“An excellent suggestion, Mr. Canning.” The admiral nodded and raised his glass in a toast. “To Commander Harrington, may she have other things to concern herself with very shortly,” he murmured.

Chapter Sixteen

SCOTTY Tremaine hit the powered adjustment button and stretched hugely as the purring motor moved the copilot’s seat back from the pinnace’s console. He rotated his shoulder joints, grimacing as he worked the stiffness from them, then rose.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Ruth,” he told his pilot.

“No sweat, Mr. Tremaine.” Coxswain Third Class Ruth Kleinmeuller grinned. “I don’t guess the planet’s going anywhere till you get back, Sir.”

“Probably not,” he agreed, and opened the cockpit hatch. He made his way down the cramped passage (pinnaces were little larger than pre-space jumbo jets) to the flight engineer’s cubicle and poked his head in.

“How’s it going?”

“Nothing, Sir.” The rating manning the sensor equipment wrinkled her nose at him. “As far as this outfit’s concerned, we’re flying over lots and lots of nothing.”

“I see.” Tremaine smothered a smile at her tone. Her reply was respectful and reasonably cheerful, but he heard the disgust under its surface. His people had been less than pleased to be detached to customs work at the outset, but that had changed over the past few hectic weeks. They’d learned to take a positive glee in making a major bust, and what it was doing to their bank accounts back home didn’t hurt. Now they actively resented any diversion from the steadily thinner pickings of the orbital traffic.

“Y’know, Sir,” a voice said from behind him, “without more pinnaces, this is going to take a long time.”

Tremaine turned to face PO Harkness.

“Yes, PO, I do know,” he said mildly. “But unless you happen to have a half-dozen more of them tucked away in your locker, I don’t see anyone else we can assign to it. Do you?”

“No, Sir,” Harkness said. The ensign, he reflected, had come a long way since that first contraband discovery. Harkness liked Tremaine—he was neither an arrogant snot, like too many ensigns who were afraid of betraying their inexperience, nor the sort to avoid responsibility—but he’d been testing the youngster. There were many ways to find out just what an officer had inside, and there were depths to young Mr. Tremaine the casual observer might not suspect.

“I was just thinking, Sir,” the petty officer went on after a moment.

“About what, PO?”

“Well, Sir, it occurred to me that we’re diverting one pinnace full-time from customs work, right?” Tremaine nodded. “With the close passes we have to make, this is going to take days then,” Harkness went on, “but what about all the other boats?” Tremaine cocked his head and made a little “go on” gesture with his fingers. “The thing I was thinking, Sir, is that each of those other boats is making at least six space-to-ground passes every day—down and back every time they change off crews—and that got me started wondering. Couldn’t we maybe reroute their landings and liftoffs? I mean, they’ve got the same sensors we’ve got, don’t they?”