We left Gyril trying to soothe Elys down out of her screaming tizzy. Considering everything, I thought she was having the only possible reasonable reaction.

Back at quarters. Lisa and I needed some cleaning up;

over the past hundred years or so, I understand that the stink of burning insulation hasn't improved much. Ordi- narily we'd have hit the wash-off booth together and had fun at it, but with her extra bulk now, that wasn't feasible.

So we hugged, and then I took myself off to the communal officers' showers, which are handy for- relief breaks during watches if you happen to feel the need then.

Those compartments have G-control; I put mine on low so I could float on strong spray and be pelted all over with mild. Great! I needed to relax, and now I did. When the warning buzzer rang, meaning that someone else wanted in, I put G back to normal and stood up. I could have punched "Wait," but it's more polite not to. And the spray dwindled off, so the door could open and let some- one in.

It was Szabo. None other. Not the Szabo I'd known- from the way his face looked, this was Szabo' "made right," as Tiriis had shown him on the screen. He grinned, and stuck his hand out, and though I knew he could still break me in half if he wanted to, he didn't scare me now.

I took the hand. P

"Hi, Ren," he said. He'd never called me anything but

446 ,.

Bearpaw or Comm-Second, and that had suited me just fine- But now...

I said, "Hi, Szabo. Good to see you." And before I thought: "But how'd you get up here?"

The question didn't seem to bother him. "I'm not going to ask," he said. "I'm afraid Dahil or Tiriis might tell me."

So it had to be the teleport thing, and Szabo didn't like psi stuff. But he said, "My first name's Ferenc, Ren; feel free to use it It got changed to Frank when my folks went American, but I think I'll go back to my ethnic start." Before I could think what to say, he reached for the compartment controls, and said, "Low-G?" I nodded, and tht.Ti we floated on spray, and bad to speak up to hear each other over the splashings.

I didn't know what to say, except to ask if he had any- thing to tell Base about the Others that might help the ship get off the dime. He didn't, so I was stuck, because I wanted to stay off the subject of his personal tran5or- mation in case it was still dynamite.

But he cut through all that. "Look, Ren-you're pussy- footing, and you don't have to. I was what I was, and I am what I am. The Others didn't owe me a thing, either, except a fast blast in the head. In case you didn't know, I killed one of them." Not out of fear, but because this was his story, I said nothing. He said, "If it matters, I'm sorry for the way I had to be with everybody, just to keep , going. I envied eunuchs-at ^least their drives are gone, along with their abilities. I was like a bird with its wings cut off."

I damn near cried. For murderous, frightening Szabo.

With the water spraying, it wouldn't have showed, and when I got my voice back, I said, "I'm glad for you.

Okay?" And he smiled, the new way I could trust, and I flipped up to stand and leave. Low-G is nice.

"Just a minute, Ren." I paused. "I skimmed the Chrono log; I know how the ship stands. You know as well as I do, something has to be done." I never in my life made a more sincere nod. "I haven't talked yet with Captain Soong. I will, shortly. When I do, either he will take action or I will." He shook his head. "Needless to say, I won't harm the captain in either case. But he may go into storage for a time. I think the log, in itself, will justify any action I may need to take."

I couldn't argue with a word of it; I nodded, we shook

447.

hands again, I toweled and dressed and left To go tell Lisa.

I found her leaving our quarters to meet with Mark Cyril and Elys. When I said I bad news, she said to save it for the whole group, and took off as fast as her condition would allow. Well, as she said, she moved pretty well for

a fat lady.

Elys let us in, and we all got sat down, and I sprang my news. It brought quite a lot of startled comment, and Gyril said, "Does this change anything we're trying to do?" Before we could come up with anything that quacked like an answer, Ferenc Szabo was on the inter- com screen, announcing an all-ship broadcast. Looking a little mussed up, he stated that since Captain Soong had refused to abide by Regs, such as answering queries from Base, Szabo as Command-First was stuffing Soong away for future reference and assuming the title of Actrrig Cap- tain. And shortly we were all beading back for Base at the high lope. All complaints, I gathered, would be more than ignored.

Well, it figured. But who was the man speaking for: us, or the Others?

Later we heard how the takeover had gone. Under pressure, Soong had agreed to let Ferenc move the ship and inform Base. But as soon as he was alone, Soong called in his personal bully-boy guards and sicced them onto Ferenc. The personal-guard thing isn't m Regs, but doesn't violate them, either.

Even Soong should have known better; there were only six guards. At least he had the sense to send them un- armed; six armed men can't help but get in each other's way in a confined space, and then it doesn't take a Ferenc Szabo to disarm one and use the weapon to cut down the rest while they're still wondering which way is Christmas. Officer-level combat training is quite effective.

Ferenc killed one. Not by choice; he caught, a full tackle from behind while he was bending somepne, and the impact broke the man. Two more were injured but recovered; the other three had the good sense to run, luckier than either they or Soong deserved.

So, like it or not, soon we'd be on our wa^ back to Base. But not until ship's maintenance was up to snuff;

448.

people began working long shirts. A major problem was that a fair proportion of our best tech-ratings were women, and most of those simply weren't in any condition to move or climb normally; the work went slowly. But eventually we moved out; behind us, Opal dwindled.

Earth with no stops, after all the delay in orbit, meant pretty close to running out of groceries, but not quite.

Elys said we were bound to run short of baby food, with so many women expecting sooner than not. Lisa said this proved the acting captain was under the Others' control.

I said, why would the Others want their own offspring to starve?

Gyril brought up the point that if the Others were backing Ferenc, how did Soong's six heavies manage to tackle him at all? That was the best question of the se- mester, because it was our first hint that the Others'

powers had limits. Thinking back, none of us could recall any instance of group resistance to the aliens' wishes. It gave to think-and with hope, this time. Sometimes, even parts of the problem give some of the answer.

No one looked forward to the time when the ship's complement would suffer a forty-percent increase, all tiny and fragile and loud and messy. But the classic nine- month mark came and went, and that increase didn't hap- pen; the pregnant, for the most part, stayed pregnant Well. the five human conceptions delivered on time, with '' great relief, and actually there were six; one woman had worried needlessly all this time, because apparently she'd slipped her implant schedule and been secured before she went down to Opal. Well, once in a while somebody has to get lucky.

The next months in transit were pretty miserable.

Women wretched with fear, and with wombs too bulky and heavy to carry around. Lisa, bless her sturdy bones, could still stand and walk. Elys couldn't, without help;

she looked like a small girl clinging to a large rock. Men were sick with worry, trying to take care of the women and afraid it wasn't going to be good enough; they were so hyped up that it didn't take much to set off senseless fights. I expect the women would have fought, too, some- times, if they could have moved around well enough to do it

To visit Mark and Elys, Lisa and I had worked out a 449.

way to travel together through the standard-G corridors.

And on stairs, for no woman cared to trust the grav-lift now. I walked bent over, crouching a little, with Lisa be- hind me-her hands digging into my lower ribs, her great belly resting against my lower back. Not the greatest way to fly, but it got us from Point A to Point B. The ship's few invalid carts were for people who really needed them, and some of those had to do without. By contrast. Lisa and I felt we were lucking out. So far.

To see Elys was* heartbreak. Not too long ago, that tiny, bouncy wench could run your legs off in an uphill sprint.

Now she couldn't stand without a helper. Yes, it hurt to see her.

Gyril looked like the wrath of God, and who hid My thunderbolts? Heavy in study, he looked up as though we were skunks at his picnic. Lisa tried to jolly him.

"How's the research, maestro?"

He did try to grin. "I'm studying the old Caesarian operation-delivering the infant through an abdominal in- cision." The grin faded. "You didn't expect, did you, that any of you could deliver normally?"

That line was a stopper, but Lisa said, "You can do it, can't you?" ^

"Correctly, with minimum risk? That's what I want to ensure."

"Good answer," she said. Then she pouted. "Mark, come here and hug me; tell me it's going to be all right.

I'd go to you, but these days I can't get there from here."

So Gyril did, and Lisa did, and I knew who was reassur- ing whom. Gyril's the Medic-Chief, but Lisa's the psychol- ogist.

A week or two later, Gyril delivered the first of the Children, as they're called now. Dahil and Tiriis were there and observed, not interfering at all. What they did, though, was set up their own infant-care ward. As soon as the baby was out and obviously viable, they left Gyril to take care of the trimmings, and a little later, Dahil came back and trundled the infant off to the Others* own bailiwick for further care.

So for some time, most of us had no idea what the Children looked like. Only that after nearly fifteen months' gestation, they were big lummoxes that had to be cut out by _main force if their mothers hopef to live.

Though, come to think of it, we never heard now Tiriis