Hali kept her attention on the scalpel, cleared her throat, and found her voice astonishingly calm. “Those things are meant to save lives, Murdoch, not take them.”

“I’ll be saving a lot of lives by getting rid of this TaoLini woman.” His voice reminded her of that faraway time when Ship had allowed her to be confronted by Foul-breath below the Hill of Skulls.

Ship? The unspoken plea filled her mind.

Ship made no response. It all depended on her then.

Ferry had stopped the gurney two paces from Murdoch and stood now at Hali’s left, trembling.

Murdoch waved the scalpel at them. “This is made to excise unnatural growth from a healthy body. She . . .” He glared at the unconscious Waela. “. . . defiles us.”

Again, Hali found her memory filled with the faces of the Hill of Skulls—passionate eyes and violence thinly restrained behind them. Murdoch’s face was one of those.

“You have no right,” she said.

“I have this.” He flicked the scalpel’s laser blade in a searing arc past her right cheek. “That’s all the right I need.”

“But Ship . . .”

“The ship be damned!” He took one step toward her, thrusting out with his free hand to sweep her aside.

In this instant, Ferry moved. He was so fast that Hali saw only the backwards jerk of Murdoch’s chin, the blur of old Ferry’s elbow. Murdoch went sprawling to the deck, the scalpel spinning from his hand. Hali was as shocked by the old man’s speed as by his action. Desperation moved Ferry.

“Go!” Ferry yelled at her. “Get Waela out of here!”

Murdoch was scrambling to his feet as Ferry lunged for him.

Hali moved instinctively. She grabbed the gurney, jerked it past the struggling men. Its howling wheels grated on her senses.

How much time do we have?

And she asked herself as she swept the gurney through the Bay Eight hatch: What made Ferry so desperate?

The sealed hatch into the freighter lay directly beyond the Bay Eight opening. She wheeled the gurney across the bump of the interlock and in ten steps brought it up short against the freighter’s hatch. It was then that she realized she could not escape without Ferry. He carried the freighter’s transit program. She stared at the control panel beside the hatch. Without the program, the freighter would land them at Colony. Her instincts told her that something worse than Murdoch awaited them there. Without that program, they could not enter the freighter—they would be cooked alive here in the Docking Bay. Without that program, she could not switch the freighter from automatic to life-support.