A bluish moon with a sharp shadow 'cross its middle. A ship floating close, with feathery spines, like some giant bug. What in the Qeng Ho… where am I?… and consciousness fled.

— =*=

There were dreams. He'd lost a captaincy once again, been busted down to tending potted plants in the ship's greenhouse. Sigh. Pham's job was to water them and make them bloom. But then he noticed the pots had wheels and moved behind his back, waiting, softly rattling. What had been beautiful was now sinister. Pham had been willing to water and weed the creatures; he had always admired them.

Now he was the only one who knew they were the enemy of life.

More than once in his life, Pham Nuwen had wakened inside medical automation. He was almost used to coffin-close tanks, plain green walls, wires and tubes. This was different, and it took him a while to realize just where he was. Willowy trees bent close around him, swaying just a little in the warm breeze. He seemed to be lying on the softest moss, in a tiny glade above a pond. Summer haze hung in the air above the water. It was all very nice, except that the leaves were furry, and not quite the green of anything he had ever seen. This was someone else's notion of home. He reached up toward the nearest branch, and his hand hit something unyielding just fifty centimeters above his face. A curved wall. For all the trick pictures, this was about the same size as the surgeons he remembered.

Something clicked behind his head; the idyll slid past him, taking its warm breeze with it. Somebody — Ravna — floated just beyond the cylinder. "Hi, Pham." She reached past the surgeon's hull to squeeze his hand. Her kiss was tremulous, and she looked haunted, as if she'd been crying a lot.

"Hi, yourself," he said. Memory came back in jagged pieces. He tried to push off the bed, and found another similarity between this surgeon and ones of the Qeng Ho: he was securely plugged in.

Ravna laughed a little weakly. "Surgeon. Disconnect." After a moment, Pham drifted free.

"It's still holding my arm."

"No, that's the sling. Your left arm is going to take a while to regrow. It almost got burned off, Pham."

"Oh." He looked down at the white cocoon that meshed his arm against his side. He remembered the gunfight now… and realized that parts of his dream were deadly real. "How long have I been out?" The anxiety spilled into his voice.

"About thirty hours. We're more than sixty light-years out from Harmonious Repose. We're doing okay, except that now everyone in creation seems to be chasing us."

The dream. His free hand clamped hard on Ravna's arm. "The Skroderiders, where are they?" Not on board, pray the Fleet.

"W-what's left of Greenstalk is in the other surgeon. Blueshell is — "

Why has he let me live? Pham's eyes roved the room. They were in a utility cabin. Any weapons were at least twenty meters away. Hm. More important than guns: get command console privileges with the OOB… if it was not already too late. He pushed out of the surgeon and drifted out of the room.

Ravna followed. "Take it easy, Pham. You just came out of a surgeon."

"What have they said about the shoot-out?"

"Poor Greenstalk's not in a position to say anything, Pham. Blueshell says pretty much what you did: Greenstalk was grabbed by the rogue Riders, forced to lure you two into a trap."

"Hmhm, hmhm," Pham strove for a noncommittal tone. So maybe there was a chance; maybe Blueshell was not yet perverted. He continued his one-handed progress up the ship's axis corridor. A minute later he was on the bridge, Ravna tagging behind.

"Pham. What's the matter? There's a lot we have to decide, but — "

How right you are. He dived onto the command deck, and made for the command console. "Ship. Do you recognize my voice?"

Ravna began, "Pham, What's this — "

"Yes, sir."

" — all about?"

"Command privileges," he said. Capabilities granted while the Riders were ashore. Would they still be in place?

"Granted."

The Skroderiders had had thirty hours to plan their defense. This was all too easy, too easy. "Suspend command privileges for the Skroderiders. Isolate them."

"Yes, sir," came the ship's reply. Liar! But what more could he do? The sweep toward panic crested, and suddenly he felt very cool. He was Qeng Ho

… and he was also godshatter.

Both Riders were in the same cabin, Greenstalk in the other copy of the ship's surgeon. Pham opened a window on the room. Blueshell sat on a wall beside the surgeon. He looked wilted, as when they heard about Sjandra Kei. He angled his fronds at the video pickup. "Sir Pham. The ship tells me you've suspended our privileges?"

"What is going on, Pham?" Ravna had dug a foot into the floor, and stood glaring at him.

Pham ignored both questions. "How is Greenstalk doing?" he said.

The fronds turned away, seemed to become even more limp. "She lives… I thank you, Sir Pham. It took great skill to do what you did. Considering everything, I could not have asked for more."

What did I do? He remembered firing on Greenstalk. Had he pulled his aim? He looked inside the surgeon. This was quite different from the human configuration: This one was mostly water-filled, with turbulent aeration along the patient's fronds. Asleep (?), Greenstalk looked frailer than he remembered, her fronds waving randomly in the water. Some were nicked, but her body seemed whole. His eyes traveled downwards toward the base of the stalk, where a Rider is normally attached to its skrode. The stump ended in a cloud of surgical tubing. And Pham remembered the last instant of the firefight, blasting the skrode out from under Greenstalk. What is a Rider like without anything to ride?

He pulled his eyes away from the wreckage. "I've deleted your command privileges because I don't trust you." My former friend, tool of my enemy.

Blueshell didn't answer. After a moment Ravna spoke. "Pham. Without Blueshell, I'd never have gotten you out of that habitat. Even then — we were stuck in the middle of the RIP system. The shepherd satellite was screaming for our blood; they had figured out we were human. The Aprahanti were trying to break harbor and come down on us. Without Blueshell, we'd never have convinced local security to let us go ultra — we'd probably have been blown away the second we cleared the ring plane. We'd all be dead now, Pham."

"Don't you know what happened down there?"

Some of the indignation left Ravna's face. "Yes. But understand about skrodes. They are a mechanical contrivance. It's easy enough to disconnect the cyber part from the mechanical linkages. These guys were controlling the wheels, and aiming the gun."

Hmm. On the window behind Ravna, he could see Blueshell standing with his fronds motionless, not rushing to agree. Triumphant? "That doesn't explain Greenstalk's sucking us in to the trap." He raised a hand. "Yeah, I know, she was bludgeoned into doing it. Only problem, Ravna, she had no hesitation. She was enthusiastic, bubbly." He stared over the woman's shoulder. "She was under no compulsion, didn't you tell me that, Blueshell."

A long pause. Finally, "Yes, Sir Pham."

Ravna turned, drifting back so she could see both of them. "But, but

… it's still absurd. Greenstalk has been with us from the beginning. A thousand times she could have destroyed the ship — or gotten word to the outside. Why chance this stupid ambush?"

"Yes. Why didn't they betray us before…" Up until she asked the question, Pham had not known. He knew the facts, but had no coherent theory to hang them on. Now it all came together: the ambush, his dreams in the surgeon, even the paradoxes. "Maybe she wasn't a traitor, before. We really did escape from Relay without pursuit, without anyone knowing of us, much less our exact destination. Certainly no one expected humans to show up at Harmonious Repose." He paused, trying to get it all together. The ambush, "The ambush, it wasn't stupid — but it was completely ad hoc. The enemy had no back up. Their weapons were dumb, simple things — " insight "— why, I'll bet if you look at the wreckage of Greenstalk's skrode you'll find her beam gun was some sort of cutter tool. And the only sensor on the claymore mine was a motion detector: it had some civil use. All the gadgets were pulled together on very short notice by people who had not been expecting a fight. No, our enemy was very surprised by our appearance."