The Gripping Hand

The screen showed the Honorable Frederick Townsend. "Hecate requesting permission to come alongside for fueling," he said formally.

Balasingham heard Rudakov chuckling. No sympathy there! He turned back to the screen. "Permission granted. You can turn your excess baggage over to Chief Halperin."

"Very good. Also, if you have chocolate or oranges aboard Agcimemnoii, we'll need it all."

Balasingham was beyond surprise. "I'll find out. Godspeed, Hecate."

"Thank you."

I-point dead ahead," Freddy said. "Jump in ten minutes. Secure for Alderson Jump. Ladies, strap in good."

Hecate was an empty shell. The main cabin area was crossed by nemourlon webbing. The elaborate shower was gone. Of the cooking gear, only a heater remained. With the walls the oversize water tank made a conspicuous bulge.

Glenda Ruth and Je

"We shouldn't find any trouble," Glenda Ruth said. "Henry Hudson said that Medina controls the space around the Jumppoint... Crazy Eddie's Sister. I have recognition signals."

"Why do I feel you lack confidence?" Je

"No messages," Glenda Ruth said. "Re

"Yep. Longboats on light cruisers have both Field and Drive."

"Fuel?" Je

"There'd be enough to pop through and squirt a message," Freddy said. "Clear enough they couldn't do that. We might guess that somebody won't let ‘em."

"Which means-we're about to Jump into what?" Je

"Not likely." Freddy turned back to his console.

"He's right," Glenda Ruth said. "Look at it. They sent the unarmed embassy fleet. What could they gain by luring ships into the Mote system and destroying them? That wouldn't make sense."

"And we know Moties always make sense," Je

"Want to go home?" Glenda Ruth asked.

"Humpf."

"Here we go," Freddy said. "We'll go through at nine kilometers a second relative to the Mote. That's close enough to orbital velocity at the other end. Should keep us from ru

"Yes." If the tiny note of uncertainty in her voice upset him, Freddy Townsend didn't show it. "Stand by, then. Here we go."

Crazy Eddie's Sister was a hundred hours and more than a hundred million kilometers behind Sinbad. Almost everyone was asleep. Buckman was on watch, and Joyce Trujillo had wakened long before she wanted to. She saw it first.

Indicators blinking in the display in front of Buckman. Faerie lights glowing in the magnified display aft, colored balloons, a flash. "Jacob? Isn't that-"

"Activity at the I-point," Buckman said. His voice was thick with fatigue. "We're getting a relay. It's six light-minutes to the I-point, don't know how far the relay ship is from it. Kevin! Captain!"

Everyone crowded into the lounge. Kevin Re

"See if you can get me Eudoxus," Re

"There's a ship!" Joyce said.

"No Field. Not a Navy ship," Blaine said.

The ship's entry triggered events in ever-widening circles. Motie ships changed course. Some fired on others. Those near the intruder- "Bombs," Buckman said. The newcomer rotated, tumbled, rotated- "That's Hecate," Blaine said.

"How do you know?" Joyce demanded.

"Well, it's an Empire-style racing yacht, Joyce."

Joyce was silent. Re

Blaine thought about it. His lips moved rapidly, talking silently to himself; then he said, "No sir. Let me talk to Eudoxus; you're asleep. But we're in a better bargaining position if they don't know about the Worm. We'll let Glenda Ruth work her end."

"If she lives."

The Master of Base Six, Mustapha Pasha as he would be called when the humans arrived, was lactating. With a babe cradled in his right arms and the urge to mate rising in him, he was not in a proper mood for crisis. Emergencies never happen at a convenient time.

He'd been given this much luck: East India Trading's Masters had no wish to be in Mustapha's company at such a time. Most of them were keeping to their own dome and domains when East India's signal arrived. They must have heard in the same instant that Mustapha did: the Crazy Eddie point had moved.

If it was a false alarm, Medina Trading would lose much bargaining power. Mustapha Pasha would likely die, executed for murder.

Such was luck and such was life. Mustapha began issuing orders. Only details were needed; these plans were years and decades old.

First: bumblebee-sized missiles sprayed the East India dome. Four got through. Most of East India's Masters had been in the ruptured dome, and a third of their Warriors, too, kept as a guard.

East India's remaining Warriors reacted at once; but Mustopha's Warriors were already attacking. Bombs and energy beams tore the Base Six iceball and its fragile housing. Clouds of ice crystals exploded from the surface; colored flashes lit them from within. A kamikaze attack destroyed one of the farming domes. Without orders to guide them, East India's Warriors were going berserk. It didn't matter. They would have had to die, each and all of them, regardless

Of other Classes, many died, too. Mustapha Pasha had enough of Engineers and Doctors and the space-specialized Farmers, who tended the agricultural domes. The remaining Masters of East India Company were held safe, and enough others to give them an entourage. They would serve as hostages until new terms could be made.

After all, East India and Medina were not in fundamental disagreement. They must re-divide certain resources and assign access to the powerful aliens on the far side of the Sister; but this was best thought of as a gambling game waged with lasers and gamma beams and projectiles, technology and false maps and treachery.

7 Labyrinth of Lies

As for those with whom you have made a treaty and who abrogate it every time, and do not fear God, If you meet them in battle, inflict on them such a defeat as would be a lesson for those who come after them, and that they may be warned. For God does not like those who are treacherous.

al-Qur'an

Freddy always recovered first.

And Freddy was swearing in a lurid mumble as his fingers wobbled over the controls. Hecate's oversize attitude jets kicked the racing yacht about like a windball. Glenda Ruth surged in the elastic web, her vision wobbling about the cabin, uncontrolled. Je

"Feddy lub," Glenda Ruth said, her tongue like a foreign invader in her mouth, "Freddy! Calm down and talk to me about it!"

"Talk." Another surge, milder this time. "We're surrounded. Embedded in an armada of teeny warships fighting another armada of teeny warships, Coal Sack direction. Nukes going flash. Radiation count is scary. I'm trying to get the water tank between us and that, if I can stop the lizard-raping rotation!" He was wailing like a child.