"I tried."

"Like hell you tried!" Dilys flared with a sudden rage. "Did you report it to Yarn? Did you tell anyone? Did you take precautions against something like this happening?" She gestured to the body, the machine. "Damn you, Allain. Damn you!"

Dumarest caught her lifted hand before she could send its palm against the steward's cheek. For a moment, she struggled with him and he felt the strength of her, the fear and anger which powered the muscles beneath the skin, then, abruptly, she was against him, her face pressed against his own, a dampness on her cheek.

"Earl! Oh, Earl!"

He held her, waiting for the moment to pass, knowing that until it did, nothing constructive could be done. When she finally straightened, he said, "How bad is the damage? Can it be fixed?"

"I don't know. I'll have to check."

"Then get on with it." Stopping, Dumarest gripped the body and swung it to one side. "Allain, you'd better get back to the passengers. Give them tranquilizers if they need them, and any lies which can give them comfort. We've had a temporary breakdown which will take a little while to fix. In the meantime, they can enjoy the hospitality of the ship. Break out some spirits and strong wines. Euphoriants, too, and get that woman to play more of her recordings."

"They aren't stupid, Earl. They know what it means once the field is down."

As they all knew-knowledge which gave no peace of mind. Once the shimmering haze of the Erhaft field was down the ship dropped to below light speed, to drift in the immensity between the stars, to be vulnerable to any wandering scrap of debris which might cross their path-motes which could penetrate the hull and larger fragments which would vent their kinetic energy in a fury which would turn metal into vapor. And there were other dangers, less tangible, but more to be feared. The impact of invisible energies which could twist and distort the vessel and all within it, forces which were thick in the area they now traversed.

"Dilys?"

"I'm working as fast as I can, Earl." She was at the generator, tools spread in orderly confusion around her, hands grimed, as was her face, her hair. She had stripped off her blouse and wore nothing above the waist but the fabric confining her breasts. They, and the flesh of back and shoulders, glistened with perspiration. "He'd loosed the covers," she said. "Lifted them and put something inside. A scrap of wire which he used to short out the coils."

"So?"

"Like Allain said, the poor devil was crazed. He must have wanted to attract my attention in some way."

"He wanted to die."

"Perhaps not, Earl. He didn't know too much about generators. He needn't have meant to do much damage."

"He wanted to die and take us with him." To Dumarest it was obvious and he wondered why she would want to think of excuses for her ex-lover. Because of that, perhaps, a reluctance to think ill of someone who had been so close. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

For answer, she shook her head. He had done enough, dragging the dead body into the hold and cycling it through the lock. Dead meat, fit only to be dumped into the void, but once it had been a man and one she could have saved had she been less harsh. Allain had been right. A kiss could have saved them all.

A kiss, and a little less carelessness on her part.

Had she not left the engine room untended. Hadn't wandered down the passage to enter Dumarest's cabin and waste time talking to Bochner. Hadn't become enamored of the picture he had painted, the house and prospects, the position he'd mentioned. The one dependent on marriage. Would Earl have married her to make himself eligible?

Was he a man who could be bought?

Questions which now had no meaning. Looking into the interior of the generator, she could see the damage which Jumoke had caused; delicate installations now seared and blacked, insulation charred, surfaces which should have gleamed like mirrors now dulled with the impact of heat, stained by condensed vapors. Things which could be repaired, and would be repaired if given the time, but the main problem was within the triple helixes. Each set at right angles to the other, things of delicate fabrication, matched to within five decimal places of similarity. How badly had they been distorted?

It would take instruments to tell. Tests and calibrations, and more tests with the instruments she had at hand and the knowledge she had acquired. But, to retune them was another matter. To match them so they would restore the field, was a matter of luck and skill and time. Luck, in that they weren't too badly damaged. Skill, to sense and adjust and manipulate and balance. Time, in which to work.

Time!

Egulus shook his head when Dumarest made his report.

"We haven't the time, Earl. That bastard did a good job on us. He worked on the instruments before heading for the generator. I guess he wanted to get us in any way he could."

The captain was being generous-Jumoke had only been interested in killing the engineer and her new lover.

"Radio?"

"Out. I don't mean we just can't get messages in the Quillian Sector. That's bad enough, but at least we might have been lucky. No. The crazy idiot took care of that. Busted it all to hell and the spare unit with it. I guess we should be thankful he didn't wreck the screens while he was at it."

A small advantage, and of dubious merit. Had the screens been wrecked they would have been "blind" but as it was, they could see the cold hostility of the universe in which they now drifted helplessly. See the flare of a nearby sun and the ugly corona around it, the leaping prominences, the blotches of roiling vapors which gave it a pocked appearance as if it were a thing alive and horribly diseased.

"We're heading towards it," said Egulus, "and without power we're going to hit it. Jumoke's last gift to his friends and partners." His hands closed as if he could feel a throat. "I was too gentle," he said bitterly. "I smelled the stink of that smoke but never thought he would be such a fool. To lose his head over a woman!"

"That's all you noticed? The smoke?"

"He was tense and withdrawn, but that's normal when in the Rift. To make a living, we have to take chances and always something can go wrong. It's worse in the Quillian Sector, but you know about that. We make profits but we earn them." He ended bleakly. "Greed. It's killed more men than anything else. The temptation to make an easy profit. To take that one extra chance."

"Kumetat?"

"We didn't have to go there. I was going to give it a miss this time and hit it on the way back in. Only there was a cargo, and how could I refuse?"

An odd cargo for a desert world, Dumarest remembered, but odd things were carried at times. And he'd had no choice but to stay with the Entil. The worlds at which it had touched had been too backward for plentiful shipping. Too undeveloped for a man to earn the price of another passage. Bad worlds on which to be stranded. Hard planets to easily leave. Impossible places on which to hide.

"And if we hadn't got that cargo?"

"We'd be on Tullon by now. At least, that's where we were headed until we touched at Kumetat. They had an urgent delivery for Mucianus. A good world. One on the rim of the Sector and close to the edge of the Rift. We could have stayed awhile, a day or two, maybe. There's always a choice of cargoes." He ended bitterly, "Now it looks as if we're going to roast in hell."

The Garden of Emdale had gone, the bright colors vanished, the flowers, the darting insects, all had disappeared. They had been followed by the chill mistiness of the Chephron Gorge, with its souring walls and looming masses, its blurred details and rocks stained and weathered with time and climate so as to give the appearance of ranked and leering skulls. Other recordings had followed, and now she sat engulfed by the glittering magic of the Elg Cavern. A place of winking points of variegated hue as crystals caught and reflected a mote of light, amplifying it, splintering it into a hundred component parts, distorting it, filling the salon with a snowstorm of sparkles, of eye-catching joy.