Coa, he noted, as he removed her, more gently than the others, seemed dazed and unknowing. There were no broken bones about her, but she appeared to have been pinched, or crushed on one side by just a touch of what had killed the others. Her suit was tight and intact. He thought she might make it, after all.

Seating himself in the captain’s chair, he called the gun stations and other crew posts.

“Report,” he ordered.

Gun stations One and Five through Eight answered.

“We’re going in planetward,” he said. “All able men abandon the weapon stations for now and form a working crew to seal ship and pump some air back in here. Those not sealed off, assemble in lounge. Senior surviving crewman to take charge.”

There was a slight pause. Then a voice spoke back to him.

“Gun Maintenanceman Ordovya,” it said. “I seem to be surviving Senior, sir. Is this the captain?”

“Staff Liaison Graeme, Acting Captain. Your officers are dead. As ranking man here, I’ve taken command. You have your orders, Maintenanceman.”

“Yes, sir.” The voice signed off.

Donal set himself about the task of remembering his ship training. He got the C4J underway toward Oriente and checked all instruments. After a while, the flare went out abruptly overhead and a slow, hissing noise registered on his eardrums—at first faintly, then scaling rapidly up in volume and tone to a shriek. His suit lost some of its drum-tightness.

A few moments later, a hand tapped him on his shoulder. He turned around to look at a blond-headed crewman with his helmet tilted back.

“Ship tight, sir,” said the crewman. “I’m Ordovya.”

Donal loosened his own helmet and flipped it back, inhaling the room air gratefully.

“See to the First Officer,” he ordered. “Do we have anything in the way of a medic aboard?”

“No live medic, sir. We’re too small to rate one. Freeze unit, though.”

“Freeze her, then. And get the men back to their posts. We’ll be on top of the action again in another twenty minutes.”

Ordovya went off. Donal sat at his controls, taking the C4J in cautiously and with the greatest possible margins of safety. In principle, he knew how to operate the craft he was seated in; but no one knew better than he what a far cry he was from being an experienced pilot and captain. He could handle this craft the way someone who has taken half a dozen riding lessons can handle a horse—that is, he knew what to do, but he did none of it instinctively. Where Andresen had taken in the readings of all his instruments at a glance and reacted immediately, Donal concentrated on the half dozen main telltales and debated with himself before acting.