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suggestions?"
    "No," answered Sharon. "But then, I've never met Lafferty. By the way, has he got a first name?"
    "He never shared it with me, but I suppose he must," answered Cole. "It's probably on the registration of the ship he gave me."
    "Could the hint be on the ship?"
    "I sure as hell hope not. We left it and appropriated a little three-man Navy ship."
    "We?" she repeated. "You and Lafferty?"
    "No, me and that little alien friend of his. What the hell was his name? Oh, yes—Dozhin. I think he's still on Singapore Station."
    "Do you want to contact him?"
    Cole shook his head. "No. The Navy's there now. I don't want them to be able to trace the signal. Besides, I don't know what he could tell me. He's almost as big a coward as our friend David, but without David's virtues."
    "David has virtues?"
    "He has contacts. That qualifies in his business—and ours." He frowned. "The answer has to be with Dozhin. Lafferty knows he came out to the Frontier with me. Maybe he—" Cole froze for a moment. "Oh, shit! I've got it." He touched the spot on his desk that contacted Christine.
    "Yes, sir?" she said.
    "Tell Pilot to take us to Cicero VII as fast as he can."
    "Do you know where it is?"
    "I've no idea. Not too many parsecs from Piccoli III, I should think."
    "Yes, sir."
    Her image vanished, but Sharon's remained, her face an open question mark.
    "Dozhin's home planet," said Cole. "He told me he left it when the Navy pacified it."
    "Won't they still be there?"
    He shook his head. "Lafferty wouldn't invite me there if they were."
    "Let's hope you're right," she said. "And our pilot's name is Wxakgini."
    "I can't pronounce it," said Cole. "He knows that."
    "You should try, as a sign of respect."
    "Every time I screw it up he winces. Just Pilot is better."
    "That's why he never calls you 'sir.'"
    "I can live with it."
    "It's hard to imagine you were once the pride of the regular Navy," she said with a smile.
    "I think pride is a bit of an overstatement," he said wryly. "They took two captaincies away from me."
    "And gave them back eventually."
    "No choice," said Cole. "They lost a lot of captains in the war."
    "You know, you can be really annoying when you're being modest," she said.
    "Okay, I'll brag to the crew about what you told me during an exceptionally interesting moment last night."
    "Fine."
    "You don't mind?"
    "Not if you don't mind sleeping alone for the next six hundred years," she said, and her image vanished.
    "Pilot?"
    Wxakgini's image appeared, his head connected as always to the navigational computer by a series of tiny tubes, his body similarly connected to nutrient solutions.
    "Yes?"
    "What's our ETA on Cicero VII?"
    "We'll be traversing the Glover Wormhole. Seventeen minutes to reach it, seventy-three minutes in transit, and approximately two hours at the other end."
    "Once we're out of the wormhole, have whoever's the Officer on Deck make sure there are no Navy ships patrolling the Cicero system before you begin our approach."
    "I will do so," said Wxakgini.
    Cole broke the connection, felt restless, and went to the mess hall for some coffee and a sandwich. Val was just finishing a meal when he got there.
    "I hear your friend Lafferty's got a surprise for us," she said when as he sat down two tables away.
    "So he says."
    "I also heard from Lieutenant Sokolov," she continued. "He's killed three ships since this started."
    "Little ones, I hope."
    "Have you got something against killing big ones?"
    "In a ship the size of Sokolov's I do," said Cole. "He's too small to kill anything above a Class J without blowing its nuclear pile and killing everyone on board."
    "That's the point of going to war," said Val, "to kill the other guys."
    "You go to war to get the resolution you want to a particular problem. The more people you kill, the less likely the other side is to give in until you've all but annihilated them."
    "So?"
    He sighed deeply and stared at the Valkyrie, marveling as always at the combination of beauty and