"Rod, wait! We've got to do something! Rod, where are you going?" She stared at his back as he walked rapidly away. Now what did I do? she wondered.

Blaine's door was closed but the telltale showed that it wasn't locked. Kevin Renner hesitated, then knocked. Nothing happened. He waited a moment, then knocked again.

"Come in."

Renner opened the door. It seemed strange to walk directly into Blaine's cabin: no Marine sentry on duty, none of the mysterious aura of command that surrounds a captain. "Hi, Captain. Mind if I join you?"

"No. Can I get you anything?" Blaine clearly didn't care one way or another. He didn't look at Renner, and Kevin wondered what would happen if he took the polite offer seriously. He could ask for a drink...

No. Not time to push. Not just yet. Renner took a seat and looked around.

Blaine's cabin was big. It would have been a tower room if Lenin had been designed with a tower. There were only four men and one woman who rated cabins to themselves, and Blaine wasn't using the precious room; he booked to have been sitting in that chair for hours, probably ever since the funeral services. Certainly he hadn't changed. He'd had to borrow one of Mikhailov's dress uniforms and it didn't fit at all.

They sat silently, with Blaine staring into some internal space-time that excluded his visitor.

"I've been going over Buckman's work," Renner said at random. He had to start somewhere, and it probably shouldn't be with Moties.

"Oh? How goes it?" Blaine asked politely.

"Way over my head. He says he can prove there's a protostar forming in the Coal Sack. In a thousand years it'll be shining by its own light. Well, he can't prove it to me, because I don't have the math."

"Um."

"How are you making out?" Renner showed -no indication of leaving. "Enjoying your vacation from duties?"

Blaine finally lifted haunted eyes. "Kevin, why did the kids try to do a reentry?"

"God's eyes, Captain, that's plain silly. They wouldn't have tried anything of the kind." Jesus, he's not even thinking straight. This is going to be tougher than I thought.

"Then you tell me what happened."

Renner looked puzzled, but obviously Blaine meant it. "Captain, the ship was lousy with Brownies-everywhere nobody was looking. They must have got to the lifeboat storage area pretty early. If you were a Motie, how would you redesign an escape craft?"

"Superbly." Blaine actually smiled. "Even a dead man couldn't pass up a straight line like that."

"You had me wondering." Renner grinned, then turned serious. "No, what I mean is, they'd redesign for every new situation. In deep space the boat would decelerate and scream for rescue. Near a gas giant it would-orbit. Always automatic, mind, because the passengers could be hurt or unconscious. Near a habitable world the boat would reenter."

"Eh?" Blaine frowned. There was a spark of life in his eyes. Renner held his breath,

"Yeah, but Kevin, what went wrong? If the Brownies got to the boats they'd have designed them right. Besides, there'd be controls; they wouldn't make you reenter."

Renner shrugged. "Can you figure Out Motie control panels at a glance? I can't, and I doubt that the middies could. But the Brownies would expect them to. Captain, maybe the boats weren't finished, or got damaged in a fire fight."

"Maybe-"

"Maybe a lot of things. Maybe they were designed for Brownies. The kids would have had to crowd in, rip out a dozen fifteen-centimeter Motie crash couches or something. There wasn't much time, with the torpedoes due to go in three minutes."

"Those goddamn torpedoes! The casings were probably full of Brownies and a rat ranch, if anyone had looked!"

Renner nodded. "But who'd know to look?"

"I should have."

"Why?" Renner asked it seriously. "Skipper, there's-"

"I'm not a skipper."

Aha! Renner thought. "Yes, sir. There's still not a man in the Navy who'd have looked. Nobody. I didn't think of it. The Tsar was satisfied with your decontamination procedure, wasn't he? Everybody was. What bloody good does it do to blame yourself for a mistake we all made?'

Blaine looked up at Renner and wondered. The Sailing Master's face was slightly red. Now why's he so stirred up? "There's another thing," Rod said. "Suppose the lifeboats were properly designed. Suppose the kids made a perfect reentry, and the Moties lied."

"I thought of that," said Renner. "Do you believe it?"

"No, but I wish I could be sure."

"You would be if you knew Moties as well as I do. Convince yourself. Study the data. We've got plenty aboard this ship, and you've got the time. You've got to learn about Moties, you're the Navy's heaviest expert on them."

"Me?" Rod laughed. "Kevin, I'm not an expert on anything. The first thing I've got to do when we get back is convince a court-martial-"

"Oh, rape the court-martial," Renner said impatiently. "Really, Captain, are you sitting here brooding over that formality? God's teeth!"

"And what do you suggest I brood over, Lieutenant Renner?"

Kevin grinned. Better Blaine irritated than the way he'd been. "Oh, about why Sally's so glum this afternoon-I think she's hurt because you're mad at her. About what you're going to say when Kutuzov and Horvath have it out over the Motie ambassadors. About revolts and secessions in the colony worlds, or the price of iridium, or inflation of the crown-" -

"Renner, for God's sake shut up!"

Kevin's grin broadened. "-or how to get me out of your cabin. Captain, look at it this way. Suppose a court finds you guilty of negligence. Certainly nothing worse. You didn't surrender the ship to an enemy or anything. So suppose they seriously want your scalp and they hang that on you. Worse thing they could do would be ground you. They wouldn't even cashier you. So they ground you, and you resign-you're still going to be Twelfth Marquis of Crucis."

"Yeah. So what?"

"So what?" Renner was suddenly angry. His brows knitted, and one fist clenched. "So what? Look, Captain, I'm just a merchant skipper. All my family's ever been, and all we ever want to be. I put in a hitch in the Navy because we all do-maybe back home we're not so thick on Imperialism as you are in the Capital, but part of that's because we trust you aristocrats to run the show. We do our part, and we expect you characters with all the privileges to do yours!"

"Well-" Blaine looked sheepish, and a little embarrassed by Renner's outburst. "And just what do you see as my part?"

"What do you think? You're the only aristocrat in the Empire who knows a bloody thing about Moties, and you're asking me what to do? Captain, I expect you to put your arse in gear, that's what. Sir. The Empire's got to develop a sensible policy about Moties, and the Navy's influence is big- You can't let the Navy get its views from Kutuzov! You can start by thinking about those Motie ambassadors the Admiral wants to leave stranded here,"

"I'll be damned. You really are worked up about this, aren't you?"

Renner grinned. "Well, maybe a little. Look, you've got time. Talk to Sally about the Moties. Go over the reports we sent up from Mote Prime. Learn about them so when the Admiral asks your advice you'll have some sensible arguments to give him. We've got to take those ambassadors back with us-"

Rod grimaced. Moties aboard another ship! Good Lord-

"And stop thinking like that," Renner said. "They won't get loose and multiply all over Lenin. They wouldn't have time, for that matter. Use your head, sir. The Admiral will listen to you. He's got it in for Horvath, anything Doc suggests the Tsar's going to turn down, but he'll listen to you..."

Rod shook his head impatiently. "You're acting as if my judgment were worth something. The evidence is against that."

"Good Lord. You're really down in the dumps, aren't you? Do you know what your officers and men think of you? Have you any idea? Hell, Captain, it's because of guys like you that I can accept the aristocracy-" Kevin stopped, embarrassed at having said more than he intended. "Look, the Tsar's got to ask your opinion. He doesn't have to take your advice, or Horvath's, but he does have to ask both of you. That's in the expedition orders-"