“We’re on yellow, right now.”

Jeremy’s worry was beginning to make him nervous. And he tried not to be. “Hey, we gave the Union-siders a whole bottle of Scotch. They’ve got to be in a good mood”

“I mean, you know, I didn’t think I was going to like this trading business.”

“So do you?”

“Yeah. Kind of. I didn’t think I would.”

“Neither did I. I thought being on this ship was the worst thing that could happen to me.”

“Mariner was wild,” Jeremy said with what sounded like forced cheerfulness. “Mariner was really wild.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It was.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah,” Fletcher said, and realized he actually wasn’t lying.

“I did, too,” Jeremy said. “I really did. It was the best time I ever had.”

He couldn’t exactly say that about it.

But he didn’t somehow think Jeremy was conning him, at least to the limits of Jeremy’s intentions. That ever touched him, swelled up something in his heart so that he didn’t know how to follow that remark, except to say that the time they had wasn’t over, and there wasn’t any use in their being panicked now.

“The ship doesn’t wait,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that what they said when I was late to board? The ship doesn’t wait and nothing’s ever stopped her. She’s fought Mazian’s carriers, for God’s sake. She’s not going to run scared of some skuz freighter.”

“No,” Jeremy agreed, with a nervous laugh, and sounding a little more like himself. “No, Champlain might be tough, I mean, a lot of the rimrunners are pretty good, but we’re way far better.”

“Well, then, quit worrying. What are you worried about?”

“Nothing. The takeholds and the lockdowns, this is pretty usual. This is pretty like always.” Jeremy was quiet a moment. Then, fiercely, but with the wobble back in his voice: “I’m not scared. I never was scared. I’m just kind of disgusted.”

“With what?”

“I mean, I liked the liberties we had, I mean, you know, we could go out on docks most always, and Sol Station was pretty wild.”

“I imagine it was. You’d rather be back there?”

“No,” Jeremy said faintly. “We couldn’t ever go outside Blue Sector, ever. They’d just kind of, you know, approve a couple of places we could go to, JR would, or Paul, before him. But always line-of-sight with the ship berth. Even the seniors couldn’t. They had this place set aside, we’d stay there, and we could do stuff only in Blue.”

“You mean I was conned.”

“Not ever. I mean, before Mariner that was the way it was. We got to go out of Blue a little, at Pell. Pell was pretty good. But Mariner was the best . It was really the best .”

“They’re talking about us spending a month there.”

“If it happens.”

“It’ll happen. I bet it happens.” Fletcher was determined, now, to jolly the kid out of it. “What’s your first stop? First off, when we get there, what do you want to do?”

“Dessert bar,” Jeremy said.

“For a month?”

“Every day.”

“They’ll have to rate you as cargo.”

Jeremy grinned and flung a pillow over the edge.

He flung it back. It failed to clear the level of Jeremy’s bunk. Fletcher retrieved the pillow and made two more tries at throwing it against the push.

“You’ll never make it!” Jeremy cried

“You wait!” He unbelted and carefully, joints protesting, got out of his bunk, standing on the drawers, pillow in hand. Jeremy saw him and tucked up, trying to protect himself.

“No fair, no fair!”

“You started it!” He got his arm up and slammed the pillow at Jeremy’s midsection.

“Truce!” Jeremy cried. “You’ll break your neck! Cut it out!”

“Truce,” he said, and, leaving the pillow with Jeremy, got back down into his bunk without breaking anything, a little out of breath.

“You all right?” Jeremy asked.

“Sure I’m all right. You’re the one that cheats on the V- dumps! You’re worried?”

“I don’t want you to break your neck.”

“Good. Suppose you stay in your bunk after jump, why don’t you?”

“If you don’t get up again.”

“Deal.”

He thought maybe Jeremy hadn’t expected to get snagged into that. There was silence for a while.

“Jeremy?”

“Yeah.”

“You all right up there?”

“Yeah, sure.”

There was more silence.

An uncomfortable silence. Fletcher couldn’t say why he was worried by it. He figured Jeremy was reading or listening to his music.

“So you say Esperance is supposed to be pretty good,” he said finally, looking for response out of the upper bunk. “Maybe they’ll give us some time there.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “That’d be better. That’d be a lot better than Voyager. My toes still hurt.”

“You put salve on them?”

“Yeah, but they still hurt.”

“I don’t think I want to work cargo.”

“Me, either. Freeze your posterity off.”

“Yeah,” he said. The atmosphere was better then. “You got that Mariner Aquarium book?”

“I lent it.” He was disappointed. He was in a sudden mood to review station amenities. “Linda and her fish tape.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. There was a sudden shift from the bunk above. An upside down head, hair hanging. “You know she can’t eat fish now?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Says she sees them looking at her. I’m not sure I like fishcakes, either.”

“Downers eat them, with no trouble. Eat them raw.”

“Ugh,” Jeremy said. “Ugh. You’re kidding.”

“I thought about trying it.”

“Ugh,” was Jeremy’s judgment. The head popped back out of sight “That’s disgusting.”

The engines reached shut-down. Supper arrived fairly shortly. Bucklin brought it, and it was more than sandwiches.

It was hot. There was fruit pie.

“Shh,” Bucklin said, “Bridge crew suppers. Don’t tell anybody.”

“So why the lockdown?” Jeremy wanted to know.

But Bucklin left without a word, except to ask if they were set. And Fletcher didn’t feel inclined to borrow trouble.

They finished the dinners, tucked the containers into their bag into the under-counter pneumatic, and began their prep for the long run up to jump, music, tapes, comfortable clothing, trank, nutri-packs and preservable fruit bars.

“We’re supposed to eat lots,” Jeremy said, “if we get strung jumps.”

“You mean one after another.”

“Yessir,” Jeremy said, pulling on a fleece shirt. He still seemed nervous. Maybe, Fletcher thought, there was good reason. But they kept each others’ spirits up. He didn’t want to be scared in front of Jeremy; Jeremy didn’t want to act scared in front of him.

They tucked down for the night, let the lights dim.

In time the engines cut in, slowly swinging their bunks toward the horizontal configuration.

“Night,” Jeremy said to him.

Fletcher was conscious of night, unequivocal night, all around a ship very small against that scale.

“Behave,” he said, the way his mother had used to say it to him. “We’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “You think Esperance’ll be like Mariner?”

“Might be. It’s pretty rich, what I hear.”

“That’s good,” Jeremy said. “That’s real good”

Then Jeremy was quiet, and to his own surprise the strong hand of acceleration was a sleep aid. There was nothing else to do. He waked with the jump warning sounding, and the bunk swinging to the inertial position.

“You got it?” Jeremy asked. “You got it?”

“No problem,” he said, reaching for the trank in the dark. Jeremy brightened the lights and he winced against the glare. He found the packet.

Count began. Bridge wanted acknowledgement and Jeremy gave it for both of them.

All accounted for.

On their way to a lonely lump of rock halfway between Voyager and the most remote station in the Alliance.

Almost in Union territory. He’d heard that…

Rain beat on the leaves, ran in small streams off the forested hills. Cylinders were failing, but Fletcher nursed them along to the last before he changed out. Hadn’t spoiled any. Hadn’t any to spare. He kept a steady pace, tracing Old River by his roar above the storm.