"Not even a clerk or desk worker?" Lord Kelsey-Ramos persisted. "Come, now, Commodore, I'm not asking for a full Pravilo honor guard or anything like that. I have my own launch and my own pilot—all I'm asking is for you to give me a security clearance and someone to point out the high points as we go along."

The commodore grimaced and reached for his control stick. "Lord Kelsey-Ramos, I really don't have time for this. You want a clearance?—fine; I'll have one made out for you. But you and your launch had better stay out of our way. We've got thirty tugs buzzing around out there, and you so much as near-miss one of them and you're out."

"I understand," Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded. "Don't worry; we don't intend to spend much time in the current work areas. My primary interest is with the rocheoids that have already been fitted with Mjollnir drives."

The officer's forehead creased slightly at that, but there were too many other matters clamoring for his attention for him to bother with an odd comment from a civilian. "Fine," he grunted, tapping a few keys and pulling a red-stripped cyl from its slot. "Replace your launch's ID beacon with this," he instructed, handing it across the desk, "and don't pull it out until you're ready to leave the area—if you do, it'll erase."

"Thank you," Lord Kelsey-Ramos said, taking the cyl. "What about a guide, now?"

I held my breath. We didn't really want a guide—didn't want any witnesses around when I hijacked the rocheoid—but Lord Kelsey-Ramos had persuaded me that it would be strongly out of character for someone in his position not to demand some kind of official escort. He'd toned down the request as far as he reasonably could, and I could tell the Pravilo commodore had noted that. Now if the latter would just push the protocol a little from his direction...

He did. "Again, sir, I'm sorry," he said, "but the best I can do is offer you my aide for a couple of hours."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded. "That'll be quite satisfactory, Commodore," he told the other. "Is he available right now?"

"If you want him to be," the other shrugged, waving his control stick at the intercom. "Grashchik? Finish up whatever listing you're on and pull the overview file. Got some visitors here for you to give a brief tour to." He got an acknowledgment and waved the intercom off. "It'll be just a couple of minutes."

"Thank you." Lord Kelsey-Ramos glanced behind the commodore, to a real-time schematic of the entire Project Avalanche area. "Tell me, how close to schedule are you running?"

"Dead on, sir," the other said, an obvious note of pride in his voice. "The original plan was for the rocheoids to be able to fly six days from now; we figure we'll be ready in a little over five."

I felt my stomach tighten. Five days—just five days. Deep down, I'd hoped that the project would be behind schedule, that there would be a little more time for us to prepare ourselves before we had to do this. But that hadn't happened. Today—right now—was the time.

I glanced over to find Lord Kelsey-Ramos's eyes on me. I nodded fractionally, got an acknowledging nod in return, and he turned back to the Pravilo officer. "Since time is of the essence, Commodore," he suggested, "why don't we go on back to the Bellwether and get the launch ready to go? Your man can meet us there."

The other nodded, almost absently, his mind already on more important matters. "Whatever you want to do, sir," he said. "Grashchik will be there in a few minutes."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded. "Thank you, sir," he said... and I could hear the grim determination lurking beneath the words. "We'll be ready for him."

—

Visually, Project Avalanche was a disappointment.

Not surprisingly, I suppose. The image I'd started with—two hundred mountain-sized rocheoids floating in formation with a hundred workships darting around between them—that picture had pretty well disappeared from my mind as soon as it occurred to me that it would be far more efficient to leave the rocheoids wherever they originally were in orbit and to simply move the Mjollnir-lacing equipment back and forth through the rings as needed. Still, traces of the image had lingered, reinforced perhaps by the fact that the last fifteen rocheoids were being fitted simultaneously from this one orbital station.

But even those fifteen rocheoids turned out to be scattered over a thousand cubic kilometers of space; and the tugs and workships attending them flew for the most part on cold nitrogen maneuvering jets. Even in the middle of it, it was hard to imagine anything at all unusual was happening out here.

Which was, I suspected, exactly the way the Pravilo wanted it to look.

"That's the one, over there," Lieutenant Grashchik pointed through the launch's viewplate toward our target rocheoid. "If you look carefully, you can see the attached tug just below center, on the dark side of the terminator line."

Beside him, Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded. "Yes, I think I see it. Will we be able to go aboard?"

"I suppose so, sir, if you really want to," Grashchik said, an expected lack of enthusiasm in his voice. "Let me see if it's been left pressurized..." He reached past the pilot and tapped in a telemetry code. "Yes, sir, it has," he nodded. "I can tell you right now, though, that there's really nothing there to see. Just an old, stripped-down tug fitted with a Deadman Switch and not much else."

"Has it got pseudograv capabilities?" I put in.

The lieutenant twisted around to throw me a surprised look. "I don't really know. I doubt it'll matter one way or the other to the zombi."

"I'd like to know for sure," I told him, my heart thudding in my ears. The lieutenant's boredom had subtly altered; not yet a real suspicion, but definitely a recognition that something here was just a shade off-key. The sense seemed to be universal: beside me, I felt the shifting of Kutzko's muscles as his hand drifted a few centimeters closer to his needler; behind me, I heard the rhythm of Shepherd Adams's breathing change slightly.

Grashchik studied me. "Why?" he countered.

"Because it could be important," Lord Kelsey-Ramos came to my rescue. "I'm sure you know that flights in and out of Solitaire system routinely leave their pseudogravs on, on the bridge as well as elsewhere. The thunderheads who guide the zombis are used to it by now; it's even possible they wouldn't be able to manage the pinpoint accuracy we'll need without it."

The thought, I saw, had never even occurred to Grashchik. "Ah... yes, sir, I see your point," he said, his doubts evaporating. "Well, let me check the specs."

"I'd prefer seeing directly if the pseugograv generator is operational," I said as he slid one of his cyls into the slot.

Lord Kelsey-Ramos threw me a puzzled glance. "It's just something that occurred to me," I told him, unable to explain further with Grashchik sitting there.

The puzzled look remained, but he nodded his recognition that I wasn't just making conversation. "Well, Lieutenant?" he asked. "We're going in there anyway—surely we can flip on the current for a second and see if it's functioning."

The other hesitated, and I could see the muscles of his jaw tighten. Uncertainty, this time, not suspicion. "I don't know, sir. I'd have to open-code the board to do that, and these ships are supposed to stay dead until they're all ready to fly."

I felt my heart pick up its pace. An unexpected bonus—I'd wondered how in the world we were going to persuade him to open-code the tug's control systems. Unwittingly, I'd given Lord Kelsey-Ramos an ideal lever to use.

And he knew it. "Then you'd better call the commodore and get permission," he said firmly. "Mr. Benedar is right—now is not the time to start experimenting with techniques and parameters."