The Ophiuchi Hotline

"This place is crazy," Cathay said. "Absolutely crazy."

Lilo agreed with him. She had been in all types of ships, and had seen nothing like the Cavorite.

"What do you call this?" she asked. "Early Victorian? Late Captain Nemo?" But Cathay had no answer, and Javelin was gone.

The solarium was about ten meters in length, and four meters across. Unlike the rest of the ship, it had a definite floor, which made no sense at all to Lilo. Things can be done so much more economically in free-fall. Not only that, but the floor was parallel to the axis of thrust. Under boost, the room would stand on end. At no time would down be in the direction of the floor. Vaffa pointed this out.

"Well, when you think of it, she spends such a tiny part of her trip boosting..." But it still didn't make sense.

The ceiling was curved, following the cylindrical shape of the outer hull. Twelve great panes of glass, six on each side of the room, curved overhead to meet at an ornate wooden beam that ran the length of the room. It was obvious why she called it the solarium.

The room was festooned with plants, vines, and flowers. It featured a two-keyboard pipe organ at one end, and a slowly spi

Lilo stuck her head through the hole where Javelin had gone, and she got a surprise. As she had suspected, the room beyond was the control center for the ship—though again, it was very different, with its brass-ringed instruments, its lack of digital readouts, and several things that looked like manual controls. Beside the narrow pilot's chair there was one long lever, capped with a crystal knob, that was plainly marked STOP and GO. But the real surprise was that the room was empty. Since it was at the nose of the ship with nothing beyond it but space, Lilo thought it odd.

She backed out in time to see Javelin enter the solarium from the aft corridor. So she had her own ways of getting around.

"This is an astounding ship," Cathay said to her.

"Do you think so? Thank you. I like it. I should—it's been home for nearly three hundred years. I lifted the basic design—the outside, that is—from an old magazine cover. Pre-Invasion. Pre-space, for that matter."

"That's crazy," Vaffa said, flatly.

"Do you think so? I don't. Obviously the artist who thought up the design knew nothing about spaceships. He was trying to sell magazines, so he made it sexy instead of logical. I liked that."

"But the weight penalties," Lilo said, feeling baffled. "If form doesn't follow function, don't you lose efficiency?"

"It's fu

"Pardon me?"

"Copping. Sorry, it was an archaic word. Come to think of it, all the concepts in that metaphor were archaic. But Cavorite is less inefficient than you'd think. Once I'd made the one extravagant decision—to go out alone in a ship five times bigger than what I need for the bare necessities—the rest of it was virtually free. A little thin metal for the false shell outside. Some furniture that looks massive but really isn't; the wood is a thin veneer over standard structural foam. The organ doubles as input to the ship's computer and library, which is out of sight. The aquarium is part of the recycling system, and if the fish are okay, so am I. You'll see. It works."

Lilo still had her doubts. But Quince had spoken of her with awe. She was said to be the most successful hunter of all time.

"If you're about ready to go, I should start on the final countdown. Still some things to do. I searched your luggage, and studied the X rays I took of you as—"

"You what?" It was Vaffa. Her face was quickly turning red.

Javelin looked her up and down. "Yes, I'm not surprised at your reaction," she said, dryly. "You had several crystals and several other components in your things. With a little spit and bubble gum, you might have turned them into a pair of hand lasers. I ditched them, in the interest of a safe, calm voyage."

Vaffa had planted her feet against the aft bulkhead. She launched herself across the room, toward Javelin. Her arms were extended, her mouth open in a snarl. Lilo didn't want to watch. Javelin was so tiny, so fragile-looking. Vaffa started to twist in the air, coming around for a blow at Javelin's midsection.

It was over almost before it began. Javelin twisted, bent at impossible places, planted one hand against the floor. She shoved, turned as Vaffa sailed past her, and chopped across the larger woman's neck. Vaffa hit the pipes above the organ, loosely, and floated.

Javelin glanced at her once, then turned her attention to Lilo.

"I have to know the nature of the device implanted in your abdomen," she said. "Also the thing attached to the left side of your pelvic bone."

"I don't know what they are," Lilo said. "I've suspected there might be something in me, though."

Javelin nodded. "Like that, huh? All right. One of them looks like a simple homing device. I thought the other was a bomb, but decided it wasn't. More likely it's a narcotic drug ampule. That would go along with the homer, wouldn't it?"

"I guess so." Lilo's cheeks were burning.

"Fine." Javelin seemed to want to get off the subject, too. "You'll want to remove them. Feel free to use the surgery. I can put them overboard, or you might think of something else to do with them." She let her eyes move slowly to Vaffa, still dangling loosely in midair, then smiled at Lilo.

"Boost in six hundred seconds. You'd better get to your cabins."

18

Cathay and I moved Vaffa to one of the cabins, and we decided to share the other. As we belted her into her bunk, the ship was undergoing changes. Vaffa's bunk moved from the floor and positioned itself against the aft bulkhead. In the solarium, the fish tank was draining.

Boost was one gee, about what I'd got used to on Pluto. Now we were living on the wall. But the washbasin and refresher facilities had done a flip-flop, and the lighting shifted as we moved so it was never in our eyes.

Outside, the corridor was now a vertical shaft. I could live with it for the twenty-four hours we'd be boosting.

They spent most of their time in their cabins, and they didn't see Javelin. Lilo went to the solarium once, but to do it she had to climb eight meters on a ladder which had extruded itself from the corridor wall. And now the solarium was not a pleasant place to be. The organ was now on the ceiling, hanging ten meters over her head. There was another ladder, and she climbed it to poke her head into the control room, but Javelin wasn't there. She realized that they were not likely to see her until the ship stopped boosting. Javelin would get around by means of her system of narrow pipes, where the rest of them could not follow.

Cathay and Lilo could see Vaffa across the hall. She made no move to visit them, spending her time pacing. Lilo was nervous about it, wondering how much of the blame for the situation she was going to have to take. Vaffa was going to suspect a deal between Lilo and Javelin, and would be hard to live with.