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Mr. Trogar's clock?"
    Midj sighed and met her friend's eyes.
"Don't see my business waiting that long, frankly."
    "What business is worth losing your ship,
getting killed, or both?"
    Trust Su to ask the good questions. Midj
kept her eyes steady.
    "You remember Korelan Zar," she not-asked,
and Su frowned.
    "Tall, thin fella; amber eyes and
coffee-color skin," she said slowly. "I remember thinking that skin
was so pretty-looking." She fingered her beer. "Your partner,
right? He was the one that told you one day he take you to Panore
for a vacation, right?"
    Midj nodded, said nothing.
    Su's sip was nearly a chug, then she
continued into the silence.
    "Right. Always wondered what happened to
him. Never got around to asking. Must be--what? Fifteen, eighteen
Standards?"
    "Twenty." Her voice sounded tight in her own
ears. "What happened to him was he figured he had to sign on with
another crew--he had reasons, they seemed good to him, and that's
all twenty Standards in the past. Thing is, I told him, if he ever
needed to ship out--call, and I'd come get him."
    Su was quiet. Midj had a swig of beer, and
another.
    "And where he is, is Shaltren," Su said
eventually, after she enjoyed a couple of swigs, herself.
"Midj--you don't owe him."
    "I owe him--I promised." She closed her
eyes, opened them. "He asked me to come."
    "Shit." More quiet, then--"How soon?"
    St. Belamie's Day had begun
as a joke; at need, it had become a code--he'd remembered that,
too, and trusted her to do the same. It was a moving target,
calculated by finding the square root of the diameter of Skeed a ddle ,
multiplying by the Standard day on which the message was sent and
dividing by twelve. Accordingly, she had about twenty Standard Days
on Kago before she lifted for Shaltren.
    She'd wanted to time it closer, but there
was the ship to be brought up to spec, and she daren't gamble that
Vashon would find nothing wrong. Likely he wouldn't, but it wasn't
the way to bet, not with Kore waiting for her, with who knew what
on his dance card.
    "Couple weeks, local," she said to Su, and
the other woman nodded.
    "Let's do this again, before I ship out,"
she said, and finished off her beer in one long swallow. She
thumped the bottle to the table. "For now, gotta lift.
Business."
    "I hear that," Midj said, dredging up a
grin. "I'm at the Haven for the next while, then back on-ship.
Gimme a holler when you know you got time for dinner. I'll stand
the cost."
    "Like hell you will," Su said amiably. She
got her feet under her and was gone, leaving Midj alone with the
rest of her beer and the tab.
    * * *
    HE WALKED DOWN THE ramp easy, not hurrying,
a pilot on his way to his ship, that was all. He turned the corner
and froze, there on the edge of the hallway, still out of range of
the camera's wide eye--and the woman leaning against the wall, gun
holstered, waiting.
    Waiting for him, he had no doubt. He knew
her--Sambra Reallen--who hadn't been anybody particular, and now
ran in Grom Trogar's pack; high up in the pack, though not so high
that calling attention to herself might get fatal. If she was here,
calmly waiting for him go through the one door he had to go
through--then he was too late.
    He nodded, once, turned, and went back up
the hall, walking no faster than he had going down, and with as
little noise.
    Too
late , he thought, as he reached
street-level. Damn .
    * * *
    THERE WERE TWO WAYS to play
it from here, given that he'd sworn not to be a damn' fool. The
strike for the ship, that might've been foolish, though he'd had
reason to hope that the fiction of the Judge's continued residence
would cover him. The Judge's absence would still serve as cover,
since he was the
Judge's courier. But the fact that one of Chairman Trogar's own had
been waiting for him--that was bad. He wondered how bad, as he ran
his keycard through the coder.
    If they'd been waiting for him at the ship,
then they likely knew some things. They probably knew that the
Judge and most of the household was