He tapped the disconnect key, and the static abruptly shut off. It made the silence in the bridge that much more noticeable. Turning carefully—the twelve-gee run had left aches in every muscle—he looked at Marlowe. “You heard all that,” he said.

“You and Stolt get your heads together and find out how much more the hull can take.”

“We’ve already done that, Captain,” Marlowe said. The light-intensity curve on Roman’s repeater display disappeared and was replaced by a second curve and a column of numbers. “Commander Stolt estimates the drive nozzles could handle another fifteen hours or so without damage,” Marlowe continued, indicating the appropriate part of the curve with his mousepen. “Unfortunately, we can’t go from here to Shadrach’s shadow in that position—the maneuvering jets don’t generate enough thrust.”

“How about the rest of the hull?”

Marlowe’s cheek twitched. “In twenty minutes she’d start popping seams.”

Roman pursed his lips. “What about it, Kennedy?”

“No good, sir,” she replied, shaking her head carefully. “If I stay below eight gees we can’t make it in less than an hour. And any higher acceleration will just kill more of the Tampies.”

Which reminded him, he had some unpleasant news to break to the aliens. He’d have to make time for that soon. “What about putting extra shielding on the hull?”

he asked Marlowe. “I know we’ve got some spare drive plates.”

Marlowe’s lips compressed briefly. “I doubt we’ve got enough spares to do any real good, sir, but I’ll check.” He hesitated, his eyes flicking to Kennedy, and for a moment he seemed to be teetering on the brink of saying something else. The uncertainty won, and he started to turn away—

“You worried about the nova, Lieutenant Marlowe?” Roman asked mildly.

The other seemed to stiffen, and the wince that crossed his face was probably not entirely due to sore muscles. Again his eyes went to Kennedy, a hint of pleading in them.

“I believe, sir,” Kennedy spoke up, “that the lieutenant wished to point out that the higher resistance of the drive section means we can head away from B anytime we wish to. We have adequate fuel left to do a straight-line drive all the way back to Pegasus, provided we don’t waste any of it on the way.”

Roman locked eyes with her. “That would leave fifty people stranded on Shadrach, of course,” he said. “Are you recommending that we abort the mission? Either of you?”

Just inside Roman’s peripheral vision, Marlowe looked thoroughly uncomfortable.

Kennedy, directly under his gaze, didn’t flinch. “Not at this point, sir,” she said evenly. “But if we can’t get to them in thirty hours that will have to be my recommendation.”

The bridge had gone quiet again. “Consider it noted, Lieutenant,” Roman told her.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Yes, sir.”

She and Marlowe turned back to their consoles, and the background hum of conversation resumed… and Roman found himself studying the back of Kennedy’s head. Wishing her file had spelled out her previous military service a little more explicitly. She’d served on mainline warships, certainly; probably seen actual combat in one of the plethora of interplanet squabbles that had popped up with depressing regularity all over the Cordonale before the Tampy problem had taken everyone’s attention away from all such minor disagreements.

It was entirely possible she’d had to abandon people to death before.

He shivered. Yes, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, he told himself fervently. So far he’d never been forced to send men to die, and he had no real interest in starting now.

And then memory hit him like a splash of ice water, and he felt his face warm with embarrassment and shame.

No, he hadn’t sent men to die. Just Tampies.

For a long moment he stared at his intercom, stomach muscles knotting painfully.

But the call was long overdue, and putting it off any longer would only make it worse.

As usual, it was Rrin-saa who answered. “Rro-maa, yes?”

“Yes, Rrin-saa,” Roman nodded. “I wanted to offer my condolences on the deaths of eight of your people.”

“Eleven. Three more have died of internal injuries. We mourn them.”

Eleven. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know.” He hesitated. “I’m afraid there’s more bad news from the planet. It appears your research base here was completely destroyed by the first great flare.”

Rrin-saa gave the Tampy equivalent of a nod. “This is as expected.”

Roman frowned. “You already knew?”

Rrin-saa closed his eyes briefly. “If the Tamplissta had survived there would have been no need for a rescue, Rro-maa. They would have transported themselves and the humans alike to safety.”

“Oh. Of course.” Which meant, Roman realized, Rrin-saa and the others must have known or at least suspected as soon as the distress call came through. But he hadn’t bothered to ask their thoughts on the matter… and Tampies seldom volunteered such information. “Again, I’m sorry. I wish things had gone differently.”

“As do we. I must leave now, Rro-maa. The mourning continues.” The screen went dark.

Stolt’s face on the intercom screen looked haggard and vaguely uncertain—the face of a man juggling a dozen crises, all of them clamoring for immediate attention.

But there was nothing vague or uncertain about his words. “There’s no way, Captain,” he said, shaking his head carefully. “Between the spare drive plates, shielding sections, and spray-on ablative material we’ve got maybe enough stuff to add two extra centimeters to the outer hull. Assuming, that is, that we could spread it all out evenly, which of course we can’t.”

Roman nodded heavily. “I didn’t think we’d have enough, but it seemed worth checking. Any progress on that reflector umbrella you proposed earlier?”

“We’re still doing simulations, but it’s not looking especially hopeful,” Stolt admitted. “Every material we try can handle either the light or the radiation, but not both. Woller’s setting up a trial with a multi-sandwiched sort of layering, but I’m not optimistic.”

“Captain?” Kennedy spoke up, turning to face him. “Would there be enough spare shielding to adequately cover a lifeboat?”

And then fly it across to Shadrach, cram the scientists in somehow and fly back…

“How about it, Stolt?”

The answer was prompt enough to show that Stolt had already considered that approach. “No good,” he said. “It’d be a mess to fly, for starters—we could only shield one side of the boat, which would throw the center of mass ‘way to hell and gone. And even then, you’d only have enough shielding for a one-way trip—too much of the stuff would boil off on the way for you to make it back.”

“Unless Lowry’s group has something they could use to protect it on the return trip,” Kennedy persisted.

Stolt snorted. “If they had, don’t you think it would have occurred to them to use the stuff on their own lander?”

“Maybe not,” Kennedy countered. “They’re astrophysicists, not engineers. Maybe they’ve got something that would work but don’t realize it.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to suggest it,” Roman agreed. “Have one of your people call down to Lowry and get a complete list of the materials they have on hand.”

“Yes, sir,” Stolt said.

Roman keyed the intercom off and turned to Marlowe. “The radiation going down at all out there, Lieutenant?”

“Ah… yes, sir, a little,” Marlowe said distractedly, his eyes steady on one of his screens. “Not fast enough, though. Captain, I’ve just picked up something in orbit around Shadrach. I think you’d better take a look.”

Roman frowned at his scanner repeater. A flashing circle marked the spot… “A

space horse?”

“That’s what I thought,” Marlowe agreed. “Probably the one the Tampy expedition brought with them—you can just barely see what’s left of a ship trailing behind it.

The question is, why is the thing still here?”