"But you were in Basilisk with her."

"So were several hundred other people, and I was as wet behind the ears as they come. If you want someone who really knows her," Tremaine added, frowning as he ran through a mental list of Fearless's officers, "your best bet is probably Rafe Cardones."

"I couldn't ask him!" Wolcott gasped, and Tremaine laughed out loud.

"Ms. Wolcott, Lieutenant Cardones was a JG then himself, and just between you, me, and the bulkhead, he was all thumbs, too. Of course, he got over that—thanks to the skipper." He smiled at her, then sobered. "On the other hand, you've gotten yourself in deep enough now. You may as well go ahead and ask me whatever it is you don't want to ask Rafe or Commander Venizelos." She twisted her cup, and he grinned. "Go ahead—trot it out! Everyone expects an ensign to put a foot in his or her mouth sometime, you know."

"Well, it's just— Sir, is the Captain running away from Grayson?"

The question came out in a rush, and her heart plummeted as Tremaine's face went absolutely expressionless.

"Perhaps you'd care to explain that question, Ensign." His voice was very, very cold.

"Sir, it's just that ... Commander Venizelos sent me down to Grayson to drop off Admiral Courvosier's baggage," she said miserably. She hadn't meant for it to come out that way, and she knew she'd been stupid to ask anyone a question which might be taken as a criticism of her CO. "I was supposed to meet someone from the Embassy, but there was this ... Grayson officer." Her face burned again, but this time it was with humiliated memory. "He told me I couldn't land there—it was the pad I'd been cleared for, Sir, but he told me I couldn't land there. That ... that I didn't have any business pretending to be an officer and I should ... go home and play with my dolls, Sir."

"And you didn't tell the Exec?" Tremaine's cold, ominous tone was not, she was relieved to realize, directed at her this time.

"No, Sir," she said in a tiny voice.

"What else did he have to say?" the Lieutenant demanded.

"He—" Wolcott drew a deep breath. "I'd rather not say, Sir. But I showed him my clearance and orders, and he just laughed. He said they didn't matter. They were only from the Captain, not a real officer, and he called her—" She stopped and her hands clenched on her coffee cup. "Then he said it was about time we `bitches' got out of Yeltsin, and he—" she looked away from the table and bit her lip "—he tried to put his hand inside my tunic, Sir."

"He what?!"

Tremaine half stood, and heads turned all over the dining room. Wolcott darted an agonized look around, and he sat back down, staring at her. She made herself nod, and his eyes narrowed.

"Why didn't you report him?" His voice was lower but still harsh. "You know the Captain's orders about things like that!"

"But ..." Wolcott hesitated, then met his eyes. "Sir, we were pulling out, and the Grayson — he seemed to think it was because the Captain was ... running away from how badly they've treated her. I didn't know whether he was right or not, Sir," she said almost desperately, "and even if he wasn't, we were scheduled to break orbit in an hour. Nothing like that ever happened to me before, Sir. If I'd been at home, I would've— But out here I didn't know what to do, and if — if I told the Captain what he'd said about her!"

She broke off, biting her lip harder, and Tremaine inhaled deeply.

"All right, Ms. Wolcott. I understand. But here's what you're going to do. As soon as the Exec comes off watch, you're going to tell him exactly what happened, word-for-word to the best of your memory, but you are not going to tell him you ever even considered that the Captain might be `running away.' "

Her eyes were confused—and unhappy—and he touched her arm gently.

"Listen to me. I don't think Captain Harrington knows how to run away. Oh, sure, she's making a tactical withdrawal right now, but not because the Graysons ran her off, whatever they may think. If you even suggest to Commander Venizelos that you thought that might be what was happening, he'll probably hand you your head."

"That's what I was afraid of," she admitted. "But I just didn't know. And ... and if they were right, I didn't want to make things even worse for her, and the things he said about her were so terrible, I just didn't—"

"Ms. Wolcott," Tremaine said gently, "the one thing the Skipper will never do is blame you for someone else's actions, and she feels very strongly about harassment. I think it has to do with—" He stopped and shook his head. "Never mind. Tell the Exec, and if he asks why you waited so long, tell him you figured we were leaving so soon they couldn't have done anything about it till we got back anyway. That's true enough, isn't it?"

She nodded, and he patted her arm.

"Good. I promise you'll get support, not a reaming." He leaned back again, then smiled. "Actually, I think what you really need is someone to ask for advice when you don't want to stick your neck out with one of the officers, so finish your coffee. I've got someone I want you to meet."

"Who's that, Sir?" Wolcott asked curiously.

"Well, he's not exactly someone your folks would want me to introduce you to," Tremaine said with a wry smile, "but he certainly straightened me out on my first cruise." Wolcott drained her cup, and the lieutenant rose. "I think you'll like Chief Harkness," he told her. "And—" his eyes glinted wickedly "—if anyone aboard Fearless knows a way to deal with scumbags like that Grayson without involving anyone else, he will!"

Commander Alistair McKeon watched Nimitz work his way through yet another rabbit quarter. For some reason known only to God, the terrestrial rabbit had adapted amazingly well to the planet Sphinx. Sphinx's year was over five T-years long, which, coupled with the local gravity and a fourteen-degree axial tilt, produced some ... impressive flora and fauna and a climate most off-worlders loved during spring and fall—well, early fall, anyway—and detested at all other times. Under the circumstances, one might have expected something as inherently stupid as a rabbit to perish miserably; instead, they'd thrived. Probably, McKeon reflected, thanks to their birthrate.

Nimitz removed flesh from a bone with surgeon-like precision, laid it neatly on his plate, and picked up another in his delicate-looking true-hands, and McKeon grinned. Rabbits might thrive on Sphinx, but they hadn't gotten noticeably brighter and, just as humans could eat most Sphinxian animal life, Sphinx's predators could eat bunnies. And did—with gusto.

"He really likes rabbit, doesn't he?" McKeon observed, and Honor smiled.

"Not all 'cats do, but Nimitz certainly does. It's not like celery—every 'cat loves that—but Nimitz is an epicure. He likes variety, and 'cats are arboreals, so he never had a chance to taste rabbit until he adopted me." She chuckled. "You should have seen him the first time I offered him some."

"What happened? Did our cultured friend's table manners desert him?"

"He didn't have any table manners at the time, and he practically wallowed in his plate."

Nimitz looked up from his rabbit, and it was McKeon's turn to chuckle at his disdainful expression. Few treecats ever left Sphinx, and off-worlders persistently underestimated those who did, but McKeon had known Nimitz long enough to learn better. 'Cats out-pointed Old Earth's dolphins on the sentience scale, and the commander sometimes suspected they were even more intelligent than they chose to let people know.

Nimitz held Honor's gaze a moment, then sniffed and returned to his meal.

"Take that, Captain Harrington," McKeon murmured, and grinned at Honor's laugh, for he hadn't heard many from her in Yeltsin. Of course, he was her junior CO, and unlike too many RMN officers, who saw patronage and family interest as a natural part of a military career, she detested even the appearance of favoritism, so there'd been no invitations to private dinners since he'd joined her command. In fact, she'd invited Commander Truman to join them tonight, but Truman had planned an unscheduled drill for her crew's surprise evening entertainment.