“There’s an unexplained latency whenever I try and talk to traffic control. Packets are taking too long to get through. And I’ve just noticed that we are not alone out here.”

“Not alone?”

“Let me draw you a diagram.”

We’ve been on final approach to Marsport for the past week, and we’re still decelerating at a hundredth of a gee, with more than a day to go. We’ve got nearly ten kilometers per second of delta vee to shed before Mars can capture us. Our plasma sail — a huge and tenuous shell of gas, held in place by carefully controlled magnetic fields — is still inflated, billowing as it responds to the braking magbeam from our destination. At less than half a million kilometers, Mars is showing a visible disk, but we’re not in parking orbit yet.

“We are here,” Pygmalion indicates. “The ping time to Marsport should be three seconds. Instead, it’s more like six, and there is unaccountable corruption as well. Almost a quarter of my data is showing signs of tampering.”

Whoops. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask cautiously. “Surely it’s a matter for traffic control, or all the passengers…”

“Higgins Line’s security office performs predictive risk assessment on all paying fares,” Pygmalion says blandly. “Especially ones who have paid for extra services. Two passengers were identified as possible targets for interference. You are one of them. The other is the Venerable Granita Ford, with whom you may be intimately familiar.”

“Her I can understand, she’s loaded! But why me—”

“Higgins Line is aware that your ticket was purchased through the offices of Jeeves Corporation. Jeeves Corporation simultaneously purchased a number of tickets on behalf of various other persons traveling via other lines. Three of them have been assassinated as of this date.” She continues, palpably smug: “Higgins Line has never lost a passenger to external attack, and we have no intention of starting now. Even more so in view of the special arrangements surrounding your passage. However, my threat-assessment agent tells me that there is a seventy percent probability that an attempt will be made on your life prior to our arrival in orbit, and the corruption of my external communication link suggests that infiltrators are already aboard this ship.”

“Oh dear.” I lie tensely in my bed, fighting the urge to swear aloud. “What do you propose to do?”

“Allow me to continue?” Pygmalion sounds slightly piqued at my lack of panic.

I take a second to compose myself. “Go ahead.”

“An hour ago I requested a routine long-range traffic update from Marsport. As you may be aware, the Pink Police are conducting audits of all orbital traffic. There appears to be a ship inbound for Marsport on a schedule coincident with our own and approximately a thousand seconds ahead of us which was not mentioned in my traffic update. Furthermore, the vessel appears to be a coaster, designed for low-impulse high-thrust maneuvering. I do not have its full flight plan, and do not intend to request it, but I should note that it strongly resembles a type previously employed by the Pink Police as a boarding craft. Of course, mere resemblance is not evidence of identity, and the current security alert would be an excellent cover for parties interested in carrying out nefarious activities — such as illicitly boarding commercial vessels.”

“Okay.” I think hard before I ask my next question. “When do you expect them to intercept us?”

“We have about twelve hours. And I can’t outmaneuver them.” Pygmalion pauses. “But I have a suggestion…”

IF ONE WISHES to live to a ripe old age, there are certain activities one should avoid. Chief among these is eating anything larger than one’s own head — but not so very far down the list is any activity that involves clambering around the outside of a spaceship. This is especially true when the ship in question is an interplanetary liner that is under acceleration, and its propulsion system involves rotating magnetic fields that generate currents in the mega-amp range in the plasma envelope surrounding it. Get too close to the drive antennae, or accidentally short out the plasma loop against the ship’s hull, and if you’re lucky, you’ll simply die. If you’re unlucky, well, internal electrophoresis is famously neither quick nor painless.

Which is why I’m sitting in Pygmalion’s aft maintenance air lock, my graveyard strapped to my chest inside a hastily woven black-painted chain-mail suit, clutching one end of a rope threaded with a fiber-optic bearer. I’m about to jump overboard, and I’ll be aiming right for that plasma envelope.

“This cannot be good,” says Bill, or maybe Ben. “How about we gut her, stash the payload, and claim the reward?”

“You’re just afraid of heights,” sneers Ben, or maybe Bill. “Anyway, the payload’s environment-sensitive. Like the boss said, it won’t hatch without the freak. We need her alive.”

“You don’t scare me,” I say, dangling my feet over the blue-glowing abyss. “Can either of you see the ship yet?”

“Naah.”

“Good.” It was visible a minute ago, before our slow roll took it out of view over the near horizon of Pygmalion’s hull. I lean forward, feeling viscerally ill but unwilling to admit it in front of my two oafish assistants. “Okay, you two, climb aboard.”

Bill (or Ben) bounces toward me and clings to my shoulders. He’s got the activation unit for my payload strapped to his back like a miniature pack. I roll forward slowly and drift down and out of the air lock, clinging to the edge by one hand. The two bags that my salvation depends on — one empty and one full — hang from my belt. With my free hand I hold the end of the cable where Ben (or Bill) can get it. “Can you see the socket?”

“In sight.” They’re all business, now we’re overboard. “Got it.” I look up, my vision hampered by the narrow eye slot that’s the only gap in my suit. His tiny fingers are working feverishly, lashing the cable to one of the emergency handholds under the air lock lip. The fiber-optic jack goes into a comms socket. Then another chibi-head peers over the side of the hatch.

“Move it!” He whispers. “They’ll be coming over the horizon in another minute.”

“Just finishing up. Okay, close it now.” I dangle from the cable while Bill and Ben shut the air-lock door and clamber down my back. “Make with the sack, manikin.”

“Done.” I hold the empty bag open while they climb inside, then wire it shut and double-check that it’s fastened to my belt. It balances out the other, full bag on the opposite side. I start reeling out the cable, lowering myself down toward the fuzzy blue floor beneath me.

The fuzz is the plasma magnet that Pygmalion’s M2P2 sail depends on. Powerful radio transmitters ionize the gas and induce electrical currents in it, generating a magnetic field that blocks the solar wind. We’re dropping headlong toward Mars, straight into the braking magbeam from Phobos, with the ten-kilometer-wide plasma bubble balanced between ship and destination. I’m lowering myself into it on the end of an insulating cable, wearing a half-assed hot suit I ran up on my stateroom’s printer. A funny thing about plasma bubbles is that they tend to block radar. Dangling at the end of a fifty-meter-long cable, wearing a black conductive suit, Bill and Ben and I are going to be invisible to the intruder — I hope. I try not to think about the alternatives. Maybe I got the chain weave wrong and I’m going to cook from the inside out; or maybe they’re going to locate us optically and reel us in at their leisure. Worse, maybe Pygmalion miscalculated on the length of the tether? If the plasma sail is too thin, we’re going to end up lethally exposed, dangling in the middle of the magbeam from Mars like a dust mote before a blowtorch. Neither fate is anything to look forward to, but it beats cowering in my stateroom as the bulls come stomping through the air lock.