Rabdan came out of freeze and threw open the door. Tachyon's mind grabbed his like a mailed fist. And squeezed. And now, friend Rabdan," he remarked, "we are going to talk.

It was bad. Rabdan was an incompetent and more than something of a coward. Yet he was a Psi Lord, and at the last he behaved as one, the worse for him. No normal shield he might erect could keep the subtle Tisianne from prying the last crumb of information from his brain. But Rabdan in extremis went heroic, put the deathlock on, laid his name upon it. All that he was opposed Tachyon, and no subtlety, no artifice, no force, could get past such an opposition and leave anything of Rabdan intact.

Perhaps that was Rabdan's final cunning; knowing his distant cousin's softness of heart, he gambled that Tisianne would turn away from the awful finality of unraveling his mind skein by skein.

Rabdan's judgment was never the best.

Joy, joy, joy. My master comes again so soon. Or is something wrong, that he has so much time for me of a sudden?

Knock it off, Baby.

"Hi, Baby. What's happenin'?" She twinkled her lights in happy greeting and sphinctered open a lock in her side. The damned rock was headed for Earth, of course. Zabb's people had deflected it months ago. Not much; it would take tremendous amounts of power to change the moment of such a mass by any appreciable amount. A sliver of a degree, scarcely perceptible-but over time, enough.

It was a rock familiar to the groundlings, its reappearance unremarkable. Nonetheless Rabdan and Durg had been sent down to make sure its intended recipients didn't realize its itinerary had changed. What luck, then, when the alteration in course had been noted by the one man absolutely no one in authority would listen to-whose having claimed the rock for his own, as it were, would mean every other scientist on the planet would shun it like offal. The Takisians could have asked for nothing better to seal the planet's fate. No one would realize what was happening until the asteroid was so close its path was unmistakable. And that would be too late, not all the thermonuclear weapons in all the planet's stockpiles could forestall the wrath to come.

But their ally had panicked. Zab's ally. Much as he hated his cousin, Tachyon could barely bring himself to believe it. The vast lump of malignance which was the Swarm Mother had detected Hellcat as she floated in orbit around the world it intended, in its dim, insistent way, to make its own, and had attacked. And somehow, for his own mad reasons, once the attack was repulsed, the warhound of the Ilkazam had made alliance with the greatest enemy of his house-of all Takisians.

Together they had made a plan. Semisentient, the Mother had perceived only that the plan was detected when Dr. Warren made his announcement. It acted in haste leaving Rabdan something less than leisure to try to undo the damage it had wrought.

It had seemed fabulous fortune to spot on the Jokertown streets a being who might be mistaken for a swarmling. So Rabdan and Durg went up to Central Park and made themselves a witness. How can it fail? Rabdan had gloated to his comrade.

Tach had given Rabdan the final mercy no Takisian could deny another. Moonchild accepted that his heart gave out unexpectedly under mind probe, and Tach felt soiled at having lied to her. Tach took the pictures purloined from Warren's lab to Baby. Her astrogational analysis confirmed Rabdan's story. A hasty planning session, a night spent trying to sleep.

Now Trips and Tachyon were ready to launch a genuinely harebrained scheme to Save the World. There was no time to come up with a better one. It might already be too late.

And out there Zabb waited. Zabb. Who'd killed Tach's Kibr. And betrayed all Takis. In his warship: Zabb.

Jake was trucking down the street with his bottle of La Copita in its paper bag in hand. On the waterfront, in Jokertown, and him a nat, and it was no damned thing to do at this hour of the night, especially if you were this shitfaced. But Jake wasn't sure where he'd wandered since the big fuck with the head like an iguana threw him out of his bar for messing on the floor. A good thing he'd thought to carry a spare in his coat pocket.

A rumbling took his ear. He stopped and watched as the top came off a building right in front of him-not exploding, not collapsing, but coming off in a piece, neatly as you please, like the lid off a box. It set down gently on the roof next door, and then this gigantic seashell covered all over with tiny specks of light came floating up out of the building. Nary a sound was made. It hovered against the dull-orange sky while the roof floated back into place. Then it angled upward and was gone, lining out for the Long Black.

Very deliberately, Jake walked to the nearest storm drain, and with precise aim dropped his half-full La Copita bottle down it. Then he walked very rapidly out of Jokertown.

"I never thought of, like, flying a starship from your bedroom, man," Captain Trips said, clearly enchanted.

"I think your people would call this a stateroom, yes?" As a matter of fact, it looked like a cross between an Ottoman harem and Carlsbad Caverns. In the midst of it all was a huge canopied bed piled with fat cushions, and in a dressing gown in the midst of that lay Tach. He had long ago sworn to die in bed; Takisian biotechnology made it possible to achieve that goal and a heroic demise at the same time, if you were so inclined.

"There is no formal command center-bridge?-on a ship such as this. On most warships, such as my cousin's vessel Hellcat, there is, but on a yacht, no." He felt a sizzle of fury from Baby at the mention of Hellcat's name. They were rivals of long standing.

"A Takisian symbiont-ship is psionically controlled. The pilot can receive information directly, mentally, or visually. For example.. ." Tach gestured and an image of Earth sprang into being on a curve of membranous bulkhead next to the bed. A yellow line reached away from it, describing their orbit. Then like a computer animation the globe spun away, dwindled, until an out-of-scale image of their entire projected flight path from Earth to 1954C-1100 was displayed.

Trips applauded. "That's fantastic, man. Groovy."

"Yes, it is. You Earthers are attempting to create sentience in your computers; we have grown sophonts who are capable of performing computer functions. And much more."

"How does Baby feel about all this?"

The picture vanished. Words appeared: I am honored to convey lords such as Master Tis and yourself-though I'm afraid you may poke me with that hat, it's so tall.

Trips jumped. "I didn't know she could do that."

"Neither did I. She's stealing knowledge of written English from me with a very low-powered drain-which is mildly naughty. However, she knows I. am indulgent, and will forgive her."

Trips shook his head in amazement. He was sitting on a chair that had thrust itself from the floor for him and adjusted to his frame when Tach finally convinced him to sit on it. "Not that I don't have faith in Baby," he said, "but isn't your cousin's vessel, like, a warship?"

"Yes. And you don't have to ask the question you're hoping not to have to. Under normal circumstances Baby would have no chance against Hellcat-and don't go static in my head like that, Baby, or I'll spank you! It's true."

"But Baby is fast, even with her ghostdrive gone, none faster. And maneuverable. And, frankly, smarter than Hellcat. But the important factor is that Hellcat was badly injured by the Swarm attack. A Swarm Mother as ancient and vast as this one generally will have developed biological weapons antibodies, almost-against Takisians and their ghostships. We use similar weapons against them, since only a full war fleet can carry enough firepower to harm even a small one, whereas infection can spread of itself. Zabb fought off a boarding attack, with sword and pistol and bioweapons, and was able to drive off the swarmlings. But Hellcat was infected and damaged, and though they arrested the sickness she will be a long time healing."