"Yeah. And we'll have to have a way set up to reclamp each connection in the new configuration, too . . . gonna need more clamps, or something that can be made to work as clamps. . . . Go round up all your off-shift work gang. We're going to have to have a little emergency scrounging session."

Leo stopped wondering if he was going to survive the Great Takeover, and started wondering if he was going to survive until the Great Takeover. He prayed devoutly that Silver was having an easier time of it than himself.

*      *      *

Silver hoped earnestly that Leo was having an easier time of it than herself.

She hitched herself around in the acceleration couch, increasingly uncomfortable after their first eight hours of flight, and rested her chin on the padding to regard her crew, crammed in the pusher's cabin. The other quaddies were drooped and draped as she was; only Ti seemed comfortable, feet propped up and leaning back in his seat in the steady gee-forces.

"I saw this great holovid"—Siggy waved some hands enthusiastically—"that had a boarding battle. The marines used magnetic mines to blow holes like bubble cheese in the side of the mothership and just poured through." He added a weird ululating cry for sound effects. "The aliens were running every which way, stuff flying everywhere as the air blew out—"

"I saw that one," said Ti. "Nest of Doom, right?"

"You got it for us," reminded Silver.

"Did you know it had a sequel?" said Ti aside to Siggy. "The Nest's Revenge."

"No, really? Do you suppose—"

"First of all," said Silver, "nobody has found any intelligent aliens yet, hostile or not, secondly, we don't have any magnetic mines," thanks be, "and thirdly, I don't think Ti wants a lot of unsightly holes blown in the side of his ship."

"Well, no," conceded Ti.

"We will go in through the airlock," said Silver firmly, "which was designed for just that purpose. I think the jumpship crew will be surprised enough when we put them in their escape pod and launch it, without, um, frightening them into doing who-knows-what with a lot of premature whooping. Even if Colonel Wayne in Nest of Doom led his troops into battle with his rebel yell over their comlinks, I don't think real marines would do that. It would be bound to interfere with their communications." She frowned Siggy into submission.

"We'll just do it Leo's way," Silver went on, "and point the laser-solderers at them. They don't know us—they wouldn't know whether we'd fire or not." How, after all, could strangers know what she didn't know herself? "Speaking of which, how do we know which superjumper to"—she groped for terminology—"cut out of the herd? It ought to be easier to get permission to come aboard if the crew's someone Ti knows well. On the other hand, it might be harder to . . ." She trailed off, disliking the thought. "Especially if they tried to fight back."