Adok moaned in distress, clamping his hand over his mouth.

“What we’d like to know about is Voi,” Samuel said.

“Voi?”

“Yes. Do you know where she is?”

“I haven’t seen her for days. She put us all on standby. It was silly, we had to organize the kids in the day clubs to kill spiders. She said Lodi figured out you were using them to spy on us.”

“Clever man, Lodi. Do you know where he is?”

“No. Not for a couple of days.”

“Interesting. How many are there in this group of yours?”

“About twenty, twenty-five. There’s no real list. We’re just friends.”

“Who started it?”

“Voi. She’d changed when she came out of detox. The genocide became a real cause for her. We just got sucked along by her. Everybody does when Voi gets serious about an issue.”

Monica datavised a request to her processor block, retrieving a memory image from the file she’d recorded at the Terminal Terminus. It had bothered her since the snatch. The last glimpse she had of Joshua Calvert showed him tugging a girl along. She showed the enhanced image to Adok. “Do you know her?”

He blinked blearily at the little screen. Whatever drugs Samuel had administered to loosen his tongue were making him drowsy. “That’s Shea. I like her, but . . .”

“Is she one of your group?”

“Not really, but she’s Prince Lambert’s girlfriend. He’s sort of a member; and she’s done a few things for us occasionally.”

Monica looked at Samuel. “What have we got on this Prince Lambert character?”

“A moment.” He consulted his bitek processor block. “He’s registered as a pilot for the Tekas , an executive yacht owned by his family corporation. Monica, it was one of the starships which left Ayacucho this afternoon.”

“Damn it!” She slammed her fist down on one of the cabinets beside Adok Dala’s couch. “Does Voi know Prince Lambert?”

Adok smiled blithely. “Yes. They used to be lovers. He was the reason she wound up in detox.”

Do you have a jump coordinate for the Tekas? samuel asked Niveu.

No. It flew outside our mass perception range. None of the voidhawks registered its jump. But we do have the flight vector. It was an odd course, the ship was heading back down to the disk when it passed beyond us. If it didn’t perform any drastic realignment manoeuvres there are three possible stars it could have flown to: Shikoku, Nyvan, and Torrox.

Thank you. We’ll check them.

Of course. I’ll inform Duida’s defence command. We’ll leave immediately.

Shea had changed into a grey ship-suit when Joshua floated into the sickbay. She was talking quietly to Liol, but broke off to give him a shy grin. Ashly and Melvyn were busy packing equipment away. One of the serjeants held on to a grab hoop just inside the hatch.

“How are you feeling?” Joshua asked her.

“Fine. Ashly gave me a tranquillizer. I think it helps.”

“I wish he’d give me one.”

Her grin brightened. “Is your hand very bad?”

He held it up. “Most of the bone is intact, but I’m going to need some clone vat tissue to build the fingers up. The package can’t regenerate quite that much.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Tranquillity will pay for it,” he said, straight-faced. “Where’s Kole?”

“Zero-tau,” Melvyn said.

“Good idea.”

“Do you want me to go in as well?” Shea asked.

“Up to you. But I need some help before you decide.”

“From me?”

“Yes. Let me explain. Contrary to everything the news studios were saying, I’m not a foreign agent.”

“I know that, you’re Lagrange Calvert.”

Joshua smiled. “I knew it would come in useful one day. The thing is, we are looking for Alkad Mzu, but not because of any Omutan propaganda.”

“Why then?”

He took her hand in his, squeezing emphatically. “There is a reason, Shea, it’s a good reason, but not a very nice one. I’ll tell you if you really want to know; because if you’re anything like the person I think you are, you’d help us find her if you knew what’s actually going on. But if you’ll trust me on this, you don’t want to know. It’s up to you.”

“Are you going to kill her?” she asked sheepishly.

“No.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. We just want to take her back to Tranquillity where she’s been living since the genocide. As prisons go, it isn’t bad. And if we can get to her in time, it’ll save an awful lot of people. Maybe an entire planet.”

“She’s going to drop a planet-buster on Omuta, isn’t she?”

“Something like that.”

“I thought so,” she said in a tiny voice. “But I don’t know where she is.”

“I think you do. You see, we believe she’s with Voi.”

“Oh, her .” Shea’s face darkened.

“Yes, her. I’m sorry, this sounds painful for you. I didn’t realize.”

“She and Prince Lambert had a thing. He still . . . well, he’d go back to her if she’d have him.”

“This Prince Lambert is your boyfriend, the starship captain?”

“Yes.”

“Which ship?”

“The Tekas .”

“And it left Ayacucho today?”

“Yes. Do you really think Alkad Mzu was on board?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Is he going to be in trouble with the authorities?”

“I couldn’t care less about him. I just want to locate Mzu. Once I’ve done that, once she knows I’m on her tail and watching every move, the threat will be neutered. She’ll have to come back with me then. Now, are you going to tell me where the Tekas went?”

“I’m sorry, I wish I could help, but he wouldn’t tell me where they were going.”

“Shit!”

“P.L. is flying the Tekas to Nyvan,” Liol said. He looked around inquiringly at the startled faces. “Did I say something wrong?”

“How the bloody hell do you know where he was going?” Joshua demanded.

“P.L.’s a good friend of mine; we grew up together. Quantum Serendipity has the contract to service the Tekas . He’s not the most experienced pilot, and Voi had given him a very odd manoeuvre to fly. So I helped him program the flight vector.”

André Duchamp had half expected to be shot at by the Ethenthia asteroid’s SD platforms when the Villeneuve’s Revenge jumped into its dedicated emergence zone three thousand kilometres away. He certainly had a lot of explaining to do to the local defence command, followed up by testimony from the rover reporters. When he did finally receive docking permission he assumed the famed Duchamp forcefulness and integrity had won through again.

What actually happened was that while he was busy claiming to be a defector from the Capone Organization, Erick opened a channel to the local Confederation Navy Bureau and asked them to press the local authority for clearance. Even so, the authorities were extremely cautious. Three SD platforms were locked on to the Villeneuve’s Revenge as it approached the spaceport.

The security teams which ransacked the life-support capsules in search of treachery were exceptionally thorough. André put on a brave face as composite panels were split open and equipment modules broken down into component parts for high-definition scanning. The cabins hadn’t exactly been in optimum shape before. It would take weeks to reassemble the trashed fittings to comply with even the minimum of CAB flight-worthiness requirements.

But Kingsley Pryor was hauled away by the emotionless officers from an unnamed division of the defence forces. A big credit bonus to the intrepid crew who had outsmarted Capone.

The only possible flaw was Shane Brandes. So the Dechal ’s fusion engineer was brought out of zero-tau while they were still on the approach phase and given a simple ultimatum: cooperate or you’re going to be a dead crewman who we’re in mourning over. He chose cooperation; explaining to the Ethenthia authorities why they’d abducted him in the first place would have been a little too confusing, he felt.