He sat still. Hell, he was a Corinthianofficer, not open to hassle or harassment without involving more ante than any other ship might want. So he looked them up and down like germs and stayed his position.

"Looking for Capella," the first guy said, him in grey and blue; and leaned a knuckle on the table-surface. "Where'd she go?"

"I dunno. Back to the ship. " That was a right-hand turn from here. "She was going to check something. Why?"

Blue-and-grey made a flip of the hand at the muscle behind ' him. One left, presumably on Capella's track. That tore it.

"Wait a minute," he said.

"Just a personal matter," blue-and-grey said.

"With my wife?"

Blue-and-grey stepped back, looking shocked, and laughed outright. It was an unpleasant face. Somebody a woman might have been interested in, maybe, but this was a man that'd knife you, this was a man who still wore open shirts when the waistline was getting a little much for skintights.

This was a man he didn't like, on instant instinct.

"You?" blue-and-grey asked, still laughing. And started to walk out.

The trouble was, he was still figuring how this fit with Capella's safety, which occupied all circuits and input a wait-count while the sumbitch with the mouth was walking to the door on him, while his gut level reaction, to grab that sumbitch by the throat, had adrenaline flooding his system and doing no good at all for the brain.

He carried a knife in his boot. So, he figured, did the two leaving, and so would their friend, the one he'd misdirected down the dock.

Meanwhile, if blue-and-grey and his friend were thinking at all, they'd guess he'd misdirected them, and head the other way out of here, on Capella's track, if they hadn't had a man outside to catch an escapee in the first place.

It went against the grain to call for help. But he took the com out—this close to the ship, he didn't need the phonelink—and punched in, on his deliberate way to the door. " Corinth-com, this is Christian, in Jaco's, we got a code six tracking one of ours spinward out of here, guy in blue and grey, extreme bad manners, relay and get me immediate help here."

Cops routinely monitored the coms as well as the ship-to-station links, and that was too damn bad. Trouble was headed at Capella's back and he was on the way—it wasn't so much what blue-and-grey might do to Capella that scared him… it was the ruckus bound to explode if somebody pulled a knife or a piece of macho argument on Corinthian'schief spook— Corinthiandidn't want any more legal trouble, and bodies were so hard to—

Something hit his head—dropped him to one knee with stars flashing red in his brain, and he came up at the target, straight-armed somebody he couldn't even see, approximately at the throat, impacted a face with the heel of his hand, surprise to him.

But the guy went down anyway, and papa hadn't taught him to turn his back on any attacker. He saw a shadow-someone in the red flashes and grey, trying to come up off the deck, and he rammed his hands down and his knee up. Bang. Guy went backwards, flat.

Thenhe whirled around and ran leftward up the dockside, on what he was sure was blue-and-grey's trail. Red flashes were still floating across his watering vision, it was still grey around the edges, and balance consequently wasn't a hundred percent, but he was dead on course, with blue-and-grey and one other some distance ahead of him.

He didn't see Capella. He kept going, double-fast, figuring on giving Mr. Sumbitch another quarrel to take his mind off her, figuring on his Corinthianbackup to be coming, and hoping some Corinthianwould have the basic sense to drag the sod he'd left behind him into the bar. Cops might ignore bar-business until it spilled onto the docks, but bodies in doorways were a guarantee of notice.

Just, if Capella had come out, too, and run into a trap…

"You!" he yelled, at blue-and-grey, with a stitch coming in his side and his head going around—he was too dizzy to chase the guys at a dead run. But run was what they did, then, damn the luck, just took out, both of them.

He ran, his head pounding like hell, vision fuzzing and tearing. He knocked shoulders with somebody in a better mood than he was—caught-step, recovered, chased the two until he knew he didn't know where they'd gone—then leaned against a friendly support girder near a pharmacy frontage, sweating and aching for breath.

Pocket-com was beeping, when things got quiet. He fumbled after it and thumbed it on. "Christian. Yeah. Lost the guy. Got a fix?"

"What in hell's going on?"

God. Corinth-comhad rousted Austin out. Wasn't what he wanted.

"Dunno, sir, I was walking out of Jaco's—" He gasped for air. "—and some damnfool hit me over the head."

"Thieves?"

"I—" It was better than any lie he could think of. He didn't know what Capella was into. He didn't spill Capella's confidences—and he thought in the best functioning of his battered brain that an urgent request to cover her rear was at least in the neighborhood of a confidence. "Yes, sir, maybe. I dropped a guy in Jaco'sdoorway. They find him?"

There was a delay while, one presumed, Corinthianasked on another channel.

"Travis says negative. Phone if you've got detail. "

Get off the com, Austin meant. Travis was mainday Engineering, and he'd been that for years, no green fool.

"Yessir. Working on it.—Sir. Have you seen my brother?"

A pause. " Negative. "

As if Austin wouldn't lie.

Damn!

Austin clicked out on him. And where Capella was…

"Chrissy!"

His heart did a flip. He turned around. Capella was there in the ambient noise of the docks, ghostlike, not a warning.

"Shit!" He got a breath. "Guy clipped me on the head. I was scared they'd got you…"

"You get him?"

"Got away. Who werethose guys?"

"Them, I don't know. Not a ship-patch in the lot, but they're no station-slime."

"Blue-and-grey. You knew him."

"Yeah, I knew him."

He didn't like the tone or the faraway look Capella sent in that direction. Capella didn't talk about times past. Or the Fleet. That was the deal. "Pella. Need-to-know, here. Just—is it personal? Or what?"

Capella could have a real bar-crawler look, type you'd pick up for a fast one and maybe cheap, till she went all business and gave you that down-the-gun-barrel stare. "I want to know what ship he's on. I want to know who just came into port.

"Capella. " He had his business track, too, when he had to. And he knew what he had a right to ask. "The one question. Personal? Or not?"

Capella didn't answer for a moment. Then: "You remember those doors I said I rattled looking for elder brother?"

"Yeah?"

"Bad stuff. Real bad stuff. This is not a friend and it has a ship, apparently, I can't think how else it got here. I'd sincerely like to lie in port until this leaves. It has to leave. Eventually."

They'd seen port-scum. They'd dealt with it. Corinthianhad had encroachers on their territory, in port, and in space. He'd never seen Capella spooked into sobriety by any opposition. She just got crazier.

She wasn't now. Cold sober. Not laughing.

"Pella. We've got that Hawkins ship…"

"Screw the Hawkinses. This is Mazianni, you understand me."

Capella didn't use that word. Not about herself. Capella said Fleet. TheFleet, as if there wasn't any other. As if they still served something besides survival.