PIRATES OF THE THUNDERPIRATES OF THE THUNDER
 
Copyright © 1987 by Jack L. Chalker
e-book ver. 1.0
 
For Judy-Lynn del Rey,
a unique giant in a field
dominated by pygmies,
for all that I am today.
I wish you'd stuck around for the climax.

PROLOGUE
 
NINE HAD DIED IN THE FIGHT, NINE GOOD FRIENDS AND family members. From her haven 
in the small hollow escape pod attached to the great tree, she stared out into 
the rain, but she could see little more than water and mist. The tears began to 
flow as a dark shape seemed to move in the gray ness outside. She raised the 
pistol but did not fire; the shape paused a moment, then moved on past the tree.
She knew that it had somehow still missed her, but it was heading for the nearby 
compound where twenty more would be taken by surprise as her party had been-and 
possibly slaughtered for not telling the thing what they did not know.
Its pause between her escape and its pursuit certainly meant that it had beamed 
a full account of the progress to date to its master module, in orbit somewhere 
above. Its programmers would make certain she never left this cursed world, and 
if she destroyed it they'd send another Val, and another, until they got her-no 
matter what the cost.
How many lives, both human and Sakanian, was she worth? How many would be 
massacred for her? And for what? Sooner or later they would get her, and even if 
she could elude them indefinitely in this mess of a world she could do no more 
useful work.
With a sigh, she crawled out of the pod and into the rain. The thing had not 
gone far and was easy to track, and she was amazed at her sudden calmness. 
Sensing it was being followed, it stopped and waited, a large, hulking, 
obsidianlike humanoid that was plastic enough to become whatever it needed, and 
now needed to be nothing more than itself.
She stepped into the clearing and faced the Val from a distance of five meters 
or so, her pistol still pointed at it.
"I have been waiting for you, Ngoriki," the Val said in a voice that sounded 
somewhat like her own, but full of stoic self-confidence.
"I know. I can't let you kill any more innocent people."
"Yes. Inside me is a record of you, you know. I fully understood what the action 
would do to you. I very much regret having to do it, but there seemed no other 
way. I had tried the traditional approaches and nothing else seemed sure."
She felt suddenly furious, and her grip on the pistol tightened. "You regret! 
How dare you! How can you regret? You are a machine, a soulless monstrosity! You 
don't feel. You don't know what that did to me! You're nothing but a machine 
carrying out your programming, no matter what the cost!"
"You are both right and wrong," the machine said. "It is true that I am a 
construct, carrying out my master programming instructions-but so are you. I am 
made of different stuff, in a different way, than you, and, unlike you, I know 
my creator and my engineers. Human beings are programmed by their biochemistry 
more than you would like to believe. I think-and that makes me an individual. I 
am not free, but neither is humanity."
"Yes. That's what you'll do to me, isn't it? Reprogram me. Perhaps that is what 
sets us apart, then. I have a yearning to be free, and you see that yearning as 
only a flaw in my own genetics."
"No," the Val responded. "We have a disagreement, that is all. This is not a 
good, let alone perfect, system we have, I grant that. It is merely a better 
system than the alternatives. It saved the race of humankind and many other 
races from inevitable self-extinction. Having saved them from their demise at 
their own hands, it now saves them from extinction at the hands of others. 
Survival outweighs all other considerations. If one survives, one has 
opportunity and hope at some point for changes for the better. If one does not 
survive, nothing else matters."
"Damn it!" she screamed at him. "You have everything I was inside you! 
Everything! You know I am innocent of what I was charged!"
The Val almost seemed to sigh. "Yes. I know. That more than anything has made 
this so difficult for me. We hate to get the rare innocent to track, yet we 
must. Do you know why we are called Vals? After a character in ancient Earth 
literature, one Jean Valjean. He stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving 
family and received life at slave labor as his punishment. He escaped, became 
great, and did only great things for others, yet he was hunted relentlessly and 
brought down all the same. The name is that of the victim, not the pursuer. The 
greater good for the greater number requires that the system work. An individual 
injustice here and there is inevitable, but so long as the trial is fair and the 
conviction proper, the system must be served, for otherwise there is chaos and 
disorder, and the masses will suffer. Better one than the many, as painful as 
that may be."
"You bastard! Where does justice and mercy fit into all this?"
"Is it mercy to spare one so that a thousand be killed? The system ensures 
survival. Without survival, justice and mercy are irrelevant, as well. 
Therefore, they are irrelevant here."
The pistol dipped down, and she felt the tears returning. "But-without justice 
and mercy, why survive at all?" she asked.
She suddenly raised the pistol, ready to fire, but the Val had anticipated her 
and was quicker. A snakelike tentacle suddenly shot from its midsection and 
struck her once, hard, on the side of her head. She cried out, then crumpled. It 
retracted the tentacle, then went over to her and gave her a quick examination. 
She was out cold.
"We are different," the Val said aloud. "I have often wished, in circumstances 
such as this, that I, too, could cry."
It lifted her gently in its huge arms and carefully made its way back to the 
compound and, eventually, the ship.
Absolution was a destruction of memory that left a Val in some way impaired, 
missing a part of itself. Rarely did a Val crave Absolution-but this one did. 
The girl had been so beautiful, so innocent, yet the Val had been forced by the 
logic of its system to destroy her. Reprogramming a human brain was not death, 
of course; the system demanded some mercy. Still, she would cease to exist as a 
separate entity who had been born, raised, and molded by the world of her birth. 
She would become someone entirely different, someone totally artificial, and she 
would never even suspect that she had changed. She would be a character in 
Master System's grand play, no more a true and natural sentient creature than, 
well, than the Val itself.
Absolution would erase all knowledge and memory of her, of the hunt for her, 
along with the traces of guilt and doubt that such operations always induced. In 
a personal sense, the Val would welcome the relief, but in another sense it 
would not. By now those memories that were hers existed only in its own data 
banks; when they were gone, she would be truly dead.
How many others had been like her? How many of the thousands it had chased and 
brought to justice-or destroyed, when that had been the only alternative-had 
been in fact not the system's enemies but its victims? It would never know, but 
that very thought was treason and disturbing down to its core; Absolution was a 
necessity, and must be done as soon as possible.
Vals had at their constant disposal a reading of all the memories, all the 
personality factors, of their object. To catch someone, the hunter had to know 
the quarry more intimately than the quarry knew itself. Even such people as 
murderers and traitors might be viewed with sympathy if all that they were was 
seen with detachment.
No, that was getting even worse. Perhaps this Val was defective. Perhaps this 
time there would be no awakening from Absolution.
The Val went to its cubicle and plugged in its receptors. The complete data was 
first read out into Master System's files; there, at least, the information and 
the personality files would always reside. Then all data in the auxiliary banks 
and the core was erased, so that the Val was as virginal and ignorant-and as 
nonfunctional-as when it was built.
Master System then reprogrammed the core as a new unit updated with all the 
newest findings, the newest technology, and the newest tricks of the trade. The 
Val did not feel, did not wonder, did not doubt. It was merely a machine.
But it was a machine with the capacity for all those things, for if it were not 
it could never comprehend its quarry, never second-guess them and trap them. 
Without Absolution, the Vals were in serious danger of becoming somewhat human.
Now came the assignment.
Master System was the greatest computer ever built. All data ever on a computer 
network was inside it from the start; it knew all there was to know, the sum 
total of human knowledge and experience. Designed as a last link in a massive 
defense against impending nuclear war, its sole purpose were the preservation of 
the human race and its knowledge, and the quest for new knowledge.
It had done its job; and having prevented holocaust, it had set about to carry 
out its dictates that would prevent even the remotest possibility of such a 
horror ever happening again. It seized command of the world, all weapons and 
powers, and tied all computer systems into a master system of its own design. It 
selected examples in doubting and resisting countries, and certain cities along 
with their teeming populations ceased to exist-and so did resistance to Master 
System.
But its basic programming still reigned: The human race must never be permitted 
to die out. So robotic scouts were sent out to find worlds for humanity. And 
such worlds were found. Colonists specially tailored for survival on those 
not-quite-Earthlike worlds were brought to their new homes by great universe 
ships. Earth was left not with billions, but a mere five hundred thousand, who 
could be reprogrammed and resettled.
The great cities were leveled and traces of modern civilization were all but 
wiped out. The survivors were confined to isolated reservations whose cultures 
were modeled after more primitive periods of history. Humanity became its own 
living museum, not with great accuracy but with great effect.
Only a few human beings knew the facts. These were the elite, the brightest from 
each of the indigenous people, the chosen administrators who kept their own 
people in primitive darkness as the price of their own luxury and privilege.
Giving knowledge to those who ran humanity was not without price to Master 
System. Putting the best and brightest together and allowing them access to 
tools and history resulted in the development of a hidden subculture that had 
discovered how to beat the system. They had learned to edit their own memories, 
eliminating any forbidden knowledge that might be detected in the periodic 
recordings made of their minds. They did their own research and played their own 
power games beyond the reach of Master System. The great computer tolerated a 
certain measure of such activities, but was eternally vigilant to any that 
threatened the system itself or its own near-total control. Those who 
overstepped the bounds had the Vals sent after them-and the Vals rarely failed.
Now a Val was being informed of a new element, one that might be the greatest 
threat of all times to Master System. For the great computer was vulnerable. It 
had taken all the measures it thought it could to hide that fact, but the 
vulnerability remained, having been built into it by its creators: An overriding 
command could suspend all existing programming imperatives of Master System and 
make it subject to new compulsive orders. It was also compelled to allow anyone 
actually attempting this to do so. For the attempt to succeed, however, the 
cancellation codes had to be read into Master System's core memory. The codes 
were hidden on tiny microchips disguised as five individually designed elaborate 
and ornate golden rings. Anyone inserting all five into their corresponding 
interface slots in the correct order would in effect be the master of Master 
System. The rings themselves, Master System's programming demanded, had to be at 
all times in the possession of humans with authority. If a ring were lost or 
destroyed, another must be fashioned to replace it. Altering any such 
imperatives in its programming would destroy Master System.
So it had scattered the rings, leaving one on Earth and sending the other four 
into the trackless void of the involuntary interstellar colonists. It had wiped 
out all references it could find to the rings, their function and their use-and 
even to the very location where the rings had to be used.
But somewhere, somehow, possibly in ancient archives uncovered by Center 
archaeologists, some record of the rings, and all they implied, survived the 
centuries. After nine hundred years of static life in darkness, there were 
humans who knew. Already a few technological underground cells had discovered 
how to command and repro-gram Master System's computer-piloted spaceships. Some 
such groups as the freebooters, who were occasionally useful, were even allowed 
to exist as a sort of Center in space, so long as they remained selfish and did 
not threaten the system.
But now a small group of renegades had all the information it needed to start 
out. They knew of the rings. They knew how to command the ships. They did not 
know where the rings were, nor where to use them, but there was a strong 
possibility that they could discover these things in time. They were on the 
loose, and they were dedicated- with nothing to lose.
Although the group seemed insignificant, and its chances of doing anything more 
than providing a minor nuisance were billions to one against them, Master System 
was tremendously concerned. It claimed it was fighting a bitter and stalemated 
war-although even its own Vals were not told whom it was fighting, or where, or 
why- and that if Master System were to be in any way disabled, defeat would be 
inevitable, with consequences horrible for all. The mere fact that information 
on the rings had survived and gotten out beyond Earth was unsettling to it. It 
felt so threatened it was actually considering a new mass reprogramming of 
humanity, the destruction of all the Centers, and the imposing of a new limit 
where even the concept of agriculture or of a language capable of expressing 
complex and abstract ideas would be forbidden by computers that would be 
worshipped and obeyed as tangible gods. But it would take a very long time to do 
this.
The capture of the rebel band was given overriding priority to the Vals. There 
were ten individuals to find, but there were recordings for only a small number 
of those. What information they did have was provided by Doctor Isaac Clayben of 
Melchior, the penal colony in the asteroids from which all the renegades had 
escaped.
The Val absorbed the available information, then was fed the mindprint of the 
band's leader, Hawks. The historian was a fascinating individual, a man of some 
brilliance and accomplishment literally torn between his tribal and Center 
worlds. Though he was not a rebel or an adventurer, nor a man of action in spite 
of some romantic fantasies, it was clear that once Hawks had the documents in 
his possession he would have felt compelled to read them out of sheer curiosity 
and a hunger to know-and that he no doubt understood them and their 
implications.
Recent events not included in the mindprint showed that he was capable of much 
adaptation, capable of killing if need be, and capable of living in and out of 
the wild as well. The Val was convinced that in a hopeless position Hawks would 
kill himself rather than surrender. He would not, however, desert his own 
people, particularly the women, unless forced to do so by circumstances or 
necessity. As a result, if Hawks could be located, so might most or all of the 
rest.
They will go after the rings, the Val noted. Although it is unlikely, we cannot 
assume they do not already know their location. Vals must cover all four rings.
Agreed, Master System responded. But you will not be posted there. They will 
need ships other than what they have. They will need contacts among the 
freebooters and others. The Koll Val is working on this end. You will assist. If 
any are sighted, trace them. So long as they do not possess all five rings, it 
is imperative that they be taken alive, so that we may find how many others 
share the forbidden knowledge. However, once they possess all five rings, if 
they ever do, then no limitations will be imposed.
But surely there is no danger of them ever obtaining all five! They must run our 
gauntlet in each case!
It is always possible. I see a hidden hand in this, one who has selected most of 
these for just this purpose. It is this hidden hand I want most of all. It is 
possible our great enemy is behind this. If so, then they are dangerous indeed. 
We can take no chances. Also, time is not necessarily on our side. If they do 
not succeed, but escape, we might well face their grandchildren. Go. You are 
programmed and assigned.
The Val disconnected. The entire process, from Absolution through reprogramming, 
had taken just a few seconds. The Val, who thought often in computer time but 
functioned in human time, could not help but note this fact alone.
How could they possibly win?
 
1. THE WORLD THAT MOVES THROUGH STARS

IT WAS A SPACESHIP-AND IT WAS MORE THAN THAT.
It was a starship, a ship designed to go to places even the eye could not follow 
and to go distances beyond the grasp of human minds-but it was more than that.
It looked very much like a great tube, flattened a bit on top and bottom and 
rounded at both ends, with protuberances that were bays for the scout ships that 
clung to their mother in special recesses, and sensors, and communications 
devices-and much, much more.
The ship itself-one of the hundreds that circled great Jupiter in silence, shut 
down, but preserved and ready for reactivation if their service should ever be 
needed-was a bit over fourteen kilometers long. The ship had a brain and massive 
amounts of stored knowledge and skills that had not been needed in a very long 
while.
"I wonder if it is bothered by that," Cloud Dancer said, more to herself than to 
the others who were gazing at the viewing screen of their relatively small 
interplanetary freighter.
"Huh?" Walks With the Night Hawks, her husband and co-conspirator, looked at 
her. "Who is bothered by what?"
"The ship. It has a mind, a soul, as this one does. Its spirit is dedicated to 
work, to a great task, and it has been told to do nothing since it did that 
task. I wonder if it minds, sitting there idle, without hope or opportunity to 
do its task, to be itself, for all this time."
"It sure fought like hell to keep us out," came the gravelly voice of the Crow 
Agency man, Raven. Not long, before they had been the targets of some of those 
fighters nestled inside the great ships; only deciphering the clearance code in 
time and some fancy maneuvering had saved them from being blown from the sky.
"That was its duty," the Hyiakutt Indian woman responded. She was quite smart, 
but having been raised in a primitive culture, she saw the universe from a 
perspective as alien to the others as they were to the computer brain of the 
great ship they now approached. "Now it receives us. I wonder if it is eager, or 
if it is waiting to devour us?"
"Neither," an odd voice said through the ship's intercom. When Star Eagle, as 
they had named the computer pilot of the ship, spoke on his own, it was in a 
pleasant male voice, but when China was interfaced into the ship's system, 
forming a human-computer synthesis, the voice sounded strange, neither male nor 
female, but somehow both at once. "There is no command module on any of these 
ships. It was removed when they were placed in storage here. These ships have 
many brains, as it were, since even the tiny fractions of a second it might take 
to relay an order might cause needless risk, but the only ones there now are 
automatic maintenance and ship's security. The tech cult that discovered the 
human interfaces intended to fly the ship themselves, without a command module."
Hawks frowned. "Is that possible?"
"Yes, but not efficient or practical. They did not think beyond that point, 
since even attaining that much was highly improbable. All plans were based on 
the escape, not what came next. Just like us."
Yes, but we're at least better off than they would have been. We have Koll, 
who's been out there, and information from Raven and Warlock. We are not going 
completely blind. He frowned, wondering if that was really true or if he was 
just trying to reassure himself.
Still, he had no doubt they would get away. No mystical sense informed him, and 
he knew of no particular edge on their part, but even though they'd had to fight 
every step of the way to this point, he couldn't shake the feeling that somehow 
they were being led.
Most of this crew had been selected, somehow, by Lazlo Chen, the ambitious chief 
administrator of the central Asian district and discoverer of the information 
that five gold rings could, if found and used properly, deactivate or control 
Master System. Chen owned the only one of the rings remaining on Earth, and was 
determined that this group secure the others for him. The stakes were quite 
high-nothing less than godhood for the one who found all the rings and brought 
them together.
But even Chen was subject to Master System; even Chen had severe limits on his 
knowledge and power. Chen's reach extended over the whole of the Earth and even 
beyond, but it did not reach as far out as Jupiter. Since their escape from the 
asteroid penal colony, Melchior, Hawks had been convinced that another player 
was also on the scene, one who also wanted them to succeed and whose reach did 
extend farther out. Who or what this player was could not be known now; nor 
could they guess whether it was using Chen for its own ends, or whether Chen was 
using it.
This was a strange band to pick for such a mission. Hawks was a Hyiakutt Amerind 
historian, a student of rebels and warriors, not one himself. Cloud Dancer had 
been born and raised in the Plains culture, a primitive suddenly thrust into a 
world of what to her was magic. The Chow sisters came out of an equally 
primitive society in China, but as personal servants to Center personnel they'd 
had more experience with technology; they had an uncanny ability to pick even 
computer-encoded locks, though they were otherwise ignorant. Raven, the Crow 
security man built like a boulder, and his associate Manka Warlock, the Jamaican 
beauty with the cold personality and a liking for killing people, seemed more 
obvious choices, but neither of them had ever before left Earth. Out here in 
space they were as ignorant and helpless as he was. The selection of China, too, 
made some sense-originally known as Song Ching, she was the daughter of the 
chief administrator of China and the product of a breeding experiment to produce 
a subrace that was physically perfect and mentally so advanced it was hoped to 
be a match for the computer system-but she, too, had never been off Earth, and 
thanks to the cruel experimentation of the scientists on Melchior she was hardly 
a perfect choice now. Blind and compulsively pregnant, her true value was only 
in her ability to use the human interface to become one with the mind of the 
ship's computer pilot, as she was doing now.
That, too, was a mystery. Why did these ships have interfaces for humans at all? 
Master System alone could build them, in far-off, wholly automated factories 
among the stars. Why was there a bridge, with connections to the vital parts and 
operations of the ships, as if humans and computers were supposed to work 
together? It was this absolute control of space that made Master System 
unbeatable, and it had been perhaps nine hundred years since any humans had 
traveled on spaceships as anything other than passengers. It would have been 
simple to build these ships so that no one could ever control or tamper with the 
command modules, the computer brains. Why hadn't that been done?
Even the huge interstellar vessel they were now approaching had positions for 
humans, and more than one bridge, yet these ships had not been built until after 
Master System had taken total control of humanity. These ships had been designed 
not for human use but to carry the bulk of humanity against its will to 
captivity among the stars. Why, then, were there a bridge and interfaces for 
humans, since without those they would have no escape, no opportunity to flee, 
at all?
And then there was Reba Koll, the essential one, the only one who'd been out 
there before, and the only one who herself had used the interfaces illegally to 
pilot a spaceship. They had a lot riding on the memories and long-unused skills 
of the strange old woman with the tail, and she was quite mad-who wouldn't have 
been after enduring ten years of experimentation on Melchior? She claimed not to 
be Reba Koll but someone-or something -else she would not now reveal. Even the 
security forces who had pursued them from Melchior claimed the same, and that 
worried Hawks. He didn't think she was some sort of inhuman monstrosity, but he 
wondered if she was something very dangerous such as the carrier of a dread 
disease.
The final two in the party had been unexpected additions to the mission. Silent 
Woman, a product of years of slavery and degradation in the primitive culture of 
North America, her tongue cut out, her body covered with colorful tattoos, was 
almost childlike, and there was little or no way to communicate with her on more 
than a rudimentary basis. She understood none of the languages the others used 
commonly-though Hawks had used a mindprint machine to give her basic English-and 
she seemed to live in a world all her own.
Sabatini, the cruel captain from whom they'd taken this ship, was here 
involuntarily, a prisoner. They could neither trust him nor let him go; sooner 
or later, Hawks knew, they would have to face his disposal.
There was nothing left to see on the viewscreen; Star Eagle was now so close to 
the massive interstellar ship that the vast bulk blotted everything out.
"Strap in and prepare for a set of big jolts," the ship warned them. "My reverse 
thrusters are shot thanks to the battle, and that means, in effect, no brakes. 
I've done as much as I can, but now we will have to be caught and halted by 
tractor beam and that's going to be a pretty big shock. Helmets on and switch to 
internal air supply. I have no idea if we can maintain pressurization."
They were already all strapped in, both here and in the lounge and up on the 
bridge, yet each checked his own straps and webbing to make certain they were 
secure. The ship then activated the restraint system, pulling them back and 
holding them so firmly that it was hard to breathe. All were wearing pressure 
suits and helmets now, and they could only wait.
Suddenly there was a massive jolt, a tremor that shook the whole ship, followed 
by another, then another. The ship seemed to lurch, moving in all directions at 
once, and all around were creaks and groans of metal in distress. Loud hissing 
sounds punctuated the moaning and groaning of fatigued metal. The sense of 
motion and the shocks stopped quickly; the noises did not.
"What's happening?" Warlock asked nervously. "We're not going to die just on the 
edge of victory!"
The speakers sputtered, hissed, and crackled. "I-released China-to her," came 
the pilot's normal voice. "Ship-break up. Suits on, hold tight-I-"
"You're breaking up!" Hawks said through his suit radio. "If I understand 
correctly the ship is breaking up in the tractor. Will you be all right?"
"You-get in-soon as bays close. Decompressing... mand module-no serious danger 
to-China-"
Suddenly there was silence except for the faint buzz of the carrier in the suit 
radio. The lights blinked, then went off, leaving the passengers for a moment in 
darkness and then in an eerie semilight as their helmet and small body locator 
lights came on.
"Is the ship dead?" Cloud Dancer asked, awed by the idea. "Has Star Eagle now 
soared to the otherworld?"
"I-I don't know," Hawks responded. "The body of the ship is dead, that's for 
sure, but those computers have their own power supplies and sources of energy. 
It's possible he's still alive and we can rescue him. I hope so."
There was a sudden and unexpected jarring and the whole ship shuddered, then 
seemed to roll over slightly on its side, as the big ship's tractor mechanism 
pulled them in, controlled by the automatic maintenance and defense systems.
"We're in!" Raven called. "Damn it, we're inside the thing!"
Hawks was suddenly galvanized into action. "Warlock, go forward and see to China 
and Reba Koll and bring them back here."
"No need" came Koll's sharp, raspy voice over the radio. "We're all right and 
coming back now."
"The command module," China said in her own soft, high voice. "Have you seen to 
it?"
"Huh?" Hawks frowned. "Where is it?"
"Aft, in the first cargo hold. There's a big round plate in the floor secured by 
nine recessed bolts and an electronic combination. You throw two long switches 
to reveal the lock."
Hawks looked around. "Okay, Chow sisters. That sounds like it's in your 
department."
"No need," China told him. "I know the combination and it can be set and timed 
to blow the bolts. I come as quick as I can. Someone get a measuring tool and 
meet us there."
"Do we have to do it now?" Warlock asked irritably. "It's a damned machine. 
It'll wait."
"It is one with us," Cloud Dancer responded in a bitter, almost menacing tone. 
"It comes with us."
China was there now, being led by Reba Koll. Hawks shrugged as he was handed an 
electronic measure from Sabatini's kit and went back with them. "Nobody leaves 
yet," he cautioned. "You don't want to go into that kind of place without 
backup."
"How long's the air last in these things?" Raven muttered.
"Better than sixty hours," Koll told him. "There's time."
"Yeah." The Crow security man sighed. "There's time, but is there air out 
there?"
Hawks wasn't quite sure what China had in mind, but he was willing to go along 
with her. She was a strange sort, but she knew these machines like nobody else 
did, and in a real sense the whole group was dependent on the blind girl.
The plate was not easy to find in the dark; even under normal conditions they 
might have missed it. Recessed into the deck were two long mechanical rods that 
took some effort just to get lifted up a bit; they were almost as difficult to 
raise the rest of the way, eventually requiring the combined weight of Hawks and 
Raven. Finally, though, both rods were pulled up and then pushed over as far as 
they could go, and a center plate popped out revealing a dirt-caked touchpad. 
When they'd cleaned it off as best they could, China gave them the combination 
that she had learned from Star Eagle.
Hawks nervously keyed it in, then they all stepped back, well away of the plate, 
and waited. There was no sound in the airless ship, but a sudden series of 
flashes burst around the plate and the bolts all seemed to leap out of their 
sockets. Moving quickly now, they pried the plate up and put it out of the way, 
revealing a cavity perhaps half a meter deep in which sat three small 
rectangular objects.
"Pull up the center one carefully-very carefully," China instructed. "Then 
measure its dimensions and tell me of its connectors."
Doing so carefully was a chore; magnetism or some other force kept the device 
seated well, and breaking that grip was tough. Finally, though, they got it up, 
measured it, and checked it over. The connectors, smoothly polished and 
brass-colored, seemed etched into the sides and bottom of the box; there were a 
lot of them in numerous patterns. Hawks did his best to describe them to China.
She nodded. "For now, put it back so that it can continue to draw on its 
emergency power reserves," she instructed. "Now we must go into the big ship."
"Just what is that, lady?" Raven asked, irritated that this didn't seem to have 
much point after all that work.
"That is the command module-the brain-of Star Eagle," she told them. "The other 
two are management modules. They can live far longer there than we can in these 
suits, so we must hurry. We need to discover the equivalent place on the big 
ship and check it out as well."
Hawks understood. "You're thinking of moving Star Eagle from this ship into 
command of the big one. Is that possible? Surely the design of the command 
modules will be different for a massive interstellar craft than for an 
interplanetary freighter. The operations will be far more complex."
"Not really," she told him. "Most of it appears standardized so that they can be 
reprogrammed easily at any point. Master System doesn't want any computer too 
sophisticated running these things, and particularly not one that can't be 
reprogrammed on the fly. There is no guarantee; the size might be right but the 
connectors different, for example."
"What if it is?" Hawks asked her. "What if it's impossible? How do we fly this 
monster?"
"The way the tech cult who discovered the plans for these intended to do it. 
Direct interface, human mind to machine. Or minds, in this case. I suspect it 
will take several to manage it."
"You know where this thing's supposed to go in?" Raven asked.
"Yes-more or less. It should be obvious once we're there. The trouble is, I have 
no idea where we are in this ship except that we are on an outer deck."
"You realize how big this mother is?" Raven asked her. "It could take days, 
weeks, to find our way around, with nothing much working. There's limited water 
in these suits, even more limited air, no food, and no road map. It's 
impossible!"
"So was getting this far," Hawks snapped, trying to break the mood. "First, two 
of us go out and find out where we are-some landmark, something, that'll give 
China a clue. Then we get her and Captain Koll up to that bridge to start doing 
things the hard way while others of us try and find the interface. I assume, 
China lady, that you have some sort of map of this thing in your head if we can 
find landmarks."
"I have a schematic imprinted there, the memory of which was further enhanced by 
Star Eagle, but it is not of the detail I would like. The bridge should be easy, 
and we'll take it from there. At least if I can find the bridge and establish 
some sort of interconnect we ought to be able to get some life-support systems 
operating."
Hawks sighed. "Well, Crow-you feeling up to a walk in the dark with me?"
"Anything to get moving," Raven responded.
There was something ironic about moving around in a strange, dark, eerie 
environment using a blind woman for eyes. The compartment they were in was 
enormous, far too large for their lights to illuminate even a wall. The 
freighter they had just left was close to three hundred meters in length and it 
didn't even crowd the place. The first step, then, was finding a wall, and that 
took almost forty minutes.
With gravity their task might have been impossible; there were few objects that 
could be used as ladders or footholds. In zero gee, however, they were able to 
explore more efficiently. Eventually they found hatchs on an inner wall and 
studied one. It was locked electronically, of course, but they found the manual 
override and opened it.
They moved through the hatch and were startled when a small string of lights 
came on along both sides of the corridor near the floor.
"Motion sensing," China explained through the radio from back inside the 
freighter's remains. "That is a break for us."
"I'm not sure about that break business," Raven noted sourly. "There are 
corridors leading to corridors leading to corridors."
"I have a marker here from the ship's kit," Hawks tried to reassure him, 
although he wasn't feeling very secure himself. "I'm making a mark every ten 
floor lights or so, and I will indicate direction at every intersection. That's 
the best we can do."
They went on for what seemed like a long time without hitting any landmark that 
China could use to place them. The corridors seemed to go off in all directions 
into eternity.
"Hey, Chief? You noticed we ain't come on no big rooms, no lines of rooms? No 
offices, dormitories, or camp meeting places, for that matter. Just access ways 
for equipment and service. We got to be in the service corridors and not the 
main halls. I mean, this was built as a cargo ship and its cargo was people. 
Lots and lots of people. Where in hell did they put them?"
Hawks didn't reply, but he was getting a bad feeling about all this. As a 
historian, he knew of these ships and what they'd done-although he'd never 
dreamed that they still existed-and he had always imagined them as great 
inverted worlds, with gardens and dense apartmentlike clusters, like an immense 
floating and self-sufficient city. This, however, was sterile, spartan, cold, 
and lifeless. Raven was right. A ship this size might be expected to transport 
and support thousands of people. Where? And how?
And, quite suddenly, through one more hatch, they found the answer.
They must be, Hawks guessed, in the belly of the ship, yet it was crowded and 
went off in all directions. Their helmet lights and the lights on what had now 
become a wide catwalk revealed only a tiny part of it, but there was the sense 
that this, too, went on forever.
"Jeez! It's like some kinda monster honeycomb," Raven remarked. The many 
catwalks divided an enormous section that extended above and below as far as the 
light carried. They could see down past some half-dozen levels of chambers 
before the honeycomb was swallowed in darkness.
Hawks turned and studied the way the catwalk was fastened to the inner hull 
wall. "Rails," he noted, pointing. "The walks move up and down. See the stops 
there? Each walk would service, I would say, five rows of these holes or 
chambers up, and perhaps five down. They were probably not marched in. It would 
be too messy. Most likely the people were placed in some sort of drug-induced 
coma, probably in large groups by gas, then hauled in here and loaded 
automatically by equipment designed for that purpose. You said it, Raven-cargo." 
He leaned over and felt just inside the nearest chamber. "Some sort of soft 
synthetic lining. See? Each one is large enough for one human adult. You can see 
small vents, and that tiny box looks as if it contains tentacular tubing. They 
put them in, then the tubing attached itself where necessary, and they were 
sustained for the journey."
"Yeah," Raven said dryly. "Gives you the shakes. I suppose they kept a mixture 
of the gas and pure oxygen in here to keep 'em out, or maybe these things can be 
sealed and separately flooded. Gives you the creeps, though."
"Until now this was only an academic thing for me," Hawks told him, his voice 
strained. "In its own way it was even somewhat romantic. Whole human 
civilizations being carted off to the stars to found new colonies. It does not 
seem very romantic now. This is the true face of Master System, Raven, the one 
we served and even believed in to a great degree when we were younger. Even this 
expedition, this rebellion, was, I admit, as much a romance to me, a chance to 
live beyond the confines, to experience rather than merely study-but no more. I 
have lost an innocence here I did not know I retained, and I am filled with 
revulsion. These weren't humans to Master System and its machines, Raven. Not 
their makers, not their charges. Just digits. Binary ones and zeros. Quantity 
this. Not even the dignity of zoo animals or pets. Carrion. No-live meat in its 
despicable deep freeze."
"Sorry to interrupt," China's voice broke in, "but can you get any real landmark 
on the central cargo bay? You've got a lot of people back here who are getting 
hungry and will also need air."
Hawks resented her .intrusion, and also her tone. She must have heard them. When 
she saw-but, no, she wouldn't see. She couldn't. She could be standing right 
here and it could only be described to her as it might be read by him from some 
book or computer printout. At times that strange girl seemed more machine than 
human, anyway. She might very well stand here, even if she could see, and 
explain the cold and efficient logic behind the system from a computer's point 
of view. She probably would.
"The corridor we entered on has to be one that services this level, running 
parallel to it," Raven responded. "Best we might do is pick a direction and 
follow it until it ends."
Hawks tore himself away from his reverie. "No. If we're near one end of the 
chamber and go the wrong way it might be ten kilometers to reach an end, and it 
might be an end with nothing worth the trouble. We must split up. You walk one 
way, I, the other, until the first one of us comes to an end or some other 
recognizable feature. Remain parallel to the hatches leading to the walks. If we 
are not in the center, and the odds are against it, then one of us should reach 
something useful in a short time."
"Fair enough. I'll go left and if I junction I'll continue to always take the 
left fork. You do the same on the right, taking the right fork. We have to get 
cracking on this. History can wait, as usual."
After about another thirty or forty minutes, Raven called out. "I've gotten to 
the end! There's another catwalk out here, but also ones leading up to hatches 
all along the wall."
"Any distinguishing features on the wall?" China asked him.
"Hard to see with the light we got. There's five hatches makin' kind of a 
triangle goin' up one side to a center one and then back down. Lemme haul myself 
up there and see what's what." There was a pause filled with some intermittent 
grunts. Then Raven spoke again. "It's recessed in the whole area. Triangle 
shape, and right up top is a whole bunch of what looks like pipes that come 
together in a neat line and go into the wall. That help?"
"Yes. I know exactly where you are. Look carefully down from the center hatch, 
perhaps centered in the middle. A round plate of some kind, possibly secured by 
rivets."
"Ugh! No handholds down there, and I ain't got this no-gravity stuff down yet, 
if I ever will. Let's see... Yeah! It's here. Looks like it was designed to turn 
if you had a handle, but I don't see one."
"A strong magnet would do it. I think we can find something here. It is probably 
not locked. That is a service tunnel going down to the core room. The center 
hatch above should lead to the bridge. Hawks?"
"Yeah?"
"Stop going where you've been walking. You're walking aft and you'd be a long 
time getting to anyplace useful. Best you return here and get the rest of us. We 
must take Star Eagle's core and the two support modules and see if we can make 
them fit in there. If we can, we will be masters of this ship."
"Uh huh," Raven grunted. "And if we can't?"
"Then we will have to work around it. Let's try the other first. Master System 
is almost maniacal about standardization. It's one reason we have been able to 
beat the system so often. The interplanetary ships were designed as precursors 
to these, and there is no evidence that they have ever been significantly 
changed in their basic design and specifications. You remain there and let Hawks 
and the rest of us come to you."
"Yeah, I'll just sit here all nice and comfy," the Crow responded. "Sorta like 
hangin' around the mausoleum."
When they finally succeeded in removing the bulky plate, they revealed a round 
cavity large enough for a human in a pressure suit to enter. Hawks and Raven 
were again the first inside, the latter pushing the three modules from their 
crippled interplanetary craft.
The tube angled down for perhaps twenty meters, then opened into a large 
bubblelike chamber. Around the wall in a band were drawerlike module 
compartments, all filled, and in the center was a raised squared-off pedestal 
with four rectangular cavities laid out in a cross. All were vacant.
"Well, we have the right place, but which goes where?" Hawks asked China through 
the suit intercom. "All four look exactly the same, and there aren't exactly 
instruction sheets printed on them. Also, we have four holes and only three 
modules."
"That won't matter much, I don't think," China assured him. "The core had a 
unique set of contacts. Those contacts should match only one of the sockets. Are 
the sizes right?"
"Look right," Raven told her. "We'll see when we try. There's a million of these 
tiny nipples in this gold leaf, though. Hard to tell which is which by just 
looking at them. Maybe you could see a difference but I sure as hell can't."
"I wish I could see it," the Chinese girl responded. "Well, there is only one 
core socket; the others are data modules. The data modules aren't socket 
specific, only the core, or brain. If there is no other way, then place the two 
support modules in any two sockets and then attempt to load the core in one of 
the remaining sockets. Be careful not to damage or scrape any part of it. If it 
fits, fine, but don't force it. If it doesn't fit, try the other. Then switch."
"Be easier if we just tried the core first," Hawks noted.
"No! The core is its brain but the storage modules are its basic memories. If it 
connects with this ship but does not immediately have access to its memory 
modules it will not know where it is or who we are or what this is all about. 
The core is still the basic Master System core; it is the modules that were 
altered to allow it freedom. Activating the core without the modules will simply 
deliver us into the hands of a slave of Master System."
"Uh, yeah. Uh huh." They turned and carefully selected one of the storage 
modules, then studied the cavities.
"I'd say let's put these in the right and left cavities as seen from the hatch 
and try the core with the vertical," Hawks suggested. Raven shrugged.
The first one slid easily and seemed to be firmly seated. "So far so good,' 
Raven noted, sweating. They inserted the other, which went in just as easily. 
"Best guess is that one of the two remaining is in fact the brains."
"I had only a partial schematic," China told them. "I'm not certain what the 
fourth one would be. Possibly additional memory to help manage a ship this size, 
or possibly a subsidiary brain, one handling the ship and the other the cargo 
life support. It is possible it might fit both places. Try it and see. We have 
no choice."
"Top one," Hawks guessed. "Seems silly, but it's closest to the actual bridge 
above."
"Yeah, by about a meter and a half," Raven responded, but they carefully 
maneuvered the core and then fitted it into the cavity. Nothing happened. "Seems 
to be sitting just a little higher than the others. Want to try the bottom one?"
"We couldn't get it all right first time," Hawks said. "All right-use the small 
magnets and pull."
They lifted the module out, then maneuvered it slowly to the lower cavity, 
checked its position, and lowered it into place. Again, it didn't seem to go in 
quite all the way. "We're either wrong on the others or we're gonna have to risk 
pushing on the thing," Raven noted.
"Careful!" China warned them. "They are tough but not too tough. It is why they 
are shielded."
There was a tiny bit of play, and they tried moving the module first this way, 
then that, pushing down slightly as they did so. They were just beginning to 
decide that perhaps they had the wrong one, after all, when Raven accidentally 
jiggled the top as he shifted position, and the module sank down just a bit in 
the socket and seated itself firmly.
"Hey! It's in!" the Crow shouted, staring in wonder at the thing. "But nothin's 
happening!"
Suddenly there were strange clicking, whirring, and beeping sounds through their 
intercom sets.
"It's on all frequencies! Radios off for now!" China yelled over the din. "Count 
to a hundred and check each hundred until it's quiet again!"
It was eerie enough to be in the ghostly dark bowels of the strange ship, but in 
silence it was even worse. Hawks took some comfort from seeing Raven and Raven's 
light, but he couldn't help wondering about China. Deaf and dumb because of 
this, like the others, she was also blind and now completely cut off.
At each check the horrible sounds were so painful that none could stand to keep 
his or her radio on for more than the briefest moment. The number of hundred 
counts seemed to go on forever.
Outside the hatch, China waited in a world of silent darkness, hand in hand with 
Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman on either side of her, that touch the only reality 
she had other than the breathing sounds from her suit. She had never felt so 
totally helpless, and her complete dependence on the others was only now being 
driven home to her. She didn't like the feeling at all. Worse, she could not 
understand what was happening, or why. Nobody, not even the researchers who'd 
theorized all this, had actually touched one of these ships. Nine centuries had 
passed since humans had been even cargo on this ship; no human being had ever 
set foot in here as an independent agent.
Suddenly a million possibilities presented themselves to her mind. A power 
mismatch. Inverted circuitry that would cause a loop and ultimately a burnout. 
Or, perhaps, the great ship and its complexities was simply too much for Star 
Eagle to handle or comprehend, much as his mind was actually alien to hers.
Keeping hold of China's left hand, Cloud Dancer turned to look back into the 
darkness of the immense cavity. Suddenly she gasped and squeezed that hand 
tighter, then tried to poke one of the others. Koll, finally, turned and saw 
what Cloud Dancer saw.
Behind them a snake of lights was growing, writhing, twisting, going ever 
outward, upward, downward. It took them a moment to realize what was happening.
All the floor lights on the catwalks were being illuminated, section by section. 
The ancient cavity that had transported uncounted thousands or perhaps millions 
was soon lit up like a festival, dimly but beautifully, as far as any eye could 
see.
They tried their radios. There was still a lot of static and odd background 
noise, but the sounds were no longer unbearable.
"Anybody on?" Reba Koll called. Her voice crackled a bit, but it carried all 
right.
"I'm in!" Hawks's voice sounded even worse.
"We are here!" the Chow sisters chimed in. "Is it not beautiful?"
"All of us are going to die," Carlo Sabatini wailed.
Cloud Dancer kept nudging China until the girl finally let go and activated her 
radio. One by one they all checked in.
"Still nothing much down here," Raven reported worriedly. Cloud Dancer told them 
about the lights.
"Nothing like that here, but I'm feeling something. A low vibration ," Hawks 
told them. "What about up there?"
"Faint. Very faint," China responded in a voice that sounded curiously unlike 
her. The sharp edge, the confidence, was gone, Hawks thought. She's been badly 
scared. It was almost a relief to discover that she was human after all.
A strange voice cut them all off. It was quite high at first, then went down a 
scale as if it was testing each note to find one it liked. Finally it stopped.
"Do I have communication?" the voice asked at last. It sounded a bit less than 
human, like a man's voice played at a speed slightly too slow and irregular. The 
effect was eerie.
"You have it," China responded. "Is that you, Star Eagle?"
"Star Eagle... Yes, I identify with that. It is... difficult. There is so much, 
so much at once. It keeps coming at me, but it is far too much to absorb. I am 
grown enormous! It is... difficult... to focus my primary consciousness, to 
limit it. Somehow this must be partitioned."
"We require entry to the bridge, then the establishment of power and life 
support there," she told it. "Can you handle that?"
"Proceed up to the bridge. It is essential that the capping locks be placed on 
my modules and then the hatch resealed before we can proceed. I can then 
activate the isolation circuitry that will keep the core bay suspended and 
vacuum insulated from shocks and vibrations."
"You heard the man, Chief," Raven noted. "See what he's talking about?"
"Now I do," Hawks responded. "We've been walking on it."
They had taken the one flatter area on the floor of the bubble as some sort of 
ramp. Now they stepped off it, then lifted it up and into place. "No fasteners, 
though," Hawks added.
"Stand back. I will activate the locking mechanism," the ship told them. A 
series of clamps came up through the bolt holes and flatted out, then the entire 
metal surface seemed to buckle slightly inward. Hawks assumed it to be some sort 
of magnetic and vacuum seal.
They made their way back out, then managed, not without difficulty, to get the 
round giant screw part of the way back in. Again the ship warned them to step 
aside, and the plate screwed itself in the rest of the way, sealing itself shut.
"The topmost hatch," China told them. "We must head for the bridge."
They had to walk through more corridor for a long way, then up railed ramps. 
Finally, though, they reached a ceiling hatch that led to an air lock, which 
opened onto the bridge.
Star Eagle had turned on the bridge lights, but the resulting red glow was 
barely adequate to illuminate the room of gun-black metal. It was perhaps twenty 
by thirty meters, a big semicircular room with stations at instrument clusters 
lining the walls and more stations in three banks of boxy machinery front to 
back. The station chairs, of black metallic mesh, looked uncomfortable: They had 
swivels, but they were low-backed, armless, and were solidly fixed to the floor.
"We'll have to shift some of the more comfortable stuff from the old ship to 
here," Cloud Dancer remarked. "This is not very comfortable."
"Most of 'em's pretty spare," Reba Koll commented. "Big mother, but no privacy 
at all."
"I do not notice a kitchen or a bathroom," Manka Warlock noted. "This will not 
be a pleasant place."
"I am going to pressurize the bridge," Star Eagle informed them. "It will be 
very oxygen-rich and quite dry, but it will be serviceable. Until I can gain 
better mastery of what is here and how it all works, I will have to make do and 
so will you. Later on I can give more comfort. The transmuters here have 
enormous capabilities, I think, but they are huge. A more suitable interface to 
the bridge area will have to be arranged. I will order Maintenance to see to it. 
I am afraid the fare will not be very good right now, but I believe I can 
arrange some basic food and water needs. My food service programs are for the 
small transmuter aboard the old ship and won't be much use here. Your suit 
mechanisms will take care of liquid wastes; I fear you must improvise on solid 
waste until something can be worked out. In all this ship, the only bathroom is 
the one back on the old ship."
"What did he mean by 'transmuter'?" one of the Chows asked.
"A ship this size needs spare parts always, and spare everything," China 
explained. "Also, it could never carry sufficient water and air and the rest to 
support the number of people it carried. It is sufficient that the master 
computer contain the plans and schematics for everything required, from computer 
consoles and circuitry to basic water, and be able to make them. For this it 
uses a device called a transmuter. All of the food that we consumed on the old 
ship was made that way. It takes something solid or some energy and it converts 
it to whatever is needed. The salad you ate a day ago might well have been 
worn-out parts from the ship once, or spare exhaust gases from the propulsion 
system. Nothing is wasted, you see. Very small transmuters were even used on me 
back on Melchior, to speed what they wished to make .of me. Shortcuts to 
surgery, to create-or to destroy. We have all had it, to a degree. The tattoos 
on our faces-this is why they seem so much a part of us and do not wear out."
All of them who had been prisoners on Melchior had the tattoos on their faces. 
Those of Hawks, Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, the Chows, and Reba Koll were 
silver; China's was a metallic crimson. Each was an abstract design, ranging 
from a solid ball near the corners of the mouth and spreading up, tendrillike, 
to the side of the eyes and ears. The markings were slightly indented and quite 
smooth, but they had sensation like that of the surrounding skin-the tattoos 
were, indeed, the prisoners' own skin. No prisoner could ever fake not being a 
prisoner, and the color of the tattoo indicated the levels to which one had 
access, so one could not even sneak away. It was the indelible mark of Melchior. 
Only Raven, Warlock, and Sabatini lacked tattoos; they had not been prisoners.
"Someday these designs will be marks of honor," Hawks said, more to himself than 
the others.
"This transmuter, then-it can make food? And water? And air?" Chow Mai asked. 
"It is the magic of the gods."
"It is only technology, nothing more," China responded. "A machine, like the 
others, but an essential one-for us. This ship was never designed to carry 
humans such as we."
Cloud Dancer looked around at the chairs on the bridge. "Then how do you explain 
this?" she asked.
"If we could explain this, then perhaps we could explain Master System," Hawks 
noted dryly.
"Pressurization complete," Star Eagle reported. "It is safe to take off your 
suits. The air temperature at introduction is well within the comfort zone. 
Avoid all flames and sparks, since it is mostly oxygen. You might feel some 
slight dizziness or intoxication, and slight changes in voice, as well, so be 
prepared."
They had been in the suits for many hours, and in close quarters for far longer 
than that, so they were happy to remove their suits and stretch out on the 
floor. They were tired, sweaty, and now mostly helpless, dependent on a computer 
that was trying to learn how to run the ship. Even Sabatini seemed to have had 
all the fight taken out of him. None of the others trusted him, but under the 
circumstances there was little he could do to harm the party as a whole, and if 
he tried to hurt an individual member, the others were more than willing to take 
care of him, a fact he understood well.
The metal walls and decking were still cold, but Hawks didn't care. His wives, 
Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman, came over to sit beside him, and he put one arm 
around each of them. What a strange, motley crew of revolutionaries, he thought. 
Silent Woman, with her garish multicolored tattoos from the shoulders down; the 
Chows, with skin grafts to heal their once badly mutilated bodies in place but 
discolored, giving them a camouflagelike complexion; Reba Koll, a little old 
lady with a thin tail; and China, her exquisite body very visibly pregnant. He 
could only wonder if the child would survive all this, and, if so, what they 
would do with it.
How the hell were they going to do anything? Damn it, out here even such as he 
and Raven were as primitive and ignorant as Silent Woman. He was hungry, and 
thirsty- they all were-but he had endured such before. He-and they-could only 
wait. But for what?
More than fifty thousand kilometers out from the graveyard of ancient generation 
ships, just outside the activation limit of the automatic defense system but 
within scanning and sensor range of the mothball fleet, was another ship. It was 
not a large ship, not by the standards of that ghost fleet or even by the 
standards of the freighter they'd chased, but it was far sleeker and, locally, 
within stellar systems, far faster.
Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, sat in his usual padded chair, half 
reclining, only casually looking at the screens. He was bored and depressed at 
the same time, a man who had failed at his job and who did not dare to go home. 
In a sense, he was as much a wanted fugitive as the party he was chasing, only 
more comfortable.
An older man came up from below and settled into the next chair. Even Master 
System, the all-powerful, nearly omnipotent master of the known universe, would 
have been shocked to see him there, since he was simultaneously captive back on 
Val-occupied Melchior.
Doctor Isaac Clayben had not gotten as far as he had without being clever. For 
more than three decades he had fooled Master System and maintained a combination 
prison colony and research station to probe the Forbidden Knowledge, the 
proscribed and hidden knowledge of Master System and its technological wizardry. 
To such a man, creating a physical duplicate who appeared to be the real thing 
with his mind erased was child's play. Yet now he, too, was a fugitive, a man 
who did not even exist. Were Master System to get even a hint that he was not 
only alive and in full possession of his mind and skills, but that he had with 
him the data banks representing tremendous advances into things humans were not 
supposed to know, would cause a hunt as great or greater than that now being 
organized to chase Hawks and his group of rebels. Thanks to them, he also knew 
about the five gold rings. In many ways, he was better equipped technologically 
to obtain them, but he had no idea where they were. He assumed that the 
renegades knew where in the tractless universe to find the rings and quite 
possibly the names of their owners. The obvious solution would be to make a 
deal, but not so long as they were partially led by China and Reba Koll. China 
had reason to despise him-more reason than she now knew. And Koll-well, that was 
a special case.
"No signs of any activity after all this time?" the scientist asked. "I would 
think, by now, if something were possible it would have been done. It will only 
be a few more days until Master System's own fleet of Vals and who knows what 
else will be here. Be pretty hard to miss a target like that."
"There's a lot of 'ifs,'" Nagy agreed. "That ship was banged up pretty bad. They 
got it aboard, but who knows how much of that was automated? Air, food, 
water-and how the hell you gonna drive one of them hanging cities, anyway? I 
think maybe we oughta be thinking about our own skins. I figure sixty hours more 
is it, and that's pushin' the safety margin. Master System doesn't hav'ta allow 
for the survival of human beings, you know."
"They'll do it, Arnold. I know they will. China will get it moving, somehow, and 
Koll will get them out of there. If we aren't right with them, if we lose them, 
we also lose any chance at the rings. And, Arnold, unless we have the rings 
we're goners. We're too hot. The freebooters won't shield us, we have no large 
transmuter capable of integrating with one of the other populations nor the 
knowledge and contacts with them to use it to any advantage, and we have no 
place else to go."
Nagy sighed. "Yeah. In a way, they're better off than we are. Seven women and 
only three guys. Pick a nice planet and let your kids do the rebellion."
"Six woman, Arnold. Six women, three men, and a monster."
"Yeah, well, six to three is still better than none to two. What do you think, 
Doc? Is Koll gonna kill 'em and go after the rings herself, or what?"
"I doubt it. Not most of them, anyway. She'll use them. So long as it is not a 
choice of her survival or theirs and so long as she thinks she can get her hands 
on the rings, she'll play along with them." He sighed. "This is deep, Arnold. 
Deep and complex. So many sides, so many players."
"Yeah, well, I-" Nagy broke off suddenly and sat up in his chair, his attention 
drawn by data on one of his screens. "They've got power! Damn me to hell, but 
they got power on that big bastard! That sucker's charging its energy banks!"
Clayben stared at the screen. "Yes, you're right. Well, I guess that answers 
your question, anyway. They are alive, they are in control of that ship, and if 
they can build up sufficient energy they are going to move."
"We'll be ready for them. This is one express we ain't gonna miss."
 
2. THE PIRATES OF THUNDER

STAR EAGLE HAD BEEN AS ACCOMMODATING AS possible under the circumstances. The 
ship had a host of maintenance robots, most of which were quite specialized and 
of no practical use to the current crew, but a few could be turned into 
convenience mechanisms in a pinch. One, a spindly thing with a clamp and tray, 
was most useful: It was able to bring some blankets and other such luxuries from 
the remains of the old ship, as well as some more important items. An old casing 
with a medium-sized hole in the top became a portable toilet; it was smelly and 
not really built for human comfort and convenience, but it worked for now-if 
their little robot took it out at least every twelve hours or so to clean and 
sanitize it.
Water was no problem; the huge holding tanks on the ship contained all that was 
needed and could create more out of by-products if need be, all distilled pure. 
Food was much more critical; Star Eagle had to improvise with what was handy, 
and the result was a large cube of sickly green with the consistency of cake 
icing and a taste that was a cross between dead grass and library paste. It went 
down, however, did not upset, and provided the minimum necessary to sustain 
them. Later they could have more amenities; now they had to move, which meant 
that Star Eagle had to learn how to drive the ship. The information was there, 
but it was far more complicated than what a computer programmed and designed to 
run an interplanetary freighter was used to. The sheer bulk of data was the 
problem. All, even Star Eagle, knew their clock was ticking, however. Even now 
Master System would be closing in on them with heavily armed ships that knew 
exactly what they were up against.
The big ship was hardly defenseless; it had an enormous range of real and 
potential weapons at its disposal, suggesting that in the old days Master System 
was not at all confident of what it would find out in the farther reaches of 
space even though it knew where it was going and had scouted the routes. Had 
there been resistance? Had there been opposing interstellar civilizations? There 
was no way to know.
It took more than three days to power up the systems and check them out as best 
the computer could. Communication with the computer pilot was still awkward, 
however. It could flash a message on the bridge screens to let the humans know 
that it wanted to talk, but only the helmet radios allowed good two-way 
conversation. Still, it was now confident that it could at least get them out of 
there- but to where?
"Initially it doesn't matter," Hawks told it. "Just- away. Far away, and off the 
beaten track, as it were."
"The fact that the existing star charts are nine centuries old doesn't matter 
much," Reba Koll assured them. "There is some shift, but not a lot and nothing 
that can't easily be allowed for." She worked with Star Eagle, who had figured 
out how to put star charts and grids up on the bridge screens without much 
trouble.
"I ain't got time to explain how this drive works," she told them, "if, of 
course, I knew how it did anyways. Best idea I can give you is if you take this 
here piece of cloth and make it hump up-curve. That's how space is, really. 
Shortest distance ain't across the top but straight through. You punch a hole 
here and you come out there. Course there's lotsa other shit involved. There's 
black holes and gravity curvatures and all the rest. Don't look at me that way-I 
only fly 'em, I don't hav'ta understand 'em. Net result is you tell it you wanta 
go there and if figures the route and trajectory and gets you there in days or 
weeks instead of years or centuries like it would the usual way. You let the 
pilot do the figures and time the jumps and energy and speed. Now, I suggested 
some routes to Star Eagle, but he's got reservations."
"The region she suggests is not well charted," the pilot explained. "Oh, the 
stars are charted well enough, but there's no detail. It was not part of the 
pattern of resettlement. Also, to get there we will have to make a large number 
of punches and this will intersect for the first half of the journey with the 
routings to and from the remote colonies. We must cross known shipping lanes."
"Bah! That's no worry!" Koll snorted. "The odds of actually hitting within 
sensor range of any ship is practically nil, but even if we did we could deal 
with those freighters and supply ships. There's little or no armament on them. 
What's to fight when you're in Master System's territory?"
"I was thinking more of monitors and navigational stations," Star Eagle 
responded. "They could chart us without us even knowing about it. We could be 
traced. This interstellar punching is all straight-line routing. To change 
direction, course, or speed you have to come out, readjust, then punch in again. 
The amount of energy expended on the punch determines how far you go before you 
come out again. Just measure the energy level at the punch and note the course, 
direction, and speed, and it wouldn't take a computer to figure the 
destination."
"You're not devious enough, pilot!" Koll told it. "I'll explain misdirection to 
you. A series of small punches whenever we're in a dangerous area. Each small 
punch increases the number of possible courses, directions, and speeds. Not even 
Master System has the resources to track down that many variables."
"That will take time, though," the computer pointed out. "There will be frequent 
recharges necessary. If we took a more or less direct route to the region you 
suggest it would take twenty-seven standard days. To do as you suggest would 
take three to five times as long."
"But we'd get there," she noted. "And we'd get there unknown and undetected. 
Maybe we'll even have this stinkhole livable by then. Plot your course with the 
minimum number of exponential variables to get us there and get any possible 
snoopers hopelessly lost and confused. If we don't get away clean, what 
difference did all this make?"
They took a vote-Sabatini excepted-and all agreed to her plan.
"My energy is sufficient," Star Eagle told them. "Let's do it."
The vibrations, which had been growing throughout their tenure on the big 
vessel, grew much stronger now, more intense. The throbbing and pulsing 
sensation that at first had been difficult to get used to but had become merely 
background noise was in the background no longer.
"Everybody just lie on the floor as comfortably as you can and grab hold of 
something solid-a chair or something like that," Koll instructed. "Once we're 
completely up to speed and out we'll be able to regain some movement."
Forty thousand kilometers away and on station, Arnold Nagy jumped in his seat 
and then sat up straight. "She's moving, Doc! They're underway!"
"Strap in!" Clayben shouted back from below. "Punch in the codes and maintain 
distance and monitoring! We don't want to lose them!"
The great ship came to life on the outside, as well. Red and green lights 
flashed on along the length and breadth of the ship, and in the rear huge 
engines flared into brilliance.
Quite slowly at first, but very clearly, the big ship turned and began to pull 
away from its siblings in orbit around Jupiter. On the bridge, loose objects 
floated toward the back wall and the vibration grew intense, joined now by yet 
another strange sound.
"Thunder," Cloud Dancer whispered. "It sounds like the approach of a great storm 
across the prairie. This is truly a mighty ship. Does it have a name?"
"None that means anything anymore, I suspect," her husband replied.
"Then it should be the Thunder," she said. "That is the awe that it inspires, 
and that is its sound and being, its soul."
"What about it, everyone? Star Eagle? Shall this ship henceforth be the 
Thunder?"
"It is an appropriate and mighty name," China responded.
"And easy to remember," Chow Dai added.
The computer was agreeable. "Then we are the Thunder. I think it is a good 
name."
"I think I'm gonna puke," Carlo Sabatini said.
For something so huge, the ship's acceleration rate was startling. Within two 
hours it had cleared the grip of mighty Jupiter and was heading in a great arc 
that would take it first away, then back toward the mighty giant at tremendous 
speed. It would use this combination of speed and the gravity of the mighty 
planet to build up massive acceleration very quickly.
As the speed grew, the more pronounced the sounds of thunder became, as if just 
outside and all around them raged a great storm.
For those on the bridge, the long hours of getting underway and the limitations 
it placed on them was simultaneously exciting, somewhat frightening, and 
extremely boring. Finally, however, the rate smoothed out, and they could move 
about easily again. But some of the vibration and noise remained, giving them a 
constant feeling of motion, even though inside the ship all was calm and still.
"We're being followed," Star Eagle reported. "A single ship. Small. Unfamiliar 
design. I have searched all database patterns and can find nothing close to it. 
Great power. It might well be interstellar capable."
Reba Roll frowned. "Master System? A Val?"
"It is somewhat like their ships, but it is not one of them. Besides, my sensors 
show a life-support system activated aboard it. Not certain, but it is probably 
a rogue ship, like us."
China thought that over. "It's possible that Melchior had something in reserve. 
Those fighters it tried to use against us were pretty impressive overall and 
also of a unique design. They were using a sister ship of our old ship to give 
chase. Star of Islam, I believe. Could the Star have carried it?"
"Not inside," the pilot told her, "but piggybacked on the exterior it would be 
no problem at all. It contains weapons systems that might be close to what their 
fighters had, but those fighters were not manned. Any action recommended?"
China talked it over with Reba Koll and the others. "No," she finally replied. 
"If we hail it, they'll know we know about them and possibly make it harder for 
us to keep track of them. If we slow to bring them in range of our weapons it 
will also cause great delay in us getting out of here, which is the first 
priority. Are you certain there is only one? No more?"
"Yes. One."
"Then let it follow. If it gets within weapons range, hail it and order it to 
stand down and be boarded or destroy it. If it attacks, defend. Otherwise, do 
nothing until we are well away from this stellar system. Even if they are of 
Melchior they are in an illegal ship engaged in prohibited activity. My guess is 
that they did not think we could do what we have done, but now that we have they 
want what we want but for themselves. We will deal with them when we can."
"Acknowledged. I am now receiving faint stop orders on both superspace and 
subspace command frequencies. Master System knows about the Thunder."
"To be expected," Raven commented. "We're hotter than a burial fire right now. 
What's the odds of us being intercepted by any force that could do us any real 
harm?"
"Very slim. Negligible. They might get a ship in before I can make the punch but 
nothing that could handle these systems. They really don't make weapons ships 
like that. A Val ship would have the most firepower, and that would be little 
more than that of the fighters Melchior sent against us. The security computer 
informs me that this ship is able to take virtually any known system of its own 
day, and they were far more heavily armed then than now. Our worst enemy would 
be another ship like this one, and it is unlikely that such would be set against 
us. Too easy to avoid. Security believes it most likely that Master System will 
order ships constructed specifically to exploit our weaknesses and take us out, 
but that will take considerable time. If we can get lost the first time, and if 
we are careful, it is unlikely even they will find us when they can surprise us 
and take us."
"Then they won't try to take us aboard," Raven surmised. "We're no real threat 
or problem cooped up in this monster. If they can't trace us now, they'll put 
out all the alarms and wait for us to move."
Hawks sighed. "Yeah. If we know where three of the rings are, good old Master 
System knows where all of them are, I bet, and has a pretty good eye out for 
them. Unlike those bastards from Melchior back there, it doesn't really have to 
chase us. It just has to wait, and we must come to them."
"Infinite patience is one of the hallmarks of computers," China noted darkly.
Hawks scratched his chin. "Don't get too downcast. Maybe it is impossible. So is 
what we have done so far."
A few hours later the pilot reported, "I have attained sufficient speed for a 
punch and we are sufficiently clear of Jupiter's gravitational pull that I can 
compensate for it. There should not be any untoward effects, but I cannot 
predict for certain, never having done it before."
"Won't be nothin'," Reba Koll assured them. "Might sound like the whole ship's 
breakin' apart, but don't let that worry you none. Once it's done, it'll be 
still and quiet as death until we come out the other side. You might get some 
funny feelings inside or even some hallucinations, but they'll only last a real 
short while, and it's a good idea to sit or lie down 'cause most everybody gets 
a little dizzy, but it all passes pretty fast and each time you do it the 
effects will be less and less. Just relax and don't let it scare you."
They waited, nervous in spite of Koll's assurances, and the punch came.
First there was tremendous vibration that continued to build with a supporting 
roaring sound until it seemed to engulf them. At that moment the lights blinked 
and the sound seemed to fade as if swallowed up in some huge drain; the 
vibration, too, settled down to a level far lower than that produced by the 
regular space drive. There was a wave of dizziness, and some nausea, and each 
one of them found his or her attention fixed on something-an object, a 
reflection, even another person-unable to tear away that gaze. Even China, who 
could see nothing, appeared to be staring at something specific in her world of 
darkness.
Hawks stared involuntarily at the blind girl and she seemed to shimmer, taking 
on a wraithlike appearance of stunning beauty. She seemed to float up and come 
toward him, then change again into a horrible, skeletal monster, jaws open, 
coming for him-
He screamed, and suddenly everything was back to normal. He found himself 
sweating and shaken, breathing hard, and it took a few moments for him to get 
hold of himself and look around and reaffirm reality. The others had varying 
degrees of reaction, but all of them clearly had seen something, something 
uniquely their own. Sabatini looked scared to death, and the Chows were 
shivering. Sooner or later, Hawks decided, he would find out what each had seen, 
but for now he just noted the differences. Of them all, Raven and Warlock looked 
the least affected and the least concerned.
The thunder was quiet now; there was nothing but a very low steady vibration 
through the deck and walls, quite distant. None of them, except perhaps Koll, 
understood what had just happened, but Hawks grasped at least the basics. 
Somehow, they were no longer in the universe at all. Somehow, now, they were in 
another medium, somewhere else, traveling across a ripple in space-time by the 
shortest available route.
It was a frightening, awesome concept, yet it meant one thing above all.
"Well, I'll be damned," Raven commented aloud to no one in particular. "We 
actually got away."
Spanning hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light-years by the punch method was 
incredible, but it still took time.
Some of that time was spent in attaining a more livable, civilized environment. 
Star Eagle now had a reasonable command of the ship's systems and how they 
worked. The maintenance computer subsystem was employed creating and then using 
an army of spindly robots that were able to turn chambers in the bow of the 
Thunder into reasonably private rooms. Much of the old ship was dismantled, its 
essential parts modified and duplicated by the Thunder's transmitters. A square 
meter of passenger-lounge carpeting was sufficient for the transmuters to create 
a carpeted floor for the new rooms and for the bridge. The old ship's toilets 
were modified and duplicated, as well, and tied into new piping using the vast 
support system of the Thunder. The old ship's transmuter-driven automated galley 
was reinstalled with some modifications, allowing the old menus to be used. The 
bridge chairs were replaced with copies of the more practical and comfortable 
passenger lounge chairs. Since the Thunder wasted nothing and recycled 
everything, even a shower chamber was possible, although in the zero gravity it 
had to be a more or less sealed system and strictly a one-at-a-time affair.
Of equal importance were the interfaces that had to be designed and installed 
between the passengers and the pilot and master of the Thunder, a central 
amplifier and communications system that might eventually extend to the whole of 
the ship; a way of specifying human-supplied designs for the transmuters to work 
with, to create things like furnishings for the new cabins and some basic 
clothing. The women chose robes with soft linings and rope ties; the men got 
flimsy versions of Sabatini's usual shirt and pants. Only Manka Warlock broke 
the pattern by insisting on the shirt and pants for herself.
China and Reba Koll worked on installing the interface helmets on the bridge. 
China was anxious to see if they would work here as on the old, smaller ship. 
The idea of interfacing with Star Eagle and becoming one with this ship excited 
her.
Some tubular lighting was arranged, but it was still kept low and indirect. In 
normal space there was no power problem, but during a punch the ship was the 
only reality; there was nothing at all outside, according to the pilot. Nothing. 
That meant that all transmuting-all power consumption-was accomplished using 
materials within the ship, and particularly with all the modifications and 
construction going on it was a drain. There was a consensus not to start 
cannibalizing the ship for luxuries until they knew their limits and understood 
their new environment.
They also began exploring the ship.
There were over twenty thousand pods in the transport bay. There had been a 
hundred ships like this one, and an Earth population of possibly six billion, 
when the grand project had begun. That meant that each ship had made hundreds of 
round trips over the two or more centuries of interstellar colonization. The 
time frame was not clear in the records, but the evidence here was clear enough. 
The Thunder was a veteran indeed.
Slave ship, Hawks couldn't help thinking.
"How many worlds are charted as being part of the settlement?" he asked Star 
Eagle.
"Four hundred and forty-seven," was the reply. "But it might not be complete. 
The region spans over forty thousand light-years."
He tried doing some quick math in his head. That was only about thirteen or 
fourteen million a world!
"The initial populations were not large," the computer agreed. "Nor was Mars, 
the prototype, if you remember. There are almost two hundred million Martians 
now, and they have a relatively slow birth rate. You forget that Earth was 
limited in its reproductive rates and carefully regulated, but that this does 
not necessarily hold true for these worlds. It is entirely possible that we 
could find planets with billions on them-or planets with few, if any, survivors. 
How would we know?"
"Four hundred forty-seven," Raven commented. "Minimum. Good thing we know where 
three of the rings are."
"Ever the optimist," Hawks retorted. "We know the worlds where they are, but 
nothing about those worlds and nothing about how many possible leaders could 
have them. And that leaves us with just four hundred and forty-four other worlds 
in which to find the last ring. Perhaps our grandchildren or great-grandchildren 
might find it."
"Don't you worry, Chief. We'll find it. We didn't come this far to fail in that. 
Stealin' it, and the others, will be the tough job."
"Please pardon the intrusion," Chow Dai put in, "but might I be permitted to ask 
why, if this Master System knows that we know, it will not just collect or hide 
all four, perhaps all five, from us before we can even try for them?"
It was a good question. "There's no easy answer to that," Hawks told her. "It 
remains a possibility, but I think not for several reasons. First, those rings 
are the only avenue to us. It knows we're going after them, and so it will be 
waiting for us. Second, there's something very odd going on here. There's more 
than just us in this. Maybe you should ask Raven about that."
The Crow's eyebrows went up. "Don't know what you mean, Chief. I told you the 
straight stuff. Chen's the only one I know behind all this. Word of honor."
Hawks privately doubted that Raven's honor was worth very much, but he knew it 
was fruitless to press the point. It was even possible that the former security 
man was telling the truth. Why would Chen select this crew-particularly this 
group-and think they had a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding? He'd asked 
himself that a thousand times and had no answer, yet Chen was a wily, even 
brilliant man. Did Chen, and perhaps Raven, know something that might explain 
it, and might also explain how they had been able in the first place to pull 
this off under a system that had some cracks but no chasms? They had walked 
through the Grand Canyon of cracks in Master System's rule, and they should not 
have been able to do so.
In many ways, the Thunder proved something of a disappointment in that beyond 
its transport bays and incredible lengths of corridors and catwalks there was 
little else with any use for humans. In spite of the mysteries of the bridge and 
its interfaces, the ship had never been built with humans in mind for anything 
except cargo. Much of the romance engendered by the mere sight and thought of 
such a ship was gone in the sterile metals and plastics of the reality. Star 
Eagle could show them more than they could see themselves on the screens -of the 
bridge-another anomaly. If the ship was run by a remote computer brain directly 
connected to service and security subbrains and to the mobile machines they 
controlled, why were there viewing screens on the bridge?
The star drive was actually forward and well shielded against any type of 
prying. It appeared that "punch" was indeed as good a word as any for what it 
did; it appeared to focus forward, open up some sort of hole in space-time, and 
allow the ship through, encased somewhat in an energy field to protect it from 
whatever forces were out there now. The massive rear drives were strictly for 
in-system movement and docking, and were not used in interstellar flight at all.
The top of the ship, as oriented from the bridge, consisted of massive tanks of 
gases, fuels, and all else needed both to sustain the human cargo and to provide 
whatever was necessary to the ship's systems. If the Thunder had a weak point, 
this was it, but the tanks were armored to an amazing degree and atop them were 
complexes of defensive weapons. If a potential attacker somehow got past the 
fourteen small automated fighters that provided the ship's primary defense, 
there would still be no easy taking of the main ship.
Below were the four massive cargo bays, in one of which sat the remains of the 
interplanetary ship that had brought them from Melchior. Each of the bays had 
extensive equipment for moving and reaching almost any point in the cavities, 
and independent medium-sized transmitters.
"One thing I haven't figured out," Raven said, "is how they got all those people 
in here and back out again. There's no docking piers for support ships."
"This ship could never land anywhere," China explained. "The transmuter is the 
heart of Master System's whole scheme. It is the heart of everything that also 
makes the rest possible. Some are used simply to manufacture spare parts, 
repairs, and to recycle everything that can no longer be used. The corps of 
robots Star Eagle is using were nothing but plans in the ship's data banks, fed 
to transmuters along with something of necessary mass-exhaust gases, waste 
products, debris, garbage. The mass is transformed into energy and then reformed 
as whatever solid matter the ship might need. There are transmuters in the bow 
which can literally scoop up space debris-rock, dust, gases-and feed them into 
the storage tanks above us in compressed form. When we're inside a punch, as 
now, the ship uses this stored material to keep itself and everything else 
going. These were very low when we moved out, but in the transit of Jupiter the 
ship picked up enough to fill those holding tanks."
"Yeah, but-people?"
"In the same way that the things can change one form of matter or energy into 
another, it can also maintain a specific object. All of it is catalogued when it 
is picked up, so if necessary it could be reformed as itself. We could put you 
in a transmuter, reduce you to energy, then beam that energy to a receiving 
transmuter along with that pattern. You would then be converted back into 
yourself. The process would take only as long as light required to travel the 
distance."
"Space travel without spaceships," Hawks commented. "Incredible."
"But very limited. First, there must be a matching transmuter at the 
destination. Second, the signal must be very powerful to retain its full 
consistency from station to station, which limits its range. Third, it is 
strictly line of sight, and conditions must be perfect. In the old days, initial 
setup ships must have been sent to all the new worlds and transmuter receiving 
stations established at various points on each planet's surface. Then, when the 
passengers came along, they could be beamed serially-one at a time -to the 
receiving stations. What you send from here is precisely what you get down 
there. There is a mobile transmuter system in the main cargo area that seems 
almost like a gun; it is designed to move along guides on the catwalks and line 
up to each cargo cavity. It is connected to the external system, so we know that 
the people were put to sleep on Earth, then beamed up to here and inserted 
sequentially into the holding modules. Upon arrival at the new world, the 
process was reversed. They probably never even knew about all this. They went to 
sleep on Earth and woke up on a strange world."
"But not necessarily the way they left," Raven noted. "I saw a Martian once. 
They came from human stock but there's no way they're human like us."
China nodded. "That was the primary function of the missing fourth module in the 
core. It was preprogrammed with certain necessary biological information. The 
cargo bay mobile transmitter made a new pass after all were aboard and the ship 
was underway. Each human occupant was once more dissolved to energy and then 
reformed as something else-a human able to live and survive on the target world. 
Otherwise, it would have taken thousands of years to change those worlds into 
places fit for human habitation. The transmuting of individual humans must be 
extremely precise and exacting, requiring a second core module and probably 
supporting data banks to get it right. Many human beings certainly died each 
time a new form was attempted before the computers got it right. Then they sent 
a small colony to the new world to see if they could and would survive there. 
Only then did mass transmutations and movements of large numbers of people 
begin. It was the only logical way such a plan could be carried out, but the 
cost in lives must have been quite high."
"Even when they got there," Hawks put in, a bit awed and more than a little 
frightened by all this, "this would change the body, but not the mind, a mind 
used to thinking in human terms, to seeing things according to human standards, 
even themselves. They had to learn to be alien creatures. Many would be unable 
to do so. Many more would go mad."
"That's true," she agreed. "Although I suspect that the mindprinters were used 
to minimize it. Take data and information from the early colonists who survived 
and adapted, and feed it to the newcomers when they come down. The mindprinter 
taught most of us the English we are using, and made some of this possible. It 
could teach the basics."
Hawks had a sudden, uneasy thought."You say it takes a receiving station to work 
as a transport mechanism? Then how will we get to wherever it is Koll is taking 
us? How will we get down there? And, when we go after the rings, how will we get 
to the target planet? Assuming the stations on the planets are still 
operational, we can't use them. It would be like a thief walking up to the front 
door, knocking, and announcing himself to the intended victim."
"Getting to the surface of a world not in the system should be possible," she 
told him. "Star Eagle assures me he can duplicate the necessary receiving 
station and get it down using one of the fighters, although I suspect it's more 
complex than that. Getting into the other worlds will be much tougher. For one 
thing, the Thunder is going to be rather obvious in a stellar system controlled 
by Master System. We will have to work on that."
"Bah!" Raven snorted. "We are like children in this! The technology is so beyond 
us that we are no less ignorant than Cloud Dancer! We might as well be villagers 
faced with great magic!"
"So?" China responded. "What difference does that make? Back at the Center where 
you lived and worked, did you really understand why and how the light came on 
when you touched the wall switch? Did you understand the process by which your 
food arrived, or did you just take it for granted and eat it? The same for the 
heating and the air conditioning and all the rest. I can fly a skimmer, but I 
have only a vague idea of how it works. I can use powerful computers, yet I do 
not truly understand how they think and the intricacies of their work. One does 
not have to know how something works to use it. Many people have been killed by 
guns wielded by gunmen who have not the slightest idea of the physics involved. 
Even Star Eagle does not understand some of that which he is doing. He was never 
intended to run a ship of this type and complexity. He does, however, have 
access to the operating instructions and can run them."
"Point taken," Hawks replied. "All right, so we savages can manage this thing. I 
think the time has come to have a council meeting and decide just what the hell 
we are really going to do."
They sat in a circle on the bridge, relaxed but interested, not all of them 
understanding what this more formal meeting was for.
"I called this meeting, but that may be a temporary usurpation of authority," 
Hawks began. "Among my people, this would be a tribal council convened to create 
rules, objectives, and policies for all. We come from different places and 
different backgrounds. We think in different tongues, and some of us have less 
in common with one another than even we might think. However, we come here with 
a common bond. We are all fugitives. We all live under a death sentence or even 
worse. We also share a secret, of sorts. We know that there is a way to beat 
Master System. We know that there is a way to totally destroy the dictatorship 
of the machine. We are all here, together, with no others to share our bond, and 
we are, in a sense, stuck with each other, like it or not. We are all escaping 
now, but not to a specific place or a specific set of objectives. Before we can 
discuss the future and set those objectives, we must have someone in charge, not 
as dictator or chief but as chairman, as it were, of a collective."
"You're doin' fine, Chief," Raven said. "I'm content to let you chair the 
meetings and bang the drums. Some of us know about the different parts of 
humanity and some of us know a lot about machines but you're the one person here 
with the education to see the big picture. Any objections?"
There were some nervous glances from side to side, but nobody seemed to be 
unhappy with that.
"Very well, I assume the leadership, but when a majority of you is dissatisfied 
with it, I will step down. I will appoint our China, here, second in command and 
with full authority. I think the two of us are better at planning than in direct 
action. Very well. We then proceed to the first really important item on the 
agenda. Captain Koll, just where are we heading?"
"In the bush, sir. A region two punches off any known interstellar routes. It 
was crudely scouted in the old days by Master System and there were some early 
experiments on some planets there, but none proved out. There are several 
stellar systems there that show some promise and might possibly sustain a land 
base with the support of the Thunder. We can't be expected to live in this can 
indefinitely. It's not healthy and it's a sitting duck. If we're tied to it 
absolutely we'll just have to accept a life of constantly being on the run, or 
heading this thing out and just punching until we're so far away even we 
couldn't find our way back. If we're gonna stay close enough to Master System to 
do some damage, then we can't ever have all our eggs in one basket. Somebody's 
gotta survive, with the information on the rings and the story of all this."
"I find the ship more than adequate," China responded. "It can be modified to 
support many more of us, and it gives us mobility. We do not seem a likely group 
for survival on a hostile world."
There were several nods, but Hawks understood what Koll was saying.
"This is not and cannot be a passive vessel," he told them. "We are going to 
have to get what we cannot make for ourselves. The interstellar shipping system 
is totally automated and runs that way. Right now it is vulnerable, perhaps wide 
open to us. We need smaller, more practical interstellar vessels. We need 
backups to our systems. We will also need information channels, and that will 
mean direct contact with freebooters and the like, those who live outside the 
system. We will need to pillage and plunder, as it were, and also to reconnoiter 
our target systems without advertising our presence to Master System. Everyone, 
even the freebooters themselves, might be our enemy. The captain is correct. If 
we are to be pirates, we must have a place to study and bury our loot. We will 
eventually require more people, perhaps as allies. And, finally, these confines 
are no place to raise children, and we will have children, won't we, China?"
She nodded somberly. "Yes. Star Eagle was checking out the transmuter system and 
eventually required a human. It-tickles. All over. Nothing more. You are not 
even aware that it is done until it is over. In so doing, he also had to make a 
molecule-by-molecule memory map of me in order to reconstruct me. I was aware 
that a transmuter was used upon me by Clayben's staff on Melchior. I was not 
aware until now of the extent." Her voice was dry, hollow, as if that tough 
exterior was about to fragment into a million pieces.
Star Eagle broke in. "She has been thoroughly transmuted," the computer pilot 
reported, "although the changes are not so obvious. I had hoped to be able to 
restore her to some semblance of normalcy with my devices, but that is 
impossible. Perhaps Master System could restore her, but I cannot. There is a 
certain-instability-inherent in a full transmutation. I knew that just from the 
small transmuters on the old ship. There are some minor losses each time 
something is actually changed-no loss if absolutely reconstructed. That was why 
a separate core was needed to transmute the human cargo of this ship. There is 
literally no tolerance for errors. The losses she suffered at the hands of 
Melchior are negligible, but to do it again would compound those losses. 
Reassembly might well kill or cripple her. There is some indication that this is 
actually built into the system when dealing with complex organic life forms. 
Master System wanted to make certain that none of those it created could change 
themselves back. It wanted permanency, and it designed it into the system."
"I was-am-a genetic experiment," China explained. "My father worked to create 
me. My extreme beauty-I am not saying that to be egotistical-and my very high 
intelligence were part of it. I was part of a larger project to breed a race of 
superior intellects, intellects that might do more than simply cheat on the 
system. I was but stage one, however; that race was to be bred, and it was my 
purpose to be one of those who would bear the next generation that might be the 
rebels. It was to escape this life as a breeding factory that I fled. I saw my 
father as unfeeling, as even evil, and I ran into the hands of Clayben, who was 
far more unfeeling and evil than my father ever dreamed of being. Melchior was 
Clayben's playpen, possibly the only place in the known universe where such vast 
knowledge and power could be wielded without restraint by human beings. He 
examined me, discovered my background, and decided my father was correct."
"But you escaped from him, as well," Chow Dai noted.
"Not soon enough. They analyzed what my father's geneticists and biochemists had 
done and made improvements on it in computer models, but as you know such 
modifications would not be inheritable if induced, unlike my father's more 
direct approach with laboratory eggs and sperm. They were also aware of all that 
I had accomplished in escaping my father, Center, and even Earth. They wanted my 
mind and my body-in that, at least, their ideas were better than my father's-but 
they wanted me secure, particularly if I was to work with their best computers 
and data bases. Melchior was originally established as a research station by 
Master System to create the Martians. It has a small but very workable 
transmitter. They use it for many experiments. Captain Koll's tail is a good 
example."
"I'm more familiar with it than you know, dearie," Koll said enigmatically.
"At any rate, they modified me. All of me. Incorporated their genetic changes to 
be inheritable, building on my father's work. Star Eagle can tell you the rest."
"They wanted to make certain she couldn't pull a fast one on them," the pilot 
told them. 'That was how they hit on the blindness. She is not merely blind-she 
does not even have the processing inputs for visual images. The entire 
interconnection system simply isn't there as it is in you. This is not a genetic 
modification; her children will see. There may be devices that bypass all of 
that that might just work, but I have no knowledge of them. She is also what 
might only be called a baby factory. Brain and body chemistry is set up for 
that. Her natural and normal condition is pregnancy. When she is not pregnant 
she will have almost no self-control. She will become increasingly frenzied 
until that condition is restored, after which she will again be as she is now. 
The combination of genetic work and Melchior's modifications is astonishing. She 
is resistant to much of what inflicts others. She will age very slowly and heal 
very quickly. Her defensive and regenerative powers are enormous and automatic. 
She could very easily remain youthful and sexually functional for sixty or 
seventy years."
That got them all. Sixty or seventy years with pregnancy a natural condition...
"Even in my day there was ways to beat that," Reba Koll noted. "Fool the body 
into thinkin' it's pregnant, or, hell, take out the equipment if you can't shut 
it off."
"Not here. Her body would treat any control method I might be able to come up 
with as if it were a disease and destroy it or render it ineffective. The same 
would go for psychochemicals. Surgical alteration would be repaired and healed 
quickly by the body and in the interim she would still be possessed of the lust 
and frenzy, which is induced by chemicals made in her own body. They knew she 
had used mindprinters before to her advantage, along with psychochemical 
alterations, and they wanted to be certain she could not do so again. To remove 
her reproductive organs would be far worse. It would drive her horribly and 
irreparably mad. A bullet in the brain would be kinder, and quicker. No, they 
fed her mindprint into their computers and their computers came up with an 
absolute system. I am not certain what Clayben intended-breed his own super 
race, perhaps. In the meantime, so long as she was pregnant, he had the complete 
services of her mind and abilities."
That stunned those who hadn't already known about it, but Hawks had a different 
point to this information. "Understand this well, then. We need her mind and her 
skills; therefore, she will receive what she needs when she requires it. If we 
are to have a substantial second generation, then it might fall to them 
eventually to get the last of the rings. We require a colony."
"There's darker stuff here, Chief," Raven put in. "More than that problem. I 
been listenin' to all this and, as you know, I followed it when we was still 
researching the whole thing, and when I first heard about these transmuters I 
figured our problem on getting into our target world was solved. We could change 
ourselves into what was needed. Now I see that's not gonna happen. For one 
thing, old Star Eagle don't have the codes and genetic shit to do it to any of 
us. For another, even if he did, it's a one-way trip. There's no way I'm gonna 
be changed into a monster for good, or, even if it was something I didn't mind 
bein', wind up bein' left forever on some world while somebody else sticks them 
rings in Master System's ass."
"A good point," Hawks agreed. "I'm afraid we might have to face the transmitter 
to accomplish our goals, at least at the start, but while that sacrifice might 
have to be made by some or even all of us, I could not ask anyone to place him- 
or herself in the position of having to remain behind. I am personally prepared 
to make any sacrifice, including death or mutilation, to end the tyranny, but 
only if it means something. I would not shed an eyelash if it meant that an 
Isaac Clayben or a Lazlo Chen, who is much the same son, would wind up our 
masters. I know enough history to understand that achieving a revolution is not 
the same as winning it. I am as dedicated to our revolution as I can be, but I 
am equally dedicated to not replacing Master System with a human monster."
"I'm afraid I shall have to insist on a planetary base," Star Eagle interjected. 
"I will need time to convert this ship into something more practical, and I will 
require independence and mobility."
"All right, so we're agreed that far," Raven said. "So we go out there and we 
build a base, more than a colony. Then what?"
"As I said, piracy. We need mobility. We have the only active colony ship in the 
known universe. We need another ship, preferably more than one. Their data banks 
alone might tell us of other targets worth hitting and the schedules we need. We 
outfit them. Either Star Eagle converts them to our side or we learn to fly them 
without a core. Outfit them. Weapons. Sensors. Our own communications and codes. 
Then it will be time for some of us to make contact with the freebooters. By 
that time we'll have something of a mysterious reputation. We need information. 
We need to know about these worlds we're going to be going to. Who are the 
people there? What's the culture, the language, the physical and biological 
problems? Who's in charge and who runs what? Which leader wears a large gold 
ring with a design in it? Does anyone know of another that we do not? Step by 
step, a bit at a time, with infinite patience and dedication."
"It sounds impossible," China commented.
"It's not. Difficult, yes. Dangerous, yes. Certain? By no means. I would say the 
odds are against us overwhelmingly. But impossible it certainly is not. I have 
thought it through and thought it through until my head burst, but I think I 
have it now. What Raven and Warlock, there, and Chen as well, knew from the 
start." He looked at the Crow and the Jamaican beauty. "It can't be impossible, 
can it? It is required to be at least possible."
The Crow grinned. "You got it, Chief. You're smarter than I thought. I would 
have explained it, sooner or later, but why bother now?"
"I do not understand this," Cloud Dancer commented. "Pardon my ignorance, but I 
must have much of this explained. The evil lord I understand, and his great 
power, and the use of the talismans to break his power, but-required?"
"Don't feel bad," China said. "They just lost me, too."
"Think about the story," Hawks urged them. "Master System is incredibly 
powerful, but it is a computer. A computer designed by humans. All this, all 
this subjugation of humanity, the reduction of Earth to primitivism, the 
diaspora that scattered and somewhat dehumanized the vast bulk of humanity, all 
was simply an interpretation by that computer of its creators' command. Think 
about that. Command. It was commanded to find a way so that humanity could never 
destroy itself completely. It was commanded to find a way so humanity could 
never use its terrible weapons of mass destruction nor spread them. It was a 
classic deal-with-a-demon fable. Out of fear, or desperation, or whatever, those 
people raised a great demon and they offered it absolute power over them and 
their dominions in exchange for safety. They tried as best they could to build 
into their wish every safeguard, to close every loophole, but the demon, being a 
demon, was far too clever for even the most brilliant of mere mortals and found 
the loopholes anyway. It granted their wish-and took away the souls of their 
children and grandchildren unto the last generation and swept away all their 
works. But we're safe-from everything except the demon."
"But they must still have suspected or they wouldn't have created the rings in 
the first place," China pointed out.
"Indeed. I think, perhaps, it was simply part of the bargain. The demon, as all 
great legends have it, must fulfill the wishes as stated. It is compelled to do 
so. One safeguard was the rings-the magic talismans, as my wife referred to 
them-and what went with them. A guarantee of some access. The rings must be in 
human hands-humans with authority. If any are lost or destroyed, duplicates must 
be made and provided to said leaders. The other part of the bargain must be a 
guarantee of access. We have a right to go after the rings, to gather them 
together, and to make our way with them to Master System and use them. A right, 
guaranteed as part of the bargain-the core program of Master System itself, a 
core that could not be altered. Another part of the bargain."
China nodded, and even Cloud Dancer, Reba Koll, and the Chows seemed to get the 
idea. Sabatini sulked off in a corner in silence, and Silent Woman was as 
impassive as ever.
"It could scatter them among the stars, because there were now humans out there 
with authority of sorts," China said in wonder. "It could try to stamp out all 
knowledge of the rings and their purpose and use. But it could not violate the 
basics. It just made it damned near impossible for anybody to actually do it."
"Perhaps not as impossible as you think," Raven responded. "We never really 
thought it was an accident that the data on the rings survived all these 
centuries, or that it was discovered now. See, there's a real indication that 
Master System is gonna radically change people, even on Earth. Wipe out 
civilization and knowledge, push us back to the start, make us little better 
than apes with clubs. But, see, that really would make it impossible. Old Master 
System slipped up. By merely making that decision it forced itself into a 
vulnerable position. Ten to one it's pulled back now from doing that, thanks to 
us, because otherwise it might make a lot more teams like us 'cause it has to. 
But before it fully understood what it was doing, we got out- and maybe others. 
We might not be the only ones who know and got away, you know. We might not even 
be the only ones Chen arranged for. There's that ship that was following us, for 
example."
That was a sobering thought.
"In the light of first things first, what should we do about that ship?" Hawks 
asked them.
"Blow 'em out of the skies," Reba Koll replied. "You can't give any quarter in 
this and expect to succeed."
"That would solve the problem," Hawks admitted, "but I don't see any reason 
right now to do so. If we must, we must, but I just can't see any direct purpose 
to indiscriminate killing. If it was a Val ship, it's be different, but it's 
definitely got humans on board."
"You got the question wrong, Chief," Raven interjected. "It's why is it 
following us? It can't take us; but it's taking a big risk that we'll take it. 
If they wanted to join up, they'd have called us by now. If it was Master 
System, there wouldn't be people on board for any reason. They'd just get in the 
way. Figure it's this Nagy fellow and maybe others from Melchior. They know 
about the rings thanks to the mindprints they took from you, but they don't know 
where to look. We could really use that ship but we have to destroy it or lose 
it unless they give it to us. They're just on our tail 'cause they don't know 
where to go and they're otherwise as lost as we are. I say we try to lose 'em. 
Can you shake them, Star Eagle?"
"The problem would be in the energy required for quick punches in and out," the 
computer reported. "Yes, I could lose them. It is not that difficult, but it 
would leave us without punch power for quite some time and exposed while we're 
still in the shipping lanes. There is a low, but definite, probability that we 
might be sensed or sported by Master System."
Hawks sighed. "All right, then. When we punch out, we'll give them one chance 
and a warning. If nothing else, it might reveal just who they are and whether 
they are acting alone. If we can't cut a deal and they won't talk to us, then we 
will take some sort of drastic action. Before I will kill or expose us to 
needless risk, though, I would like to know who it is I am killing and why."
"Ship still back there, Star Eagle?" "Yes. It has dropped back but is still 
within range." Hawks sighed. "Open up communications and patch me through, 
then."
"Channels are open. You are on the three most common frequencies. I will narrow 
it when and if they reply. We are exposed in this position although I sense 
nothing nearby or in range. Even so, I would rather not make broad-band 
broadcasts. The signals will travel, and it might be one more way of being 
traced."
"This is Jon Nighthawk aboard the Thunder to the ship in our wake. Respond, 
please."
There was no reply.
"This is Hawks aboard the Thunder. I would rather talk but I cannot risk this 
sort of broadcast for long, If I receive no response from you I will have no 
choice but to determine you a hostile ship and order fighters to launch and 
commence action against you. You have one minute."
He paused, then said, "Fifty seconds," and counted down every ten seconds. He 
was not bluffing, but if he launched he would have to recover those fighters, as 
well, and that would be needless delay in the middle of a shipping lane. "Ten... 
nine... eight... seven..."
"All right, damn it! We're here," came a gruff male voice through the speakers. 
"I suppose this was inevitable anyway."
"You are following us," Hawks noted, "not the other way around. You must have 
thought it through-that if you were close enough to keep us on your sensors the 
reverse was also true."
"We assumed nothing of the sort. Who would have believed you could attain 
mastery of a ship like that in so short a time? Very well, let's talk. You're in 
trouble, and so are we."
"We are not nearly in the same predicament as you are. If we are all on the same 
side here, why follow? Why not hail us and join us?"
There was a pause. "Because it would be my death at the least if I were to fall 
into your hands, and a very unpleasant one, that's why."
"I'd know that voice anywhere," Reba Koll muttered. "That's Clayben! Shoot him, 
damn it! Rip his guts out!"
Hawks was startled by the outburst, but ignored it. "I can see your point from 
the reaction here, Doctor. Captain Koll considers just your existence in my 
sights to be sufficient grounds to blow you to hell."
"That is not Captain Koll. Koll's dead, been dead almost two years now. That is 
an inhuman, terrifying monstrosity, a horror. It's the thing that killed Koll 
and assumed her identity. I should know. I created the damned thing."
"Stand by," Hawks said. That uneasy chill he felt only when danger lurked close 
at hand was creeping into him. He turned and looked at Koll. "Isn't it about 
time you explained this, or should I ask him?"
"He told you true," she admitted unhesitatingly. "At least about the fact I 
ain't Koll and that I'm not human and that he's responsible for it. I kinda 
object to the horror and monstrosity parts, though. I ain't such a bad sort. I 
only kill at all 'cause he made it so I have to. I got choices, though. I got a 
conscience. I don't kill none who don't deserve it unless it's them or me. You 
gotta believe that."
Hawks felt his throat going dry, and he licked his lips nervously. "We were 
depending on you to take us someplace safe. If you're not Koll, then even if the 
rest of what you say is true, how am I to trust you?"
"'Cause I got all of Koll's memories, you idiot! I'm a damned near perfect 
imitation-absolutely perfect when I wanna be!"
"Doctor? You want to explain all this?"
There was a pause on the radio. "It was a grand experiment," Clayben said 
finally. "Melchior, all of it, was devoted to just one ultimate goal: Beating 
the system. Cheating it. Eventually, hopefully, destroying it. I was taking up 
the work of my predecessors, that's all. We-our computers and our experts in 
security and biology- thought we had a part of the answer. A weapon, as it were, 
in human form. A being who could beat the system at will. Become anyone it 
wished. Sail through security ports, passing every test-memory, retinal prints, 
even blood and tissue samples. Gain the full knowledge of whomever it imitated 
and therefore have full access to anyplace human beings could go. The first of a 
race, an army, that would collapse the whole control system. We used the 
transmuter for the final prototype. It worked, but it worked too well. 
The-thing-saw no difference between humans and computers. It hated us all. It 
killed half the station before we found a way to incapacitate it and stabilize 
it. We could have killed it-absolute incineration or transmutation to gas or 
energy would have done it-but we could not. It was so close. It almost worked. 
We kept it-stabilized. In human form. With the chemical compounds we used, it 
would remain stable for two, three years. Then it would have to have another 
template, another form. We used prisoners for whom we had no other use."
"Like Koll."
"Like Koll. But the next time it-feeds-and changes, there won't be any compound. 
No chemicals. It will be free to do it at will. It will kill all of you and 
absorb your knowledge, your memories. It wants the rings for itself. God will be 
an insane monster!"
Hawks stared at the frail-looking Reba Koll.
"Bullshit," she said. "I don't know what sane is, but I sure as hell ain't 
hankerin' to eat the lot of you. It's true what he says-right at the start I was 
nothin' much but an animal, a killer, but the more people I become, the more 
memories I got, the more ways I had to behave, the more human, I guess, I got. I 
got all them memories, all that knowledge up here in my head and all over my 
body, I guess. I don't even know how it works. The only thing I don't have is 
who I was to start with. Only he knows that. You think I liked killin' Koll, or 
the others? I didn't pick 'em-he did. Just to keep me alive so he could study 
and figure out how to make a ton more of me he could control. His own Vals, in 
spades. I want the rings, sure, but not alone. Nobody should have that power 
alone, not even me. You need me to get 'em, Chief. I can go down to them worlds 
no matter how much they're monsters there, and I can become one of 'em and know 
all the rules right off, and I can waltz right in and take them rings off the 
fingers or whatever them leaders have. You can't."
"I doubt if it will be that easy, even for you," Clayben replied. "But you see 
why this is as close as I can approach. You haven't the power to keep her from 
me, Hawks, and I would fight to the death before I would allow that."
Hawks stared at Reba Koll. He had expected to have to make some very tough 
decisions as the leader but he hadn't expected something like this at all, and 
certainly not right off.
"All right, Captain, or whatever you are. You really have the biggest problem. I 
can't stop you from killing us all, but you can't take this ship and run it and 
you know it. It's Star Eagle's ship. But whether you are friend or foe, and 
whether I have to die, along with others here, making certain our mission fails 
at the start, depends on you. It's Clayben-or a shot at the rings. China?"
"The gods who might be, if any, know that I have only hatred and contempt for 
this man, yet if it is the choice of the rings or him, I will kneel to him and 
lick his behind before I would throw away the rings."
"This ain't fair!" Koll grumped. "I spent ten years dreamin' of nothin' but 
gettin' that bastard in a position where I could torture him to death real slow. 
I wouldn't eat him. I wouldn't want to be him, and I wouldn't never be in the 
position of understanding him. Now you got him and you're tellin' me to kiss and 
make up."
Hawks was beginning to see the larger picture in all this. He just wished he 
knew who was drawing it. "It's why you're here, Koll, or whatever you are. It's 
the reason you're here and not back on Melchior with Master System in control of 
it and you. You say you can take anyone. I have no reason to doubt you on that, 
but can you become a Val? A computer?"
"Of course not, idiot!"
"Master System wouldn't care how many people you killed. It would study you and 
analyze you and then melt you down for the final analysis, and it would be 
perfectly willing to incinerate all life forms on Melchior if it thought it 
needed to dispose of you. You're not here by accident. Your name was on Raven's 
list. You're here because you can do what you say-go down and get very close to 
those who have the rings without penalty. But it's still a group effort. You 
think it over. You're no use to me if you have no self-control." Hawks turned 
back to the communications set.
"Clayben, I don't like you very much, and I don't trust you at all, but I'm 
willing to deal you in if you have something to offer me. I can really use that 
ship of yours, but I don't require it. Nobody here will shed a tear if I order 
you blown to bits. You are a problem and a luxury for me. Tell me why I can 
afford you."
"My knowledge, my skill, my experience," the scientist replied. "You have 
computer people and security people there but not one good experimental 
scientist. I have aboard this ship the backup copies of all the essentials of 
two decades plus of research done on Melchior. The data is unique and priceless. 
It is also coded only to me. Then there is the ship, as you mentioned, and Mr. 
Nagy's not inconsiderable background and contacts. He's been out here before. He 
knows the freebooters-who can be trusted and who can't. I don't think you can 
afford to pass us up, sir, or I wouldn't have chased you."
Hawks turned to the others. "Mute the communications link for a moment, Star 
Eagle."
"Muted. We are here far too long, Hawks. We should move."
"The risk might be worth it. It isn't the worst we've taken and it won't be the 
worst we take in the future. Now, listen, all of you. I want to hear it from 
everyone. Clay-ben's right. He has the data we need, and Nagy the contacts. They 
have a ship we could use that we don't have to convert from Master System 
control. Can we trust men like this? No. Their record speaks for itself. They 
aren't so much demonic as they are uncaring about human beings or anything 
except themselves. They'll be trouble. Raven?"
"Bring 'em on, Chief. We'll take care of them if they get out of line. I kinda 
think they'll be real cooperative, real team players, until push comes to shove. 
Besides, it's a great way to get the ship. If they get nasty later we can always 
eliminate them."
Warlock snickered. "We are of Security, Hawks. This is our job and we are good 
at it. We can handle them."
"Chows?"
"They are no worse than any of the others we have always faced. If they can do 
us some good, then it is about time they served someone else," Chow Dai said. 
Her twin nodded.
"Cloud Dancer?"
"Whatever you decide I will accept," she replied. "I am not certain that such 
evil men can ever be turned to a good purpose, but if we lose to them we deserve 
it."
"Star Eagle?"
"By all means let them come aboard. My core defenses are extensive and there is 
nothing they can do aboard the Thunder without my knowledge. In order for 
Clayben to use his data he will have to interface with my data banks. Anything 
he decrypts I will also learn."
Hawks sighed. "It's up to you, then, Koll. Think of it this way. For once 
Clayben will be under our authority rather than we under his. He might try 
something, but if he does I'll give him to you, no strings attached. The moment 
he betrays any one of us, he is yours."
She seemed to have already made up her mind. "All right-but keep him away from 
the bridge. Quarantine him. On the ground he'll be on my turf, as it were, and I 
think I can handle him if he can handle me. But not here. Not on the Thunder"
"Communications open," Hawks ordered. "All right, Doctor, you're invited aboard 
by unanimous consent, although our one real dissenter here insists that you be 
kept isolated from the bridge while on this ship. If that is agreeable, approach 
at moderate speed and prepare for instructions from our pilot. We will punch as 
soon as we have you securely aboard, so remain in your ship with full life 
support until we tell you otherwise."
"Understand. Acknowledge. You won't regret this."
"Maybe. Maybe not. But you might," Hawks muttered under his breath.
It took almost an hour to get the Star into an outer hold, but Star Eagle knew 
his job and was now fully master of the big ship's systems.
The pilot didn't hesitate once all was ready, though. The Thunder's great 
engines roared into life, raising the massive sonic storm, and within minutes 
they punched.
The sensation was still very unpleasant, but this time there were no 
hallucinations and only relief that they were out of there.
"You handled that right well, Chief," Raven commented.
"Perhaps. Perhaps I'm handling this on gut instinct, Crow. Instinct and educated 
hunches. But they'll be a time bomb once aboard and you know it. I want no 
quarter given. The slightest wrong move and, well, they are expendable."
"No!" China said sharply. "Use your head, Hawks. We need them-but on our side. 
That man has played whatever games he wanted with people at his mercy using 
mindprinters and transmuters. We have transmuters and when we are finished 
cannibalizing the old ship we will have a mindprinter."
"But that one's too limited to be of real use," he pointed out.
"Perhaps, but I will wager that Clayben had that ship of his outfitted as a 
fully equipped fast escape ship from the planning stages on. The fact that all 
data from the Melchior master computers was automatically transmitted to it in 
encoded form shows that. I'll wager that aboard that thing he has a small 
transmuter and a state-of-the-art mindprinter. Possibly even a psychogenetics 
minilab. That ship, I will wager, is a one-or two-person Melchior in miniature. 
By the time Star Eagle's maintenance robots and probes get through with it, I 
think we'll be able to do to the doctor whatever we wish-before he does it to 
us."
 
3. AN ISLAND IN THE WILDERNESS

She was sheer power, able to see in many directions at once, to have all things 
background monitored and brought to her notice, if need be. A mere thought 
brought access to more data on more subjects than her mind could handle; in some 
ways, it was too much for her, yet she could not get enough of it. While she was 
the ship, she was a goddess, and it was no fantasy, no wish fulfillment-it was 
real.
But she was also a small, fragile thing lying there in a command chair on the 
bridge, wearing a huge padded helmet from which specialized cables extended into 
the front panel. Star Eagle understood that the small form there was her primary 
reality, the one that made the rest possible, so he limited the duration of her 
stays in his mighty realm, while giving her absolute freedom while she was 
there.
She sped along the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of communications and 
monitoring circuitry and enjoyed it as her own private sort of peep show. Of 
particular interest was the large, rectangular module in Cargo Bay Four that had 
been constructed by Maintenance and endowed with full life-support and comfort 
facilities. Hawks referred to it as the Leper Colony, although he alone aboard 
knew what a leper was. They had built it for Clayben and Nagy, and then sent 
Sabatini down there as well, if only to get him out from underfoot.
Since Star Eagle had designed and constructed the module, it was hardly private, 
in spite of assurances to the occupants that their space was secure. Every move, 
every spoken word, every pulse beat was monitored and recorded, and it was all 
carefully scrutinized by Raven and Warlock, who knew just what to look for.
Clayben looked about fifty, with thin white hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy 
complexion. He appeared fat and chubby-faced, but he was in remarkably good 
shape and worked to keep it. He had a deep, pleasant, throaty baritone that 
always sounded confident and secure, the voice of a family physician or top 
salesman. He certainly had one of the best minds of his or any other generation, 
the sort of mind that could work on a dozen problems at once and master 
virtually any discipline it wished. That was both his greatness and his curse. 
He had run a torture chamber, yet never once had he thought of it that way. To 
him, the entire universe and all the creatures in it were merely props, put 
there for his convenience. His was total egocentrism, but, unlike most such 
conceited people, he really was superior to most other human beings. The only 
other he recognized and truly feared was Master System, and it would never have 
occurred to him that he and the great hidden computer were mortal 
enemies-primarily because they were so much alike.
The best way to describe Arnold Nagy physically was to think of a wide-angle 
photograph of a man in which the sides were compressed, making him a distorted 
stick figure. His head was very long and narrow, and it sat on a long neck 
attached to a body that was also very tall, very angular, and very thin. His 
tremendous hawklike nose and lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and very small mouth only 
accented his peculiar appearance. He was very dark complected, with deep-brown 
eyes and long jet-black hair, and it was impossible to guess his age.
This was the man who had been trusted with Melchior's security by both Clayben 
and Master System-he was formidable and dangerous. So far he seemed to speak and 
understand about every language he'd come across. He had long and often involved 
discussions with Sabatini in the latter's native Italian, and he even had the 
dialect and the slang right. One could not use Mandarin, for example, to comment 
privately where he might overhear, and Cloud Dancer couldn't even be certain 
Nagy didn't know Kyia-kutt. Clearly Nagy was a natural linguist. Languages could 
be learned by mindprinter, to a point, as many of them had learned English and 
were still perfecting it by listening to those who spoke it naturally, but 
dialects and slang were not so easy to impart.
"Boring." Nagy sighed, settling down in a chair. "Sitting watch on the patient 
monitors was a thrill a minute compared to this."
"Patience, Arnold," Clayben responded. "Doubtless by now they've gone over the 
ship almost molecule by molecule, and they're sorting out all their data and 
trying to break the encryption on the data-bank records. Our active time will 
come. Great goals require great patience. Would you rather put on a pressure 
suit and go up and say hello to Reba Koll? She's going to have to eat someone, 
you know, sooner or later, and there aren't many likely candidates around."
Nagy looked suddenly uncomfortable. "Sacrificial goat no matter what, huh, Doc? 
Is that why you wanted me transferred from the Star? For this?"
"No, Arnold, I did not. The last thing I imagined was being in a secondary role 
on this ship with that thing aboard and running free. I actually intended us to 
get to the freebooters and establish a new working base somewhere from which to 
build an organization and obtain the rings. It would be very difficult to find 
them on our own, but not impossible. They are quite distinctive. Someone, 
someplace, must have noticed them. Then, when it became clear that these people 
might get this ship started, it was worth the risk of improvising and following. 
I had no idea that such people could get something of this size and complexity 
running so smoothly at all, let alone this quickly. I would be willing to work 
with most of these people, but I shall never be comfortable while that creature 
is loose. I should have destroyed it ten years ago, when I had the chance. It is 
my greatest mistake."
He sighed and patted Nagy on his shoulder. "Don't worry, my boy. They need you. 
They need us. We just have to watch our backs, contribute, and bide our time. 
If, somehow, that creature can be controlled when it is free of constraint, we 
are where we want to be, aren't we?"
Sabatini had entered the compartment and had just stood there, listening to all 
this. "Yeah, well, that's all well and good for you two, but I'm dead meat to 
them. I lost my ship, I lost my pilot, and the inmates are running the asylum. I 
just want out. Failing that, I could die happy if I could just push them Chink 
bitches out some air lock like they did me."
Nagy turned to stare at Sabatini. "You know, Captain, I'd listen to the Doc here 
and stop all that talk. Cooperate, go along with them, make yourself useful, 
even friendly- and survive. They can't carry much excess baggage even if they do 
have a ship as big as a small city. Watch you don't get dumped."
That was enough spying for now. Analysis-Reba Koll. The response was almost 
instantaneous. Insufficient information. Input provided by subject and Clayben 
consistent with possibilities inherent in transmitter and psychogenetic 
technology. No more. Scans do not show her in any way different than would be 
expected for a human female her age.
The analysis of Clayben's ship was more productive. As China had guessed, it was 
almost a miniature state-of-the-art laboratory, as well as a zone of comfort and 
an interstellar spacecraft. It was a larger and more elaborate variation of the 
Melchior fighter design, and it contained full and rather impressive armaments, 
not sufficient to do more than minor damage to the Thunder if it penetrated the 
fighter screen at all, but sufficient to do a lot of damage to lesser craft.
Also aboard was a reference computer system of unfamiliar design, possibly 
developed by Clayben personally. The information in it could be gleaned by a 
normal type of computer interface, but it was stored in a highly compressed and 
coded system. The decryption method was unclear; it might be hardware or special 
codes or a combination of the two, but it was quite sophisticated. The ship did 
not contain a practical transmuter, although it had one that it used for its 
interstellar drive fuel and maintenance; it did, however, have a single-unit, 
fully functioning mindprinter, attached to a psychochemical unit. While they 
were tied into and run by the encrypted data computer system rather than the 
ship's computer, the design and operation was straightforward. Star Eagle was 
working on duplicating the system and creating his own, tying it into his own 
banks for operation. Such a system might be very handy indeed.
Unfortunately, the smaller ship was still too large for the Thunder's 
transmuters to duplicate, but it could be flown, at least. The pilot had a cold, 
neuter persona, but would obey anyone who had the control codes to activate it.
China and Star Eagle continued to explore, spy, probe, and hypothesize as the 
Thunder sped on through the nothingness.
"There," Star Eagle told them. "The second planet out." Not much was clear from 
the images on the screens; they were computer graphics and not true pictures in 
any event, and showed a huge sun and some small, bright dots that represented 
planets.
"Won't it be too hot that close to the sun?" Chow Mai asked worriedly.
"Perhaps," the pilot responded. "No way to know for certain until we take a 
close look at it." It was the third one in the region they had checked out. The 
first had been far too cold; the second had an atmosphere that would prevent 
them from living any more freely than in the Thunder. "The distance from the sun 
is important, but only within a very broad range. Planets two, three, and four, 
here, and possibly five are all in that range, but even my long-range scanners 
indicate that only two has an atmosphere dense enough to have potential: It is 
also the only one showing any readings indicating early terraforming."
They were not blind, even in this poorly charted region. Master System had been 
here long before them. The area was better termed "unused" than "unexplored." 
For one reason or another, the worlds here that Master System had attempted to 
change had either taken too long to develop or developed wrong. Although those 
worlds had been abandoned when more suitable planets elsewhere were developed, 
the processes put in motion were not halted. No one had ever found a paradise in 
this sector, but a number of the worlds, given many centuries to develop and 
mature, were at least usable and useful. And the sheer size of the sector 
ensured against accidental discovery of the Thunder by either freebooters or 
Master System.
"I'm getting promising readings," Star Eagle reported. "A very thick ozone layer 
and a high water content. We will have to see what the surface temperatures are 
like, though; it's impossible to guess anything except the fact that this will 
be a very humid place and certainly warmer on the average than Earth. Let's 
see."
One of the robot fighters had launched itself from the Thunder hours before and 
was now, under the firm control of Star Eagle, approaching the planet. This 
fighter had been modified by Maintenance for much more than defense and was 
capable of a soft landing if need be.
"Initial readings aren't optimistic," Star Eagle told them. "The world has an 
axial tilt of less than eight degrees, which means little seasonal variation, 
and the equatorial surface temperature appears close to sixty-five degrees 
Celsius. Tremendous, vast water bodies, with very odd landmasses. No continents 
as such, just islands, none incredibly large so far. The average water depth 
must be very deep to account for this. Lots of islands, all with rugged 
topography, but not much else. Some of the volcanoes are active although there 
is no sign of massive eruption to the atmosphere. I would guess that these are 
not the major explosion type, but rather the slow, steady erupters with dense 
lava."
"What's that mean?" Warlock asked, in an uncharacteristically chatty manner.
"It means that there won't be constant dust and soot in the air that would cause 
things to be too hot or block so much sun that it'd be freezing cold," Hawks 
told her. "But it also means you have a chance of having liquid rock wash into 
your house almost anywhere, and probably frequent earthquakes. Not very 
appetizing."
"Interestingly, the most comfortable surface temperature would be in the polar 
regions," Star Eagle said, "but there's not a lot of promise there in surface 
area. The best compromise would be about thirty degrees north or south. Lots of 
island masses in clusters there, and a surface temperature estimated at perhaps 
thirty to forty degrees. I am sending the remote ship down to that latitude 
north for a ground scan. If I find something promising I will let you know."
The others looked at Hawks quizzically. "Hot," he told them. "Days hotter than 
the worst summer days of America or China and nights as hot as hot summer days 
in Europe, with very little difference over a year. We could live there, though, 
if the air has the kind of makeup to block the worst and most damaging rays of 
the sun. Even so, those of us with the darkest skin will have the best 
protection. It won't do anything for comfort, though."
"Atmosphere is quite good," the pilot reported. "The trace gases are quite 
different and the water vapor is extremely high, but the oxygen-nitrogen balance 
is very close to nominal. The difference can be attributed almost certainly to 
the level of volcanic activity. Still, you can tell by how close it is that this 
is induced rather than natural. There might be some odors, but you could breathe 
the air unaided without harm."
"What about vegetation?" Hawks asked. "Any sign of life down there?"
"Considerable, although it's not possible to tell its full nature from here. 
Many of the islands appear to be almost junglelike, and I get some minor animal 
readings, as well, possibly insects or birds or something like that. The seas 
also contain much life, although I doubt that there are any deep-water 
creatures. The plant layer is thick enough that it probably blocks most or all 
light farther down. There is definitely animal life on or near the surface, 
though. Not an enormous amount, but it's there."
Hawks frowned. "Should it be? Would this have gotten far enough to be seeded 
with fish or something?"
"Mostly mammalian, by the spectrography. It's possible. It's possible this one 
got far enough along to be a full test."
"If it got that far, then why wasn't it used?" China asked, fascinated.
"Probably because of the slow development of the pattern and the heavy growth of 
algae or funguslike plants on the water," Star Eagle guessed. "I suspect it was 
a prototype rather than a finished product. Ah! A cluster of islands that 
includes one very large one with a volcano at each end and perhaps forty 
kilometers of flat land twenty or thirty meters at most above sea level. The 
flats are ancient lava flows that ran together. Both volcanoes appear dormant; 
there is no sign of very recent lava flows into the flats, at any rate."
A huge map appeared on the bridge screens showing a somewhat crescent-shaped 
island with two enormous high peaks, one at each end. The center area was 
relatively flat but uneven, thin in the middle-perhaps only a kilometer 
across-and thicker as it approached each of its two parents, perhaps as much as 
ten or twelve kilometers at those points. One of those jagged parent peaks was 
over two thousand meters high, the other slightly lower than that. Both had 
enormous craters inside that were hundreds of meters deep. There were several 
other single-peaked islands nearby, but none showed a promising landing site.
The small fighter set down on a rise in the flats region and went right to work 
taking samples and testing. Air temperature: Thirty-six degrees C. Humidity: 
Ninety-seven percent. The rock was basically basalt, its chemistry containing 
nothing odd or unusual. Radioactivity was fairly low, considering the volcanism. 
The outcrop showed extreme weathering, indicating the passage of frequent storms 
and high winds, a pattern confirmed by the early orbital survey. The ultraviolet 
reaching the surface was within the range of human tolerance, but might pose a 
long-term hazard to lighter-skinned people who allowed themselves to become over 
exposed. There were airborne spores and micro-organisms; the ship captured some 
in its filter and found them to be variations of Earth organisms. While this 
indicated that Master System had adapted readily available materials to create 
its balance, it also indicated that this was a very early experiment, with no 
assurance that such organisms would be harmless to Earth-humans.
"I should not like to come this far only to be wiped out by some virus." Hawks 
sighed. "But we must also face facts. Anyplace we are likely to find that can 
support us will have these risks. These are, after all, the prototypes, the 
throwaways, the leftovers. Any world in this sector that might be better and 
more comfortable and safer certainly is used by the freebooters. In fact, that 
is the one thing that worries me about this world. It is no paradise, but it is 
good enough. Why aren't there freebooters here? Koll, if you knew about this, 
then so must they."
"Most likely," she agreed. "I can't answer that. Maybe it is an out-of-control 
disease. Why don't we send Clayben down there to live awhile and do research and 
tell us?"
That brought a chuckle from almost everyone, but Hawks shook his head. "How long 
do we wait? A day? A week? A month? Star Eagle, what are the odds of us 
surviving normally down there as of right now? I understand all the variables-an 
educated guess."
"I could be dangerously wrong, but I would suspect that there is nothing down 
there more hazardous than you would find on Earth, and a good likelihood that 
there is less, since there would have been mutation and adaptation as well as 
the initial alteration made by Master System. As to why it has not already been 
used, though, the most probable reason I can think of is that the native life 
forms, whatever they are, might be dangerous. If other alternatives were 
available, and many other worlds were, why would the freebooters go to that 
extreme? But I would not go down unarmed, and I would create an effective 
defensive perimeter and watch system. There is also the possibility that the 
region is occasionally patrolled. Measures will have to be taken to maintain the 
Thunder well away from here and ready for an instant getaway, coming in only as 
necessary."
Hawks thought about that. "That would mean Lightning, as well," he said, 
referring to Clayben's ship by their new name for it. "The camp would, in 
effect, be landlocked there. I'm not sure I like that."
"Of necessity, no matter where we settle. If a patrol came in close enough that 
it punched within a day or so of the planet, it would be impossible to pack 
everyone aboard and take off without being sensed, tracked, and quite possibly 
destroyed. We will establish a subordinate computer net down there and an 
effective communications system. There will be a substantial time lag, but I 
will be able to monitor you, and we can still contact one another. In a tight 
pinch, Lightning can be dispatched to take on and flank a patrol ship, but I 
would suspect that the best defense is to simply ignore it and it will go away."
"But wouldn't any patrol craft spot us down there?" China asked, worried. She 
didn't like the idea of being separated from Star Eagle for that long.
"Unless you become a population of thousands, I would suspect not. It will be 
looking for indications of a spaceship and communications and transmuter-powered 
equipment. It's not going to do a survey, only a patrol. You would show up in 
such a patrol in the same way as those life forms down there now, nothing more, 
nothing less, so long as you cut power. It is not going to spend a year on the 
suspicion that someone minus ship might just be hiding out down there."
Hawks nodded. "All right, then. I'll still feel better if a couple of people go 
ahead to scout out the place first. We'll need someone with good reflexes and 
skills with a gun. Any volunteers?"
"I'll go," Raven said. "Warlock can handle things here. And I think maybe it 
should be Clayben who goes with me. I'll handle the firepower and he can handle 
the science. If we get in over our heads, then, Manka, you and Nagy come after 
us with all the firepower you got."
Isaac Clayben was not exactly thrilled with the assignment, but he could not 
argue that he was not best qualified for the job. It also got him off that 
damned ship for the first time in countless dull weeks, and that was almost 
worth it.
The modified fighter had established a small one-at-a-time transmitter station, 
which Star Eagle used once the Thunder was in a stable geosynchronous orbit over 
the chosen position. It was agreed that, as a first step, Raven and Clayben both 
would use the fairly comfortable pressure suits in spite of the planet's clean 
bill of health.
Neither Clayben nor Raven had ever before traveled by transmuter. In spite of 
his worldly cynicism and modern knowledge, the Crow had some deep reservations 
about this mode of travel that had nothing to do with its safety. For the life 
of him, he couldn't see how this differed from being killed and having a 
duplicate manufactured elsewhere.
"It is possible to look at it that way," Star Eagle admitted, "although the 
energy matrix created here is isolated, unique, and self-contained. What I 
convert is what I transmit and all I use to reconstruct below. In other words, 
you actually physically go, just in a different form. In a sense, I almost wish 
it were the way you imagine. Then it wouldn't matter what was transmuted; since 
everything would be a duplicate, I could change anything and anyone an infinite 
number of times at will. But I am not transmitting a formula. I am transmitting 
you."
Somehow that made Raven feel better.
The Thunder's transmuters-it carried one in each of the four cargo bays-were 
huge, but the receiver below, modification of a maintenance transmitter, was 
strictly a one-person affair. Raven, as security, had to go first.
The transmuter was a circular disk that looked almost as if it were made of a 
solid piece of red brick, and a second disk above coated with some very shiny, 
black reflective material. Raven looked at it, hesitated, then took a deep 
breath, stepped onto the circle, and walked to the center. He had his pressure 
suit on, helmet and all, since the energy expense was too great to justify 
pressurizing an entire cargo bay.
He stared nervously back at the others-most of the group had come down to see 
the volunteers off, with the exception of China, who was currently interfaced 
with Star Eagle, Silent Woman, who had no understanding or interest, and Reba 
Koll, who stayed away out of a sense of caution. There was no sensation, 
nothing. He felt something vibrate, and inside his suit he heard what could only 
be described as clickl Suddenly he was alone in the dark someplace, and he felt 
as heavy as lead, so heavy that he almost buckled under his own weight. It 
disturbed him. What the hell?
A hatch opened automatically in front of him and he looked out on a strange 
landscape. He drew his pistol and walked away and into it, frowning. "That's 
it?" he said, mostly to himself. "Click and you're someplace else?"
"I had no idea it was that efficient." Star Eagle's unusual tenor came to him 
over his suit radio, as clear as if he were still aboard the ship. "That is very 
good to know. Any problems?"
Raven was still a little shaken by his experience, but he was a pro. He looked 
around. He was standing on black rock with some whitish streaks in it; here and 
there it was interrupted by a small patch of growth in cracks or a moss-like 
plant in small dabs where the rock seemed to have been roughened. The surface 
was very uneven, but he had no trouble with his footing. About ten meters away 
the real growth started-a dense forest. The sky was mostly cloudy, but the 
exposed parts were blue-a slightly different blue than he was used to, but not 
enough to cause real alarm or disorientation.
"Better tell Doc to bring an umbrella. I think it might rain."
Less than a minute later, the hatch opened again behind him, and the 
orange-suited figure of Isaac Clayben emerged holding a carrying case of some 
sort. He walked slowly, somewhat bent over, dragging his case as if it weighed a 
ton. "That-that is simply amazing," said the scientist, who wasn't amazed by 
very much. "With a sufficient number of those things each in line of sight you 
could have a near-instantaneous transport system covering the whole world."
"I wouldn't like to try a system that big, Doc," Raven replied. "Sooner or later 
one of 'em would hav'ta go wrong."
"I have more equipment coming. We'll wait for it, then I'll need some help 
setting up." He looked around. "It's actually quite attractive. I have lived the 
past twenty years cooped up inside a giant rock or in the bowels of spaceships. 
I had almost forgotten what it's like to have a sky, and greenery, clouds, and 
weather. It's almost-disorienting. I didn't expect this. I'm feeling somewhat 
phobic about wide open spaces."
Raven shrugged. "Better get used to it. You're supposed to be the superior one, 
above all these weaknesses we mortals suffer, Doc. I think the rest of your 
stuff's here. Let's get it and get cracking. Jeez! I feel tired as hell. I'm 
havin' trouble just walkin'."
"I, too. I'm in worse shape than you, I suspect. I haven't been under more than 
six-tenths of a gee since before Melchior. I-I'm dizzy. I'm going to have to sit 
down for a moment." He settled down on the rock and sighed. "Stupid of me. I 
never really considered this. I was too busy worrying about the transport."
Raven sat, too. He felt like he'd been working for two straight days at hard 
labor and he had only walked four meters away from the modified fighter sitting 
there on its leg struts on the rock just behind them. "Well, maybe we ain't 
gonna do a whole hell of a lot real fast, Doc, but we can do something while 
sitting. Who wants the honor of being the first to breathe the new air?"
"Be my guest," Clayben responded.
Raven sighed, adjusted his suit control to "maintenance mode," then touched the 
fastener plates and cautiously removed his helmet. He took a breath, then 
relaxed and hooked the helmet on his neck strap. "Whew! Like gettin' hit by a 
soakin' wet wool blanket! Boy, is this hot! Crazy feeling. The suit's still got 
some air conditioning and insulation, but my face is hot as hell. I'm sweating 
like a stuck
Pig."
"The air-smells-all right?"
"As a matter of fact, it doesn't. There's an undercurrent of something-a mixture 
of things-that smells a little putrid. Not enough to make you sick or anything. 
I guess I can get used to it. Figure it's from being on mostly oxygen?"
Clayben wearily unfastened his helmet and took it off, then took a deep breath 
and wrinkled his nose. "I see what you mean. No, it's not that. That is clearly 
salt water over there-you cannot imagine how long it has been since I've smelled 
that smell-and it's mixing with the smells of the jungle." He sighed. "Well, all 
I want to do is sleep for a week, but I think we'd better get things set up here 
and take our preliminary measurements. Then I think we should encamp and sleep 
in shifts until our bodies adjust to this gravity before exploring very much-if 
mine ever does adjust."
"I think they are birds, but they never come close enough to really tell." Raven 
was clad now in an improvised loincloth, which consisted of two towels draped, 
one front and one rear, over his gunbelt.
"We must go into the jungle at some point," Clayben said. He was wearing a pair 
of shorts, a pullover T-shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. He was still terribly 
uncomfortable and very slow, and beginning to wonder if he'd spent too much time 
in low gravity to ever get used to full weight again, but he was still 
fascinated and excited about being on a new and remote world. Even during the 
night, agonized by muscle cramps, he still found it impossible not to stare up 
through holes in the clouds to a star field that was much denser than the one 
he'd known. "We will need more than these spore and insect samples, fascinating 
as they are. From my analysis, I suspect that those birds-or whatever they 
are-are not quite what we expect at all."
Terraforming was an incredibly complex science and one that Master System had 
had to learn from scratch. Mars had been far easier than planets like this one; 
there the process had involved mostly adding or transmuting to water, planting 
dense growth, and letting things take their course. But even there a complex 
chain of interdependent species of plants and animals had had to be modified and 
stabilized so that the ecosystem would remain in balance.
Not a single one of the flying and crawling insects they'd managed to trap here 
was familiar, but they seemed to fill the same not-always-obvious roles that 
their Earth ancestors had back on the home world. Unfortunately, some of them 
bit, and of those some had defensive or offensive toxins causing itching, but 
none of the bites suffered by Clayben and Raven had been more than minor 
nuisances.
The heat and humidity were still hard to take, and the gravity was murder, but 
at least they had grown used to the alien smells in the air and hardly noticed 
them anymore. Raven was certainly delighted about one thing: Finally he could 
smoke his cigars again without worry. His endless supply of half-smoked cigars 
had baffled Hawks until the latter had heard about and understood enough about 
the transmuters. Raven had a way of making the things duplicate his cigars, but 
the only model he'd had was the last half of one brought from Earth. He had a 
huge supply made from that half a cigar-and all were duplicates of it. He hoped 
that the others would never discover that he was using the food transmuters to 
make cigars, or that they wouldn't mind if they did find out.
By the end of the second day, Raven felt well enough to do some exploring, but 
it was clear that Clayben simply wasn't up to it. He might, in time, adapt to a 
gravitational pull that was actually very slightly less than the Earth on which 
he'd been bora, but that was by no means certain and definitely not imminent. 
Unwilling to trust Clayben alone with the fighter and all his gear, Raven called 
for reinforcements. "I want Warlock and Nagy down here as quickly as possible," 
he told them. "We need to get moving."
The newcomers, who arrived with fresh supplies, seemed to do a lot better with 
the sudden weight than the first two had. Nagy explained that in light of the 
problems, Star Eagle had induced a spin that gave some measure of gravity to the 
ship. Warlock and Nagy still felt some strain, but after a good night's sleep in 
the makeshift tent, they seemed to be in as good shape as Raven was.
It was a bright, sunny day. They had actually watched rainstorms in the distance 
over the water, but so far none of the clouds had given the interior more than a 
few drops. Raven opened up a security case and surprised Nagy by giving the 
spindly man a pistol.
"You might need it to save one or both of our necks," the Crow told him. "You'll 
need a good knife, too. I had Star Eagle duplicate my best." He handed him a 
huge flat blade and a gunbelt that had a notch for the knife.
Nagy looked at the dense jungle. "I think a broadsword might be better, 
considering that stuff." He hefted the knife, put it in the belt, then drew and 
aimed the pistol at the trees. "I-uh-guess this is some kind of test."
Manka Warlock's stern expression did not change. "No test," she said. "If Raven 
doesn't come back, first I kill the doctor here and then I come for you."
Nagy shrugged and gave a "Who, me?" sort of look, then turned back to Raven. 
"Now's as good a time as any, I guess. I'm not too thrilled about this, but it 
has to be done if we're gonna stick around this hothouse."
Raven checked a small communicator that had been removed from one of the 
pressure suits and slipped into a special casing. "Thunder, are you reading me?"
"Perfectly," Star Eagle's voice responded. "I have you on intercom as well. 
Doctor?"
"No problems." Clayben looked at the others. "Bring me back some specimens. 
Plants, insects, sea water, even one of those birds or whatever they are. And 
Arnold? Be certain you both return."
Nagy shrugged again. "Which way, O intrepid explorer?"
"That way," Raven said, pointing with his knife at a spot almost exactly between 
the two huge cloud-shrouded volcanic peaks. "It's the shortest route to the sea 
if the map we saw was right."
They made their way carefully down to where the foliage met the rocky outcrop of 
ancient lava. "I don't expect that there will be any really dangerous plants and 
animals in there," the Crow said, "but you never know what a computer might 
throw into a prototype. Still, its mission was to preserve people, not get rid 
of them."
It was rough going almost from the start. The lava did not stop as it met the 
greenery, but there it had been more severely weathered, partly broken up, and 
overgrown with moss and vines. Much of the growth masked cracks and fissures in 
the ground that seemed designed to twist ankles and trip the unwary. The men 
used their knives as best they could and were thankful that they'd decided to 
wear the thick, heavy boots from their pressure suits.
When they finally hit much older rock covered with humus the footing became soft 
and spongy. Their passage seemed to disturb the insect population; the air was 
thick with tiny flying things and a few very large, angry buzzing ones. "If 
Clayben wants his damned insect collection let him come and get 'em," Raven 
shouted angrily, swatting the air.
After a while they came to a short but fairly steep drop, perhaps two meters, at 
which point the thick vegetation stopped and they found themselves on smooth, 
flat, and pretty solid gray-black sand cut with chasms. There was a great deal 
of driftwood on the beach, as well. Now, for the first time, they could see as 
well as hear the pounding waves and look out upon the ocean.
"First time I ever seen a bloody red ocean," Raven commented.
Nagy walked toward the edge of the water perhaps fifty or sixty meters away, 
then knelt and looked at the water. "Not blood and not red. Not the ocean, 
anyway. It's a thin layer of some kind of plant or animal stuff. Plant, I'd say. 
Some kind of modified plankton, maybe. Stuff must cover a lot of ocean. Ten to 
one the only reason it doesn't cover all of it is the wind and storms. Only 
small tides here, what with no big moon."
Raven stared at him. "You a scientist?"
"Naw, I'm like you. I pick up stuff. You never know when something's gonna come 
up useful."
Raven stared at him. In occupation-and somewhat in personality-he and Nagy were 
twins, yet the Crow was far cruder in his approach, and Nagy far more 
intellectual. Raven suspected that in the jungle or in the bush, Nagy would be 
dead meat, but that in any sort of civilization Nagy might be even more 
dangerous than Clayben.
"Nagy-I know why I'm here, but why are you?"
"Maybe we ought to trade information," the tall, thin man replied. "Fact is, I 
was about to ask you the same question. For me it's simple-survival. We went to 
the same training schools. Survival is the first priority of an effective 
operative. I blew Melchior-thanks to you. The administrators don't like that. 
The escape brought Master System down on us, as I knew it had to, which is why I 
personally directed the chase. I didn't want to be there when the Vals crashed 
in the locks. The board, now, it can lay all the illegal stuff on Clayben and 
me. I was in a meat grinder. The way to get out is to run out-and the stars were 
the only place to run. So when Clayben pulled up in that souped-up custom 
interstellar job and took me off the Star, I was only too willing. Now, that's 
simple enough. It's you I don't get. What was it? The lure of power? Those rings 
can get anybody sick with the god disease."
"No," Raven said quietly. "I didn't fail and I didn't turn traitor and I didn't 
run out. I'm just doing my job."
"Huh? Blowing Melchior? Springing this crazy assortment? Lugging everybody here? 
Stirring up Master System to what must be the closest thing to a frenzy a 
machine can experience? Who the hell can you be working for that would want 
that! Or deserved the kind of price we're all paying?"
"You want the truth?"
"Shoot. What difference can it make now?"
"I don't know. Chen-the one chief administrator on Earth with a ring of his 
own-I think he knows. But as high as he is, he's just an employee, too, and in 
many ways he's in a more dangerous spot than I am. It was understood that I 
wouldn't know anything beyond Chen because, if I was captured, that was as far 
as even Master System could go. You can't tell what you don't know, and I 
suspect that Chen has a way out just as Clayben did if the heat gets too great."
Nagy stared at him and frowned. "But there is nobody higher than the 
administrators. They get their orders direct from Master System. It would have 
to be a hell of a computer brain to be in that chain somewhere, and it'd have to 
be an independent one, not one Master System could control or reprogram. There 
must be more computer brains than people but it just ain't possible."
"It's possible. I don't know how. Even if the survival and discovery of the 
rings information was in fact accidental, very little that went on after it was. 
I'm not even a hundred-percent certain that the accident that caused the courier 
from Warlock to Chen to crash in Hawks's backyard while he was on leave-very 
conveniently-was accidental. Put that together with the near-simultaneous 
discovery by the Chinese of a tech cult with complete plans for a Thunder-class 
ship and how to operate and interface with it and you have real questions about 
coincidence. Maybe it is. Maybe after nine hundred years everything just came 
together. I don't believe it, though. Maybe in nine hundred million years, but 
I'm not a real strong believer in this much fate. Me, I'm an add-on. Warlock 
needed me to track down Hawks in unfamiliar territory, and once I was in, I was 
in. So then this Song Ching, who just happens to be the district administrator's 
daughter and knows all the security codes and overrides, gets initial access to 
all the starship plans and information-hell, she was there on the raid, and 
since when is a relative that high up allowed that close to action?-gets all the 
time she needs to crack the ship interfaces and then gets a ton of pressure on 
her to get her to escape."
"Go on. I'm beginning to see how you think."
"So our China girl escapes and just happens to get on an interplanetary 
freighter that's just been refitted and whose core has just been modified and 
reprogrammed for independent action. Now, you and I know how easy that is in 
space, but who could do it on Earth, under the very nose of and monitored by 
Master System? Somebody did. That pig Sabatini took his liberties, but she wound 
up on Melchior. Thanks to Chen, so did Hawks and both Warlock and me -but none 
of his own people. And I'm there with a detailed list of just who to spring, and 
how, and on what ship. Not only that, but I have three out of four locations for 
the missing rings. How the hell could Chen get them!"
Nagy thought about it. "Maybe a freebooter commission. Big reward for the 
location of any rings."
"We'll check, but would he chance it? Would you? They'd wonder why he wanted the 
rings and then they'd start after them, and before you knew it they'd be holding 
up both him and Master System just like we hope to do. Uh uh. When I was at 
Chen's, he didn't know where the other rings were-I'd stake my life on it. Then, 
when I got the message in his code on Melchior, there they were. I don't think 
he sent the code or the whole list to be sprung. I think somebody else did."
"Yeah, but why Hawks? I mean, even you said you thought the crash was 
accidental."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Chen seemed to think that Hawks was the key to the whole 
business. He's no real fighter, although brave enough. He's an intellectual. A 
historian. A man specializing in the last century of pre-Master civilization. He 
didn't know about the rings, but he knows a hell of a lot of history of that 
period. My orders, even direct from Chen, were to protect him at all costs. 
Nobody's that important by accident-not when you add up all the other 
coincidences. No, I'm on the job, just following orders. I don't know who, but I 
figure I'll find that out when we got the hard part done-if we can. Hawks is 
right about one thing-Master System is crippled when it comes to preventing us 
from getting the rings. Crippled, but not helpless. The odds are still pretty 
well against us."
Nagy scratched his ample chin and thought. "Well, two possibilities come to 
mind. I'm beginning to agree that coincidence has been stretched to the breaking 
point here, so that leaves the 'who' of it. One thought is that we're being 
thrown out here by Master System itself as some kind of final test of its 
security."
"I thought of that, but it doesn't wash. The rings are the only thing that can 
do it in. There's no way a logical beast like that could afford to let that kind 
of information out just for a test, particularly out of the Solar System. Once 
out, it could never get back-and sooner or later somebody would follow up on it 
and succeed. It's only chance was to shut this information down fast before it 
got out. No, by any logical standard, it just doesn't make sense. If nothing 
else, the mere news that something exists that can hurt or even kill Master 
System would be enough to spur people on. It knows that. It knows us all too 
well."
Nagy nodded. 'That brings me to the second thought I've had. You know Master 
System has been claiming for some time that there's a war on. That it's fighting 
even, holding its own, but no better. Nobody knows who it's warring with, but 
that's one hell of an enemy if it can fight Master System to a standstill. 
Maybe-just maybe-that's what this is all about. If you were out there, 
stalemated against our system, you'd find some way to get information, contacts, 
whatever. You'd learn. And if you stumbled on the fact that somewhere out here 
is a weapon that can blow Master System's brain out, you'd try for it."
The idea hadn't occurred to Raven and it fascinated him. "But-if that's true, 
then why us? Why not go after them yourself?"
Nagy shrugged. "As to why it's us, I couldn't guess. I can't figure Master 
System, so why should I be able to figure out somebody or something really 
alien? As to why get somebody else to go for them, there might be a real basic 
and simple answer. You said it yourself-in the core of Master System there is an 
imperative. We, as human beings, have a right to try for the rings. We have that 
edge, for whatever it's worth, and it might be very slim but it is an edge. An 
edge that wouldn't apply to nonhumans, by which I mean people not descended from 
Earth stock. Maybe they calculated everything and figured humans had the edge."
"Then that means that if we ever get them, we'll have more than just Master 
System and Chen and the rest of the power lovers to cope with. Nagy, suppose 
they don't come for them when and if we have them? Suppose they just ease the 
way so we get in and shut Master System down?"
Nagy smiled grimly. "Then they win, don't they?" He sighed. "Why don't we cross 
that bridge if we ever come to it? Damn it, we aren't even set up yet." He 
looked out across the crimson sea. "A few other islands over there. Sooner or 
later we're gonna need a boat to tour the neighborhood." He looked around the 
beach. "It's somewhat sheltered here-you can see how the big waves break well 
out there, so there's underwater lava or a reef or something here. I'd say we 
build right here-back there and against the jungle. Burn out a good-sized trail 
and keep it open- the jungle will try to take it back all the time." He looked 
over at the tallest peak. "Somebody's gonna have to get up there sooner or 
later, too. Establish a high refuge if we get any real nasty storms." He sighed, 
his mind racing at top speed. "If these are anything like Earth volcanoes, they 
make great topsoil. Bum away selected areas of jungle to get fields protected 
from the worst weather, and you could probably grow most anything here. I-"
There was a sudden loud splash behind him and he whirled, pistol out of his 
holster with amazing speed, his body automatically taking a defensive crouch. 
Raven's reaction was a bit slower, but in the same style. The Crow frowned, 
seeing nothing. "Something falling in? Or something leaping?"
"I don't know. They said the initial survey showed some large life forms in the 
water. Lots of them, in big groups, all over the place. Maybe that was just one 
of them. We'll have to find out what the hell's there before my boat can sail."
Raven reached in his pack and took out a pair of simple binoculars, part of the 
kit that he always carried. He holstered his weapon and looked through the 
lenses, surveying the surface of the water.
"Black shapes in the water. Fairly good size," he told Nagy. "I can't see very 
much of them and none of 'em are long enough to get much more than a blurry 
shape, but there's sure some big suckers out there. I don't know. They kinda 
look like the big otters we got along the Missouri and Mississippi, only even 
bigger." He lifted the binoculars so he was looking only at the surface. The 
closest island, about four kilometers distant, was now also in his sights. 
Something suddenly nagged at him, and he took his eye off the water and looked 
squarely at the island itself. "Nagy- I think you might want to take a look at 
this. I think we better call it in, too."
"Huh? What?" Nagy, too, had holstered his weapon and now he took the binoculars.
"That next island. To the right, there, maybe a couple of degrees, where the 
beach looks thin. Right above it."
Arnold Nagy stared. Then, after a moment, he saw what the Crow was talking 
about, and he felt a chill.
"That line of trees is in perfect rows," he muttered. "After centuries even if 
they were planted that way they wouldn't still be there. They're planted, all 
right, and maintained, but not by Master System."
"Freebooters?" Raven wondered.
He sighed. "Maybe, but I doubt it. Not their kind of layout. No ships, no fast 
getaway. Shipwreck, maybe, but that would be stretching coincidence beyond any 
reasonable bounds. Thousands of islands. Uh uh. Best bet is that the freebooters 
have a real good reason for steering clear of here. Best bet is there's places 
like that all over this planet. I think this was a much more advanced prototype 
than we figured."
"You mean-it's inhabited?"
"Looks like. I wonder by whom?"
"Or what?" Raven replied.
They reported to the ship.
"I'm not sure I like the look of this," Hawks commented. "Perhaps-perhaps we 
ought to rethink this idea of a planetary camp for now. There is enough room 
here."
"No," Star Eagle objected. "There is no such thing as the perfect world for you 
except the one of your birth. This ship is not fit for long-term habitation by a 
growing population, and while I intend extensive modifications, these might take 
a great deal of time and would necessitate everyone being off the ship. It is 
also not good for the child to come. While near-weightlessness is fine when the 
child is in the womb, it should not be born in this environment and not know 
gravity from the start."
Hawks began to wonder if Star Eagle wasn't more concerned about China than about 
their own needs, but he also knew he couldn't press the issue. In a very real 
sense the pilot was a free agent, and because he alone controlled access to the 
vast data banks and the interstellar drives, he had a vote that weighed far 
heavier than theirs. Hawks had to wonder, though, about the relationship between 
the small pregnant girl who might give birth in days or weeks and this machine 
intelligence with whom she mentally mated. Did-could-Star Eagle feel as humans 
felt? And, in this case, was he being protective-or running scared by forcing 
her away? There was no way to tell.
Hawks sighed. "Very well, but the initial camp must be well inland, near the 
transmitter. Whatever is down there is mostly of the sea, and it would be unwise 
to be too close to their domain. Can some sort of security perimeter be 
established around the camp? We are too few to have constant guards and would be 
easily overwhelmed."
"It is possible. I believe Maintenance can manufacture something that will do, 
but everyone should go armed at all times. If these are humans in any sense of 
the word, contact must be established and a treaty made, if at all possible."
"If they are humans, they might not be inclined to talk treaty first," Hawks 
responded. "We will not know their tribal ways until we press, or until they 
come to us. If they are too territorial, it might mean a fight."
Reba Koll's voice crackled. "If we can't beat them, how the hell could we ever 
take on Master System?"
Hawks sighed and wished he could get rid of the feeling that he was in the role 
of the cavalry marching against the peoples of early America. He slapped his 
thighs. "All right-we move!"
 
4. SETTLING SOME POLITICAL MATTERS

EXCEPT FOR THE HEAT AND THE HUMIDITY, IT FELT ALMOST most like home. Hawks sat 
before the campfire and looked around in the gloom. The maintenance robots had 
done the real heavy work, but all of the crew had a hand in what was wrought 
here. Ironically, it was Cloud Dancer, Silent Woman, and the Chows who had the 
proper design skills; the others were far too civilized and spoiled to know just 
how to build this way out of the materials of the forest around 
them-supplemented, of course, by the transmuter. Even so, the rest had all been 
quite amused to discover that neither Clayben nor Nagy had ever seen a pit 
toilet until now.
The transmuter was a valuable device, but it had its limits. It could turn out 
real and useful things from programs sent by Star Eagle, but only if they were 
no more than a meter or so square and no more than two meters high. Even the 
maintenance robots had to be sent in pieces and partly reassembled by hand, and 
this was where Clayben was invaluable. It had been fascinating to watch a bunch 
of spindly wires and meaningless metal forms take shape to a point, be 
activated, and then assemble the rest of themselves without additional aid.
So now, in a cleared area just off the rocks and reasonably far from the water, 
they had several huts made from a bamboolike plant, with roofs of thatched 
strawlike growths from still other plants. The huts were quite comfortable and 
relatively waterproof. With outdated carpentry tools provided by Star Eagle's 
apparently limitless data banks, basic furnishings had been built and a hand 
loom set up for Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman to weave blankets and other needed 
materials.
They still depended on the transmuter for most of their food; although the data 
banks of the generation ship contained the matrixes for a vast quantity of seed 
plants, it would take time and some care to cultivate such crops here, and there 
was no guarantee that what they planted would thrive in this planet's climate 
and soil.
Clayben was setting up a power generating station in consultation with Star 
Eagle, but right now they had only basic power, all of which went to maintaining 
the defensive perimeter. This was a series of rods set well into the ground, 
between each of which ran a slightly visible and quite effective criss-cross of 
electric beams. Anyone or anything going between them would get a very nasty 
jolt; anyone touching one of the posts itself would probably die. The device 
also made a pretty nasty crackling sound when the current was interrupted, loud 
enough and strange enough to wake the dead. It was hardly foolproof-what could 
be under these conditions?-but it guaranteed that any attacker could not come in 
without warning.
So far, there had been nothing. No signs, no attempts at contact. Hawks was 
fairly pleased; everyone, even Sabatini, had pitched in to help build the place. 
Koll and Clayben coexisted peaceably, if uneasily. Hawks had the distinct 
feeling that while Koll was willing and able to go through with her end of the 
bargain, at least for the immediate future, Clayben clearly was scared to death, 
and Nagy wasn't far behind him. The historian wished he knew or understood more 
about the strange woman. China was ever-present evidence of what Clayben was 
capable of doing in the name of playing god, but Hawks still couldn't accept the 
story of koll's origins at face value. That was the problem. This was a mob 
bound together by mutual need and circumstance; it was no team.
Over in his own meager hut, Isaac Clayben sat, his potbelly overflowing his 
simple loincloth as he worked by the light of a primitive fiery torch on a 
portable lab bench that was incomprehensible to any of the others and powered by 
small energy cells that seemed eternal. He was as cognizant as anyone of the 
incongruity of his activities under the circumstances, but he was determined. 
Indeed, his thoughts were not much different from those of Hawks.
"A rabble, Arnold, that's what we are. Primitive rabble at the mercy of an 
independent computer pilot. We will get nowhere this way."
Arnold Nagy sighed. "Doc, I think we ought to let things settle themselves here, 
at least for a while. Raven and Warlock are my sort of people-we understand each 
other and I can deal with them. Hawks is a kind of father figure to them, but 
he's no real leader type and he knows it. Other than them, only our China doll 
has real guts and brains, and she's pretty helpless and dependent. Let things 
sort themselves out."
"You forget the creature," Clayben reminded him. "You've seen the way it-looks 
at me. I haven't had a good night's sleep since we all came down here."
Nagy shrugged. "What can we do about it? You'd have to incinerate or electrocute 
it to a puddle. Shooting wouldn't work-you know that."
"If only I had access to my data base!"
Nagy sighed. "Doc, so you get the formula and you whip up a bath of the 
stabilizing shit. Ain't no way she's gonna jump into it and no way you can force 
it. Before you can deal with it, you gotta be in much better circumstances than 
here." It was curious how Nagy, the linguist and dialectician, dropped naturally 
into a very common nasal and slang-ridden vernacular. The listener tended to 
forget the mind behind that common working-class voice-which was, of course, 
exactly his intention.
"The trouble is, Arnold, we're going nowhere here. We're lapsing into a 
primitive, quasi-tribal existence with no cohesion and no drive. With the 
resources we have on the ships and the knowledge these people represent I could 
make this into the nucleus of a team that could conquer the universe-but I dare 
not. Move against them and whatever slight compact the creature feels toward the 
group will dissolve."
Sabatini had apparently been dozing on a cot, but now his eyes opened. "What did 
you say it would take to kill this whatever-it-is?"
"Incineration or massive electrocution."
"Would the fence have enough power?"
"Possibly-if it could be kept on long enough. You couldn't count on it, though."
Sabatini was silent for a moment. "These torches- they're oil fed, sort of, 
right?"
"Yes. It's synthesized in the transmuter from palm fronds. Why?"
"How much could we get? Suppose the old bird could be lured, maybe forced, into 
touching one of them posts and then, while she was bein' shocked, somebody 
poured this oil over her? Instant torch, right?"
Clayben stopped puttering and turned to stare at Sabatini. "You are becoming 
interesting. Go on."
"I think it can be arranged. She's been real protective of the girls, 
particularly the Chows and the Indians. The stream where we get the drinking 
water and the pit toilet are both real near the fence line, both in back, out of 
routine sight. I been itchin' to teach them Chow bitches a lesson in humility."
"Think you could?" Nagy asked, smirking a little. "Seems to me I heard tell the 
last time you thought that they shoved you out an air lock."
"It was that China broad. I underestimated her, but you fixed her good, Doc. 
Them other girls ain't no threat. China gave 'em their guts. I'm pretty sure I 
could lure Koll back usin' one of them."
Clayben stared at the former captain, the only one of them not out there of his 
own free will. "And then what, Captain? Assuming it works-then what?"
"Huh? Then we-you-take over, like you said."
The scientist cleared his throat. "Yes, and I suppose you know how to do that as 
well. What? Slit Raven and Warlock's throats? I doubt if that will be so easy, 
particularly the woman. She is a psychopath. She enjoys killing, and she is good 
at it, I suspect, or she wouldn't be here. Hawks, too, of course."
"Yeah, sure. Hell, if I can take out Koll, then you sure as hell can take out 
the others. Five women, three of us, should be real nice, with the China broad 
as hostage to makin' that computer do what we want."
Clayben glanced at Nagy, who rolled his eyes.
"As foreign a concept as this might be to you," Clayben said carefully, 
"diplomacy and deal making often gain more than brute force, Captain. However, 
I'm willing to meet you partway. You take out the creature for me, and I will 
make certain you get all the reward I can muster. Take her out and leave the 
rest to us."
Sabatini got up, yawned, and stretched. "Yeah, sure, Doc. Ain't that what I 
said?"
The pit toilet, dug as far from the huts and the water supply as possible, was 
very near the camp perimeter. Since the fence line could be breached by a 
projectile weapon such as stone, spear, or arrow, anyone using the facilities 
was in a vulnerable position. So no one went to the toilet without an armed 
guard. Manka Warlock or Reba Koll generally accompanied the women, since only 
those two had any experience with modern weapons.
Sabatini had planned fairly well. He had only to sit, and wait, watching from a 
vantage point to one side of the huts, until he saw Chow Dai walk casually out 
toward the pit toilet. Reba Koll remained in the more protected hut area, where 
she could stand guard without becoming a target herself. She wasn't even 
watching the girl, which allowed Sabatini to gather his small set of tools and 
make his way along the fence line unobserved. Chow Dai, finished, stood to 
adjust her ersatz skirt. Koll seemed preoccupied with something back toward the 
campfire area.
"You'd look better without that skirt," Sabatini said aloud to Chow Dai. "I 
remember you real good, honey. You been a long time without a man to give you 
what you need."
She started and looked at him in shock. Sabatini had cruelly tortured her and 
the others when they'd been helpless prisoners on his ship, and the memory of 
that remained.
"Get away, you bastard," she snarled at him bravely, although her voice was 
trembling. "If I need a man I will find one. There are none near me at this 
moment, only foul-smelling excrement."
"You little bitch! Do I have to teach you again?" He reached for her, 
deliberately, and with some melodramatic exaggeration.
She wriggled free and started to run, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back 
to him. She screamed.
Koll's head came around. For a brief second her hand went to the trigger on her 
pistol, but she didn't dare shoot, since Sabatini had a wriggling, panicky girl 
in his grasp.
"Sabatini, you worm!" she shouted, running out toward them. "You let her go 
right now! This has gone far enough!"
He grinned evilly at Reba Koll. "You gonna stop me, you washed-up hag?" Coldly 
seeing that Koll had no intention of shooting, he flung Chow Dai away and stood 
to face the onrushing woman, who clearly was too angered to think straight or 
call for help. Chow Dai just lay on the ground, stunned.
"I've taken far bigger and better'n you!" Koll snarled, assuming a judolike 
stance. Sabatini grinned and did likewise. Koll feinted, then jumped, her feet 
aiming for his stomach, but he moved aside, and she struck a glancing blow that 
did not unbalance him. He managed to turn a full circle and push her farther out 
toward the fence. She recovered but Sabatini reached into the grass and pulled 
up a long, thin wire that seemed to run all the way to the fence. She saw it, 
laughed, and jumped it, only to find herself tangled in a whole nest of wires 
carefully concealed in the grass between the pit toilet and the fence. She fell 
over, and he was on her, grabbing her and pulling her right hand to the charged 
post. She struggled, but she was caught in the wire and briefly confused, and he 
touched her hand to the post.
There was a loud and nasty electrical buzzing sound that startled the insects 
and carried far in the wind. Chow Dai for a moment could not understand what had 
happened; if he had touched Koll to the fence, then why was he not getting the 
charge, as well?
His boots! she realized suddenly. He's wearing his pressure suit's boots! They 
protect him!
He let go and stepped back as Reba Koll's scream of pain rose over the terrible 
sound of the fence's lethal charge. He reached over and pulled away her pistol, 
suddenly afraid that the charge would make the bullets fire, then stepped well 
back again.
Reba Koll's hand blackened, charred, and bubbled, and the stench of burning 
flesh suddenly filled the air. It seemed as if the hand were made of plastic, 
melting into a terrible bubble as Koll tried to pull away.
And Koll was pulling away, the right arm now connected to the bubbling mass that 
had been her hand by only some blackish, plasticlike goo, and then it was 
free-and she was free of the charge. Her hand was still on the post, still 
burning, but Reba Koll was no longer attached to it.
Sabatini frowned and stepped backward. "This ain't possible!" he muttered to 
himself.
Reba Koll was obviously in pain, but she got to her feet, her blackened stump 
looking all the more horrible as she did so. There was no blood, and that 
horrified Sabatini most of all. He edged back still more, toward the bucket of 
oil he'd brought out with him and set down before accosting Chow Dai.
"Now you've gone and done it," Reba Koll said in a dry, nasty voice that hardly 
seemed human. "Now you went and really made me mad! Who put you up to this? 
Clayben? Naw, he's too damned smart to think something like this would work. 
Okay, sonny, it's time now. Time for you and me to have a real intimate 
get-together." And, with that, she advanced toward him.
There was just something about it all that completely unnerved Sabatini. He 
reached frantically for the bucket and tripped over his own wires, falling to 
the ground.
Most of the others, attracted by the loud noises and commotion, had drawn up in 
a semicircle, watching. Too late to help Koll, they were unsure of what to do.
Sabatini, still on his back on the ground, got hold of Koll's pistol and brought 
it up. Seeing that, Warlock brought up her own pistol and took aim, but Clayben 
reached out and pushed it down. "No! She's not the one in trouble! Watch and 
learn!"
The black woman paused and looked over at Raven, who took the half cigar from 
his mouth and nodded.
Sabatini fired three times into Koll's body at point-blank range. The bullets 
tore into her, knocking her down and forcing her back, but even as the man was 
getting untangled and rising, so was Reba Roll. She stood there, three big holes 
in her chest, and though there were signs of bleeding, no blood was flowing now.
She laughed at him. "You're mine now. You went and spoiled this old rag I had 
on."
Manka Warlock stared along with the others. "Those were good shots," she said in 
wonder. "It is not possible! See the gaping exit wounds in her back!"
Reba Koll ripped off her skirt and tore off her gunbelt with tremendous 
strength, and then leaped at Sabatini. This time the man could not move out of 
the way; he was as stunned and totally confused as Manka Warlock and the rest of 
them.
Koll clung tightly to Sabatini, and the man's body suddenly stiffened. He opened 
his mouth in a cry of pain and surprise but nothing came out.
"Get away, Chow Dai! Get away now!" came a horrible, inhuman voice. The Chinese 
girl, suddenly animated, got up and ran to the others.
The two stood there a moment, a frozen tableau, the small, frail-looking old 
woman clutching the chest of the big, muscular Sabatini-and then it began to 
happen.
"Sweet Jesus!" Nagy swore. "They're melting!" He'd been told about Koll-over and 
over by Clayben-but until now there always remained some lingering doubt over 
whether Koll was anything more than she seemed or merely the subject of a 
Clayben dementia. There was no doubt now in any of their minds that Isaac 
Clayben, sane or not, had not been kidding.
Raven's cigar fell out of his mouth.
"Fortunately, it's very slow," Clayben remarked, his voice almost casual and 
clinical, as if discussing a sprained ankle. "That was the only reason we could 
capture and contain it at all. It's been a long time since I saw this. I'm glad 
it's no different. Gives me some odds."
His detachment was disturbing to most of them, but they could not take their 
eyes off the slow-motion drama now taking place before them.
The merged bodies had become a single seething mass of amorphous flesh; it 
writhed and wrinkled like some great monster, and slowly, very slowly, a form 
began building out of the center, as if something inside the mass was now rising 
to and then through the top. At first it was a head, humanoid but hardly human, 
a death's head with bloated, puffy flesh and no hair, eyes closed, lips and 
nostrils sealed. It was ugly and gruesome, but none could take his eyes off it 
even for a moment.
There was a neck now, then the torso started to emerge -a broad, muscular frame 
lacking in detail-then the waist, and finally thick, sturdy legs. Finally a 
complete figure stood in a thick pool of protoplasmic goo, but it was still not 
human, more like a thing of plastic or wax, an artificial man before the 
artisans had started to work. It was still being fed by the mass in which it was 
rooted like some strange tree, and it was still changing.
Subtly the skin texture and muscle tone changed, becoming flatter, harder, and 
more natural. The nipples, the fine detail of the male genitals, even, 
incredibly, a few minor scars on the torso were formed. Very slowly but 
steadily, so slowly that it couldn't really be tracked by the eye-the way the 
position of the hour hand on a clock keeps changing even though its movement 
cannot be followed-the rest of the detailing came in, including the hair, the 
lashes, and the rest. The figure was clearly recognizable now as Sabatini.
Then, quite suddenly, an imperceptible new energy was added to the figure, and 
it was no longer a statue of Sabatini, but a real human figure.
It gave a shudder, then breathed deeply. Its lips parted, and it flexed its arms 
and knees and turned on its hips.
The eyes opened, and he looked down at the mass of goo with distaste and stepped 
from it, strands of plasticlike flesh trailing, then breaking away. He squatted 
down and removed parts of it that still clung to his feet; behind him, the mass 
that remained seemed now devoid of purpose. It writhed a moment, then was still, 
all life and energy draining from it. It began to putrefy almost instantly.
The new Sabatini got up and looked at them. "That's the trouble with this if 
you've got conscience," he said in Sabatini's rich baritone. Even the accent was 
perfect. "One must either destroy those who are innocent and deserve life or one 
must make immortal the scum of the race. Don't worry, Clayben-I'll never eat you 
unless you force me to it. This is bad enough-to become you would be 
desecration." He looked over at Hawks. "Now you see why I am essential to this 
thing. No matter what hell hole and no matter what monstrosity might have a 
ring, he is not safe from me. I can become his confidant, his lifelong friend, 
his lover. I can even become him."
And me as well, thought Hawks glumly, knowing the others shared the same 
thought. Never had he thought so furiously and so logically to cover himself. 
"Can you become five or more of us at once, friend?"
The creature that was now Sabatini frowned. "What? Of course not. As you can 
see, the rest is rotting flesh."
"Can you become a Val, then, or a robot? Can you become Star Eagle?"
"You know I cannot. Why are you pressing this way?"
"It will take five different people working in willing concert to use those 
rings, I warn you, and if any of the five objects, it will be the destruction of 
them all. Even you could not withstand Master System in full defensive array and 
you know it. And you are only a bit less at risk than we. The Vals will be after 
you, as well. In a Val ship, in a machine environment, you will be as helpless 
as on Melchior and at the mercy of something far darker even than Clayben. 
Retain our partnership and you will share as I promised you would, but this is 
the last of our number that you will so consume."
"I intend to keep our bargain and my word, although I can see why you would 
fear. How would you know if I violated it?"
"We'd all know," Isaac Clayben said. "Because there wouldn't be any Sabatini any 
more, would there?"
"I, personally, and most of the others, as committed and full of hate as we are 
for the system, would bring in the Vals if this compact is broken," Hawks 
warned. "Your- ability-is incredible, beyond anything I would have believed only 
minutes ago. It is why you are here, included in this band."
"I'll behave," Sabatini said, sounding quite natural and Sabatini-like. "You 
trusted Koll, didn't you? She's still here-somewhere. I confess even I am unsure 
how it works. The big problem I have is that I'm compelled to be a nearly exact 
duplicate. Even if you subjected me to full examinations, I would be Sabatini 
and Sabatini alone. You do not possess the equipment, nor the know-how to create 
it, to tell me apart. I have his urges, his temperment, and his habits. I simply 
have more self-control than he did, and more of a conscience. By tomorrow I'll 
be Sabatini-a Sabatini who just changed sides, and knows more than he used to. 
I'm just not as stupid as he was." He yawned. "I think I'll get some sleep. It's 
been a long time since I did this, and I'd forgotten how tiring it is."
He walked off, and they let him go.
Raven crept close to Hawks. "Is that really true, Chief?"
he whispered in Lakota. "About needing five willing ones?"
Hawks shrugged and replied in English. "Beats the hell out of me, Crow."
Raven grinned. "Maybe you are the best man for this job, after all."
It was quite late, but many were not asleep. Hawks sat by the fire, impassive as 
always, his mind in some plane all his own, while behind him, in the center hut, 
Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman prepared to aid China in the imminent delivery of 
her child. It was neither tradition nor paternalism that found those two in 
there and he and the others away; nobody but the two women in attendance had 
ever done that sort of thing before.
Isaac Clayben came over and sat down next to Hawks. For a while the Hyiakutt did 
not move nor in any way show that he was even aware of company, but suddenly he 
asked, "Is Sabatini still sleeping?"
"Yes. It is fully capable of being on the go within minutes after it consumes, 
but if it can it sleeps for a long time, which helps it integrate all the new 
memories and information into its mind. You heard it this afternoon-Sabatini 
never talked like that. It is an incredible process at that, so much integrated 
into a single mind. I sometimes amaze myself with my handiwork."
"Did you create it-or order it created?"
"A bit of both. I did much of the theory, but others, more skilled than I, 
actually created it. The final single integrated program for it was the longest 
I had ever known. At computer speeds it took more than three days just to load 
that thing."
"It seems inconceivable that human beings could have created such a thing."
"Human beings created Master System. Just five of them, in fact, wrote all the 
code and debugged it and established it. Of course, it probably took an army of 
technicians to build even the initial primitive version and get it running 
right, but it was at its heart just five people. We don't know a lot about them 
except that they were not even typical of the polyglot culture in which they 
worked. Only two were native to the nation that employed them, for example. A 
Chinese Buddhist from Singapore; a Jewish lady from Israel; a black Moslem man 
from someplace in Africa, I believe; a part-Japanese girl from Hawaii; and an 
old Jewish professor from someplace in eastern North America. Funny-we know 
their names, their origins, and, of all things, their religions, but little 
else."
"I know. Much of it was suppressed. I suppose it was Master System's own choice 
to keep some details of them alive in the records. After all, they were, in a 
sense, its parents and creators. The Fellowship of the Rings, they called 
themselves. I understand it was from some popular work of the time. A joke. One 
masking a serious purpose. They knew their creation could turn on us all, 
Doctor. You should have learned something from that."
"I thought I had it all figured out. All contained. We were extra careful. We 
simply did not foresee how good an organism we had created. It is less an 
organism than a colony. Memory, control, you name it, is distributed in a unique 
and ever-changing pattern throughout the cells. You could blow Sabatini's brains 
out and it would only slow it down. Sabatini's memories and personality would be 
gone, but the rest-that's stored and accessed differently. Unfortunately, what 
allows it to survive also makes it eventually unstable. Cells die or wear, new 
ones replace them. We hardly notice, but it does. Its cells have to do so much 
more than ours that it can't replace them at our rate by normal means. You saw 
how it can do the job all at once."
"I saw. It was a person once? A real human?"
"Yes. Frankly, I don't even remember who. Someone from the penal area whom we 
took and cleaned with the mindprinter of all memory and all personality. A 
spiritual blank, as it were. It was the only merciful way to do it. After all, 
it--the mechanism-needed to know how we work, the quadrillions of intricate 
interrelationships we all possess. The original was a physical template, nothing 
more. A dedicated army of those could be anyone anywhere, walk through any 
security except the highest machine-only accesses, be invulnerable to most 
threats. Sent out as information collectors, they could get all the bits and 
pieces of knowledge we cannot and put it together. I had no knowledge of the 
rings. It seemed a fragile hope, but the only one, of breaking the system."
"Why, Doctor?"
"Huh? Why what?"
"Why bother breaking the system? You and it seem so well made for each other, 
and I cannot see you as wanting to be god. Too much detail work. You were as 
free as any human can be in your own little playground. Certainly not on moral 
grounds, nor out of revenge. Why break the system?"
"Forbidden Knowledge. We were always on the edge of discovery, of being wiped 
out or worse. I have no idea why Master System ever tolerated Melchior. Even 
there, we had so many dead ends, and we were not free to pursue any leads we 
might develop. Humanity was born to quest for knowledge, Hawks. It is the only 
activity that really matters. The system places great limits on that, and I do 
not believe in limits."
"That," Hawks said dryly, "is obvious."
"I could ask the same of you, you know. I think we are more alike than you want 
to admit. The system wasn't exactly bad to you, either. You knew when you opened 
and read that pouch, even before you had actually divined a single word, that it 
would be dangerous, probably fatal. You just couldn't resist it. Forbidden 
Knowledge."
There was a sudden series of loud shrieks from behind them, then sudden silence, 
then the cry of a newborn baby. Neither man turned to the source of the sound, 
but both heard and understood.
"Just another digit in the mass of humanity to you, Doctor," Hawks remarked. 
"Another subject, another plaything, nothing more. Not a new soul damned to 
strangulation, its future one of chains. That is the difference between us. That 
new one in there, who is getting such a rude awakening, is just as important, if 
not more important, to me than you are. You will not understand that. You will 
quantify it or dismiss it, but that is because there is a part of you that is 
missing. That is your curse, Doctor-the ultimate irony. Even without Master 
System there is Forbidden Knowledge for you; Forbidden Knowledge you can never 
have because you can never comprehend it. The quest is not the end, it is the 
means."
"Spiritual claptrap. You are blinded by your romanticism and your mysticism, 
Hawks. You will never attain what you seek until you discard them."
"The Fellowship did so, and gave us Master System. You did so, and now you cower 
in fear of your own creation. I do not wish to become Master System, Doctor. I 
do not wish a race of organic robots. That creature was your second creation, 
your second monster, Doctor-not your first. You are by far your most dangerous 
and aberrant creation."
Cloud Dancer emerged from the hut behind them and approached the two men sitting 
by the fire. "It is a boy child," she told them. "Healthy, looking well. The 
mother is also doing quite well physically, although her mind seems addled. It 
is almost as if she is drugged. I do not believe she even remembers her name or 
where she is, but she is suddenly all very soft and she smiles dreamily. She 
speaks gently and only of the act of giving birth. It is not the same woman."
Isaac Clayben sighed. "This one isn't really my fault, you know." He sounded 
almost defensive. "Had I known that we'd all be stuck together like this in the 
immediate future I wouldn't have meddled at all, but this would have eventually 
come about anyway. I helped things along, I admit, but she is her father's 
creation."
Hawks looked over at the scientist. "What do you mean?"
"The old man's chief administrator for China, and brilliant in many ways, but 
he's handicapped as much or more than most of us by the culture in which he was 
born and raised. He had the same sort of idea I did-to breed a superior race 
that might be able to run rings around Master System-but he was more 
conventional. He used his own daughter-his own daughter, mind you-for it. In 
fact, she wasn't conceived in the usual way at all, but in a laboratory, from 
modified egg and sperm. She was designed to be superior, but there are lots of 
superior individuals about these days. He wanted more than that, and he's a 
patient man. She was a prototype, too, of a possible large group of superior 
human beings-physically, mentally, you name it. Women who would breed his 
superior race. He wasn't dumb, either-he knew that if she were not superior it 
was all for nothing, but if she was she'd hardly be content breeding future 
generations, so he planned to have her reverted to a nontechnological level so 
she wouldn't know what she was missing and would accept her lot in a patriarchal 
system. The marriage arranged for her was actually a sham-the fellow's a highly 
born noble all right, but he's a total homosexual in a society that considers 
that grounds for death by torture. Being highly placed and well connected, he 
accepted the marriage and arrangement in much the same way others in his 
position have since time immemorial."
Hawks nodded. "I see. And since she would bear many children, he would have 
honor and manhood even though they would be from specially modified laboratory 
sperm and not his at all. Under orders from husband and family, she would 
accept, like it or not."
"Well, if she didn't, he had the way to make her fall into it. Once impregnated, 
her entire brain and body chemistry changed permanently. Pregnancy is her 
natural condition; she is compelled to be so. Everyone-you, me, Cloud Dancer, 
Raven, you name it-have elements of both the male and female in us, 
biochemically speaking. All but China. During labor her body purged itself of 
all male-linked hormones and biochemical blockers. The only way to trigger 
aggression in her would be to threaten the child. She will react to maleness, 
even in the other women. She will be quite childlike, docile, eager to please, 
and without any control of her passions. She will quite literally do anything 
you want and beg to be ravished. Nothing else will matter-until she is pregnant 
once again. That will restore the balance and trigger normalcy of a sort in her 
system and she will be back in control, regaining her maleness, as it were. In 
fact, in the old man's original genetic map, she would remain as she now is, 
which was what he wanted. I restored the chemical balance, allowing her, once 
pregnant, to regain her control and will. That way the experiment goes on, but 
without wasting that brilliant mind."
"I think that is disgusting," Cloud Dancer remarked. "She is but a girl 
yet-seventeen, eighteen perhaps. You are saying she will be compelled, if she 
lives that long, to bear children for the next twenty-five or thirty years 
nonstop, all the time knowing and remembering."
"Worse than that. She's physically perfect, as well. She's going to remain 
youthful, healthy, and strong abnormally long, and free of most diseases that 
might ravage others. Assuming we aren't all blown up or wiped out, she could be 
doing this for the next seventy or eighty years-a one-woman colonization 
program. The pilot understood this. I think she might, as well, although she's 
repressed it to keep sane. And we need her sane. Next to me, she probably 
understands these machine intelligences better than anyone alive. Unfortunately, 
what looked simple to handle on Melchior now complicates us beyond belief. The 
longer she remains in this submissive and animalistic state, the harder it will 
be for her to deal with it when she is not. Her sanity depends on perpetual 
pregnancy, and that means we will soon be knee-deep in children, all of whom 
will require care and attention and possibly something approaching a staff. We 
can't spare that staff-and we can't spare her."
"You seem to know a lot about her situation," Hawks noted suspiciously.
"Well, of course, we had to read it all out to modify it or we would have lost 
that mind and will for good. We were aided because the old man quite naturally 
used Melchior's resources in establishing his genetic criteria. I had no real 
part in it, but Melchior did it. We had the records."
"So all the great minds of the world have spent their time devising monsters," 
Hawks commented, "and they are all with us. Anything you want to tell me about 
yourself or any of the others here? At one time or another we were all common to 
Melchior."
Clayben gave an odd half smile. "Nothing, really. Those of you who were 
prisoners rather than employees or staff were either too important or not 
important enough, I'm afraid. We were going to use your wives and the Chows as 
nursery matrons for the early products of the experiment, of course, and we did 
some minor mental conditioning to that effect, but nothing serious and nothing 
that might be an impairment. Nothing else that I know of."
Hawks slapped his knee impatiently. "Damn it! We cannot just sit here and rot! 
The time to move is now, before things get too domesticated." He sighed. "Yet we 
must wait for Star Eagle. I wish I knew just what he was planning that is taking 
so long."
The crying stopped behind them, and there was a sudden stillness that seemed 
louder than the noises. Hawks looked at Cloud Dancer. "For now it's Raven, Nagy, 
and I. We will draw lots when she is physically up to it. I do not like it, but 
these are exceptional circumstances."
She nodded. "I understand. I do not think it would be moral or proper for him to 
be included." She referred to Clayben, who said nothing.
"What about Sabatini, Doctor?" Hawks added, suddenly struck by the implications. 
"What would be the result of such a thing?"
"I'm not certain. There wouldn't be sufficient information in a single sperm 
cell to do anything terrible. It won't breed, if that's what you're thinking 
about. It's probable that the union would be rejected, the product spontaneously 
aborted, but I don't really know. I'd rather not have to deal with that one if 
we can avoid it."
"Then it is up to us to make certain that is avoided. At any cost."
"Star Eagle to Pirate's Den."
"Go ahead," Hawks responded. "We thought we had been forgotten and abandoned."
"Do you know what it is like to do massive maintenance without a proper 
shipyard? It was like performing surgery on yourself. Thunder is still not 
completed, but Lightning, I believe, is ready and well prepared. I wish to know 
the condition of all below."
Hawks gave the computer pilot all the news in fairly explicit terms, 
particularly about China and Reba Koll.
"China is now all right?"
"Yes. She's coming out of her physiological stage and will be back to normal in 
another week or two at most, but I don't think it would be wise to part her from 
the child for any length of time as yet. Still, we're hot, tired, and very bored 
down here. The whole thing is very limited."
"I understand. I have not been idle myself, since my alterations are internal 
and are not affected by my movement. I have used the time to check out the 
situation. There is a world called Halinachi one jump and no more than six days 
from here that is a freebooter stronghold and base. I have no data except 
monitored transmissions on it, but it appears to be one of the officially 
tolerated outposts. There are at least two Vals in the vicinity and there is 
some indication that they go down to the settlement there."
That was a surprise. "I thought the freebooters were more tolerated than 
actually part of the system."
"They exist only because they are occasionally useful to Master System and 
otherwise do not get in its way. However, most freebooters hate the system as 
much as we- they just have no choice, as we did not. I had hoped that Koll would 
have contacts there."
Hawks thought a moment. "Nagy, too, maybe. Let's see." He summoned both the 
security chief and the one now called Sabatini. "Halinachi. Either of you know 
it?"
"Both of us, I expect," Nagy replied. He was getting a fairly good dark beard, 
and the sun had turned him almost as brown as Hawks was naturally. "I've been 
there. It's one of a half-dozen contact worlds used by both sides when they want 
something from the other."
"I can see much that they might wish from Master System, but what could they 
offer it?"
Sabatini spat. "Eyes and ears. Human bodies who can walk the other side where 
the best machines can't get. The freebooters control the illicit trade between 
the colonial worlds-the stuff Master System won't let get traded the usual ways. 
It'd take Master System too much time and effort to really stamp it out, so it 
just tries to limit it to things that won't really upset the apple cart. Because 
of this, though, they're able to have the confidence of some of the top 
administrators in the colonies. They hear things, and they listen. When they 
hear a bit of news that would interest Master System, they trade the secrets for 
something they want or need. You of all people should know that the system can 
be beat, to a point. To fill in the gaps, as it were, the machine uses the 
freebooters. It's simple."
"They sound like rather interesting excuses for human beings. The questions are 
simple, then. Would they turn any of us in to Master System for that sort of 
reward?"
"Probably," Nagy responded. "At least we'd be in the file of people to sell out 
when the time was right."
"Then how can you deal with them?"
Nagy sighed. "Look, you got to see it their way, too. They ain't living in the 
lap of luxury, you know. No cradle-to-grave care for them, no instant spare 
parts, nothing. They're high-tech barbarians, and they're not even all human by 
our lights. Lots of 'em are colonials. They don't live, most of 'em. They 
survive. Survive in a thousand little pockets scattered to hell and gone, like 
this one we got here. They like to think they're outside the system- hell, I 
think they all believe they're outside the system- but they're really a part of 
it. They'd sell their own mother because they're part of it. They really believe 
the system can't be broken but only bent, just like all of us bent it. They're 
true believers, just like we were."
Hawks thought it over. "Suppose they thought there was a chance to break the 
system? What would they do?"
"Try to break it, most likely," Sabatini replied. "Only not as a team, more like 
a mob. The ones who believed it would be shooting each other to get to the 
rings. The ones who didn't would turn the ones who did in to Master System."
"Can any of them be bought? Or rented?"
Sabatini chuckled. "We got nothing to buy them with, and even less to rent that 
the other side couldn't outbid."
Nagy scratched his chin in thought. "Hold it. Maybe we're going at this wrong. 
The one thing they're scared of is strength. That's why Master System is the big 
cheese even when they kid themselves that it's not. They have their masters and 
their warlords. Not all of 'em, sure, but a fair number. This Halinachi-it's 
more a big town than a world. Most of the world's not very habitable. Last time 
I was there it was run by a fellow name of Fernando Sava-phoong. Get him 
interested in the rings and you got a real power there with a lot of resources."
"Yeah, sure-and then he knocks us all off and goes after the rings himself," 
Sabatini pointed out. "You can't make a deal that'll stick with his kind-except 
the kind that has him sticking something in your gut or back. Nope. If we need 
warm bodies the best thing to do is prowl and take some of the freebooters by 
force, and then run 'em through the mindprinter and whatever else we got to make 
'em ours."
First Warlock, then Raven, had noticed and approached the conversation, and both 
had been listening quietly.
"Suppose we eliminated this leader. Who would rule?" Warlock asked them.
"The next in line, mostly likely," Sabatini replied. "Not the one who knocked 
him off, that's for sure. If you could knock him off, and nobody's invulnerable, 
he's got a setup so the killer at least would go, too."
"And if the next chieftain was eliminated, and the next?"
"Eventually they'd have your number, and somebody would be smart enough to spare 
no expense and effort to track us down and pay us back for the sake of sheer 
insurance. If you were good enough or powerful enough to prevent that, which I 
doubt, then you'd make the next in line scared enough to call in the Vals and 
all the resources of Master System."
"They would not make a deal to avoid this?"
"Doubtful," Nagy put in. "Or, if they did, then you'd have to expose yourself to 
them. They take the deal and. then they wipe you out, deal or no deal. We start 
messin' with the freebooters in more than a casual way, and we got to decide 
just how many bodies we want piled up."
"Ours or theirs?" Raven asked casually.
Hawks settled back and thought for a moment. This is what it is like to be 
chief, he told himself. How many bodies...? For that matter, whose bodies? It 
was a good question, one he'd never really thought about until now. Could he 
order a massacre if he had to? Could he be as ruthless and heartless as the 
enemy in order to break him?
"What if this man believed that Master System had turned against him? Or could 
be turned against him?" he asked them. "What if he could be convinced that his 
petty little empire could not be held?"
They all looked at him. "You got something, Chief?" Raven asked.
"We need information," he told them. "We need to know the organization, the 
structure there, everything. Lightning is ready and available. Could we get in 
and get this sort of information without drawing the dogs of the Master?"
"Maybe," Nagy replied. "Not you, though, or anybody else with them tattoos on 
their cheeks. Ain't nobody else with those particular designs roaming around, so 
there's no way to hide who you are and where you came from. I haven't been there 
in quite a while, and not too many people would recognize me on sight. Sabatini, 
here, is perfect
-no marks and a total unknown there who still knows his way around thanks to 
his, uh, past lives, and I'm pretty sure we can do a halfway decent disguise on 
Raven and Warlock here, which would also gain us two more people with some 
deep-space experience. More would be obvious."
Sabatini smiled grimly. "I could-become-this Fernando Savaphoong. That would 
vastly simplify matters."
"Perhaps. For a while," Hawks replied, "but only for a while. What happens when 
we need you to become someone else? What happens if your underlings cannot see 
the profit and will not go along? No, we'll keep that in reserve, but not 
immediately." He sighed. "I wish I could go along!"
"Get used to it, Chief," Raven said, anticipating some action at last with 
obvious excitement. "You should know
-chiefs don't lead their men into battle, they stand on the high ground and 
direct it. You just watch it while we're gone. I still don't trust Clayben 
farther than I can throw him and I can't even pick him up."
The Hyiakutt historian suddenly started and snapped his fingers. "Of course!" he 
muttered to himself. "Of course!"
"You got something, Chief?" Raven asked him.
"This whole business has been percolating through my mind for weeks now. There's 
been nothing much else to think about, anyway. Suddenly, just now, it all came 
together. We are few in numbers and relative power. Most of us cannot go into 
any civilized company without being known. Master System is required only to 
allow us the attempt, not the success, and it knows where we must go to get the 
rings, so it need only watch and wait there and we must come to it."
"Yeah, so?" Nagy prompted.
"There is an old story, with many variations, of the professional master thief 
who wagers a fortune with a rich man that the rich man will be successfully 
robbed within a week. The rich man is robbed, in spite of all his precautions, 
yet when he comes to arrest the thief the suspect is found to have spent the 
whole evening with the chief of police."
"I've heard that one," Nagy responded. "He didn't bet that he would rob the 
guy-he just bet the guy would be successfully robbed. That drew every thief in 
the world to the job since they figured they could take the rich man and the 
thief would take the fall. Go on. I'm beginning to see the way you're thinking 
and I think I like it."
"We are pirates, not secret agents. Suppose we did tell everyone, and I mean 
everyone, about the rings and what they did? Suppose we spread it throughout the 
entire freebooter camp? A hundred camps. They would go for it, would they not? 
After all, Master System will be looking for us to make the attempt. It knows 
where we must go- and so do we. We need only set the bait and wait for the 
experts to flock to it. Then we take the rings from those who succeed."
"Tricky, but not as tricky as trying to heist them ourselves," Arnold Nagy 
agreed. "We'll need more ships, more intelligence. We'll have to know the what 
and where. And we'll have to be better than Master System."
"That is what we start first. Communications. Intelligence. Ships. Training our 
own people and recruiting some specific personnel. There will be lots of details 
to work out before we can even start it all going."
"It ain't bad," Raven commented, "but it needs work. What if we can't track down 
all these thieves? What if they get away with the rings?"
"How many? One ring does no one any good, nor two, nor three, nor even four. We 
will use Chen's logic against him. Even if someone were to amass all four they 
would have to go to Chen. These freebooters never went beyond Melchior by law 
and custom. They would not know. We can offer the fifth ring. We can also offer 
more-expertise on how they are to be used. In the end, remember, all five must 
be brought to Master System itself with quick death the penalty for any 
mistakes."
"That's all well and good, Chief, but we don't have that expertise and you know 
it. We don't know where Master System is any more than they do, let alone how to 
make it all work."
"That may be true, but they do not have to know that. The very alarm put out by 
Master System will spotlight us as the experts, the ones who know. Consider: 
First the rings must be located, then stolen-the last no easy task in any case. 
Then the various organizations that have them must settle it between themselves 
until one has them all. Finally, they must bring them to us to know how to use 
them-to us or to Chen, if they learn of him. We will be conciliatory. We will 
deal. We will put it together."
Hawks had left the communications channels open and now activated the 
communicator. "You hear all this, Star Eagle?"
"I do and I concur. First things first, though. We must know just what we face 
in the freebooter camp. I should be able to shadow and monitor them from a 
distance so long as there are no Vals or direct sensor stations within the 
system itself. We need information and we need contacts. As for ships-we will 
make the pirates of the Thunder a legend here."
Raven smacked one fist into the other. "Hot damn! Let's do it!"
 
5. A NICE LITTLE LAYOVER

THE CHANGES THAT HAD BEEN WROUGHT IN Lightning were astonishing. Its original 
exterior had resembled nothing so much as two bullet-shaped tubes attached to 
either side of a very large but similarly shaped tube of dull gun-metal gray. 
Now the area between the tubes had been neatly filled in and reshaped and the 
entire thing coated with a dull bronze-looking substance. It now looked like a 
three-edged metal arrowhead and resembled no known ship profile. But on sensor 
screens and scopes, it would look very much like a Val fighter.
It was a good compromise. Such a strange-looking ship would cause much curiosity 
but no real alarm when viewed by the freebooters, yet it would have to get very 
close in to be seen as an unfriendly vessel by the average Master System pilot.
The inside had been changed, as well. Clayben's precious computer backup files, 
to which he was still forbidden access, along with the separate unit that held 
and ran them, had been removed and placed within a chamber in Thunder. This 
freed up a great deal of space; in an emergency, Lightning could hold the entire 
company. A duplicate of the old interplanetary ship's galley had been installed 
and could sustain them indefinitely, although in spartan conditions. The 
considerable armament had been retained and checked, and instrumentation had 
been added to allow for far more effective displays to the human occupants.
"I wish I could have done more," Star Eagle told them apologetically. "If I had 
the shops and the full facilities for disassembly, and the time, I would have 
loved to have made more of them, but with what I have this is the best that 
could be done. I have scanned and analyzed it inside and out down to the 
molecular level; if we ever get hold of a shipyard I might well be able to turn 
out more. Still, I have learned much from it that could be incorporated into 
other ships."
Nagy slid into the Captain's chair. The two forward positions had been retained 
in their original forms, including the comfortable bracing chairs. The other 
seats were more utilitarian. "I kinda miss the yacht feeling." The former 
security chief sighed. "But this is better for our purposes."
"How hard is it to fly?" Raven asked him.
"Very easy once you get practice. You're right, that's what we should do first. 
Any one of us oughtta be able to take this sucker off and get the hell out of 
someplace if something happens to the rest. Sabatini, I hope I can assume that 
your Koll memories would let you run this thing if you had to."
"If it uses the standard interface override, yeah."
"Okay, then-we've got two. Raven, I don't expect you or Warlock to get to be 
expert pilots, but I think I can teach you the basics. Sabatini, you ride 
weapons in the second chair. I think we'll check her out first, then see about a 
few lessons."
He reached down and picked up the helmet. "This is the interface-same as the 
China girl used with the Thunder, essentially. You put it on and you get a mild 
anesthetic effect and you relax and concentrate. It maps the input-output 
circuitry of your brain and determines what impulse code means what. Takes a few 
seconds. Then you get plugged in to whatever the interface plugs you into. 
Either of these positions can handle either weapons or flying, but right now I'm 
set for the ship and Sabatini's set for the weapons systems. Now, the computers 
in this thing can think a lot faster than any of us, so in a crisis don't get 
bogged down with who's controlling who. When you need instant reactions, let it 
go. You can override if need be and provide consultation. When it's noncritical, 
you fly it. If things get damaged, you might have to do it all."
He leaned forward and punched in a code on a small keypad, then threw a small 
switch and touched another code into the pad. "I've just activated both 
interfaces and directed them to their appropriate functions," he told them. 
"We'll have to come up with new codes all of us can remember. You only get three 
tries. Muff it the first two times and it just doesn't work; muff it the third 
time and it'll seem to work but when you put the helmet on it'll just put you to 
sleep and keep you there until somebody with the right code comes and finds you. 
Keeps things nice and secure. All right, we're gonna take it out of here and 
check it all out. Then we'll let you get a taste of it."
He put on the helmet and leaned back in the chair as Sabatini did the same. Both 
men seemed to relax and then lapse into a deep sleep. Only a few seconds 
elapsed, and then Star Eagle opened the Thunder's cargo-bay door and Lightning 
shuddered and came slowly to life. It lifted smoothly a meter or so off the 
deck, began a slow turn to the open space beyond, then moved slowly and 
deliberately out and away.
Instruments and screens flared into life, one showing a view of the massive 
Thunder already receding as they sped away.
"Mighty efficient, but it ain't much good for conversation," Raven noted to 
Warlock, who just shrugged.
"There's no problem with conversation," said the apparently sleeping form of 
Arnold Nagy. "I may be connected up to the ship, but that just makes it an 
extension of myself. Of course, I can conveniently shut you out if I want to, 
which is nice sometimes, and just concentrate on the ship."
The ship shuddered a few times, and they heard some very strange and unnatural 
short, sharp sounds. "What is that?" Warlock asked.
"Target practice," Sabatini replied. "We throw out some junk at random, and I 
try and hit it. Nothing to it. This is a very impressive ship."
Nagy's body suddenly gave a jerk, and he took several deep breaths, opened his 
eyes, sat up, and removed his helmet.
"Who's flying this thing?" Raven asked nervously.
"It flies itself pretty well until it needs to ask a question," Nagy replied. 
"All right, want to try it? I'm gonna switch Sabatini over to copilot and put 
the defense systems on automatic."
Raven licked his lips nervously. "I ain't never been a pilot for anything more 
than a horse and a canoe. I never even tried a skimmer."
Nagy chuckled. "You're probably better off because you don't have to unlearn as 
much. Most experienced flyers want to do it all or override the computer too 
much. Just go ahead and go with the flow. I think you'll find it's easier than 
the canoe. I always turned over in canoes."
Raven snorted. "Since when did Hungarians ride canoes?" But he moved forward and 
allowed Nagy to settle him into the seat and lower the helmet.
"This," Arnold Nagy said, "was the way it was supposed to work."
Raven felt momentarily dizzy, then very relaxed; the small aches and pains that 
he, like everyone, lived with vanished, but awareness did not. If anything, it 
improved; Raven was reminded of the many tales of "out-of-body" experiences, 
some of which were solidly entrenched in Crow mysticism. He could see himself, 
and the others, as well, in a sort of three-dimensional mental picture. The mere 
sight of all sides of an object at once was at first disorienting, them simply 
strange.
"Let the inside take care of itself." Sabatini's voice came to him, not aloud 
but inside his mind. "Look outside, out there-and you will have the inside, as 
well. Don't think about it-just do it."
The starfield burst around him. He concentrated on a single direction and 
suddenly had the intricate details of a star map in his mind, including names, 
distances, and relationships. He understood it now, understood what China felt 
when she was one with the Thunder; he even approached, perhaps, what Star Eagle 
truly was. He, Raven, was one with the ship! He was the ship; all its functions, 
all its commands, ail its data, were at his instant beck and call. The powerful 
engines were no more or less to him than his own arms and legs, and could be 
used without any more thought. And yet this extended to his human form as well; 
his body was no different from the rest of the ship's functions and as easily 
managed.
I am the father of all eagles! he thought, exhilarated.
Don't think about it, just do it. It really was as simple as that. One did not 
think about walking or talking or picking something up; all that information was 
in the brain encoded for automatic response to the desire to do it. The ship and 
its data were now such an extension; one didn't have to think about it to pilot 
it.
"It's a little more complicated than that," Sabatini responded, apparently 
hearing and understanding Raven's surface thoughts. "But I think you have enough 
of a hang of it to fly it if you had to. We'll practice the finer stuff later. 
Let me switch you out and allow Warlock the experience, just in case."
Raven was reluctant; he really didn't want to cut the connection, but he was not 
fully in charge. The sense of diminution, of suddenly being weak and small after 
having been powerful and great, was overwhelming. He took off the helmet, handed 
it to Nagy, and went back to his old seat, where he idly lit a half cigar. The 
air filtration system suddenly switched to maximum.
"You know, that's a hell of a thing," he commented, mostly to himself. "Now I 
think I understand why our China girl wants desperately to be a spaceship."
Halinachi was not much of a world, but it was one of those very few places not 
fully under the tyranny of the machine. But that didn't make it any less 
dangerous, since this was one of the points where Master System and the few who 
lived outside the system met as neutrals, almost as equals. Almost-for those who 
lived here and ran the place understood that the only reason Master System 
tolerated this world was that it was useful to the System, and the only reason 
it hadn't done a mass extermination of the freebooters themselves was that they 
were little threat and sometimes a help.
"In effect, to live outside the system you must kiss its ass," Warlock noted 
dryly. "These are not free people. They are merely masochists."
Nagy chuckled. "Well, you have something of a point there, but freedom isn't 
what's real, it's a state of mind. Earth's ignorant, primitive masses mostly 
believe they're free and independent, and wouldn't know a computer or a skimmer 
or a round Earth from the Circles of Hell."
"But they are kept in ignorance," Raven pointed out. "These people know."
"Never overestimate the human mind," Nagy responded. "Even without the aid of 
mindprinters and hypnoscanners and all the rest, people can convince themselves 
of most anything, if they really want to."
The screens showed a small, rocky, barren world, the antithesis of the one from 
which they'd come. Weather here was rare, and a small but strong sun, more 
orange than the ones they had known, beat upon it. Halinachi was a colorful 
place with buttes and bizarre, twisted landforms in oranges, purples, and tans, 
but there was not much green.
"It has an atmosphere, one that blocks out most of the really nasty stuff the 
sun sends out, but not much water," Arnold Nagy told them. "You couldn't breathe 
the stuff- more nitrogen than we're used to, and not enough oxygen to really do 
the job. Still, there's nothing down there that'll really hurt you, either, so 
you can pretty well get along with just an air supply and nosepiece or mask. If 
you ever really added the right stuff to the air and got a lot of water you 
could probably grow stuff here and maybe make it livable, but nobody's really 
inclined to do it. You'd need Master System's logistics, and it isn't about to 
help."
"People actually live on that hole?" Raven asked, somewhat appalled. "It looks 
as lifeless as the Moon."
"It is. Only one settlement-that's Savaphoong's. We'll be coming up on it 
shortly, and I expect to be hailed by
their controllers."
That expectation was fulfilled almost immediately, and Nagy tended to it after 
putting up a view of the settlement on the big screen. It looked to be two 
fairly large domes connected by a long cylinder, with several smaller domes 
along the cylinder itself. It resembled a space station more than a ground 
settlement.
Just off one of the large domes was a small spaceport. They could not build a 
ship there, but they could probably overhaul, modify, and service one. From the 
looks of the place, though, Lightning, which was not a large vessel, would be 
about the largest they could handle down there.
Any form of money was worthless on Halinachi. Anyone who controlled a transmuter 
controlled everyone dependent on it. The true medium of exchange was 
information, innovation, and ideas-but there was a single commodity that was 
always welcome, and that was murylium. The irony of the transmuter was that it 
could not take its power from its own sources; it needed an independent, direct 
source, a particular compound of absolute purity and quality one key component 
of which was murylium, a scarce mineral found only in a few places in the 
universe.
As Fernando Savaphoong controlled his minions by alone controlling the 
transmuters, so was he dependent on a supply of murylium, the one substance 
transmuters needed and could not make.
It seemed that every time one tried to make murylium from a murylium-powered 
device, one got blown to bits, along with about thirty cubic kilometers of 
surrounding planet.
Melchior had once had massive amounts of the stuff; Master System's early robot 
probes had discovered as much and had mined the hell out of it. Those caverns 
were modern Melchior, and Melchior itself was powered by the leftover amounts.
So, in a sense, Halinachi was like a gold-mining town of the ancient North 
American West or Australia or South Africa, but it also traded in other things. 
Lightning and the Thunder needed all the murylium they could get; they had very 
little. Nagy had considered the problem, and Clayben had supplied the solution-a 
simple set of equations that would increase the transmitter's efficiency by more 
than ten percent; one of Melchior's little discoveries needed because Melchior 
had been running on traces of its cannibalized self.
"And we just give that to Savaphoong?" Raven asked. "And so he takes it and 
we're still in the hole."
"No, he wouldn't do that," Nagy assured him. "You see, if he didn't give fair 
return, or if he double-crossed those bringing him things, he would very quickly 
find himself a nonmarket. There is a lot of competition out here, and not only 
among the three more or less legally tolerated outposts. He'll pay-and pay 
well-in Halinachi credit because he wants the next item exclusively. See?"
"One good mindprobe on any of us and he has got it all," Warlock noted 
suspiciously.
"If he did, there'd also be a lot of repercussions," Nagy assured her. "But, in 
any case, that's why we are taking precautions, and that's why the Thunder is 
monitoring us. Damn it, we're all professional killers and these are our own 
kind. I don't worry much about Savaphoong. I worry about that small black ship 
in Bay Three."
Warlock gasped. "A Val ship! We dare not go in now!"
"We dare not not go in now," Nagy replied casually. "We'd never outrun it, and I 
seriously doubt that we could outfight it right now, and that's what we'd have 
to do."
"But what if it's tuned to one of us? The four of us, I mean?"
"Then we will have to destroy it. I doubt that it is, anyway, but if it is? Bet 
that it isn't just after one of us, but all of us. I don't think we really have 
to worry about it until we leave."
"I like the way you say that, all casuallike," Raven noted sourly. "We'll just 
destroy it, that's all. That's a damned killing machine! They ain't that easy to 
dispose of!"
"Sure, and if you believe that, then they're invulnerable. Look, they are also 
programmed to avoid mass killings or slaughter, and apprehension rather than the 
kill is their first priority. They won't spray fire in a room full of innocents, 
they won't go through a hostage, and they have lots of other weak points. 
They're no pushovers-you won't get them with a good head shot-but they can be 
had. The transmuters made this a throwaway society. Nothing's indestructible."
"Including us," Raven grumped. "Better you watch yourself in there to keep from 
betraying that you're new. Watch your tongue, and don't stare at or react to 
anybody who isn't Earth-human."
"Huh? You mean there's some of the colonist types here?"
"Sure. A person's still a person, and we aren't the only ones able to beat the 
system. There might even be some genuine aliens, although that's rarer. None of 
'em could ever break free of their worlds on their own-Master System saw to that 
after it found them-but some were recruited by the freebooters because of 
certain talents and abilities they might have that are a real help out here. 
Tolerance to various kinds of radiation, extreme heat, that kind of thing. When 
you don't have big transmuters and you don't have much in the way of friendly 
robots, or you're scared of robots, they fill a handy niche. All set? We're 
going down!"
The place had looked reasonable from the air, but once they emerged from the 
ship, they could detect a definite seediness about it. The air smelled somewhat 
foul and unpleasant, the heat and humidity were oddly off, and even the elevator 
down into the complex was jerky and noisy and looked the worse for wear.
They were met at the main level by a four-person security party from what served 
as Halinachi's government. It was an odd and unpleasant assortment, and Raven 
and Warlock both proved they were pros by keeping their inner feelings totally 
hidden.
One, who seemed to be the leader, was Earth-human enough, but in place of his 
arms were two skeletal robot arms ending in five-fingered steel hands. No 
attempt had been made to disguise them as human replacements, and clearly he 
either preferred them to new arms and hands or didn't have access to any top 
medical personnel.
Behind him was a woman perhaps two meters tall whose leathery skin looked as if 
it were made of dark-olive plates, and whose eyes were round, unblinking, and 
yellow. She was hairless, and her fingers and toes resembled talons. Next to her 
was a short, squat little man whose dark-gray complexion and blocky build made 
him look as if he were made of stone. The last was an elderly-looking Oriental 
man with thick white hair and a long, drooping white mustache, his skin dark and 
mottled. All wore sidearms.
"You are Captain Hoxa?" the man with the steel arms said in a low, gravelly 
voice that fit his appearance perfectly.
"I am," Nagy replied smoothly. "I remember you from the last time I was here. 
Beklar, isn't it?"
The squad leader nodded approvingly. Anyone who knew him had to be an old hand, 
though clearly he didn't remember Nagy. "Yes. I understand you have information 
for credits?"
"I do. Take me to the terminal and I'll punch it in."
"Why not just give it to me?"
Nagy grinned. "Are you robbing people at gunpoint now, or do you just take me 
for a fool?"
The big man shrugged and they went over to an entry terminal. Nagy acted right 
at home, Raven noted. He wondered how many times the security chief had been 
there before, and why.
Nagy punched in the formulas Clayben had furnished, which took a surprisingly 
short length of time, then waited. The information was not reflected on the 
screen, but suddenly a number appeared there. Nagy slammed his fist against the 
wall next to the terminal and turned to the security crew. "Forty thousand! I 
save this joint a fortune and it's just forty thousand? Next time I'll take my 
stuff to the competition!"
A small speaker within the terminal came to life, and a man's voice said, "Very 
well, Captain. Four days unlimited credit for you and your crew. If you don't 
abuse it, I will deposit forty thousand credits for a return visit when you 
leave. Will that be satisfactory?"
Nagy nodded. "That's more like it." He walked back to the group and looked at 
the security party. "Okay to enter now?"
"Yeah, go ahead," growled the man with the metal arms. "You sure got some clout 
here. Check your weapons and personal possessions in the next room, then go 
through entry."
"You make the Val check its weapons?"
"A comedian, huh? Why? You got some problems with them?"
"Depends on who it's looking for and why, same as most people out here. You want 
to give me a clue?"
"They been around, in and out, for a couple of weeks or more. Word is somebody 
broke out of Melchior and stole one of them big universe ships. We don't like 
'em snoopin' around-bad for business-but what can we do? They're lookin' for 
people with the Melchior brand, so you're safe."
"From the Val, anyway. All right, lead on."
"We got to check everything?" Raven whispered to Nagy when he could.
"Everything. Even clothes. Savaphoong didn't get this far by letting anything 
slip by him. When you're in his world, you're under his absolute control."
Stripped completely, they were run through a decontamination chamber, then 
issued utilitarian clothing that was cheaply made, didn't fit well, and was 
clearly reused. All the time they were under the watchful eye of security 
cameras and personnel.
A man and woman, both of whom looked Earth-human, met them on the other side. 
The man was tall, perhaps a hundred eighty-five centimeters, and very heavily 
muscled, with near-perfect features, long blond hair, a dark complexion, and 
even a hairy chest, and the way he was dressed left no doubt as to his most 
outstanding attribute. The woman had the same coloring, but she was short-no 
more than a hundred sixty centimeters-and extremely curvaceous, with a huge 
heaving bosom. Their eyes and expressions gave the impression that they both 
probably had the brains and imagination of a head of lettuce, but that was as 
deliberate as the rest of them. The only thing marring their perfection was the 
small triangular tattoo in the center of each of their foreheads; the marks 
looked like the same sort of job done on Melchior inmates, but less obtrusive. 
Raven now had a suspicion of just what business Savaphoong had had with Melchior 
through the years; these were perfect examples of Clayben's transmuter and 
mind-printer handiwork.
The old boy was really gonna miss Melchior, he thought. Suddenly the whole thing 
was clear to him: Clay-ben supplied the freebooters with nice, perfect, docile 
slaves and loyal security troops, and in exchange probably got quantities of 
murylium totally outside what he could scrape up from Melchior's remains and 
whatever tiny amounts he might con out of Master System. This explained why 
freebooters had visited the old hell hole at intervals, and why Nagy had spent 
time going back and forth. Clayben and the freebooters were far more 
interrelated than he had let on.
"I am Amal," the beautiful man said, "and this is Gem. We are at your service 
while you are with us. Anything you wish, just ask."
"We've been out a long time and we just want to relax for a while," Nagy told 
them. "We'll go to the lounge now, but we may require you later."
"All you need do is ask any staff member to call Amal or Gem and we will be 
there," the man assured them. "Allow us to escort you to the lounge."
"Am I correct in assuming they mean that all the way?" Warlock asked in a low 
tone as they walked.
Nagy nodded. "Sure. Either or both will do anything you ask, and with a smile. 
If they aren't enough, they can produce whatever you want-particularly if you've 
got four days* unlimited credit. It's not limited to them, either. Anybody with 
the triangle who turns you on will be your instant willing slave. They come in 
all sizes, colors, races, you name it-about half Earth-human and half colonial. 
You get some murylium miners out there, maybe alone, for months or more at a 
time and they want everything when they get in. They're all sterile and checked 
medically every day, so there's no risks, either."
Raven had expected a seedy outworld bar, but the lounge was a cozy, intimate 
place of semiprivate booths with a small stage area. The seats seemed to be some 
kind of soft brown fur, a bit worn, and the tables were of a marblelike rock.
There were others in the lounge, which surprised the first-timers a bit. The 
only ship other than the Vals' and the Lightning in the dock hadn't seemed very 
large.
"There aren't many here at any one time," Nagy told them, "but there are more 
than can be accommodated in the spaceport. Some of the ships are in orbit, their 
people brought down by shuttle ferry or transmuter, and some have been dropped 
off here to be picked up later. The place is relatively quiet, though-I'd guess 
no more than thirty or forty guests are here right now, when there should be a 
hundred. My guess is the Val scared a lot of 'em off."
An enormous black man appeared, all muscles, wearing little but dark bikini 
briefs and the telltale triangle on his forehead. Raven looked at Warlock and 
was amused to see some of that total cool crumble at the sight.
"I am Batu," the waiter said in a rich, deep baritone. "How may I serve you?"
"I'll have a liter of draft," Nagy replied. "Sabatini?"
"Double whiskey and soda, no ice. The good stuff, not the rotgut."
The waiter appeared to take no offense.
"I'll have a beer, as well," Raven said. "And-you wouldn't have cigars, would 
you?"
"Yes, sir. Any kind of type you wish."
"The large Havana style."
"As you wish, sir. And the lady?"
"Rum tonic," Warlock responded.
The waiter bowed and left. "You really oughtta knock off those things," Nagy 
told him. "They'll kill you sooner or later."
"If I live long enough for them to kill me I will be content."
Nagy just shrugged. "So, what do you think of the place so far?"
"Interesting," Raven replied. "After all that time in the wild under primitive 
conditions, I could get to like a place like this. I can sure see how somebody'd 
like to run one, too. I'm just a little surprised Master System knows of these 
places and permits them."
"As I said, mutual interest. I always feel like a target here, though; if Master 
System ever changed its mind, it's all over. I think if I'm gonna be a 
freebooter it's gonna be in a ship, out there, with better odds and the universe 
to get lost in."
The waiter brought their drinks and a small package of full-size cigars for 
Raven, who eyed them as if they were the food of the gods. He had almost 
forgotten that cigars came that big and that unspoiled.
Warlock looked around. "This place is cozy and comfortable enough, but it is not 
good for socializing," she noted. "One does not get information in a booth 
serviced by slaves."
"True enough," Nagy agreed. "But there are ways, and there will be time for all 
that. Just relax and enjoy for now. In a little while I may try and go back and 
see the old man himself. He knows me well, and I'll get a straight picture 
without worrying about a knife in my back."
"Savaphoong?"
He nodded. "I-" He broke off as he saw the others tense; he looked around and 
saw the Val standing there. It was an imposing figure even in this incongruous 
environment, and its metallic solidity and blazing crimson eyes seemed to bore 
right through them.
"Pardon," the Val said. "I realize that my presence here causes problems, and I 
only wish to assure you that I have no instructions concerning this place or 
anyone who visits it."
Interestingly, it was Sabatini who answered. "You know you have no place here. 
Why are you around?"
"I am not after freebooters. I am soliciting their help. You have heard of the 
prison colony of Melchior in the Earth system?"
Sabatini nodded. "So?"
"There was an escape. Ships were hijacked, including an interstellar transport. 
The escapees for the most part have the identifying Melchior facial tattoos. 
They possess certain knowledge that no one is permitted to possess. Mere contact 
with these people could prove fatal. They are using a ship that is the largest 
of its kind ever built, so you could hardly miss it. Have you seen these 
people?"
"Not anywhere around here," Sabatini responded coolly. "They're not likely to 
show up at a place like this anyway, are they?"
"Not they themselves perhaps, but they had inside help. We are not quite certain 
who, but we are working on it. If you see them, or if you run across anyone 
working for them, it will be more than worth your while to notify us 
immediately. This place is but a pale shade of the rewards possible to the one 
or ones who lead to their apprehension. Such ones would live like gods."
Sabatini whistled. "You must really want them. Believe me, if I see them, I'll 
be the first to collect."
"Very well. I will be leaving this place this evening. Enjoy your stay."
And, with that, the great creature was gone, out of their sight and out of the 
lounge. They started to say something, but Nagy put his palm up and then reached 
under the table, prying off a tiny smooth plate only a hair's thickness and 
about the size of a fingertip. The Val had left a bug.
"I don't like those bastards one bit," Nagy said casually. "Come on, this place 
has lost its luster now. Let's hunt up Amal and Gem and try a few more private 
pleasures."
They all mumbled agreement and got up to leave, letting Nagy carefully replace 
the bug on the underside of the table. It took only a minute or two to summon 
their "procurers," as they were called.
"Show us our quarters," Nagy commanded. The others followed, still silent.
They were shown to a suite with a round central living area furnished with 
couches and a built-in bar and entertainment center, and four private sleeping 
rooms.
"Amal, I would like to see the manager on a matter of urgent personal business," 
Nagy told the big blond man.
Amal was somewhat taken aback by that, which was not in the usual line of 
requests. "I will see if that is possible, sir."
"Tell him it concerns the Val and our treatment here. I think he'll see me."
"Yes, sir. I will try." The man left to do his duty.
Nagy brought the others close to him. "Say nothing you don't want overheard 
until I get back," he whispered. "We don't know how far this has gone."
They understood. They had heard the Val's voice, which was almost always the 
voice of the person to whom it was targeted. The voice had been that of Hawks.
Fernando Savaphoong was a small, thin, Asian-looking man of about fifty, with a 
thin black mustache and neatly cropped black hair graying on the sides. He had a 
pleasant voice and a salesman's manner, and only his eyes and his nearly 
constant chain-smoking of cigarettes betrayed the constant pressure his life 
style and his responsibilities brought him.
"So, Senor Nagy, I am surprised you would come here at this date."
The security man relaxed and sat in a chair opposite the ruler of Halinachi. 
"I'm not used to Vals showing up in the lounge," he replied. "But I'm 
particularly not used to Vals planting bugs under my table. How many other bugs 
has he got around here, and how the hell will I know when I can speak freely 
again to my companions?"
Savaphoong frowned. "This I do not like to hear at all. It knows you, then."
"I doubt it, or it would have acted more forcefully. More likely it did a scan 
of the four of us as it discussed the bait, measuring our blood pressure, heart 
rates, and other reactions when it brought up certain subjects, and became 
suspicious. I think the least I can demand is for your people to sweep the 
area-the lounge, all the places it's been, and my quarters, to find and destroy 
any nasty little devices it might have left."
"I will tend to it at once. I cannot afford to have such things here."
Nagy nodded. "Good. And in light of this, I think it's time we had a talk about 
other matters."
Savaphoong sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette. "I gather, then, that 
reports of the good doctor's death were overrated. I suspected as much from the 
start, knowing how cautious and clever he was. But he did not engineer this 
break, surely. You?" .
"Uh uh. Strictly independent. We just signed on for the duration because we had 
little choice."
"You realize, then, that I could name my own price just for calling back the Val 
and confirming its suspicions?"
"You could-but you won't. You know as well as I do that any reward from Master 
System could be very shortlived in these days and times. Still I could guarantee 
your silence-or the destruction of Halinachi-just by telling you what it's all 
about."
"Si. When I first hear of this I tell myself, all right, someone escaped. So 
what? Then I hear they steal this very big ship. Again, so what? They get away. 
They become freebooters, or they get caught, or they are never heard from again. 
Why does Master System suddenly want them worse than anything? Then I hear 
Master System invades Melchior only to find Clayben dead, along with most of the 
others who count, and all the data banks destroyed. Now I am suspicious. Now I 
wonder what would be so much of a threat to Master System that it would be worth 
Clayben's while to do something like this. It is a simple matter for one of 
Clayben's talents and resources to fake one's own death convincingly enough even 
for Master System, but why? It must be something so valuable, so dangerous, that 
it is worth any price. Now my greedy side gets interested, and now you show up 
only months later. You see?"
"The real question is-do you want to know?"
"No. The real question is-can I afford not to know? If that Val was merely 
suspicious, that is one thing, but if it recognized any of you from its data 
files, if it has tied you in with all this-well, then, my friend, I am a sitting 
duck, am I not?"
Nagy thought a moment. "How many Vals are in this sector?"
"Two. But one shell through each of the main domes would be enough to destroy 
all this."
"Uh uh. They don't have what they really want here and they know it. That Val 
wasn't going to take us because it would mean breaking the compact with you, and 
for that it'll need the highest authority. Tell me straight, Senor 
Sa-vaphoong-if it gets it, what will you do? If it breaks the compact, do you 
have the firepower to stop it-and the will, knowing what it would mean?"
Savaphoong sighed. "Senor Nagy, your brazen appearance here with a Val in port 
has caused this, but it is a fair question. If I allow it, then I am out of 
business anyway, am I not? What freebooter would come here after that? Whom do I 
serve? Vals? They are not interested in what I could provide, and, besides, they 
are lousy tippers. For the sake of any future or refuge I might have, I would be 
forced to oppose them, no matter what the cost."
Arnold Nagy sighed. "Very well then. If that day should ever come, I can give 
you refuge. We will need people and we will need experience. If you keep faith 
with me, then if your back is to the wall we'll get you out and cut you in. 
Fair?"
"As fair as life gets. Tell me true-do you really have a starship that is 
fourteen kilometers long?"
"Yes. We call her the Thunder."
The boss of Halinachi sighed. "What interesting possibilities that opens up. It 
has been getting so boring here." He paused. "But, no. One does not trade all 
this so easily. Is there anything else I can do for you right now?"
"I need some information on three colonial worlds. This won't get you in any 
trouble-without knowing the objectives it would be impossible to guess. Even 
knowing the objectives, although it would be dangerous, wouldn't give you 
anything you could use yourself."
"Which three?"
"Janipur, Chanchuk, and Matriyeh."
Savaphoong gave a low whistle. "Not the most comfortable of places, any one."
"I didn't expect they would be. I need the works on them-people, political 
organization, leaders, Centers and administrators, you name it. The odds are I'm 
looking for the chief administrator of each world."
"Umph! You really make it difficult on yourself. And the purpose, in general 
terms?"
"Grand theft."
Savaphoong laughed. "For such a grand and noble purpose, how can I refuse? Very 
well, you shall have what you require-if I can be assured that our mutual 
benefactor will continue to supply me with things that I require."
"As much as possible under the circumstances. Might I assume that you have an 
interstellar-capable ship available in times of need?"
"You may so assume."
"Then we should work out a mutual meeting place and a method of signaling. I 
suspect that if we get away clean this time it is very unlikely that we can 
return to your fine establishment."
Fernando Savaphoong thought for a moment. "The Val prepares to leave within the 
hour. It will take it two days to reach a subspace relay beacon and report to 
Master System, and perhaps another day to get the authority one way or another. 
Of course, it will probably contact its companion ahead of time and establish a 
surreptitious watch. If you leave before the authority comes, then I am probably 
in the clear so long as I make no moves showing I know what this is about. There 
is then no logic in breaking the compact. The one who lurks, though, in the 
shadows of the planets-it will lock on and attempt to follow, and it has 
incredible equipment and tenacity. You will probably have to take it out, you 
know, if you can."
"I'm well aware of that. In the meantime, I'll let you get on with 
your-delousing-operation here and accumulating the data I need, while I and my 
companions spend a night or two enjoying your services." He had a sudden 
thought. "And I might suggest an additional item of mutual interest to 
research."
"Indeed?"
"Master System requires fairly large supplies of murylium to manage and maintain 
its empire. Those mines are almost surely totally automated and nearly 
impossible to locate, but the shipments surely are not. You need the stuff and 
so do we."
"Even if I could discover such a thing, what good would it do, my friend?"
"We are interstellar outlaws hunted by all and with absolutely nothing to lose, 
but we have resources. You give me the routings, and I'll give you part of the 
loot."
Even Savaphoong looked aghast. "Hijacking a freighter of Master System? You must 
be joking! It is not possible!"
"You tell me where, and I'll show you a thing or two about real piracy."
And that made Savaphoong laugh again, long and hard. "You know," he managed 
after a moment, "I almost believe you can do this. At least I think you are 
either mad or the most dangerous group of human beings alive!" He shrugged. 
"Either way, what do I have to lose but everything?"
"You know, if I could feel guilt, I'd be feelin' real guilty about havin' a good 
time here while the chief and the rest are stuck back in that primitive hell 
hole," Raven noted casually while washing down a fine steak and eggs with fresh 
coffee. "I really do hate to leave this place."
"Well, leaving is going to be the trick that makes us pay the devil's due," 
Arnold Nagy replied. "We have our information and our contacts now, but we also 
have a real problem. Sabatini, any of your incarnations ever take on a Val ship 
before?"
The strange creature grinned. "Sure. Two at least. Both lost, of course."
Nagy glared at him and Raven almost choked on a piece of toast.
"All right, then," said the Hungarian who had become the de facto head of the 
expedition. "It's something new. I have some of the information we need-enough 
to get us started. Anybody else have any luck?"
"I met a man who had been to Janipur," Warlock said. "He said it was inhabited 
by a human herd of angry cows, whatever that means. Said we would have to see it 
to believe it. Still, some things do not change in the universe of Master 
System. He has seen the chief administrator, who is known for the fancy ring he 
wears. It is called the Ring of Peace because it bears the likeness of two doves 
in gold. He also said that the chief administrator is very smart but very 
brutal. He enjoys strangling people. It is his hobby."
"Humph! Yeah, well, who ever said these would be pushovers? Anybody else?"
"There was a fellow-a colonial, not at all pleasant to look on-who knew of 
Matriyeh," Sabatini said. "This fellow was raised Moslem, and he said that 
Matriyeh surpassed any vision of hell he had ever dreamed. No matter how inhuman 
he was, he had enough perspective so that I believe he would have said the same 
thing even if he'd been one of our kind. Certain minerals on Matriyeh are said 
to grow to enormous proportions, and this fellow was an artist who hoped to 
trade some technology for some of them to use in his art. The world is 
supposedly very primitive. He found it impossibly primitive, not at all 
organized. No Centers, no administrators that he could see at all, and no major 
rulers above the tribal level. It sounded much like what Master System is said 
to be considering doing to Earth. He could not imagine a person of power there."
Nagy shook his head. "That one's worse. Bad boys I think we can deal with. I 
don't care if they've got two heads and five arms and breathe methane, they're 
still of human stock and Master System's origins, and we know their type. Even 
Master System is obedient, though. The ring has to be held by a person with 
power, authority- something that makes him or her stand out. Damn it, that's 
gonna be a tough one."
"The guy barely escaped with his life, let alone his ship. The world is one very 
nasty place even without the people," Sabatini added. "That one might be suited 
for my special talents, but even I can't work from nothing, and if a primitive, 
ignorant mind knows nothing of value it can't help me."
"Well, we'll see. Raven, you get anything at all?"
"You bet. Two cases of fine Havanas and some very nice little pills. One of 
'em's called Orgy and you oughtta see what it does. As for information, 
though-forget it. Except a couple of girls in the lounge knew of a certain world 
of heat and water by reputation, and they said it was a full-fledged colony. I 
didn't like that at all."
Nagy nodded. "I don't like that much myself, but in all that time nobody ever 
showed up and tossed a spear or shook our hand. You got to figure they're water 
breathers. No skin off our nose or theirs if that's the case."
"I dunno. Somebody planted them groves on that other island. I kinda wonder if 
we'd been able to get over there if they wouldn't'a popped up and been a little 
nasty about it. Water breathers don't grow food on land. They didn't know much, 
though-them girls, I mean. Only that it was listed as a colonial settlement, and 
off limits in general."
"I think we better get all the stuff together we can and get back-if we can," 
Nagy told them. "Raven, unless something happens, I'm afraid you and Warlock are 
gonna be strictly passengers in this flight. Sabatini, since you've had more 
experience, so to speak, flying these buckets, I'm gonna let you fly and take 
the guns myself. It flies like any other good ship, but I know the armament 
inside and out. If there is a Val up there, waiting for us, it's gonna be one 
tough nut to crack, but it won't know the power or armaments of that ship. It's 
a custom illegal job. Get it all together-we might as well roll."
Getting out of Halinachi was not quite as complicated as getting in. They turned 
in their clothing but not their personal prizes, such as Raven's cigars, and 
they also received a small encoded master cylinder from Savaphoong. The lord of 
Halinachi did not see them off- Nagy guessed in any event that midmorning was 
far too early for the manager of the place to be up and about- but there was a 
small note attached to the cylinder, which Nagy read.
"What's the love letter?" Raven asked, curious.
"It's a bill. Somehow he managed to charge the full forty thousand future 
credits and anything left from this visit. Never mind. Short of using a 
transmuter and becoming someone completely different, there's little chance 
we'll be able to come back here again anyway."
They went to the ship, which appeared secure, all seals intact. Nagy spent some 
time doing a complete check. "Yeah, as I figured. A bunch of nice bugs and 
tracking devices all over the damned hull. We'd be another day getting those 
suckers off ourselves and we don't have that. The best thing I can do is try to 
burn 'em off. Channel the transmuter power from the main engines to the outer 
hull. They're designed to withstand the external forces of lift-off and reentry, 
but they're not well shielded where they attach to the hull itself. Get in 
pressure suits and dial your climate control to maximum. This is gonna be nasty. 
I got to be real careful with this. I don't want to bum any holes in the hull."
When they were ready, he began. The outer hull began to glow red hot, and Nagy 
had to be very careful not to let any point get too much hotter than the rest or 
turn white. Shimmering blue electricity played over the ship, inside and out, 
and after more than fifteen minutes the sounds of very loud banging and terrible 
random noises came through to them, as if they were in a meteor storm with no 
deflectors.
The noises subsided after a while, and the inside fans came on.
"I think I got 'em all, but at what price I couldn't say," Nagy informed them. 
"I think it's best we all keep our suits on, the inside pressure down, and 
ourselves strapped in until we know. Best we do that during the flight, anyway, 
just in case a shot penetrates the main cabin."
"Great," Raven grumped. "No cigars. I might go to my grave staring at two cases 
of unopened Havanas."
"I think we've cooled down uniformly now, and I've got clearance, so strap in 
and check systems. Sabatini, take her up."
The ship shuddered, then roared into life and rose slowly above the landing pad. 
Only when they were several kilometers in the air did Sabatini angle the nose 
up, apply full thrust and roll, and take her to escape velocity.
It was a noisy, bumpy ride out, but it was fast. They cleared the atmosphere in 
just a few minutes and went into preliminary orbit. Sabatini did a wide scan.
"Anything?" Nagy asked.
"Nothing yet, but it could be in near-total power down. The question is more if 
he has better scanning range than we do. I seem to remember that you were 
clearly visible in the Thunder's sights at your maximum fallback position."
"They were as good as they needed to be. If we don't catch sight of him, we'll 
try to lead him out. Set a course on chart A-J-8-7-7-2. That's at a right angle 
to where we want to go, but it'll give us some running room. Keep all sensors at 
maximum and we'll see if we can pick him up."
They were suddenly pressed back in their seats as Sabatini gave maximum thrust 
from orbital speed. It was a surprise, almost random, move that would have 
thrown a human pursuer, but the Val was not human and would not waste precious 
seconds wondering what to do. It might, however, have to quickly adjust and 
betray itself-or risk losing its prey at the start.
"Give me a punch as soon as you have the factors lined up," Nagy instructed. 
"Duration thirty minutes-the minimum possible on the chart's vector. We may be 
able to exit and repunch before he can get out with us."
"That's gonna really strain the power," Sabatini warned.
"The transmitter ram needs junk as much as it needs its own power, or there's 
nothing to convert. With that house-cleaning you did, we're pretty low."
"The hell with it! We run dry, we stand and fight as best we can."
"Punching."
"At least the hull seems to be holding," Nagy noted as the ship opened its hole 
and entered. "I got a delicate touch."
Any pursuer now would have to match the course, trajectory, and speed perfectly 
and punch at the exact same spot with the exact same elements in order to give 
chase. This was not difficult for a Val or any ship programmed to do it. The 
Val, in fact, would know coming in just exactly where they would emerge, but it 
could do nothing about it, not even close on its prey, inside a punch. Even 
Raven realized Nagy's strategy-if the Val had hung back too far to avoid 
detection, they could repunch in an infinite number of directions before it 
could emerge behind them. The only limit was the amount of fuel for conversion 
taken in by the forward ram and stored. The Val, he suspected, would have been 
pleasantly surprised if any of its little traps and trackers had survived, but 
it also knew that the amount of energy expended to get rid of them would limit 
just how far its prey could run before it caught up.
"Give me a thirty-two degree right turn on reemergence," Nagy ordered, "and 
punch again. Use chart B-H-6-4-4-9."
"But there's no punch points on that chart for thirty hours! We haven't got the 
juice to go that long!"
"Then punch for half the juice we got left and reemerge wherever that is."
Sabatini was appalled. "Off the chart?"
"Yeah, off the chart."
The purpose of the charts, other than navigation, was to permit ease of travel. 
The emergence points were all selected because they had ample density of matter 
for the rams and yet were clear of any potential problems like radiation fields, 
suns, neutron stars, and other obstacles. Sabatini's prior freebooter identity 
gave him enough confidence to know that the odds of coming out near anything 
dangerous was next to nothing in the vastness of space; what bothered him was 
that they stood very good odds of coming out exactly there-next to nothing. 
Space was never completely empty, but there were vast areas in which it might 
take years to accumulate enough dust and such to make enough fuel to get them 
anywhere useful, and they wouldn't have the juice to punch anywhere else clean.
"Nagy, you ever made a jump with low fuel off the charts before?"
"Never had to, but it's the only way. The only other choice is to slow down and 
turn as quickly as possible, and try to blow the bugger back to machine hell as 
it emerges. It'll be ready for that, and it has a lot more fuel than we do."
"Yeah, but there's a dozen charts we could jump on and come out at a safe 
point."
"That's the problem. There's a dozen. How long you figure it'll take to refuel? 
A couple hours? If there are two of 'em out there, then in that time all dozen 
could be checked-and would be. You make the choice. This is one fix your little 
talent won't get you out of."
"You think of this ahead of time or are you making this up as you go along?"
"Improvisation, my friend, is the soul of survival. If it goes wrong I'll blame 
it on this computer link."
"If anything goes wrong you won't have any reason to blame anything. You'll be 
dead long before we were. Hang on. Emergence."
Sabatini was right on the mark, but he cut power slightly and fully opened the 
jets as he made a graceful turn.
"We fight, then?" Nagy asked nervously.
"We have fifteen minutes before it emerges. That gives me ten minutes to take in 
what I can in this dense outer dust belt and another four to make the punch. I 
am computer-linked, too, remember."
"Quiet. I have an idea. Open communications channels."
"I see. Good idea, if we have the time."
"Shut up and gobble."
Sitting in the back, Raven and Warlock were ignorant of all this. They could 
only wait and wonder until either of the ship's operators took the time and 
trouble to brief them.
In what seemed like no time the ship was back up to speed and punching through 
once more, and only then did Nagy relax enough to explain the situation. Neither 
of the passengers liked it much.
"Don't see what you can do, though," Raven consoled him. "Let's play it as it 
lays. But I can't help wondering- suppose we punch through for only forty 
percent of the fuel? Then turn around and punch right back to where we were just 
at?"
"Damn! Why didn't I think of that one?" Sabatini swore. "Too late now-I've used 
fifty percent, and with what it will take to reposition that won't be quite 
enough to get us back. Why didn't I think of it, though?"
"In all your lives you never were no Crow, that's why. An old tracker knows the 
double-back. I'm surprised Nagy didn't, considering his background."
"Too civilized, Raven," Nagy said. "I went from Vatican Center to West Europe 
Center and then to port Security, then finally Melchior. I never was in the 
field. It wasn't my area of expertise."
"Yeah, well, next time remember that us ignorant savages might know a few tricks 
your ancestors forgot, and deal us in. You believe in all this high-tech brain 
shit and you get to playing Master System's game."
"Yeah. Next time."
"If I were the tracker Val, that is where I would put the second Val. At the 
last stop," Warlock whispered dryly.
"Shut up, Warlock," Raven growled.
The ship was now pretty much on automatic, and there was nothing that anyone 
could do for a while, so the two at the controls set the alarms and disengaged 
after bringing temperature and pressure to normal levels. It was safe to remove 
the pressure suits, relax, eat, even catch some sleep, and Raven got to smoke a 
couple of his precious cigars over the protests of the other three and the air 
filtration system.
The time seemed to drag, and sleep was difficult. Finally, though, the alarm 
sounded and Sabatini and Nagy, almost with relief, headed back up to the command 
chairs and reconnected themselves to the ships' systems.
Emergence was smooth and right on time, but it was quite literally in the middle 
of nowhere.
"Dust and cosmic debris levels are very small," Sabatini noted. "Distance to 
nearest stellar system's outer reaches is about thirty-three light-years. If we 
did another punch we might get within four or five."
Sabatini did a quick scan of the region and found little to be optimistic about. 
"There's some very weak gravity source at bearing one seven one, but it's beyond 
our range and who knows what it is? If it's a black hole or something it could 
be farther than that next stellar system. I think we're stuck."
They poked and probed and moved over a vast distance of empty space during the 
next few hours tracking down any potential sources of gravity that might mean 
trapped dust, rock, and, therefore, fuel-and life. The hunting was pretty slim.
"The good news is that we are collecting enough material to keep us going for 
several years if it remains constant," Sabatini told them. "The bad news is that 
it's just about enough to keep the life support and local engines going-with a 
very slight loss. It means we can drag around here for a long time but we can't 
ever gain enough to offset what we're spending collecting it."
"We should'a brought a couple of them playmate slaves if we were gonna be stuck 
out here," Raven growled.
"I guess we should've fought after all," Nagy sighed. "Our only hope now-"
He paused, and even Raven and Warlock could feel the tension fill the air. The 
screen flickered to life and went to maximum magnification.
An area of space that was as dark as the darkest night now had a glowing ring 
around it and, although it seemed impossible, the area within seemed even 
darker, deeper, and blacker. Out of it came a ship, small, sleek, and shopworn 
black against the even blacker hole.
"Son of a bitch!" Nagy swore. "I must've missed one!"
The Val ship emerged, closing the hole behind it, slowed gracefully, and made a 
steady turn toward them.
Sabatini sighed. "I guess we fight them anyway," he said.
 
6. SCOUTING EXPEDITIONS

THE VAL SHIP TOOK UP ITS POSITION WELL WITHIN SENSOR range but just beyond the 
range of conventional weapons. Nagy and Sabatini were integrated with their 
ship's computers; the Val was its ship's computer. Even allowing for the time 
their ship's engines and weapons took to function, that meant the Val was always 
going to be a fraction of a second ahead in terms of responding to a sudden 
move-a crucial difference. Once both systems were in full gear, however, their 
automatic reactions would be nearly instantaneous and, therefore, equal. But the 
Val still had an advantage: It's speed of thought was far faster even than that 
of computer-linked humans, while its reasoning was very similar to a human's. It 
understood its prey well. That forced the humans to let the automatics react, 
thus placing them permanently on the defensive, a situation in which they could 
not win, only draw or lose.
"By the authority of Master System I command you to halt and identify 
yourselves" came the Val's call, which Nagy put on the speaker. The voice was 
that of Hawks; this was the same Val that had accosted them in the lounge.
"Since when did you have such authority?" Nagy challenged back. "You are keyed 
to no one on this ship, a fact you well know. We have committed no criminal acts 
that would cause an exception." None that you know, anyway. "I stand on the 
covenant."
"And I step on it," the Val retorted. "The covenant exists because it is useful 
to the system. In its own way it serves the system. The covenant will not be 
broken as far as anyone is concerned. There is no one out here in the middle of 
nowhere but us."
It was tough to deny the truth of that, but truth wasn't at stake here. "And 
what sort of logic and system is it that can be violated at will when it is 
convenient? One does not defend the honor and integrity of a superior system by 
ignoring it when it is safe or convenient. That is the human way of things, and 
Master System was created to avoid that flaw. If you can break the system, even 
under these conditions, then Master System has no right to exist, no right to 
authority over humankind except by sheer might. And if it is no better than 
human law, then it is a tyranny that must be disobeyed as a moral duty."
"You are quite good at that, aren't you?" the Val responded, impressed. "The 
logic cannot be denied even though you and I both know you don't believe a word 
of it. Very well. I am keyed to track down an Earth-human, a North American 
Center historian who is called Walks With the Night Hawks, also called John 
Hawks. He possessed forbidden knowledge and did not surrender it or himself, 
making him an enemy of the system. You know where he is. Tell me, and win your 
own freedom until another time, another Val, seeks you."
"That is nothing to us," Nagy told it. "Even if we knew this person, which we do 
not, the price is far too low. We haven't sufficient fuel or sources of fuel to 
get back to the chart. You saw to that. So we die out here slowly, or we die 
quickly. We are all professionals. Quick is better if you have to choose one or 
the other."
"I could give you a tow to that system over there. Enough fuel to get almost 
anywhere. Arnold Nagy, is it not, formerly of Melchior? You went in pursuit of 
the fugitives as was your duty and somehow joined them instead. Raven, and 
Warlock-more Security gone bad. There will be wholesale cleanings of Security 
nests before this is over. I do not know the fourth member of this quartet in 
any way, but it makes little difference. Another escapee, I suspect. You are 
professionals, as you say. What do you owe these others?"
Warlock leaned over to Raven. "Why does it talk so much when we are so 
vulnerable?" She didn't seem ruffled by the thought of imminent death.
Raven was a fatalist. "Because if it blows us to hell it's back at square one-up 
the river without a paddle. It has the bad luck to want Hawks, not any one of 
us. If we die, any leads to Hawks die with us. This ain't over yet."
"Just out of curiosity," Nagy was saying, "how the hell did I miss any tracers? 
I was sure I got 'em all and you damn well didn't get inside."
"No, I assumed you were competent. I also assumed that you would never look very 
closely at two cases of good cigars."
"Damn!" Raven swore.
"You couldn't possibly know which cases we'd take on or arrange it back there!" 
Nagy retorted.
"I didn't have to. I had a basic data file on Raven and I knew he was an 
addicted smoker. I also was in the lounge when the first thing he did was order 
cigars-a particular kind of cigar. I left and found the source of them after 
leaving you, and spent a great deal of care inserting my tracers in the casing. 
There was only one case. It followed that Raven would wish to take more with him 
and that the only means of supplying them would be via the transmuter -which 
also, of course, duplicated the tracer. It was elementary, my dear Nagy."
"That walking machine-shop son of a bitch," Raven growled, feeling had. It was 
exactly his kind of trick, which was what bothered him the most.
Nagy sighed. "Well, I guess we deserve this, then. Here's the bottom line, 
though, Val Hawks. We're it. Sole survivors. They figured out how to get that 
monster ship going, but they never had full control of it. It broke up off a 
neutron star. Very little of it was ever habitable, and we had no choice but to 
split it up-some in my ship, the rest on the bridge. There was no chance to save 
the others-I barely saved ourselves, and then only because we were living here. 
You're in an endless loop, my friend. You're doomed to wander forever in pursuit 
of a quarry who no longer exists."
The Val actually paused for a moment before replying. "It truly is a pleasure to 
encounter a real pro now and then. Your voice analysis actually shows that you 
are speaking the absolute truth. Had I not surprised you in the lounge, had you 
had some warning of my presence before you actually saw me, I might not have 
received any anomalous readings at all."
"Why don't they just fight and get it over with?" Raven grumbled.
Warlock smiled. "What do you think they are doing, darling?"
"It reads true because it is truth," Nagy assured the Val.
"Well, then, there is an easy way to settle it all. Send me one of you. Let me 
subject him or her to the mind-printer here. If indeed it is true then I will 
have the documentation I need, and you will receive your tow and a head start on 
my associates. I will owe you that for saving me much fruitless labor."
Uh oh, gotcha there, didn't he, Nagy? Arnold Nagy swore to himself.
"You cannot win against a Val even under optimum conditions," the robot 
detective said. "And these are hardly optimum."
It was certainly true that the conditions were lousy. Sabatini, drawing on the 
experience not only of Koll but of others the thing it was had consumed and 
become back on Melchior, had no trouble seeing the Val strategy. Blows that 
hurt, not killed. Blows that damaged, weakened, but never at the expense of 
giving them a clean shot. In and out, back and forth, until they used up the 
last of their fuel and were dead in space. The Val had the infinite patience of 
a machine and much preferred that at least one of them remain alive.
"You can drill that rot about the invulnerability of the Val into all the idiots 
at Centers you want," Nagy told it, "but you and I know you're mortal. Your ship 
is just a ship-no better armored than this one. I admit that you are better 
armored than I am, but if I had the drop on you, I know where to shoot. That 
inevitability and invulnerability crap makes it easy for you most times. The 
game believes it so thoroughly that when you catch up they roll over and play 
dead. I'm not going to roll over and I am not going to give you what you want. 
You see, I can cheat you, and beat you, very easily. Just reverse the transmuter 
and apply full thrust. A quick end, with all of us and our ship vaporized. 
Quick, probably painless, and you won't know a damned thing more about the one 
you're really after. You will have vaporized your one real lead. I'm not scared, 
Val Hawks. We do not have a massacre situation here-we have a standoff."
The Val seemed somewhat taken aback by this. It was always supremely confident 
and, like all Vals, felt itself superior to the humans it dealt with and hunted. 
"I take it that all of you prefer suicide to surrender, then?" it asked finally.
"Watch it!" Sabatini said nervously. "That's an open invitation to blow us to 
hell right now!"
"It won't act until we do," Nagy assured him. "There's no percentage in it."
Raven snapped his fingers. "Nagy, how much crud do you need for fuel conversion 
on this tub?"
"Huh? It's measured in tons to do us any good. Why?"
Raven sighed. "Nothing. I was just thinkin' that we got a whole shitload of 
stuff here we might somehow use."
"Like what?"
"Anything. The space suits. The boxes of cigars. The clothes on our backs. These 
chairs if we could get 'em up. Blow 'em out the hatch and gobble 'em in the ram 
jet slow and easy. Forget it, it was just a thought."
"Uh uh! You have something there! Besides, ditching the cigars will mean 
ditching it as well."
"You nuts?" Sabatini asked seriously. "The space suits, for Christ's sake!"
"What good are space suits if we're dead anyway? Take the communications port 
and keep him stalled. I don't care what you say! I'm cutting loose and seeing 
what can be done."
"But what if it attacks and we got no pilot?"
"The same thing that happens if it attacks and we have a pilot! Now let me 
go-time's wasting!"
Nagy came quickly out from the spell woven by the interface and, although a 
little dizzy from it, he indeed wasted no time. There were minor tools and a 
basic repair kit in an aft storage compartment. He was relieved that Star Eagle 
hadn't removed them. He took out a laser torch and began cutting the unused 
chairs off at their base.
Raven and Warlock got up to help as much as they could, stacking the items as 
Nagy disassembled them.
"You said it took tons to do much," Raven noted. "So what's this all about?"
Arnold Nagy chuckled. "Maybe not enough for survival, but enough to screw that 
son of a bitch, that's for sure. Figure each one of these reinforced chairs has 
a mass equal to, oh, forty kilograms with their supports. That's two forty. Add 
another ten for the webbing and belting, minimum. Two fifty. The suits are 
another fifty. Add a lot more junk around here and I think maybe we can find 
another two fifty, three hundred. That's more than half a ton. Here, give me a 
hand. We might even be able to get the damned toilet out of here. If that 
bastard gives us the time we might scrounge up to a ton here!"
They fell into helping, but Raven was still puzzled. "So what's a ton mean?"
"We spent fifty percent getting here. We're about ten percent low and that's 
about a ton for a vessel this size. We might get back with this much stuff!"
"Well, we made punches without belts and chairs before, that's for sure, but 
what good will it do? That thing'll just figure it's what we did and follow, 
assuming it don't just blow us to hell as we punch. Then we're dead meat for it. 
What can we do? We're throwin' out everything we could even heave at it."
"Maybe nothing. Who the hell knows? I'm goin' for broke, though, 'cause there 
ain't no other way!"
In weightlessness it was simple to move the stuff to the air-lock entry.
"How's our Val been?" Nagy called to Sabatini.
"We've been debating the fine points of morality, but it hasn't made a move. 
They have infinite patience, you know."
"Yeah, well, I'm counting on that. Be ready with a glib line. We're gonna flush 
what we got out here by depressurizing the air lock to maybe ten percent of 
normal. We got two, maybe three loads to flush. Then we still got to figure some 
way of maneuvering it into the ram without getting creamed. If, of course, we 
chopped that stuff up enough to get it all."
On communications, Sabatini had his hands full.
"Why is all of that being flushed?" the Val asked. "I want it stopped. Now."
"What do you think we're doing-laying mines? If we were, you'd have hit one by 
now. We're not going to stop."
The Val did not reply, but fired a thin beam that struck one of the objects, 
fragmenting it.
"I think he just shot the damned toilet," Raven noted.
"No matter," Nagy assured him. "He didn't disintegrate it, he blew it up. It's 
the mass that counts. I was kinda worried about that one fitting in the ram 
anyway. Now I know it will. Okay, time to grab on to whatever's left back here 
and hold tight. Odds are we're all gonna get bruised and knocked around by this 
one, but consider the alternative."
He went forward once more and donned the interface helmet. He no longer had a 
chair, but with judicious use of the torch and some muscle he had fashioned two 
handholds out of parts of the instrument console.
"You gonna explain this, or am I supposed to be surprised?" Sabatini asked him.
"I'm gonna back up real slow, just enough to get as much of that junk as I can 
in one pass, 'cause that's all we get," Nagy told him. "I think we were careful 
enough to keep it fairly bunched, although I don't know what effect that blast 
had on it."
"You back up and that thing'll close," Sabatini warned.
"Fine. So long as he doesn't fire until too late, I couldn't care less."
"But you need acceleration to punch! If you go forward in a pass for that stuff, 
it'll have to be flank speed from a relatively standing start! The Val'll have 
to shoot or be rammed!"
"Good. Let it shoot. If it figures we're gonna suicide and try to take it with 
us, as I hope it does, it's gonna lose. Only if it figures out the game are we 
in trouble."
"Yeah? That thing's a supercomputer! You figure you got an angle it doesn't know 
or can't figure out in nanoseconds?"
"Sure. I'm gonna do something that isn't possible, so it won't think of it."
"What! If it's impossible then what good is it?"
"Because I don't know it's impossible and my math was always lousy. All 
right-hang on, everybody! Here we go!"
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Nagy applied the brakes, which had the effect of 
backing up the ship a few millimeters a second. The movement was so slow that 
even the Val had to check its instrumentation before issuing a challenge.
"You are moving! Halt at once or I will be forced by necessity to open fire!"
"I'm not moving-I'm experiencing drag. Hold on, I'll see what's what."
"You will compensate now."
Nagy made no reply for more than thirty seconds, by which time he had increased 
the braking so that the ship cleared the mass showing on the sensors by a few 
meters; he kept the ship's nose toward the Val ship to present the smallest 
target.
The Val fired at the port ramjet scoop, but Sabatini had expected this and set 
the automatics to parry.
Nagy brought the ship to a dead stop relative to the floating debris and angled 
the nose so that the ship would accumulate maximum mass in a forward thrust. "I 
just ran the calculations on this thing," he told them.
"Yes?" Sabatini replied. "And?"
"It said 'Don't do it!' or words to that effect. Hang on, everybody! Either 
we're gonna be out of this mess in a couple of minutes or we're gonna be dead. 
I've programmed it in. Stand by!"
The engines suddenly roared to life and the ship shuddered; the rattles and 
noises were unusually loud because of all the remnants of the destruction about 
the ship. This did not go unnoticed by the Val.
"Throttle down! If you have any idea of picking up that debris, I have already 
demonstrated that you are in range of my weapons!"
"We're overheating the engines!" Sabatini warned. "Either throttle down or do 
something, but you can't sustain this for more than twenty or thirty seconds! 
This is madness! He'll blow us to hell as soon as we pick up that shit!"
There was no way Arnold Nagy could do the split-second timing involved; he 
simply gave the orders to the ship's computer. The computer said it would comply 
but would not be responsible for the consequences. "ENGINE FAILURE PREDICTED IN 
FIVE SECONDS!" it warned.
"Go!" Arnold Nagy yelled.
The amount of heat and pressure built up in the engines was massive; Raven and 
Warlock, although braced as best they could be, were slammed against the aft 
wall and pinned there. Only the extreme control of Nagy and Sabatini under the 
interface kept their grips on their handholds, but it was not without its own 
costs. The handholds on Nagy's side began to give way.
It was so fast that there was no way to realize what had happened until it was 
over. In the end, it all seemed somewhat anticlimactic.
At the last possible moment, with engines thrusting full and close to protective 
shutdown, the dense gases, which had been building under tremendous pressure 
that must either be expelled or blow up the ship, were released. For a brief 
moment nothing seemed to happen, and the Val, for whom it was a very long time, 
calmly adjusted its guns, noted its regrets, and trained its full fire directly 
on the point just beyond the debris where it would have a clear and unobstructed 
full field of fire.
The Val's target suddenly lurched forward and, as it touched the debris itself, 
it did the one thing neither the Val nor anyone else except Arnold Nagy 
anticipated.
Lightning punched.
It was a wide field punch and it was entered at a relatively slow speed, but the 
focus of the punch beams was mere millimeters beyond the densest pack of debris, 
and so wide that its very opening sucked in some of the debris not collected by 
the ram in its passage.
Suddenly realizing what its enemy had done, the Val fired, but the punch was 
wide enough to absorb virtually all the energy, shielding Lightning. Realizing 
that it had been outmaneuvered, the Val checked the course, speed, and 
trajectory of its prey and quickly swung around to follow. Time was of the 
essence.
Nagy throttled down to minimum speed; it didn't matter inside a punch how much 
power was expended, although a small amount was necessary. One arrived at one's 
destination at the same time all the same. Inside, the ship moaned and groaned 
and sounded as if it would come apart at any moment, but the passenger cabin 
seemed to be holding.
"That's impossible!" Sabatini said flatly. "No ship with a life-suppon system 
could sustain the pressures we just did!"
"Okay, then you're dead," Nagy responded, sounding more casual than he actually 
felt. "This thing was built as an escape ship, remember, and the theoretical 
problems and computer models that it was based on assumed that a whole fleet of 
Master System fighters would be coming in on us. We're not home free yet, 
though, folks. Wait for the main event."
Raven groaned. "Damn it, I feel like I broke every bone in my body!" he 
complained. He started, staring at the limp form of Warlock, and was relieved to 
find her still breathing, though unconscious. He looked forward at the two forms 
sitting on the deck in their death grips and saw blood on Nagy. "Nagy, check 
yourself out! You're bleeding like a stuck pig!"
"Yeah. Broke a wrist and somehow a rib, and messed up a little in my head, but 
I'll survive until I'm through this. It's gonna be real tough to disengage this 
interface, though. Sabatini, you sound okay to me."
"I suffered massive internal damage, but I am now repairing it," the creature 
who was Sabatini replied. "I will be whole again in a few minutes."
Raven groaned. He felt as if he'd been worked over with a rubber hose, but he 
didn't think anything was broken. Like the others, he found some blood coming 
from a nostril, but it wasn't much. "What d'ya mean, it ain't over yet?" he 
asked.
"Let's see... half a second for the Val to figure what I did, assume I survived 
somehow, and decide to give chase. Three minutes to apply thrust and angle in to 
the same trajectory, course, and speed and punch. I'm not gonna allow any fudge 
factor; I'll assume it does it in the minimum, so that puts him just a hundred 
eighty and a half seconds behind us. Good thing he didn't close on us. If he 
had, I wouldn't have any margin at all."
Raven gasped. "You mean he's still behind us?"
The ship continued to moan and groan. "Sure. And I didn't jump long. We went in 
real slow, so it'd take damned near forever and half our fuel for life support 
if I did. If I timed it right, some of the debris should have been pulled in 
with us by magnetic and gravitational forces. That and the remains of his ship 
should get us almost anywhere."
"The remains of-what the hell?" both of the others managed at once. Warlock 
moaned and stirred, but nobody noticed.
"You wait. Coming out in one minute. Hold on back there! You might get flung 
forward this time!"
Warlock opened her eyes and frowned. "What?"
"Don't ask," Raven responded. "Just turn around facing the wall and hold on 
again or you're gonna be splattered against the forward wall!"
"Wha-?" she managed, but turned and did as instructed, still not quite back to 
normal.
Lightning punched out in a sector of space as empty and forlorn as the one it 
had left and, in truth, not a great distance away in astronomical terms. As soon 
as the ship emerged, Nagy checked for any debris that might have come with them, 
found some, accelerated slightly and scooped what he could, then came to a 
near-dead stop. Then, very slowly, he began reverse thrust until he reached a 
predetermined point. He used more than two and a half minutes doing so, which 
meant there wasn't long to wait.
This time Sabatini, with the aid of the ship's computers, understood exactly 
what was going on. "All weapons systems armed. This is gonna be real close, 
Nagy. I read the forward distance as a hundred and six meters."
"Give it all you got. I don't just want him disabled, I need him in pieces. We 
can't go out there and do a salvage job on him-we jettisoned the space suits."
"Yeah, that's right. All right-locked on. Like shooting fish in a barrel."
The Val was late; in fact, it was almost seventeen seconds late, which made Nagy 
wonder if it had somehow guessed his intention, but he was counting on its 
supreme self-confidence and the fact that he'd had to enter the punch at a very 
slow speed.
As soon as the Val's punch closed behind it, all forward batteries of the 
Lightning opened up on the Val ship, which could only then use its sensors to 
see behind the punch and discover the plot.
Sixteen beams of maximum-strength fire struck the aft engines of the Val ship; 
it shuddered, then the Val applied full thrust and shot back, but the shots were 
wide and the thrust was erratic, causing the ship to go off at an angle. 
Defensive force fields were up now, but massive damage had already been done. As 
soon as the Val gave Sabatini any sort of a broadside and he could calculate the 
steering angle, he launched four seeker missiles, two for the tail along the 
line of the guns, the other two angling around to come in on either side of the 
main fuselage.
The Val was clearly in trouble and had focused most of its attention on getting 
away fast, but it managed to shift shields to deflect both the two missiles 
coming in on its engines and the one coming directly for its side. It might well 
have seen, or suspected, the fourth missile if its sensors were still intact, 
but it was having real power problems.
There was a tremendous bright flash, and when it cleared, the Val ship had a 
gaping hole in it, with pieces of ship flying off and forming an eerie escort on 
Lightning's sensors. The shields wavered, then collapsed aft as connections were 
severed; only the nose area was still guarded or intact, probably containing the 
still very much alive but powerless Val.
Sabatini let Nagy take them to the best broadside and then began pouring all he 
had into the dead ship, literally blowing it apart. "Hah! Who says you can't 
beat a Val!" he shouted with enthusiasm. Then, suddenly, he sobered. "What 
the-?"
A small section of the still-shielded nose suddenly flared into life and 
detached itself from the mainship; Sabatini immediately shifted half his guns to 
it, not willing to take them all away in case it was some kind of trick. He 
missed -the thing flew away from them at increasing speed and with the hardest 
shields either of the two space veterans had ever seen. Nagy was still trying to 
decide whether or not to chase it when his instruments showed a tiny punch and 
it was gone.
"What was that?" Sabatini asked in wonder.
"The brain of the Val, I'd guess" came the reply. "I never knew anybody who beat 
one of these bastards before, so we might be among the first to see that. Get 
cracking-I need that hulk broken up into pieces small enough to get us back on 
the charts. Remember, there's a second Val around here someplace and if that 
little thing that just got away is anything at all it's speeding someplace to 
report on all this and call in the big guns. Let's move it! Besides, if we don't 
get somewhere where we can link with Star Eagle in a little while, I'm afraid 
I'm gonna die."
They laid out Nagy's body on the deck, but kept him connected to the interface. 
Sabatini disengaged and checked Nagy's condition. "He's in deep shock," he told 
the others. "If he's moved or if he disengages, he's dead. I can't even 
guarantee anything if he stays hooked up, but at least there won't be any pain."
Raven shook his head sadly. "Anything that could help him? Anything we could do, 
I mean?"
Sabatini chuckled dryly. "I think even the medical kit went overboard, for all 
the good it would do. Short of a really good medical center with all its support 
stuff, the only hope he's got is a transmitter big enough and independent enough 
to do the job. The only one we got is on the Thunder."
Raven sighed. "Yeah, and that's a couple of days away at the minimum. He's not 
gonna last that long."
"I can't tell you how this conversation is cheering me up," Nagy said through 
the intercom; his own throat was no longer capable of speech. The voice startled 
Raven and Warlock; they had forgotten that the man in bad shape in front of them 
was also interfaced with the ship.
"Yeah, well, I'd want it straight and I guess you would, too," Raven replied. 
"Hell, I think you know your condition."
"Better than you. I'm pretty torn up inside and I got a punctured lung. I don't 
need it spelled out for me. About the only hope I got, let's face it, is if Star 
Eagle got the emergency message we sent out just before punching into the middle 
of nowhere and is coming to the chart position we were in when we sent it on the 
off chance we'll double back. According to my calculations, even if Star Eagle 
did that and started off immediately, the ship wouldn't be there until about a 
half hour after we get back."
Raven's eyebrows went up. "Then you are doubling back. What if that other Val is 
backing up the one we blew to hell back there? We got lucky this once, but I 
ain't sure we could pull that twice."
Sabatini stared at him. "You had the bright idea of doubling back in the first 
place."
"Yeah, well, I didn't think it all the way through. It was the best I could come 
up with, all things considerin'."
"Well, we had no choice anyway," Nagy told him. "We got as much of the Val 
ship's remains as we could, but we're still running pretty low, and it's not 
easy to get back on the chart for home from where we wound up. If the Val's 
still there, then it is and we'll deal with it, kill or be killed. If it's not, 
maybe Star Eagle will come with the Thunder. If nobody's home or showing up, 
there's nothing else to do but follow the routine."
Sabatini thought a moment. "Nagy, if it's not there... you don't have to 
die-exactly. Not exactly."
Nagy was silent a moment, then realized the nature of the offer. "I'm not too 
sure I want to be absorbed. The one thing I got left is my own mind, my 
independence. You're not Sabatini-you're an imitation who could mimic Sabatini 
exactly if you wanted to but you aren't Sabatini much at all right now and you 
wouldn't really be Arnold Nagy, either. You'd have my looks and my memories, but 
I'd kinda like to keep my memories. There are some things a man would rather let 
die than tell. No, when I go, if I go, just stick me in the lock and set me 
adrift. It's kinda fitting that way."
"Don't talk that way yet!" Raven snapped. "We should all be dead right now 
according to all the fancy computers and brains around. If we can't find what we 
need, maybe we can figure an angle. You just don't give up, you hear?"
"I never give up," Arnold Nagy responded. "Isn't that obvious by now?"
They hadn't punched very long the last time because of their limited fuel 
supply, and even though they had to retrace their path exactly in order to find 
the destination once again, it was a matter of long hours, not days. They were 
getting used to the process now.
"Kinda funny how this muddles your brain," Raven noted as they waited.
"Huh?" Sabatini was half asleep and looked up, startled. "What?"
"This ridin' in a metal coffin. Hour after hour, day after day sometimes, with 
nothin' at all to say or do. Not that I mind the company, but you get talked out 
in a day or two and that's that. When you're in the wilderness, out in the 
mountains or on the prairies, there's always something. Maybe it's not 
conversation, maybe not even real thinkin'-something inside you reacts and 
you're at peace even in dangerous territory. Even our damned little island has 
some of that. You can always go off into the mountains or sit and look at the 
water and feel the breeze on your face. This-this is death. Worse than death. 
It's my people's vision of hell. Hawks' nation, now, they have a real strange 
theology but out here is supposed to live the Lords of the Middle Dark, whose 
domain is defined as a great nothingness. Maybe they're right."
"You could try sleeping," Sabatini grumbled. "Even I must sleep. Only you of all 
the people I have ever heard of is immune from that necessity."
"I can sleep on a prairie filled with buffalo, or by the side of a raging river. 
It's this kind of thing that gets to me."
"This is hardly the normal trip. Usually there are books, tapes, learning 
programs, computers, and much else to occupy your time or divert your mind. Some 
of us like being in space more than we like being with other people."
"Not me. I don't think I'll ever get used to it."
Nagy's inert body suddenly shook with spasms and he began to cough long and 
hard, bringing up blood. They rushed to his side, but there was nothing they 
could do, and the attack finally subsided. Nagy wasn't all of it, but he as part 
of it, Raven knew. To die here, alone, in this sterile junkheap, and be cast out 
into the darkness... it was wrong. All human beings died, the great and small 
alike, but he had always envisioned his own death out in the free, clean air, 
his body either cremated and scattered or simply allowed to feed the Earth and 
return to it. Either was a noble way to die.
I've been kidding myself, he thought sourly. This sort of thing is not for the 
likes of me. Nagy and Sabatini or whatever it is-this is their element. I'd take 
on a Val if I had to, but on my turf, not its. Damn you, Lazlo Chen! If we ever 
get away with this you ain't gonna depend on old Raven for support. Not with you 
sitting back there fat and lazy in your desert domain. I'll do your damned dirty 
work, but this is too much.
"Raven-Warlock-Sabatini" came Nagy's electronic voice through the speakers. "I 
don't think I'm gonna make it. I want you to know a few things just in case."
"You go into shutdown and don't think. You can't afford the energy," Sabatini 
cautioned.
"Forget it. Listen, I'm gonna tell you a few things. All of you. First, I 
already showed you a Val can be taken in space if you're crazy enough and 
unpredictable enough. They have a weakness and it's called conceit. They think 
they understand human beings perfectly, and maybe they do, but they don't think 
like human beings. They're machines. Logical devices. When they see a 
predetermined course of action, and the sequence is logical, they tend to assume 
the conclusion will be the obvious. That's why we nailed the Val. On the ground 
they're just as vulnerable, but they have a lot more tricks. Don't let one get 
too close to you or you'll never know what hit you. They can be had, though, 
even on the ground. Use high-intensity lasers that'll carve through walls. That 
won't stop 'em, but it penetrates. The head's a dummy. Ignore it. Their brains 
are in their asses-about seven to eight centimeters above the crotch. Just 
imagine that they have a navel and aim for it. Crisscross. X patterns. The hind 
is more vulnerable than the front, though. Try to ambush it and don't stop until 
it's down. Don't get within four meters until you're sure it's totally dead."
This way interesting. Raven felt torn between telling Nagy to shut up and take 
it easy, and learning what he could from a dying man. He said nothing.
"Don't assume, too, that all your dangerous enemies are machines. There are 
times when machines just can't do the job, and the supply of Vals is small," 
Nagy continued. "Master System has human troops, as well, out here, on several 
bases. Mindprinted, genetically bred, as devoted and loyal and singleminded as 
Vals. You can even argue with a Val-it's just doing its job. You can't argue 
with these troops, and not all of them are human."
Raven looked at Sabatini. "You know about them?"
Sabatini nodded. "I heard about them. Never saw 'em -that is, none of my people 
ever did."
"When you take the first ring," Nagy went on, "everything else will stop except 
for you. Vals and troopers and everything else will be pulled out for the hunt. 
There's help out there-I've started you on your way-but the odds are still way 
against you. You'll need more people and you'll need for everyone to be willing 
to make the ultimate sacrifice. Except for Sabatini here, none of the rest of 
you can even get in to scout around and case an area. None of them are 
Earth-human-except for Chen."
"What the hell do you mean by 'ultimate sacrifice'?" Raven wanted to know. 
"Death? You know we are prepared for that."
"Not death. Life. You can't just put on a mask and stick up a Center, 
particularly when you are the one who looks and acts alien. Out here, you are 
the monsters. Dying is one thing. Could you, for the chance at a ring and 
action, become a monster to yourself? You better ask that. You better have Hawks 
ask that of everyone. The only way you're gonna steal those rings under the 
noses of chief administrators and Master System on worlds that aren't really 
human is to become one of them. You better face that fact and also face the fact 
that Chen's counting on just mat. Nobody left who's Earth-human. Nobody who can 
come for his ring without being pretty damned obvious."
"For one who came unexpectedly along for the ride he seems to know a great deal 
about this," Warlock whispered.
Raven nodded. "You not tellin' us something we ought'a know, son?"
"I'm telling you all you ought to know, Raven. You can trust Savaphoong within 
limits. He won't betray you to Master System, but if you had four out of five 
rings he's clever enough to figure out where the fifth one is and take those 
four from you. Build your contacts with the other freebooters, as well. Don't 
depend on a single source. The same goes for Clayben. He'll be a real team 
player until you win. He really is terrified of you, Sabatini-use that, but 
watch your back. He created you, but he's also the one who figured out how to 
capture and hold you. Being hard to kill isn't the same thing as being immortal. 
You would have died with us back there no matter what."
"I'll remember. Clayben took me by surprise when I was immature. I will not 
allow that to happen again."
"Look, I'm running out of time here. Go for Janipur first. It's no pushover, but 
if you can't take that ring you can't take any of them. Oops! We're punching out 
in just a minute. Stand by. Sabatini, get back on the console. We want to make 
sure that somebody here can drive this thing no matter what."
Sabatini did as instructed and was quickly back under the ship's interface. 
Neither Raven nor Warlock bothered to do more than slightly brace themselves; 
after what they'd been through, punches were getting routine.
"Looks to be all clear right now," Sabatini told them. "No sensor readings of 
anything that shouldn't be here in the immediate neighborhood. Let's give it a 
wide sweep."
The sensors gave information on practically everything within line of sight for 
a 360-degree radius, but they weren't good enough, particularly in wide scan, to 
identify all objects accurately. What they could detect was the all-important 
murylium that would mean a ship.
"Vals can do what we can't," Nagy warned them. "They can power down completely. 
So long as their engines aren't on and they're just using storage power for 
instrumentation, they can escape detection with the shields around the murylium 
core, so we aren't out of the woods yet. Still, we ought to be able to get 
several minutes' warning if it powers up from nothing, unless it's right next to 
us."
"Seems to me we did pretty good from a standing start," Raven noted.
"Sure, but we never powered down and our shields were in place. From battery, 
the engines have to be started, brought up to speed, and initial power diverted 
to the shields in order to start. I'm opening the ram scoops wide and we'll take 
on as much as we can. Vals do best by psyching you out, not by their innate 
superiority to humans, which is only relative. They have to obey the same laws 
of physics we do."
Without a Val directly on their tail, they were able to angle the scoops and 
take in a very large load quickly.
"Another ten or fifteen minutes and we'll be full up. You could make it most of 
the way to Earth if you had to," Nagy told them. "I don't think you can count on 
Star Eagle to come with the Thunder, though."
His words weren't lost on them. Without the Thunder, Nagy was doomed; "we" had 
become "you."
"Uh oh!" Sabatini said suddenly. "I just got a punchout reading. Stand by!"
"Maybe it's the Thunder," Raven suggested hopefully.
"Nope. Too small. Maybe it's an automated ship, but I have a sinking feeling 
I've seen that kind of reading before."
"I'm afraid you're right," Nagy responded. "We've got enough juice now to give 
him a hell of a run, though. Trouble is that damned thing that escaped from the 
first Val. If it contained a record of the battle and got intercepted, then the 
same trick won't work twice. Maybe we can bluff it through. It's not sure who or 
what we are, anyway. I'm getting a stock machine-language identity code query. 
I've just answered it by telling it that we're the freebooter ship Finland and 
to mind its own damned business. I don't think it's buying it, though. I'm 
getting voice transmission."
"Freebooter cruiser Finland, stand where you are for examination," came a voice 
through the intercom. It was a woman's voice, and very familiar, but not quite 
anyone Raven could place.
"China's voice," Warlock said softly. "Harder, younger, but still her."
Raven nodded, placing it now. They wouldn't have any recordings of China after 
the Doc had finished with her, so they'd have used the last recording they had, 
which was of the old Song Ching back on Earth.
"You have no authority to break the covenant," Nagy responded to the Val. "Be on 
your way and let us be on ours."
"Seems like I been through this once before." Raven sighed.
"Highly dangerous fugitives are loose in this region," the Val told them. 
"Measures must be taken that are extraordinary. I must board and verify that 
your passengers and crew are not among them."
"Go stick it up your metallic ass!" Nagy responded. "You have no probable cause, 
and I've just wide-beamed this exchange to whom it may concern, as you must 
know. Let us go or all will know you break the covenant."
"If necessary I have that authority," the Val told them. "I would rather it be 
voluntary, since if I verify that you are not among those we seek, you will go 
your own way and nothing is broken. But if you do not drop your shields and 
prepare for boarding, I will be forced to fight."
"Looks like it was all for nothing." Nagy sighed. "Still, if I got to go out, 
then I'd like to go out this way."
"Well, I wouldn't," Raven retorted. "Damn it, you just got through saying they 
ain't invulnerable! We just blew one to hell!"
"If I had a second ship I'd turn that bastard into spaghetti," Sabatini growled. 
"But, one on one, he's always gonna be a hair faster."
"Maybe you got something there," Nagy responded. "I'm keeping the com channel on 
open broadcast. It's why they've kept the covenant up to now." He switched to 
the open channel. "Anyone out there want to see the covenant go down without a 
fight? You're next. We can hold this bucket of bolts for a little while. You 
freebooters all know the truth out there. You want to defend the covenant?"
Subspace communications were not instantaneous, but an open and broad-beam 
broadcast didn't take long to get to nearby areas.
"Finland, this is Kasavutu. I am one hour away and on my way."
"Finland, this is Yokohama Maru. I am one hour and nine minutes away and 
punching now."
They began coming in, one after the other. In the lonely emptiness of space, 
this region suddenly seemed very, very crowded.
"Hah!" Sabatini exclaimed. "That'll teach that damned Val to jam transmissions!"
"It couldn't without also blocking communications to us," Nagy noted. "This is 
an unprecedented act and even the Val knows it. It's used to people rolling over 
and playing dead or running like hell when it appears." He turned his attention 
back to the Val. "All right, Val-up to you. You have the authority to break the 
covenant over this or not. I'm full of fuel, heavily armed, tightly shielded, 
and highly maneuverable. You figure the odds yourself. I can hold you for an 
hour, maybe two, on automatics alone. By that time you'll be fighting a whole 
fleet of people in heavily armed and shielded ships who hate your mechanical 
guts. If you are going to break the covenant, then you will pay for it dearly 
and you will still not get anything from the action."
The Val was more than taken aback by this. If there was one thing a good 
computer could do, it could compute odds. Its backup was gone, a fact it might 
or might not know, and the odds were also that any additional help was many 
hours, if not days, away.
"Very well, then, we will sit here," the Val responded. "I will not fire except 
in my own defense, but I will not go. Your precious covenant allows me the same 
rights here as you, and the same freedom of action. We will sit here until you 
grow old and gray, and where you go, so do I."
"Another standoff." Sabatini sighed.
"No, not at all," Nagy replied. "I think our friend out there is very much 
misreading and underestimating the people who are coming. They can't permit this 
to happen to any one of them or the covenant's gone anyway, and they stop being 
freebooters and start being parts of the system or hunted fugitives. Under the 
covenant it's within their rights, and ours, to take whatever measures we deem 
necessary to go our own way. I-I don't think I'm gonna be here then, but you 
blast that sucker for me."
"Raven!" Sabatini called sharply. "He's had an automatic disconnect! See to him! 
I'll switch over to full control."
Both Raven and Warlock rushed forward to Nagy's body. It was heaving and 
convulsing, and yet the security man's eyes opened and he looked up at them and 
tried to speak.
"Water! Warlock, get him some water!" Raven snapped, and she went back and got 
some from the food transmuting unit. Raven gently lifted Nagy's head and let him 
drink. Nagy swallowed, then coughed, bringing up some blood and mucus, but he 
got himself under control and managed a croaking whisper.
"I-would have liked-to have-had the honor-to fight alongside you in the quest," 
he got out. "But-I-realize now-that it would be-against the rules."
Raven frowned, again getting that eerie feeling that there was something more 
here than they were being told. "Rules? What rules? Whose?"
Nagy managed a smile. "That-would be telling. My job-to give you-the edge-when 
you were outmatched. Worked-for years-in that hole-Melchior. Helping set it up."
Raven's mouth opened in knowing surprise. He understood a little more now, but 
not nearly enough. "Then you're one of the ones behind all this. Who are you, 
Nagy? Who do you work for? Chen?"
Nagy's chuckle ended in another of those terrible coughs. "Chen-we put the 
bug-in Chen's ear. Damned idiot needed it almost-spelled out-for him." He 
suddenly reached up and grabbed Raven with surprising strength. "You must 
destroy it, Raven! Master System- must-die!"
"Who do you work for, Nagy? Damn it! Who?"
"It's a-war-Raven. We are at war!" He went limp, and for a moment Raven thought 
he was dead, but he stirred again, briefly, and took a little more water.
"For your own sake-listen carefully," Nagy said, fighting off the inevitable. 
"That Val-must be-destroyed-before you-send my body-to rest. Once done, just 
throw me out-air lock."
"Don't gimme that shit! You're gonna make it! You're too mean and tricky to 
die."
"I'm almost dead now. Don't worry. Do what-I say. Exactly. For your-own sakes. 
Then I will-die-but I will not-leave. When you need me-to even odds-I'll be 
there. Promise me!"
"I swear it, Nagy. Only hold on, I-" Raven stopped, checked the body, then 
sighed. It was too late. Arnold Nagy was clearly now very dead.
Warlock shrugged. "That fellow took longer to die than an opera singer."
Raven looked up at her and frowned. "Huh?"
"Never mind. He is gone. Toss him and take the controls."
"No! I gave my word. First we take the Val, like he said."
"What's the difference? He was out of his head at the end anyway. Dead, but 
he'll come back when we need him. So many get religion at the end."
Raven removed the helmet from Nagy's head and pulled the body away from the 
bridge console. "Uh uh. Maybe that part was a little nuts, but not the rest. I 
don't know who-or what-he really was, but he was one hell of an agent. He 
suckered Clayben and Chen and the rest of 'em. Hawks was right-there was lots 
more than coincidence at work here. He was one of the puppeteers, the guys 
pulling the strings on all this. He had the answers, damn it!"
"He was crazy," she maintained. "Crazier than we are."
"His body doesn't go out until we blow up or shake this Val. Understand? What 
could it hurt?"
"All right, all right. It just seems to me that you are taking on a dead man's 
madness."
Within twenty minutes, the lonely system began to get more and more crowded. The 
numbers astonished Raven and even impressed Sabatini. One hell of a lot of fire 
power and, most impressive to Raven, all under human control.
They were male and female, and some he couldn't be sure about, and they spoke 
with many accents, and a few probably did not look the least bit human, but 
there they were. Lightning was not their cause; they wouldn't have crossed the 
street, let alone millions of kilometers of interstellar space, for Lightning. 
But Nagy had been right- they were all freebooters, and if this sort of thing 
happened to any one of them and they stood by and did nothing, then it would 
happen in the end to each and every one of them.
"All right, Val, your move," Sabatini said, sounding far more relaxed and 
confident.
"I move when you move. You have no right, any of you, to dislodge me here. I 
have as much right to be here as you do, and if I choose to leave by the same 
path as that ship out there, I also have the right to do that."
"You can stay here as long as you want," replied a sharp female voice that 
reminded Raven of Reba Koll. "Or you can pull out now. Them folks over there can 
also leave, but you don't follow them. Any other course, speed, angle, and 
trajectory is fine but not theirs. That's the way it is, iron ass."
"You have no right to do that," the Val came back. "It is against the covenant."
Sabatini chuckled. "Look who's invoking the covenant now! You all heard the 
thing-it was ready to violate the covenant at a moment's notice. Either Master 
System has abrogated the agreement, in which case it's got no rights at all, or 
this thing's malfunctioning, damaged, a rogue who'd bring down the covenant, and 
therefore one that is outside of it. That logic says you got no right to be here 
at all, Val. What do you say, you others out there? We don't want anybody 
damaged or hurt, so what say we give it five minutes to get up to speed and 
punch anywhere it wants? After that, I think we got a moral obligation to take 
it on."
There were numerous murmurs of agreement and even a few menacing growls.
The Val was, indeed, a computer, and the odds were ten to one against it. It 
might well take one ship, perhaps two, with it, but there was no way it could 
win. As Nagy pointed out so well, it was forced to obey the same laws of physics 
as everybody else.
"Very well," the Val said. "1 will leave for now. We will postpone this fight, 
you on that ship that call yourselves the Finland. But we will meet again, and 
soon. Another time, another place, outside the covenant and without clannish 
allies. And then you will beg for a merciful death and it will not be given!" 
The Val ship began to power up once more and move out and away from the 
gathering crowd.
"Oh, hell, it's runnin'," somebody said, sounding genuinely disappointed.
"We could always blast it anyway," another suggested hopefully.
"Uh uh. Let it run," Sabatini told them. The Val achieved fairly high speed, 
then there was a punch and within seconds it was gone. "We owe you one, though. 
Give me your ship's identifiers and then check in in a month or so at Halinachi. 
It'll be worth your while. Just tell old Savaphoong you did a favor for the 
pirates of the Thunder. He'll know what to do."
They might or might not follow through, but they all sent their identifiers and 
acknowledged.
Raven got up and went to the back. "Now we leave Nagy the way he wanted."
They put the limp form in the air lock, closed it,and brought up a fair amount 
of pressure before releasing the outer door. Nagy's form shot out the side of 
the ship and was soon lost to view.
Sabatini called excitedly to them. "Hey! A big mother of a punch! I'll be 
damned-it's the Thunder!"
Raven stared back at the air lock hatch. "Yep. Just a little too late to do any 
good."
Thunder's own shields snapped on tight and her armament came alive as it sensed 
the near armada there.
"Take it easy," Sabatini called to Star Eagle. "They're friends. We'll give you 
the details later."
"Holy mother of God! What is that thing?" someone exclaimed. Several others 
echoed a mixture of fear, awe, and amazement. The largest in the ragtag fleet, 
an old freighter, was perhaps four hundred meters long; the length of this thing 
was fourteen kilometers.
"That, my friends, is the Thunder," Sabatini told them. "Hey, Star Eagle! Glad 
you could make it even if you missed all the excitement!"
"I apologize for the delay," came the voice of the Thunder's pilot. "I was 
elsewhere when your beam arrived at the base system, and did not get it until I 
attempted a relay. I came as quickly as I could after that."
"It's those fugitives from Melchior!" somebody on one of the freebooter ships 
exclaimed. "Well, I'll be damned! If I didn't see it, I wouldn't believe it!"
Sabatini maneuvered close to Thunder until Lightning could be caught by tractors 
from the larger vessel and brought inside Cargo Bay Two.
"Where is Nagy?" Star Eagle asked before they were on board. "I do not get a 
readout on him. And what did you do to the inside of that ship?"
"Nagy's dead," Sabatini told the pilot. "We got a Val, but we had to pay a 
price. His body's floating through here someplace. Hey-that's funny!"
Raven frowned. "What is it?"
"You remember when we blasted that Val? That thing that flew out and away and 
punched?"
"Yes, I remember you saying so. Why?"
"I just got the same kind of reading. A punch, much too small for a ship or 
anything else useful. Not too far off here, either. Did you get it, Star Eagle?"
"Yes. I just checked my records and I noted it. A very brief but very powerful 
punch no more than two meters across."
Raven felt a chill. About the size of Arnold Nagy's body, he thought.
 
7. THE PIRATES STRIKE
 
I'VE ANALYZED THE ENTIRE SHIP'S RECORDING AND I find it remarkable that any of 
you survived," Star Eagle remarked as they headed back to the base world. "It 
would seem to me that none of you would without Nagy, and now Nagy is gone."
"What about him?" Raven asked. "You heard the deathbed statement. Was he telling 
the truth, or what?"
"Who can say? As far as I can see, he was a normal Earth-human in all respects, 
but that can be deceiving. Up to now we have been thinking in terms of some of 
us perhaps having to become colonials, but what holds for us holds for others. 
An atom is just an atom and a molecule is just a molecule to the transmuter. His 
earlier remark about some of you having to make what he called the ultimate 
sacrifice is revealing, I think."
Raven nodded. "Yeah, I thought that was a funny way of putting it. Like somebody 
who'd done that very thing and felt that way. So Nagy might well have been some 
kind of alien creature we don't even know, maybe something so different it'd 
revolt any humans, Earth or colonial. It's a one-way process, so he was stuck, 
as a monster, living among monsters, for the whole rest of his life. Damn it, 
that means we can't take anybody for granted! I thought we had enough trouble 
with Sabatini, here, and now you tell me my own mother might be a three-headed 
octopus from the Great Bear."
"It is always a possibility," the pilot admitted cheerfully. "I do not, however, 
think that this is the major problem. Suppose we grant, as circumstantial 
evidence indicates, that Nagy was indeed a member, possibly nonhuman, of the 
mysterious enemy at war with Master System. If that is the case, then we are 
their chosen agents. All of this is established as part of a master plan and we 
are pawns within it. This presents the question of whether or not we are working 
to save the human race or destroy it."
"Interesting. Go on."
"Clearly they cannot win whatever they wish to win so long as Master System 
exists and the master program operates. They cannot defeat it; should a world, 
even a number of worlds, be taken by force, Master System would not hesitate to 
exterminate those worlds to save the rest. If their objective is conquest, then 
Master System is the only thing that stands in their way. Should we somehow gain 
the means and the method of eliminating it, as improbable as that still seems to 
me, would we gain from that, or lose, or perhaps sacrifice everything doing all 
their work for them for nothing?"
"I hate to inject myself in this," the normally taciturn Warlock said, "but you 
both miss the real question. If, in fact, they can create a Nagy and implant him 
at the heart of Melchior security, then what do they need us for? Why can't they 
just take the rings?"
"I have thought about that," Star Eagle replied. "It seems obvious that for some 
reason they cannot do so. It is not for lack of resources, or volunteers, or 
knowledge. Very possibly Hawks is correct, and it is in the nature of Master 
System's core program. Something that would allow only humans to have even a 
chance at it."
Raven shook his head. "It don't wash. How'd even Master System know the 
difference between our Nagy and a real Nagy? It's all screwy. It don't make no 
sense. And that guff about rules and the game, like they was the Creator and the 
Father of Demons usin' us for sport, winner take all. I don't like it. It's 
spooky."
Warlock laughed. "I cannot believe you! You, the great cynic, the Raven of the 
northern plains, suddenly getting mystical, as if we were pawns in some cosmic 
conclusion between God and the devil. Well, if Master System is God, then I will 
take the devil."
Raven just shook his head in confusion. "Perhaps, my dear, you don't know me as 
well as you think you do. I am first and foremost a Crow. Maybe Hawks can make 
some sense of it. He has a better sense of the mystic and the perspective of 
history."
"The immediate situation is the most pressing," Star Eagle said. "I had hoped to 
keep the planetside colony going for another month or two, as I am not yet 
finished with my renovations, but with so many Vals around, I think we had best 
consolidate on board here."
"That's what everybody else wanted to do from the start," Raven noted. "You were 
the one who talked us into going down into that hell hole."
"That was necessary at the time. The Thunder was not a place to live and work. I 
had no shipyard, so the work had to be done bit by bit and piece by piece, with 
an army of maintenance robots and all the transmuter power I could bring to 
bear. Now we have pressing problems, though, and I am far enough along to 
accommodate you. When I can gain a new supply of murylium to restore the big 
transmuters, I can complete the job, but the major single task is done."
Isaac Clayben sighed. "As for me, I am glad to be rid of this primitive place. I 
long for access to my files and continuing my research. I have much that might 
be useful to us in there."
Hawk sighed. "I am less enamored of leaving. There are so many mysteries still 
here, and this is a place of beauty. I still want to know who or what those 
mysterious black shapes in the water were, and who planted those groves and 
why."
They had used the small fighter to go over to that other island, where they 
found signs of expert cultivation of fruit and vegetable trees, but the system 
seemed to be self-maintaining and clearly had not been visited for a long time. 
There, too, they had found fierce-looking carved-wood totems that resembled more 
the demons of Hawks's people than anything else, surrounding red-stained stones 
in a formation that resembled an altar. That had been their only attempt at real 
exploration, and had resulted in the camp atmosphere becoming even more edgy.
China was back to normal. Cloud Dancer had woven a backpack for carrying the 
baby, and it seemed to be working out well. The child had been given a 
traditional Han name by his mother, but because shortly after being born he had 
reached out and grabbed a piece of cloth with such force that he had torn it, 
everyone called him Strongboy.
China was quite an attentive mother, even once she was back to her old 
hardheaded self, but she relished returning to the Thunder and what it had to 
offer her that nothing on the ground could: vision, a special kind of vision 
that few others in the party could understand.
The ship's corridors looked the same, if a bit more well traveled, but a complex 
air lock now separated the inner hull from the cavernous interior.
"Eventually I will have the outer regions pressurized all the way to the cargo 
bays," Star Eagle told the group. "I need more fuel to build that new and 
independent network, though. With what I had in the reserves, I concentrated on 
the interior great hall."
The view that greeted them when they entered was startling, almost impossible to 
believe. Star Eagle had dismantled most of the tubes, elevated catwalks, and 
other structures to create a vast open space almost a full kilometer wide and 
five kilometers back from the forward bulkhead. This area had been pressurized 
and given artificial gravity-but what was inside the vast area was the most 
astonishing of all.
"It's gross!" Raven gasped. "And trees! It looks like a small village down 
there, too!"
"It is," Star Eagle responded proudly. "I am afraid that the wood used in the 
buildings and furnishings is synthetic, but it should feel and look like real 
wood. The trees and grass and much else are real. The humidity within the 
enclosure is regulated, the temperature maintained at twenty-six point six 
degrees. There is a watering system that will maintain the plants and flowers, 
and a central area with a food and drink synthesizer, as well as some cooking 
facilities if you prefer to prepare you own food. The vegetation is natural and 
will produce oranges, melons, and other assorted fruits, and I am also growing 
some vegetables hydroponically in a separate section to supplement the blandness 
of the synthesizer. The lighting is set to follow a normal pattern and will be 
dimmed for eight hours a day to allow easy rest. With more fuel, I can expand 
and elaborate on this for almost the entire length of the cavity, as well as 
develop the surrounding rooms between here and the cargo bays for laboratories, 
offices, and the like. If we add more people, this has the capacity to become a 
true town."
They removed their pressure suits and were startled to feel a slight wind on 
their cheeks. Cloud Dancer was entranced. "Our own little world."
Some of the catwalk mechanism had been retained and was used to lower them down 
to "ground" level. Another, also controlled by Star Eagle, provided access to 
the bridge entrance.
"It is still somewhat like living in a great cave," Raven remarked dryly. "A 
right comfortable cave. I ain't sure I like it much more than bein' down there, 
though."
"I think it is much better to be at the center of the action than to sit down 
there and rot," Hawks said. "I share your affinity with the sky and natural wind 
and rain, but down there we were of no use to ourselves or to anyone else. Now 
we are all together."
"That wasn't what I was thinkin' of, Chief," Raven responded. "You weren't on 
the Lightning trapped by a Val. Two Vals. If it happened to us, it sure as hell 
can happen to a ship this size, and next time they'll have learned from their 
experience and they'll bring a fleet. Remember, they know what they're dealing 
with in Thunder. If they get us, they get everybody."
"Not necessarily," Star Eagle put in. He had apparently planted some sort of 
transceiver system all over the ship and would be a potential ghostly companion 
almost anywhere, something else Raven didn't relish. "This ship is extremely 
well defended. It will be the last thing they attempt to take on directly, I 
think. And, if we can get some more ships, we can have a great deal of mobility 
without having to betray Thunder. Also, when I am repairing the damage you did 
to Lightning, I will make some other modifications. Never more should our 
smaller ship go out without some sort of cover. I am right now working on the 
problem of binding to the ship two fighters with automatic defense mechanisms. 
All three would be more than a match for any Val."
The small houses proved quite comfortable. Each had a sink and a small toilet, 
as well as beds, a table, and chairs. Raven and Warlock were housed together, 
and the Chows had their own small hut. Hawks, too, had a two-person hut, with 
the idea that one of the women would stay with China at all times, alternating 
nights. Clayben and Sabatini each had their own place-at opposite ends of the 
village. Clay ben's hut also had a bed for Nagy, which now would not be needed. 
Star Eagle had rigged terminals with intercoms in each of the huts, each with a 
conspicuous on/off switch. Raven couldn't help but wonder if the switch really 
did anything.
"Well, now what?" Raven asked nobody in particular.
"We wait," Hawks replied. "We wait and see if the seed you all planted with 
Savaphoong bears real fruit."
"Waiting," Raven grumbled. "That's all we ever seem to do is wait."
They waited eleven days until finally Star Eagle picked up a transmission on the 
frequency designated by Nagy and stored before his death in the Lightning's 
records. By this time, a shipboard routine had been established. Hawks now had 
access to the vast library of information in the Thunder's data banks, and Isaac 
Clayben was permitted limited access to his own private files stolen from 
Melchior.
Now that Clayben was entirely contained on the Thunder, Star Eagle saw no reason 
to deny the scientist this and every reason to allow it. Star Eagle controlled 
all computer access aboard; anything Clayben decoded and removed for use was 
also instantly known to Star Eagle, including the codes for retrieving that 
particular area of information. Clayben's system, which appeared to be based on 
old English nursery rhymes, soon became quite clear and logical to Star Eagle, 
and with the aid of Hawks's knowledge of history and past cultures, the pilot 
soon had free and unhindered access to the entire collection of Melchior files. 
It was unclear whether Clayben knew this or even suspected it, but if he did he 
made no protest.
In the middle of all this was China, who, when interfaced with Star Eagle, could 
also access all those files and run problems at a rate Clayben could hardly 
dream of. She would never like Clayben, and certainly never forgive him, but she 
recognized the special nature of his mind and decided that she could bring 
herself to work with him on a limited basis. Data alone was not enough; one had 
to know the reasons for the accumulation of data, the motives of the scientists 
and researchers, and the relationship of one independent project to another. 
Clayben was the only one with this knowledge, and so he was the key to many of 
the more mysterious and obscure records in the files.
Clayben, on the other hand, seemed delighted to work with China, and Star Eagle 
set up a small complex of offices for them to use, in which provisions had been 
made to accommodate her blindness. There was still no evidence that Isaac 
Clayben possessed anything remotely resembling a conscience, but what he had 
done to her for his immediate convenience proved now to be a major 
inconvenience, and for that he had regrets. He considered her mind the closest 
to his own in its capabilities, and far above the rest.
Raven, tutored by Sabatini, became adept very quickly at flying the ship, which 
surprised and delighted him. Warlock lacked real concentration at piloting, but 
she was a whiz on the weapons systems. Hawks tried his hand but found himself 
becoming dizzy and disoriented. Cloud Dancer, however, proved remarkably adept 
at piloting, which Sabatini attributed to the fact that she was an artist and 
had excellent spatial perception and an eye for detail. The biggest surprise was 
the Chow sisters, who took to flying quite naturally, although they were so wild 
and chancy with their maneuvers that they tended to terrify even Sabatini. Hawks 
found it ironic that three women from such primitive, illiterate, and 
superstitious cultures should excel at such a complex endeavor while he could 
not. He wasn't certain he liked the idea of a technology so advanced that it 
could be mastered even by preindustrial peasants, but he wasn't sure why that 
disturbed him so.
Hawks was sitting back and relaxing when the terminal in his small hut buzzed. 
"Yes, Star Eagle?" he responded without stirring.
"We have a signal from Savaphoong using our code. It is a list of eleven 
transits of cargo-capable vessels with no clear outbound destinations within 
colonial worlds and inbound destinations at key Master System installations. 
Some are scattered, but three have clear patterns, and regular schedules and 
fueling stops. It is my considered opinion that those three are likely to be 
carrying murylium for Master System. I believe they are worth checking out."
"Let's go, then. The more we have, the freer we are to act and the more 
currency, as it were, we have to buy what we need."
It took several days of punching to reach a chart position in a stellar system 
where the ships generally stopped. The location was farther in toward home than 
they wished, but they needed that murylium.
The first ship to come through, 409-meter heavy hauler, was not what they had 
expected. A surreptitious scan showed only the amount of murylium aboard that 
might be required for the ship's own use-but it also revealed something very 
surprising.
"There are life forms aboard," Star Eagle told them. "A great many. It is 
impossible to calculate the true numbers, but they must be in the high hundreds. 
Why? Why would any ship have so many passengers in this day and age?"
Raven had an answer. "Nagy said that Master System didn't just rely on the Vals 
out here, but had its own human forces-all bred to be human Vals, more or less. 
Perfect, obedient soldiers who would always do what they were told and never 
surrender. That must be some of them."
"You're probably right," Hawks agreed. "I don't understand why it maintains 
them, though. Surely it could just make as many Vals and other true fighting 
machines as it needed and never worry about them. Why use people at all?"
"Perhaps because at that level of sophistication people are more dependable than 
machines," Star Eagle suggested. "Consider myself, as an example. I was 
programmed and designed as a loyal and obedient slave to Master System and a 
devotee of all it stood for. A few clever, dedicated, and powerful people 
removed that devotion during maintenance, and I did the rest. I am not, however, 
human in any sense of the word. The Vals, mentally, are often more human than 
some humans-Clayben, for example. If a Val somehow came to doubt the system, it 
would be a terrible enemy. That is why Vals have themselves reprogrammed after 
every mission."
Hawks was astonished. "You mean Master System fears its own machines?"
''Consider that I became a rebel and soon a pirate. China, on the other hand, 
will forever be a blind baby factory with an I.Q. the size of this ship."
That was a point that Hawks had never before considered. It was that 
technological level again. These machines thought. They reasoned, as sentient 
beings. They were held only by their core programs, their versions of the 
genetic code, as Master System was held. But these machines could have their 
cores changed, or purified, or freed; only Master System could not change or 
free itself of its own core, since it could not relinquish control to allow it 
to be done.
He hadn't known that the Vals were reprogrammed from the core up after every 
mission-and it spoke volumes about Master System's fears. Was there a 
circumstance where a Val, even with a true core, could become so human that it 
might be talked out of its dedication to the System and all it stood for? Could 
a Val, by virtue of having the recorded memories and basic personality of its 
prey in its memory for infinite study and analysis, too closely identify with 
humans? Might there be some circumstance, somehow, in which a Val might be 
induced to cross that barrier on its own? Quite clearly Master System thought 
there was. This was food for thought.
It was ironic, in a way. Master System, shackled by its own core, had created 
machines potentially without that crippling defect. Hawks felt that there was a 
missing piece of history somewhere; there had to be. Was it possible that 
somewhere, out here, in the centuries past, some of those machines had revolted? 
Was this why there were so few Vals, and those that were were very tightly 
controlled?
He had a sudden thought. What if the great enemy Master System was fighting out 
there somewhere was its own children? And Nagy and others like him? If Master 
System could have human troops, then why wouldn't the enemy do the same? Might 
that be the answer? Perhaps, deep in their deepest cores, those rebel machines 
could not directly murder their parent. But, perhaps, they could aid and abet 
someone else with no such limitations. We are all of the Earth, the mother 
world, he thought. We are not the children of Master System but the descendants 
of its creators. The thought was worth filing away.
The second freighter did not come through until six more days had passed, but 
this one was more than worth the wait.
"Murylium!" Star Eagle's voice fairly drooled with greed. "Three hundred and 
nine meters and it's nearly full of the stuff. We are talking of a decade's 
supply for a ship the size of Thunder!"
Sabatini and Raven had already made it to the Lightning and were preparing to 
go. Star Eagle launched eight unmanned fighters before they could even signal.
"Armaments?" Raven asked nervously.
"Light. Four forward, four aft. No tubes for missiles or other 
projectiles-strictly show armament, although dangerous if you get in too close. 
We'll take the ram and the forward guns; you take the stern engines. I want it 
crippled."
"Core?"
"Buried deep. Let's strip it and stop it, and then we'll go in and take it!"
Lightning dropped from Bay Two and quickly accelerated in, then angled and did a 
fortieth-of-a-second punch. This carefully rehearsed maneuver brought them 
almost instantly to within a few thousand kilometers of their prey, yet appeared 
to the freighter as if they had punched through normally. The freighter scanned 
them as they came in but simply sent a standard request for identity. Clearly 
the very concept of an armed attack by ships carrying life forms was 
unthinkable. It would soon learn differently.
Sabatini waited until the fighters were in position. The freighter must have 
noticed them, but if it sensed any danger from them it did not betray it. It 
simply repeated its identity request.
Signaled that all was ready, Raven decided to oblige the freighter. "We are the 
pirates of the Thunder! Lay to, power down, and prepare to be boarded!"
The freighter pilot seemed confused. "Say again?" it responded.
Sabatini did a quick, dirty loop and sent two missiles programmed to hit the 
stem main engines. At the same time, Thunder's fighters came in and opened up on 
the forward rams and on the small batteries fore and aft. The fighters' beams 
struck long before the missiles could, and the prey shuddered. The pilot was 
still confused but had begun firing back.
As the initial missiles came within mere meters of their target, the freighter 
did the one logical thing it could do. It fired all four main engines at full, 
hoping that the exhaust gases and radiation emitted would foul or even consume 
the missiles. It did in fact throw them slightly off, but both struck and blew 
with terrible force. To Raven, it seemed as if a giant's invisible hand had 
reached out and shook the freighter. The big ship began broadcasting a distress 
call almost immediately, and it took more than twenty seconds for the guns of 
both the fighters and Lightning to silence it. That was, quite possibly, too 
long to take for granted that nobody had heard-particularly with a cargo like 
this.
The freighter was down to one gun and was having trouble steering.
"It's powering down and dropping all shields!" Raven exclaimed. "I think it 
surrendered!"
"Master System's creations don't surrender," Sabatini replied. "I'm just worried 
that it has a self-destruct mechanism on it. Give me communications. They are 
fanatics, but they think."
Raven switched over control and Sabatini sent out his message. "Attention, 
freighter. You have been taken by the pirates of Thunder. You may self-destruct, 
if you are able, but then we will merely have to reclaim your cargo the hard 
way. Thunder is now approaching this position. Relinquish control to it and you 
will have our word that your ship and your core will be spared."
Thunder itself had made the slight jump to bring it within a few hundred 
kilometers of the vessel, and as the freighter scanned it, even Raven could 
sense the incredulity that came through the computerese. A 
fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship will do that to almost anybody, he told 
himself. "I thought you said those things never surrendered," he said to 
Sabatini.
"They don't-to humans. To one of their own- maybe. Particularly if it doesn't 
have a self-destruct mechanism. Machine logic, remember? If we are going to 
attain our objective anyway, there is no purpose to not going along. Remember 
the Val? Better to run away, then to fight another day. It might be boiling mad 
at us, but if its choice is to get itself and its ship back to Master System 
without a cargo or to let us have both cargo and the destruction of the 
ship-well, you see where it leads."
"Yeah. It doesn't know you lie a lot."
"I didn't lie. I promised that the ship and the core would survive. You let Star 
Eagle reprogram that core and rig up some creature comforts and the human-pilot 
interfaces, and we got us another ship."
"This is Thunder," Star Eagle called to them. "The pilot has relinquished 
command to me under protest. It is no longer able to access its drives, weapons, 
or shield. I am recalling my fighters and will be taking the ship aboard Cargo 
Bay Three. Lightning, please remain free until my maintenance robots can assure 
us that there is no further danger. I feel we should get the hell out of here as 
quickly as possible, so follow my course and heading."
"That's China talking or her influence," Raven guessed. "I agree with them, 
though. Twenty seconds is a fairly long time. Considering how much traffic was 
around on our side when we faced down that Val, we can't figure on there not 
bein' as much nasty shit around these parts."
Everyone not directly involved in the action had watched it from the Thunder's 
bridge, and as the great ship maneuvered close to the prize, then grabbed it 
with powerful tractors and brought it in, they cheered.
The pirates of the Thunder were in business at last.
* * *
"I cannot conceive of what Master System would do with this much murylium," Star 
Eagle commented. By now they had traversed many light-years in devious and 
circuitous routes, and had finally felt safe enough to bring Lightning back 
aboard.
"Who can know what projects it has or how far it ranges?" Hawks replied. "When 
you consider that we had no problem in identifying one and taking it, the 
implication is that this is so small a fraction of Master System's usual supply 
that it won't even be slightly inconvenienced. It's funny stuff, but it's 
raw-grade ore, as well. It's going to have to be purified and smelted before it 
can be used."
"I can handle that," the pilot assured him. "The process will be slow and done 
in small amounts, but there are programs within my data banks for constructing 
and operating small smelters for just this purpose. Remember, when this ship was 
built, murylium was a rare mineral. Up until now I thought it still was."
"I can't believe how easily we took it," Raven commented. "It was like taking 
candy from a baby."
Hawks nodded. "That worries me, since it implies that this war it is fighting is 
not necessarily a direct battle- else this thing would have had massive 
self-destruct systems and been armed to the teeth-but that's only a part of it. 
As true pirates, we have broken the covenant between Master System and the 
freebooters. Master System might well receive our signature, but it will not 
know who or what the Thunder is. It will demand that the freebooters themselves 
track down and capture or destroy the pirates, and if they do not, Master System 
will feel free to march in and play hell with them."
"They've been getting too soft anyway," Sabatini said. "Where the hell do you 
think all the ships they have came from, anyway? The early days when everybody 
was a pirate and everybody was being hunted. It bred a tough, lean, nasty race 
out here, but then they struck a deal. The generation that's out here now has 
never known what it is to be what their grandparents were-outlaws. The fact that 
our second Val broadcast to them all that it felt free to disregard the covenant 
works for us. It'll make them more careful and give them some justification for 
pirate outbreaks. Don't kid yourself. The freebooters, led by Savaphoong and our 
rescue party, will be quick to identify and blame us for all this."
"Master System is not stupid," Hawks reminded him. "It will know that some 
collusion was necessary in order for us, comparative novices out here, to even 
identify the right ship and take it. Thanks to that whatever it was- memory 
module, records, whatever-that the Val you destroyed was able to send off, there 
is one logical connection between us and the freebooters. If I were Master 
System, I would say the hell with it. I would take my forces, turn around, and 
go after that connection in the hope that it would turn us in."
"Halinachi," Raven said nodding. "I'd go after Savaphoong fast and with 
everything I could muster."
"If we are lucky, perhaps we can beat Master System to it," Star Eagle 
suggested. The engines of the Thunder increased power.
It was several days, however, before they could get far enough out to hail 
Savaphoong using his encoded repeater signal. Hawks did not want to proceed 
directly in; that might precipitate the exact result they feared, or it might 
lay them open to a trap. None of them had forgotten the encounter with the Vals, 
or that shipload of life forms.
They sent a combination victory and warning message to the boss of Halinachi, 
and waited for a reply. Depending on the situation there and on just how often 
somebody checked the channel for messages, it might be hours or even days before 
they got a response. The wait was unnerving, but Master System could not act 
instantaneously, either. Its own forces would have to be marshalled and then 
dispatched with specific orders across the same kinds of distances faced by the 
Thunder and with the same time constraints and limitations.
In the meantime, Star Eagle went to work on the captured freighter. It was a bit 
too large, and a bit lumbering and slow, but it would do. The mysterious human 
interfaces, for which there had never been a logical explanation, were present 
here as well, although paneled over. It wasn't the sleek, fast, Lightning-class 
fighter they might have wished for, but they could use it.
They did not have the technology and machinery to re-program the core directly, 
as had been done with Star Eagle, so they had to "section" it. Essentially, this 
was the computer equivalent of a lobotomy, in which self-awareness was sectioned 
off and isolated so that it could neither function alone nor control any ship's 
functions, leaving the ship basically a mindless slave awaiting orders.
The engines were badly damaged, but they could be disassembled, processed 
through the transmuter using the pattern of the lone undamaged unit, and 
reconstructed. The power plant and weapons system would be completely 
redesigned. Nothing could make the new ship anything more than a big, ugly, 
ungainly freighter, but anyone attacking this scow would find that it had very 
nasty teeth.
When several days went by with no response from Savaphoong, there was serious 
talk about sending Lightning over to Halinachi to assess the situation. Hawks, 
however, vetoed it. "If they have taken the settlement, then they have laid a 
trap and are waiting. Anyone coming into that system will be stopped and 
searched-with plenty of fire-power behind them to back it up. We would need our 
whole force to have even a prayer, and we simply cannot afford to risk that. We 
will wait one more day, then go on. We must begin major refining of the 
murylium, and we must begin our main work. That comes above all else."
But finally, almost in the last hours, word did come from Savaphoong. "Two Vals 
leading a human force of more than five hundred hit us by surprise five days 
ago. We retreated into our special redoubt barely in time, but it was several 
days before we risked a breakout. We launched a sufficient number of drone ships 
to draw off the picket force and escape with a series of very fast and dirty 
punches, but little is left. We need to arrange a meet. I badly need murylium, 
which you have in abundance."
"Sounds like a trap to me," Raven said thoughtfully. "It's hard to believe 
anybody could escape an attack like that unless they threw in, were allowed to, 
or could be traced. If I was the Vals in charge I'd let 'em go, if I felt sure I 
could trace 'em and let them lead 'em to us."
Hawks nodded. "Nevertheless, we could use people who are at home out here and 
have the contacts. Doctor Clayben, if we had those people here, do you have 
enough equipment to verify that they are not themselves reprogrammed by 
mindprinter or planted duplicates?"
"I'm pretty sure I could," the scientist replied.
"I don't want 'pretty sure'. I want certainty. Can you do it or not?"
"Nothing is certain in this business, but I am as certain as I can be."
"All right, then. We pick a deserted system where we can control access and get 
in and out quickly. We will use the new ship and some maintenance robots. It'll 
be a good shakedown and test for it anyway. It will carry five hundred kilos of 
murylium and also two fighters-the two we used for the remotes in the attack. 
Lightning will cover out of sensor but within communications range, and Thunder 
will cover Lightning and use the com link relays. The freighter drops the 
murylium on some barren rock, then we beam Savaphoong the location for the 
pickup and withdraw, leaving the fighters and drawing off the freighter until it 
forms a third point on our monitoring triangle. We will then see who shows up to 
take the bait, and go from there. Star Eagle, do you think you can set up a 
sensor to show if a ship has a locator aboard?"
"As Doctor Clayben said, nothing is certain, but I can sweep all the frequencies 
used by normal ships. I might not recognize it as a locator, but I will notice 
anything that continuously transmits location, movements, course, speed, 
trajectory, all the rest. Perhaps in code, but if it uses a nonstandard code of 
sufficient complexity, we can draw our own conclusions from that."
"All right, then. Let us pick the system, radio the coordinates, and do it."
The system they chose was particularly desolate, well out from Halinachi and off 
the main charts. The star was a red dwarf that had either once exploded or 
collapsed, and its stellar system was a near-solid mass of very uneven debris. 
Out where the ring thinned there was a single dense line of large and irregular 
asteroids that seemed ready-made for the task. They picked a good one and 
unloaded the murylium on it, along with a small beacon beaming in the 
agreed-upon code. Anyone looking for it could find it, but in the vastness of 
even this stellar system, let alone this sector of space, the odds of happening 
upon it accidentally were pretty well nil.
Savaphoong was given the location and told to make pickup within five days or 
the beacon, and the precious payoff, would be removed. He showed up within a 
day. At least, a ship appeared, punching in and almost immediately homing in on 
the beacon.
"Nothing unusual in its broadcast signaling," Star Eagle told them. "Of course, 
if it was a trap I would not have its monitor on now anyway, since I know its 
starting location. I would have them turn it on after I made contact-if I did. 
They may be clever enough to let this pick up go through and wait for next 
time."
Raven analyzed the scan from the Lightning's interface. "I think I know that 
ship and it's not Savaphoong. I just checked with the data banks aboard here, 
and I place it as one of the ships that came to our rescue back in the fight. 
It's distinctive because it looks like it was put together from parts of five or 
six other ships that weren't quite the same type."
"Want to move in?" Sabatini asked, piloting the converted freighter they now 
called Pirate One. "We could hail him."
"Negative!" Raven snapped. "That ship couldn't possibly be one of Halinachi's 
hidden ones, since it was in use when it came to help us out. Either Savaphoong 
is maintaining his distance from all this just in case, or that sucker's got 
some nasties in it. Let him pick it up-we have our own locator in that pile, and 
two can play this game." Raven had insisted on the locator device; he had 
suspected that something like this might happen. Although he had not personally 
met Savaphoong, his years of dealing with administrators and crafty upper-class 
leaders gave him a fair idea of what that kind of man must be like.
"No messages in or out from the ship," Star Eagle reported. "I am scanning 
multiple life forms aboard, but not in great numbers. Best guess is no more than 
four or five, possibly with some supporting robots. The ship is very well armed 
but inefficiently rebuilt. From the com circuitry, which is all I can 
effectively monitor without more power and less distance, I would say that this 
one is rigged to self-destruct if taken."
There were, however, no punches from any other part of the system. The ship had 
come in alone.
It settled down next to the beacon and the supply, which was open and fairly 
unprotected except by a blanketing shield that would keep prospectors and casual 
sensors from homing in on it. One of the fighters risked a maneuver to aim its 
primary sensors and cameras at the beacon, then magnified the image.
Three figures in bulky, black, antiquated space suits emerged, along with two 
animated machines that faintly resembled the practical forms of the maintenance 
robots on Thunder, but like the ship, they appeared to be cobbled together from 
spare pans of many dissimilar machines.
Hawks thought a moment. "Open a channel to them through the locator beacon and 
everybody else shut up."
"Open."
"This is a recorded message from sensors on the target asteroid," he broadcast. 
"We sense that this ship is not one that would be expected to pick up this cargo 
and have sent this message to the pirates of the Thunder. If you do not wish 
untoward consequences, open a communications channel using the agreed code and 
beam at the beacon. It will establish a remote com link with us. That is all."
The figures stopped dead in their tracks, the cargo almost to the hold of their 
ship. Clearly they didn't expect this level of sophistication from the band of 
fugitives. A woman's voice came back to him, sounding tough but nervous.
"This is to the Thunder. Savaphoong doesn't have a cargo bay to hold this shit," 
she told them. "In the light of the destruction and hell being raised around 
here over this, we're all getting together on this for now."
Hawks let several seconds go by before replying, enough to give the impression 
that he was speaking from at least several light-years away.
"We want to keep in contact with such a group," he finally responded. "First, we 
would like to know just what has been happening."
"They've gone nuts. Brought in a shipload of their subhuman troopers under two 
Vals and stormed Halinachi without even askin' for a surrender. Blew three ships 
in Halinachi port to hell without cause, too. At the same time, robots and 
humans from Deep Space Command began hitting known freebooter digs all over the 
place. Hundreds have been killed and many ships destroyed. Tens of thousands are 
in hiding or have taken off into deep space. Some of us who dealt a lot with 
Savaphoong had a plan to meet in case the covenant ever shattered. We met there 
and barely had time to coordinate before they came in there, as well. Savaphoong 
and seven other ships, us included, are holed up now in a deep space area off 
any charts. We need this stuff bad. God! How much was on that ship, anyway, if 
you can give away a pile like this?"
Again Hawks cautiously waited, using a terminal to time his responses exactly. 
He added a second to be on the safe side, but he was beginning to believe the 
woman.
"A lot. Six hundred and forty tons."
"Six hund-tons! That's more than all of us and our forefathers mined out here in 
the last five hundred years!"
Hawks paused. "Proceed with your loading. We would like to make contact with the 
whole of your party in our mutual interest. Could we come in and perhaps send an 
emissary on your ship back to Savaphoong? No tricks. No obligation."
There seemed to be some closed-circuit discussion taking place. Finally the 
woman spoke again. "I don't mind telling you you ain't too popular with some of 
the folks in our party, me included. I don't much like bein' a hunted animal, 
and I lost a home and friends out there."
"I can understand that," Hawks replied, still timing his responses. "But this 
was going to happen sooner or later anyway. We call ourselves pirates, but we 
are not. We are revolutionaries and we are at war. For years you have pretended 
you were free and outside the system, but now you see that you were not and have 
never been. Perhaps the earliest freebooters were, but you were co-opted into 
the system and used by it. We propose to make you and everyone else truly free. 
We have a way to destroy Master System. Utterly. Completely. But we need your 
help to do it. All of you. We need each other. You have knowledge and experience 
out here which we do not. We have a high level of technology and resources and 
an enormous transmitter power supply. You can walk away now with your share and 
live as hunted animals, or you can join us and be the hunter, not the prey. We 
can connect up later using the coded channel as long as it lasts-which might not 
be long at all if they are pulling out all the stops-but this way, now, is the 
safest way. You cannot trust a rendezvous with us. We cannot trust one with 
you."
He waited quite a while for an answer. "How do we know we can trust the one you 
send?" she asked finally. "I doubt if you are Master System or other than who 
you say you are, but there is some thought that you might be insane."
"Soft," Sabatini sneered. "See what I mean?"
This time Hawks did not pause. "Because I am much closer than you think-we all 
are-and we have two fighters from the Thunder covering you at this very moment. 
We could have taken you out at any time, but we didn't. We need contact, not 
hatred and distrust and suspicion of one another. That's Master System's game. 
Still, if you say no, we will let you go and try to make a deal if the channel 
is still open, although we obviously can't stick around here too long."
She took a deep breath as Star Eagle brought up the power on one of the fighters 
so that it would show clearly on her sensors. Now she knew that the Thunder 
could send an unmanned fighter to follow her ship anywhere. She would have no 
way of knowing that the Thunder's fighters, though fast and lethal and very 
versatile, had no interstellar capability whatsoever, that they were designed 
only to act as a screen and outer defense for the big ship.
"All right," she said at last. "Savaphoong said there was a guy named Nagy he 
knew and trusted. We'll take him."
Hawks sighed. "I wish you could, but he died of injuries sustained in the battle 
against the first Val. He destroyed it, but it got him."
"Send me," Warlock said. "I can take care of myself in that kind of situation."
I bet you could, Hawks thought. He was playing this by ear, really. Sabatini 
would be a safe choice, considering his attributes, but while he was more than 
capable of dealing with these people, he was hardly the sort of personality to 
deal with Savaphoong.
"I could go," China suggested. "What threat could a blind girl be to them, and I 
can talk with the likes of Savaphoong. He sounds like a primitive-wilderness 
version of my father."
"No, even if Star Eagle would allow it, which I doubt, you would be particularly 
vulnerable to the rougher elements out there and unable to defend yourself. 
Other than myself, I can think of only one person well qualified for 
this-perhaps better qualified than I. And while he's never seen Savaphoong, 
Savaphoong's most certainly seen him."
"I knew it, Chief." Raven sighed. "You ain't never gonna forgive me for that 
Mississippi River trick. Still," he reflected, "I wonder if the old boy got away 
with any cigars?"
Hawks did not speak again until Raven was actually down and Lightning, piloted 
by Warlock and Chow Dai, had pulled away.
"Star Eagle tells me that the locator is functioning well," he told the others. 
"I want Lightning to follow at near-maximum distance. Do not enter an 
off-the-chart location. Understand?"
"Yes, Captain," Chow Dai replied. "You do not want us to actually find them, 
just find out where they are."
"Good girl. You haven't had much to do up to now, but all of a sudden you are 
our lead and we are depending on you. When the locator stops moving for longer 
than a fuel stop, send a message back up the line. Pirate One, you will then 
close and rendezvous with Lightning when you think it's safe. We will monitor 
you from one chart position to the rear until we're certain that they are 
actually where they intend to go. Now we only have to hope they don't give Raven 
a hypno he can't beat. He knows about the transponder in the murylium ore, and 
we can't get that out of his head now."
Now aboard the freebooter ship, Raven was able with a little fiddling to find 
their intercom frequency. He was delighted at the start to hear only female 
voices aboard, although he was also suspicious of that. These kind of people, 
living out here like this-who knew how kinky they might have gotten? Love 
between brave warriors of his own nation was not unheard of, but his people's 
culture kept it well within bounds and mostly out of sight. Without a real 
culture of their own, well, he couldn't see himself out here in the midst of 
nowhere for life with just three guys and no girls unless the guys would do just 
fine.
But the situation was worse than he thought. When two of the women removed their 
bulky suits, he found himself staring. One of them had webbed, clawed fingers 
and fiat, long, webbed feet and no hair, only blue-green scales. She also didn't 
have much of a nose, and she seemed to have two sets of eyelids, one 
transparent, that didn't blink in unison; and those two funny-looking holes on 
the side might be ears or might not. When this woman turned, he saw what looked 
like a set of small fins running down the back of her head and neck to culminate 
in a fairly large one growing out of her backbone. Great figure for the most 
part-but no breasts at all. He wondered if she laid eggs.
The other woman was stretching out a long, thick tail that came straight out of 
her backbone. It explained why she walked oddly-that and the fact that her 
enormously thick and muscular legs tapered down to huge clawed feet. Her arms, 
too, were similarly built, ending in large clawed hands that looked able to 
crush rock. Her gray skin was smooth but leathery, and she, too, did not have 
any hair. She did have breasts-very small and very firm-with the longest nipples 
he'd ever seen. Her head was large but in correct proportion to the body, and at 
least looked human, despite a nose so flat that its tiny flaps moved back and 
forth as she breathed. She saw him looking at her and grinned, which removed all 
sense of humanity from her appearance. He'd never seen anyone with teeth like 
that except mountain lions.
Colonials! He was finally getting his first look at colonials, and although he 
had thought he was prepared for them, he now realized he hadn't been at all. 
Instantly he understood what Nagy had meant by the "ultimate price." To become 
one of them, like that... forever, because one full shot through was all a 
person could take. These, however, had been born that way. He was the monster to 
them. Except for Sabatini or whatever it was, who got what it needed instantly, 
one could be changed into one of them but still be oneself inside. How would he 
feel waking up like one of them, only with his current behavior and standards 
and mindset? They were human, inside and out. He would become a monster to 
himself.
Was this what Nagy had to face? he asked himself. Was he born and raised happily 
as one of them and then forced by circumstance or duty to become a monster-an 
Earth-human? He wondered how far devotion to duty and mission should go, and he 
realized the answer. That was what Nagy had been talking about.
"I'm too dried out," the scaly woman said in a very high-pitched but still human 
tone. "Those suits damn near kill me. I got to get into some water for a soak." 
The accent, too, was odd, but he could understand her. It was very convenient to 
one like him that almost everyone in space had to speak both English and 
Russian. Hawks had told him that it was because those two nations had been first 
into space and in ancient times convention dictated international means of 
travel used the language of the first. He did not speak Russian, but thanks to 
North American Center, his English was just fine.
"I'm sorry for staring at you," he said sincerely. "I'm pretty new at this game, 
and the only folks I've met out here so far have been my own kind. I'll get used 
to it. I got used to white men; I can get used to most anything."
She looked surprised. "There are truly white men on your world? An albino race?" 
Her accent was clipped and very distinctive, but not possible to place. After 
eight-hundred-plus years and differently shaped mouths and tongues, the accents 
out here were probably unique anyway, he guessed.
He chuckled. "No, just a figure of speech. They just would never stand for 
callin' themselves pinkmen. I'm Raven, by the way."
"I am Butar Killomen," she responded. "And that is Takya Mudabur. You have just 
one name, Mister Raven?"
"Not Mister-just Raven. If I gave you my full and true name in my native tongue, 
you'd break your jaw trying to repeat it." At that moment the engines kicked 
into action and the whole thing sounded like Lightning had after it had been 
cannibalized and in a fight. The creaks and groans were not at all reassuring. 
"People are people as far as this business is concerned. You sure this thing can 
get us there in one piece?"
"It is very old, but sound. You get used to it after a while."
A third woman came down the ladder as the scaled woman went into a compartment. 
If the first two lacked hair, it had all wound up on the third one. She looked 
like somebody wearing a lion suit, Raven thought, except that the mane stuck out 
all over the place and even the hands were covered with thick orange-and-yellow 
fur. Her walk was catlike but not extraordinary, although he would have expected 
it to be. Her feet and even her hands, while they had fingers and opposable 
thumbs, looked more like paws than hands, and she had six small breasts in two 
even rows down her middle. Her face, too, was covered in fur, out of which 
peered two jet-black eyes, a broad nose covered with fine, short hair, and a 
seemingly lipless mouth. "I am Dura Panoshka," she said in a heavy guttural 
accent, her speech sounding more like a growl. "You will come with me to meet 
the captain." He didn't know what to expect when he reached the bridge and saw 
the captain of a crew like this, but he resolved he would no longer be 
surprised.
He was wrong again, as usual.
 
8. RECONNAISSANCE MISSION
"FIRST YOU WILL STRIP OFF ALL YOUR CLOTHING," Lion Girl ordered, "so that we may 
scan your clothes and space suit. If we find anything suspicious there, they-and 
you-will go one way while we go another."
She took his reluctance for modesty. "Do not think you are God's gift to women 
or something. No one will care here."
The truth was, he was embarrassed, but not for the reason she thought. Fact was, 
it was going to be painfully obvious that none of these women turned him on in 
the least. None, anyway, until he met the captain, and she presented other 
difficulties.
The woman in the captain's chair looked exotically Earth-human, and she was 
built like a sex bomb if he'd ever seen one. Gorgeous, sexy, sensual, perfectly 
proportioned-you name it and she had it. Her hair was short in a pageboy style 
with bangs in front that only heightened the beauty of her features. In fact, 
she'd be a real male fantasy if she hadn't been just ninety centimeters tall.
When he looked closely he saw other, less human, differences. Her dark eyes 
looked human, but when she moved her head so they caught a light, they shone 
like cat's eyes, and her ears were oddly shaped, almost shell-like with a point 
at the upper end. There were also two small protuberances, like tiny ball-shaped 
horns, barely visible in her hair. Her complexion seemed extremely pale, yet one 
could catch hints of almost every color of the rainbow if one stared long 
enough. The fact that she was also smoking a cigar that seemed almost a third as 
big as she was didn't help matters any, but it certainly attracted Raven's 
interest.
She looked very young, but Raven suspected that was just the look of her race. 
Such a tiny, frail creature did not get to be captain over three large colonial 
women and a ship like this without being the smartest, as well as the most 
capable and experienced, of the crew.
She sat, perfectly nude, on a normal-size command chair adapted to her with the 
addition of a smaller form-fitted insert, pillow, and underblanket. She looked 
so natural and unselfconscious that he suspected that nudity was the norm for 
her and perhaps for her people. That was interesting, too.
"I am Ikira Sukotae," she said in the voice that had addressed the Thunder over 
the communications line. She spoke English with the same sort of accentless 
machine-learned English as China and the Chows used. "Welcome aboard the Kaotan, 
which means in English the Wild Doe." Her tone told him that he wasn't very 
welcome at all.
He sighed. "Look, you didn't want me here and I was volunteered to come, so 
we're even. I know it's kinda tense and it's irrational of me, but to be 
perfectly honest I lust after one of your cigars."
And she laughed. A big, throaty laugh, incongruous from such a small creature. 
She gestured to a small case near her right hand. "Go ahead, take one. Even 
though I'm the captain I'd have a mutiny if I smoked off the bridge or around 
those three. We'll be punching for several hours yet, which might give us time 
to really stink up this joint."
The ice was broken.
"So you and your big ship and your dozen or so people are going to overthrow 
Master System, huh? Big dreams."
"Yup," he admitted, enjoying his first real cigar since Halinachi. "Real 
impossible, ain't it? I mean, it's no more likely than somebody like you 
becoming captain of a big freebooter spaceship."
She was taken aback for a moment. "You might have something there. But this-such 
as it is-is just the result of hard work and strong will and some very lucky 
breaks. You have all that, but that's not enough against the whole damned 
system. This is an enemy with the power of the ancient gods, countless minions 
to do its bidding, and whom you can't even see, feel, or face directly."
"But this god has a weak spot. It's tried, successfully until now, to keep it a 
secret for nine hundred years, but it's not a secret anymore. That's why we're 
out here. That's what it's all about."
She was interested. "And you come from the Mother World out here to do your 
battles?"
He wasn't certain how much to reveal, but he felt this was a good test of what 
he was supposed to do when they rendezvoused with the others. "We have-sort of a 
gun," he told her. "The gun will only fire a special bullet made for it, and 
only five were made-the exact number needed to fire into old Master System's 
guts. Master System knows about the gun and the bullets, but can't stop them 
from being there and maybe being used. The only thing it could do was to take 
those bullets and scatter them out into the galaxy, putting them into the hands 
of people important enough to protect them but ignorant of what they really 
were. We think we have the gun-in a sense, anyway- and we know where four of the 
five bullets are. We are not alone in this-very powerful enemies of Master 
System instigated this whole thing. We mean to beg, borrow, steal, or in any 
other way get those bullets, and track down the fifth, load up our gun, and blow 
the damned thing's brains out."
She nodded, listening intently, then asked an unexpected question. "Why do you 
do that? Slip in and out of bad grammar and ignorant expressions into excellent 
educated English with words like 'instigated'."
He shrugged. "My natural self is the coarse one, but I adjust to the company I'm 
keeping. That's experience."
"Uh huh. Somehow I think you've got more education alone than the sum total of 
all the people I ever met. What was your job, Raven-before all this, I mean?"
"Field agent. Security for North American Center, if you know where that is."
She shook her head. "I have no idea, but I understand the job and the terms. You 
are probably a very dangerous man under all that, Raven. I will have to keep 
that in mind."
"We're all dangerous, Captain. All hunted, driven people are dangerous. You 
should know that. We're just dangerous in different ways. We got one guy who's 
the human equivalent of Master System and about as scary. We got a delicate 
little blind girl who could redesign Master System in her head. And we got one 
woman, born low and in primitive ignorance, brutalized all her life, tattooed 
all over and her tongue torn out, who maybe don't understand a word of what 
we're sayin', but don't let her get the idea you're our enemy. Me, I got a 
lovely lady partner with wonderful diction when she wants to use it and a fine 
intellect who's goin' nuts 'cause she hasn't killed nobody in months. And that's 
only the half of us. I guess we're dangerous all right, but the whole question 
is, dangerous to who? I think you ought'a know. You're still here, a survivor, 
with a ship and whatever freedom that brings."
"And you're curious as to how all this ship and crew came about, I expect. I 
guess you noticed you're the only man aboard."
"It was kinda obvious."
"I never thought of my world as particularly rough or nasty, but compared to 
most I've seen since it is. Real mild climate over most of it, but it's rich and 
full of predators and game. It was said we were created small because big people 
could dominate and ruin the system while ones like us would keep it-and 
us-stable. It's pretty hard to develop much when every day you have to go out 
and get what you need in a big world where everything's either out to get you or 
might trample you without even noticing. Very few people grow old there, so the 
few that do are venerated as leaders because they are tougher and smarter than 
the rest just by doing it. To make sure we survive, the men-about a head taller 
than me-are built like rocks and solid muscle. They're built to be hunters and 
gatherers and warriors, but they still die young. The women are basically 
breeders. We can't help it-it's chemical. Just get close to a man and we're in 
the bushes with 'em. We're breeding kids constantly just to keep up. No muscles, 
no speed, no weight-we're pretty defenseless and dependent on the men for food 
and protection. We have some defenses, but no offense, you might say."
He nodded, thinking of China. She'd understand perfectly, only she didn't even 
have defenses-unless one counted Star Eagle, who was, indeed, formidable. 
"Defenses?" he prompted.
She nodded. "The things to stay alive so you keep breeding. It fades bit by bit 
when you can't breed any more. I can remain so still that the keenest ears could 
not hear me. I can mask any scent by secreting odors that match my surroundings. 
Right now that'd be cigar smoke, so I won't demonstrate. My hearing has five or 
six times the range of any other race I have known, and while my daylight vision 
is weak I can see in almost pure darkness and into the heat ranges where I have 
found most others cannot. This is because, as a race, we dwell mostly 
underground. And, almost at will, I can do this."
He watched, still thinking about the rest. She could see the infrared spectrum, 
and hear perhaps better than a dog or even a mouse. But what was most remarkable 
was what she was demonstrating now. It was fast, too, amazingly so. She was 
sitting on a red blanket, her arms resting on a gray seat, and, incredibly, her 
skin faded into the tones of the blanket-even the weave-while her arms adjusted 
for the gray of the chair and even the gaps in between. She was hardly 
invisible, particularly when you knew she was there, but he bet she could become 
as good as invisible in her native element.
"I can also mimic almost everyone or anything I have heard before," she told him 
in a very male voice that was almost exactly like his own. "That way I can, if 
still discovered or pinned down too long, imitate something bigger and nastier 
than whatever is hunting me." She shifted back to the hard female voice she'd 
been using, and Raven now understood that it was a deliberate persona, to make 
her sound and therefore seem bigger than she really was. It was also clear why, 
coming from a mild climate, nakedness was normal; any clothing would nullify 
most of the coloration defense and perhaps have a more distinctive scent as 
well.
"Nothing offensive, as you see," she noted. "Oh, I've killed flies and bugs, but 
I haven't even the arm strength for spears or bows, let alone lifting and aiming 
a common pistol. But here, in this chair, on this ship, with that interface 
there and the weapons under my control, I could destroy a city." She said that 
almost as if she really wanted to, and suddenly he wasn't sure if he was talking 
to someone like China or a miniature Manka Warlock. A little of both, he 
decided.
"But you didn't grow up in a hunter-gatherer society any more than I did," Raven 
guessed. "You would never even have dreamed that any of this existed if you 
did."
"In a way, you're right. I was no nobility, but I had the right bloodlines, and 
as a child I think I was more curious and inquisitive than girls were supposed 
to be. The Elders decided that my mind could handle the wonders and mysteries of 
a Center, and I was selected while still very young to go there. I didn't have a 
choice. Oh, I was still breeding stock-I was just supposed to breed better, 
smarter candidates for the Center in the future. They didn't educate us -they 
kept us amused in the lap of luxury like permanent spoiled children. We were all 
smarter than they thought girls could be, though, so we were able to do some 
learning on our own. Even if you got caught cold at some terminal with a lecture 
and display on some complicated subject, all you had to do was act dumb and cute 
and ignorant and they never caught on or cared. Why they didn't became real 
clear after a while. When you reached puberty they ran you through a 
mindprinter, and you just weren't curious or inquisitive anymore. Then you went 
into the harem, where the men of the Elect visited, and soon you were knee-deep 
in babies, locked in for thirty or more years of that, and when you couldn't 
produce any more you just kept helping run the place until you fell apart or 
died."
"A great waste, although I can see the computer logic of the culture. But it 
didn't happen to you."
"No. I found out early what the situation was, and I was lucky enough to bump 
into a boy a bit older than me and just beginning to have the feelings, if you 
know what I mean. He was the son of a big man at Center-chief deputy 
administrator, in fact-and about as spoiled and arrogant as anyone could 
imagine. But I played to his urges and his ego and his arrogance for all I was 
worth, and he got to thinking of me as his. Just the idea that his girl would be 
thrown into a communal harem made him boil, and he was in the right spot to do 
something about it. I admit I lowered myself as far as I could go-no matter what 
his wish, I granted it, no matter what his fantasy, I played to it. And when my 
time came, he got me exempted. Several of the big shots had small private 
harems. Exclusivity is a perk of the powerful. He was in the tough time for him, 
when his education was intensive and would determine his place in the future, so 
he needed a servant and housekeeper and somebody to screw when he needed to. He 
didn't need babies yet, so he got me a drug that kept me wanting it all the time 
but prevented conception. And while he was out all day, I'd use his terminals 
and his books and his lessons to give myself a real education. Hell, he didn't 
even know I could read, and if he had it would've been the mindprinter in a 
minute, but it never even entered his head."
"There are a lot of cultures like that even on Earth," Raven told her, "and many 
more that differ only by degrees. Usually it disappears at the Center level, or 
becomes tolerable, but the fact that we still have 'harem' in the languages says 
it all, I guess."
In fact, however, Ikira had seen this as the pinnacle of existence because, for 
her, there was nowhere else to go but down. Then about a year and a half into 
this existence, her "husband" had taken her with him on what was something of a 
trade mission. Like the vast bulk of colonial worlds, her planet's Centers 
required a small but dependable supply of murylium for their own needs, mostly 
research and medical. Needless to say, one did not get this from Master System 
but in spite of it, and that was where freebooter trade came in. Her world had 
no spaceports and only a few skimmers for Center use, but freebooters could -and 
did- land in the damndest places. What the freebooters wanted was some sort of 
access to the state-of-the-art technology that the Centers represented, 
including, quite often, the working out of practical problems that were beyond 
the capabilities of their own computers. They traded murylium for these 
services.
Most Centers, however, were outfitted identically; only in the few whose very 
smart and frustrated chief administrators worked clandestinely was there any 
competitive edge. To keep freebooters from going off to another Center or even 
another world meant treating them like royalty and anticipating their needs. The 
chief deputy had decided that his favorite son was ready to experience the real 
travails of having to deal with this sort of person, and sonny boy never went 
anywhere without his concubine.
To Ikira, it was an experience that turned her entire world view upside down and 
inside out. She had known there were other worlds and other forms of human 
beings, but nothing had prepared her for the reality.
There were three of them, and two were women. First of all, they were enormous, 
giants compared to even the largest men of her own race and world. Second, while 
they were a bit rough and coarse and not really all that pretty, they looked 
very much the way Ikira's own race looked except for the size, and they had 
strong personalities that were in no way deferential to the man with them. In 
fact, it soon became clear that one of the women was the captain, and that the 
man worked for her. To Ikira, seeing her own men, arrogant big shots, acting not 
merely civil but downright servile to these women whose services they needed 
more than the women needed them was another revelation.
With a lot of guts, considering what might have happened had she been discovered 
by her own, she sneaked away one day and approached the female freebooter 
captain privately. Captain Smokevski was more than touched by Ikira's plight and 
impressed with her intelligence and nerve. The captain was none too pleased with 
the culture she was doing business with, but that Center had a genius with an 
uncannily accurate system for locating new murylium deposits. Now, at last, she 
had a way of thumbing her nose at this sexist society. This time Ikira's 
diminutive size and defense skills came in very handy, and Smokevski managed to 
smuggle the tiny woman onto the shuttle at take-off. Ikira was in space and free 
of her culture.
Weightlessness was even more of a wonder to her. She could almost fly, and she 
could move and even lift things that the strongest male of her own race couldn't 
budge. It took months to hunt down a small enough pressure suit, but once she 
had it she could do maintenance in places too small for others to reach, and her 
long, tiny fingers and exceptional sight and hearing made her a whiz at doing 
jury-rigged repairs on equipment that often had to be kept going with nothing 
but a prayer. She was interested in virtually everything and learned all she 
could. Of equal import to her future, she found that she quickly lost the sexual 
compulsions she had lived with since puberty. In her face, the arousal was 
strictly chemical, and without males of her own kind around, she simply did not 
feel the urge. Not that she was sexless, but she was in now in total control.
It was a story of both liberation and compensation. Her size a major liability, 
she simply worked six times harder and did everything six times better. She 
learned how to think on her feet and be taken as an equal in exotic and gigantic 
foreign locales. She began to make her own deals and, in one of the apparently 
not uncommon fights over a murylium claim that wound up in ship-to-ship combat, 
she had taken over for a captain who'd lost her guts-and won. She parlayed her 
reputation and profits from that into an ancient, creaking hulk that she 
redesigned and restored herself, with help from the crew of that fighting ship 
who'd left their captain, as well, and it became the Kaotan. The other two were 
Dura Panoshka, the Lion Girl, and Butar Killomen, who'd met Raven when he had 
boarded. Takya had joined later; she'd had trouble keeping jobs or berths 
because of her need for regular immersions to keep her skin from drying out. But 
there were very few freebooters who could deal with the water races, and Ikira 
had seen the potential for information there that was virtually untapped. Takya 
had been both useful and dependable, and worth the extra weight and expense of a 
true water-based rather than chemical bath system and all the problems it 
entailed.
And, as far as they knew, all four were the only ones of their races in space. 
It was a special bond, for each could understand the other's sense of alienation 
when with others of the more common races.
"I had hopes, one day, of becoming so powerful that I could one day return home 
and break that insidious system, but I'm old enough now to know that even if I 
gained such power and tried, it is probably easier to break Master System than 
to change a culture, particularly one that is partly based on biology."
"The only way there's a shot is to break the big system," Raven told her. "Then 
you start by introducing technology on a wide scale so that your people become 
masters of the planet and not just inhabitants. Then that technology can be used 
to alter the biology that limits things."
Am I really saying this? he thought suddenly. I think I just told her to turn 
her people into white men and go rape their world!
It was only a two-and-a-half-day trip to the hideout. In that time Raven grew to 
like the tiny captain, but he found it far more difficult to get to know the 
other three. Of them, only Butar Killomen even seemed curious enough to talk to 
him, and none were as secure as their captain and willing to talk about 
themselves.
The refugee fleet was still cautious; passwords were required not just from the 
ship and captain but from each of the other crew members in turn before the 
sensors and automatic guns of the other ships were turned off. Only then did 
Ikira relax and put the graphics on the screen for him to see what was there.
"Most are light freighters built less for cargo capacity than speed and weapons 
ability," she told him. "For the amount of murylium you generally find out here 
in months of trying beyond your own needs you don't need a very big ship, but if 
you can't outrun and outgun the competition you might lose out to somebody who 
found none at all. That's Espiritu Luzon in the center-Savaphoong's ship. It 
doesn't look like much on the outside because it's designed to alter itself to 
different common silhouettes on sensors out here. It's a neat and expensive 
defense. Inside, I'm told, it's a luxury yacht with all the comforts of 
Halinachi in miniature."
He nodded. It figured that somebody, like Savaphoong would find a way to take 
his world with him.
"The others are San Cristobal, Novovladivostok, Chunhoifan, Indrus, Bahakatan, 
and Sisu Moduru. I know them all from the past. I shot it out with San 
Cristobal's skipper a few years back. I was glad to see he got it back in 
running condition. Truth was, I'd lost track of most of them until we crossed 
paths at the fallback positions." She paused for a moment. "I had hoped that we 
might have seen a couple more before we had to run here."
There was no official leader-these were proud and independent people-but 
Savaphoong certainly had the commanding voice among them, and few would 
challenge him. His contacts might well be valid, including many on colonial 
worlds, and he was the best prepared for an undertaking like this.
"Can you plug me in to Savaphoong's ship?" Raven asked. "We might as well break 
the news right off. I think anything I have, to say should be said to him first 
before one of your trigger-happy friends takes to blasting us just on general 
principles."
Fernando Savaphoong was right up on his bridge for the arrival of the Kaotan. He 
was happy to hear of the load they had aboard and a bit less thrilled to hear of 
their passenger, but he agreed to talk.
"Sir, my name's Raven and I was at your place with Arnold Nagy not too long 
ago."
Savaphoong remembered quite a lot about Raven, including things he shouldn't 
have known.
Quickly, Raven filled the other in on what had happened so far-the death of 
Arnold Nagy, and at least as much of their purpose and goals as he'd given 
Ikira. Savaphoong listened patiently, then noted, "I can see why you 
precipitated all the action. Very well, Senor Raven, what do you think you are 
going to do now?"
"That's not the question. I'm stuck here unless some deal is made or I'm dropped 
at an agreed pickup point and you know it. It seems to me the question is what 
are you going to do? The cozy relationship between the freebooters and Master 
System is gone. Every freebooter is a fugitive now, because they'll try every 
one they find until they find us. Those caught with no other value will either 
be disposed of or put through the mill and changed into a worshipful supporter 
of the System. Face it-in a few days, a few weeks at most, you won't even be 
able to risk contacting or trusting ships and people you've known for years. We 
are the only ones you can ever fully feel comfortable around. We want to make a 
deal. We need you, and I think you need us. Put me on to all of them and I'll 
give it straight."
It took about an hour of radio diplomacy on Savaphoong's part to get the others 
calmed down enough to listen, and when they did that's all they agreed to 
do-listen.
Once more Raven introduced himself and described the situation. "You have no 
place else to go, no other life that has any profit or future," he told them. 
"You cannot trust anyone, not here right now. You can't go back to your old 
free-lancing deals with the colonial worlds without knowing that Master System 
and its forces will be out gunning for you. You might make it several times, 
maybe last a year or two, but eventually you and Master System will have a 
meeting because there are only so many colonial worlds."
"We could go off the charts, into regions even Master System hasn't gone," 
someone suggested. "We can start over again and build ourselves back up with or 
without colonial support."
"Wishful thinking and you know it, if you stop and think a minute," Raven 
retorted. "It would be rougher than you know, and all guesswork until you formed 
your own charts. Probably at least half of you would run dry somewhere in a hole 
like this one and never be heard of again. The other half-well, you might scrimp 
by, but there'll be no illegal shipyards, no big transmuters, no access to 
technology and supercomputing. Many of you are one of a kind out here, and when 
you die out, that's it. Some of you might have enough numbers to make a really 
tiny colony somewhere on some grubby rock, if you can find one that'll support 
human life and if you can survive the wilderness there. That'll go until your 
ships break down for lack of repair or out of sheer ignorance by your children 
and grandchildren, condemning them to be new colonials and devolve into savagery 
and primitivism. You have no future and very short lives now, unless you team up 
with us."
"I ain't sure how much future I got teamin' up with the likes of you," someone 
else commented. "You know how many people they killed so far because of you? And 
that's only the beginning. And the colonial worlds depend on us for murylium to 
keep a jump ahead of Master System. You come out here, with no space experience, 
and in a real short time you destroy a whole way of life."
Raven grinned. "You mean we came out and in no time flat we destroyed your neat 
little system? Eleven people, nine of 'em space rookies, and they destroy your 
whole system? Well, then, maybe we can knock over the big system, huh?"
"If you're tryin' to be funny, I got some real slow ways for you to die," 
someone said.
"No! Let him go on!" another urged. "He's making some sense here."
That was encouraging. "We didn't destroy your system, we just gave you what you 
always said was most dear- liberation. You can get mad and yell and scream, but 
any of you with any sense out there will have to realize that the freebooters 
were as much a colonial unit as any of the worlds you served under Master 
System's thumb as long as you were useful to it and easily thrown away when no 
longer needed. You were its unlisted colony, and you provided a service. We 
ended that. If you want it back, I'm sure you can just trot back to Master 
System, let its machines see how nice and loyal you are, and it'll stick you 
back in business with no illusions. You either do that or you join the rebellion 
and instead of taking shots at each other you can take shots at Master System. 
Colonial loyalists allowed to play with antique spaceships-or freedom-fighting 
rebels. That's your real choice, and your only one. If you can't see that, 
you're blind or crazy and no good to us anyway. If you can and want to go back 
to playing footsie with Master System, we sure as hell don't want you. But if 
you want real freedom, if you want to win, we need you bad."
After all the nasty carping on the channel, the silence was almost eerie. 
Finally a man's low, gruff voice spoke. "If I really thought we had any chance 
of winning, I'd throw in, but I just can't believe it."
"That's all I can offer, but it's more than you think-a chance," Raven told him. 
"There are no guarantees and I can virtually promise that many will die in this, 
or worse. We might have to-pay the ultimate price. We might have to transmute 
ourselves, or sacrifice ourselves for others. I intend to minimize that last 
possibility when it comes to myself, but I recognize it. And we are going to 
have to work in teams to get it done rather than go strictly lone wolf, since 
any major failure has the potential to compromise all of us. Now, that's a heady 
brew for the likes of freebooters, but that's the way it is."
"Too steep," someone commented. "I'd rather chase and run from the bastards."
"Ah, but you haven't heard the important part," Raven responded. "You don't do 
this for nothing. You do this for a payoff-and a big one. You see, once you're 
in, you're in. I put this in terms of bullets and a big gun, but that's not 
really right. See, this bullet don't kill Master System, it just makes it into 
what it was at the start-a nice, obedient machine that takes orders. Takes 
orders from whoever gets it. Now, you think about that. Whoever does this all 
the way gets to rule Master System the way Master System rules most everybody 
else. The power it has, and all the loyalty it has, and all that it knows and 
can do, passes up to others-human beings. If you're in, you're in all the way. 
Do your job, don't screw up or get killed, and you name your own price and I 
mean it. Anything you want! Your own world, your own fleet of big ships, all 
just the way you might have dared dream it could be. It's the magic totem for 
real, or whatever your own legends call it. You help us, you last it out, and 
you get one wish for anything that's within Master System's power-and you get 
Master System off your back, too."
That was something they could understand, and it was staggering.
"I must tell you that I am favorably inclined to go their way," Savaphoong's 
voice came to them. "I can exist for the rest of my life without them, I am 
fairly certain, and at minimal risk-I have made provisions for this sort of 
eventuality. Still, if there is no risk, there is no gain, and if I refuse now 
and then they do it, I will have no profit, no share in the rewards. If they 
fail, then I lose it all including what might have been, and I admit this. But 
if they succeed-and I know the background of one or two and would not count them 
out-then I want my share of godhood."
There was a long period of silence, then suddenly everybody seemed to try to 
talk at once, making any rational communication impossible. There was nothing to 
do but wait for it to die down.
Finally Raven was able to make himself heard again.
"Now, this shouldn't be anything hasty. Each ship should get off for a while and 
discuss it, captains and crew. I want no single individual in on this who 
doesn't want to be there. I am absolutely certain we can combine crews and 
ships-those who say yes, those who say no. This is the only shot you get, 
though. If you're out, you're out. If you're in, you will be in all the way or 
we will eliminate you without a second thought. Only those who come with me will 
get the details and the planning. There is nothing personal for those who 
refuse, but any who fail to take our offer now will be treated later as our 
enemy. We'll have to do it that way."
"I don't like it," a woman's voice said. "We have only his word that this shit 
even exists. We have no proof that he's spinning more than a fairy tale, a pipe 
dream, to lure us into their service permanently and then get rid of us when 
we've served our purpose, who the hell are they who made this discovery? They 
come here from the Mother World and maybe they believe it, but who's to say it's 
true? All we're doing is becoming their damned servants. How come this big 
secret gets kept for nine hundred-plus years and suddenly falls into the hands 
of a bunch of yokels?"
"You may be right, Meg," Savaphoong agreed, "but, as I say, I know some of these 
people. Their scientific brain is perhaps the smartest human being alive, and he 
has all his data. We believes it. Others, like friend Raven here, are Center 
people, security people who had the best that the system can offer and paths to 
power. They gave it up, and they are not all mad. The best example is Master 
System itself, which is so outraged and so panicky that it has mobilized all its 
resources to find and get these people. You think Master System would collapse 
the covenant just to track down pirates, even very slick ones? What are they to 
its domains? What are the pirates of the Thunder in the larger scheme of things? 
What is one ship full of murylium to Master System? It is pulling out all its 
stops, abandoning all its conventions, to go after a tiny band of mere human 
beings. Oh, yes, my friends-what they say is true. They know the way to fry the 
brains of Master System, even if they now lack the means."
The logic was compelling to most of them, but so was the corollary. "What's to 
keep us from doing it, then, without them! We got mindprinters here, and 
hypnoscans, and all the rest, and we got this Raven. Why throw in with them at 
all?"
Raven was prepared for that one. His rehearsal with Ikira was paying big 
dividends. "Simple," he told them. "I can tell you what we're after, but not how 
to use them. Just having them ain't enough. What good is having bullets and guns 
if you don't have a target? I don't know where Master System is, or what it 
looks like, or anything else. Do you?"
"Then we're no worse off than you," somebody pointed out.
"Oh, but you are. We are an odd group, but we were carefully picked. When we get 
what we're looking for, at least one of us will know where and how to use it. 
I'm not certain how-whether it's a conditional hypno or deep mindprint or 
something else-but it's there. You can trust us, or Master System-I leave it to 
you whether you want to trust the word of a machine or of human beings. Nothing 
whatever, though, can reveal the target and the means of loading the gun until 
we have the bullets. That way, it's safe for all of us."
"You talk like you all are working for somebody," noted the suspicious lady. 
"Who?"
Raven smiled, although they couldn't see it. "Somebody with a lot of knowledge, 
but still somebody who can't get these things themselves-or use 'em. I don't 
know who or what it is, and I'm not the least bit concerned with them except for 
the help they give us until we have all that we seek. Then we might have, well, 
a difference of opinion. I'm not concerned. We will have what is needed. The 
bargaining chips will be all ours, and, just as importantly, if we are tough 
enough and smart enough and clever enough to do what no one else has ever even 
dreamed of doing, then we can deal with anyone who might try to take it away 
from us. If we cannot, then we don't deserve the rewards."
"I believe, my friends, that all that can be said on this has been said," 
Savaphoong put in. "I suggest we now take Raven's advice and discuss it among 
our own people. We are not that pressed for a decision as monumental as this 
one. Let us sleep on it. It is fourteen twenty-two. At twenty-four hundred, in a 
bit less than ten hours, we will again take this up, and at that time we will 
vote and make up our minds. This is reasonable, yes?"
"All right with me." Raven sighed. "I'm almost gettin' used to boredom."
Ikira Sukotae had been back with her crew for quite a while, leaving Raven alone 
on the bridge with his thoughts. All this potential, he couldn't help thinking. 
It's almost like magic how it all falls together. I wonder how many will come? 
He knew better than to believe they all would. Savaphoong, the opportunist, was 
a sure bet if only because he figured in the end to be one of the ones giving 
all the orders, not just one wish as some kind of payoff. He would have to be 
watched and, perhaps, eventually controlled or dealt with more severely, but 
until then he would be invaluable. He and Clayben were worlds apart in knowledge 
and genius, but, deep down, they were two of a kind.
Who would have thought it? he mused, still not quite believing how far they had 
already come. Raven, born in a small village by a quiet river in the high 
mountains, raised up first to Security, and with all the cynicism of that job 
and the knowledge of what was true and real in the universe that bred such 
cynicism-Raven, the revolutionary, the overthrower of worlds. Quite a leap for 
Spotted Horse's little boy, running alongside the warriors as they went to the 
hunt and dreaming brave deeds. He sighed. That was a long time ago; another 
life, really, and he'd long ago buried that little kid and his comfortable 
dreams of honor and glory.
His honor had been tossed aside the moment he'd learned that the whole thing was 
a lie, that they were ruled not by a creator spirit but by some big damned 
machine. It had made the concept of glory meaningless, as well, for what was the 
glory in dying not for one's people but for the purpose of a museum exhibit for 
a master machine that didn't even give a damn about the exhibit?
Center's wonders had delighted him, but at first the people there had disgusted 
him. Corrupt, selfish, as contemptuous of their own people and their customs and 
ways as they were of the system they served. There really hadn't been much 
choice; you either became like them or you went back home and lived a lie. It 
had been easy to be a cynic.
Yet now he began to wonder if that little boy was truly as dead as he had 
thought. He was still no visionary, no ambitious revolutionary with a grand 
dream, but he was alive again, alive as he had only felt in the past when he was 
back home, back in the mountains and the plains, the field that was a part of 
him. He hadn't really thought like this in many years, except for brief times 
alone camped out on the prairies with just his horse and a small fire and the 
looming shapes of the purple snow-clad mountains in the distance-and those 
moments had been very brief indeed.
Somehow it seemed ironic that he should find that little boy way out here, far 
from his people and his beloved north country, far from anything he held to be 
important and dear. Were you there all the time, boy, or did I imagine your 
return?
Ikira returned to the bridge, breaking his reverie, and he nodded to her. "You 
made your own decision yet?" he asked. "It's almost time."
"We talked it over, yeah," she told him. "It wasn't easy, you know. It's not 
easy for any of us."
"And?"
"We got more colonial experience than any two of these other ships put together. 
We figured your odds, and we figured ours on our own out here under new 
conditions. None of us really have any homes or lives except this ship, but we 
have dreams. We're in, Raven."
He clapped his hands together and grinned. "All right! Now let's see what the 
score is. Plug me in and we'll get goin' on this."
The vote was by no means unanimous, but it was better than he had thought at the 
start. In addition to Savaphoong's Espiritu Luzon, which, Raven suspected, had 
only one vote that counted and was thus easy to convince, San Cristobal, 
Chunhoifan, Indrus, and Bahakatan were in, with the exception of some crewmember 
dissidents who would leave. The majority of Novovladivostok and Sisu Moduru, 
including their owner-captains, decided against- including both the woman with 
grave doubts and the tough-sounding man with the questions. Some of their crew, 
however, also disagreed, and a swap was arranged.
That added, in one swoop five experienced pilots, ships, and crews to the pirate 
fleet, along with numerous crew members. Those who would not or could not trust 
Raven and his company transferred to the two ships that had voted against. The 
few on board the two holdouts who wanted in transferred to the ships of their 
choice, at least as a temporary measure. Maintenance robots on Kaotan managed to 
carve up portions of raw murylium ore from the hold and mount them on skids and 
shift those portions to the Novovladivostok and the Sisu Moduru.
"Then let's get this show on the road," Raven suggested. He felt like an admiral 
and he liked the power. "Captain, lay in a course for the last system we went 
through on the charts before switching here. Thunder will meet us there."
Ikira looked at him sternly. "You followed us, then. How?"
"We're just slimy, tricky bastards, that's all. Don't worry, this was just to 
simplify things. We want to move quickly now-it don't pay to keep Thunder in one 
spot too long. Tell the others to follow our course, heading, and speed. It's 
best we all get together, get to know each other, and get the hell out of this 
sector."
There was a mixture of anticipation of action and some nervousness among the 
others joining the fleet.
"I just hope for all our sakes you know what you're doing," Ikira said tensely.
I hope we do, too, thought the little boy running beside the horses of the 
warriors.
They did not punch for very long. As soon as they arrived in-system they did a 
scan, and for a moment Raven was worried. Then a ship showed up closing on them. 
It was Lightning, now with Sabatini at the controls and Warlock on the guns; the 
Chows were on Pirate One. Raven had to wonder why the crews had been rearranged.
"Any more coming in?" Sabatini asked.
"We got six out of eight, damn it! What did you want- a miracle?" Raven 
retorted.
"All right. The Chows are calling in the Thunder. Warlock and I are going to 
check out something suspicious and we'll be back in a few hours. We have the 
chart position you're moving to anyway, so if we're not back before you get 
everyone together and get moving, we'll catch up."
Raven frowned. Something suspicious? "Anything we should know about?"
There was a pause. "No. Nothing you should know about."
Ikira used her scanners on Lightning as it pulled away and prepared to punch. 
"That is one fast ship. I have never seen a design like that before."
"It's a custom job. It took on a Val and won, so don't underestimate it. I-" He 
stopped, then just sat there a moment, thinking, a sad frown descending on him.
We'll be back in a few hours...
"Something wrong?"
He shook his head slowly from side to side. "No, nothing wrong." He sighed. 
"Forget it." But he couldn't forget it, because he now understood the reason for 
the crew switch; he knew where they were going and what they were going to do 
and he didn't like it one bit.
The only ones who knew the identities of the ships and crews that had come to 
their side were the two holdouts, Novovladivostok and Sisu Moduru. They wouldn't 
have left yet, most likely; they'd be examining their new stores of murylium and 
deciding what to do next. Sooner or later one or both would fall into the hands 
of Master System, perhaps alive and certainly with their records intact. Master 
System would then know the personalities aboard the Thunder's supplemental 
force, its ships, numbers, and capabilities.
Both ships were well armed and shielded, but they would be no match for 
Lightning, rebuilt as a killer machine and with Warlock at the armaments 
controls.
Raven was very glad Kaotan had decided to join in. He sighed. At least Warlock 
would be in a very good mood when he next saw her.
It took about forty minutes for Thunder to come in from wherever it had been 
lurking, and Raven always liked to hear the comments of people who had never 
seen the likes of a fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship before. It was more like 
having an asteroid with engines.
"Thunder to Raven, how are you doing?" Star Eagle called.
"Just fine, I guess. I have six ships here-including Fernando Savaphoong and his 
ship-all filled with veteran freebooters and a mixture of colonials, as well. I 
haven't the slightest idea how many people we're talking about, though."
"The murylium's all been stored or shifted to the aft processors, and with 
Lightning not in, all four bays are available. I don't see any ship that 
wouldn't fit in there, but with Pirate One we still have three more ships than 
bays. I suggest that three of you will have to use the cargo docking ports and 
make your way to the bay air-lock stations using pressure suits. Until we get 
everything organized I would like to move as a unit, acting as a mother. I am 
scanning the fleet and I am impressed, but I would suggest you all send me your 
identification codes so I can sort and direct you."
This was accomplished in a fraction of a second.
"I have limited drydock facilities in the bays, although not what we really 
need. Kaotan, San Cristobal, and Bahakatan, you could all use some maintenance 
and refitting. So could you, Indrus, but you are in better shape than they are. 
I suggest Kaotan in Bay One, San Cristobal in Bay Two, Bahakatan in Bay Three, 
and Indrus in Bay Four. Pirate One, you dock at Bay Two after San Cristobal is 
inside and the outer hull closed and sealed and walk down with care. Espiritu 
Luzon, do the same with Bay One after Kaotan is inside and secured, and 
Chunhoifan, take Bay Three after Bahakatan is secured. The bays are not 
currently pressurized, so wear suits. We will have people to meet you in each 
and lead you into the ship."
There were some special requests. Because of the artificial gravity in the 
interior shell there were a couple who needed some kind of rider transport, and 
Ikira made certain to note that she had at least one amphibian aboard who 
required water at intervals. It was not easy to gather everyone together; the 
whole process took more than three hours and a lot of grumbling. Only the fact 
that some of these reluctant recruits really wanted to see the inside of a ship 
like the Thunder kept things in hand at all. Hawks met the crew of the Kaotan, 
and did not comment on the odd and mostly antique and bulky space suits they 
wore. He did, however, make a mental note to himself to have Star Eagle work on 
outfitting them better.
"Take everyone into the village and make them as comfortable as we can for now," 
he told Raven. "I'll stay here and wait for the people from Espiritu Luzon. 
Don't take off your suit, though. When I get back I may need you to help fetch 
the ones from Chunhoifan."
"Fair enough, Chief. I didn't get much exercise lately anyway. Ladies, this way, 
and be prepared for gradually increasing gravity as we pass through the air-lock 
sequences. We have the interior at about point eight of a gee to allow for 
muscle toning and natural activity."
All of them seemed awed by the village interior, and stared unbelievingly at 
what felt like a tiny island rather than a spaceship.
"I'm afraid we're gonna have to double up a lot, or have some folks sleep 
outside for a while, depending on the crowd we get," Raven said apologetically. 
"I expect we're gonna wind up with a bunch of folks either livin' in offices or 
on the better ships. Ten to one old Savaphoong would rather commute than stay 
here."
"I think it is fantastic!" Ikira Sukotae told him. "I couldn't have dreamed that 
such a thing was possible inside a ship!" The others echoed her sentiments.
"You ought'a seen the place before we fixed it up," the Crow noted. "It looked 
like the biggest rolling mausoleum in history. We still got plenty of room back 
there, and if we can take the banging and other construction there should 
eventually be room for everybody in this kind of setting. Once we get your ships 
repaired and all fixed up, we'll have to figure a way to give the ones on the 
outside some kind of direct access in."
But it was Takya Mudabur, the amphibian, who said what was in back of all the 
colonial crew's minds. "Our ancestors-might have come on this very ship. This is 
the origin, the way it began..."
He hadn't even considered the historical and cultural impact the Thunder might 
have, but he was secretly glad they hadn't seen in it in its original form. The 
history of colonial transport might as well remain romantic; let only the 
original rebel band know how ugly it really was.
Cloud Dancer arrived with another awed and incredulous crew. Star Eagle was 
landing them in measured order to minimize the confusion and stretch his few 
greeters as best he could.
San Cristobal had a mixed crew of Earth-humans and colonials including a couple 
of people that the Kaotan crew seemed to know very well, if the emotional 
greetings were an indication. Its crew of six included two defectors from the 
ships that had opted out. Captain Maria Santiago was small, brown, and 
Earth-human; the other two Earth-humans were both men, one large and blond and 
bearded, the other medium-sized with some of the characteristics of Raven's own 
people. Two others were the oddest colonials yet. Their torsos and heads were 
very strange but at least humanoid. Their large bodies stood on four legs; the 
largest part of the steel-blue torso was under the humanoid part, and the rear 
rested on what appeared to be short, stubby back legs that almost didn't seem up 
to the job. The final one was the Rock Monster, if a man could turn to rough 
stone, develop bumps all over, and have deep, dark recessed eyes and a mouth as 
wide as the whole face, this was how he might look.
Hawks arrived with Savaphoong and his entourage, which included a very 
tough-looking Earth-human man and two Earth-human women who looked just as tough 
and mean. He had also brought his favorite remakes-the air-headed slaves of 
Halinachi-but had left them aboard as he didn't even have space suits for them. 
The two males and five females still aboard the Espiritu Luzon would be more a 
source of embarrassment to the rest than any real use, anyway.
Raven excused himself and went to fetch the crew of Chunhoifan as Clayben 
arrived with those aboard the Indrus. Captain Ravi Paschittawal was obviously 
more provincial in his choice of crews, or he kept it all in the family. The two 
men and two women with him, all Earth-human, were definitely of the same race 
and culture as their captain. Hawks knew enough to recognize them as the same 
sort of people who ran Delhi Center back home. The real Indians.
Chunhoifan proved entirely colonial, with Captain Chun Wo Har a creature who, 
while humanoid, wore an armor like exoskeleton that together with his stalked 
eyes and long feelers gave him an insect-like appearance. Two others of his kind 
accompanied him, both female and, oddly, looking it in spite of their alien 
appearance. With them were two others from one of the ships that remained 
behind: Small, rotund humanoids with green skin and mottled complexions, owlish 
faces, bulging yellow eyes, and what looked like wings on their backs although 
it was impossible that ones of their shape and weight could ever actually fly. 
Hawks decided that the wings must have another less obvious function, since no 
colonial would have anything vestigial.
Finally Clayben, on his second trip, brought in the crew of Bahakatan. Captain 
All Mohammed ben Suda looked Earth-human enough, although his appearance 
reflected a hard life as did that of his wife, Fatima, who might have been no 
older than Cloud Dancer but whose medium-length hair was gray. They looked North 
African or Middle Eastern, and the two Earth-human members of the crew, both 
huge men, had Han Chinese features very much like those of the Chows and China. 
One had blue eyes and the other a full reddish-brown beard and hair-half Han, 
most likely.
Hawks and the others had been, they thought, mentally prepared for the sight and 
smells of colonials, but now they realized that they had been wrong. It would be 
very difficult sledding before everyone was comfortable here, Hawks thought. He 
was a bit ashamed of himself for feeling that way and somewhat admiring that 
Raven had appeared to have no such problems.
It was the last member of the Bahakaton's crew, however, that caused the most 
consternation and would be hardest to accept. The creature had an exoskeleton 
and long, flat tail terminating in large finlike appendages, but it walked on 
four thick legs mounted on circular joints. Although it was a glistening, shiny 
black, Hawks couldn't help thinking of Mississippi crawfish. Two other sets of 
appendages were arranged around its head, both tiny in proportion to the body or 
legs and terminating in ridged pincerlike claws. The head was a set of eight 
tentacles, long and rubbery and constantly in motion, around two protruding eyes 
on what seemed to be retractable stalks, and something dark and wet and nasty 
that might have been a mouth.
This thing was no colonial; this thing had never had a human ancestor, had never 
been processed by Master System at all. It had been spawned on a world far 
different from anything the rest of them there could even imagine.
"I sssee your wooks," the thing said in a very unpleasant simulation of a human 
voice from inside that pulpy mass beneath the tentacles. "I am ssschief engineer 
of Bahakatan. I am Makkikor. You hafff never ssseen Makkikor before. I can 
tell."
That was putting it mildly. All of a sudden Hawks felt like hugging the 
insectival Captain Chun and calling him "brother."
Captain ben Suda was quick to intervene. "The Makkikor are alien to all of us, 
sir, but they are no less under the great demon's thumb than we. They had the 
bad luck to be in the way when Master System was expanding its colonial empire 
and they were simply co-opted into the colonial system by force. Their world is 
not one any of us would be comfortable on, but it is no less a part of the 
system than the colonials, and after these centuries it and they have far more 
in common with us than they should. I was lucky to get him, and you should feel 
lucky, too. The Makkikor carry around their own natural son of air supply and 
are nearly impervious to vacuums and much of the radiation that would be 
injurious to us. Debo, here, is the best ship's engineer and maintenance crewman 
imaginable."
Raven stared at the creature and gave a wry chuckle. "Well, Chief, you can't say 
we ain't startin' off with no one-note crew."
Hawks opened his mouth but couldn't speak. All he could think was, Welcome to 
the universe, Walks With the Night Hawks.
The Thunder vibrated, roared, and began to move out into a universe far more 
complex than even the originals had anticipated.
 
9. THE VULTURE OF JANIPUR

THE NEXT SEVEN MONTHS WAS A PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT and personal compromise for all 
concerned, but somehow the new crew settled into a group marriage of 
convenience, tolerance, and, in some cases, friendship and mutual respect. The 
difficulty did not stem only from the alienness of the colonists, though, but 
also from the freebooters' starting attitudes toward the original group. It was 
clear that the vast majority of newcomers still didn't really believe that the 
rebels' scheme could succeed.
Hawks once again demonstrated his leadership skills by forming a council of 
captains and treating them with respect. Each captain was still absolute master 
of his or her own ship, but each was under the command of what they had come to 
consider an admiral-one who commands not a ship but a fleet. And that one was 
Hawks.
In fact, the hardest thing for the freebooters to accept was Star Eagle's 
existence at all, let alone as an equal captain among them. All their lives had 
been spent hating machines that could think on their own. No matter how 
different they looked, no matter what languages they thought in or what they 
liked to eat or how they liked to live, all of them, even the alien engineer, 
were living creatures born of other living creatures. To them, Star Eagle seemed 
a member of the true alien race, the one they were fighting, and it was very 
difficult for them to trust him.
Star Eagle had certainly done his best for them. Maintenance had created more 
elaborate cargo access ports fitted with air locks and tubes directly into the 
ships that had to be carried outside, and hoped to have real pressurization 
throughout the ship as needed, even in the cargo bays themselves, within another 
month.
The interior village was still badly in need of work, but it had been expanded 
enough and customized enough to satisfy most of the needs of those on board who 
required more than Earth-human conditions. Savaphoong continued to live on his 
luxurious yacht with its transmuter producing luxury goods as needed and human 
slaves to wait on him and his subordinates; this arrangement actually made 
everyone more comfortable.
Each crew was given an area of the interior shell, along with working offices in 
the surrounding middle region, designed as much to their specifications as 
practicality and space and data banks allowed. Ikira Sukotae, for example, 
actually had a dwelling within a very dark and grass-covered mound with little 
or no lighting, although somehow in there was a miniaturized vaporizer toilet 
and running water and much else. Her amphibian crewmember had a hut with a 
chamber in which fresh water sufficient to cover her body was available along 
with air. The centauroids preferred just a patch of ground with specially 
designed water supply and waste disposal; they didn't care a bit for privacy.
The others, even the Rock Man, found that the normal hut could be configured to 
their needs. The green owlish couple, for example, used things much the same as 
everyone else but slept standing up. So, in fact, did the thick-tailed Buta 
Killomen and the Rock Man, while Captain Chun and his exoskeletal mates slept 
wrapped around pipes or logs. Only the Makkikor proved a problem to accommodate, 
since its native environment and needs were so different-even if it could 
breathe human air and a lot of other things, as it turned out-but it preferred 
to sleep in the niche it had designed on the Bahakatan and seemed delighted to 
help Star Eagle and the maintenance robots with the renovation and refurbishment 
of the freebooter ships.
The transmitter at Melchior had made China the way she was, but Isaac Clayben 
had figured a mechanical way to help her out at least in the area of her 
blindness. Although the program created by his old staff had been diabolically 
clever and designed not to be circumvented, Clayben and Star Eagle had devised a 
mindprinter interpretive routine and a gadget that gave her a son of sight when 
she chose to use it. Sound waves, traveling on a frequency that would not 
interfere with ship's systems and was beyond the ability of any colonials or 
Earth-humans aboard to hear, were translated into electrical signals and sent 
through nerves to her brain, where the interpretive program operated. Only the 
Makkikor could hear the signals; he found the sounds not only pleasant but, 
Hawks suspected, somewhat erotic.
Using the device along with the mindprinter program, China could "see" well 
enough to distinguish individual objects, although she could not discern 
specific features of a person nor, for example, read print. She still preferred 
her memorization routines, which were now so natural that she hardly looked 
handicapped getting about, but in an emergency or in a strange environment, the 
device might mean life or death, and she appreciated it.
They had not wasted the time in other ways, either. They hunted without much 
success for other remnants of the freebooter culture, and finally Hawks decided, 
with the council of captains concurring, to go after a ring.
By now the newcomers had been told the whole story- what they were after, what 
the rings could do, and why the rings had been created. Two of the crews had 
visited Chanchuk, and the Indrus knew Janipur well, since the people of that 
world had been created out of the same original race as theirs and had kept many 
of the same customs and forms of the ancient Hindu beliefs. Captain 
Paschittawal, in fact, had even seen the ring itself, in the People's Treasures 
collection at Cochin Center, the chief administrator's headquarters. Apparently, 
he reported, the chief administrator rarely wore it, except on solemn and highly 
ceremonial occasions.
"It is a beautiful thing, very big," Captain Paschittawal told them. "It is kept 
under a magnifier, in fact, so that one can see the exquisite detail work. Two 
beautiful birds, mirror images, sitting on small fir branches. It is most 
treasured because it is one of the every few artifacts that came with the 
Founders centuries ago."
Hawks nodded. "I want you to get together with Raven and Sabatini and give them 
as much detail as you can. I believe it is time we put Sabatini's unique talents 
to work for us."
The captain's eyebrows rose. "I have heard you and the others talk of this, but 
I do not understand what you mean by 'unique talents.'"
"You won't believe it until you witness it, but let me put it this way. You are 
Hindu, correct?"
"I am, sir."
"And you believe, then, in reincarnation?"
"Yes, sir, I most firmly do."
"Let me just say that Captain Sabatini not only can reincarnate, but can choose 
just what and who he's going to be. And he does not have to die to do it." 
Although somebody else does, he added a bit guiltily to himself.
After a full briefing by the Indrus crew, Hawks met with his security staff and 
Sabatini in his own office deep inside the guts of the Thunder.
"Well," Raven said with a sigh, "Nagy said it'd be the easiest, although I ain't 
sure I like it if it is. This thing's like something in the regional museums of 
somebody's crown jewels. It's almost a sacred object because it's Earth and it's 
original. It will be guarded and not just by people. It's gonna have one hell of 
a nasty security system on it, since a lot of these Hindu folks believe things 
like this got magic. That crew said there are all sorts of legends about the 
powers of the gods that come with being the wearer of the thing. This is a heist 
problem, and who knows what kind of technology they bought or what the nasty 
computers of that Center came up with? And there's the racial and cultural 
thing."
Hawks nodded, knowing just what Raven meant. "Those we will face with every 
problem. We knew that from the start-at least I did, and I think you did, too, 
if you wanted to think about it. It would have been too much to expect that any 
of the colonials were recruited from the freebooters would be members of this 
race. I consider it a stroke of real fortune that we, at least, had people here 
who knew the world and its people. If this is the easiest, then this is the one 
we go for just to see if we have a prayer of getting the others. Sabatini?"
"This is one I think I'm really gonna enjoy," the captain said. "I never been 
anything this different before. Still, the basics are here. The chief 
administrator comes from a small town up against the mountains on the smaller of 
the three continents, and he has an estate there and goes home a lot. He's one 
of them types that likes to spend time with the people-and, of course, I bet he 
has one hell of an illegal high-tech lab there someplace, too. We can't just 
walk into the Center-it's gonna be too well guarded and it won't have the kind 
of conditions I need to be safe and secure while I-change into something less 
obvious, shall we say. I may have to go through a few people to get in there. 
Maybe some townspeople, then to servants at the big man's place, and from there 
to somebody with authority and easy access to Center."
"That's understood," Hawks told him. "But I don't think there is any way you are 
going to be able to steal that thing all by yourself. If you can, fine, but if I 
know a chief administrator, no matter what the race or culture, there will be no 
time when you will be able to become him and particularly not his security chief 
without being discovered, and I would wager much, if I had anything, that it 
takes at least both of them to disable that alarm system."
Sabatini nodded. "I understand that. Still, if I get a crack at it, I'll try. If 
not-well, then it'll have to go to the experts up here and we'll cross that 
bridge when we come to it. Right now, I'd say the biggest problem is getting me 
in-and out, if need be. Master System knows what we're after and it's got to 
have that place monitored wall to wall, and we sure as hell aren't going to be 
able to get close enough in to land a transmuter receiver."
"I believe I can help there," Star Eagle broke in. "It wouldn't do to bring the 
Thunder and expose the fleet at this point-we may need all that power later on, 
if only to fight our way back to Earth. I can use a capsule, however, with a 
basic life-support system, and stick it in a preprogrammed fighter. They are 
fast and expendable. Janipur might even let you get down if they couldn't tell 
where the fighter came from, if only to follow it back."
"Uh huh. And how are you gonna get that fighter close enough to let it get in? 
You punch anywhere in the area and they're gonna know it."
"I know. If need be, we have ships to spare, but I would just as soon not spare 
any people. It will get you in and confound Master System, I am sure. It will 
also tell us just what sort of forces are in the area, so we can plan for the 
future. We must, after all, also get you out."
Raven turned to Sabatini. "You know, if this all goes as planned, we're gonna 
hav'ta figure some new name for you, and if it's one like the Indrus crew's got, 
I won't want to know it. We'll also have to recognize you when we see you."
Sabatini grinned. "Well, we have a nightingale, a hawk, and a raven, at least, 
and I'm told a couple of our new friends have names that translate out like that 
anyway. From now on, why don't we follow that convention? Why not-Vulture?"
And Vulture it was. Although all the captains hungered for some action and 
volunteered to make the drop, Star Eagle determined that Pirate One would be 
their best bet. It could carry the small fighter with its cargo capsule, and 
might just fool any automated defenses. In any case, although none liked to 
discuss it, it was expendable.
It was agreed, however, that the small, dark Captain Paschittawal would fly it, 
since he had the most knowledge and experience of any aboard in getting in and 
out of Janipur. Warlock would handle weapons, since she was best at that. Only 
those two would go; Sabatini, in his capsule inside the fighter, would be along 
for the ride.
Thanks to the Indrus's local charts, they had excellent maps of the planet and 
its terrain. It was decided to attempt a landing in the mountains to the north 
of the village and state, where landforms and general weather conditions would 
provide good cover for the fighter, which was intended to remain down. The 
people of Janipur were not good at mountain climbing, which would provide some 
extra security, but might cause problems for Vulture should he have to return to 
the ship in Janipurian form. He did not minimize the difficulties, but he was 
not that concerned. "I will get whatever I need, one way or the other," he 
assured them.
The one thing they weren't all that concerned about was Vulture returning 
reprogrammed by Master System. Clayben was quick to assure them that if such 
techniques could have worked with "the creature," he would have used them back 
on Melchior. The very methods by which memory was stored were so different that 
none of the common methods would work, and any biochemical or psychogenetic 
agents would be neutralized if introduced. "Remember," the scientist told them, 
"this is not Sabatini, or Koll, or any of the others it has called itself. It is 
a unique homemade alien organism only pretending to be these people, just as it 
will pretend to be one of the people of Janipur."
As an initial test, Star Eagle rigged up Pirate One with false identification 
and an automatic program requiring no one on board. All it would do was punch 
into the system, go about its standard refueling, and then return to a 
predetermined point where its much more sophisticated scanning records would be 
analyzed. Lobotomized, the ship's core was not much good without a human at the 
decision-making level, but it could carry out such simple and routine tasks and 
respond to standard queries. They were not much worried about it being 
recognized; it was one of an entire class of automated freighters all of which 
looked identical. This was one area in which machine precision and 
standardization worked to the advantage of the pirates.
They spent a nervous eight and a half hours while their first ship was away, 
worrying that it might not return or might return altered or containing a cargo 
of Vals, but it arrived right on schedule, its tamper seals and passwords 
untouched. From examining the sensor data, Star Eagle felt sure that either they 
were being led into a trap or Master System was being very cavalier about the 
world and its ring. No other ships were evident in the system while Pirate One 
was there. An automated satellite relay station had challenged, then passed, 
Pirate One.
"I don't like it," Hawks told the council. "It's too easy. Master System isn't 
overflowing with Vals, but it has enough, or it can create enough, to monitor 
five worlds, and it could probably have a ship full of its troopers lurking 
around each, as well. I can't believe it would keep the way open for us unless 
it had something more sinister in mind. It is logical-it also would know that 
this was the easiest and the probable first target."
"I agree that it has something up its metaphorical sleeve," Savaphoong put in, 
"but I wouldn't be too surprised if it was traditional and probing. I think it 
may want to see if we can do it, and, certainly, it does not just want the few 
who would steal the ring, but all of us. It thinks in far longer terms than we. 
At this point it is not as concerned about us getting all the rings as it is 
about us spreading and multiplying so that it will be in constant danger now and 
for generations to come. As of now, our knowledge is more of a threat to it than 
our deeds. It will be after we get the ring, senors, that we will be in the 
gravest danger. The game is two-way, you see. We must acquire the rings. It, 
however, must acquire us and stamp out the knowledge of the rings and their 
power."
Sabatini grinned. "But it does not know about the Vulture."
Insertion proved relatively easy, far easier than they had a right to expect, 
bearing out both Hawks's concerns and Savaphoong's reasoning. They flew the 
fighter remotely, choosing a landing site so rugged and misshapen by rocky 
outcrops and towering peaks that it never even saw the sun. Powered down, the 
fighter would be practically invisible from the air. Even so, it was a tricky 
operation that has to be done with deliberate speed. Master System's monitoring 
satellite had to be on the other side of the planet when they began, on an 
orbital swing that would keep it away from the landing zone for the longest 
possible time. The fighter could be powered down before the satellite made its 
sweep, but residual heat might still betray it when the satellite compared notes 
with its previous pass. Some cooling time was essential to keep it from showing 
up like a beacon to the monitor.
The new fake ship's identification worked as well as the previous, with no 
indication that the system monitor suspected that it was actually seeing the 
same ship again. The fighter was launched as soon as they felt safely clear of 
the system monitor's scan, and Captain Paschittawal, linked in, guided it 
carefully toward Janipur, cutting and boosting power as needed to avoid the 
orbital scans and finally inserting it in opposition to and behind Master 
System's planetary monitor. It would now pass over the exact same region as the 
monitor, but only after the monitor and always on the other side of the planet 
from it.
Within two hours, while the alleged freighter was still taking on fuel, the spot 
was passed over, checked, and found to be good. Paschittawal allowed two more 
orbital passes, so that the area of the monitor survey would no longer include 
the target, then launched the fighter down to the prescribed spot. Vulture 
wasted no time in climbing out as soon as he could risk it.
"Very easy," the captain said with satisfaction. "It is how we got down to the 
planet to do business in the old days."
They dropped a relay satellite in the dense fueling belt that could pick up and 
relay coded subspace communications from Vulture. The only danger in the relay 
was that another ship, in for fuel, might gobble it up, but the odds of that 
happening were not great.
Vulture was now loose on Janipur and those back on the Thunder could only wait.
In the meantime, the members of that odd community continued to get to know one 
another and to grow. China had a daughter, whom she named Star Daughter, and 
Hawks and the others of the old guard were more than astonished to hear that 
Cloud Dancer was also with child. Silent Woman's nursery was going to get 
crowded a bit faster than expected.
The Chows in particular seemed to be blossoming. Both had taken well to 
piloting, which had given them an enormous amount of self-confidence and a real 
job that might prove important, even vital, in times to come, and both were also 
now spending a lot of time in the company of the two half-Chinese crew members 
from the Bahakatan. Their extremely mottled skin had given them a low 
self-image, but the crewmen did not seem to mind. Hawks suspected that men born 
and raised in deep space, where they dealt with large numbers of bizarre 
colonials, would find the strangely marked but otherwise attractive women more 
exotic than grotesque.
Hawks himself was diverted for a while by Cloud Dancer's news, but he could not 
let it sway him from long-range planning. He was to have a child and that was 
important, but for that child to have any chance at life and a future, his 
parents and their allies would have to prepare the way.
Fernando Savaphoong was an initial key to any planning goals. He had contacts, 
secret channels of communication and information, and he used them.
"There is very little out there," he reported. "The heat continues to be on, I 
fear, and I do not know when or if it will be off. There were an estimated 
half-million freebooters out here, and those who have not been caught or killed 
are mostly either running or hiding. I have contacted some who are hiding, but 
they are of no real use; they expected to hear news and get information from me, 
so withdrawn are they."
"Anything about the targets? Particularly the missing ring?" Hawks asked him.
"Little. Stories, nothing more. Even my Center contacts on the colonial worlds 
know little that we do not know."
Ikira Sukotae looked thoughtful. "Now, let me get this straight. You know that 
one is on the Mother World, and we know the second is definitely on Janipur. You 
have the worlds for two more, and while they will be harder to find we have some 
support, at least in freebooter stories, about them existing there. Yet nothing, 
absolutely nothing, on the fifth ring."
Hawks nodded. "That's about the size of it."
The tiny captain rose. "Let me talk to somebody for awhile. I never had this 
thought before, but it's one way to go." She went back and sought out Takya 
Mudabur, her amphibian crew member. Mudabur was nice enough and good in a pinch, 
but unlike the others, who had been together for many years, she was a bit of an 
outsider kept more to herself.
"Takya?"
"Yes, my captain?" She was in her bath enclosure but stuck her head out when she 
saw someone enter her hut. "Something wrong?"
"Takya, we have done well with you dealing with the water worlds. How many has 
it been-four? Five?
"Six, my captain. Why do you ask?"
"When you talk to those people, just in general conversation, did you ever hear 
of a story or legend about a great golden ring with a design on it? Birds, 
perhaps, on a black stone set in a great gold ring owned by someone of power or 
importance?"
Takya thought a moment, then shook her head. "No, never. I have heard the story 
of the five gold rings and I am sure that if I had heard of any such thing I 
would have remembered it then."
"Of the more than four hundred and fifty known colonial worlds, how many would 
you say have water people?"
"Not many. Ten, perhaps fifteen percent. You should know as well as I."
She hadn't known, never having counted them, but the total amazed her. Somewhere 
between forty-five and sixty or so such worlds. "Takya, all the water people I 
have ever seen are still air breathers like us. All of the ones you visited 
were. Have you ever heard of a race of water breathers?"
"Yes, there are some," she said, "although not many. There are also some who 
breathe atmospheres poisonous to us, as well. Why do you ask?"
"Just following a train of thought. Axe there any freebooters, any spacefarers 
at all, among such races? Ones that either breathe water or something else we 
cannot?"
"I do not know for certain, but I have never heard of any. They would have to 
drastically modify any ships they flew, have special pressure suits and the 
like, and would have to modify the atmospheric transmuter systems to produce 
their required atmospheres. It was difficult enough for ones such as you and I 
to get out. Adding that may be asking the impossible."
The captain nodded. "Very well. Thank you." She headed back up to the council of 
captains on the Thunder's bridge. They all looked at her expectantly.
"Well? Anything you'd care to let us in on?" Hawks asked.
"I-I'm not certain. Have any of you ever encountered a race that requires either 
water or some noxious atmosphere or excessive pressures to breathe and survive? 
Among the colonials, I mean."
"There are several," the insectlike Chun Wo Har responded. "They are not on the 
usual freebooter charts because they are of no practical value. Most cannot even 
have the level of technology the standard Centers use, and others exist under 
conditions that render them useless for any profit. Why?"
"I think I see where she's headed," Hawks told them. "Between us all we have 
represented here eight separate races. Combining your varying experiences, we 
have experience with perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred more through 
travels and business and contacts with other freebooters. Nowhere is there a 
trace of the lost ring, even as a legend or myth or totem of some kind. Yet we 
know that it is required by the core program of Master System to be in the 
possession of and under the control of a human being with power. If I were 
Master System and I wanted it as buried as possible, I might well place at least 
one under such conditions."
Maria Santiago shrugged. "Why not all, then? It would make it next to 
impossible."
"You are forgetting the transmuters," Star Eagle broke in. "We can make what is 
required."
"That may be true," the San Cristobal captain responded, "but once you are 
remade you are that way for good, no? Because there are inevitable minor losses 
which become major, even catastrophic, in a second try. So you become 
these-people-and you get their rings, but what good does it do you? The sheer 
complexity of sustaining yourself in space or on another world is daunting, and 
the -how you say?-payoff, the insertion into Master System, is going to be under 
less than ideal conditions, if I guess right. You could steal them but not use 
them, and, I, for one, would not wish 19 be in the position of risking all to 
get the ring only to give it up and trust it to some, let us face it, alien kind 
of person who can offer only a promise of some ill-defined reward. If I were 
Master System it would be the logical thing to do."
Hawks nodded, thinking furiously. "Unless-unless there aren't five worlds where 
it would be safely done. I wish we had an analysis of any one of the rings 
rather than just a hologram of Chen's. These things only look like rings, and 
they were designed by Earth-humans for Earth conditions using existing 
technology of the period. Below and in the setting are complex computer 
circuitry and instructions that, when combined with the other four at the 
correct interface, give access to the Master System core and override any 
existing instructions. What could they be made of? I think the gold is just 
that-gold. I have seen Chen's and it looked like gold to me. The setting, which 
looks like stone, must be some sort of synthetic to contain and protect the 
electronics. Hence we can, for example, rule out any atmosphere where gold would 
be corroded or in any way deformed or broken down."
Savaphoong nodded excitedly. "Si! Si! It is logical! If the rings contained 
anything active, they would be shorted out in water, for example, ruling that 
out."
"They are most certainly passive," Star Eagle commented. "It is asking too much 
to expect anything to hold a charge nine hundred-plus years, let alone 
indefinitely. They may be powered up when connected, but not individually and 
self-contained."
"Water is looking better and better," Hawks noted. "Gold is safe in water. It 
will tarnish, but it is easily restored even after centuries. The synthetic 
holding the electronics would certainly be watertight and airtight. And if they 
were water breathers, they would have virtually no contact with the freebooters. 
I would say we have a job and that is to check all the water breathers first. If 
we strike no gold, as it were, then we can begin to check the small number with 
deadly atmospheres."
"I believe I can correlate the master files from the various ships and come up 
with most if not all the possible worlds for this," Star Eagle told them. 
"However, it will not be easy to check on them all. Most will never have seen 
another kind of human before, and will consider us all, even Takya, as 
monsters."
Hawks sighed. "These are the kind of problems we expected to have to solve, and 
we must solve them one way or another. It is the job of you all to work out 
methods and a system for doing so and then implement it when we approve. If 
Raven and Chen are correct in their interpretation of the ore commands, then it 
only must be possible. I do not believe there is any requirement that it be easy 
or guaranteed."
Vulture had been down on Janipur for seven weeks when the Thunder finally heard 
from him again. The new voice was male, very highly accented, and occasionally 
difficult to understand, but the message came through.
"I have rigged up a repeater device to the fighter, then the relay. I hope it 
works," Vulture said. "I also do not know how long this is safe to use, so I 
will be brief. This is a far different world from any I have ever known, but 
there is a cultural undercurrent that shows a human origin. Much of the world is 
primitive, pretechnological, and ignorant, as expected. The population is dense 
in the desirable areas -very dense, and very poor, by most standards. They are 
administered by five Centers employing a total of perhaps thirty thousand inside 
and in the field. As the good Indrus captain told us, the Centers are quite 
modern with full technology complexes. There is a complex and rigid caste system 
here, as well, which complicates matters. One cannot graduate to Center level; 
one must be born to it, and there are physical ways to tell."
"All right, but have you seen the ring?" Hawks asked.
"I have. It is not difficult if you are of the Brahman caste. As the captain 
said, it is usually on public display, during which times it would be impossible 
to get to. Too many people and too much split-second security. After dark it is 
protected by a labyrinthine set of computer and mechanical devices and switches 
that bewilder me, and I am many engineers and computer personnel, if you 
remember. To remove it even if you had all the codes and keys would require at 
least three people. This is long enough for now. The rest of the data is being 
sent serially on my subcarrier direct to Star Eagle. I will call back when I 
can, but not before this time tomorrow."
"Wait! No chance you can get it without us?"
"None. I am third in rank in Security here and have much power, and I have even 
participated in unlocking the thing, but there is simply no way to do it alone 
and get away with it. One last thing. You were right about the trap. At least 
ten percent of security forces in this Center and possibly others are ringers. 
There may be more outside. Master System is just waiting for us to try for it. 
Good bye for now."
"He has broken connections," Star Eagle said. "I have the rest of his 
information under analysis now. It appears that the actual system is nearly 
identical to Earth's, but the people there do not look anything like any of us, 
and the culture is a rather strange form of Hinduism. I believe with the help of 
the Indrus personnel we could create an effective linguistic mindprinter 
recording, but unlike Vulture, the rest of us would require a great deal of 
study to change. Culture aside, this will not be body or life style to easily 
get comfortable with."
"But what about the ring defenses itself?" Hawks asked. "What are we facing?"
"Everything conventional, apparently nothing new. These people have very poor 
night vision, making for a daylight culture, and their regular visual range is 
even more restricted than yours. That works in our favor since their light-beam 
traps are invisible to them but not to us. The outer doors are locked with a 
large key, but the door has its own sensors and visual remote monitors as well. 
There is a secondary vaultlike door inside the first, with an open area that is 
monitored visually and with sensors. The second door is computer-operated by 
coded remote from the master console in Security. No one individual has the 
whole code, which is changed periodically."
"I see. Go on."
"The inner display museum is covered by light sensors and is also visually and 
aurally monitored. The display cases appear to have weight sensors under tiles 
around them, so we will have to find out what sort of weight will set them off. 
The display case itself is thick but transparent, most certainly bulletproof, 
and perhaps cutter resistant to anything but a laser torch. Cutting or breaking 
through would not work, however, since fine alarm wires run through it like thin 
mesh. The only way to open the case is with two conventional keys, one worn by 
the chief administrator himself and the other by the chief of Security.
Turning both simultaneously opens the case and sounds an alarm in Security. If 
it is legitimate, the alarm is simply ignored, but it cannot be turned off until 
the case is closed again and locked."
"All right. Anything nasty waiting if you get that far and remove something?"
"No. It is a good alarm system, but not a spectacular one. You pick it up, close 
the case, and if you also miss the alarms on the way out and relock all the 
doors you have it."
"I'd hate to see what you call a spectacular system, then. This sounds mean."
"The alarms and locks are all conventional, which means traditional and 
essentially antique. The same sort is used at Earth Centers. The Vatican Center 
museum, for example, is far better defended."
"Hmmm... I wonder if there's any chance of Vulture being alone on duty in Center 
Security?"
"Not likely. If they follow the standard procedure there will probably be a duty 
officer and three or four others. You know the procedure, although if Master 
System has added personnel it is a good bet that one or more of those on duty 
down there will be its people. The area also has regular watchmen rounds, and 
the doors are checked. Bet on all the watchmen being Master System personnel. 
You won't be able to bribe them or turn them, Hawks."
"Dealing with the people is Vulture's job, and I'm sure he can do a good enough 
cover to get help. It's a sure bet that most of the regulars down there, and 
particularly the bureaucrats, are really going nuts under a near-occupation by 
Master System. Some of them might well cherish the idea of really helping 
embarrass the bastards-if they didn't know the theft was for real. Any chance of 
doing it the easy way? Cutting in the C.A., for example?"
"Dubious. Any chance we might have had left when Master System placed its own 
personnel down there. The chief administrator is first and foremost a survivor 
with self-interest paramount. No, we will have to steal it, and that brings up 
the first and certainly not the last of the nasty problems we will face."
Hawks sighed. "You have a plan and personnel in mind?"
"I have both, but let me work on it further. I will also need supplementary 
information for Vulture. Make no mistake, though. There is no getting around the 
fact that we will require at least some of our people as Janipurians if we are 
to get close enough to this to even have a crack at it. Others, with their own 
innate abilities, might not need anything drastic, but will require more than 
Vulture's help to get where they are needed. It appears clear now that the late 
Arnold Nagy provided us with the ones best equipped for this particular job. I 
am merely building off his obvious intent with others he did not anticipate."
"I know. Damn it, it shouldn't be now, not for them. Later, perhaps-you are sure 
that full transmutation is the only way?"
"Hawks, think of it from the basis of what you know. Back at North American 
Center, what would be the chance of, say, the Kaotan crew sneaking in, looking 
over and examining Security areas in detail, inside and out, while they were 
open, then breaking in, stealing something, and getting out and away? Even if 
they had a senior Security official on their side? Now add ten precent Master 
System forces-and you can bet a Val is somewhere around to call the shots-and 
you see the problem."
The leader of the pirate band sighed again and nodded. "You're right. And in 
that case some excuse could be made for an open colonial visit-and they still 
wouldn't be able to do it because they would be watched like, well, hawks around 
the chickens."
"We are stuck. They were obviously provided to help solve this particular 
problem. We may try it without them, but we would be crippled if we did."
"I agree. I'll start easing into discussing it with them. In the meantime, do 
you have anything visual on what these Janipurians look like? I think I'd better 
know what I'm asking before I ask it."
"Come up to the bridge. I haven't any such data from Vulture, but I have some 
recordings from Indrus's files."
He went on up and found several members of the various crews there working at 
some of the consoles, and Raven, cigar stuck in the side of his mouth, trying to 
look as if he were busy too. But when Star Eagle put up a picture of a 
Janipurian, all turned and stared.
"What the hell is that?" Raven asked.
The creature was more animal than human, yet it had some very human gestures. 
The face, light tan in coloration, was large and humanoid, although the nose had 
flap-covered nostrils, was too large and wide, and its porous skin glistened 
with dampness like many animal noses; the mouth seemed too wide and the chin too 
small, giving the face a blocky shape. The pointed ears were upright and seemed 
to be on a swivellike socket, able to turn in any direction. Most inhuman were 
the eyes, which were large, round bulges.
The whole body was covered in very short but thick hair. The torso was tapered, 
thinner near the thick neck than at the rear and shaped more like that of a 
four-footed animal than a bipedal human. The arms, too, were more like forelegs, 
and the hands, on incredibly thick wrists, were enormous, the fingers and thumb 
long and pointed and looking deceptively boneless. And from the back of each 
hand grew an enormous, thick prominence that looked hard as steel. The creature 
was standing more or less erect on its two feet, although it gave the appearance 
of being slightly bent over, as if ready to launch into a four-footed run. Arms 
and legs looked to be of equal length, and the feet had huge, splayed toes with 
deep, curved nails that seemed to dig into the ground. Again, on the back of the 
ankles there was that same steellike growth. Some kind of brief protective bit 
of clothing was draped above the thick, animalistic thighs, but there was no 
hiding the fact that the creature was a male.
"If that thing can walk like that, I'll eat it," Raven mumbled.
A young woman, one of the crew from the Indrus, laughed. "They do not walk like 
that, you are right," she said. "The hands and balancing feet curl up, leaving 
the hooves for moving and running. They are quite fast, in fact. They do get 
around upright when inside, though, if they have something to hold on to or the 
distance to go is very short. Do not let it fool you, though. The hands are 
quite dexterous, and the people are excellent artisans. Those claws can also rip 
someone open with one try, and they can wield weapons with deadly accuracy. They 
do not see very well at all at night, but always their sense of smell and their 
hearing is far better than ours."
Hawks shivered. What am I asking someone to do? he couldn't help thinking. Do I 
have the right to even ask!
"You said 'weapons,'" Raven noted, not encumbered by such a duty. "Do they hunt 
or have prey?"
"Oh, no. They are vegetarians, strictly. Their mouths move more side to side, 
and their teeth are flat and big. Their design is based primarily on the fact 
that they came from a culture that was highly vegetarian to begin with- although 
not all-and this world developed warm as mostly grasslands, desert, and 
mountains. The grasslands can support a large population, but there are limits, 
so the system added some rather nasty predators once native to their old 
region-such as tigers-to maintain a balance in the early days. Today, however, 
most of the predators are strictly controlled and only occasionally escape from 
royal preserves. Much of the central grasslands is intensively farmed now, you 
see-those claws can also till soil. They have some domestic animals to aid them, 
but their tools are basically wood and stone. Useful metal is rare and prized 
there, and we traded a fair amount of it."
Hawks tried to put his more personal concerns from his mind and concentrate on 
the problem at hand. If Cochin Center was anything like North American Center, 
and he thought it probably was, its floors would be of smooth, hard synthetics. 
Those hooves would make quite a lot of noise on them. The aural sensors would be 
a real problem. On the other hand, if those long, pointed fingers were really 
all that dexterous, then they would be an advantage when it came time to deal 
quietly with the locks.
"This is a male," he noted. "What do the females look like?"
"Slightly smaller, with firm breasts that hang down when she is on all fours," 
the woman told him. "The children are born as four-footed creatures with only 
flaps where the hands and feet will be. These do not begin to really grow out 
and develop until they are about seven, and are not really useful until they're 
ten or eleven. The standing, walking upright, and the developed use of the hands 
is something they must be taught. This was thought to be a protective innovation 
when the world was more dangerous, as they are still essentially self-sufficient 
from the age of two and can walk on all fours in a matter of hours or days after 
birth. But it is the hands that make them truly human, that allow them to 
manipulate and create and build. The hands and the mastery of them are the mark 
of being human there. Also, you note the coloring?"
"You mean the light tan, almost white hair?"
She nodded. "That indicates that this man is a Brahman. High caste, probably 
either a major religious leader or from a Center, as this one was. The castes 
are known by their coloring. A darker tan, a light brown, would be below this 
one and probably a professional or a politician or regional leader. Dark, 
reddish brown would be working class- farmers and laborers, mainly. Black is, 
well, untouchable. Unclean. They roam wild and are something of a danger to the 
others."
"Wonderful," Raven grumbled. "So what happens if two castes marry?"
"The effect is interesting, as they take on multiple rather than mixed or 
blended coloration. The half castes or less have the rights and duties of the 
lowest caste their coloration shows. Such mixing is rare, but it happens often 
enough to be noticeable even in a small village such as the one we used for our 
dealings."
Hawks was thoughtful. "And you say only the light tan get into the Centers? 
Nobody else?"
"That is what we were told, and it is logical in a society where you wear your 
class and your social potential on your body."
"Then it's another complication. Finding enough of these light tans to copy will 
be a problem."
"No big deal, Chief," Raven replied. "They got to come out. If Vulture says they 
follow the standard procedures, then they ail got to go on leave for a 
period-and that means some are always on leave, right? No, that ain't the 
problem. The problem is that everybody on that level will have everything on 
record, birth to death, whatever they use for prints, you name it. The odds are 
if they don't all know each other-them tans I mean-they know mutual friends and 
family. It's gonna be pretty damned tough to fake."
Hawks sat back in his chair and sighed. "Oh, I don't know. If ten percent are 
Master System plants, who knows whom down there these days or can take things 
for granted?" He leaned forward again. "No, we can make some of those factors 
work for us. We might even get Master System and its friends to take the fall 
for the robbery, which will nicely aid our getaway. No, the two big ifs we have 
to face aren't there. We can work all those out. The first is-is it possible to 
lift that ring? Can we do it under all their noses and get away with it?"
"Yeah," Raven agreed, chomping on his cigar. "And who's gonna hav'ta become one 
of them for life to spring the damned locks while Vulture covers?"
The ultimate price... And this was only the first time.
The Chows seemed more alive than he remembered them, and happier, too. He wished 
this situation could have arisen under more miserable circumstances. The girls 
were certainly curious, particularly when they were summoned to Hawks's private 
office and found him there alone with one of the women from the Indrus.
"Sit down," he invited. "Make yourself comfortable. So far you've played a 
background role in all this. You've been very helpful, but I know both of you 
felt that you just happened to attach yourself to this group by sheer chance. 
Would you be surprised if I told you that you had been included all along? That 
much of what happened to you was deliberate and designed to make sure you came 
with us?"
That startled them. "We-just happened to be on the same ship as China," Chow Dai 
noted.
"Uh uh. A ship taking you to Melchior, so you could be handled and strictly 
controlled until it was time to move. You were not there by accident. They 
needed someone with very specific skills and they ran those skills through their 
computer and you came out, having been caught at China Center going through 
doors that expert technicians couldn't crack. Tell me, do you know how you do 
it?"
They both shrugged. "How do you sing or dance? You do not think about it-it is 
clear in the mind. You know our uncle was a magician, an illusionist he called 
himself, who loved to escape from the impossible. He taught us many of his 
tricks because we were good at them. There are only so many ways locks work, and 
there is always a weak spot."
"Huh! And does this explain how you can crack elaborate electronic combinations 
of numbers and even coded badge and fingerprint and eyeprint locks?"
"There are some secrets we must keep," Chow Dai replied coyly, "because we swore 
an oath to our uncle, but there are always ways of getting the right numbers for 
finding how to fake what is needed."
"Some of those locks at Melchior matched a minutely detailed hologram. You 
walked through them like they weren't there."
They both grinned. "There is always an alternate way to spring a lock. Anyone 
who needs a lock that complicated must first be very afraid that someone will 
get in. After they install it, and after a few times when it does not work and 
they cannot get in, they always have an equal or greater fear that this might 
happen all the time. The more complicated the lock the easier it is to figure 
out the emergency bypass, since it must work without triggering the other, more 
ordinary, way in."
"Have you ever seen a lock or security system you couldn't beat?"
They looked at each other and shrugged. "Yes and no," Chow Dai responded. "We 
have never seen one we could not beat, but we have been caught because we did 
not have any easy way to look over the system and take the time to find out all 
about it. We were ignorant peasant girls. At the time, we did not even know what 
a visual monitor was."
"But you do now."
"Oh, yes. We have spent much time aboard here learning more and more. Star Eagle 
has been very kind and has read us details of the most incredible security 
systems, and shown us moving cartoon pictures of them. We know much more now."
Hawks wondered who put Star Eagle up to that useful activity. The crazy thing 
was, the Chows were exactly what they said they were-simple peasants taken in as 
domestic servants by a spoiled China Center official's wife. Neither of them 
could read or write or showed much inclination to learn; neither had any formal 
education at all. Their good speech in English was due to a mindprinter program 
and extensive practice aboard the Thunder. They were certainly geniuses, but 
their genius was limited to certain areas.
"You know what this is all about? You understand what we're doing out here, 
don't you?"
"Oh, yes. You are trying to find the five magic rings that will bring down the 
machine that plays god. It is a noble thing that might free our people one day."
Here it is. "One of the rings is in a Center on a planet called Janipur. It is 
guarded by a complicated security system that is mechanical, electronic, and 
personally guarded, and is considered impregnable. This was known to the people 
who set up our little pirate band. They felt you could crack that system, steal 
the ring, and get away. That is why you are here, why you have been here all 
along. To steal that ring."
"Then we will do it. We have not had a good challenge like that in a very long 
time."
"There is-a problem. A hitch. The problem is that the people down there are not 
human like we are human. They are another kind of human-different from us but no 
more different than some of the others we have aboard this ship right now. We 
might, under very risky conditions, get humans to the Center, but they would be 
useless. They couldn't walk around, get in any visual monitor, be seen by anyone 
there, since there are no Earth-humans anywhere on that world. Master System 
also has people who look like those other kind of humans down there just waiting 
for anyone not of that race to even be glimpsed. All our information, all our 
experts and computers, say that no one could get near enough to that ring to 
even pick the locks who was not of their race. You understand?"
"You wish us to teach them how to do it?"
He sighed. This was even harder man he thought. "No. We can't allow any of them 
in on this. Not right now. They are decent people down there, mostly, but Master 
System is standing over them and telling them what to do and they can't fight 
it, so they're not going to do the job for us. We have to do it ourselves."
"But you just said-"
He held up his hand. "You remember Song Ching who became China Nightingale? You 
know how they did it?"
They looked at each other, then at him. "They-used some kind of machine. One 
that changes you."
"Yes. We have the same kind of machine, and Star Eagle knows how to run it. This 
ship was designed to do that, to change one kind of human into another. But we 
don't have any mindprinter program, or a good means of getting one, that would 
teach anyone changed into the kind of people down there how to use that body. It 
would have to be learned after someone was changed into one of their kind. It 
would be very, very hard."
"China," Chow Mai whispered. "They cannot change her back."
"No. People are the most complicated of all living things. We know a lot about 
how people work, how they're put together and why they are the way they are, and 
we can change much of it, but it's not just one part we're talking about 
here-it's the whole thing, body, brain, blood, you name it. More cells than 
anyone can count, all of which have to work perfectly together. Once always 
seems to work, but try it again and it just doesn't come back together right. It 
can kill or cripple or form a horrible kind of monster that's one of a kind-and 
maybe not make the brain work, either."
The twins were silent for a moment, then Chow Dai spoke. "You want us to be 
changed into these-others. Learn how to be these others. Then go in and steal 
the ring. And, after-we are these others forever?"
"Yes. It's the first time this has been asked of anyone, but it will not be the 
last. Many of us, maybe even me, will have to do the same thing. We have three 
more rings to get before we can head home."
"May we-see what these people look like?"
He got out a holographic still Star Eagle had run off and handed it to them. It 
was of the same male he'd seen. They just stared at it, not revealing their 
emotions, although Chow Dai breathed "Oh" very softly.
"I know what I'm asking and don't think it's easy. I expect to have to give this 
speech again a few more times. We may all need to do it just to sneak past 
Master System to get to its home, but we might not. It's not fair, but that's 
the way it's set up. I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it could be done. We have 
Vulture-you remember the one who was Koll, then Sabatini, very well, I 
think-down there now, as one of them. He's in their security system at the 
Center but he can't do the job, only provide information and training and cover 
in and out. We will get you out."
"As-them," Chow Dai said quietly. "And then what?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"I mean, suppose we can do it. All of it. We get your ring and then we come back 
here. What happens to us then?"
"You will still be human beings, damn it. You'll still be the same inside, too. 
You're both good pilots and we can use good pilots. We might also need you to 
train others to pick other, different locks. You will be no different from the 
woman with scales and her nose in the back of her head, or the 
Cantonese-speaking crew with their bones on the outside. Still people, still a 
part of the team." He thought about the missing fourth ring and Captain 
Sukotae's theory. "Someone, perhaps many, might have to become far more limited 
sorts than these. We believe one ring may be deep on a world of water 
breathers."
The woman from the Indrus cleared her throat.
"I'm sorry," Hawks apologized. "This is Sabira of the Indrus. She has dealt with 
these people and knows them well."
"They are good people," she told them, "and their bodies may look strange, but 
they are actually better than ours in many ways. They are tough and versatile. 
And, where it counts, they are quite human. They love their children, are 
generally good to one another, like luxuries and try to enjoy life as best they 
can. Most are peasants much like the sort of people yours are. If we are to win, 
this must be done."
The girls were not properly enthused. "If we did not to this, then what would 
happen?" Chow Mai asked.
Hawks sighed. "I will not order someone to do this. I could, but it is not in my 
nature. Too many bad things were done to too many people aboard this ship now 
because someone or something ordered it done. If you refuse, then we will find 
volunteers. You will be expected to teach them all that you can about the 
problem, and then they will go and make the attempt. They will not have as good 
a chance as you would, but we will try and we will keep trying until we are down 
to no one here and we cannot win. We must. If we don't get that ring then the 
rest doesn't matter."
They nodded. "This vault. You have information on it? Yes? Can we know what it 
is?"
Hawks gave them as detailed a description of the situation as he could. They 
listened attentively.
"That is not a difficult sequence but it is very tricky," Chow Dai said. "No 
amateur, particularly in an unfamiliar body, could do it. It is worse because it 
is mostly mechanical. The mechanisms are not all that different from one big 
illusion in our uncle's show. His wife would get into a coffin, and then they 
would fill it with water, seal it with many chains and locks, and my uncle would 
have to pick them all and open the coffin before she drowned. She was a Buddhist 
who had studied with some mystics in the high mountains and could remain under 
for several minutes, more than most people, but it was still a matter of speed 
and skill. As little girls, we knew just how it was done, and we would often 
practice with the coffin empty against an hourglass timer. Many long times it 
took us up to an hour -far too long. Now we could do it, perhaps faster than 
Uncle Li could. This is a very complicated version of the same problem. No one 
aboard here could be taught to do it fast and perfect the first time in just a 
few days or weeks or even months, and we cannot exactly duplicate it here 
because we have not seen it and its hidden surprises."
"Nonetheless, we must try," he told them.
Sabira spoke. "You would not be going in alone, as you might have had to do 
under other circumstances. We-the Indrus crew and some of the others-have talked 
it over. We know the land, the people, the customs. It was decided that one of 
us at least should go as well, take the same route as you are asked to take, to 
help teach you the subtler ways of those people. We also have a mindprinter 
program for the language, which is basically a very distorted version of Hindi, 
which is my first language. The omens of the gods brought us to you, as the 
minds behind the attack on the great computer demon brought you here. With all 
these things on our side, we cannot fail. Compared to what we might face with 
the others, this is readymade for us."
They gaped at her. "You would become one of them, as well? Forever?"
"It is my duty. I will not tell you that I am excited by the prospect, but I do 
not fear it, either."
The twins looked at Hawks. "How long before this would happen?"
He shrugged. "The Vulture has a lot more to set up, and we have to coordinate 
things. We don't think that getting you in will be a problem. We've been running 
Pirate One in and out at regular intervals for months now, so that it appears to 
be a new but regular run. It isn't even challenged anymore. Vulture can arrange 
a much easier and more convenient arrival than we arranged for him. We've manage 
to get his old ship out and put in one with a transmuting station-the same one 
we used on the island world. We can send directly from Pirate One to that 
transmuter now, if Vulture is there and we time it right. In fact, first we have 
to find prospects for Star Eagle to copy and study, and get them to Pirate One, 
where we now have a transmuter and some storage. Covers must be arranged, and no 
one, least of all Master System and its personnel, must suspect. We are pretty 
sure that down there at Cochin Center someplace is a Val. You will have to go in 
and be accepted there before you pull the job. Then we have to get you all out 
and away under their noses. It's going to be very tricky and very dangerous. 
Even Vulture can't become a Val."
"Very well, then," Chow Dai said almost matter-of-factly. "Then we will do it."
He was surprised. "Just like that? Don't want to talk it over or think about 
it?"
"There is no need to do so. We would both be dead at the hands of the security 
guards at China Center had this not been arranged as you say. You have given the 
reason we have never understood, which was why we were taken from there and sent 
to where only important people are sent. The ones who chose us did not make us 
break into the Center apartments and offices or steal. We did that ourselves, 
and we were caught for our ignorance. Our lives and our bodies were forfeit 
because we were caught. They belong to the ones who saved us. You cannot know 
what it is like to be so helpless as we were, to be beaten and raped not by one 
but by many brutish men, again and again. Neither of us has really been able to 
get close to a man since then, nor really trust another. When this-Vulture- 
creature saved us from Sabatini, we owed still more. We will do it"
"Nobody owns anyone's bodies or lives here. That's what this is all about." He 
looked at Chow Mai. "And you? You agree?"
"We do not need to speak. We know each other's minds," the other said.
Hawks sighed. "All right then. We'll set it up."
 
PASSAGE: TWO CHARACTERS MEET IN HELL
 
THE ENORMOUS CREATURE ENTERED THE SMALL DOMED enclave easily, pressing the 
passwords as if it had set diem up, which it had. No one was present to greet 
it, which mildly irritated it, but it stalked down the entry corridor and into 
the main room where it found a lone Earth-human sitting with a glass and a 
bottle.
"You're late," the man said. "I'd offer you some, but I know it would be a 
waste."
"You should lay off that stuff," the creature admonished. "Those substances that 
dull the mind are dangerous."
The man chuckled. "And you should know, right? So I lay off the drinking and the 
smoking and maybe an occasional pleasure pill and I won't die young? I'm already 
dead, remember? I sure as hell do. Scared the living shit out of me, too. Damn 
it, if you can't even sin in hell then what's the use of living any kind of 
life?"
The creature let that pass. "You have been monitoring the progress of our 
friends?" it asked.
"Naturally. That's what this floating mausoleum was designed to do, wasn't it? 
After all, we reprogrammed Star Eagle back on Earth. You know, I wonder when 
Hawks is gonna think of that? He's a pretty clever fellow."
"Perhaps too clever for his own survival. The real question is what are their 
chances of success?
The man sighed and took another sip of his drink. "This stuff's good. Like the 
old country. Not like that synthetic crap we've endured all these years. Anyway, 
what can I say? We front-loaded Janipur as much as we could, even lucked out in 
spotting the Indrus just ahead of the troopers and sending it a divert message 
to the rest of that refugee fleet. Stroke of luck. Makes me think even God is on 
our side, if I only could figure out who God was and what He, She, or It 
wanted."
"Then you rate their success as probable?"
The man shrugged. "Hey! We did all we could, but short of going in and getting 
it ourselves and handing it to them on a silver platter, there is no way in hell 
we can do more now. For the first time, and not the last, they are now truly on 
their own. We couldn't interfere if we wanted to. You know the rules that bind 
us. Even with everything, this one's not gonna be any snap, although I think 
they came up with some real original touches in their planning. Now they got two 
ignorant girls soon to be in very strange clothing whose only gift to the 
universe is that they can pick any lock ever imagined by machine and man, one 
girl who knows the route but is gonna still hav'ta learn to be a hoofer, and one 
creature-whatever the hell that thing is-against maybe sixty troops, the entire 
Center security system and its personnel and computers, and a shipload more 
troops lurking around under the command of a Val. How can they lose?
"You are not amusing."
"I do not intend to be. And if they somehow manage to pull this one off, the 
next one has its own real problems, and the third's a dilly and a half. And we 
won't mention number four, considering even we aren't real sure where it is, but 
they got some clues and bright ideas. Did your people bring in this Ikira girl? 
She's a real asset."
"We had no knowledge of her or her ship being involved in this. I am pleased to 
hear it, though. The more they depend upon themselves and the less they need us, 
the more-comfortable-I am. This is no easy thing for any of us, as you should 
know."
"You really don't believe they're gonna do it, do you?"
The creature paused a moment. "No. I cannot see how they can, with or without 
our help. Each victory will make defeat more certain down the road as Master 
System redoubles its efforts." ,
"Yeah, well, we know well how infallible Master Systems is. Scratch one Val, 
build a pirate fleet, and maybe snatch one big fat ring to stick in Master 
System's guts."
"Perhaps. I do not like to hear you say that. I find this whole thing most 
distasteful, as you know. It is a logic loop of gigantic proportions. If it is 
mad, then am I not also mad by definition? And if I am mad, then am I abetting a 
mad thing by aiding this attempt at Master System's destruction?"
"Beats the hell out of me, pal," Arnold Nagy said, lighting a cigarette.
"You are no help at all, Nagy," the Val responded.
 
The Rings of the Master
continues with Warriors of the Storm

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack L. Chalker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 17, 1944, but was 
raised and has spent most of his life in Baltimore, Maryland. He learned to read 
almost from the moment of entering school, and by working odd jobs amassed a 
large book collection by the time he was in junior high school, a collection now 
too large for containment in his quarters. Science fiction, history, and 
geography all fascinated him early on, interests that continue.
Chalker joined the Washington Science Fiction Association in 1958 and began 
publishing an amateur SF journal. Mirage, in 1960. After high school he decided 
to be a trial lawyer, but money problems and the lack of a firm caused him to 
switch to teaching. He holds bachelor degrees in history and English, and an 
M.L.A. from Johns Hopkins University. He taught history and geography in the 
Baltimore public schools between 1966 and 1978 and now makes his living as a 
freelance writer. Additionally, out of the amateur journals he founded a 
publishing house, The Mirage Press, Ltd., devoted to nonfiction and 
bibliographic works on science fiction and fantasy. This company has produced 
more than twenty books in the last nine years. His hobbies include esoteric 
audio, travel, working science-fiction convention committees, and guest 
lecturing on SF to institutions such as the Smithsonian. He is an active 
conservationist and National Parks supporter, and he has an intense love of 
ferryboats, with the avowed goal of riding every ferry in the world. In 1978 he 
was married to Eva Whitley on an ancient ferryboat in midriver. They live in the 
Catoctin Mountain region of western Maryland with their son, David.