“I’m amazed,” was all he found to say.

“Mazian, of course, isn’t going to like it. Neither are the merchanters that are trading with him. As some are. We know certain names. We just haven’t had a way to charge them with misbehaviors. Consequently we are a target, Jamie. I’ve wondered how much you could guess and when you’d penetrate the security screen. Pardon me for using you as a security gauge, but if you’ve figured it, I can assure myself that others with inside knowledge, on the opposing side, can figure it out, too. So I place myself on notice that we have to assume from now on that they do know, and that we need to be on our guard. We’re about to threaten the living of the most unprincipled bastards among our fellow merchanters. Not to mention the suppliers on station.”

“Sabotage?”

“Sabotage. Direct attack. Between you, me, and the senior crew, Jamie-lad, I’m hoping we get through this with no one trying it. But if you hear anything, however minor, report it, I don’t want one of you held hostage, I don’t want a poison pill, I don’t want a Mazianni carrier turning up in our path between here and Esperance. The danger will go off us once we’ve gotten our agreement. But if they can prevent us securing an agreement in the first place, by taking this ship out, or by taking me out, they’d go that far, damn sure they would.”

“I’ve put Fletcher out there on the docks with three kids.”

“Oh, he’s been watched. He’s being watched.” The Old Man gave a quiet chuckle. “He’s got those kids walking in step and saying yes, sir in unison.”

It was literally true. He’d been watching Fletcher, too, on the quiet.

“But we’ve got Champlain under watch, too,” the Old Man said. “ Champlain’s listed for Voyager. They’re due to go out ahead of us, six days from now.”

JR was aware of that schedule, too. Champlain and China Clipper both were suspect ships on their general list of watch-its. A suspect ship running ahead of them on their route was worrisome.

“Once they’ve cleared the system,” the Old Man said, “you’ll see our departure time change for a six-hour notice. Boreale can out-muscle them on the jump, and Boreale is offering to run guard for us. I think we can rely on them. Let somebody else worry for a change. We’ll carry mail for Voyager and Esperance. We can clear the security requirements for the postal contract and I’ll guarantee Champlain can’t.”

Mail was zero-mass cargo. It made them run light. The Union ship Boreale , perhaps in the message he’d just hand-delivered to the Old Man, was going to chase Champlain into the jump-point and assure that they got through safely.

How the times had changed!

“Yes, sir,” he said “Glad to know that.”

So he took his leave and the Old Man returned to his correspondence with Boreale .

So they were pulling out early, to inconvenience those making plans. It had the flavor of the old days, the gut-tightening apprehension of coming out of jump expecting trouble. And it was chancier, in some ways. With Mallory you always knew where you stood. The other side shot at you. You shot at them. That was simple.

Here, part of the merchanters who should be working on their side was working for the Mazianni and at the same time, representatives of their former enemy Union might be working for Mallory.

He supposed he’d better talk to the juniors about security. The juniors, especially the junior-juniors with Fletcher, were, on one level, sacrosanct: any dock crawler that messed with a ship’s junior crew was asking for cracked skulls, no recourse to station police, just hand-to-hand mayhem, in the oldest law there was among merchanters. Even station cops ignored the enforcement of simple justice.

But he didn’t want to deliver the Old Man any surprises. And Fletcher was worth a special thought. Attaching Jeremy to him with an invisible chain seemed to him the brightest thing he’d done at this port.

Chapter 16

Games, vids, more games, restaurants with a perpetual sugar high. It was everything a kid could dream of… and that was when Fletcher began to know he was, at stationbred seventeen, growing old. The body couldn’t take the sugar hits. The ears grew tired of the racketing games. The stomach grew tired of being pitched upside down after full meals. So did Vince’s, and the ship’s sometime lawyer lost his three frosty shakes in a game parlor restroom, and didn’t want to contemplate anything lime-colored afterward, but Vince was back on the rides faster than Fletcher would have bet.

It meant, when he took them back to the sleepover nightly, that they were down to the frazzled ends, exhausted and laying extravagant plans for return visits.

Linda had bought a tape on exotic fish.

And he’d gotten them back alive, through a very good meal at the restaurant, past the sleepover’s jammed vid parlor. He loaded them into the lift.

“Hello,” someone female said, and he fell into a double ambush of very good-looking women he’d never met, who had absolutely no hesitation about a hands-on introduction.

“On duty,” he said. He’d learned to say that. Jeremy and the juniors were laughing and hooting from the open elevator, and he ricocheted into a third ambush, this one male, in the same ship’s green, who brushed a hand past his arm a hair’s-breadth from offense and grinned at him.

“What’s your room number?”

“I’m on duty,” he said, and got past, not without touches on his person, not without blushing bright red. He felt it.

The lift left without him, the kids upward bound, and he dived for the stairs.

“Fletcher!” a Finity voice called out, and he caught himself with his hand on the bannister.

It was Wayne, with a grin on his face.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Not a thing,” Wayne said cheerfully, and brushed off the importunate incomers with a wave of his arm.

“The kids just went up.”

“They’ll survive,” Wayne said “Join us in the bar.”

“I’m not supposed to.”

“JR’s with us.” Wayne clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on in.”

He’d not had a better offer—on first thought.

On second, he was exceedingly wary it was a set-up.

Except that Wayne had been one of the solid, the reliable ones. He decided to go to the door of the bar and have a look and risk the joke, if there was one.

It was as advertised, the senior-juniors with a table staked out and a festive occasion underway. Wayne set a hand on his back and steered him toward the group. JR beckoned him closer.

He took it for an order, set his face and walked up to the table… where Lyra cleared back, Bucklin pulled up a chair, and JR signaled service. Chad was there, Nike, Wayne, Sue, Connor, Toby, Ashley… the whole batch of them.

“Our novice here just shed three offers,” Wayne announced. “They’re in tight orbit about this lad.”

“Not surprised,” Lyra said. “I would, if he weren’t off-limits.”

“You would, if you weren’t off-limits,” Connor gibed. “Come on, be honest.”

He wasn’t sure whether that was a joke at his expense or not, but the waiter showed up and asked him what he was drinking. He took a chance and ordered wine.

Talk went on around him, letting him fall out of the spotlight. He was content with that. They talked about the sights on the station. They talked about the progress of the loading, they talked about the rowdy arrival—it was a freighter named Belize , a small but reputable ship, no threat to anyone—and he had his glass of wine, which tasted good and hit a stomach long unaccustomed to it. Chad ordered another beer. There were second orders all around.

“I’d better get up to the kids,” he said, and got up and started to move off.