Amat frowned. "It's a long way to anywhere else... where would we go?"

"I don't know. Yet. How are we doing on cargo loading, Gary?"

"It's coming. Sixty-five percent at the moment. We'd left open space for drives access for repairs-if we block that up-"

Then a repair crew, if she could find one, and if they would extend

credit, wouldn't be able to get at the drives. But the ship without drives was nothing but a target. But the ship without cargo was useless...

Too many variables, too many conflicting priorities.

"How about the four I sent up?" Ky said. "Are they any use?"

"Oh, yes. Good workers, all of them. If we just had the drive in order

"Understood." Ky tried to make her brain work faster. It had to work faster; she had to find a solution to this. And the logical thing to do was try to find a repair yard. "I'm going to see what I can do about the drive problem. I'll switch our contract to Vatta Limited, and see if that shakes 'em loose, though with war breaking out and the ansibles gone, who knows? See if that drives tech thinks he can install parts if I can just get the parts. We could stand off somewhere on insystem drive, and install the stuff ourselves,

maybe." And if he left her alone for a few minutes, she might be able to think clearly.

She called up the station directory and found the orbital offices of

six firms with orbital yards. Helmsward Yard, Ltd., Sabine Systems, and Artco Yards all had a Superior rating, but Helmsward had already turned her down for financing. She doubted they would reconsider her application if she now claimed to be operating under Vatta's umbrella. In fact, in light of the ansible attack, they might think she was trying to misrepresent herself if she changed her story. When she checked the status of the others, Artco had relisted itself Unavailable. She called Sabine Systems, and a nervous-sounding voice on the other end said their chief engineer would have to get back to her.

That left Colley & Co. and Bartlin Brothers, rated Acceptable in the guide, and RealValue Repairs, unrated. She tried Bartlin Brothers; no one answered. Colley & Co.'s com was answered by a man who

was both out of breath and annoyed. "Are you kidding?" he said, when she started to say her ship needed repairs, and then he hung up.

Gravity, her father had said, ensures that stuff rolls downhill until it

hits bottom, and some psychic gravity was definitely at work here.

RealValue Repairs sounded like the kind of place only the desperate approached. The kind of place where they removed parts from the previous repair job, cleaned and polished them, put them in fresh containers, and sold them as new. Where they had more experience in faking and cheating than actually repairing.

But what choice did she have?

Quincy's call from the drives bay gave her an excuse not to call them. "If you can get us a sealed unit and about ten meters of good-

quality liner, we might get this done ourselves," she said. "It'll take us longer than a proper yard, but it's doable."

The first good news. Things got bad until they started getting

better...

"I'll see what I can do," Ky said. Maybe RealValue would sell the parts. Quincy should be able to tell if the sealed unit was really sealed, and there had to be some kind of function test she could apply, short of going into FTL flight... and liner, that was a visual test. She knew how to do that herself. And maybe there were other suppliers... She queried her implant.

The comboard flashed red and a message came up on the screen: ALL SHIP TO STATION COMMUNICATIONS SUSPENDED EXCEPT TRAFFIC CONTROL TO SPACECRAFT. Great. Just great. Now she would have to leave the ship to get any more supplies.

No. She would send someone. She was the captain; she was responsible for them all. She would not leave the ship now, of all times. She called Quincy again.

"I need you to go onstation and find us that sealed unit," she said. "They've cut off ship to station communication, except for official contacts. I can't even get a list of suppliers, but I do have one contact name from before: RealValue Repairs. I don't want to leave the ship myself-"

"Quite right," Quincy said. "And I shouldn't either. I'll send one of the junior engineering crew. You do know RealValue has a bad rep." "I suspected it; they're unlisted. But all the others have shut up business-I can't get through. We can sit here with nothing, or try to get permission to leave the station and go crawling off on insystem-which means we'd have to crawl back in a few weeks- or we find someone to sell us the sealed unit and some liner material. And RealValue is the only name I have."

"I have a couple others, not repair places but suppliers," Quincy said. "I'll send Beeah. You'll need to give him the financing options."

The financing options, which consisted primarily of begging someone to trust that Ky was really Vatta Transport, Ltd.

"Of course," Ky said. "Send him up and I'll give him the works."

Since the station/ship commercial channels weren't working, Ky printed out a hardcopy of her master's license, her ID, and a statement on the Vatta Transport, Ltd., letterhead which authorized Beeah Chok, engineering second, to make binding legal contracts contingent on her signature.

Beeah showed up on the bridge in a crisp-jacketed Vatta Transport uniform completely unlike his usual working coverall. "Quincy said I had to look official, Captain," he said. "With trouble on the docks, I don't want to get taken in for something. Quincy gave me the shopping list-what else do I need?"

"This," Ky said. "Vatta Transport, Ltd., authorization to purchase, my authorization... and don't worry about getting the best price.

Pick up whatever news you can, and make it snappy. Someone's going to close down this station soon, one way or the other..."

"Attack a station?" Beeah said, his eyebrows going up.

"Someone attacked ansibles," Ky said. "I expect an attack here; I would have broken us loose already if we had a working FTL drive."

"Right," Beeah said.

"Check the dockside intercom on your way off our patch," Ky said.

"If anything happens, I want to be sure we have that much linkage."

"Will do," Beeah said.

She watched him on the monitors as he went; at dockside, he picked

up the microphone and spoke.

"You hear me, Captain?"

"Loud and clear, Beeah. What can you see from there?"

"Not much. A lot of empty dockside. Looks like they may've closed the big hatches between here and Y-Zone, with just the personnel locks between. That may be why the ship-to-station ordinary linkages are down. That was all optics, probably. See you later, Captain."

Ky watched him go, chewing her lip. It wasn't safe. Nothing was safe, right now. ISC would have noticed immediately when their ansibles went down; they would respond, but who knew how long that would take? She and the Glennys Jones and all her crew could disappear into this war, and nobody would ever know what had happened. Her family would wonder...

But they would know, she realized in the next instant. Vatta Transport, Ltd., used the same ISC ansibles as anyone else; Vatta ships had a regular schedule through Sabine. The Sabine ansible would be monitored by someone at Vatta's home offices, and they might even know already she was here, if that monitoring included a list of ships currently at Sabine's orbital station.

She hoped it didn't. She hoped very much her father didn't know that she was a long way from where she was supposed to be, in a developing war zone, and out of ansible contact.

The board meeting opened on time, for a wonder. The media ruckus downstairs had almost delayed the arrival of Ky's father, but he had time for a half cup of coffee before strolling, elaborately casual, down to the boardroom with his brother.

"Any news?" Stavros asked.

"Not yet," Gerard Vatta, Ky's father, said. "We shouldn't hear anything now until the first stop." He raked his hand through his thinning hair. He didn't need to say more; Stavros knew the plan.

"It's a shame," Stavros said. "She was doing so well."

"Yes. And thanks again, by the way, for being available for a pickup."

"Of course."

"And don't think I don't know you're biting your tongue not to

mention Stella."

"Much as I love Stella, I'm not having to bite my tongue, Gerry.

She and Ky are nothing alike. Stella is eighty-seven percent feeling.

We should've tweaked that in the embryo, but you know how it is..."

"I do indeed. Thanks anyway, and for handling the press so far."

Gerard clapped his brother on the shoulder, and let him enter the boardroom first. Almost everyone there was family but, even in the family, etiquette demanded that the CEO enter before the CFO.

"How much is all this going to cost us?" one of the nonfamily asked. Stavros paused, on his way to his chair, and glanced at the man, and then at Gerard.

"No reason it should cost us anything," Gerard said. "People aren't going to give their cargo shipments to someone else because my daughter blundered with another military cadet."

"But our military support contracts?"

"I have been assured that they are not in jeopardy. Ky wasn't pilfering from cargo locks, after all; she just fell for a pitiful story

from a handsome lad, as girls have done for thousands of years. The military understand that. Now if we tried to send classified cargo by a ship she commanded right now, they might raise their brows. But we aren't, so there's no problem."

"All that publicity-"

"Is focused on a possible love affair... It will die down."

"But if your daughter talks to the press-"