He might have done that if the mutineers planned something really foul, like cutting the computer out and trying to run Discipline manually.

The mutiny was a blank to Sharls.

He had edited those memories. He even remembered why. The descendants of the mutineers would need Sharls Davis Kendy someday. It was not good that he hold grudges against specific ancestors, against old names. But had he been too thorough?

-There! CARM #6's communications system had come alive.

It was a thousand kilometers behind him and something less than six thousand kilometers in toward Voy. Kendy did several things at once. Before his new orbit could carry him away, he restarted the drive. He beamed, "Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State."

The CARM autopilot responded.

"Link to me. Beam records."

He'd made mistakes enough during that unexpected contact twenty Earth years ago! At least he'd accomplished something: he'd broken the program that denied him access to the Cargo and Repair Module. The drive systems were beyond his reach. The original mutineers must have physically cut the fiber-optic cable. But the CARM would talk to him!

He'd instructed the autopilot to take photographs at ten-minute intervals. Reentry was in progress when he sent that message. Static might well have fuzzed him out. But pictures were streaming in.

Time passed at a furious rate. CARM #6 flamed as it plowed through thickening air, veering from plants and ponds and creatures. It dipped into a pond to refuel, then bedded itself in the Voy-ward tuft of the largest of a cluster (grove?) of integral trees. It stayed there, with not much of a view at all, for most of a Smoke Ring year. Flickering shapes carved cavities through the foliage and wove small branches into wasp's-nest structures. Abruptly the CARM backed into the sky, skittered outward under inexpert handling, and docked at the midpoint of the tree.

With another part of his mind, Kendy fiddled with Discipline's fusion motor. He could not match his orbit to that of the CARM. He must stay well outside the Smoke Ring to protect Discipline from corrosion. The best he could do was twice the CARM's orbital period, to dip low above the CARM's position once every ten hours and eight minutes. But he'd be in range for half an hour while his motor was firing.

More of his attention went to watching the CARM's lone occupant in real time.

Jeffer the "Scientist" was stored in memory. He had aged twenty Earth years: hair and beard going gray, wrinkles across his forehead (broken by a white line of scar that was a healing pink wound in Kendy's records), and knuckles turning knobby. Height: 2.3 meters. Mass: 86 kilograms. Long arms and legs, toes like stubby fingers, fingers like a spider's legs: long, fragile, the hands of a field surgeon.