"R and D? What the hell?"

"What have they got going over there? What don't we know?"

The comm hummed again. Beckhart answered, said, "This one's for you, Charlie."

Jones sat on the edge of the vast desk, turned the comm his way. "Go ahead." In a few seconds his tall, lean, black frame began quivering with excitement. "Good. All right. Thank you."

"Well?" Beckhart growled.

"One of my Electronic Intercept people. They just picked up a message from the Starfisher Council to Confederation Senate. Routine request for clearance to hold an ambergris auction. They asked for The Broken Wings. Usual rules and mutual obligations. The same request they send whenever they hold auction on a Confederation world."

"The Broken Wings is close to Stars' End. Any other reason to be excited?"

"Payne's Fleet is going to sponsor."

Beckhart stared at his hands for more than a minute. When he looked up his expression had become beatific. "Gentlemen, the gods love us after all. Cancel all leaves. Cancel any computation capacity loans we have out. Pass the word that we're going on overtime. Everybody, including the janitors and shredder operators. I've got a feeling we'll find a rose in this dungheap yet." He laughed demoniacally. "Eyes open and ears to the ground gentlemen. Everything that comes in from now on—and I mean everything—goes into the master program for correlation. And have the programming teams start working backward. I want the biggest and best goddamned model outside the High Command Strategic Analysis. Let's see if we can't do this all up in one big, pretty package."

Beckhart departed his desk and unlocked his personal bar. He took out glasses and the half gallon of genuine Old Earth Scotch he saved for occasions of millennial significance. "A toast to successes and victories. Hopefully ours." He poured doubles.

Six: 3049 AD

The Main Sequence

The five great harvestships barely moved. Their velocity relative to the debris was a scant three kilometers per hour. Gnatlike service ships flitted before the head and flanks of their line, nudging any flying mountain that threatened collision.

It was almost an embarrassment, the way those swift monsters of the spatial deeps had to crawl. Elsewhere they could have sprinted off and left light lagging like a toddler behind an Olympic runner. Here they could not match the pace of a lazily strolling old man.

Those battered survivors of Payne's Fleet had been making the passage for a week.

The dense boulder screen gave way to a less crowded region occupied principally by asteroidal chunks the size of small moons. The harvestfleet accelerated. The line dispersed.

"Well, you kept asking about the Yards," Amy told benRabi. "We're there." She indicated the viewscreen they had been watching.

"Yes, but... " All Moyshe saw was a big asteroid illuminated by Danion's powerful lights. A few smaller boulders drifted around it. Not one star was visible in the background. All outside light was screened by the dust of the nebula.

Danion seemed to be stalking that big asteroid.

"But what?"

"There's nothing here. We're in the tail end of nowhere. I expected a hidden planet. Maybe even Osiris. Something First Expansion. Strange cities, drydocks... "

"Planetary docks? How could we take Danion into atmosphere? Or lift her out of a gravity well? Most of your Navy ships wouldn't try that."

"But you'd have to have thousands of people to work on a ship this big. Tens of thousands. Not to mention a hell of an industrial base, and one all-time grandfather of a drydock."

"The dock's right in front of you."

"What? Where?"

"Watch and see."

He watched. And he saw.

A gargantuan piece of rock began separating from the asteroid. In time it exposed a brightly lit interior vast enough to accept a harvestship. Diminutive tugs swarmed out. Some pushed the cork. Some hurried toward Danion like eager bees to a clover patch.

BenRabi saw a glow in the remote distance. Another asteroid was opening its stone mouth.

"We're going inside?"

"You got it. You catch on quick, don't you?"

"Smart mouth."

"They'll lock the door behind us. Then they'll flood the chamber with air. The work goes faster that way. And the dock will hide us from any snoopers who wander by."

"Who would come poking around in a mess like this? That would be asking to get fine-ground between those flying millstones."

BenRabi was less surprised by the existence of the nebula than by the Seiners' willingness to hazard it. Similar asteroidal shoals existed inside several dust nebulae.

"But they come anyway. Moyshe, this's the Three Sky Nebula."

"No. Not really? Yes. I guess you're serious."

One of the most dramatic actions of the Ulantonid War had occurred in the outer shoals of the Three Sky Nebula. After the war, the repatriated human survivors had circulated stories of having seen abandoned alien ships there. Some had been wrecks, some had appeared to be intact.

Three Sky had won an immediate reputation as a Sargasso of space. The treasure-seekers, xeno-archaeologists, and official investigators who went there hunting the alien ships were seldom seen again.

"The expeditions... There must have been fifteen or twenty that disappeared. What happened to them?"

"We interned them before they could stumble onto something and run home to report it. They're doing what they came to do. They just can't go home."

"Why risk setting up here if the traffic gets so heavy?"

"The risk isn't that big. We don't have visitors very often. Not when they always disappear. And, of course, it's such an unlikely place to look for us."

"Still... There's been talk at Luna Command, off and on, about sending a squadron to back up an investigation. In case it's McGraws or Sangaree that have been getting the others."

"If that happened, we'd fight. And we'd win. Only a fool would attack what we've made out of Three Sky. We've been here since before the Ulantonid War. That's a lot of time to get ready. It'd be almost like guerrilla warfare. We think we can hold off Confederation if we ever have to."

"I think you're a little over-optimistic. For people who don't have the muscle to duke it out with the sharks. I'll let you know for sure after I've looked things over."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I haven't met a Seiner yet who had the least idea of just how big and strong Confederation is. Or how tough Luna Command can be when they put their minds to it. Or that your weapons systems are prehistoric relics. Danion's got a ton of firepower, but one Empire Class battleship could carve this whole harvestfleet up like a side of beef and never get in a sweat."

"I think you're probably too impressed with your Navy. Our shortcomings were calculated into our defense plans."

BenRabi decided not to argue. Each of them was telling the truth as he or she knew it. "Are the creches here?"

"Some. All of them will be someday. It's a big job, civilizing a nebula."

"Mainly an engineering problem, I'd think."

"Yes. But it takes time and money. Especially money. We have to buy everything we can't manufacture ourselves. Which means we have to wait for the auctions because our credit is pretty slim."

"Ah. I begin to see why the good doctor was making do with primitive equipment."

"We've colonized more than seven thousand asteroids, Moyshe," Amy proudly declared. "But we've only just begun. They're all cramped. The harvestships are cramped. Our other hidden places are overcrowded. We've been taking in Confederation's dropouts for two hundred years. The ones who didn't become McGraws or run away to the outworlds."

Outworlds was a word as relative as yonder. For benRabi, born an Old Earther, it meant anything off Old Earth. Around Luna Command it meant any planet not one of the original seven founders of Confederation. Those seven usually called themselves The Inner Worlds. But out on the fringes of Confederation outworlds were human planets not signatory to the federal pact. BenRabi was unsure which meaning Amy wanted to convey.