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forward attitude jet was being resisted fiercely by the crewmen at the other two bands who didn't have a clue as to what was happening on the bridge.
    The Sultan yawed. Gregg jumped over a squat power supply and through the hatch like a practiced gymnast, touching nothing on the way. "Those Federation heathens are shooting at us!" someone bleated behind him.
    The next compartment was even more crowded than the bridge. The double bank of attitude-control workstations, each with an officer standing in the middle of three seated crewmen, was against the starboard bulkhead. Platt and Martre were on duty.
    The port side was usually rolled hammocks and a table for off-duty men to do handwork. Now it was stacked with rations for the Molts—fungus-processed carbohydrate bricks that stank almost as bad now as they did when the aliens excreted the residue. Half a dozen men clustered around the crates for want of anywhere better to be.
    Overhead a tannoy blurted fragments of Choransky's voice. The Sultan 's intercom system worked badly, and the captain was nearly incoherent at the moment anyway.
    "What's going on?" Platt demanded. Gregg's appearance caught him leaving his station to go to the bridge.
    "Fire Jet Two, both bands!" Gregg shouted. "Not the others!"
    "You heard him!" Martre said, pointing to one of his team. Choransky had dropped the men on the central and rear attitude controls into an unexplained crisis when he switched off the artificial intelligence. Martre was delighted to have someone—anyone—tell him what to do.
    "What in hell is going on?" Platt repeated. The Sultan began to yaw as the attitude jets fought one another.
    Ricimer came through the hatch behind Gregg and darted for Platt's control set. Platt tried to grab him. Gregg put his right arm around Platt's throat from behind and clamped hard enough to choke off the officer's startled squawk.
    Platt's team members jumped up from their seats—to get out of the way rather than to interfere. Ricimer slid one control up. Tancred, off duty in the compartment a moment before, sprawled over a workstation in order to drop its slide and that of the third to the bottom of their tracks.
    Lights flickered. Gregg felt hairs lift on his arms.
    " Missed us, by the mercy of God," Ricimer said, and there was no blasphemy in his tone. He seated himself properly at the workstation he'd taken over. "But not by much."
    Bivens stuck his head through the hatch from the bridge. "Stand by for braking!" he warned in a shrill voice.
    Gregg released Platt.
    The smaller man turned and croaked, "You whoreson!" He cocked a fist, then took in Gregg's size and the particular smile on the young gentleman's face.
    Platt turned away. Leon, who'd popped up from one of the lower compartments, judiciously concealed what looked like a length of high-pressure tubing in his trouser leg. The bosun nodded respectfully to Gregg.
    The thrusters cut in again with a tremendous roar, slowing the massive starship after her freefall through the line-of-sight range of the Federation guns. The braking effort was an abnormal several Gs, slamming men to the decks and causing some shelves to collapse. Gregg kept his feet with difficulty.
    On the bridge, the men at the forward attitude controls were bellowing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" in surprisingly good harmony.
     

8
Virginia
    The Sultan 's long cigar shape lay on its side with the landing legs properly deployed and all three cargo hatches open. The ground beneath the thrusters fizzed and snapped as heat-stressed stones cooled.
    Gregg hunched in his hard suit and wondered whether he ought to drop the thick visor as well. That would mean using bottled air and seeing out through a slit, but at least it would keep the wind off him.
    Virginia's breezes slapped harshly against skin used to the weatherless corridors of Venus. The Sultan 's thrusters had ignited pungent fires as she roared in to land, and miniature leaves blew from the scorched trees surrounding