Dar started to ask what he meant, but Shacklar was already turning away, and the ship rumbled threateningly deep in its belly, so Dar had to turn and run.

"Took you long enough," Sam groused as he dropped into the acceleration couch beside her and stretched the shock webbing across his body. "What was that high-level conference all about?"

"About why I should flow with the social tide." "Hm." Sam pursed her lips, and nodded slowly. "Quite a man, your General."

"Yeah. I really feel badly about deceiving him." Dar rolled back the envelope flap.

"What's that?" Sam demanded.

Dar didn't answer He was too busy staring.

"Hi, there!" Sam waved. "Remember me? What have you got there?"

"My credentials," Dar said slowly. "What's the matter? Aren't they in order?"

"Very. They're all for 'Dar Mandra.'" "Oh." Sam sat quietly for a few minutes, digesting that. Then she sighed and leaned back in her couch. "Well. Your General . . . perceptive, too, huh?"

Chapter Seven.

The courier ship had room for ten passengers. Dar and Sam were the only ones. After five days, they'd both tried all ten seats at least twice.

"No, really, I do think it looks better from back here," Dar said from the seat just in front of the aft bulkhead. "You get more of a feeling of depth-and it's definitely more aesthetic to feel the force of acceleration on your back."

"What force of acceleration? This snip could be in free-fall, for all we feel. Built-in acceleration compensators, remember? This cabin's got its own gravity unit."

"Luxury craft," Dar griped, "absolutely destroys all sense of motion."

"Which makes it far more aesthetic to sit in the middle of the cabin,"

Sam opined. "You get the sense of the environment this way." She spread her arms. "The feeling of space- limited, but space. You're immersed in it."

"Yeah, but who wants to be immersed in molded-plastic seats and creon upholstery?" "If your accommodations bother you, sir . . ." Dar looked up at the stewardess in annoyance. "I know: I don't have any choice about it."

"Not at all, sic I can offer you a variety of other realms of reality." The stewardess's chest slid open, revealing several shelves crammed with pill bottles. "AH guaranteed to make you forget where you are, sit and make the time fly."

"And my brain with it. No, thank you-I'll stick with the old-fashioned narcotics."

A plastic tumbler rammed into his palm; the stewardess's finger turned into a spigot, and splashed amber-colored fluid and crushed ice into his tumbler. "One old-fashioned, sir."

"I had in mind a martini," Dar grumbled. "But thanks, anyway."

"It is unnecessary to thank me, sit I am merely ..." "A machine, yes.

But it keeps me from getting into bad habits. When do we get to Haldane IV?"

"That's got to be the twelfth time you've asked that question," Sam sighed, "and I told you as soon as we'd boarded-Bhelabher said it'd take us five days!"

"I know, I know." Dar griped, "but I like to hear her say it. When do we get to Haldane IV, stewardess?"

"Experienced space travelers never ask 'when,' sir," the stewardess answered, a bit primly.

"I love the programmed response." Dar leaned back, grinning.

"Look at it this way-it's a faster trip then I had on the way out," Sam offered. "That took a week and a half."

"I believe the ship transporting you on the outbound swing was a common freighter, sir. . . ." "Miz!"

"Oh, really? But I believe you'll find that an I.D.E. courier ship is a bit faster than your earlier conveyance. In fact, we're approaching breakout now. Stretch webbing, please." And the stewardess rolled into her closet, clicking the door shut behind her "Talk about bad habits!" Sam snorted. "Or didn't you realize you were making fun of her?"

"I know, I know," Dar growled. "But I have definitely taken a dislike to that machine."

"Programmed by a snob," Sam agreed. "Come on, we'd better get ready."

"Approaching breakout," the resonant PA ship's voice informed them.

"I don't know why we bother" Dar stretched his shock webbing across his body. "What could happen when you break out of H-space, anyway?"

"Y'know, you're getting to be a pretty surly bird." "So, I'll get a worm.

You've got to admit, there isn't even a jar when you break out into normal space." "Not unless they've got you bottled up." Dar frowned.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam sighed. "It's a holdover from the pre-I.D.E. days, when there wasn't any central government and things were pretty chaotic outside the Sol system. Pirates used to lie in wait for ships at the breakout points. They couldn't touch a freighter while it was in H-space, but they could jump it as scon as it broke out."

"Oh." Dar felt a slight chill of apprehension. "Uh-the central government isn't too effective, these days. ..."

"Breaking out," the ship's voice informed them. "We will be without interior power for a few seconds."

The lights went out as all the ship's power was channeled into the isomorphei; translating them back into normal space. A surge of dizziness washed over Dar, and objective reality became a little subjective for a second or two-in fact, it seemed to go away altogether.

Then it came back, and the lights came on again. Dar blinked and turned his head from side to side, to see if it still worked. "On second thought, maybe the webbing isn't such a bad idea."

"Please maintain your position," the ship's voice advised. "There is an unidentified craft in pursuit."

Dar looked over at Sam. "What were you saying about pirates?"

"Not in this day and age, certainly." But she looked a little pale.

"I think they said something like that in the early 1800s, to a man named Jean Laffite." Dar turned to stare out the porthole. "You know, you can actually see something out there now."

"Of course-stars. We're back in normal space, remember? So what did he answer?"

"That one's got a discernible disk; must be Haldane. . . . Who?"

"This Jean Laffite."

"Oh-'Stand and deliver'" Dar peered through the porthole. "There was more; I forget the exact wording, but it had something to do with the ownership of a place called 'the Caribbean. . . .' Wow!"

An orange glare lit up the cabin.

"That was close!" Sam said through the afterimages.

"I think that's what they used to call a 'shot across the bow.'"

"This is serious" Sam yelped. "Where's the Navy when you need it?"

"Ask the pirates-I'm sure they know."

"So do I; I got one of the Navy data operators drunk one night, just before I quit, and got the access code out of him."

Dar frowned. "Why'd you do that?"

"I wanted to make sure I was going to be safe on my trip out here. And I found out I would be; there wasn't supposed to be a sailor for fifty parsccs. The nearest fleet's a hundred seventy-five light-years away, over toward Aldebaran, sitting on their thumbs and polishing the bright work."

"What're they doing there?"

"Somebody called 'em, about a year ago, to come take care of some pirates."

"So, while they were on their way out, the pirates were coming back here! Great!" Dar said.

Sam took a deep breath. "Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're getting carried away here. For all we know, those aren't pirates out there."

"Sure, maybe it is the Navy-and for all they know, we're pirates. If you'll pardon my saying so . . ."

A brilliant flare lit up the cabin. Sam shrieked. "I'm convinced! It's pirates!"

Dar shrugged. "Pirates or Navy-after we've been turned into an expanding cloud of hydrogen atoms, I'm afraid I won't really care much about distinctions."

"You're right." Sam loosed her shock webbing. "Whoever it is, we've gotta get out of here."

Dar's head snapped up, startled. Then he waved an airy hand toward the porthole. "Sure-be my guest. It's a great day outside, if you face sunwards. Of course, the night on your backside gets a teeny bit chilly."

"Credit me with some sense," she snorted. "This ship must have some kind of lifeboat!"

But Dar was looking out the porthole. "Get down!"

Startled, Sam obeyed. A rending crash shot through the ship, and she slammed back against the cabin wall. Dar bounced out against his webbing.

"What in Ceres' name was that?" Sam gasped.

"They got tired of playing games." Dar yanked his webbing loose and struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the pull of acceleration.

"They shot to maim this time, and they had some luck. They got our gravity generator. Where'd you say the lifeboat was?"

"It'd make sense to put it between the pilot's bridge and the passenger cabin, wouldn't it?"

"Right." Dar turned aft. "Since that makes sense, it'll obviously be between the cabin and the cargo space. Let's go." Sam started to protest, then shut up and followed. The ship bucked and heaved. Dar caught the tops of the seats on either side, bracing himself. Sam slammed into his back. "Near miss," he grated. "We got hit by a wave of exploding gas. Wish I had time to watch; this pilot's doing one hell of a job of dodging."

"Is that why my body keeps trying to go through the wall?" "Yeah, and why it keeps changing its mind as to which wall. Come on."

They wallowed through a morass of acceleration-pull to the aft hatch.

Dar turned to a small closet beside the hatch, and yanked it open.

"Two on this side; there'll be three on the other side, I suppose." He took down a slack length of silver fabric with a plastic bulb on top.

"Here, scramble into it."

Sam started struggling into the space suit. "Little flimsy, isn't it?"

Dar nodded. "It won't stop anything sharper than a cheese wedge. It's not supposed to; the lifeboat'll take care of that. The suit's just to hold in air"

The ship bucked to the side with a rending crash, slamming Sam up against him. Jumpsuit or not, he realized dizzily, she was very definitely female. Somehow, this didn't seem like the time to mention it.

She scrambled back from him, and kept on scrambling, into her suit.

"They're getting closer! Hurry!"

Dar stretched the suit on and pressed the seal-seam shut, being careful to keep it flat. Sam copied him. Then he braced himself and touched his helmet against hers, to let his voice conduct through the plastic. "Okay, turn around so I can turn on your air supply and check your connections."

Sam turned her back to him. Dar checked her connections, then turned on her air supply. When the meter read in the blue, he tapped her shoulder and turned his back. He could feel her hands fumbling over him; then air hissed in his helmet. He took a breath and nodded, then turned to the hatch, wrenched it open, and waved Sam in. She stepped through; he followed, and pulled the door closed behind them, wrenching it down. Sam had already pushed the cycle button.

When the air had been pumped back into the reserve tank, the green light lit up over the side hatch. Dar leaned on the handle and hauled back; the three-foot circle swung open. Sam stepped through, and Dar stepped after her.

He sat down, stretching the web over his body. Sam leaned over to touch helmets. "How about the pilot?"

"He's on his own-got his own lifeboat if he wants it." Dar punched the power button, and the control panel lit up.

"You know how to drive this thing?"

"Sure; besides, how can you go wrong, with two buttons, two pedals, and a steering wheel?"

"I could think of a few ways."

Dar shrugged. "So I'm not creative. Here goes." The "READY" light was blinking; he stabbed at the "EJECT" button.

A five-hundred-pound masseur slammed him in the chest, and went to work on the rest of his body. Then the steamroller lightened to a flatiron, and Dar could breathe again. He sat up against the push of slackening acceleration and looked around through the bubble-dome.

It had darkened to his right, where a sun was close enough to show a small disk and kick out some lethal radiation. But that didn't matter; the silver slab of pirate ship filled most of the starboard sky. "Way too close," Dar muttered, and pressed down on the acceleration pedal.

The flatiron pressed down on him again, expanding into a printing press. He glanced behind him, once, at the silver-baseball courier ship, then turned back to the emptiness before him. Sam struggled forward against the pull of acceleration. "Any chance they haven't spotted us?"

Dar shrugged. "Hard to say. We'll show up on their detectors; but they might not pay attention to anything this small."