The Ranger captain was present, leaning over the communication console manned by his second officer. The pilot and flight engineer were busy at their stations.

"If they board, they'll arrest him, and he'll be automatically delivered as ordered," the second officer was saying.

"If they arrest him, they could arrest us too. She said to plant him, and she didn't care if it was head or feet first. She didn't order us to get ourselves interned," said the captain.

A voice from the comm; "This is the picket ship Ariel, Aslund Navy Contract Auxiliary, calling the C6-WG out of Vervain Hubside Station. Cease accelerating, and clear your portside lock for boarding for pre-docking inspection. Aslund Station reserves the right to deny you docking privileges if you fail to cooperate in pre-docking inspection-The voice took on a cheery tone, "I reserve the right to open fire if you don't stand and deliver in one minute. That's enough stalling boys." The voice, once gone ironic, was suddenly intensely familiar. Bel?

"Cease accelerating," the captain ordered, and motioned the second to close the comm channel. "Hey you, Rotha," he called to Miles. "Come over here."

So I'm "Rotha"again. Miles mustered a smarmy smile, and sidled closer. He eyed the viewer, striving to conceal his hungry interest. The Ariel? Yes, there it was in the vid display, the sleek Illyrican-built cruiser . . . did Bel Thorne still command her? How can I get myself onto that ship?

"Don't throw me out there!" Miles protested urgently. "The Oserans are after my hide. I swear, I didn't know the plasma arcs were defective!"

"What plasma arcs?" asked the captain.

"I'm an arms dealer. I sold them some plasma arcs. Cheap. Turns out they had a tendency to lock on overload and blow their user's hand off. I didn't know, I got them wholesale."

The Ranger captain's right hand opened and closed in sympathetic identification. He rubbed his palm unconsciously on his trousers, back of his plasma arc holster. He studied Miles, frowning sourly. "Headfirst it is," he said after a moment. "Lieutenant, you and the corporal take this little mutant to the portside personnel lock, pack him in a bod-pod, and eject him. We're going home."

"No," said Miles weakly, as they each took an arm. Yes! He dragged his feet, careful not to offer enough resistance to risk his bones. "You're not going to space me . . . !" The Ariel, my God. . . .

"Oh, the Aslunder merc'll pick you up," said the captain. "Maybe. If they don't decide you're a bomb, and try to set you off in space with plasma fire from their ship or something." Smiling slightly at this vision, he turned back to the comm, and intoned in a bored traffic-control sing-song, "Ariel, ah, this is the C6-WG. We chose to, ah, change our filed flight plan and return to Vervain Station. We therefore have no need for pre-docking inspection. We are going to leave you a, ah, small parting gift, though. Quite small. What you choose to do with it is your problem. . . ."

The door to Nav and Com closed behind them. A few meters of corridor and a sharp turn brought Miles and his handlers to a personnel hatch. The corporal held Miles, who struggled; the lieutenant opened a locker and shook out a bod-pod.

The bod-pod was a cheap inflatable life-support unit designed to be entered in seconds by endangered passengers, suitable either for Pressurization emergencies or abandoning ship. They were also dubbed idiot-balloons. They required no knowledge to operate because they had no controls, merely a few hours of recyclable air and a locator-beeper. Passive, foolproof, and not recommended for claustrophobes, they were very cost-effective in saving lives—when adequate pick-up ships arrived in time.

Miles emitted a realistic wail as he was stuffed into the bod-pod's dank, plastic-smelling interior. A jerk of the rip cord, and it sealed and inflated automatically. He had a brief, horrible flashback to the mud-sunken bubble-shelter on Kyril Island, and choked back a real scream. He was tumbled as his captors rolled the pod into the airlock. A whoosh, a thump, a lurch, and he was free-falling in pitch darkness. The spherical pod was little more than a meter in diameter. Miles, half-doubled-up, felt around, his stomach and inner ear protesting the spin imparted by the ejecting kick outward, till his shaking fingers found what he hoped was a cold-light tube. He squeezed it, and was rewarded with a nauseous greenish glow.

The silence was profound, broken only by the tiny hiss of the air recycler and his ragged breathing. Well . . . it's better than the last time somebody tried to shove me out an airlock. He had several minutes in which to imagine all the possible courses of action the Ariel might take instead of picking him up. He had just discarded skin-crawling anticipation of the ship opening fire on him in favor of abandonment to cold dark asphyxiation, when he and his pod were wrenched by a tractor beam.

The tractor beam's operator, clearly, had ham hands and palsy, but after a few minutes of juggling the return of gravity and outside sound reassured Miles he'd been safely stowed in a working airlock. The swish of the inner door, garbled human voices. Another moment, and the idiot balloon began to roll. He yelped loudly, and curled up into a protective ball to roll with the flow till the motion stopped. He sat up, and took a deep breath, and tried to straighten his uniform. Muffled thumps against the bod-pod's fabric. "Somebody in there?"

"Yeah!" Miles called back.

"Just a minute. . . ."

Squeaks, clinks, and a rending grind, as the seals were broken. The bod-pod began to collapse as the air sighed out. Miles fought his way clear of its folds, and stood, shakily, with all the gracelessness and indignity of a newly-hatched chick.

He was in a small cargo bay. Three grey-and-white uniformed soldiers stood in a circle around him, aiming stunners and nerve disrupters at his head. A slim officer with captain's insignia leaned with one foot on a canister, watching Miles emerge.

The officer's neat uniform and soft brown hair gave no clue whether one was looking at a delicate man or an unusually determined woman. This ambiguity was deliberately cultivated; Bel Thorne was a Betan hermaphrodite, minority descendant of a century-past social/genetic experiment that had not caught on. Thorne's expression melted from scepticism to astonishment as Miles rose into view.

Miles grinned back. "Hello, Pandora. The gods send you a gift. But there's a catch."

"Isn't there always?" Face lighting with delight, Thorne strode forward to grasp Miles's waist with bubbling enthusiasm. "Miles!" Thorne held Miles away again, and gazed avidly down into his face. "What are you doing here?"

"Somehow, I figured that might be your first question," Miles sighed.

"—and what are you doing in the Ranger-suit?"

"Goodness, I'm glad you're not of the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later school." Miles kicked his slippered feet clear of the deflated bod-pod. The soldiers, somewhat uncertainly, held their aim. "Ah—" Miles gestured toward them.

"Stand down, men," Thorne ordered. "It's all right."

"I wish that were true," Miles said. "Bel, we've got to talk."

Thorne's cabin aboard the Ariel was the same wrenching mix of familiarity and change Miles had encountered in all the mercenary matters. The shapes, the sounds, the smells of the Ariel's interior triggered cascades of memory. The captain's cabin was now overlaid with Bel's personal possessions; vid library, weapons, campaign souvenirs including a half-melted space-armor helmet that had been slagged saving Thorne's life, now made into a lamp; a small cage housing an exotic pet from Earth Thorne called ahamster.