“Go on, son,” Lindenhoff said. “You’re holding up the show.”

Imbry felt the knotted tension straining at his throat. He snatched up his pack.

“All right,” he said harshly. He strode over to his ship, skirting out of the way of the little trucks that were humming back and forth around the ships, carrying supplies and maintenance crewmen. The flight deck echoed back to the clangs of slammed access hatches, the crash of a dropped wrench, and the soft whir of truck motors. Maintenance men were running back and forth, completing final checks, and armorers struggled with the heavy belts of ammunition being loaded into the guns on Jusek’s ship. In the harsh glare of work lights, Imbry climbed up through his hatch, slammed it shut, and got up into his control compartment.

The ship was a slightly converted model of the standard TSN carrier scout.

He fingered the controls distastefully. Grimacing, he jacked in his communication leads and contacted the tower for a check. Then he set up his flight plan in the ballistic computer, interlocked his AutoNav, and sat back, waiting.

Lindenhoff and his fearsome scar. Souvenir of danger on a frontier world? Badge of courage? Symbol of intrepidness?

Actually, he’d gotten it when a piece of scaffolding fell on him during a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, well before he ever came aboard the Saint Marie.

The flight deck cleared. Imbry set his ship’s circulators. The flight-deck alarm blasted into life.

The deck canopy slid aside, and the flight deck’s air billowed out into space. Imbry energized his main drive.

“Imbry clear for launch.”

“Check, Imbry. Launch in ten.”

He counted down, braced back against his couch. The catapult rammed him up off the deck, and he fired his engines. He rose high above the Sainte Marie, hovering, and then the ship nosed down and he trailed a wake of fire across the spangled night, in toward the foreign sun.