Carefully, she locked her power-gripping lower hands around his wrists, and freed her uppers. Both hands working together easily peeled his clutching fingers from the hypodermic. She held it up and crooned, "This won't hurt a bit."

"No, no—"

He was wriggling too much for her inexperience to try for a swift venous injection, so she went for a deltoid muscle instead, and went on holding him until he grew woozy and weak, which took several minutes. After that, it was easy to immobilize him under the steri-shield.

She looked over his tray of instruments, and touched them wonderingly. "How far should I carry this turnabout, do you think?" she asked aloud.

He whimpered in his wooziness and twitched feebly against the soft restraints, panic in his eyes. Claire's eyes lit; she threw back her head and laughed, really laughed, for the first time in—how long? She couldn't remember.

She put her lips near his ear, and spoke clearly. "I don't have to."

She was still laughing softly when she sealed the doors to the treatment room behind her and flew down the corridor toward refuge.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

It had been a mistake to let Ti insist on docking to the superjumper, Silver realized, as the crunch and shudder of their impact with the docking clamps reverberated through the pusher. Zara, hovering anxiously, emitted a tiny moan. Ti snarled wordlessly over his shoulder at her; returned his fraying attention to the controls.

No—her mistake, to let his downsider, male, legged authority override her own reason—she knew he wasn't rated for these pushers, he'd told her so himself. He was only the authority after they got inside the superjumper.

No, she told herself firmly, not even then.

"Zara," she called, "take the controls."

"Dammit," Ti began, "if you'd just—"

"We need Ti too much on the com channels to spare him for piloting," Silver inserted, hoping desperately Ti would not spurn this offered sop for his pride.

"Mm." Grudgingly, Ti let Zara shoulder him aside.

The flex tube docking ring wouldn't seal properly. A second docking, and all the hopeful jiggling the auto-waldos could supply, couldn't make the locking ring seal properly. Silver either feared she would die, or wished she could, she wasn't sure. All her palms sweated, and transferring the laser-solderer from one to another only made the grip clammier.

"See," said Ti to Zara, "you can't do any better."

Zara glared at him. "You bent one of the rings, you dipstick. You better hope it's theirs and not ours."

"That's 'dipshit'," Jon, laboring back by the hatch trying to make it seal, corrected helpfully. "If you're going to use downsider terminology, get it right."

"Pusher R-26 calling GalacTech Superjumper D-620," Ti quavered into the com. "Von, we're going to have to disengage and come around to the other side. This isn't working."