“You are,” she said. “Good evening, Captain.”

“Maybe I don’t want this. Maybe I want to change my mind.”

“Do you, Captain? I’d prefer not.”

The silence hung there. “All right,” he said. “You protect us, do you?”

“As best we can, Captain.”

Never Stevens. She never used the name. He stood up, nodded a reflexive courtesy. Not a response: dead eyes stared into him. He turned then and walked out, and Talley followed him into the corridor, hand-signaled a trooper who came down the corridor to walk him out.

Down the lift and out to the ramp again, the cold of the dock-side coming as a shock after the metal closeness of the warship. He walked down the slant past the guard that stood there, past uniformed troops and idle, hard-eyed stares… He reached the dockside and walked away, taking larger breaths the farther he got from the perimeter. He felt as if he had been picked up and shaken. Dropped hard.

He saw the Dubliners waiting for him, out by the lighted fronts of the offices. Allison and the others. He went toward them with the consciousness that the military might be watching his back, taking notes on his associations.

“What was it?” Allison asked. “Trouble?”

He shook his head and swept them up with a motion of his arms. “Come on. We’ve got our clearance. They’re going to load.”

“Like that?”

“Like that.” He looked at Curran as the five of them headed down the dock at a good pace. “The Konstantin cargo just got cancelled. We’ve been handed military stuff. Hazard rate. Immediate loading, undocking at 0900 mainday.”

“Military.” For once Curran was taken aback. “What, specifically?”

“No word on that. I talked with Mallory. The lock was hers. The cargo’s hers. I think she wants rumors spread, or she wouldn’t spill what she spilled.”

“Like what?”

“That Union’s occupying the nullpoints along the Line, hunting Mazianni, and Alliance is doing the same.”

“Lord, you’ve got to tell that to the Old Man.”

He walked along in a moment’s silence—that it took that much for them to suggest him and the Reilly talking face to face. They were scared. He saw that. Deirdre’s face had lost all its cheer, pale under its freckles. Allison’s—had a hard-eyed wariness like Curran’s. Neill just looked worried. “I’ll make a call from Lucy” Sandor said. “When I get clear and boarded.”

“They’re on a hunt?” Neill asked.

“I think I was told what she wants told in every bar on dock-side. And I don’t know what the percentage is.”

“She say anything else?” Curran asked.

“She knows about the deal. She talked about the profit there might be for a route from Sol into Union. Direct to the point. Said they’re going to be at the nullpoints of the Hinder Stars, keeping an eye on things.”

“For sure?” Allison said.

“I don’t trust anything I was told.—I know I want to be down there if they’re taking the security seal off the hatch. I want to see what they’ve had their fingers into on my ship.”

“We’re going to take a look and go straight back to Dublin? Allison said, “as soon as we’re sure we’ve got that lock open. Got some good-byes to say, all of us. If they’re going to load for a 0900 undock, then you can use some crew over there.”

“Could,” he agreed. “Could.”

He had help, he was thinking, an unaccustomed comfort. He had his Dubliners who were not leaving him at the first breath of trouble. He felt a curious warmth in that thought.

Legitimate, he kept reminding himself. With connections. Mallory could not touch him. Might not want to, wanting to keep on the good side of a powerful Unionside merchanter, with all its connections.

He tried to believe that

But he had looked Mallory in the eyes, and doubted everything.

Downers surrounded the lock, the barriers having been removed… Downers in the company of one idle dockworker, who rose from the side of the ramp and gave them all a looking at. “Business here?” the man asked.

“Stevens,” Sandor said. “Ship’s owner.”

The dockworker held out his hand. “Be happy to turn her over to you, sir, with ID. Otherwise I have to report”

It was insane, such bizarre security interwoven with the real threat of Alliance military. It was Pell, and they did things in strange ways. He took out his papers and showed them.

“He good?” a Downer asked, breather-masked and popping and hissing in the process. Round brown eyes looked at them, one Downer, a whole half-circle of Downers.

“Good paper,” the dockworker confirmed. “Thank you, sir. Good day to you, sir; or good night, whichever.”

And the dockworker collected his assortment of Downers, who bowed and bobbed courtesies in the departure, trooped off with shrill calls and motion very like dancing.

“Lord,” Allison said.

“Pell,” Sandor said. He turned, led the way up the ramp in deliberation, into the lighted access, with thoughts now only for his ship. He walked the tube passage, into the familiar lock. Home again. He kept going to the lift—five of them to fill the space, to make an unaccustomed crowd in the narrow corridors. The lift let them out on the main level, into the narrow bowed floor of the in-dock living quarters and the bridge; and he stood by the lift door and watched them walk about the little zone of curved deck that was accessible… silver-clad visitors come home to scarred Lucy, to pass their fingers over her aged surfaces, to touch the control banks and the cushions, to look this way and that up the inaccessible curve of her cabin space and storage corridors, wondering aloud about this and that point of her design. He was anxious in that scrutiny, watched their faces, their smallest reactions, more sensitive than if they had been looking him over.

“Not so comfortable in dock,” Allison said, “but plenty of room moving.” She fingered the consoles. He had cleaned the tape marks off because of customs, disposed of all the evidence: but she found a sticky smudge and rubbed at it. She looked back at him. “She’s all right,” she pronounced. “She’s all right”

He nodded, feeling the knot in his chest dissolve.

“Handle easy?” Curran asked.

“A crooked docking jet. That’s her only wobble. I use it”

“That’s all right,” Curran said, surprisingly easy.

“You going to call the Old Man?” Allison asked.

“… it’s likely,” he said into the com, “that all of it’s planted rumors. But if you’re headed for Union space, sir—it seemed you might want to know what was said.”

“Are you in trouble with them?” the voice came back to him.

“It’s still possible, yes, sir.” And aware of the possibility the transmission was tapped, shielded-line as it was: “I hope they get it straightened up.”

A silence from the other end. “Right,” Michael Reilly said. “You’ll be taking care, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks for the advisement”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Yes,” the Reilly said, “you might do that.”

“Sir.”

“Information appreciated, Lucy.”

“Signing off, Dublin.”

He shut it down, alone in the quiet again. The Dubliners were on their way back to their ship. For good-byes. For gathering their baggage. He sat in the familiar cushion, staring at his reflection in the dark screens and for a moment not recognizing himself, barbered and immaculate and in debt over his head.

Mallory’s face kept coming back at him, the scene in her onship office. Talley’s face, and the meeting on Pell. The old fear kept trying to reassert itself. He kept trying to put it down again.

He clasped his hands in front of him on a vacant area of the console, lowered his head onto his arms, tried for a moment to rest and to recall what time it was—a long, long string of hours. He thought that he had slid mostly into the alterday cycle; or somehow he had forgotten sleep.

He did that, slept, where he sat

It was com that woke him, the notice from dockside that he had cargo coming in, and would he prepare to receive.