Yalson shrugged, hoisted her gun to her shoulder and fired at a four-legged shadow on the practice screen. It stopped in its tracks and dropped, seeming to dissolve into the line of shady ground at the bottom of the screen.

Horza gave talks.

It made him feel like some visiting lecturer at a college, but that's what he did. He felt he had to explain to the others why he was doing what he was, why the Changers supported the Idirans, why he believed in what they were fighting for. He called them briefings, and ostensibly they were about Schar's World and the Command System, its history, geography and so on, but he always (quite intentionally) ended up talking about the war in general, or about totally different aspects of it unrelated to the planet they were approaching.

The briefing cover gave him a good excuse to keep Balveda confined to her cabin while he paced up and down on the deck of the mess talking to the members of the Free Company; he didn't want his talks turning into a debate.

Perosteck Balveda had been no trouble. Her suit and a few items of harmless-looking jewellery and other bits and pieces had been jettisoned from a vactube. She had been scanned with every item the CAT's limited sick-bay equipment could provide and had come up clean, and she seemed quite happy to be a well-behaved prisoner, confined to the ship as they all were and, apart from at night, locked in her cabin only occasionally. Horza didn't let her near the bridge, just in case, but Balveda showed no signs of trying to get to know the ship especially well — the way he had done when he came on board. She didn't even try to argue any of the mercenaries round to her way of thinking about the war and the Culture.

Horza wondered how secure she felt. Balveda was pleasant and seemed unworried; but he looked at her sometimes and thought he saw, briefly, a glimpse of inner tension, even despair. It relieved him in one way, but in another it gave him that same bad, cruel feeling he experienced when he thought about exactly why the Culture agent was still alive. Sometimes he was simply afraid of getting to Schar's World, but increasingly as the voyage dragged on he came to relish the prospect of some action and an end to thought.

He called Balveda to his cabin one day, after they had all eaten in the mess. The woman came in and sat down on the same small seat he had sat in when Kraiklyn had summoned him just after he had joined the ship.

Balveda's face was calm. She sat elegantly in the small seat, her long frame at once relaxed and poised. Her deep dark eyes gazed out at Horza from the thin, smoothly shaped head, and her red hair — now turning black — shone in the lights of the cabin.

"Captain Horza?" she smiled, crossing her long-fingered hands on her lap. She wore a long blue gown, the plainest thing she had been able to find on the ship: something that had once belonged to the woman Gow.

"Hello, Balveda," Horza said. He sat back on the bed. He wore a loose gown. For the first couple of days he had stayed in his suit, but while it stayed commendably comfortable, it was bulky and awkward in the confines of the Clear Air Turbulence, so he had discarded it for the voyage.

He was about to offer Balveda something to drink, but somehow, because that was what Kraiklyn had done with him, it didn't seem the right thing to do.

"What was it," Horza?" Balveda said.

"I just wanted to… see how you were," he said. He had tried to rehearse what he would say; assure her she was in no danger, that he liked her and that he was sure that this time the worst that would happen to her really would be internment somewhere, and maybe a swap, but the words would not come.

"I'm fine," she said, smoothing her hand over her hair, her eyes glancing around the cabin briefly. "I'm trying to be a model captive so you won't have an excuse for ditching me." She smiled, but again he thought he sensed an edge to the gesture. Yet he was relieved.

"No," he laughed, letting his head rock back on his shoulders with the laugh. "I've no intention of doing that. You're safe."

"Until we get to Schar's World?" she said calmly.

"After that, too," he said.

Balveda blinked slowly, looking down. "Hmm, good." She looked into his eyes.

He shrugged. "I'm sure you'd do the same for me."

"I think I… probably would," she said, and he couldn't tell whether she was lying or not. "I just think it's a pity we're on different sides."

"It's a pity we're all on different sides, Balveda."

"Well," she said, clasping her hands on her lap again, "there is a theory that the side we each think we're on is the one that will triumph eventually anyway."

"What's that?" he grinned. "Truth and justice?"

"Not either, really," she smiled, not looking at him. "Just…" She shrugged. "Just life. The evolution you talked about. You said the Culture was in a backwater, a dead end. If we are… maybe we'll lose after all."

"Damn, I'll get you on the good guys" side yet, Perosteck," he said, with just a little too much heartiness. She smiled thinly.

She opened her mouth to say something, then thought the better of it and closed it again. She looked at her hands. Horza wondered what to say next.

One night, six days out from their destination — the system's star was fairly bright in the sky ahead of the ship, even on normal sight — Yalson came to his cabin.

He hadn't expected it, and the tap at the door brought him from a state between waking and sleep with a jarring coldness which left him disorientated for a few moments. He saw her on the door-screen and let her in. She came in quickly, closing the door after her and hugging him, holding him tight, soundless. He stood there, trying to wake up and work out how this had happened. There seemed to be no reason for it, no build-up of tension of any sort between them, no signs, no hints: nothing.

Yalson had spent that day in the hangar, wired up with small sensors and exercising. He had seen her there, working away, sweating, exhausting herself, peering at readouts and screens with her critical eyes, as though her body was a machine like the ship and she was testing it almost to destruction.

They slept together. But as though to confirm the exertions she had put herself through during the day, Yalson fell asleep almost as soon as they lay down; in his arms, while he was kissing and nuzzling her, breathing in the scent of her body again after what seemed like months. He lay awake and listened to her breathe, felt her move very slightly in his arms, and sensed her blood beat slower and slower as she fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning they made love, and afterwards he asked her, while he held her and their sweat dried, "Why?" as their hearts slowed. "What changed your mind?" The ship hummed distantly around them.

She gripped him, hugging tighter still, and shook her head.

"Nothing," she said, "nothing in particular, nothing important." He felt her shrug, and she turned her head away from his face, into his arm, towards the humming bulkhead. In a small voice she said, "Everything; Schar's World."

Three days out, in the hangar, he watched the members of the Free Company work out and practise firing their guns at the screen. Neisin couldn't practise because he still refused to use lasers after what had happened in the Temple of Light. He had stocked up on magazines of micro projectiles during his few sober moments in Evanauth.

After firing practice, Horza had each of the mercenaries test their AG harnesses. Kraiklyn had purchased a cheap batch of them and insisted that the Free Company members who didn't already have an anti-gravity unit in their suit buy a harness from him, at what he claimed was cost price. Horza had been dubious at first, but the AG units seemed serviceable enough, and certainly might be useful for searching the Command System's deeper shafts.