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Woman. He was hungry, and thirsty—they all were—but he had endured such before. He—and they—could only wait. But for what?
     
    More than fifty thousand kilometers out from the graveyard of ancient generation ships, just outside the activation limit of the automatic defense system but within scanning and sensor range of the mothball fleet, was another ship. It was not a large ship, not by the standards of that ghost fleet or even by the standards of the freighter they’d chased, but it was far sleeker and, locally, within stellar systems, far faster.
    Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, sat in his usual padded chair, half reclining, only casually looking at the screens. He was bored and depressed at the same time, a man who had failed at his job and who did not dare to go home. In a sense, he was as much a wanted fugitive as the party he was chasing, only more comfortable.
    An older man came up from below and settled into the next chair. Even Master System, the all-powerful, nearly omnipotent master of the known universe, would have been shocked to see him there, since he was simultaneously captive back on Val-occupied Melchior.
    Doctor Isaac Clayben had not gotten as far as he had without being clever. For more than three decades he had fooled Master System and maintained a combination prison colony and research station to probe the Forbidden Knowledge, the proscribed and hidden knowledge of Master System and its technological wizardry. To such a man, creating a physical duplicate who appeared to be the real thing with his mind erased was child’s play. Yet now he, too, was a fugitive, a man who did not even exist. Were Master System to get even a hint that he was not only alive and in full possession of his mind and skills, but that he had with him the data banks representing tremendous advances into things humans were not supposed to know, would cause a hunt as great or greater than that now being organized to chase Hawks and his group of rebels. Thanks to them, he also knew about the five gold rings. In many ways, he was better equipped technologically to obtain them, but he had no idea where they were. He assumed that the renegades knew where in the tractless universe to find the rings and quite possibly the names of their owners. The obvious solution would be to make a deal, but not so long as they were partially led by China and Reba Koll. China had reason to despise him—more reason than she now knew. And Koll—well, that was a special case.
    “No signs of any activity after all this time?” the scientist asked. “I would think, by now, if something were possible it would have been done. It will only be a few more days until Master System’s own fleet of Vals and who knows what else will be here. Be pretty hard to miss a target like that.”
    “There’s a lot of ‘ifs,’“ Nagy agreed. “That ship was banged up pretty bad. They got it aboard, but who knows how much of that was automated? Air, food, water—and how the hell you gonna drive one of them hanging cities, anyway? I think maybe we oughtta be thinking about our own skins. I figure sixty hours more is it, and that’s pushin’ the safety margin. Master System doesn’t hav’ta allow for the survival of human beings, you know.”
    “They’ll do it, Arnold. I know they will. China will get it moving, somehow, and Koll will get them out of there. If we aren’t right with them, if we lose them, we also lose any chance at the rings. And, Arnold, unless we have the rings we’re goners. We’re too hot. The freebooters won’t shield us, we have no large transmuter capable of integrating with one of the other populations nor the knowledge and contacts with them to use it to any advantage, and we have no place else to go.”
    Nagy sighed. “Yeah. In a way, they’re better off than we are. Seven women and only three guys. Pick a nice planet and let your kids do the rebellion.”
    “Six woman, Arnold. Six women, three men, and a