Exultant

She spoke well, Pirius thought with a mixture of envy and nostalgia. She had grown so much. The mixed-up cadet who had been press-ganged into flying with him to Earth just a few months ago could never have made such a presentation.

Eliun spoke for the first time. “Show me the point of failure.” His voice was like the man, oily, unperturbed.

Torec ran through a series of stop-motion images of the greenship at the moment of its terminal catastrophe, magnified so heavily they broke up into crowding cubical pixels. She showed the first instants of failure, using two bright red laser-pointer beams which intersected on the ship’s Virtual image. The point they picked out was just a flare of light, right at the junction of the ca

Pirius knew that all this was irrelevant, to some extent. For him, the greatest failures of the test flight had been navigation and accuracy. Even if they could overcome the problem of the damn ship blowing itself up in the moment of firing, to get the one-hundredth-of-one-percent accuracy of positioning Nilis was demanding, the navigational control of the ships was going to have to be improved by an order of magnitude.

Idly Pirius glanced over his shoulder at the source of the laser pointers. They came from light globes that drifted at the back of the room. The beams’ location of the failure point on the Virtual had been precise to well within the size of a pixel on that much-magnified image. An idea hovered at the back of his mind, elusive. He tried to relax his thinking -

“…Pirius.”

Nilis was calling his name. Commander Darc was glaring at him.

“Sir, I’m sorry. I was just thinking that—”

“Yes, yes,” said Nilis impatiently. “I asked if you as pilot had anything to add to Torec’s expert presentation.”

“No. I’m sorry,” Pirius said.

Nilis harrumphed. Now he turned to Commander Darc, as the Earthworm’s navigator.

Darc had clearly been waiting for this moment. His strong face blank and threatening, he turned on Eliun, who had been looking faintly bored. “I have no report, Guild-master. Only a question.”

“Go ahead, Commander.”

“You’ve seen the report. You saw the summary before you walked into the room. How will you help us resolve this issue of structural integrity?”

Eliun spread his fingers on the table. “I’m sure your analysis, if sufficiently deep, will—”

“Our analysis,” Darc cut in. “Ours. But the Commissary’s Project is a scratch operation that has been ru

That unexpected shot got through Eliun’s defenses; for an instant, shock creased his face. But he said with quiet control. “Commander, I’ll enjoy speaking to your seniors about your future career path.”

Nilis bustled forward, his own agitation obvious, a vein showing in his forehead. This was the crux of the meeting, Pirius saw. Nilis said, “Well, that’s your privilege, Guild-master. But before we descend into personal attacks, shall we examine the issue? You see, faced with our cruel timescale, we’ve been struggling, not only against a shortage of resources and antiquated test craft, but against — how shall I put it? — secrecy.

“After the prototype work in Sol system, we’re now trying to integrate our new systems into a greenship’s design. But as the Commander implies, we’ve been given nothing by your people on the craft’s technical aspects. Surely you have blueprints, records, practical experience you could offer us? And then there is the GUT engine itself. Again we’ve been given no documentation. Remember, we’re trying to use it to run black-hole ca

“A little longer,” Eliun said smoothly. “And not of ’more or less’ this design, Commissary — exactly this design.”

Darc eyed him. “Three thousand years of stasis. And you’re proud of that, are you?”

“It’s clear that you misunderstand our objectives. Our mission is not i

The Guild of Engineers was an ancient agency. It had grown out of a loose band of refugees from the Qax Occupation, who had spent centuries stranded in space. When the Qax were thrown out they had come home, their antique technology carefully preserved. In the internecine struggles that had developed during the establishment of the Interim Coalition, mankind’s first post-Occupation government, the Engineers, with their ancient bits of technological sorcery and their proud record of resistance to the Qax, had been well-placed to grab some power for themselves. And they had kept their place at the highest levels of the Coalition ever since.

“But you’re not engineers,” Darc said contemptuously. “Not if you resist i

Eliun said, “Commander, our technologies reached their plateau of perfection mille

“You pore over your ancient, unchanging designs, polished with use—”

“ — and we standardize. Have you thought about that? Commander, your pilots fly greenships of identical design from one end of this Galaxy to the other. Think of the cost savings, the economies of scale!”

Nilis was as angry as Pirius had ever seen him. “But your perfect designs and your standardized parts lists are not wi

Pirius laid a hand on Nilis’s threadbare sleeve. “Commissary, take it easy.”

Nilis shook him off. “If there’s one thing I can’t bear, Pirius, it is the hoarding of knowledge as power. There’s too much of that on Earth — too much! And I won’t have it here.”

Eliun said coldly, “And I won’t take lectures in duty from rogue Commissaries and junior Naval officers.”

“Then we are at an impasse. I suggest we adjourn this meeting until I’ve heard from Earth.” Nilis turned to Pila. “Adjutant, would you please open a cha

Eliun laughed in his face. “Commissary, don’t you understand? The Engineers have seats on the Conclave, too.”

“We will see,” said Nilis darkly, and he stalked from the room.

Pirius felt oddly calm. He had sat through too many meetings like this. And he had been distracted from these fireworks by his vague thoughts about intersecting laser light. As the meeting broke up, he tapped Darc and Torec on the shoulders. “Listen. I have an idea…”

As they left the room they passed the Silver Ghost, which hadn’t moved or said a word during the interrupted meeting. Pirius wondered what emotions swirled beneath that glistening, featureless hide.

On the way, Pirius called ahead for a sim room to be set up.

Only a few minutes after ducking out of Nilis’s adjourned meeting, the three of them were once more sitting in their crew blisters, at the end of the outstretched limbs of the Earthworm. The Virtual simulation around them was faultless, although the target Rock looked a little too shiny to be true.