Ehrehin fixed him with a hard stare that seemed to Trip to fairly ooze with suspicion. “Who in the name of Erebus could it possibly be if not Valdore?”

“It could be Ch’uihv’s people, Doctor. And hailing them would only confirm our escape for them.”

“If he’s pursuing us,” Ehrehin said, shaking his head. “Ch’uihv already knows we’ve escaped in this ship.”

Trip shrugged, pressing on even though his extemporaneous yarn‑spinning was beginning to sound ridiculous even in his own artificially pointed ears. “Maybe, Doctor. Maybe not. If Ch’uihv is the one who’s chasing us, then all we know for sure that he knows is that somebodytook off in this ship without any launch clearance.”

Ehrehin leaned back in his copilot’s chair and sighed. Trip spared a glance at him and saw that he was staring straight ahead at the distant, uncaring stars. The old man was scowling deeply, apparently becoming lost in thought.

He must suspect by now that I don’t have any intention of taking him to Valdore,Trip thought as he leaned forward, entering commands intended to coax still more thrust out of the impulse drive, while simultaneously laying in his desired heading: Coalition space. So I’d better do whatever I can to keep him preoccupied.

He touched a few of the cockpit’s other thankfully simple controls. The deck plates beneath his feet began to rumble with a gratifyingly familiar vibration. That sensation alone told Trip that the warp drive was beginning to warm up to operational temperatures, pressures, and intermix ratios.

The little vessel suddenly shook and rattled intensely, as though it had been punched by the fist of an angry god.

“They’ve opened fire,” Ehrehin said dryly, one eyebrow arched upward as if to announce that he found making declarations of the obvious to be darkly amusing. He calmly studied the readouts on his copilot’s board. “At the rate they’re gaining on us, they’ll be in weapons range in only a few siure.”

Trip considered the grim fact that it could all be over for them both in a matter of only a few short minutes. He felt a knot of fear twisting in his stomach.

Fortunately, Trip often regarded his own fear as a wonderful source of motivation during a crisis.

“Put on your helmet, Doctor,” he said as his hands flew across the console. “We’re going to warp.”

Ehrehin scowled again, then reached under his seat and drew up his helmet with a pained grunt. A moment later, he was fitting it clumsily over his head and trying to mate its collar to his suit’s broad neck ring.

The vessel shook again, though not quite as roughly as on the previous occasion. Trip hoped that meant that their pursuers had scored only a glancing blow this time.

After noting the temperature and power‑level readings, displayed graphically as well as in unreadable Romulan text on the warp field gauge, Trip heaved a brief sigh of relief that the weapons fire hadn’t disabled the warp drive.

Yet.

Eager to deny their pursuers another opportunity to strike, Trip wrapped his gloved left hand around a pair of levers. Here goes.He pulled the levers down quickly, then punched a button beside them.

A moment later the starfield that lay before them distorted into streaks around the edges, with the light of the stars near the center shifting toward the blue portion of the visible spectrum.

“We are now at warp,” Trip announced. I’m not the only one who gets to state the obvious around here.

“And I’m sure Valdore’s ship is still pursuing us, only much faster than before. Do you think it was really wise to go to warp so close to the planet?”

Trip knew very well that certain types of warp fields could unleash catastrophic gravimetric and subspatial effects if activated too deep inside the gravity well either of a star or a planet. Once again, he had no choice other than to defend his decision to gamble for the sake of his mission.

“Seemed like the best option at the time, Doctor,” Trip said as he unstrapped himself from his seat restraints.

He rose to help Ehrehin hook up the hoses that led from the back of his helmet to the environmental pack mounted on the back of his suit.

“Indeed,” the scientist said, obviously unconvinced.

Once he was satisfied that Ehrehin’s suit was completely sealed and functioning properly, Trip reached behind his own helmet, attaching his own air hoses and checking his suit’s seals in a series of swift, practiced movements.

Then he noticed that Ehrehin, who had already strapped himself back into his seat, was staring daggers at him through their helmet faceplates.

“These particularpressure suits were an interesting choice on your part, Cunaehr,” the old man said, his voice distorted slightly by its passage through two hel‑mets before reaching Trip’s ears; Trip had taken the precaution of disabling the com systems in both suits, so that Ehrehin wouldn’t be tempted to find a way to use them to communicate with their pursuer.

Trip shrugged as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat once again. “You have to use what you have on hand.”

“Indeed you do.”

Trip looked across his console’s orderly bank of gauges and monitors, noting with some apprehension that the pursuing vessel was steadily gaining on them. Although the scout ship’s sensors lacked the resolution to settle the matter definitively, Trip had no doubt that Ehrehin was right about their pursuer being one of Valdore’s military ships. Therefore the other vessel had to be more than capable of catching up with them at their present speed, which both the console gauges and the vibrations of the deckplates told Trip he had already pushed to within a millicochrane or two of maximum.

It’s time to push this baby a little bit past spec,Trip thought as he carefully began entering a new command string into his console.

“Tell me, Cunaehr: Are there no other suits aboard this ship?” Ehrehin asked.

He knows,Trip thought. Heis a genius, after all.

Aloud, he said. “There are, Doctor.”

“Suits of Romulan manufacture, rather than these… aliengarments?”

Trip was becoming increasingly certain that it wasn’t going to matter much longer how he answered the old man’s questions. “I think so.”

“Yet you chose thesesuits instead. And you seem quite expert in their operation, I might add.”

“The environmental packs on these suits were more fully charged than any of the others were,” Trip said. Whether his answers continued to matter or not, he found he couldn’t resist offering plausible‑sounding explanations whenever possible. “And you know what a quick study I am.” He punctuated his words with what he hoped was a disarming smile.

The scientist did not return it, however, either because he couldn’t see it through both of their faceplates, or because he simply was no longer quite so easy to amuse.

“I had no idea you were so fluent in reading the gauges and instrumentation on non‑Romulan pressure suits.”

You have no idea,Trip thought as he examined his pilot’s console, confirming that the other ship was still inexorably creeping up on them. Would it be able to open fire on them in two minutes? Three?

“I’m going to have to coax a bit more power out of her,” Trip said just before entering yet another command into his board.

The cabin lights instantly shut off, and the resulting total darkness was replaced a beat later by dim, green emergency lighting. Trip could hear the sudden, conspicuous absence of activity in the air‑circulating system as the ventilator fans abruptly died. He imagined he could feel the icy vacuum beyond the hull caressing his spine with delicate, chill fingers, although he knew it was far too soon for either of them to start feeling the cold of space through their heavily insulated suits.