My skin crawls briefly as we near the plasma shell, then we’re inside. A couple of blue sparks flash across the surface of my chain-mail hot suit, but there’s no arcing. A mimetic reflex makes me try to breathe a sigh of relief, which is very disconcerting in vacuum. Down. The empty gulf swings below me, as the ship decelerates at ten centimeters per second squared. From this side of the barrier the far side of the magsail is almost invisible, many kilometers away.

I hang in the bubble, with nothing to do but watch my power consumption and keep an eye on the stealthy feed Pygmalion has fed to Bill and Ben. I’ve got maybe twelve hours before I have to start shutting down limbs to save juice. In the worst case, I’ll have to rely on the terrible twosome to get me out of here when Pygmalion reaches Marsport and powers down her sail. But at least I’ve got a good view of the other passengers. Which is why I’m watching events in the saloon, with mixed feelings of boredom and wistfulness, when things start to happen.

It’s early morning, shipboard time, and Pygmalion has alerted everybody that something is happening. The Lyrae twins squat in their usual corner, stolidly chewing their way through a platter of pancakes. Reza Agile and Sinbad-15 sit nearby, sharing a go board while Mary X. Valusia dances attendance to Granita’s entourage, who are gathered in a gaggle at the opposite end of the saloon from the dreadful duo. As for the venerable Granita Ford herself—

“Attention.” Brash electrospeak ripples through my head, forwarded from Pygmalion’s general announcement feed: I tense. “Attention passengers and spacecraft Pygmalion. This is Port Control. You are ordered to stand to for boarding and inspection. A police cutter will come alongside shortly. Any resistance constitutes a violation of quarantine regulations and will be punished severely.”

“What?” shouts Reza Agile, jumping so suddenly that she bounces off the ceiling. “What’s going on? Ship! Are we delayed, or waylaid? I demand an explanation!” Then she’s drowned out by a hubbub from the other passengers.

“Attention. Coming alongside now.”

“It was too good to be true,” Sinbad-15 moans.

“Has anyone seen the other passengers today?” One of the Lyrae twins asks thoughtfully. “I find it interesting that Ford and her floozy are absent.”

“It’s a conspiracy!” Agile is clearly very agitated indeed. “She’s been studying us for the entire voyage — she’s going to have her minions chip and file us! We’re being press-ganged!”

At which precise moment Granita storms into the saloon. Two arbeiters trail behind, desperately battling to finish dressing her. “What is this disturbance about?” she demands.

“Attention! You will comply with all instructions on pain of immediate arrest. We are coming aboard now.”

I look away from my stealth feed. Above me, beyond the blue nimbus of the drive field, I see a slim black knife shape. Painfully bright lights flash on and off along its flanks as it maneuvers toward the Pygmalion . Lightning plays across the glowing magsail ceiling; the intruder’s exhaust stream is doing strange things to the plasma bubble.

“Hey, do you see that?” (I stitched a patch cable into the neck of my sack of troublesome assistants, just in case I needed their withering sarcasm for a change. Now it seems like a good thing I took the precaution. ) “Do we need to think about moving?”

“Yep.” I can’t tell whether it’s Bill or Ben, but he doesn’t sound happy. “Looks like a VASIMR on high thrust. They can’t hold it for long, but if they don’t dock quickly, it’ll short out the plasma bubble. Look down.”

I take his advice, and wish I hadn’t. The blue nowhere beneath my feet is rippling and shimmering like an ocean surface before a storm front. Pinpricks stipple it like rust. “That’s not good, is it?”

“I think it’s going to be alright,” says Ben, or Bill — the other one, anyway. “They’re on final approach. Won’t be long now. Look at it move! That’s military thrust, alright.”

I look back at the approaching intruder. Pirates? Or police? I’m not sure it really matters at this point. Neither of them would be good news. The ship is slim and smooth-edged, with triangular-tiled surfaces that make my eyes hurt as I try to trace its outline. The stubby cone of its main drive is just visible now, the bell nozzle glowing violet-hot even through the hazy plasma overcast. It sideslips toward Pygmalion, and for almost a minute I’m frozen with fear, terrified that it’s going to ram the ship we dangle from, or quench the ionized bubble, or angle its main engine just wrong and blast us all to white-hot shrapnel with its plasma rocket…

Then the glare vanishes, and there’s a ripple in the cable that tells me the two ships have locked together above us. And part of me realizes, Of course. They don’t want to destabilize the sail, not with us riding the Phobos magbeam on final approach.

“It’s time for stage C,” says Bill (or Ben), presumably reading off Pygmalion’s detailed checklist.

“Is it?” I check the other bag dangling from my belt. Yes, it’s the one we made up earlier. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s keep an eye on what’s going on in the saloon, yes?” I start the ascent, climbing hand over hand and reeling in the cable as I go. I feel like I only weigh about a kilogram here, even with my passengers. The trick is going to be not overdoing things and ramming the underside of the air lock headfirst.

The air in the saloon is steaming. The passengers are engaged in furious recriminations; Granita is tearing a strip off the Lyrae twins, Reza Agile is demanding my head (she appears to think I’m a police spy, of all things), and Mary X. is huddled in a corner, desperately trying to convince anyone who’ll listen to her that she’s nothing to do with whatever is happening.

Meanwhile, the steam is thickening, pumping into the saloon in great gouts. Pygmalion has fallen silent, evidently succumbing to whatever pressure our assailants can bring to bear on a spaceship over a direct docking link. I can’t tell precisely what’s happening, but I’m sure of one thing — the best place to be, when your spaceship is being boarded by bad bots who’re looking for you, is on board another vessel.

A rasping voice of authority comes over the broadcast channel again. “Attention, passengers and ship. Your pressurized compartments are being fumigated. Police agents will come aboard once fumigation is complete. This is an official Replication Suppression Agency inspection. You are suspected of harboring illegal replicators. You will be inspected and sterilized before you are allowed to proceed to Marsport; resistance will be punished severely.”

It is the Pink Police. Of all my luck; pirates would actually be preferable. You can usually negotiate a ransom with extralegal capitalists, but the Pink Police are distressingly short of venality. I pause, pressing a hand against the base of my abdomen. I can see the payload inside me with my mind’s eye, restlessly replicating. Do magnetic fields damage pink goo? I suddenly wonder. I could have blown the mission completely! But I don’t have time to worry about that now if I’m going to save myself.

On the other hand, I think, as I close in on the docking tunnel above me, the last place they’re going to look for it is aboard their own ship. Right?

Gouts of hig h-temperature water vapor blister the delicate paintwork of the Pygmalion’s saloon, soak into the colorful nylon-and-polyester padding, and steam up the sensors. There is some complaining and grumbling from the passengers, but the announcement that it is an official RSA inspection damps down the state of near panic. Nobody likes the Pink Police, but the prevailing state of public opinion is that they fulfill a nasty but necessary requirement. And so, the reaction is muted and the atmosphere steamy when the police jet in.