escape the Alliance. He dwelled especially on Kelt Dalishaar's reaction to the idea, and finished by saying. "There was no time to consult any of you. I had to make a decision. I chose to take one more revenge on the people who murdered Dane."

"Are you sure that was your only reason?" Halley asked, facing him from across the narrow console of flight controls.

"Speak your mind!"

"She's uncommonly beautiful. Are you sure that didn't sway your judgment?"

His ears burned at her implication. "I brought her aboard because it irritated Dalishaar and aided the task our employers set for us, which, if any of you have forgotten, was to sow confusion among our enemies."

Hume Bailey was the next to comment. "We went along with this raid, Captain, because we had a good chance to hide out afterwards. That chance is now gone. She has seen our faces. She knows who we are, for God's sake!"

"She hates the Alliance more than we do. She certainly isn't going to give us away."

"We don't know that, sir. Even if she does not intend to, she may not be able to help it. She is a public person. As soon as we let her go, the Alliance will know where to lay their hands on her again. What if they abduct her and use drugs to make her talk?"

"That would start a war with Titan."

"That prospect didn't exactly stop them this time, did it, Captain?"

"I hate to say it, Lars, but Bailey's right," Ross Crandall said. "Even if she agrees to keep our secret, it will only take them a few minutes with the right drugs to wring her dry of everything she knows."

"Look, if she's kidnapped again, the news will be all over the planet within a matter of hours! We'll have time to cover our tracks."

"I don't want to cover my tracks," Reese said from the reactor control room. The deep muted thrum ofSparrowHawk 's dual powerplants was audible in the background. "I want to spend my ill gotten gains in peace."

"Aren't you all forgetting something?" Halley asked.

"What?"

"What happens when we get to Glasgow-Prime? The arrival of the Titanian factor's daughter will be big news. The Northern Alliance won't have to question her under drugs. They merely have to subscribe to one of the fax services."

"Do we know sheis the factor's daughter?" Brent Garvich asked.

To Sands's surprise, Halley spoke up. "I've been doing some checking on just that, Brent. There are half a dozen pictures of Kimber Crawford in computer storage, mostly at diplomatic receptions. She's genuine, all right."

"I say we don't take chances. I vote that we toss her out the hydrogen lock."

"That we will not do!" Sands warned. "Not as long as I am captain of this ship."

"We're missing a bet here," Crandall said, moving in to defuse the tension that had suddenly crackled across the intercom circuits. "What about ransom?"

"She's already offered a reward," Sands replied, glad for the way out of the impending crisis.

"How much?" came the response from several voices.

"She said her father would give us anything we ask."

"Why didn't you tell us this before?"

"I turned it down."

There was a long silence on the intercom, followed by an explosion of oaths.

"All right, I made a mistake. We will demand the reward for delivering her to her father. As for the problem of keeping her concealed when we get to Glasgow, we will think of something. Now, I want a vote of confidence on this. Does she stay aboard, or do you all find yourselves a new captain?"

"No need to put it that way, sir," Garvich said. "I'll go along."

"Reese?"

"Aye, now that I know about the reward."

"Same here," Bailey replied.

"You're the boss, Lars," Crandall added. "I just hope you know what you're doing."

Sands turned to Halley. "What say you, copilot?"

"I still say that you're thinking with your glands. Still, if she'll agree to remain incommunicado, I'll support you."

"Very well," he said, unstrapping from his seat. "Halley, let's see if we can't find open air. Ross, keep thesensor gain up and notify me if you see anything, even a ghost. I'm going aft to talk to our guest."

He moved down the central passageway and unlocked the second cabin on the port side. He found Kimber lying on the doublewide bunk, which, until a few weeks ago, Dane had shared with Halley. Ever since Dane's death, Halley had refused to enter the cabin.

"What did they decide?" she asked as she propped herself up on one elbow. Her green eyes were cool as she stared at him. She knew that they had been deciding her fate.

"The crew is willing to support my decision if you will agree to certain conditions."

"Such as?"

"They want the reward."

"I offered it to you."