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tumbling so that any rescue mission might better know how to dock with it when Enderby arrived at Command. The ring’s optical trackers caught only reflections of Zanshaa’s sun flashing on the glossy black surface of the yacht, hardly ideal data for an analysis. Even the 3D displays at Operations would be too small for the kind of detail he needed of a small vessel that far away, so Martinez got a headset out of storage and projected a virtual environment onto the visual centers of his brain. His mind flooded with an infinite, empty darkness that seemed to extend light-years beyond the limits of his skull, and he built a simulation with a picture and specifications of the craft he’d snagged, using Enderby’s priority code, from the files of Vehicle Registration. Once he had the model of Midnight Runner, he created a virtual sun at the appropriate angle and of the appropriate intensity, then sent the model tumbling over and over again in a lengthy series of simulations until it began to resemble the flashing visual he was getting from the ring’s optical detectors. It could be refined later, after he began getting reflections back from the ranging lasers he’d pulsed out along Blitsharts’s presumed track.
    Under normal circumstances, a Fleet pinnace should be able to rendezvous with a yacht like Midnight Runner with little trouble. The boats were approximately the same size, and were built for nearly the same purpose: carrying a single passenger very fast, through abrupt accelerations and decelerations and changes of course. In Blitsharts’s case, this was to enable his boat to make the changes in vector necessary to win a yacht race; in the case of the Fleet boat, it was to avoid destruction long enough to accomplish its mission.
    It occurred to Martinez that no one had ever performed a rendezvous like this. The yacht’s rolling was wildly complex, as if designed on purpose to baffle anyone attempting to dock with it, and he couldn’t imagine that Blitsharts could remain in that tumbling craft for long and remain conscious. There was only one hatch on Midnight Runner, and it was rolling over and over in a chaotic series of gyrations. It was forward of the center of gravity about which the yacht was tumbling, and there was no way a rescue craft could dock to it. It would be like docking with the end of a stick being waved in the air by an erratic child.
    Martinez worried at the problem, his mind spinning as frantically as the tumbling yacht. He built a model of a standard Fleet pinnace and tried to maneuver it near the yacht, only to see it batted away again and again, one potentially crippling collision after another.
    It seemed that if he worked really hard, he could help kill two pilots, Blitsharts and his rescuer both.
    It was the scent of a bruised apple that brought him out of the depths of his study—Abacha’s apple, or perhaps just the peel, lying somewhere nearby and reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since his noon meal, over half a day ago.
    He saved his simulation and pulled off the headset. “Ari,” he said, turning toward Abacha’s console. “Got any of that apple left? Or any food at all?”
    It was then he realized that the person he’d sensed standing behind him had far too much braid on his uniform to be a mere lieutenant.
    â€œMy lord!” He leaped to his feet, his chin snapping back. Agonizing pain clamped on his crotch, which had been perched on an alien chair for over an hour.
    Fleet Commander Enderby gazed at him with mild eyes. “Carry on, Lieutenant,” he said.
    â€œYes, my lord.”
    Enderby looked at the displays, which had been showing Martinez’s solution. “A difficult problem, is it not?”
    â€œI’m afraid so, my lord.” Martinez clenched his teeth against the pain. Whatever passion had seized Enderby during their last interview had passed: the Fleet Commander was his usual self