“Call Lance,” she said.

My heart stopped. I opened my mouth to babble some excuse on his behalf: he can’t, he can’t, I thought; but there was no excuse that would hide the truth, and perhaps—perhaps with her—I nodded, rose and went out to the com, pushed 21, the crew quarters. “Lance,” I said. “Lance.”

“Yes?” the answer came.

“My lady wants you in her quarters.”

A silence. “Yes,” he said plainly. It was all that had to be said. And very quietly I slipped away out the door, because all that I could do was done.

O Griffin, I thought, you never walk out on my lady; you didn’t know that. But you will. And more than that, you’re doing things your own way, and she’ll never bear with that, not where it touches the Maid. Not in that.

But for Lance—for him I was mortally afraid.

I didn’t want to go down the lift. I might meet Lance there, coming up, and that was not a meeting I wanted. The knell still rang against the hull, insane hammering that grew loud and soft by turns. I avoided the lift, kept to the main corridor, that took me back to the vicinity of the bridge, where I was not supposed to be, by Griffin’s order.

Viv was there, just standing, where she could see in the open door, her hands locked together in an attitude of worry. I startled her, being there, and she scowled and looked back to the bridge.

“What are they up to?” I asked.

“What would you know?” she said. That was Viv. Her old self, worried as she was.

I edged up into the doorway. The main screen was off, but they had a clear image on some. I stood there and stared at our neighbors.

Tubes.Tubes, Griffin had said, and there were, everywhere. At every point a wreck contacted the wheel, the station, whatever it was that had snared us ... tubes like some kind of obscene parasites that sucked the life from them. Tubes between the ships, as if the growth had pierced them and kept going. The wounds I had thought to have seen, holes in the ships themselves through which the light bled ... some of those were not: some of those holes had been the arch of those tubes, against the chaos-stuff that was measled black in the still picture. They were huge, those structures, big enough for access, and irregular in their shapes, like many-branched snakes, like veins and arteries growing out of this thing we had snuggled up to and growing us to its body.

It didn’t take much guesswork now to know what was proceeding out there with all those noises. Or why we were stuck fast. There’s a thing I’d seen on vid, an access box, and they use it when there’s some emergency ... Hobson’s Bridge, I had heard it named. It’s a tube and two very powerful pressure gates; and they use it in shipboard disasters when ships have to be boarded and suits aren’t sufficient to get people off. You rig it at one side and ride it across; you lock on with the magnetic grapple and you make the seal. You cut through. You’re in.

Sometimes I wished I listened to fewer tapes.

Griffin had looked around. He caught me in the doorway, fixed me with that mad blue-eyed stare of his. “Elaine. Did Dela send you?”

“She dismissed me, sir.”

He nodded, in a way that more or less accepted my presence there. I took a tentative step inside. Noticed by a born-man, one doesn’t vanish when his back is turned. Griffin walked the length of the U at controls, stopped by Modred and looked back again at me. “You understand what we’ve got here?”

I swallowed against the tightness in my throat and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“How’s Dela taking this?”

She had told me to take Griffin’s orders, even if she really didn’t want me to; and I stood confused, not knowing what I owed where; but I’m high-order, and I don’t blank in choices. “I think she’s scared, sir; and I don’t think she wants to think about it for a while.”

That at least was the truth; and it kept Lance out of it. I didn’t want Griffin dashing back there to comfort Dela, not now, no.

Griffin ran a hand through his pretty golden hair, and he leaned standing against the chair absent Percy used, looking mortally tired. I felt sorry for him then, and I was not in the habit of feeling sorry for Griffin. He was trying. He had sent Lynn and Percy to rest; and Lance and Viv ... even if no one was able to. He tried to solve this thing. So did the crew ... fighting for the Maid, even if Dela saw no hope in it.

“You know what a Bridge is?” he asked. “Ship to ship?”

I nodded.

“And Dela—what does she say?”

“Nothing,” I said. “But she would understand if she saw that.”

He looked still very tired. Looked around at all of us, Gawain and Modred, and back to me. “You’re good,” he said. “You’re very good.”

I made a kind of bow of the head, pleased to be told that, even by a stranger. We knew our worth; but it was still good to hear.

“What they’re doing,” Griffin said, and all at once I was conscious that the hammering had stilled for a while, “is linking into all those ships. That means that something’s been alive and doing that a long, long time.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, contemplating the age of those ships that had come here before us. I looked round the control center, a nervous gesture, missing the sound. “It doesn’t take long to set up a Bridge, does it?”

“No,” Griffin said. “But I daresay they’re jury-rigging. They. It. We have to do something to stop it. You understand that. When you talk to Dela—” He spoke very, very softly, in conspiracy. “When you talk to her, believe that. Protest it in her ear. For her sake. It’s your duty, isn’t it?—Where’s Lance?”

I must have flinched. “Below, sir.” We can lie, in duty. He looked at me—he could not have suspected when he asked that question; me, with my face—he had to suspect something behind that flinching, had to think, and know why one of us would lie, and for whom.

“When you see him,” he said, ever so quietly, only that tired look on his face, “tell him I’ll see the whole staff up here at 1000 this morning. I want to talk to all of you at once. And keep it quiet. I don’t want to frighten Dela. You understand that.”

I nodded. He walked away himself, his hands locked behind him, and stopped and looked at the screens. I stood there, while Modred and Gawain consulted and did things with the comp that showed up in the image on the screens.

It looked uglier and uglier, defined, where before the bleeding smears of light had masked all detail. It took on colors, greens and blues. Finally Griffin walked over to the side and looked at Gawain and Modred. “You’ve got that inventory search run.”

“Yes,” Modred said, and reached and picked up a handful of printout. Griffin took it. The hammering started again, and even Modred reacted to it, a human glance at the walls about us. Griffin swore, shook his head.

“Go get some rest,” he told them. “I’m doing the same.”

He started away then, and I moved out of the doorway, to show respect when a born-man wanted past. My heart was beating very fast: com, I was thinking, I could get to com before Griffin could get to Dela’s rooms; I could think of something casual to say—something; but Griffin delayed, fixed me with a strangely sad look. “I’m going back to myquarters,” Griffin said.

I felt my face go hot. I stood there, he walked out, and I didn’t make the call. I walked down the corridor after him, headed my own way, for the lift that would take me down to the crew quarters.

Vivien trailed after me, maybe the others too; but I watched Griffin’s broad back, his shoulders bowed as if he were very tired, his head down, and for a moment he looked so like Lance in one of his sorrows that I found myself hurting for him.

I knew pain when I saw it. Remember ... it’s my function.

I wished I might go to him, might balance things, set it all right by magic. I walked faster, to overtake him; but my nerve failed me, with the thought that I had no instruction from Dela, and I could not side against her. Not twice. I stopped, close by the lift, and Viv pushed the button, opening the door.