“See if you can fine it down now,” Griffin said. “What happened to your last setup on that?”

“Everything’s shifted,” Modred said. I hoped he meant the figures.

Griffin swore and turned away, paced the floor. Maybe it was hard for him to stare at the screens for any length of time. I know it got to my stomach; and even the crew looked uncomfortable, jolted out of sleep, with that terrible banging never ceasing. Tap. Bang. Bang. Tap-tap-tap.

Lynette turned around at her place. “We might ungrapple,” she offered, looking at Dela, not Griffin. “We can push off and disrupt whatever they’re doing on the other side.”

“ Doit,” Dela said, snatched at that with all the force in her. Griffin looked like he wanted to say something and shut his mouth instead. Lynn turned about again, all coolly done. She touched switches and boards came alight.

“Take hold,” Percy warned us. We hurried and got Dela and Griffin to the emergency cushions, got ourselves snugged in, Viv first, and Lance and myself together, holding hands for comfort.

Moving would delay things. It would give us time. But maybe the thing out there had guns, I thought; maybe when we moved it would just start shooting and all we would have of life would be just the next moment, when the fragile Maidwas blown apart.

Did Lynn and the others think of that? Was that what Griffin had almost said? Maybe my listening to his tapes, all those things about wars and killing people, let me think such things. I felt like I was sweating all the way to my insides.

The crew talked to each other. It took them forever ... judging, I guessed, how hard and how far and what we were going to grab to next that might make it harder for whatever was trying to hammer through our bow. Finally: “Stand by,” Lynette said.

VIII

And Vivien answer’d frowning yet in wrath:

“O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend,

Traitor or true? that commerce with the Queen,

I ask you. ...”

It came simultaneously, the clang of the grapples disconnecting, the shudder that might be our engines working.

“Shut it down,” Percy cried. “Shut it down!”

“No,” Lynn said, and the shuddering kept up, like out-of-tune notes quavering through metal frame and living bone. Lynn reached suddenly across the board. The harmonies stopped. Gawain, beside her, made a move and the grapples slammed on again.

“We didn’t move,” Dela said softly; and louder: “We didn’t move.”

Lynn swung her chair about. “No.” There was thorough anguish on her freckled face. “Something’s got a grapple on us. We can’t break it loose.”

“Do it!” Dela was unbuckling the restraints. She got them undone as the rest of us got out of ours. She stood up and thrust Griffin’s hand off when he got up and tried to put his hand on her shoulder. “You find a way to do it.”

“Lady Dela, we already took a chance with it.”

“Listen to your captains,” Griffin said, taking Dela’s shoulders and refusing this time to be shaken off. “Listen. Will you listen to what she’s trying to tell you?”

“We didn’t move at all,” Lynn said, with soft, implacable precision. “Our own grapples went back on right where they had been, to the millimeter. We gave it repulse straight on and angled and we didn’t shake it even that much. That’s a solid hold they’ve got on us.”

“Well, why did you let them get it on us?” Dela’s voice went brittle. “Why did you play games with it and let this happen?”

“Last night at dinner,” Modred said in his ordinary, flat voice, “we should have investigated. But it was probably too late.”

Only Modred was that nerveless, to turn something back at Dela. She cursed him, and all of us, and Griffin, and told him to let her go. He didn’t and Modred never flinched.

“They’ve told you the truth,” Griffin said, making her look at him: there was no one but Lance could fight back against a strength like Griffin had; but he let her go when she struck at his arms, and stood there when she hit him hard in the chest in her temper. And we stood there—I, and Lance—even Lance, watching this man put hands on Dela, because somehow he had gotten round to Lynn’s side, and Modred’s and the ship’s, and we were standing with him, not understanding how it was happening to us.

Maybe Dela realized it too. She made a throwaway gesture, turned aside, not looking at anyone. “Go on,” she said. “Go on. Do what you like. You have all the answers.”

She stayed that way, facing no one, her hands locked in front of her. Griffin stared at her as if she had set him at a loss, like all of us were. Then he looked over at us. “Get her out,” he said quietly. “All of you who don’t have to be here, out. Crew too: offshift crew, go back to sleep. This may go on into the next watch. We have to put up with it.”

I didn’t know what to do for the moment. I wasn’t supposed to take his orders about my lady Dela, but then, Dela was fit to say something if she wanted to say something. I hesitated. Lance did, not included in that order, things being as they were. “Come,” I said then, and went and hugged Dela against me. “Come on.”

Dela put her arms about me, seeming suddenly small and uncertain, and I put mine about her and led her back through the corridor to her own rooms. Then she walked on her own, in her own safe sitting-room, but I held her hand, because she seemed to want that, and led her back into her own bedroom and did off her shoes and her robe and tucked her into that big soft blue bed. She was still shivering ... my brave, my strong-minded lady. Just last evening she had put courage into us, had talked to us and made us sit down and almost made us believe it would all turn out. She had made herself believe it too, I think; and it was all unraveling.

Vivien had followed us ... not Lance. He had not felt permitted, or he would have. “Get her a drink,” I told Viv—when she could hardly round on me and tell me to do it myself; she gave me a black hysterical look and went over to the sideboard. I sat with my lady and kept my arm about her behind the pillow. The banging at the hull began again, and Dela’s hands were clenched whitely on the bedclothes.

“It can’t get in,” I offered, not believing it myself any longer. “Or it would have done it already. It’s just wishing, that’s all.”

Vivien brought the wine. Dela took it in both hands and drank, and seemed to feel better after half a glass. Vivien sat down on the other side of the wide mattress and I stayed where I was, just being near Dela. For a long time Dela drank in small sips, and stared with detached interest at some place before her, while the hammering kept up.

“Go on,” my lady said finally, to Vivien. “Go on.” But she didn’t look at me when she said it, and when Vivien got up and left, I stayed. “Get me another drink,” she asked quite calmly. “I can’t stand that noise.”

I did so, and took one for myself, because alone, we were not on formalities.

And I sat there beside her while she was on her second glass, my hand locked in hers. Psych-set: Dela was hurting, above and beyond the fear; I could sense that. A frown creased her brow. Her blonde hair fell about her lace-gowned shoulders and she leaned there among the lacy pillows drinking the wine and looking oddly young.

“Why doesn’t he come back?” she asked of me, as if I should know what born-men thought. “We’re stuck here. Why can’t he accept that?”

“Maybe he thinks he could beat it.”

She shook her head, a cascade of pale blonde among the pillows. “No. He doesn’t.” She freed her hand of mine and changed hands with the wineglass, patted Griffin’s accustomed place in the huge bed. “He’s so good to me. He tried so hard to be brave, and I know he’s scared, because he’s young—that’s not rejuv: that’s his real age. He doesn’t know much. Oh, he’s traveled a bit, but not like this.” A soft, desperate laugh, as if she had realized her own bad joke. A reknitting of the brows. “He’s scared. And he doesn’t have to be nice, but he is, and I do love him, Elaine. He’s the first one of all of them who ever didn’t have to be nice to me, and he is, and I hate that it has to be him in this mess with us.”