As a matter of safety, passengers were warned when either was about to be changed deliberately; there had been no warning this time. Main power? Molly thought. No, there was still light, and instruments were still functioning. Only drive seemed affected. No alarms, either visual or auditory, were making themselves obvious. The heavy-handed student pilot again? If so, there should be acceleration warning and a resumption of weight in, at the outside, a few seconds. Molly held her chair arm and waited.

No warning. No weight. For fully a minute, no word. The students in the conning room remained at their instruments, but a faint murmur of conversation began to interrupt the sacrosanct work atmosphere—some pairs present didn’t need translators, and the neutral gas mixture did carry sound—and faces lifted from monitor screens. Molly looked down at the Nethneen beside her and could tell that his right pair of eyes was meeting her own. Even Joe was willing to talk.

“What’s going on?” She hoped her translator was not betraying her uneasiness; she had done her best, over the last few months, to condition it to convey to her any innuendo it could read in incoming messages, but would be just as glad now to have that a one-way operation. Joe’s answer seemed free of worry, but that could be due to similar management at his own end of the communication link.

“I don’t know. No normal sequence within my experience is running, but I have never ridden in a craft of this type before, so that is not very meaningful. I can suggest nothing but to wait a reasonable time and, if no information is received, to follow standard emergency usage.”

“I know the emergency procedures. What’s a reasonable time?”

The Nethneen was spared the need to answer. Another voice, inhumanly calm, sounded in both their translators.

“Permanent crew to Condition Four stations.