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“Perhaps we should call it the Broan Sovereignty?”

“Perhaps,” Sar-Say had agreed. “I will have to think upon it.”

“Let us hurry, Lisa,” Sar-Say said, gesturing for her to follow him as he again began his effortless movement down the long corridor.

“Very well. The view compartment is just ahead there. You go on and I will catch up.”

Sar-Say swarmed toward the open hatchway toward which she had gestured. She watched him go. The ship bringing the stardrive and fusion generator that were to be transported to the New Eden system was due today. Sar-Say enjoyed watching the supply shuttle come and go, but today their cabin viewport was facing the wrong direction. She had asked to take him on an excursion outside the research area and had gotten Dr. Bendagar’s permission. It was like taking a young child to the zoo.

She caught up with Sar-Say to find him hovering in front of the meter-wide viewport. Beyond they could see the Earth with the Moon low behind it. To judge by the position of the Earth and Luna terminators, the sun was somewhere over their left shoulders. The Earth was as small as it ever got, indicating that the orbiting mirror and habitat were near apogee - the highest point in their orbit. Below them, the arctic region of Earth was laid out in a dazzling mosaic of white. It was still summer in the northern climes, with little need of PoleStar’s service. Indeed, if the weather directorate could ever figure out how to deliver darkness to those climes at this time of year, they could probably sell that service too.

“There it is!” Sar-Say said, pointing. She followed his long, nimble arm with her eyes. Not only was the alien’s memory better than hers was, apparently, so was his vision.

“Watch what you are doing, you fumble fingered oafs!”

Lieutenant Harlan Frees turned his attention to the smallish figure in the day-glow orange vacuum suit gesturing violently at the gang of sweating, cursing spacers who were manhandling the large burnished cylinder toward
Magellan
’s hull. Lucky for Frees’ future career in the survey, his faceplate was polarized to golden-mirror sheen. Otherwise, Laura Dresser might have seen the look he gave her. He switched to the alternate comm circuit and said, “Please keep quiet, Ms. Dresser. The command channel must be kept clear for my orders to the crew.”

“Damn it, Lieutenant, they almost bounced it off the hull that time. They need to be more careful. That stardrive generator is a delicate piece of machinery.”

“We are doing our best. Now, either observe in silence or else I’ll halt the job and have someone escort you back to the airlock.”

Frees took the ensuing silence for assent and turned back to the six men who had their boots in restraints and who were spaced evenly around the large cylinder that hung a meter and a half above
Magellan
’s north pole. Despite the mass of the generator, its lack of weight and the total lack of friction in space made it a skittish load. The slightest touch was sufficient to start it wobbling and only careful, coordinated work by the six spacers could damp out the oscillations.

Had they been at High Station, they would have used one of the big manipulator arms to position their cargo. Unfortunately, at PoleStar they were forced to do it by hand. As the first astronauts who had tried to build a space station had discovered, manhandling heavy objects in microgravity has its own special problems.

“All right, let’s try to get it right this time. Murphy, you lead off. Do not let it rotate, and for God’s sake, keep your boots clear when it bottoms out on the hull. On three, let us see you plant it square on the thrust frame butt-plate with no more than a centimeter-per-second of velocity. Ready? One ... two ...

three!”

This time the operation went more smoothly. The cylinder drifted across a decreasing sliver of space, moving dead slow toward a collision with the starship. It took a sharp eye to note that the drive generator was in motion. Even so, Frees wondered if they had given it too much velocity. When the gap between ship and generator dropped to 20 centimeters, he gave orders to begin retarding the heavy generator casing.

Frees noted the resulting
thump
through the soles of his boots when the generator touched down. He wondered just how loud the noise had been inside the ship.

“Right. Haskens, Baker, Donner, Kurtzkov. You four stabilize it while Murphy and Goldstein get it anchored properly.”

Two of the figures around the generator immediately moved to where a series of monofilament straps had been strung from the generator in preparation for this moment. They quickly and expertly threaded the straps through the circle of padeyes that surrounded the generator to form a spider web of restraints.

“All secure, Lieutenant,” Murphy’s voice said over the command circuit.

“Very well. Ms. Dresser, would you care to check the restraints?”

“I would, Lieutenant.”

Frees felt a moment of irritation. He had made the offer out of courtesy, not expecting her to take him up on it. Hadn’t she watched them while they worked? He stood with his boots against the starship’s hull and a crescent Earth overhead as Laura Dresser checked the tension meters built into each strap. Finally, she turned to him and said, “Good job, Lieutenant. Now let’s go back and get the power reactor before we patch the generator into the ship’s star drive.”

“Very well, Ms. Dresser. You heard her, men! Back to the freighter. We’ve a power reactor to offload.”

#

Ensign Niles Pendergast sat at the sensor station in the bowels of
Magellan
and watched an impossibly large ship make the slow climb from Earth. According to the glowing green digits on his screen, the vessel was more than one hundred kilometers in diameter. In fact, the ship was nowhere near that large. Or rather, it was, but it was not.

The vessel climbing toward them was a solar-sail-powered racing yacht out of Earth parking orbit. They had watched it climb laboriously away from the planet for the past three days. The sail was every bit as large as the computer claimed, but so thin that a thousand sheets of the mirrored polymer made a stack thinner than tissue paper. As for the yacht itself, that was a pod barely large enough to carry its crew of three and minimal life support equipment. Conditions aboard were so primitive that the yacht’s crew lived in their suits. Pendergast had heard that at the finish of each year’s Solar Regatta, there were so many showers taken aboard the host station that water had to be rationed.

“What’s that you are looking at Mr. Pendergast?” Chief Newman asked from his station beside the ensign’s. The chief was monitoring the team sweating the new stardrive generator in place on
Magellan
’s hull. There was considerable profanity on Channel 3, not coincidentally; the one the Lady VIP’s suit was not equipped to receive.

“That solar yacht is back, Chief, bigger than ever.”

“Wonder what a yacht is doing in polar orbit, sir?” the chief asked aloud. His tone was respectful enough, but the words conveyed the message that Pendergast should be wondering too.

“He is close enough, maybe we should find out,” the ensign agreed. He punched a control and caused a high gain antenna to slew to point where the control pod ought to be. “Space yacht, this is
Magellan
.

You are approaching a restricted area. Advise your intentions, over!”

There was no reply for more than a minute as Pendergast sent the same warning three times. Finally, a voice responded.

“Hello,
Magellan
, this is
Gossamer Gnat
. What restricted area?”

“Orbital Control has declared a 100 kilometer buffer zone around PoleStar Station to be off-limits to all traffic. What are your intentions?”

“Well, damn it, why doesn’t anyone ever tell me these things?” the exasperated voice exclaimed.

“If you kept up with your Notices to Spacers you would know that this station has been restricted for almost two months now.”

“What the hell for?”

“I am sure I don’t know,
Gossamer Gnat
. I just work here.”

“Be advised,
Magellan
, that I am having control problems. One of my anchor units is loose and in danger of separating. I could lose some of my rigging if it goes. I had planned to reef my sail and call at PoleStar for repairs.”

“Sorry,
Gossamer Gnat
, that will not be possible. I suggest you shift your sail and start spiraling down again. You can have a tug meet you for a return to equatorial orbit.”

“I need to make repairs,” the peevish voice replied.

“Are you declaring an emergency?” Pendergast asked. Since the days of airplanes, those words have held magic when spoken by a pilot-in-command. In this case, they would automatically clear the yacht for its approach to PoleStar Habitat. Coincidentally, the declaration would also leave the pilot liable for criminal and civil penalties if the emergency turned out not to be real.

There was a long pause before the voice responded, “Negative. The problem is not that bad. I will begin maneuvers to return to parking orbit immediately.”

“Good day to you, sir,” Pendergast said before switching off. “Well,” he thought, “that’s about all the excitement I can expect this watch.” He reminded himself of a time he had been on watch in the New Eden system when things had gotten much too exciting.

Just for fun, he used one of the big ultraviolet lasers to paint the light sail. The target was so frinking large at this close range that the picture took nearly thirty seconds to build on the screen. The sail, he noted, was the usual spinning disk with outrigger panels to aid in tilting the axis of rotation. Emanating from the sail were the fixed rigging and the control shrouds used in maneuvering, all of which were too thin to be seen against the blackness of space. Even to the laser display, it looked as though the tiny pod was suspended by magic from the vast dish shaped sail.

He ordered the computer to zoom in on the pod and waited while it did its work. The yacht’s life pod was little more than a formless splotch on the screen. He was about to return to the normal watch screen when he noticed a tiny speck separated from the pod by a few millimeters of blackness.

“Computer,” he commanded. “What is the speck of light at? ” He reeled off the coordinates without bothering to mark the spot with his cursor.

“Object is too small to identify,” came the musical reply. “It separated from the pod four minutes ago.”

“Do you still have it in sight?”

“Negative. It is not visible with normal wavelengths.”

“What do you think, Chief?” Pendergast asked Newman, who was now more interested in the ensign’s screen than he was in listening to the work party.

“Hit it with another scan.”

Pendergast ordered another laser sweep of the light sail. Suddenly, his screen was yelling at him and flashing alternate red and white.

“Warning! Object is under power. Repeat. Object is not in ballistic flight. Possible hostile intent.

Warning! ...”

For the second time in his young career, Niles Pendergast found himself in the unenviable position of calling the captain and telling him that something bad was happening.

#

Harlan Frees’s reflexes took over the moment the General Quarters alarm began to beep in his earphones. His crew of vacuum stevedores had just maneuvered the bulky fusion generator into position next to the stardrive generator, but had not yet started the long, slow descent to the hard point on the hull.

To the six spacers arrayed in a circle around the generator, he ordered. “Stand by to jettison! On the count of three. One, two, three, jettison!”

At the “Stand By” order, the six shifted their grips on the half-sphere. Twelve gloved hands moved under the outer rim of the generator, palms forward and up, as twelve knee joints flexed to prepare to lift. At the end of Frees’s count, all six put their backs into shoving the generator straight into the black sky. The velocity imparted was not great, but the big mass rose perceptibly as it began its journey away from the starship. Frees didn’t care where it went so long as Magellan had room to maneuver if needed.

“Haskens, Baker, get Ms. Dresser back to the airlock. Double time!”

The two spacers grabbed the surprised stardrive expert by the harness and jerked her off her feet. Using their free hands, they pulled themselves along the safety lines leading back to the lock. Frees chinned the control that would put him on the ship’s main command circuit.

“Frees, on the hull with six spacers and Ms. Dresser. I have her and two men headed in, awaiting orders.”

“Where’s that generator, Lieutenant?” the duty officer asked.

“On its way to infinity, sir. It will clear the danger zone in another thirty seconds.”

“Very well, stand by for orders.”

A moment later, the captain’s voice crackled on the circuit. “Frees, what is your consumable state?”

“We’ve oxygen for another four hours, Captain. Everything else is topped off.”

“There’s an object coming in from that solar yacht below us. Flight profile indicates a visitor in a vacuum suit, although we have yet to confirm that. The object does not show a locator beacon. I repeat, no beacon! I want you and a couple of your men to hook on maneuvering packs and go out to meet whatever it is. Understood?”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Frees switched to his local frequency. “Donner, Kurtzkov, you are with me. You other two get on packs and see if you can stabilize that damned reactor before it floats out of sight. Move it!”

#

Mark Rykand was more frightened than he had ever been in his entire life. He remembered the night he had thought up this scheme. He had been half smashed and feeling mad at the world. That was the only combination he could imagine that would cause him to consider such a damn fool stunt. He remembered how confidently he had assured Gunter Perlman that he could reach
Magellan
on his own, or failing that, merely call the station for someone to come pick him up. No problem, right? Somehow, the original picture of himself in a vacuum suit, sailing confidently toward a ship and station too small to see, had not included the heart that was now pounding in his ears and the adrenaline that saturated his blood. If only he hadn’t been so damned persuasive?