hat the friction of his palm against
the wall could be used as a brake.

He wasn't used to maneuvering without gravity; he'd been taught it in
Cadets, of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away. When the
pseudograv generators had gone out, he'd retched all over the place, but
now his stomach was empty, and the nausea had gone.

He had automatically oriented himself in the corridors so that the doors
of the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling
"above" and the deck "below." Otherwise, he might have lost his sense of
direction completely in the complex maze of the interstellar
battleship.

_Or_, he corrected himself, _what's left of a battleship_.

And what _was_ left? Just Al Pendray and less than half of the
once-mighty _Shane_.

The door to the lifeboat hold loomed ahead in the beam of the
flashlight, and Pendray braked himself to a stop. He just looked at the
dogged port for a few seconds.

_Let there be a boat in there_, he thought. _Just a boat, that's all I
ask. And air_, he added as an afterthought. Then his hand went out to
the dog handle and turned.

The door cracked easily. There was air on the other side. Pendray
breathed a sigh of relief, braced his good foot against the wall, and
pulled the door open.

The little lifeboat was there, nestled tightly in her cradle. For the
first time since the _Shane_ had been hit, Pendray's face broke into a
broad smile. The fear that had been within him faded a little, and the
darkness of the crippled ship seemed to be lessened.

Then the beam of his torch caught the little red tag on the air lock of
the lifeboat. _Repair Work Under Way--Do Not Remove This Tag Without
Proper Authority._

That explained why the lifeboat hadn't been used by the other crewmen.

Pendray's mind was numb as he opened the air lock of the small craft. He
didn't even attempt to think. All he wanted was to see exactly how the
vessel had been disabled by the repair crew. He went inside.

The lights were working in the lifeboat. That showed that its power was
still functioning. He glanced over the instrument-and-control panels. No
red tags on them, at least. Just to make sure, he opened them up, one by
one, and looked inside. Nothing wrong, apparently.

Maybe it had just been some minor repair--a broken lighting switch or
something. But he didn't dare hope yet.

He went through the door in the tiny cabin that led to the engine
compartment, and he saw