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have in common with space is that you can fall and never reach bottom, and everything happens in slow motion. The old freighter was running for all it was worth but the privateers were closing fairly easily, and because of the distances involved it was all taking days to play out. Yet I could read the end without any trouble. I’d been driving ships a long time and could handle relative motion by instinct. I didn’t even need to consult the maneuvering systems to know about where the privateers would catch the freighter.
    Since the freighter had come out of the area of the fourth planet, the same area we were headed, and had run in our general direction, the privateers would catch it pretty damn close, as space goes, to where Lady would pass. They’d be busy killing the kids and looting the ship, of course, so they wouldn’t spare a glance at us.
    We’d just have to watch it happening.
    And Halley Keracides watched me. She didn’t say any more, she just watched me and the read-outs, where as the hours spun down prey ran and predators chased and the Lady got ever closer to both.
    There’s always points of decision when you’re driving a ship. Given your mass and your engines you can tell how long you have to make up your mind before it’s too late to be able to do something. We were six hours from the place where the pursuit would end. Halley Keracides and I were the only ones on the bridge of the Lady . She stayed silent, but we were coming up on that point of decision soon and I finally had to say something. “Just one good run.”
    Halley Keracides nodded. “And one more after that?”
    “Yeah. That’s all Lady needs, right?”
    “No. Not really. But you’ve got a clear shot at it.”
    “At the fourth planet, you mean.”
    “Yes. If that’s what counts.”
    I kept my eyes on the displays. “And after we deliver our cargo we’ll have to find something in Fagin system that people will pay to have delivered to another system.”
    “The people you deliver that stuff to will have something they want you to haul. Count on it. Whether you want to haul it is another question.”
    “This is an honest ship. I swear.”
    “Today, I’ll agree with you. Tomorrow, maybe not. What course do you want to steer, Kilcannon?”
    “I know what course I won’t steer. But…damn. One or two runs…we could get them done and then drop that crap for legit cargo again.”
    “Is that what you think?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s Captain Weskind think?”
    I didn’t want to hear that question. But Halley Keracides looked and sounded sincere when she asked it, and I knew it was a question I ought to know the answer to. “I’ll brief her on our options.”
    “So now you think you have options?”
    “For a little while longer, yeah.”
    Captain Weskind wasn’t awake but this was a critical time, and any Captain knows they’ll be awakened when necessity calls. I talked to her, laying out the situation again. I discussed options, I made a recommendation. I waited.
    Captain Weskind sat there. Not a word, and too many changes coming too fast in her facial expressions for me to even try to read meaning. Feeling an ache inside, I prompted her. “This could be a good run. The one we’ve been waiting for.”
    But she didn’t respond. And I knew I had my answer. Captain Weskind had given me that answer a long time ago, when I was new to the Lady and she was teaching me the ropes. Small players in the freighter trade sometimes had to take a flexible approach to rules and regulations. But she always told me there were some cargos you didn’t take on, some things you didn’t do. And some things you didn’t let happen if you could do anything about it.
    Halley Keracides was still on the bridge. She looked a question at me, but said nothing. I did some calculations, then I adjusted our course a bit, sat back and waited.
    “You’re going to come a lot closer to those privateers,” Halley observed.
    “Yeah.” I called