“And that is…?”

Ferrol locked eyes with him. “There’re two small facts that the official version conveniently leaves out. First, that it wasn’t the Defiance’s crewers who forced us out of our homes and off our world. It was a Tampy task force. A very efficient, very cold, very military task force. And second… that they forced us out a full four days before the date that’s on the treaty.”

For a moment Roman was silent. “You’re saying,” he said at last, “that the Tampies jumped the gun?”

“I’m saying,” Ferrol corrected grimly, “that they took unilateral action against us…

and that the Senate backed off and let them get away with it.”

Roman rubbed his thumb and forefinger together gently. “Is it possible you could have been mistaken as to the timing involved? After all, you were fairly young at the—”

“I was almost sixteen,” Ferrol cut him off. “Quite old enough to know the months and days of the week, thank you—and to know how to translate local dates into Earth Standard ones.” He glared at the other. “There’s no mistake, Captain. The public image the Tampies portray of themselves as peace-loving, passive friends of nature is a lie. I know it, the Senate knows it… and the rest of the Cordonale deserves to know it, too.”

“And how far do you intend to go to prove it?” Roman asked bluntly.

Ferrol took a deep breath, dragging his anger back under control. “You mistake my intentions, sir,” he said evenly. “I’m not here to goad the Tampies into showing their true character. I won’t have to—being locked up in close proximity to a shipful of humans for three months ought to do it for me.” He locked eyes with the captain. “I’m here only to make sure that that evidence doesn’t somehow get itself snowbound.”

“I see,” Roman nodded. If he was offended by the implied slur on his integrity, he made no sign of it. “Then there’s just one more question I have to ask: given your feelings about the Tampies, are you certain you’re willing to trust your life to them?”

Ferrol frowned. “In what way would I be doing that?”

Roman frowned in turn. “You didn’t know? The Amity’s a modified in-system freighter, without a Mitsuushi Star Drive. All interstellar travel will be via the space horse… and the systems we’ll be going to are all well beyond normal Mitsuushi range.”

Something cold settled into the pit of Ferrol’s stomach. “I wasn’t told that, no,” he murmured. All travel via their tame space horse… and only the Tampies able to control or communicate with the giant creature. “That seems… a bit foolhardy, sir,” he managed.

“Perhaps.” Roman was giving him an all too understanding look. “Under the circumstances, if you’d like to resign the post, I’ll certainly understand.”

Ferrol glared back, a flash of anger burning away the fear. That grandfatherly expression, reducing him to a child again—“Thank you, sir, but I’ll be staying.”

Roman seemed to measure him with his eyes, then nodded. “Very well, Commander,” he said gravely. “Welcome aboard the Amity. We leave at 0800 tomorrow; I’ll want you on the bridge two hours before that.”

“Understood, Captain.”

“I’ll see you then. Dismissed.”

It was a long walk from the captain’s office aft to the officers’ section, a walk made all the more difficult by the subtly shifting weight and Coriolis effects Ferrol had to contend with. It was a standard enough procedure, certainly: altering a ship’s rotational speed was a quick way to simultaneously test the spin jets, flywheel, and structural integrity. But he wasn’t in the mood to be lenient with standard procedures. Even ones that worked.

In politics, lying was apparently one of the standard procedures. It often worked, too.

They’d lied to him. Deliberately. A lie of ommission, but a lie nonetheless—and what really killed him was that part of the blame had to sit squarely on his own neck. Not once had it even occurred to him to ask whether the Amity would have a Mitsuushi backup.

Damn them.

He reached his cabin and went in, privacy-sealing the door behind him and flopping down on the bed. Beneath him, the cabin’s tiny port showed a dizzying panorama as the stars swept past in time to Amity’s rotation; but it was to the side bulkhead that he found his attention drawn. A normal, everyday bulkhead… except that, by an accident of room assignments, Ferrol’s cabin was at the edge of the human half of the ship.

Beyond that wall—six centimeters of metal and soundproofing away—was the Tampy section.

Tampies. Misshapen faces, stupid-looking tartan neckerchiefs, infuriatingly whining voices, strange and vaguely nauseating odors. Bio-engineered

“technology” which just barely deserved the name. High-minded ideals, noblesounding words… and quietly ruthless actions. Memories flooded back, sharp and clear, and for a teetering moment the fears of Prometheus loomed over him like thunderclouds.

But this wasn’t Prometheus… and he was no longer a helpless sixteen-year-old.

No longer helpless at all.

Rolling over, he reached down and pulled open the closest of the underbed storage drawers, withdrawing a thin black box from beneath a pile of shirts. He wouldn’t have put it past Roman to have had his luggage examined… but, no, the indicator built into the lock showed it hadn’t been touched. He tapped in the proper code, heard the gentle snick of the lock, and lifted the lid.

He pulled out the compact needle pistol first, making sure it pointed away from him as he laid it arm’s length away on the bed. The spare clip came out next, along with the special permit for him to carry the gun. Beneath the hardware was the false bottom; and beneath that was the envelope.

The gun was a conversation piece. The envelope was his weapon.

There was a single line of instructions on the front of the envelope, written in the Senator’s small and geometrically precise script: To be used when deemed necessary. Ferrol gazed at the words, letting the Senator’s calm strength and infinite confidence flow from the handwriting into him. No, this wasn’t Prometheus and helplessness. This was the Amity… and the chance to turn the Tampies’ quiet undeclared war right back on them.

If he was lucky. Somehow, Ferrol thought he would be.

For a long minute after Ferrol left, Roman sat quietly in his chair, gazing at the door and listening to the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He’d expected anti-Tampy from the other, of course—virulent anti-Tampy, even.

He hadn’t expected absolute ice-packed hatred.

Even now, with Ferrol gone from his sight, the memory of the emotional turmoil he’d sensed in the younger man made him wince. Ferrol’s pain and anger were as fresh as if he’d been thrown off Prometheus only yesterday, the emotions kept alive for eight years by the certain knowledge that the Senate had lied through its collective teeth about what had happened to the colony.

About that, at least, he was right. Roman had seen the official documents.

He dropped his gaze to the intercom, feeling temptation tugging at him. A single touch of a button—a short, probably very painful, conversation—and Ferrol would be gone. The Antis’ time bomb gone from his ship, the faction itself absolutely furious at him—

And their revenge would be to scuttle Amity. And with it perhaps mankind’s last chance to stay out of war with the Tampies.

Roman closed his eyes tiredly. No, it was too risky. For now, at least, the only prudent course would be to play along with Ferrol. Give him all the leeway he wanted… and hope that whenever he made his move—whatever that move was—that there would be a chance to block him.

And until that happened, Roman still had a ship to run. Putting Ferrol out of his mind as best he could, he keyed his display to the status report menu and got back to work.

And tried not to notice how remarkably similar his wait-and-see plan was to the pro- Tampy Senators’ own method of dealing with the problem.