acknowledged it with a puckish nod, and smiled blandly at Bothari.

Bothari was unamused. Not ironically unamused, befitting the

interplay, as his guerilla warfare with Mrs. Naismith on the subject of Miles's cultural mores usually was; but genuinely enraged. An odd

knot formed in Miles's stomach. He came to a species of attention,

querying his bodyguard with puzzled eyes.

"She goes with us," Bothari growled. Elena nearly clapped her hands in triumph, although Mrs. Naismith's list of proposed treats

had plainly eroded her resolve not to be left sitting in the baggage train when the troops moved out. But Bothari's eyes raked past his

daughter unresponsively, lingered for a last frown at the holovid, and met Miles's—belt buckle.

"Excuse me, my lord. I'll—patrol the hall, until you're ready to leave again." He exited stiffly, great hands, all bone and tendon, vein and corded muscle, held half-curled by his sides.

Yes, go, thought Miles, and see if you can patrol up your self-

control out there. Overreacting a tad, aren't you? Admittedly, nobody likes having their tail twisted.

"Whew," said Mayhew, as the door closed. "What bit him?"

"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Naismith. "I hope I didn't offend him." But she added under her breath, "The hypocritical old stick . . ."

"He'll come down," Miles promised. "Just leave him alone for a while. Meantime, there's work to do. You heard the man, Elena.

Supplies for a crew of two and a supercargo of four."

* * *

The next 48 hours were a blur of motion. To prepare an eight-week

run for the old ship within that time limit would have been mind-

boggling for an ordinary cargo, but crammed atop that were extras

needed for the camouflage scheme. These included a partial cargo of hastily purchased items to provide them with a real manifest in which to embed the false, and supplies needed for rearranging the cargo

hold bulkheads, flung aboard to wait the actual work to be done en

route. Most vital, and correspondingly expensive, were the extremely advanced Betan mass detector jammers, to be run off the ship's

artificial gravity and with which, Miles hoped, they would foil the Oseran Mercenaries' cargo check. It had taken all the simulated

political weight Miles could muster on the basis of his father's name to convince the Betan company representative that he was a qualified purchaser of the new and still partially classified equipment.

The mass jammers came with an astonishingly lengthy file of

instructions. Miles, studying them in bewilderment, began to have

qualms over Baz Jesek's qualifications as an engineer. These gave

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way, as the hours passed, to even more frantic doubts about whether the man was going to show at all. The level of liquid in Mayhew's