“You heard the captain,” said Rembrandt, with a warm smile. “I’m sure he can find his way around a frontier world just fine all by himself. Besides which, I’ll be needing both of you here. So that’s settled.”

“OK, Captain,” said Sushi, calmly. “So I’m assuming you want the Lorelei shuttle here ASAP-and connections from Lorelei to Tejas and Cut ‘N’ Shoot. I’ll get those right away-shouldn’t take more than an hour. Anything else?“

“A little luck wouldn’t hurt,” said Phule, wryly.

“Here’s hoping you don’t need it,” said Rembrandt. “But if I were you, I’d start packing now. If Sushi does get lucky with the shuttle, maybe we can have one earlier than we expect.”

“Good idea,” said Phule. “Let me know as soon as you know when the shuttle will be here, Sushi.”

“Right on, Captain,” said Sushi, turning to his console and starting the call to Lorelei shuttle service.

As soon as Phule had left the room, he turned to Do-Wop. “Are you ever going to learn when to keep your mouth shut?” he said. “Now we’re going to have to stay out of the captain’s sight the whole way to Cut ‘N’ Shoot.”

“Hey, if he bought it, we’d‘ve been riding up in first class with him,” said Do-Wop, with a shrug and a grin. “You never try, you never win.”

“And when you try something that stupid, you’re blowing your chances before you even start to play,” said Sushi.

“All right, you guys, cut it out,” said Rembrandt. “I’ll give you the same advice I gave the captain-get your stuff packed and be ready to go. If you miss the special shuttle, you’re going to be a day behind him by the time he gets to Lorelei-and that might be enough for you to miss him altogether. We need somebody to make sure the practical details get taken care of, now that he doesn’t have Beeker to look after him. And you’re the best I’ve got-as sad a commentary as that is.”

“Don’t worry, Remmie, we’ll stick to him like glum-bions to a cressleback,” said Do-Wop. He spun on his heel and swept out, leaving the other two with mouths wide open.

“Glumbions?” said Rembrandt, in a dazed tone of voice. “Cressleback?”

Sushi shrugged. “I’ll fill you in if I ever find out,” he said. “Which probably won’t turn out to be worth the effort…”

“I know what you mean,” said Rembrandt. “But thanks, anyway.”

Phule had just returned to his office when there was a knock on the door behind him. He turned to see Lieutenant Rembrandt standing in the doorway. “Captain, may I speak to you privately, sir?” Rembrandt’s voice was-well, not quite urgent, but certainly insistent. So was the look in her eyes.

Phule nodded. “Sure, Lieutenant, come on in.” He sat on the edge of his desk and waved a hand. “Have a seat,” he said as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “What’s on your mind?”

“Thank you, sir, I’ll stand,” the lieutenant said. She stood awkwardly for a moment, then began. “Captain, I didn’t want to bring this up in front of everybody else, because I don’t want anyone to think I can’t handle the company while you’re gone. But I really do need to know this: What’s so important about Beeker’s going away that somebody else can’t go to bring him back? Or why don’t you ask some of your off-world contacts to find him? It’d be way easier, I’d think.”

Phule cleared his throat and said, “Well, Rembrandt, to tell you the truth, I thought I was overdue for a little bit of vacation myself…”

“No, sir,” said Rembrandt, firmly. “That’s a good story, and most of the troops will buy it. But it’s not the real reason. I’m going to be running Omega while you’re gone, Captain. If I don’t know the whole story, I’m likely to say something that everybody can see through-or that has consequences I can’t foresee. I need to know the real story. Nobody else needs to know it, but / do. And if you don’t think so, I respectfully suggest you give this job to somebody else.

Phule nodded. “You’re right, Lieutenant. My apologies- I should’ve been straight with you. The real reason has to do with the Port-a-Brain…”

“Surely you’re not worried about Beeker stealing it, sir?”

“Oh, that’s the last thing old Beeks would do,” said Phule. “Even if he decided to give me notice, he’d make it a point of honor to send back the Port-a-Brain-and anything else that belonged to me. No, the problem is a security feature my father had built in when he ordered the twin ‘puters for us.”

“A security feature?” Rembrandt frowned. “What kind of security feature?”

“Well, of course a Port-a-Brain’s got some fairly advanced antitheft and antihacking features as standard equipment,” said Phule. “Dad was worried about one of us being abducted along with our ‘puter. Somebody might try to kidnap Beeker and use the Port-a-Brain to tap into my stock portfolio, for example-we do have a lot of sensitive data on them.”

“So what happens if somebody does snatch one of you?”

“If either of us enters a certain code, they both shut down. It kicks in automatically if the two computers are out of range of one another-which basically covers a normal-sized planetary system-for three standard days. You can turn them back on, but you can’t open any programs unless Beeks and I both enter two different passwords within fifteen minutes-and each of us only has our own password.”

“OK, I can see how that’d be a pain,” said Rembrandt. “You’d have to wait till he gets back to use your computer-unless you can get him to enter the password from wherever he’s going…”

Phule nodded. “That’s not even the worst of it. If we’re still out of range and the right codes aren’t entered after another five standard days, the Port-a-Brain completely wipes its memory. As far as I know, there’s no way to recover it. I’d have to send it back to the factory just to get it restarted.“

“Ouch!” Rembrandt made a face. “Well, you’ve definitely got to email Beeker and set up a time when you can both enter your passwords. I wonder why he didn’t take care of this before he left? It’s not at all like him to leave you with this kind of problem.”

“Well, I have sent an email, of course. But I wish it was that easy,” said Phule. He drummed his fingers on the desk and said, “If the ‘puters aren’t within about sixty light-minutes of each other, it’s physically impossible to punch in both passwords within fifteen minutes. Hyper-space asynchronicity, they call it. So now I’ve got to go chasing after Beeks, in hopes I can stay close enough to keep the security from shutting me down. Luckily, the timing circuits go into stasis during starship travel, to avoid FTL paradoxes. That ought to give me enough time to catch him before the memory wipes. Then I can just ask him to give me his Port-a-Brain until he’s ready to return. And then I can come home and let him have his vacation.”

“Well, if I were you, I’d start backing up my data,” said Rembrandt. “That way, even if you don’t catch him quickly enough, you’ll lose as little as possible.”

“Oh, my data’s backed up, all right,” said Phule. He stood up and began to pace. “I know enough to do that. But there’s one more problem-and I’m afraid Beeks doesn’t even know about this one. My dad bought a special anti-kidnapping chip. If the computers are outside the sixty-light-minute range for more than five days, a special chip shuts me down.”

“What?” Rembrandt’s eyes opened wide. “You mean…”

“Yeah, I do,” said Phule. “The chip’s implanted in me, and if the computer goes down, it triggers this stasis chip which taps into my central nervous system and throws me into induced super-hibernation. Think of it as like a deep coma, except it’s externally controlled. I tried to argue Dad out of it…“

“I can see why,” said Rembrandt, clearly appalled. “But isn’t there an override? What’s the point of something that drastic, anyway?”

Phule paced nervously. “If there was an override, kidnappers could make me punch it in, and then what good’s the security? There was a case a few years back-the Sojac kidnapping on Arbutus-they bullied a kid into giving up a whole batch of his family’s access codes and passwords, then buried him alive in the desert. But you can’t threaten someone in stasis. In fact, the super-hibernation field protects the, uh, subject from almost everything. You can apparently even survive hard vacuum for a couple of years. Of course, you can’t do anything while you’re in stasis.”