Chapter 6 — PUGIL

There are set routines for promotion and assumption of commands, but Lieutenant Commander Mondy knew how to circumvent them. Our next step was perhaps unique for the time: my company expanded into a battalion; my three platoons became companies; and my squads grew into platoons. New personnel came into this framework mostly from below. We simply fissioned away from our former battalion and became our own.

Now my battalion staff became official. Lieutenant Commander Phist transferred in to be my S-4 Logistics officer; he had not been part of our unit before, so had not shared in the blanket promotion. I now ranked him and could include him in my command.

Now our training commenced in earnest. Some of it made little sense to the troops, but they worked at it, anyway, because the penalty for unsupport was to be transferred out again. You see, it wasn't just physical training, it was social.

I required each man to learn a song, and that he always be ready to sing it in public. I had been reminded of the power of song by my experience with the migrants. The migrant laborers had a special kind of camaraderie, and I wanted it for my battalion. This was my first major step. The men grumbled, but they picked out their songs in the migrant manner and rehearsed them. We had regular singing sessions where enthusiasm counted more than skill. There were a good many duplications of songs, and those who shared songs were supposed to look out for each other's interests, even if they had no other bond.

I had Sergeant Smith, now E7, instruct a program of special training in judo, fencing, and pugil sticks. Why? Because I wanted my men to be expert in hull-fighting. You see, there are several ways to take out an enemy ship in space. You can blast it to pieces, which I deem to be wasteful; or you can disable it and force surrender, which is risky when dealing with dishonorable folk such as pirates; or you can board it and take it over from inside by using a pacifier or gas grenade. To board it you have to land suited men on the hull, who then operate the airlocks and get inside to do their work. A stun-bomb flung through as the inner lock opens is very effective. But a smart ship's captain will post guards on his hull to prevent exactly such intrusion, and those guards have to be dealt with quickly and silently.

Picture the problem: There you are, just arrived on the hull, your magnetic boots clinging to the metal surface, the centrifugal force of the ship's rotation pulling you outward. (Technically, there is no such force, but it is more convenient to deal with that imagined force than with the more complex input of the vectors of deviation from rest.) You are, in essence, hanging upside down, with little leeway for error; the moment your feet lose contact with the hull, you fall out into space. The boot magnetism is not great, because you need to be able to move individual feet readily; falling is all too easy. And here is this enemy soldier coming at you—

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is to describe an episode of the training in which I was personally involved. We did not have many discipline problems, because of the spirit of unity we cultivated, but any organization has some. This one involved Corporal Heller, a huge, tough, canny brute of a Saxon who went in for all the violent activities. He wasn't popular, because he had a sarcastic mouth and was apt to hurt people by too-vigorous physical competition, and he had a bad attitude. But he insisted on remaining in our unit, and he was competent and worked hard, so we tolerated him.

When an opening came for a squad leader, there were two prime candidates: Corporal Heller and Corporal Valencia, a qualified Hispanic. I interviewed both men, for even small decisions of personnel were important to me and the lower officers had not wanted to touch this particular case. I made my decision in favor of Valencia. He was designated squad leader and was promoted to sergeant.

Heller was furious. He claimed I had discriminated against him as a Saxon. Actually, I had seen that however well qualified Heller was otherwise, he was unsuitable as a leader of men, because he had little sensitivity to the needs of others. This was a largely Hispanic squad that would be more responsive to one of its own, and Valencia spoke Spanish. He could not compete with Heller physically, but leadership is more than physical. He would do a better job, and his squad would have higher morale and fewer gripes and superior performance.

However, a sizable segment of my unit did not see it that way, including many Hispanics. Sergeant Smith explained it to me succinctly: "We're training to go out and fight pirates, right, sir? Pirates are tough, so we need tough leaders to match them, not just good organizers or nice guys. Heller is tough."

"Would you have given him the job?"

Smith laughed. "No way, sir! You can't train men by breaking heads! But that's the way some of the men see it. There'll be discord, sir."

I called in Lieutenant Commander Repro. He had a spaced-out attitude, but he was functional. That addiction bothered me increasingly, and I knew I could not forever postpone taking action. "Are you familiar with the Heller/Valencia case?"

"Certainly, sir." Personalities were in his bailiwick.

"What's your advice?"

"You'll never satisfy Heller without giving him promotion and responsibility, and he's not fit for it. You need to find a slot for him that has rank and responsibility without direct command of men. Is there such a spot?"

I looked at Sergeant Smith. "Is there?"

"Yes, sir."

"But you must also satisfy his pride," Repro continued. "He's so angry, and so are a number of others in the unit. They think you have been unfair, and they're taking flak from their peers in other units about reverse discrimination. You've got to give them some satisfaction."

Leadership has its limitations. "How?"

"A challenge match, sir." Repro's brow furrowed. "Odd, though, that Heller even made an issue, when he could simply have transferred out. Something's not rebounding."

A steel ball not favoring the pattern; I knew what he meant. But his advice seemed good. That was why I arranged a challenge match with Corporal Heller.

We took off our marks of rank and set it up as a public training exercise, with the rest of the unit watching. We started at the center of the ship, back to back in the fashion of a duel. We each carried a foil, a pugil stick, and a bomb in addition to our standard gear, attached by snap-free fasteners. They looked clumsy but added only about fifteen pounds to the thirty-five-pound suit assemblies. We could handle the weight, especially in free-fall and with suit-jets to propel us.

This match was well refereed; just about every enlisted man wanted to see the old man defend his turf, so to speak. (Age has nothing to do with the designation; it is the slang for any unit commander.) It was not necessary for me to win to retain their respect; it was necessary for me to show the same qualities I required of them: skill, courage, stamina, and fighting spirit. But if I lost, I would have to appoint Heller squad leader, and that would be a minor disaster. There was also the matter of pride.

Sergeant Smith gave the command: "Move out!"

We bounced away from each other and floated toward opposite airlocks. I was the Raider, and Heller was the Defender; these roles had been chosen by lot. It was my job to disable the enemy ship, and his to protect it.

I spun the wheels and worked the handles of the inner panel of the lock. Everything was manual, of course; airlocks are too important to trust to powered machines. There was an art to navigating an airlock swiftly, and it was important now; the first man out had a definite advantage.

The portal opened; I jumped down in, for there was gee here at the rim of the ship. Gee, of course, is more than an abbreviation for gravity; it means weight in space, in whatever manner it occurs. I closed and secured the inner panel, then struck the pressure-release valve. The air of the lock bled out rapidly into space. This might be considered wasteful, but it was fast, and a powered air pump would be suspect during battle conditions, as well as slower. What use to save a little air and lose a ship? Simplicity and speed were of the essence.

My suit became rigid as the pressure dropped, but the hinges in the limbs kept it flexible where it needed to be. Civilian suits are flexible all over, and the really good ones fit like a second skin; in fact, a healthy young woman can be spectacular in space, the more so because she's untouchable. But the military suits were old-fashioned, bulbous-limbed, and heavy and rigid between the hinges. But they were cheap and reliable, and they provided a convenient cushion of air around the body that enabled a person to remain in space as long as his oxygen held out, and sometimes that was critically important.

I dropped out as the outer panel opened, caught one of the external handholds, and flipped over to plant my magnetic boots against the hull. These boots certainly would have been useful when I was working on the hull of the refugee bubble, so long ago! Then I had had to depend on a tether to keep me from drifting free in space, and it had been nervous business.

The panel slid back into place automatically, spring-loaded. I stepped on the fiber panel, where the force of magnetism was muted, and squatted. I waited for the buoy to come into sight; the spin of the ship brought me around to it in a few seconds. Then I leaped as hard as I could toward that buoy. I seemed to depart the ship at an angle, but this was mostly illusion, because the ship was spinning under me. Over me; I was falling away from it. I had compensated for the tangent of my centrifugal departure when I jumped; I was right on course for the buoy, which was two miles away. I was traveling at close to forty miles an hour, so would reach it in about three minutes. The buoy represented the halfway point in the course; in an actual mission I would make a jump correction here and home in on the enemy ship. This time it was trickier; I had to loop around the buoy and return to the Copperhead, now redesignated as the Enemy Craft. That meant using my suit-jets to kill my inertia and get me moving back. That could be awkward, but my officer training had prepared me well for this. I could make the loop with fuel to spare.

Now I spotted Heller. He was way behind me and proceeding slowly, no more than twenty-five miles per hour. Good enough.

I approached the buoy, oriented, and used my jet to decelerate. I may have mentioned that technically there is no such thing as deceleration, only acceleration, but the old concepts remain useful even when erroneous. Why say negative acceleration when deceleration makes it so much clearer? At any rate, I was braking, reducing my velocity relative to the buoy.

I came to a "halt" in space just beyond the buoy where three enlisted men, referees, perched in their suits. They saluted cheerfully, and I returned it, though no salutes were required in this circumstance. I nudged to the side, then accelerated again, having looped it. The enlistees waved. Heller was only now coming close.

Then I remembered: He was the Defender. He didn't have to loop the buoy; he just had to defend the ship he started from. He had come out slowly not to race me but to stop me, and he had saved all his fuel. Now he was meeting me, and my challenge had just begun. All he had to do was grab me and haul me out to space; if I used my jet to oppose his, my fuel would run out before his, and I would not be able to reach the target craft.

My best bet was to outmaneuver him: to get past and accelerate so that he could not catch up. But now he used his jet, angling to intercept me. I could not stay on a straight-line course.

I tilted my body and jetted to the side. Heller tilted and jetted, again on an interception course. Maneuvering in space in a suit takes skill; I had it, but so did he. In fact, he was better at it than most enlisted men were; he must have had more aptitude for this than our supervisory personnel had judged. Why hadn't he transferred to a unit specializing in this sort of thing? Inexorably he closed on me.

He had equivalent skill and more fuel remaining than I did; I could not avoid him. I would have to fight.

I reached over my shoulder and drew my foil. This was a long, thin, round-bladed sword with a button on the end. On a real mission a rapier would be used, the sharp point being used to puncture the enemy's suit. This was the manner that swords came to space, anachronistic as it might seem: There was hardly a more efficient method to dispatch a person in space than simply poking a hole in his suit. Small hand-lasers could be devastating on bare flesh, but the material of military space suits resisted this, spreading the heat rapidly and dissipating it harmlessly. A ship-mounted laser could readily take out a suited man, of course, but a hand-laser was a mere toy in comparison. It was not true that a mirrored surface could stop a laser, as many folk believed; the ray ignored the polish and melted the backing, as it was not strictly a visual phenomenon. A mirror might help deflect a glancing shot, and some suits were polished with this in mind. But only hand-lasers made glancing shots; a ship-laser could send a beam several feet in diameter, bathing the whole suit, and there was no defense. The heat had nowhere to dissipate to. Of course, it was uneconomic to take out a single man with a ship-laser; such power is by no means cheap. So the net effect was to eliminate lasers from this action. Small projectile weapons were notoriously unreliable in a vacuum, even those supposedly designed for it. They tended to misfire or explode in the hand, and the recoil could set a man spinning wildly. Thrown knives or bombs depended on the accuracy of the throwers and could be dodged if any distance was involved. So it came down to the recoverable sword point, which had no permanent recoil and could be used as often as needed. Not the slashing type of sword; that was too easy to parry or blunt, and was too unbalancing to swing unless the user had good anchorage. But the direct thrust of a rapier was difficult to avoid or counter.

So we did indeed have old-fashioned swordplay in modern space, and swordsmanship was a viable Navy skill.

The foil, of course, had a blunted point. The button of the tip would, when depressed with sufficient force, complete an electrical circuit that registered as a score. A score anywhere on a space suit suggested a puncture, and that, in a real combat situation with sharp points, would be lethal. It did not have to be a vital area of the body, and no blood had to flow; a sleeve puncture was just about as fatal as a heart puncture. A pinhole leak could be patched before significant deflation occurred, but a sword puncture would blow out the suit too rapidly for remedy, and if it didn't, surely the victim would be too busy trying to stop the leak to continue the fight and would be easy prey for the next strike.

But this discussion becomes tedious. Heller had his sword out. He wasted no time; he jetted right at me, the sword point leading. I reacted automatically, countering his thrust and using the contact as leverage to move myself out of the way. I could have struck forward at his torso, but that would only have resulted in mutual scoring. Who won if both died? The suicide ploy was only for those who were dying, anyway. He shot past me harmlessly.

Harmlessly? I realized that I had seen something alarming. Probably a misperception, but I wanted to be sure.

He spun in space, using the catlike gyration needed to reorient when there was nothing to push against. It is an acquired skill, but military men are so often exposed to free-fall that most pick it up readily. The body had to be oriented so that the fixed suit-jet would aim in the desired direction; orientation plus thrust equaled motion.

This time I jetted toward him, my point extended. The niceties of fencing don't work well in free-fall, because the body is not braced. Heller did not seek to parry me; he extended his own weapon. We were ready to suffer mutual "death."

This time I saw the point, uncapped. He had a rapier, not a foil!

This man was out to kill me, literally.

Abruptly I parried, shoving him out of the way. I spun in place and jetted at him again immediately. The ship was now directly behind me, and my fuel was low; this was the last such maneuver I could make. I would lose this aspect of the match if I got stranded in space, but that was not my present concern. I had my life to protect!

Heller spun to meet me, his sword coming at me. I parried it again—and grabbed it with my other hand. I let go my own weapon, putting both hands on his rapier, wrenching it from his grasp. He hadn't expected this! I put my two boots up against his chest and shoved him violently away from me. He spun out toward the buoy, and the recoil sent me spinning toward the ship as I had planned.

I reoriented and used the last of my fuel to accelerate toward the ship. I now had a head start, but Heller had plenty of fuel. Would he come after me without his rapier?

He did. He gained on me and would have intercepted me before I reached the ship, but now I had his rapier, and I menaced him with it, keeping him at bay. Rather than risk my thrust, he avoided me and preceded me to the ship. I could not prevent that; he would have the advantage of being set on the hull as I arrived. I had no choice except to continue my course; I was out of fuel. If I missed the ship, I would be helpless.

But I had faced death before and had seen my family and friends die. I had no liking for violent death, but this immediate threat only galvanized me to better performance.

As I moved toward the ship, I pondered. Why was Heller trying to kill me? He had a grudge, true; but he could settle that by defeating me in this match and getting his promotion. He was throwing that away, for he had to know he faced court-martial and summary execution the moment he tried seriously to kill his commander. His life was on the line now, and he hadn't had to put it there. There was a missing element.

There were more witnesses floating beside the ship. I could signal them at any time, but they did not know how this contest had changed and might only get hurt themselves, so I let them be. This was my own fight!

Someone must have put Heller up to this. His insistence on staying with my unit, and trying for a position for which he was unsuited, now fell into place as part of a more insidious plot. But who or what could have caused him to go to the extreme? Well, if there were some understanding within the Navy, so that he would face a lenient court, and if he claimed he hadn't known his weapon was pointed—an error by Supply—and I were not alive to refute him, he just might get off with a nominal punishment. A year in detention, reduction in grade, a general discharge from the service. Then he could collect his private reward: perhaps enough money to make the risk worthwhile.

Heller was surely a tool. Who was behind this? Who had sufficient money and influence to arrange this—the murder and the nominal punishment? Who had motive to eliminate me?

There was an answer: QYV.

QYV had left me alone for years, ever since Chiron. It seemed his activity had resumed. He still wanted that key and knew I would not yield it while I lived. So he was trying to kill me and somehow recover the key from my body, gambling that it was the original. It made a certain sense.

I experienced two reactions, of roughly equal and opposite nature. The first was curiosity. Who was QYV, and how did he wield so much power? What secret did the magnetic coding of the key unlock, that was at once so quiescent as to be able to wait for years for recovery, yet so important that people could be killed for it?

My other reaction was anger. Twice QYV had set traps for me, and twice I had survived them. Now he was doing it a third time. I fancy myself an intelligent rather than a vindictive man, but there are limits. It was time to deal with QYV.

These thoughts took only a moment. Now I was sailing in toward the ship, and Heller, the agent of this annoyance, was waiting for me with his pugil stick.

The pugil stick is a training device dating back six or seven centuries. Surely the name derives from the English word pugilism, itself derived from the Latin pugil, a boxer. In other words, it was a boxing stick. It was originally designed to resemble, in mass and length, the primitive projectile weapon of historical Earth called the rifle. You see, the liability of all projectile weapons is that they constantly require new projectiles, the old ones being lost by use. When the ammunition is exhausted—as might happen when a unit is surrounded or has its supplies interrupted, or when the press of battle prevents timely reloading—the empty rifles, laser pistols, blasters, or whatever become clubs or swords. A knife could be affixed to the end of the ancient rifle, so it came to resemble a crude spear, and in that condition was called a bayonet. Unfortunately bayonets were not ideal for training, being too clumsy and deadly. So the pugil stick became a mock-up of the bayonet, padded and rounded so that it was difficult to actually harm an opponent. The center was narrow, for a handy grip, while the ends were cylindrical masses; the whole vaguely resembled an ancient barbell. Protective helmets were worn for such practice, and heavy gloves, and crotch armor. Still, it was possible to inflict quite savage punishment with such a device; a blow solid enough to knock down an opponent was not lightly dismissed. On occasion, in the early days, men were beaten to death with the pugil sticks, and on occasion, such pugilism had been banned. But I had instructed Sergeant Smith to train my men with it, and the present case was an example why.

In the Jupiter Navy we used the sticks in new ways. They were, of course, useful for inculcating an aggressive attitude in trainees; it might fairly be said that there are no pacifists with pugil sticks. The man who hesitates to strike is doomed to be struck; he soon learns to fight back. The exercises are competitive with squad, platoon, and company champions. I had become a platoon champion in my day, using my talent to comprehend the nature of an opponent. All this had been standard in military training since the pugil stick was developed, but in space and/or free-fall, there is a new dimension, literally. The stick is no longer a substitute for a more effective weapon; it is a weapon itself.

I could tell by the way Heller held his stick, and by his stance on the hull, that he was expert in this form of combat. He was large and strong; there he had a natural advantage over me, for I am of average dimension. But already I was coming to grasp his nature—as I should have done before this match ever started!—and this would enable me to compensate. There is more to pugilism than mass and strength. This would be a fairer match than he supposed.

Several more referees were on the hull. They watched without interfering. As yet, none of the observers realized the actual nature of this encounter.

It was Heller's evident intent to bash me as I landed. If he could knock me loose from the hull before my magnetic boots found firm attachment, I would drift helplessly through space, my mission incomplete, and the victory in the match would be his. On the other hand, if I could land and knock him loose, I would then have the advantage. He did have fuel remaining, so he could return; but I could intercept him as he did so.

I rotated so that I came at him boots first. Then I hurled the rapier at him. He had to dodge aside lest his suit be punctured. The throw also provided me some braking action, slowing my approach. As he dodged, the weapon smashed into the hull and rebounded back into space, and I landed safely before he could attack.

Heller strode into me, thrusting at my head with one of the padded ends, but I was ready. I blocked his pugil stick and quickly countered with a butt stroke to his groin. A point is scored when a contestant lands a solid blow to a vulnerable region: the head, throat, chest, stomach, or groin. Of course, our suits protected all these regions of the body, but the referees would tally the score for any such blows made. In addition, there was the knockoff strategy: to knock the opponent loose from the hull and into space. This would be the object on an enemy hull: literally, to hurl the defenders away.

Heller readily blocked my stroke, and struck swiftly at my shoulder. I ducked and dodged aside, letting the padded end graze my shoulder while I countered to his briefly vulnerable midsection. I scored on his stomach solidly enough to rock him back, and I knew the referees were making notes.

But something was wrong, and in a moment I realized what it was. There was a scratch on my shoulder where his strike had scraped across it.

Scratch? From the soft, padded end of the pugil stick?

I fenced with him, watching his stick. The ship was spinning, so that we were in effect hanging by our shoes with light and darkness alternating frequently; as we swung back into "day," I saw the bumps in his stick. Originally the pugil sticks were wooden rods wrapped in polyfoam, enclosed by canvas bags at each end; today they were wholly synthetic but similarly padded and enclosed, and the materials were still called "foam" and "canvas" and "wood" though they were not. There should have been no bumps in the canvas. Heller's stick had to be spiked with hard or sharp objects fixed between foam and canvas. They showed only slightly, but any solid blow would bring their sharp surfaces into direct contact with the opposing surface: my suit.

I slashed viciously at his head, forcing him to counter. Thus his canvas struck mine—and mine tore. Now I had confirmation. His supposedly harmless pugil stick had been rendered into a deadly weapon, here in space. He was still out to kill me, and the referees still didn't know it.

I could retreat, grab a referee, and have Heller arrested. But wise as that course might be in the practical sense, it would not be good in the social sense. No officer should flee an enlisted man in a situation like this, or pull rank to get out of a difficult situation. I would be entirely within my rights in this instance, but I could suffer a critical loss of respect in my unit. I needed that respect, not for personal pleasure but to enable me to forge an absolutely dedicated corps. I wanted troops who put the welfare of the unit ahead of their own, and I had to set the example. This remained my fight, win or lose, regardless of the handicap. After all, in real battle situations the unexpected had to be dealt with, too.

I continued to analyze Heller's style. He was strong and skilled, but I was flexible; already I grasped his patterns. This was my talent, and it was of inestimable value to me in a crisis. It was as if he were calling his shots in advance, while mine were surprises. Now that I knew his weapon, I guarded against it. The tide of battle was turning in my favor.

Heller became aware of this. He strove desperately to take me out, smashing brutally at my body with alternate ends of his stick, but no shot touched my suit. My own pugil stick was in shreds, however. When his intemperate effort put him out of position, I countered devastatingly; I chopped at his feet, sweeping both his boots free of the hull. He fell away from the ship, and in the moment he did so, I lofted him on his way with a stick-end uppercut that caught in his padded crotch and shoved him out. He was on his way!

Of course, he used his jet to brake and return, but that took precious seconds, and in that time I charged the airlock he was supposed to be defending and spun the exterior wheel. Heller returned before I got the lock open, but I was mindful of his progress and paused to bash him back into space. On his next return he was more careful, landing at a small distance so he could anchor his boots before encountering me, but by that time I was inside the lock.

He jammed his pugil stick into the closing aperture, preventing me from shutting him out. I grabbed the stick, opened the panel, and hurled the stick away into space; but that gave Heller time to scramble into the lock with me.

Now it was the third phase of the contest: hand-to-hand. This was where the judo came in. Judo is one of the old Earth martial arts, and though in its full scope it includes all of the blows and holds known by man, its essence is the technique of throwing. On Earth this meant throwing the opponent to the ground on his back hard enough to knock the fight from him, and perhaps holding him down; the idea was to overcome him without having to hurt him. The term judo meant, in the original Japanese, "gentle way," in contrast to the necessary violence of striking with fist or foot. In that respect judo was superior to most other martial arts; it provided an avenue of limited or measured force, regardless of the effort of the opponent. Such an avenue was invaluable when it was necessary to subdue an intoxicated friend, or an enemy one preferred to reason with. Here on the hull of a spaceship, the thrust of the judo throw was reversed. Now it meant breaking the opponent's magnetic contact and hurling him into the void. The seemingly opposite techniques were not too different in practice; the presence or absence of gee made all the difference. But in the close confines of an airlock, it was another matter.

Strength counts for a lot in hand-to-hand combat, but skill counts for more. Here I had the advantage; I had spent more time in a space suit, and had faced worse hazards than had Heller. I maneuvered him into an armlock that was just as effective in suits as it was naked; he could not move without dislocating his elbow. I maintained the hold with one arm and my body and feet, pinning him to the wall by using the leverage in my magnetic boots as well as bracing against the opposite wall. With my free hand I sealed the lock, pressured it, and set off my bomb.

When the inner panel opened, my "nerve gas" spread rapidly into the ship. It was actually colored, perfumed vapor, harmless, but it made the point: I had taken the ship and won the match.

Now I signaled Sergeant Smith. "Arrest this man," I said as my helmet came off. Respect was no longer an issue.

The referees recovered the rapier and doctored pugil stick; there was no question what Corporal Heller had tried to do. But before taking any further action, I interviewed him in my office.

"Corporal," I said briskly, "you have your choice of summary unit discipline or a formal court-martial. I recommend the former."

"Sir?" he asked, perplexed.

"I am prepared to deal," I said.

He understood. "Unit discipline," he said immediately.

"You may have information I want. Provide it freely, and I will assign nominal punishment." I remembered how Sergeant Smith had said this to me, years ago; I had learned from him.

"Sir, you know I tried to kill you," he protested.

"You are not the first," I said dryly. "I know you are only a tool. I want the mind."

"Sir, my life—"

"Is forfeit to the Navy. I will protect you."

He yielded, knowing the nature of my commitment. "I will tell you anything I know."

"Who hired you to kill me?"

"Kife," he said, his mouth seeming to be reluctant to form the syllable.

That surprised me. Not the answer; I already knew that. But the fact that he answered without evasion. Few who betrayed QYV, I was sure, survived long. In fact, he could have been hired indirectly, not knowing his true employer. QYV was being less devious here than I had expected.

I got the story from him: Heller's family was poor, with no real prospect for improvement. He had been sending most of his service pay back home; the normal Navy allotments for dependent parents were not sufficient in this case for the medication required. QYV had offered instant, anonymous settlement of the family debts, and a handsome reward upon discharge from the Service, so that the family would be secure and Heller himself would have much-improved future prospects. Heller trusted QYV because QYV always kept his word; in any event, the debt settlement had been arranged before Heller made the attempt on my life. If he died in the attempt, or was executed, his family remained better off. "It was the best I could do for them," he concluded.

"Now that you have failed—"

He smiled grimly. "No bonus. I'm on my own."

"If you had succeeded—"

"I was to fetch a little key from your body and fling it into space."

I was surprised again. "You had no delivery route?"

"No, sir. Just to fling it away. After that, Kife would send a lawyer to plead my case in court-martial and get my sentence reduced."

With such a lawyer, and the strings QYV could pull, I knew Heller would have done all right. But he had failed, was now a liability to QYV, and so had accepted my terms instead.

That was the extent of his pertinent information. I knew he was telling the truth, because of my talent. "You have no personal animosity toward me?"

"No, sir. I respect you. It was a put-up job; I'm no good for command, just for fighting. We knew you'd have to turn me down, giving me cause for challenge. You're not bad at combat yourself, sir."

I pondered. "I can't give you riches, but I can give you life and a clean record." I had not forgotten the potency of that offer, either. I knew he would respond; when he made a commitment, he honored it all the way. "Will you serve me loyally henceforth, if I give you the chance?"

He spread his hands. "You beat me fair, sir. You've got me, if you want me. I wouldn't want me."

"Then you are hereby assigned to my personal staff. Your record will not be affected, and your family will not know."

He was amazed. "What about the punishment, sir?"

"You will be my bodyguard. If I am to be killed, you will intercept the attempt to the best of your ability. If you die or are wounded, that is your punishment. You tried to take my life; until you save it, you have not paid."

"Yes, sir!" he agreed.

Another person could not have afforded the risk, but my talent made it feasible for me. Heller would be the best bodyguard I could obtain. He owed me life and knew it.

"Uh, sir—"

"Yes, Corporal?"

"Something I heard, can't be sure it's true—"

"Yes?"

"There's another attempt on you slated. Some other way to get the key from you. But I don't know how. Just that there's someone or something on the ship. Indirect, maybe."

"Thank you, Heller." I wasn't surprised. QYV had tried three times; why not four?

 

I had survived the encounter with no more than some chafes about my body, owing to the unexpectedly strenuous nature of it. I didn't bother with sick bay, preferring to assume the pose of indestructibility. I rubbed some salve on the sore spots, had a light meal, and settled down in my hammock for a nap, alone. When I had been married, I had rated a bed; I missed it, but single enlistees or officers had hammocks, and I was no exception.

Several hours later I awoke, feeling odd. The room was dimly illuminated, the way I preferred it for sleep; there was sufficient light for vision. I looked at the ceiling, for I had caught a flicker of something there, something in a dark color, oblique to my vision. I could not quite focus on it, seeing it mostly peripherally as it flowed gently by. I was not alarmed; the sight was pleasant. It occurred to me I was dreaming, for there was no holo-projector here, yet I knew I was awake.

Now the image changed, becoming brighter, more defined, undulating iridescently, as though an ocean of rainbows were heaving by. Bands of color separated from the mass, forming into arcs, semicircles, spirals, and loops. Other bands realigned, forming patterns of lines that somehow passed through the individual curves without interference. Perhaps it was like the petals of flowers floating on a heaving sea, the waves distinct from the objects yet interacting in a curious, intangible fashion.

I closed my eyes, and the sight changed but did not disappear. Rather, it became muted, an underlying grid of color, as if this were the fundamental form that filtered through my eyelids. I opened my eyes again, and the grid was clothed with new ornaments, symmetrical motifs, that slowly turned in space three-dimensionally, like galaxies or rare ancient urns, each more lovely and significant than the others, each a vessel of sheerest wonder. Faster they turned, like spinning planets, spraying out colors like gravity waves, more and more rapidly until their outlines blurred, and even then they were impossibly beautiful.

Abruptly, all was gone. I saw only my room, stark and bare. There are no loose items in a Navy ship, for they could become missiles during accelerative action. No pictures or paperweights. All is secured and little is esthetic. I lay still, hoping for a return of the pretty visions, but they were gone. I felt a loss so great it brought tears to my eyes and a burden to my chest. Paradise lost!

I stirred, sitting up, causing my hammock to swing slightly—and suddenly there was sound. Fragments of marvelous music flitted about me, as if some profound orchestra were tuning up. The room seemed to tilt as I moved, throwing me off-balance; everything was askew. I steadied myself, but though my body was still, it also seemed to be turning; the room was turning, too, in the opposite way, and my legs were rotating in diverse directions; yet somehow all was organized so that I neither twisted apart nor lost my position in the room. The sound clarified, and I heard a distant, lovely, vaguely familiar melody, one I longed to appreciate more closely but could not approach.

But I tried. I got to my feet and found I was not dizzy despite the motions of the universe and my body. Beautiful bass notes sounded as my feet struck the floor. I walked melodiously to the door in pursuit of the distant theme, passing through the complex tapestry of colors that reformed, without disturbing it. Geometric patterns played across the door, and the latch-release panel was somewhat like a painted goblin's head, but I touched it and the panel slid open.

Beyond was flickering fire. Intense orange flames leaped up and came through to touch me, but they had no heat; I was invulnerable to this sort of illusion. I stepped into the inferno, following the melodic theme.

The flames remained, reminding me somewhat of the savage surface of Io, but once I was fairly in them I discovered new aspects. They had discrete shapes of their own, and these were animate, almost alive. There were flame-flowers blooming from their twining flame-vines, more beautiful than any I had ever seen. The smells of them came to me now, the essences of perfect nature, compatible with the music that enfolded them. The geometric shapes flitted in from the other chamber, becoming angular and sine-wave bees and butterflies and hummingbirds without sacrificing their mathematical identities, and carried sparkling pollen from flower to flower, mating them. There were small, satisfied flashes of light as the sex organs that were the flowers received their gratifications, their completions. Then the flowers faded, for nature has little use for anything whose function is past, and were replaced by fruits on the vines, becoming full and juicy and delicious.

As I gazed at those fruits and understood the symbolism of their generation, I felt the stirring in my own loin, the need to merge my own pollen with the ovules of the female, to generate my own fruit and the seeds of my own type of life. The flames became half-naked young females of human persuasion wearing skirts without panties, shawls without halters, dancing, twisting, shaking, writhing, their breasts bouncing and quivering with the fullness of their motions, their legs lifting, spreading, closing beckoningly. The nymphs twined like serpents inside their decorative ornaments, impossibly alluring. Now I saw flame-men, too, with fire phalluses that jetted sparks into the crevices of the female flames. I longed to jet my sparks also, but the flame-girls were intangible to my flesh. I needed my own kind.

I resolved to search for a human woman of suitable configuration and youth. I strode forward, and suddenly my environment shifted again. Horror fell on me like nocturnal rain, soaking me through the flesh to the bone, and through the bone to the marrow. I shivered, terrified of everything. Things came at me, threatening; I was aware of teeth, claws, eyes, and thin sucking-type proboscises. I fled their chill menaces, but there was nowhere to flee; the very shadows reached their barbed extremities toward me.

I spun to the side, and the scene obligingly shifted, sliding past me laterally, vibrating; when I stopped, it continued more rapidly, carrying the monsters along. But this was dizzying. I clapped my eyelids down; the clang as they slammed closed echoed loudly across my skull and set the jelly of my brain to vibrating. That was worse than the monsters, so I reopened my eyes, cautiously so the orbs would not burst loose from their sockets in the vacuum, but it was all right; they were contained. Now I saw my hand before my face, outlined in double contours without and within, so that it was at once skeletal and ballooningly fat. The contours tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, sextupled, until I blinked, reminded of something by that last description; I had been in quest for a woman. Then the multiple lines vanished, replaced by solid colors, red contrasting sharply with green, blue with orange, yellow with brown. But underneath remained the hand, the empty hand, proffering what was more horrible than anything it could have held. I wrenched away again, trying to scream, trying to blot it out.

And a man loomed before me, but the sounds he uttered were unintelligible, a meaningless roar. I peered into his face, but it was blank, devoid of soul. As I looked, I saw a progression of features on him: human, ape, feline, reptilian, with staring eyes. I realized he was but a shell, an incubus, a golem of no account. I shoved him aside, and he moved with strange lightness, as if he were canvas filled with foam, and I went on to the next, and he, too, was nothing. I continued past a crowd of them, until I came to the master-entity, a monster in vague man-shape, foul smelling. I saw it take hold of a man and crush him in a bear hug so hard that flesh pulped under the skin, so that he was rendered into a shapeless mass. Then the monster sank a hollow fang into the top of the victim's head and sucked out the multicolored juice, and the skin-sac shriveled as the substance was depleted. When the bag was empty except for the rattling bones, the monster blew foul air through its tooth, inflating the sac until it was as turgid as a space suit in a vacuum. The man was restored as a soul-empty shape, a balloon, a doppelganger who moved about among the others who did not notice the change. Who accepted it as an ordinary person.

Now the monster came for me, for I still had juice in me, and I could not flee him. There was blood all around me, pooling on the floor, spattered on the walls. Evidently some had leaked from the victims of the monster while they were being squeezed. I didn't want to step in it, knowing it would somehow destroy me, but the monster was reaching for me. I was too frightened to think straight or even fight, knowing I was doomed.

Words came through from the confusion of notes and blood. "Hope... Hope... Hope... Hope..."

I paused, seeking the source. "Who calls me?"

"Repro. Repro. Hope, you have been drugged. Drugged! Do you understand?"

"Drugged," I repeated. It did seem to make sense.

"Hallucinogenic, evidently. Are you in a vision?"

"Vision," I agreed. I was not surprised that I could talk to him. At the moment, nothing surprised me.

"We don't yet know what drug it is, so can't neutralize it. But I can help guide you through the vision till it passes. I have had experience with hallucinogens. Just listen to me, and all will be well. Do you understand?"

"Understand." Then I essayed a more relevant thought, as my mind was quite clear, regardless what my senses were doing. "There's a monster here, about to squeeze me to a pulpy mass, suck me dry, and blow me up again as a doppelganger. I can't flee it; there's blood spattered all around."

"That sounds like the boraro," he said after a pause for thought. "An ancient spirit of South America associated with the jungle and with visions. I have encountered him in the past. He carries a quartz crystal to make him fierce. Do you see that?"

I peered at the monster. Sure enough, now I saw the bright crystal held by one paw. "I see it."

"If you can take it away from him, he will not attack you."

"Take it away from him!" I exclaimed. "I don't dare get close to him!"

"Then give him milk and honey; that will pacify him, and you can escape while he's eating. Both milk and honey have a seminal character, so are potent in magic. The boraro loves potency. He is a manifestation of a person's repressed instincts, so—"

"I have no milk and honey!" I cried as the monster took another step toward me, bear arms extended, sucking-tooth ready. He seemed larger and fiercer than ever.

"Then you must find him."

"I can't—"

"Now listen to me, Hope," he said. "This is your vision, and you have the power. You merely need to know how to use it. You are in your vulnerable human form now; you can change it to something the boraro can't hurt. In South America, the jaguar was very strong. Change to a jaguar."

"A jaguar? A feline animal? I can't—"

"Yes you can. I know how these things work. I have been there before you. Just—change. You can do it if you try."

The boraro took another step toward me, his pulp-squeezing arms almost enclosing me, and suddenly I was a jaguar. I was on four lithe feet, and my limbs were finely muscled, my torso lean, my senses keen. I felt exhilaration and strength.

"But beware," Repro's voice came. "The jaguar embodies death—"

I ignored him. I leaped at the boraro, and he fell down, terrified, no further threat to me. I charged on through the jungle, exhilarated. This was my alter ego, my true self; now I could act out my deepest desires with impunity.

I sniffed, winding female. Ah, yes, I could not touch the flame-forms, but there were others. I followed the currents of the breeze, zeroing in on the scent I wanted. I found a hill and entered a tunnel in it, going down into the subterranean world where the females were lurking, hiding. I burst into a great nether ballroom where women were dancing. I took hold of the nearest and spun her about, and she was made of flesh and her eyes were alive, but she screamed with terror.

I realized what was wrong. "I have not come to consume you," I told her. "See, I am really a man!" And I resumed human form, confining as it was, giving up the jaguar alternate.

But still she flinched away. "I am not really a woman," she told me. "I am a deer in human form."

I stared at her and realized it was true. There was a doe-eyed, furry quality about her. She had fled the hunters and concealed herself in this manner. All the dancing women were animals. Still, she was female, and flesh, and that was what counted. I drew her into me hungrily. She tried to resist, but her efforts were ineffective, for she was not a fighting creature. This was, as Repro had pointed out, my vision, and I had power.

"I will do it," another female said, interceding. I looked at her, and she was full and beautiful. She had taken the form of Juana. I let the deer-woman go and turned to her. I had always liked that particular form.

"This way, jaguar," she said, and led me to a separate chamber within the mountain, where there was a bed. I wondered what kind of animal she was in reality but did not ask, lest her present attractive form be lost. Perhaps she was a female jaguar.

Then all was immersed in the colors, sounds, odors, and touchings of hallucination, and I lost myself in the raptures of pollenization and closeness and warmth, and finally slept.

 

When I woke I was in my own room, and Commander Repro was sitting by my hammock. I was back in the mundane world. I felt tired but not ill. Had it been a dream, rather than a vision?

Repro saw me stir. "Over, sir?" he inquired.

I nodded. "What happened?"

"You were dosed with a potent hallucinogen," he said. "It sent you on a several-hour trip. I don't know when it began, but it was well advanced when I was summoned. I tried to talk you through it, for that often helps, but lost you—"

"I remember," I said. "I changed into a jaguar and went rutting after—" I paused. "Maybe you had better tell me just what happened next."

"You charged into the enlisted women's barracks—"

"Oh, no! I thought it was a subterranean cavern filled with, er, animals."

He smiled. "In human form. I have been there, too. Fear not. Juana was there, and she took you in hand."

"Some hand! I—"

"I explained about the drug," he said. "The girls understand. They are amused. And Juana—was glad to do it. Your secret will not escape this ship."

Probably true. My personnel were loyal to me and to the unit. "I should apologize to—"

"No need. They rather enjoyed the episode, once they realized what the problem was. Your new bodyguard, Heller, was alarmed, however; every time he approached you, you yelled about the monster. He figured you hadn't forgiven him for past offenses."

"I didn't recognize him," I said.

"What we must do now is discover what the drug was, and when and how you were dosed. I think we know who is behind it."

"Kife," I agreed. "Heller warned me that something was in the offing. But how could dosing me with a hallucinogenic drug—?" I had had to explain about the key to my staff, so they could be alert for QYV.

"Some of these drugs are addictive," he reminded me. "Generally, the more potent the effect, the greater the addictive potential. Some are primarily physiological, some psychological, but once you're hooked, you're hooked. I happen to know."

An understatement! Suddenly I understood. "If I were to become addicted to a rare drug, and Kife was the only source—"

"You would do almost anything to assure your supply. The key would be only the beginning. You would become the creature of the supplier. There are nameless drugs today that put to shame anything known historically. Believe me, you do not want to go my route. That is why it is essential that we run this down immediately. We must eliminate the guilty party. A single dose should not habituate you, but a very few repetitions could. This appears to be the most potent hallucinogen I've seen, considering that it leaves no measurable residue in the body. You can bet that Kife uses only the best."

I saw his point. He was the expert here, and now I was selfishly glad he was an addict. His guidance had indeed helped me get through the vision. "This wouldn't by any chance be similar to what you—?"

"No. Mine is not hallucinogenic. It merely enables me to function. I am on it now."

Just so. I had never inquired into his addiction, because if I ever officially learned of it, I would be required to discipline him—a pointless exercise. I knew he would die if deprived of his drug. Only in this privacy could the subject be mentioned at all, and only now was he trusting me with this confirmation. My staff had given him the song "Beautiful Dreamer," but there was nothing beautiful about it. Commander Repro was on a spiral sliding slowly to Hell, and the best I could do for him was to try to implement his dream of the perfect unit—and use it to extirpate both piracy and the drug trade from the face of the Solar System. Certainly I did not wish to join him on that spiral!

We reviewed my activities immediately prior to the episode in detail, and concluded that the drug must have been slipped into my food. These chemicals could be tasteless and colorless, so potent that a few milligrams did the job. Therefore we launched a rapid private investigation into both the food supplies and personnel associated. With excellent computerized records and Commander Mondy's insights, we were able to accomplish in hours what once would have required weeks.

Food and personnel were clean. We had to assume this had been a one-shot deal, leaving no trace. It was frustrating, but we were stuck. QYV was indeed a slick operator. But I felt no compulsion to take more of whatever drug it was.

Then I had another vision. This time the geometric and color patterns were fleeting, and I proceeded directly to the action. I became the jaguar, hunting prey. The colors about me formed a rainbow, and that converted to a huge python, and that became a bolt of lightning that returned to thunder and rain. The rain fell so heavily that it formed a huge, branching river, and I saw that rivers, like snakes, were both male and female. The mouth of the river was its female orifice, and to ascend by that mouth was to indulge in symbolic copulation. I did this and saw the water nymphs swimming; I resolved to catch one for my own, but she eluded me, being more versatile than I in this medium, and so the jaguar had no woman.

Repro was there again when I came out of it. "Must have been a smaller dose this time," he said. "That's fortunate; your intoxication was not as intense."

I agreed, relieved. Not only had the duration been less, so had the intensity of the experience. I had enjoyed it but felt no strong compulsion to return to it. I remained unaddicted; but where had the drug come from?

My food had been monitored this time, just to be sure; there had been no drug in it. We searched everything, and tested the water I had last drunk: nothing. We had the air ducting gone over and the rest of the life-support apparatus. Nothing.

"Maybe it was only a flashback," Repro said doubtfully. "That does happen. Many of the visual effects are the result of phosphenes, subjective images that originate within the optic system itself. It's a common phenomenon, and phosphenic patterns appear in many art forms. Drugs stimulate them, but they can occur spontaneously. Many hallucinogenic drugs produce phosphenes of geometric motifs; these are not true visions, but an intermediate form."

"Maybe," I agreed uncertainly. I was deeply disturbed by this demonstrated ability of QYV to penetrate our defense.

Next day I had another vision. This time I entered a quiet jungle glade where natives were playing flutes formed from bones and the shells of snails. This was a haunted spot, dangerous to visit, because spirits of slain animals were present. When I intruded, the spirits of those animals turned on me and riddled me with tiny arrows: their vengeance for being hunted. "But I'm not a hunter!" I protested. "I'm a refugee!" Then they faded away; I knew that none of this was real, and I snapped out of it.

When I told Repro, he was perplexed. "That was a vision, not a phosphene," he said. "Yet very mild, almost a daydream. You must have been dosed—"

I shrugged, and touched one of my healing scrapes, which were not after all the wounds from tiny psychic arrows. The medicinal salve had really helped.

Salve? I had used it three times....

"Test this salve!" I exclaimed.

That was the answer. The salve had been heavily laced with an extremely rare, potent, highly addictive hallucinogenic drug whose chemical description was meaningless to me but caused Repro to whistle, shaken, as he reviewed the lab results. "You have had three doses; you should be addicted now. This stuff is like a shot from a laser cannon!"

"I'm not addicted," I protested. "I have no craving for it."

Indeed I was not. There are ways to test for drug susceptibility, and Repro knew them, and we used them. I was now immune to this particular drug. My system was developing antibodies against it, protecting me. "I never heard of that before," Repro said. "Apparently you cannot be habituated; your body treats addictive drugs like disease and fights them with increasing effectiveness on repeated exposure."

Just as my mind was able to tune in to the natures of other people, rapidly enabling me to protect myself against them. And my emotion had developed a block against the shock of threats against my life, so that the horror of death had not caused me to suffer from post-traumatic stress in the manner of Mondy. I had not before realized that there was a physiological component of my talent, but it made sense. I was blessed with an unusual, subtle, but quite useful system.

It developed that I remained vulnerable to other types of drugs. My immunity was only to this specific one, and to a lesser extent to closely related drugs, and it did take time to develop. We found that I had used the salve before, but only irregularly and in very small amounts, so that the full effect had not been triggered and I had suffered no visions. But my body had gotten a head start on defending against it. Otherwise, my second and third major episodes could have been far more intense than they were, though I still could not have become addicted.

Repro shook his head. "I wish I had your immune system."

"I wish I could share it with you." But, of course, I could not.

We agreed to keep this matter private. We couldn't even discover who had doused the salve; it had been part of my private supply for several months. Evidently QYV had set this up as a sleeper, knowing that sooner or later I would use it. That had been correct, and only my unusual body chemistry had prevented this insidious ploy from being effective.

But QYV might now suppose that I was addicted. Quite possibly I could turn that supposition to my advantage when the right time came. Mondy was the one who perceived how: "Have Commander Phist put in a requisition for some of the components of that drug," he suggested. "We cannot duplicate it precisely, but this will suggest we are trying to. Kife will get the message and may come forward with an offer."

I smiled like a jaguar. "You are an evil genius!"

Mondy nodded, pleased. He was doing very well in our unit.

 

One other matter I should mention here. We were adding considerable personnel during this expansion phase, and I left most of the details to my Adjutant, as is normal. But officers and key enlisted personnel I interviewed myself, to be quite sure they were what we wanted. In the Navy a commander's powers of choice are limited; some higher and somewhat erratic power directs the movements of personnel. That was one reason we had to use marriage to fetch our most vital members; it bypassed the red tape without betraying the nature of the larger plan. But the commander can do quite a bit to encourage particular people to remain or to move on, and this I did, whichever way was called for. Most were all right, for they knew of me and my unit and wanted to join; many were Hispanic, but others were ambitious Saxons or minority factions, highly motivated. We promised fair treatment and no-fault advancement for those with merit and loyalty, regardless of background, and it seemed this was unusual in the contemporary Jupiter Navy. So now we were getting skilled personnel without going after them, apart from the marriage acquisitions.

Spirit surprised me one day by bringing in a civilian clerk. The Navy did employ a number of civilians, because they were cheaper for mundane purposes such as kitchen police and janitor service and clerking, and often better suited for these jobs. It made little sense for the Navy to draft qualified personnel, run them through expensive training and conditioning, grant them generous medical and retirement benefits, then put them to work scraping dirty pots. Also, the job requirements for specialized noncombat positions are beyond what is normally available in the military system, especially when sophisticated computerized equipment is involved. For these positions civilian specialists must be hired, theoretically temporary until qualified Navy personnel are assigned; actually, they tend to be more permanent than most Navy assignments, since they are not subject to whimsical rotation. The local commander can hire and fire directly, without significant interference from above. Thus he has greater control, and often the truly key personnel in a unit are almost invisible civilians, known in the trade as technical mercenaries, hired out by civilian companies. This process was so advanced at this time that unit commanders sometimes vied competitively for desirable civilians. The rates of pay were fixed by Navy regulations, but there were off-the-record inducements. Some civilian employees lived quite royally, with government meals and the pick of enlisted (and sometimes commissioned) roommates of the opposite sex. For centuries it had been said that a master sergeant had things as good as anyone in the Service; today it was the choice civilian mercenary. As a military mercenary myself, I was quick to appreciate the situation. But in fairness I must also say that most civilian employees were simply that: hirelings with no job security and not a great deal of respect.

This one was a woman in her forties, slender and serious. "Isobel is a resident alien," Spirit said. "She migrated from Titania as a child and lost her papers."

"I know how that is," I said. "It took over a year for my lost papers to be replaced, and then only because I joined the Navy—and even then my age slipped by them."

"She's a skilled military-computer operator, and conversant with navigation in space. But she does not want any security clearance."

I looked more carefully at the applicant. She had shoulder-length brown-red hair and color-matched painted fingernails. Her eyes were deep gray. Her face was poker, giving nothing away, and she had no body mannerisms to signal her thoughts. I could not read her, yet she was oddly familiar. "We can use her qualifications," I said, "but the position we need her for requires a clearance, or personal assurance by the commander. Does she have good references?"

"No," Spirit said.

I glanced at her, annoyed. And paused, for Spirit was virtually quivering with excitement. Something was afoot.

I looked again at Isobel. "Speak to me," I said.

"As you wish, sir," Isobel said.

Then it struck me. "Captain Brinker of the Hidden Flower—in drag!"

She grimaced. "It is the only way to conceal my identity. A necessary evil." She glanced with distaste at her nails.

I had made a deal with Brinker, sparing her life in exchange for mine, and preserving the secret of her sex in exchange for information about QYV. The deal had been honored by both parties. She had spent her adult life as a male; how ironic that she now had to hide by reverting to her true nature.

But hiring her in my unit?—I really did not want any further association with this pirate. Yet my sister had brought her.

I returned to Spirit. "You know this woman a good deal better than I do. Do you speak for her?"

"I don't like her," Spirit said. "But she treated me fairly and kept my secret, and she is the most competent fighting woman I know. If she will serve you, you can't afford to turn her down. I gave her my word not to betray her to the authorities."

"That word shall be honored, of course," I agreed. "But she is a pirate!"

"Was," Spirit said. I saw that despite her personal distance from Brinker, she did want the woman to be hired.

I turned to Brinker. "My friends died because of you."

"I lost my ship because of you," she said evenly. "It happens, in war."

So she viewed piracy as a state of war. Well, perhaps it was. It was true that I had done her about as much damage as she had me; several of her officers had been executed. It was also true that I had recovered my sister, who probably would not have survived on another pirate's ship.

"With your qualifications," I said, "you can hire out elsewhere. Why come to me, the one who knows your secret?"

"I can't return to space without protection. I am confined to low-grade clerical tasks and subject to the whims of men."

The whims of men. Yes, women had little sexual privacy in the Navy, and civilian employees could have difficulty retaining their positions if they differed too obviously from Naval norms. If she wanted to be inconspicuous, she had to go along. "Are you homosexual?" I asked. Even today, some people distinguish between homosexuality and lesbianism, but they are the same: sexual preference for one's own sex.

"No. I don't like sex at all."

I glanced again at Spirit, who nodded. In this manner I had the answer to a question I had not been able to ask before: whether Spirit had been subjected to same-sex sex. I knew Spirit could handle anything she had to, but the information gratified me. I had feared what I might have left her to, among pirates.

But now this woman wanted not only employment, but also protection: from the attentions of men, and from revelation of her history. And she wanted to get out of the clerking trade. She wanted a lot, and I could not see my way clear to giving this pirate any of it. I would much prefer to put her on trial for her past.

But Spirit spoke for her. I had to hedge.

"Bring Repro," I said to my sister.

Spirit made a military turn and departed, leaving me alone with Isobel Brinker. "The things you want can be arranged, if I choose," I said carefully. "You could be assigned a male roommate whose sexual interest matches yours. You can be assigned compatible work. Your past can be private, with certain exceptions. Lieutenant Commander Repro is our unit psychologist and our S-5. He and my other key officers would have to know."

"Your word governs them?"

"Yes."

"Then do as you will."

"You know I have sworn to extirpate piracy from the face of the system."

"I have no loyalty to piracy. It was a necessary expedient."

"You would serve in this cause?"

"Yes."

Spirit returned with Repro; he must have been close at hand. I outlined the situation briefly to him. "What is your advice?"

He considered. "She was not on my list, because I did not know of her. She belongs on it. Hire her."

"But she is a pirate!" I protested again, dismayed by his ready acceptance.

"Sir, you swore to eliminate piracy. You can do that by conversion as readily as killing. You must be ready to accept those who genuinely reform, otherwise you are no better than Mondy was."

"Mondy?"

"He has killed as many as you have, in much the same manner, and now cannot escape his conscience."

Conversion—it did make sense. Why had I never been able to see it before? Because I was overly obsessed with vengeance. I did not need to consult with my other officers; I knew they would agree with Repro. Captain Brinker, former pirate, was not really the issue; my attitude was.

"It seems I have been overruled by my staff," I said. I turned to Spirit. "Hire her."

Brinker and I both knew the commitments implied.

Brinker would not attempt to kill or harm me and would serve in whatever capacity assigned with complete loyalty and effectiveness. I would protect her from certain types of exposure. Objectively I knew it was a good deal for both of us; she could return to space action in no other way, and she could do our unit a lot of good, for she was highly competent. Still, there was a bad taste.

Repro was right; it did work out. Brinker served me better than I could have anticipated. My unit even gave her a song: "Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?", which concludes, "I don't need no man." Brinker sang it with a certain pride.