Tripoint

Most did. Some laughed, as if it was fu

Tom stared. He would have stared on dockside. He'd not seenthat many tattoos. "You want a chocolate?" the tattooed man said. He was drunk. Extremely. Others grabbed him away.

He didn't know what to think. He got to his feet and went to the bars to look after the group and see what was going on in the corridor, wondering whether that was an authorized entry or were dock-crawlers taking a drunken tour of the ship while the cargo ports were open. He heard shouts in the corridors, the usual noises of meetings and comparisons of stories, after a liberty.

Crew, he decided.

Suddenly the noises weren't friendly. He heard angry shouts, guessed from chance words he could pick up that two of the crew had had a prior set-to on dockside, and heard other voices trying to break it up, some woman yelling there were going to be officers.

"He's got a knife!" somebody yelled. Somebody hit the paneled walls, he heard the thump. And someone yelled, "Get him, get him, get him!"

Another thump, a lot of shouting. He couldn't see anything. Then:

"Damn, it's Michaels," he heard, and by everything he heard, some officer had come in on it, was asking questions, who'd started it, who'd flashed a weapon. A man got hauled off to infirmary on this Michaels' orders, and then…

Then a deal of cursing, a thump again against the paneling, and a measured, meaty thud, of something meeting flesh, not just the once or twice he thought might be justified, but it went on, and on, and on, until the screaming stopped, and something heavy hit the deck.

"Get him out of here," somebody said. The voices after that were all quiet.

He found himself with a death-grip on the bars, shivering in a cold more inside than out, and more than ever wanting out of this cell.

Not a Family ship. He'd just had a demonstration what the penalties were, and how they were dealt out. No word with the captain, nothing of the sort.

He'd thought he'd had a hard life. Now Spriteseemed a sheltered, protected existence, where Mischa's frown was a reprimand, where crew didn't carry knives against their shipmates. He'd never heard the sounds he'd just heard, out of any human being, sounds that had gone straight to his nerves, and brought a quiet over the whole ship.

He heard other traffic in the corridor and retreated from the gridwork, went back to his bunk and sat down with his back to the face of the cell, so he wouldn't have to deal with anybody. Wherever he went the cable trailed, and reminded him that even if the door opened he hadn't a chance at escaping… or putting up damn much of a fight against anybody with a key and access to the cable switch.

Ransom wouldn't work. He'd been in a place he shouldn't have been and they knew he knew, and if the station cops came asking, he didn't know what Corinthianmight do, but he didn't think they were going to turn him loose to tell the police or the merchant trade at large what he'd been doing or what he'd seen and not seen.

Not if gossip was right about Corinthian'sbusiness.

Traffic came and went outside.

And it had to be board-call, Corinthiancalling in its crew, even while the loading was still going on. You didn't ordinarily crowd up the ship with crew underfoot until they had something to do—unless they'd for some reason had to get off the docks.

Unless they were shortening their dock time and pla

In which case he didn't see a thing Mischa or Marie could do about it. Station police could say Stop, and demand to search the ship, but only if they could come up with plausible evidence: a merchanter deck was the same as foreign territory, merchanters didn't allow boarders as a matter of principle, while stations depended so much on ship traffic they just wouldn't push that point unless they had very clear evidence of a customs crime.

That left him nothing to do but sit and worry at the lock. He searched the bath for anything he could use for a pick, but he couldn't find anything—there weren't any drawers, and he tried bashing it with the butt of the wall-mounted razor.

But it didn't do any good.

Just after that spate of noise-making, the loading stopped.

The whole ship sat in silence, except the rush of air in the vents.

He went to the bars again, trying to see something, anything to tell him what was going on.

Then came the unmistakable thump as the hatch sealed. A moment later the louder thump as the lines closed down and detached, and a siren sounded throughout the ship, no word from the captain, just that lonely, warning sound that said hazard, hazard, take stations, the ship is moving.

It was a nightmare. The misjudgment. The mistakes he'd made, that led this direction, step by step. Thinking that he'd win Marie's… acceptance, if no more than that. He'd gambled his safety. Thought he might win Marie's acceptance—and her sanity. And he'd lost.

He hoped Marie was free, and safe. He hoped nobody had gotten hurt on his account.

But it was decidedly time to sit down and take hold. Which he did, with a lump gathering in his throat. He located the safety restraints on the bunk and sat down, cross-legged, not expecting but a short zero g, and a gentle shove, not worth belting in for.

It was far more than a gentle shove. He grabbed the frame of the bunk and the safety hold on the wall, and braced his feet, one on the deck and one on the mattress—thinking he'd just made a serious mistake.

He didn't know how long the acceleration was going to last. He dared not let go the handholds he had to get the safety restraints fastened. His heart was going doubletime.

He didn't likethe ship putting out like that. He didn't likea pilot who skirted the regs and a bridge that didn't warn people when they were moving.

It struck him then that there couldn't be kids or seniors aboard. It just wasn't, wasn't, wasn't a Family ship, never mistake it again, and if he didn't lose his grip and break his neck during launch, he'd be luckier than he deserved for trusting anything about it.

They went inertial then, a moment of float, and he snatched the restraints across and jammed the first and the second clip shut with shaking hands.

After that he lay flat on his back and felt the stomach-jolting g-shifts of maneuver of a ship that didn't care about crew comfort, and didn't engage the ring for crew safety, or warn anyone beyond sounding the siren.

In a hurry to leave and doing a show-off bit of maneuvering, he could read it—screw you all, the pilot was saying to Sprite, and to Viking, and maybe to all civilized places, maybe just because Austin Bowe was pissed, who knew?

Chapter Four

—i—

"MARIE."

Depend on it. Saja found her. Turned up at her elbow in the Trade Bureau offices, all concern, all indignation.

Marie keyed up another file in the Financial Access section, downloaded it… they said a ship at Viking Free Port had open access to the trade records. Translation: they let you look. If you understood the software and knew what files might be significant, good luck, you had a chance, but the too-damned-helpful system wanted to pre-digest the reports for you if you got into the market area, not give you access to the raw data, and thatwas a piece of computer cheek.

So Corinthianhad pulled out. Spooked out, left, maybe to change its whole pattern, her worst fear, and she was not in a mood to be lectured to by Family.