little more limp beneath his safety webbing. I looked up, caught the captain's eye.

"We'd better get out of here," I said in a low voice. "It looks like he's long gone, but I don't think we want to be here if he comes back."

"And we need to report this right away, too," Kittredge added.

"No!"

I would've jumped if there'd been any gravity to do it with. "Take it easy, colonel," the captain soothed him. "There's no one else alive down there—trust us, we made a complete infrared grid search while you were being brought up.

We've got to warn the Services—"

"No," Halveston repeated, much weaker this time. "You've got to go after him.

Now, before he gets too far away."

"But we don't even know what direction he's gone in," Kittredge told him.

"My pack... has the records of our... three nav satellites." Clearly, Halveston was fading fast. "He didn't think... take them out. Got the... para-Cerenkov rainbow... when he left."

And with the rainbow recorded from three directions we did indeed have the direction the ship had taken—at least until he came out of hyperspace and changed vectors. But it would normally be several days at the least before he did that. "All the more reason for us to go sound the alarm," I told Halveston.

"No time," Halveston gasped. "He'll get away, regroup with other Drymnu ships...

never identify him then. And the whole mind will know... how easily he got us."

And suddenly, for a handful of seconds, the pain cleared almost entirely from his face and a spark of life flared in his eyes. "Captain Garrett... as a command-rank officer of the Combined Services... I hereby commandeer the Volga... and order you to give chase... to the Drymnu ship... that destroyed Messenia. And to destroy it. Carry out your... orders... captain." And as his eyes again rolled up, the warbling of the life-failure alert broke into our stunned silence. Automatically, we floated back to give the med people room to work. We were still there, still silent, when the doc finally shut off the med sensors and covered Halveston's face. "Well?" the captain asked, glaring at the intercom and then at Kittredge and me in turn. "Now what do we do?"