"We'll go out with these four. How far around from the Traveler are we?"

"A kilometer."

"Great. What's the visual on dockside?"

"Dead except for a standard docking crew for a shuttle, a crabby looking bitch in Admins, and a kid wearing Spacers with Pioyugov patches. Looks like he might hit puberty any minute."

The shuttle's master shoved a gigantic smoke stick into his mouth. He did not fire it. "What kind of desperados are you broads, anyway? Besides crazy? This is V. Rothica 4 station, not some pirate hangaround."

"We're live desperados," Jo told him. "Going to stay that way, too. Get it shut down and let's go."

He went to work, shaking his head. "The people you got to deal with in this business."

Ten minutes later it was time to leave. Jo put the shuttle crew in front, which they accepted with more amusement than resentment. The older man went straight to the woman waiting dockside. "Made it one more time, Cyn." He gave her a cassette. ‘Twenty-six tonnes dry atmosphere. Credit us."

‘Two passengers? I've only got paperwork for one. What's going on?"

"They're real convincing."

"Which one is Klass?"

"The mean-looking one. Have fun." He started walking. His bunch followed. Jo saw no reason to stop them.

The Admin woman glared at something in her hand. "Klass, Lieutenant Jo."

"Yeah?"

"ID and documentation."

Jo showed her the business end of a haiisplitter. AnyKaat watched the dockworkers. They did not seem interested. "This is all the ID you're going to get. Let's take a hike over to that Pioyugov Traveler."

The woman looked at the weapon, maybe not recognizing the type but certainly the threat. "Regs say I have to..."

"Are regs to die for?" AnyKaat asked. She caught the Pioyugov boy's arm. "Where you going? Stick around. We need you both. Something happens, we want you right in the middle of it."

The woman said, "You people are crazy."

"And still alive after all these years." Crazy could be situational, sometimes. "Start walking."

No one paid them any heed the whole kilometer, except for normal curiosity.

The boy got restless as they approached the docked Traveler. AnyKaat told him, "Don't even think about running. You look like a nice kid. Be a shame to blow a hole through your head."

Same song, third verse with the Pioyugov purser. He didn't have any Karwin AnyKaat on his list. He relented when they showed him heavy caliber boarding passes.

"Operating bridge," Jo snapped the instant they were inside. "You two go ahead of us," she told the purser and boy. She had let the Admin woman go. "Hurry." They would be hearing from STASIS soon.

"Let's don't get trigger-happy now, Jo."

"I've got it under control."

A normal watch was on bridge for a Traveler in dock. They were startled when the human wave rolled in. Hands flew into the air, jaws dropped, one spacer cursed softly, thinking they'd been boarded by pirates. Jo thought they probably looked it. She wasn't wearing her dress blacks. "I'll cover. You hit the boards and see what's going on."

"Right." AnyKaat dragged a Pioyugov out of her seat.

The watch officer demanded, "What the hell?..." His question evaporated as Jo pointed the hairsplitter.

AnyKaat fiddled for several minutes. It had been a long time and she was not sure what to look for.

Jo heard something in the passage outside. She did not have her back to the hatchway. "Company, AnyKaat. Cover."

"Right."

Jo spun to cover the passageway.

Lieutenant Jo. I have found you at last.

"Seeker? You old sonofabitch! AnyKaat. It's Seeker. I think. What the hell is this? Was that really you in my nightmares?"

It was a thin thread and a weak one, Jo Klass. It has been a long, hard search.

"You found us. I could kiss you. Couldn't you kiss him, AnyKaat?"

"Yeah. Station's on with a bitch, Jo."

"Screw station." She had a thousand questions.

Now we must find your commander.

"Haget? He's dead. Long gone. You know that. You were there."

The one called WarAvocat Hanaver Strate Dictat. There is much to tell him.

"You bet your ass we're going to find him. We're going to let him know what the hell has been going on, then we're going to kick some ass."

"Jo."

She looked at AnyKaat. She saw a lot of pain that would not have awakened had they never broken free of Merod Schene. AnyKaat had a kid she hadn't seen in more years than they had figured out. Just one anchor point away. A lot closer than this station had seemed from Merod Schene till a few years hours ago. "Yeah. Right. Seeker, we got to go on down the strand to P. Jaksonica. Got to."

There, AnyKaat. That do it?

She fought the panic that boiled up from the pit of her stomach. All those days of peril, all those nights of fear, all those years, with nothing constant, nothing trustworthy, but AnyKaat. Gone on so long it was programmed into her cells, it seemed. And now maybe about to be lost.

Jo suffered an almost paralyzing dread of being alone. It had been bad down below, but now it was worse. Now it was not something she could hold back by being the fastest and deadliest gun around.

"Station is all excited," AnyKaat said. "Somebody is going to have to deal with them before STASIS gets righteous."

Seeker faced the senior Pioyugov. The man's half of their exchange made it sound like Seeker's people had all but bought the Traveler. The Traveler's operators seemed inclined to do anything he asked. If they could understand what he wanted done.

The crew went to work. AnyKaat drifted out of their way. Joe told the purser, "Guess you'd better show us where to bed down."

He glanced at her hairsplitter, said, "Yes, ma'am."

— 115 —

The convoy left the Web twice before crossing the Rim, each time so its commanders could pass information, each time far from any anchor point. Turtle was impressed. The Outsiders were more daring than Canon operators, who dreaded leaving the Web away from carefully calculated optimum insystem points. Few Canon-based ships were prepared for extended stays in starspace.

A Godspeaker ship waited at the second pausing place. It relayed the news that Tregesser commandos had uncrossed the planned doublecross in the Hemebuk Neutrality.

They could not make an issue of it. But Turtle was sure they would try to even scores later. He would have to keep them thinking they had not reached his useful limit.

The convoy made a long passage to the nether reaches of the Outsider empire, broke away into the wildest waste space Turtle had ever seen.

Interstellar gas and dust were so dense the galaxy outside could not be seen. Parts of the cloud were in such rapid motion that its electromagnetic voices formed an endless chorus of screams. Gasses and dust and clouds of cold matter ranging from sand to planetoids were torn this way and that by mad gravitational tides. At the waste's heart was a trinary consisting of a black hole, a neutron star, and a living giant star that was being gutted by each in turn as the three whirled in a rapid orbital dance that distorted the very fabric of space. The cloud was no more than five light years across, yet Turtle could discern another dozen stars or protostars with his naked eye. Their fires lighted the dust, making sprawls of angel hair that braided into a firestorm spanning the entire sky.

Fourteen strands led into the maelstrom. Not a one was anchored.

Provik was intrigued. He thought a study of local conditions would reveal something about the Web, the study of which, for him, was something more than a hobby yet not quite an obsession.

"I tell you, Kez Maefele, if we survive this, I may just retire. The older I get, the less it seems worth the trouble. Shike would love to take over. I could give it to him. Take me a Voyager and go kiting off, trying to figure out what the Web is, why, where it came from, all that." There was real excitement in his eyes.