Ti shrugged and produced a sickly smile that was either very well acted, or real. “Not exactly. I’m kind of with them.”

Siggy, reminded, pointed his solderer at Ti. Silver, when approving this ploy, had kept her inner thoughts about it most secret. Going in with Ti unarmed, apparently under the quaddies’ guns, covered him in case of later capture and legal prosecution. Equally, it disguised the possibility of making his ersatz kidnapping real, should he decide to bolt back to the side of his legged companions at the last moment. Wheels within wheels; did all leaders have to think on multiple levels? It made her head hurt.

They filed quickly through the compact crew’s section to Nav and Com. The Jump pilot sat enthroned in his padded chair, plugged into the massive crown of his control headset, a temporary, regal cyborg. His purple company coveralls were stitched with gaudy patches proudly proclaiming his rank and specialization. His eyes were closed, and he hummed tunelessly in time to the throbbing biofeedback from his ship.

He yelped in surprise as his headset detached and rose, cutting his communion with his machine, when Ti thumbed the disconnect control. “God, Ti, don’t do things like that—you know better—” A second yelp at the sight of the quaddies was swallowed with a gulp. He smiled at Silver in complete bewilderment, his eyes, after one shocked pass over her anatomy, locked politely on her face. She wriggled the laser-solderer, to bring it to his attention. “Get out of your chair,” she ordered. He shrank back into it. “Look, lady… uh… what is that?”

“Laser gun. Get out of your chair.” His eyes measured her, measured Ti, flicked to his engineer. His hand stole to his seat harness buckle, hesitated. His muscles tensed. “Get out slowly,” Silver added. “Why?” he asked. Stalling, Silver thought.

“These people want to borrow your ship,” Ti explained.

“Hijackers!” breathed the engineer. He coiled, floating in his position near the airseal door. Jon’s and Siggy’s solderers swivelled toward him. “Mutants…”

“Get out,” Silver repeated, her voice rising uncontrollably.

The pilot’s face was drawn and thoughtful. His hands floated from his belt to rest in a parody of relaxation over his knees. “What if I don’t?” he challenged softly.

She fancied she could feel control of the situation slipping from her to him, sucked up by his superior imitation of coolness. She glanced at Ti, but he was staying safely and firmly in his part of helpless—and unhelpful—victim, lying low as the downsiders phrased it.

A heartbeat passed, another, another. The pilot began to relax, visibly in his long exhalation, a smug light of triumph in his eyes. He had her number; he knew she could not fire. His hand went to his belt buckle, and his legs curled under him, seeking launch leverage.

She had rehearsed it in her mind so many times, the actual event was almost an anticlimax. It had a glassy clarity, as if she observed herself from a distance, or from another time, future or past. The moment shaped the choice of target, something she had turned over and over without decision before; she sighted the solderer at a point just below his knees because no valuable control surfaces lay behind them.

Pressing the button was surprisingly easy, the work of one small muscle in her upper right thumb. The beam was dull blue, not enough to even make her blink, though a brief bright yellow flame flared at the edge of the melted fabric of his supposedly nonflammable coveralls, then winked out. Her nostrils twitched with the stink of the burnt fabric, more pungent than the smell of burnt flesh. Then the pilot was bent over himself, screaming.

Ti was babbling, voice strained, “What d’ja do that for? He was still strapped to his chair, Silver!” His eyes were wells of astonishment. The engineer, after a first convulsive movement, froze in a submissive ball, eyes flickering from quaddie to quaddie. Siggy’s mouth hung open, Jon’s was a tight line.

The pilot’s screams frightened her, swelled up her nerves to lance through her head. She pointed the solderer at him again. “Stop that noise!” she demanded.

Amazingly, he stopped. His breath whistled past his clenched teeth as he twisted his head to stare at her through pain-slitted eyes. The centers of the burns across his legs seemed to be cauterized, shadowed black and ambiguous—she was torn between revulsion, and the curious desire to go take a closer look at what she had done. The edges of the burns were swelling red, yellow plasma already seeping through but clinging to his skin, no need for a hand-vac. The injury did not seem to be immediately life-threatening.

“Siggy, unstrap him and get him out of that control chair,” Silver ordered. For once, Siggy zipped to obey with no argument, not even a suggestion of how to do it better gleaned from his holodrama viewing.

In fact, the effect of her action on everyone present, not just their captives, was most gratifying. Everyone moved faster. This could get addictive, Silver thought. No arguments, no complaints—

Some complaints. “Was that necessary?” Ti asked, as the prisoners were bundled ahead of them through the corridor. “He was getting out of his seat for you…”

“He was going to try and jump me.” “You can’t be sure of that.” “I didn’t think I could hit him once he was moving.” “It’s not like you had no choice—” She turned toward him with a snap; he flinched away. “If we do not succeed in taking this ship, a thousand of my friends are going to die. I had a choice. I chose. I’d choose again. You got that?” And you choose for everybody, Silver, Leo’s voice echoed in her memory.

Ti subsided instantly. “Yes, ma’am.” Yes, ma’am? Silver blinked, and pushed ahead of him to hide her confusion. Her hands were shaking in reaction now. She entered the life-pod first, ostensibly to yank all the communications equipment but for the emergency directional finder beeper, and to check for the first-aid kit—it was there, and complete—also to be alone for a moment, away from the wide eyes of her companions.

Was this the pleasure in power Van Atta felt, when everyone gave way before him? It was obvious what firing the weapon had done to the defiant pilot; what had it done to her? For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. This was a somatic truth, visceral knowledge ingrained in every quaddie from birth, clear and demonstrable in every motion.

She exited the pod. A hoarse moan broke from the pilot’s lips as his legs accidently bumped against the hatch, as they stuffed him and the engineer through into the life-pod, sealed it, and fired it away from the Jumpship.

Silver’s agitation gave way to a cool pool of resolve, within her, even though her hands still trembled with distress for the pilot’s pain. So. Quaddies were no different than downsiders after all. Any evil they could do, quaddies could do too. If they chose.

There. By placing the grow-tubes at this angle, with a six-hour rotation, they could get by with four fewer spectrum lights in the hydroponics module and still have enough lumens falling on the leaves to trigger flowering in fourteen days. Claire entered the command on her lap board computer and made the analog model cycle all the way through once on fast-forward, just to be sure. The new growth configuration would cut the power drain of the module by some twelve percent from her first estimate. Good: for until the Habitat reached its destination and they unfurled the delicate solar collectors again, power would be at a premium.

She shut off the lap board and sighed. That was the last of the planning tasks she could do while still locked up here in the Clubhouse. It was a good hiding place, but too quiet. Concentration had been horribly difficult, but having nothing to do, she discovered as the seconds crept on, was worse. She floated over to the cupboard and took a pack of raisins and ate them one at a time. When she finished the gluey silence closed back in.