Lands turned to give the order, only to find his X.O. already heading toward him. "Sir," said Causo.

"I know," said Lands. "I relieve myself of command."

"No sir," said Causo. "Come with me, sir."

"What do you plan to do?" asked Lands.

"The cargo officer has reported something in the main hold of the ship."

"What is it?" asked Lands.

Causo just looked at him. Lands nodded, and they walked together from the bridge.

Jane had taken the box of the starship, not into the weapons bay of the flagship, for that could hold only the Little Doctor, not the box around it, but rather into the main hold, which was much more copious and which also lacked any practical means of relaunching the weapon.

Peter and Wang-mu stepped out of the starship and into the hold.

Then Jane took away the starship, leaving Peter, Wang-mu, and the Little Doctor behind.

Back on Lusitania, the starship would reappear. But no one would get into it. No one needed to. The M.D. Device was no longer heading for Lusitania. Now it was in the hold of the flagship of the Lusitania Fleet, traveling at a relativistic speed toward oblivion. The proximity sensor on the Little Doctor would not be triggered, of course, since it was nowhere near an object of planetary mass. But the timer was still chugging away.

"I hope they notice us soon," said Wang-mu.

"Oh, don't worry. We have whole minutes left."

"Has anyone seen us yet?"

"There was a fellow in that office," said Peter, pointing toward an open door. "He saw the starship, then he saw us, then he saw the Little Doctor. Now he's gone. I don't think we'll be alone much longer."

A door high up the front wall of the hold opened. Three men stepped onto the balcony that overlooked the hold on three sides.

"Hi," said Peter.

"Who the hell are you?" asked the one with the most ribbons and trim on his uniform.

"I'm betting you're Admiral Bobby Lands," said Peter. "And you must be the executive officer, Causo. And you must be the cargo officer, Lung."

"I said who the hell are you!" demanded Admiral Lands.

"I don't think your priorities are straight," said Peter. "I think there'll be plenty of time for us to discuss my identity after you deactivate the timer on this weapon that you so carelessly tossed out into space perilously close to a settled planet."

"If you think you can --"

But the Admiral didn't finish his sentence, because the X.O. was diving over the rail and jumping down to the deck of the cargo hold, where he immediately began twisting the fingerbolts that held the casing over the timer. "Causo," said Lands, "that can't be the --"

"It's the Little Doctor, all right, sir," said Causo.

"We launched it!" shouted the Admiral.

"But that must have been a mistake," said Peter. "An oversight. Because Starways Congress revoked your authorization to launch it."

"Who are you and how did you get here?"

Causo stood up, sweat dripping off his brow. "Sir, I am pleased to report that with more than two minutes' leeway, I have managed to prevent our ship from being blown into its constituent atoms."

"I'm glad to see that you didn't have any nonsense about requiring two separate keys and a secret combination to get that thing switched off," said Peter.

"No, it was designed to make turning it off pretty easy," said Causo. "There are directions on how to do it all over this thing. Now, turning it on -- that's hard."

"But somehow you managed to do it," said Peter.

"Where is your vehicle?" said the Admiral. He was climbing down a ladder to the deck. "How did you get here?"

"We came in a nice box, which we discarded when it was no longer needed," said Peter. "Haven't you gathered, yet, that we did not come to be interrogated by you?"

"Arrest these two," Lands ordered.

Causo looked at the admiral as if he were crazy. But the cargo officer, who had followed the admiral down the ladder, moved to obey, taking a couple of steps toward Peter and Wang-mu.

Instantly, they disappeared and reappeared up on the balcony where the three officers had come in. Of course it took a moment or two for the officers to find them. The cargo officer was merely baffled. "Sir," he said. "They were right here a second ago."

Causo, on the other hand, had already decided that something unusual was going on for which there was no appropriate military response. So he was responding according to another pattern. He crossed himself and began murmuring a prayer.

Lands, however, took a few steps backward, until he bumped into the Little Doctor. He clung to it, then suddenly pulled his hands away from it with loathing, perhaps even with pain, as if the surface of it had suddenly become scorching hot to his hands. "Oh God," he said. "I tried to do what Ender Wiggin would have done."

Wang-mu couldn't help it. She laughed aloud.

"That's odd," said Peter. "I was trying to do exactly the same thing."

"Oh God," said Lands again.

"Admiral Lands," said Peter, "I have a suggestion. Instead of spending a couple of months of realtime trying to turn this ship around and launch this thing illegally again, and instead of trying to establish a useless, demoralizing quarantine around Lusitania, why don't you just head on back to one of the Hundred Worlds -- Trondheim is close -- and in the meantime, make a report to Starways Congress. I even have some ideas about what the report might say, if you want to hear them."

In answer, Lands took out a laser pistol and pointed it at Peter.

Immediately, Peter and Wang-mu disappeared from where they were and reappeared behind Lands. Peter reached out and deftly disarmed the Admiral, unfortunately breaking two of his fingers in the process. "Sorry, I'm out of practice," said Peter. "I haven't had to use my martial arts skills in -- oh, thousands of years."

Lands sank to his knees, nursing his injured hand.

"Peter," Wang-mu said, "can we stop having Jane move us around like that? It's really disorienting."

Peter winked at her. "Want to hear my ideas about your report?" Peter asked the admiral.

Lands nodded.

"Me too," said Causo, who clearly foresaw that he would be commanding this ship for some time.

"I think you need to use your ansible to report that due to a malfunction, it was reported that a launch of the Little Doctor took place. But in fact, the launch was aborted in time, and to prevent further mishap, you had the M.D. Device moved to the main hold where you disarmed and disabled it. You get the part about disabling it?" Peter asked Causo.

Causo nodded. "I'll do it at once, sir." He turned to the cargo officer. "Get me a tool kit."

While the cargo officer went to pull a kit out of the storage bin on the wall, Peter continued. "Then you can report that you entered into contact with a native of Lusitania -- that's me -- who was able to satisfy you that the descolada virus was completely under control and that it no longer poses a threat to anybody."

"And how do I know that?" said Lands.

"Because I carry what's left of the virus, and if it weren't utterly killed, you would catch the descolada and die of it in a couple of days. Now, in addition to certifying that Lusitania poses no threat, your report should also state that the rebellion of Lusitania was no more than a misunderstanding, and that far from there being any human interference in the pequenino culture, the pequeninos exercised their free rights as sentient beings on their own planet to acquire information and technology from friendly visiting aliens -- namely, the human colony of Milagre. Since that time, many of the pequeninos have become very adept at much human science and technology, and at some reasonable time in the future they will send ambassadors to Starways Congress and hope that Congress will return the courtesy. Are you getting this?"