A voice came from the speaker above the hatch. “What’s all this ruckus?”

“That spacer just stole my diamond collection!” Grace yelled, stumbling up to the hatch and starting to work it.

“What spacer?”

“The one the captain sent to give us sleeping pills.”

“I did no such thing,” came a new voice. “What spacer did this?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t have a name on his shirt,” Grace said, bracing herself and pulling the hatch open. A heavy wrench sailed through the hatch, missing her by only a centimeter. “He also just tried to kill me,” she added.

“Ship’s Sergeant at Arms, take anyone not essential to moving ship and settle this. Where’s all this happening?”

Grace glanced around—speaker but no camera. She read the numbers off the hatch to the captain.

“He’s heading into the cargo holds,” the captain said.

“And I’m following,” Grace said, snatching the wrench out of the air.

“It’s dangerous in there, young woman.”

Lord, another old man. “I jogged around in there on the way up here. I probably know the Dyev’s cargo holds as well as anyone.” And she was there and they weren’t. She went.

Jogging in a vast space full of pipes, machinery and narrow walkways was one thing. Coasting from one handhold to another while searching for a man who’d tried to bash her brains out was something else entirely. Grace moved cautiously.

A computer voice began announcing the minutes until the ship would put on acceleration. “That’s weight for you ground types,” a man’s voice added.

The thief was moving quickly, but he was noisy. Grace could hear him inside the space of huge tank ends, ice-caked compressors and pipe after pipe—some hot, some cold, most dangerous. She went as quickly as caution allowed, searching for the next handhold before launching from the last. The chase could kill her as dead as the hunted. Ahead of her, the man quit making noise. Grace paused at her handhold.

Behind her, some crew members—five, Grace estimated—were complaining about their assignment as they moved with the fast efficiency of those experienced in micro-G. A man with an impressive beer gut and two chevrons with crossed pistols on his collar caught up with Grace.

“You the woman what lost her jewels?”

The other men snickered at the joke.

“If your captain doesn’t want to pay out a small fortune, you’re the ones who are going to find them.” Grace smiled, showing teeth and the hard face she used when a new work crew wondered why they were taking orders from a woman.

“Yes, ma’am,” the guy in charge answered, not looking her in the eye. “Abe, you and Bo cover the right. Den and Jess, take the left. This nice woman and I will cover the walkway.”

“Okay,” “Yeah” and a “Yes, sir” from the youngest followed as the men split up.

“He got quiet about the time you fellows started chattering along this metal sidewalk,” Grace said, intentionally calling things what she wanted.

“How far ahead was he?” the Sergeant at Arms asked, pulling a sonic stunner from his back pocket.

“Hard to tell.” Grace glanced around at the huge spheres that held liquid gas or chilled oil. “I’d say about two bays farther up. Don’t you have a pistol?”

“Woman, no one in their right mind uses a slug thrower in here. Some of those tanks have liquid gas at a thousand psi. You ding one of them and this whole bay would be filled with gas slush in, what, ten seconds. You’d be an icicle before you could turn around.”

“He know that?” Grace said, nodding toward the thief ahead.

“If it’s the mess boy what I think it is, no, but I checked his bag when he came off leave and there weren’t no pistol.”

“Seen any sleeping pills?”

The man glanced away. “The Star of Dyev’s a drug-free ship. We don’t keep crew who do drugs.”

But for the right price, you’ll look the other way, won’t you, Grace thought.

“There he goes!” someone below them shouted as the thief broke from behind an ice-covered compressor, going hand over hand along the metal walkway. Now four men howled at his heels.

“That’s Iav,” the Master at Arms shouted. “Iav, give it up! We’ve got you!”

The boy kept going. Grace made a note of the number 38 that was written above the compressor the kid had hidden behind. He might have ditched the diamonds. She pushed off in chase right about the time the computer voice said, “Acceleration in zero minutes,” and went crashing down as 1G was restored.

The spacers found her yelp of pain hilarious. Her only consolation was that Iav fared no better.

But for five minutes more the boy fled farther aft. “Boy, you ain’t going into reactor country—not if you ever want kids, you ain’t,” the Sergeant at Arms taunted him. The thief hooked a right, and they found him huddled behind a compressor, trembling from exhaustion. Maybe from fear.

“Come on out, boy. You got no place else to run.”

“You were supposed to be asleep,” the young man whined at Grace. “The other guys were.”

“I don’t follow instructions very well,” Grace said gently. “Toss the diamonds out, and I’ll talk to the captain for you.” Grace didn’t really mind what happened to the kid once she got her trading stock back.

A shot rang out. More like a pop, but there was no missing the slug’s wind as it shot past Grace’s ear too damn close.

“What the hell—” the Sergeant at Arms yelled.

The young thief was looking down at the bag of jewels he’d been about to throw to Grace. His eyes grew wide as he took in the hole in his chest and fell back against a pressure vessel before collapsing on the walkway. The sacks of jewels fell from his hands, clattering as they fell to the machinery below. Grace could hear the small tinkling of jewels spilling free. She had a hunt ahead of her. Wonder how many of the diamonds will end up in other hands?

Turning, Grace faced the shooter. The Sergeant at Arms’ face was purple, his mouth was open, but no words were coming out.

“Hello. Mr. Santee, is it?” Grace said, intentionally mangling the name.

“Alfred Santorini,” the shooter corrected her. “At your service.”

“You seem to have shot an unarmed man,” Grace said.

“I thought he was about to throw explosives at us,” Santorini said, with almost enough sincerity to convince a well-bribed judge.

“I’ll get the boys hunting for what he dropped, ma’am,” the Sergeant at Arms said, apparently more than happy to leave this conversation.

“I posted an inventory, complete with photos of each jewel, with the purser when I came aboard,” Grace informed the Sergeant at Arms. “The diamonds are also numbered. You might mention that to your crew.”

“Right about the diamonds,” he said. Which said nothing about the jade, turquoise and emeralds. But with luck, she’d at least cut her losses.

“I didn’t know you were aboard,” Grace said, turning her attention to the man who’d destroyed her chance to find out who had come up with the idea of the theft and provided the drugs to pull it off.

“I came aboard at the last moment. Since my business proposal did not appear to meet your planet’s needs, it seemed senseless to waste any more of my time there.”

“And I never saw you in the mess?”

“I rented the captain’s cabin,” Santorini said lightly, “the better to get some work done on this enforced break. I take my meals in my cabin.”

“That poor young man wouldn’t happen to be the one who brought you your meals?” Grace said, nodding at the body being bagged by two of the crew.

“I really wouldn’t know. A mess steward is hardly the type of person I bother myself with. Do you know the name of the last waitress who touched your life?”

Grace ignored the question as she leaned over the rail, watching as spacers used hand vacuums to scour the equipment for wayward jewels. Santorini didn’t offer an explanation as to how he’d come to join in the chase for the thief. No doubt he would have just as empty an alibi. Grace wasn’t sure she could stomach any more of his transparent lies.