Between them and the Arachnids there had been only one shield: the Federation's ships. The Federation was nearly a religion to these people, and they had not been prepared to entertain a schism.

Isolated by rebellion from the rest of the broken Federation, they'd formed a loyalist provisional government. Since Admiral Ortega, commanding the Frontier Fleet elements at Zephrain, had found himself equally isolated from his superiors, he had placed his forces at the disposal of the provisional government. He was neither brilliant nor imaginative, but his integrity was absolute and he had the seniority.

Trevayne had placed himself under his command.

But once the desperate race was won, what had happened came crowding back like a slow, dreary drumbeat to which the rest of his life was mere counterpoint. The realization that only Colin was left to him. Colin... whom he had last seen as an angrily retreating back.

He remembered the quarrel with merciless clarity.

Colin had declared his sympathy for the Fringers, and Trevayne reacted with fury. And that, he thought, was because his son had blurted out things he himself felt but could not say, so that he'd been reduced to sputtering like an idiot about "Your oath..." "My oath," Colin had shot back, glaring at him with Natalya's blue eyes, "is to the Federation, not a bunch of greasy Corporate World political hacks! Can't you see, Dad? The Federation you and I swore our oaths to died with Fionna MacTaggart?" 'aat's enough!" Trevayne had roared. "D'you think I don't know the Fringe Worlds have grievances?

But neither those grievances nor anything else can justify shattering over four centuries of human tlnity!" So it had gone: the sterile repetition of incompatible positions and the final, angry parting.

Now the only anger Trevayne had left was reserved for the fate which had kept him in deep space as a junior officer for most of Colin's boyhood. Only later, with more time in port, had he found that which is given to a parent but once: to rediscover the universe while first watching a chfid discover it. And he'd found it with Courtenay.

Trevayne made one last try as he and Ortega left the flag bridge.

"Damn it, Sergei, Zoroffs command facilities are far better than Krait's, and incomparably better protected. It doesn't make sense to keep fleet command in something as fragile as a battleship--and you bloody well know it!" Ortega smiled wearily. He followed Trevayne's advice on most things, but on this he had his heels dug in and there was no moving him.

We both ('less-than now the Rim is still pretty volatile and that we'll probably have to proceed under martial ('aw in one form or another." "Now to stou** underestimating these people," Trevane demurred. "They know better than most what war is about, and theg put together the provisional government because they're loyal. So you are important because of your connections with it. Why, your daughter's one of its founders! There's no need to b.vpass it. Let's just give it a chief executive who represents the Federation and has extraordinary powers for the emergency. My legal officer and I have come up with a precedent: a captain who assumed emergency powers as temporary military governor of the Danzig System during the Theban War and was upheld afterward.

We'll declare you--oh, say Governor-General of the Rim for the duration." He held up a hand against the objections that were halfway out of Ortega's mouth.

"If the Assembly doesn't like it, they can say so when contact is reestablished. But for all we know, Sergei, the Rim is all the Federation that's to eft. Old Terra could have fallen into a black hole last month, and we'd have no way of knowing it.

We're on our own out here, and we'd better start acting accordingly. That's why you're so bloody important... because you're one of these people's own, at least by adoption!" Ortega opened his mouth, then closed it. Finally he shook his head.

"For God's sake, Ian, you're moving too fast for me again! Let's at least defer this until the immediate threat is past. His The "immediate threat" was, of course, the rebel attack that must come, sooner rather than later. Hot because of the mammoth building and refitting facilities, blot even because Zephrain held the "Gateway," the warp point which was the Rim's only practicable link with the rest of the Federation. What made Zephrain unique was the RandD Station, where two generations of brilliant minds had happily turned out the blueprints for a whole new order of military technology. They'd been cheerfully oblivious to the fact that none of it was being produced. (who wanted a new arms race with the Khanate of Orion?) But what they'd never seemed to notice was that their quest for a heavier, longer-ranged missile had brought them innocently to the threshold of a gravitic engineering revolution that would transform more than just warfare. The memory banks of Zephrain RDS were a womb wherein a whole new era gestated and Trevayne would unflinchingly perform a thermonuclear abortion ff he saw the station about to fall into rebel hands.

Zephrain RDS was the key to the Rim. If enough of the new weapons could be put into production--and the Zephrain Fleet base was one of the two or three places in the' Federation where it might be done--then the Rim would survive. And, knowing that, Trevayne and Ortega had to assume the rebels also knew it and would act to prevent it.

The intraship car reached Zoroffs boatbay, and the two admirals emerged, a study in physical contrast. Ortega was short and slightly overweight, his stocky frame and broad, high-cheekboned face reflecting his Slavic and Mesoamerican ancestry. Trevayne was tall, lean, and very dark, an Englishman with more than a trace of the "eoloured" genes that the departing empire had bequeathed to the island's population in the late twentieth century. His hair was beginning to thin on top, but unlike some (including Ortega) he'd made a good job of growing the short, neat beard currently in vogue among male TFN officers. The latter caused him more satisfaction (and the former more annoyance) than he eared to admit.

"I'd be delighted," said Trevavne, not sonnding pa'ticu- lady delighted. Ortega noticed (he lack of enthusiasm and smiled again.

"You may as well resign yourself, lan. She's like you-- she tends t get her way. It's ahnost unnatural how much like her mother she is." They proceeded towards Ortega's cutter, and Ortega paused as the Marine honor guard clicked to attention.

"'Governor-General"!" he snorted. Then, with a sudden twinkle, "Well, at least it got your mind off trving to keep me aboard Zorofjq." His His The next day found Trevayne in the small staff briefing room adjacent to Zoroffs flag bridge with his chief of staff, Captain Sonja Desai, while his operations officer, Commander Genii Yoshinaka, described the exercises planned for the next few days. Captain Sean F.

X. Remko, Zoroffs CO, attended via corn screen from his cxunmand bridge. Part of Trevavne's brain listened to the briefing, hut another part eofisidered his three subordinates.

Desai listened to Yoshinaka with her usual thin-lipped lack of expression. Looking at her dark, immobile face, a blend of Europe and India, Trevavne knew she would never he a charismatic leader, but her brilliance was acknowledged even by those--and they were many--whicho disliked her.

Remko's rnddy, brown-bearded face nodded in the corn screen as he followed Yoshinaka's cmments. Trevavne could easilv visualize the workings of the hurlv flag tap-rain's miner. Remko was a battle-cruiser man h), temperament, hut he performed his present duties with'aggressive cxggmpetence. He was a fighter, a man whose sheer guts and ability had carried him from a childhood in the Hell-broth, this worst slum on New Detroita planet noted ibr its slumsto his present rank despite the prejudice bis buzz-saw accent engendered.