"But-" The singleton was looking at him in astonishment.

"I'll be watching; I'm not giving up those two to your possession. Just handle the close diplomacy."

The Fragment drooped, the pain in its shoulders undisguised. "If that is your wish, My Lord."

Steel showed all his teeth. "It is indeed. Just remember, I'll be present for everything important, especially direct radio communication." He waved the singleton off the parapet. "Now go and cuddle up to the children; learn something of self-control yourself."

After the Cloak was gone, he called Shreck up to the parapet. The next few hours were spent in touring the defenses and planning with his staff. Steel was very surprised how much clearing up the puppy problem improved his quality of mind. His advisors seemed to pick up on it, relaxed to the point of offering substantive suggestions. Where the breaches in the walls could not be repaired, they would build deadfalls. The cannon from the northern shops would arrive before the end of the dayaround, and one of Shreck's people had worked out an alternate plan for food and water resupply. Reports from the far scouts showed steady progress, a withering of the enemy's rear; they would lose most of their ammunition before they reached Starship Hill. Even now there was scarcely any shot falling on the hill.

As the sun rose into the south, Steel was back on the parapets, scheming on just what to say to the Starfolk.

This was almost like earlier days, when plans went well and success was wondrous yet achievable. And yet ... at the back of his mind all the hours since talking with the singleton, there had been the little claws of fear. Steel had the appearance of ruling. The Flenser Fragment gave the appearance of following. But even though it was spread across miles, the pack seemed more together than ever before. Oh, in earlier times, the Fragment often pretended equilibrium, but its internal tension always showed. Lately, it seemed self-satisfied, almost ... smug. The Flenser Fragment was responsible for the Domain's forces south of Starship Hill, and after today-after Steel had forced the responsibility upon him-the Cloaks would be with Amdijefri every day. Never mind that the motivation had come from within Steel. Never mind that the Fragment was in an obvious state of agonized exhaustion. In its full genius, the Great One could have charmed a forest wolf into thinking Flenser its queen. And do I really know what he's saying to the packs beyond my hearing? Could my spies be feeding me lies about him?

Now that he had a moment away from immediate concerns, these little claws dug deeper. I need him, yes. But the margin for error is smaller now. After a moment, he grated a happy chord, accepting the risk. If necessary, he would use what he had learned with the second set of cloaks, something he had artfully concealed from Flenser Tyrathect. If necessary, the Fragment would find that death can be radio swift.

Even as he flew the velocity match, Pham was working the ultradrive. This would save them hours of fly back time, but it was a chancy game, one the ship had never been designed for. OOB bounced all around the solar system. One really lucky jump was all they needed. (And one really unlucky jump, into the planet, would kill them. A good reason why this game was not normally played.) After hours of hacking the flight automation, of playing ultradrive roulette, poor Pham's hands were faintly trembling. Whenever Tines' World came back into view-often no more than a far point of blue light-he would glare for a second at it. Ravna could see the doubts rising within him: His memories told him he should be good with low-tech automation, yet some of the OOB primitives were almost impenetrable. Or maybe his memories of competence, of the Qeng Ho, were cheap fakes.

"The Blighter fleet. How long?" asked Pham.

Greenstalk was watching the nav window from the Riders' cabin. It was the fifth time the question had been asked in the last hour, yet her voice came back calm and patient. Maybe the repeated questions even seemed a natural thing. "Range forty-nine light-years. Estimated time of arrival forty-eight hours. Seven more ships have dropped out." Ravna could subtract: one hundred and fifty-two were still coming.

Blueshell's voder sounded over his mate's, "During the last two hundred seconds, they have made slightly better time than before, but I think that is local variance in Bottom conditions. Sir Pham, you are doing well, but I know my ship. We could get a little more time if you only you'd allow me control. Please-"

"Shut up." Pham's voice was sharp, but the words were almost automatic. It was a conversation-or the abortion of one-that occurred almost as often as Pham's demand for status info on the Blighter fleet.

In the early weeks of their journey, she had assumed that godshatter was somehow superhuman. Instead it was parts and pieces, automation loaded in a great panic. Maybe it was working right, or maybe it had run amok and was tearing Pham apart with its errors.

The old cycle of fear and doubt was suddenly broken by soft blue light. Tines' World! At last, a wondrously accurate jump, almost as good as the shocker of five hours before: Twenty thousand kilometers away hung a vast narrow crescent, the edge of planetary daylight. The rest was a dark blot against the stars, except where the auroral ring hung a faint green glow around the south pole. Jefri Olsndot was on the other side of the world from them, in the arctic day. They wouldn't have radio communication until they arrived-and she hadn't figured out how to recalibrate the ultrawave for shortrange transmission.

She turned back from the view. Pham still stared upward into the sky behind her. "...Pham, what good is forty-eight hours? Will we just destroy the Countermeasure?"What of Jefri and Mr. Steel's folk?

"Maybe. But there are other possibilities. There must be." That last softly. "I've been chased before. I've been in bigger jams before." His eyes avoided hers.

THIRTY-EIGHT.

Jefri hadn't seen the sky for more than an hour in the last two days. He and Amdi were safe enough in the great stone dome that sheltered the refugee ship, but there was no way to see outside. If it weren't for Amdi, I couldn't have stood it a minute. In some ways it was worse even than his first days on Hidden Island. The ones who killed Mom and Dad and Johanna were just a few kilometers away. They captured some of Mr. Steel's guns and the last few days the explosions had gone on for hours, a booming that shook the ground beneath them and sometimes even smashed at the walls of the dome.

Their food was brought in to them, and when they weren't sitting in the ship's command cabin, the two wandered outside the ship, to the rooms with the sleeping children. Jefri had kept up with the simple maintenance procedures he remembered, but looking through the chill transp of the coldsleep coffins, he was terribly afraid. Some of them weren't breathing very much. The inside temperature seemed too high. And he and Amdi didn't know how to help.

Nothing had changed here, but now there was joy. Ravna's long silence had ended. Amdijefri and Mr. Steel had actually talked to her in voice! Three more hours and her ship would be here! Even the bombardment had ended, almost as if Woodcarver realized that her time was near to ending.

Three more hours. Left to himself, Jefri would have spent the time in a state of wall-climbing anxiety. After all, he was nine years old now, a grown-up with grown up problems. But then there was Amdi. The pack was much smarter than Jefri in some ways, but he was such a little kid-about five years old, as near as Amdijefri could figure it. Except when he was into heavy thinking, he could not stay still. After the call from Ravna, Jefri wanted to sit down for serious worrying, but Amdi began chasing himself around the pylons. He shouted back and forth in Jefri's voice and Ravna's, and bumped into the boy accidentally on purpose. Jefri hopped up and glared at the careening puppies. Just a little kid. And suddenly, happy and so sad all at once: Is this how Johanna saw me? And so he had responsibilities now too. Like being patient. As one of Amdi came rushing past his knees, Jefri swept down to grab the wriggling form. He raised it to shoulder level as the rest of the pack converged gleefully, pounding on him from all directions.

They fell to the dry moss and wrestled for a few seconds. "Let's explore, let's explore!"

"We have to be here for Ravna and Mr. Steel."

"Don't worry. We'll remember when."

"Okay." Where was there really to go?

The two walked through the torchlit dimness to the clerestory that ringed the inner edge of the dome. As far as Jefri could see, they were alone. That was not unusual. Mr. Steel was very worried that Woodcarver spies might get into the ship. Even his own soldiers rarely came here.

Amdijefri had investigated the inside wall before. Behind the quilts, the stone felt cool and damp. There were some holes to the outside-for ventilation-but they were almost ten meters up where the wall was already curving inwards toward the apex of the dome. The stone was rough cut, not yet polished. Mr. Steel's workers had been in a frantic hurry to complete the protection before Woodcarver's army arrived. Nothing was polished, and the quilts were undecorated.

Ahead and behind him, Amdi was sniffing at the cracks and fresh mortar. The one in Jefri's arms gave a concerted wiggle. "Ha! Up ahead. I knew that mortar was coming loose," the pack said. Jefri let all of his friend rush forward to a nook in the wall. It didn't look any different than before, but Amdi was scratching with five pairs of paws.

"Even if you can get it loose, what good does it do you?" Jefri had seen these blocks as they were lowered into place. They were almost fifty centimeters across, laid in alternating rows. Getting past one would just bring them to more stone.

"Heh heh, I don't know. I've been saving this up till we had some time to kill... Yech. This mortar burns my lips." More scratching, and the pack passed back a fragment as big as Jefri's head. There really was a hole between the blocks, and it was big enough for Amdi. One of him darted into the tiny cave.

"Satisfied?" Jefri plunked himself down by the hole and tried to look in.

"Guess what!" Amdi's shrill came from a member right by his ear. "There's a tunnel back here, not just another layer of stone!" A member wriggled past Jefri and disappeared into the dark. Secret tunnels? That was too much like a Nyjoran fairy tale. "These are big enough for a full-grown member, Jefri. You could get through these on hands 'n' knees." Two more of Amdi disappeared into the hole.

The tunnel he had discovered might be large enough for a human child, but the entrance hole was a tight fit even for the puppies. Jefri had nothing to do but stare into the darkness. The parts of Amdi that remained at the entrance talked about what he had found. "-Goes on for a long, long way. I've doubled back a couple of times. The top of me is about five meters up, way over your head. This is kooky. I'm getting all strung out." Amdi sounded even sillier than his normal playfulness. Two more of him went into the hole. This was developing into serious adventure-that Jefri could have no part of.

"Don't go too far; it might be dangerous."

One of the pair that remained looked up at him. "Don't worry. Don't worry. The tunnel isn't an accident. It feels like it was cut as grooves in the stones when they were laid. This is some special escape route Mister Steel made. I'm all right. I'm all right. Ha ha, hoohooo." One more disappeared into the hole. After a moment the last remaining one ran in, but stayed near enough to the entrance so Amdi could still talk to Jefri. The pack was having a high old time, singing and screeching to itself. Jefri knew exactly what the other was up to; it was another of the games he could never play. In this posture, Amdi's thoughts would be the weirdest rippling things. Darn. Now that he was playing within stone, it must be even neater than before, since he was totally cut off from all thoughts except from member to adjacent member.

The stupid singing went on a little longer, and then Amdi spoke in an almost reasonable tone. "Hei, this tunnel actually splits off in places. The front of me has come to a fork. One side is heading down... Wish I had enough members to go both ways!"

"Well, you don't!"

"Hei ho, I'll take the upper tunnel today." A few seconds of silence. "There's a little door here! Like a member-size room door. Not locked." Amdi relayed the sounds of stone scritching against stone. "Ha! I can see light! Up just a few more meters, it opens onto a window. Hear the wind." He relayed wind sound and the keening of the sea birds that soared up from Hidden Island. It sounded wonderful. "Oh oh, this is stretching things, but I wanna look out... Jefri, I can see the sun! I'm outdoors, sitting way up on the side of the dome. I can see all round to the south. Boy, it's smoky down there."

"What about the hillside?" Jefri asked the nearest member; its white-splotched pelt was barely visible through the entrance hole. At least Amdi was staying in touch.

"A little browner than last tenday. I don't see any soldiers out there." Relayed sound of a cannon firing. "Yipes. We're shooting though... It hit just on this side of the crest. There's someone out there, just below my line of sight." Woodcarver, come at last. Jefri shivered, angry that he couldn't see, frightened of what might be seen. He often had nightmares about what Woodcarver must truly be, how she had done it to Mom and Dad and Johanna. Images never fully formed ... yet almost memories. Mister Steel will get Woodcarver.

"Oh, oh. Old Tyrathect is coming across the castle yard this way." Thumping sounds came from the hole as Amdi blundered back down. No point in letting Tyrathect know that there was a tunnel hidden in the wall. He'd probably just order them to stay away from it. One, two, three, four-half of Amdi popped out of the wall. The four wandered around a little dazedly. Jefri couldn't tell if it was because of their stretched-out experience or if they were temporarily split from the other half of the pack. "Act natural. Act natural."

Then the other four arrived, and Amdi began to settle down. He led Jefri away from the wall at a fast trot. "Let's get the commset. We'll pretend we've been trying to raise Ravna with it." Amdi knew well that the starship couldn't be back for another thirty minutes or so. In fact, he had been the one who verified the math for Mister Steel. Nevertheless, he chased up the ship's steps and dragged down the radio. The two were already plugging the antenna into a signal booster when the public doors on the west side of the dome were unlatched. Silhouetted against the daylight were parts of a guard pack, and a single member of Tyrathect. The guard retired, sliding the doors shut, and the Cloak walked slowly across the moss towards them.

Amdi rushed over and chattered about their attempts to use the radio. It was a little forced, Jefri thought. The puppies were still confused by their trip through the walls.

The singleton looked at the powdering of mortar dust on Amdi's pelt. "You've been climbing in the walls, haven't you?"

"What?" Amdi looked himself over, noticed the dust. Usually he was more clever. "Yes," he said shamefacedly. He brushed the powder away. "You won't tell, will you?"

Fat chance he'll help us, thought Jefri. Mr. Tyrathect had learned Samnorsk even better than Mr. Steel, and besides Steel was the only one who had much time to talk with them. But even before the radio cloaks, he'd been a short-tempered, bossy sort. Jefri had had baby-sitters like him. Tyrathect was nice up to a point, and then would get sarcastic or say something mean. Lately that had improved, but Jefri still didn't like him much.

But Mr. Tyrathect didn't say anything right away. He sat down slowly, as if his rump hurt. "...No, I won't tell."

Jefri exchanged a surprised glance with one of Amdi. "What is the tunnel for?" he asked timidly.

"All castles have hidden tunnels, especially in my ... in the domain of Mr. Steel. You want ways to escape, ways to spy on your enemies." The singleton shook its head. "Never mind. Is your radio properly receiving, Amdijefri?"

Amdi cocked a head at the comm's display. "I think so, but there's nothing yet to receive. See, Ravna's ship had to decelerate and um, I could show you the arithmetic...?" But Mr. Tyrathect was obviously not interested in playing with chalk boards. "...well, depending on their luck with the ultradrive, we should have radio with them real soon."

But the little window on the comm showed no incoming signal. They watched it for several minutes. Mr. Tyrathect lowered his muzzle and seemed to sleep. Every few seconds his body twitched as with a dream. Jefri wondered what the rest of him was doing.

Then the comm window was glowing green. There was a garble of sound as it tried to sort signal from background noise. "...over you in five minutes," came Ravna's voice. "Jefri? Are you listening?"

"Yes! We're here."

"Let me talk to Mr. Steel, please."

Mr. Tyrathect stepped nearer to the comm. "He is not here now, Ravna."

"Who is this?"

Tyrathect's laugh was a giggle; he had never heard any other kind. "I?" He made the Tinish chord that sounded like "Tyrathect" to Jefri. "Or do you mean a taken name, like Steel? I don't know the exact word. You may call me ... Mr. Skinner." Tyrathect laughed again. "For now, I can speak for Steel."

"Jefri, are you all right?"

"Yes, yes. Listen to Mr. Skinner." What a strange name.

The sounds from the comm became muffled. There was a male voice, arguing. Then Ravna was back, her voice kind of tight, like Mom when she was mad. "Jefri ... what's the volume of a ball ten centimeters across?"

Amdi had been fidgeting impatiently through the conversation. All through the last year he had been hearing stories of humans from Jefri, and dreaming what Ravna might really be like. Now he had a chance to show off. He jumped for the comm, and grinned at Jefri. "That's easy, Ravna." His voice was perfect Jefri-and completely fluent. "It's 523.598 cubic centimeters ... or do you want more digits?"

Muffled conversation. "...No, that's fine. Okay, Mr. Skinner. We have pictures from our earlier pass and a general radio fix. Where exactly are you?"

"Under the castle dome at top of Starship Hill. It's right at the coast by a-"

A man's voice cut in. Pham? He had a funny accent. "I got it on the map. We still can't see you direct. Too much haze."

"That's smoke," said the Cloak. "The enemy is almost upon us from the south. We need your help immediately-" The singleton lowered its head from the commset. Its eyes closed and opened a couple of times. Thinking? "Hmm, yes. Without your help, we and Jefri and this ship are lost. Please land within the castle courtyard. You know we've specially reinforced it for your arrival. Once down we can use your weapons to-"

"No way," the guy replied immediately. "Just separate the friendlies from the bad guys and let us take care of things."

Tyrathect's voice took on a wheedling tone, like a little kid complaining. He really has been studying us."No, no, didn't mean to be impolite. Certainly, do it your own way. About the enemy force: everyone close to the castle on the south side of the hill are enemy. A single pass with your ship's ... um, torch ... would send them running."

"I can't fly that torch inside an atmosphere. Did your Pop really land with the main jet, Jefri? No agrav?"

"Yes, sir. All we had was the jet."

"He was a lucky genius."

Ravna: "Maybe we could just float across, a few thousand meters up. That might scare them away."

Tyrathect began, "Yes, that might-"

The public doors on the north side of the dome slid open. Mr. Steel stood silhouetted against the daylight beyond. "Let me talk to them," he said.

The goal of all their voyaging lay just twenty kilometers below OOB. They were so close, yet those twenty thousand meters might be as hard to bridge as the twenty thousand light-years they had come so far.

They floated on agrav directly over "Starship Hill". OOB's multispectral wasn't working very well, but where smoke did not obscure, the ship's optics could count the needles on the trees below. Ravna could see the forces of "Woodcarver" ranged across the slopes south of the castle. There were other troops, and apparently cannon, hidden in the forests that lined the fjord south of that. Given a little more time they would be able to locate them too. Time was the one thing they did not have.

Time and trust.

"Forty-eight hours, Pham. Then the fleet will be here, all around us." Maybe, maybe godshatter could work a miracle; they'd never know stewing about it up here. Try: "You've got to trust somebody, Pham."

Pham glared back at her, and for an instant she feared he might go completely to pieces. "You'd land in the middle of that castle? Medieval villains are just as smart as any you've seen in the Beyond, Rav. They could teach the Butterflies a thing or two. An arrow in the head will kill you as sure as an antimatter bomb."

More fake memories? But Pham was right on this: She thought about the just-concluded conversation. The second pack-Steel-had been a bit too insistent. He had been good to Jefri, but he was clearly desperate. And she believed him when he said that a high fly-by wouldn't scare the Woodcarvers off. They needed to come down near the ground with firepower. Just now, about all the firepower they had was Pham's beam gun. "Okay, then! Do what you and Steel talked about. Fly the lander past Woodcarver's lines, laser blast them."

"God damn it, you know I can't fly that. The landing boat is like nothing either of us know, and without the automation I-"

Softly: "Without the automation, you need Blueshell, Pham." There was horror on Pham's face. She reached out to him. He was silent for a long moment, not seeming to notice.

"Yeah." His voice was low, strangled. Then: "Blueshell! Get up here."

OOB's lander had more than enough room for the Skroderider and Pham Nuwen. The craft had been built specifically for Rider use. With higher automation working, it would have been easy for Pham-for even a child-to fly. Now, the craft could not provide stable flight, and the "manual" controls were something that gave even Bluseshell a hard time. Damn automation. Damn optimization. For most of his adult life Pham had lived in the Slowness. All those decades, he had managed spacecraft and weapons that could have reduced the feudal empire below to slag. Yet now, with equipment that should have been enormously more powerful, he couldn't even fly a damn landing boat.

Across the crew compartment, Blueshell was at the pilot's position. His fronds stretched across a web of supports and controls. He had turned off all display automation; only the main window was alive, a natural view from the boat's bow camera. OOB floated some hundred meters ahead, drifting up and out of view as their craft slid backwards and down.

Blueshell's fidgety nervousness-furtiveness, it seemed to Pham-had disappeared as he got into piloting the craft. His voder voice became terse and preoccupied, and the edges of his fronds writhed across the controls, an exercise that would have been impossible to Pham even if he had a lifetime of experience with the gear. "Thank you, Sir Pham... I'll prove you can trust..." The nose lurched downwards and they were staring almost straight into the fjord-carven coastline twenty kilometers below. They fell free for half a minute while the rider's fronds writhed on their supports. Hot piloting? No: "Sorry, sorry." Acceleration, and Pham sank into his restraints under a grav load that wobbled between a tenth gee and an intolerable crush. The landscape rotated and they had a brief glimpse of OOB, now like a tiny moth above them.

"Is it necessary to kill, Sir Pham? Perhaps simply our appearance over the battle..."

Nuwen gritted his teeth. "Just get us down." The Steel creature had been adamant that they fry the entire hillside. Despite all Pham's suspicions, the pack might be right on that. They were up against a crew of murderers that had not hesitated to ambush a starship; the Woodcarvers needed a real demonstration.

Their boat fluttered down the kilometers. Steel's fortifications were clearly visible even in the natural view: the rough polygon that guarded the refugee ship, the much larger structure that rambled across an island several kilometers westward. I wonder if this is how my Father's castle looked to the Qeng Ho landers? Those walls were high and unsloping. Clearly the Tines had had no idea of gunpowder till Ravna had clued them to it.

The valley south of the castle was a blot of dark smoke smoothly streaming toward the sea. Even without data enhancement, he could see hot spots, fringes of orange edging the black.

"You're at two thousand meters," came Ravna's voice. "Jefri says he can see you."

"Patch me through to them."

"I will try, Sir Pham." Blueshell fiddled, his lack of attention spinning the boat through a complete loop. Pham had seen falling leaves with more control.

A child's piping voice: "A-are you okay? Don't crash!"

And then the Steel pack's hybrid of Ravna and the kid: "South to go! South to go! Use fire gun. Burn them quick."

Blueshell was entirely too cooperative to this direction. He had them down in the smoke already. For seconds they were flying blind. A break in the smoke showed the hillside less than two hundred meters off, coming up fast. Before Pham could curse at Blueshell, the Rider had turned them around and floated the boat into clearer air. Then he pitched over so they might see directly down.