"But if I'm planning to be on your ship-" "You can board ahead of the crew. There's a room off my cabin you could take up residence in without anyone being any the wiser. When they talk to you on the viewscreen, they won't know if your signal is coming from somewhere on board or from another ship."

Tambu leaned back and stared at the ceiling as he turned the thought over in his mind.

"It's a good idea," he admitted finally. "Maybe we can give it a try and see how it works. I'll talk to my crew."

"It'll work," Ramona declared triumphantly. "You know, I think we'll work well together. Who knows? If we play our cards right, we might end up ruling the universe."

"Who wants it? Right now I'll settle for eking out a humble, but substantial, living."

"I know, I know. But when you talk to the new recruits, you might make some veiled references to a secret master plan. It'll help us fill the rosters if they think they're getting in on the ground floor of something big." "They are," Tambu announced solemnly. "The question is how big-and I figure we won't know the answer to that for a long time yet."

"Then your original crew was surprised by your plans of expansion?" Erickson asked. Tambu seemed tyrannical, even in his early career.

"I had not deliberately withheld the information from them. The plan had been half-formed in my mind for some time, and I had simply forgotten to tell them about my thinking on the subject. If I had reached a firm decision before encountering the Mongoose and its captive, I would have discussed it with them."

"How long had you been thinking about it before you actually implemented the plan?" the reporter pressed.

"I guess it had been in the back of my mind all along," Tambu admitted. "I was always aware of the limitations of a single ship, both in terms of firepower and of coverage."

"Coverage?"

"One ship can be in only one place at a time. If the pirates could figure out where our one snip was, they would know where we weren't, and therefore where it was safe for them to operate. Three ships complicated the problem for them."

"I see," Erickson nodded. "Once you had three ships, though, how did you deploy your original crew-the ones you could be sure of in terms of loyalty?"

"Egor and Whitey were each placed in charge of a ship. I assigned Puck under Whitey."

"Didn't that cause problems with Puck? Giving him a subordinate position while Ramona kept command of her own ship?" the reporter asked, eager for clues of dissention.

"Surprisingly enough, not. I expected him to be much more upset than he actually was. Egor gave me more problems than Puck did."

"What kind of problems did Egor cause?" Erickson pressed.

"It was strange. I had expected problems with Whitey and Puck, but it never occurred to me that Egor would object. Whitey and Puck took the change in stride, but Egor put up an unholy argument. He flatly felt he wasn't qualified for an independent command."

"But you changed his mind, right?" the reporter smiled. "Whitey had commented before on your powers of persuasion."

"Not really," Tambu sighed. "I still maintain Whitey was wrong in attributing superhuman persuasive powers to me, and this is just one example of my failures. I did get Egor to accept a command position, mostly by pointing out there was no one else available with the necessary qualifications whom I trusted."

"What about Puck?"

"Even Egor admitted that Puck was too young for command. Not so much in years, but he lacked maturity. On that basis, Egor accepted command, but he never really agreed with me as to his qualifications." "So in essence, you forced your will on him?" Tambu hesitated a moment before answering.

"I suppose you're correct," he said finally. "If that was an error, it's one I paid for a hundredfold afterward. I was constantly receiving complaints, both from Egor and from the other captains as to his shortcomings as a commander. He was probably the least effective captain who ever served under me."

"Why didn't you relieve him of command, then?"

"That is one of those hindsight questions we were speaking of earlier," Tambu admitted. "I've asked myself that a hundred times in the last few years and still haven't come up with a satisfactory answer-mostly because I'm unsure of my own motives during that period. Mostly, I think, it was because of friendship. Egor was my friend, and I gave him command of a ship because I believed in him and his abilities. To take this command away would have been a sign that I no longer believed in him. Balanced against that was my own stubborn pride. I didn't want to admit I had been wrong in my assessment of his abilities, and I sincerely felt that the problems he was encountering were manufactured by him in an effort to prove me wrong. I genuinely believed that once I made it clear that I wasn't going to remove him from command, he would resign himself to the task and solve his own problems. I saw it more as a test of wills than as a sign of incompetence on his part."

"That must have been pretty rough on your friendship."

"It was, particularly as the force continued to grow. As my time was divided across an increasing number of ships, my rapport with my original crew-with my friends-became dangerously thin."

"I can see that," Erickson commented thoughtfully. "Even adding to your fleet by conquest, the number of ships would grow geometrically."

"Even faster than that," Tambu countered. "Few people realize exactly how fast the fleet did grow. You see, not all the new ships came to us as fruits of battle."

"You're sure she'll be all right?" Tambu asked again.

"Look, will you relax?" Whitey scolded, her exasperated expression received clearly on the command console viewscreen. "Women have been having babies since prehistoric times. The hospital is more than able to handle any complications that might arise."

"I still don't know why you didn't sign her into the hospital on Carbo when you were there last month," Tambu grumbled. "It's a better facility."

"We aren't talking about a limb transplant," Whitey argued. "It's a childbirth, a simple childbirth. Besides, I tried to talk her into staying on Carbo and she wouldn't do it. Deny can be very strong-willed when she sets her mind to it. What was I supposed to do? Force her to go on shore leave and strand her there?"

"It isn't your fault, Whitey," Tambu sighed. "I know that. It's just this is the first childbirth in the fleet, and I don't want anything to go wrong. I guess I've been taking it out on you. Sorry."

"That's all right," Whitey shrugged. "If you can't sound off at us, who can you sound off to? Most of the new recruits would faint dead away if you talked to them direct, much less shouted at them."

"It's not quite that bad."

"Well, anyway, Pepe's staying with her here on Bastei, so he'll be able to handle any problems that we've overlooked," Whitey continued. "We'll be back in a month to check on things and pick them up if they're ready."

"You're sure they're set on rejoining?" Tambu pressed. "Shipboard is no place to raise a kid."

"I already tried that argument, and it didn't work. Deny was raised on shipboard."

"But that probably wasn't a fighting ship. There's a difference."

"We haven't done any fighting for a long time," Whitey observed. "Anyway, they both want to keep working for us, and I'm not about to stop them. Do you want to overrule me?"

Tambu shook his head, then remembered she couldn't see him.

"No," he said hastily. "It's your ship, and if you're willing to put up with it, I won't interfere."

"Good," Whitey nodded. "Then it's settled."