et passage on the next
Kadell-bound transport the following day. Once spaceborne, Thane felt
a lot of his depression lift. There was a good chance they would reach
the Kadenar spaceport on Kadell IV before the other ship had left. In
the meantime there was Astrid....

By the time they had reached the second warp-line intersection Thane
had learned that Astrid had also attended the Systems University at
Beirut, three classes behind him. They'd had some of the same
professors and a couple of mutual friends. Thane told her of life on
Proxima, and she told him how she had lived and worked with her
father. Her talk was in the off-hand sort of vocal shorthand that
their generation shared. But through the facade, Thane could see that
she was immensely brilliant in research, fascinated with her work, and
at the same time, immensely lonely. She was animated when she spoke of
the work that she and her father had done but there was a different
sparkle in her yellow eyes when she talked of the university. Talks
with fellow students, a brief love affair, weekend trips to Tel Aviv
or New Rome--it was plain that she had badly missed it all in her
years in Norway, in the glittering, isolated laboratory far under the
snow.

And always there was recurrent alarm for her father. She broke off her
talk of the University and gripped his arm. "Roger, we must stop them.
If they take my father to Onzar, he'll be killed. And the movement.
What will happen to that?"

"The movement?" Roger Thane asked, puzzled.

"Why of course," she said, surprised. "Don't you know about it?"

Thane was about to answer, but just then there was the shummer as they
re-entered space at the second warp-line intersection. At the same
moment the red warning light in their compartment blinked. The
navigator's voice, with an undercurrent of alarm, came over the
intercom. "Emergency. Emergency! Crew to battle stations. Passengers
to lifeboats."

Roger and Astrid dashed out into the port corridor. The corridor
widened as they ran forward, and they were suddenly in the port fire
control center. An Onzarian officer, the Third from his insignia, was
at the fire control panel. Thane looked at the screen over the Third's
head. The ship was black and unmarked but if it was a pirate it was by
far the biggest Thane had ever seen. The whole black hulk was turning
in space, a hundred KM away, lining up its armament. It would only be
seconds. Thane looked at the Third. He seem