Johnson's Climber preceded ours in. The girls left love notes.

"How the hell did they know we were behind them?" I ask.

"Computers," Yanevich says, amused. "With enough entries you can determine the patrol pattern.

It's never completely random."

"Oh." I've watched Rose and Canzoneri play the game when they have nothing else to run. They also try to identify the eido. It's just time-killing. The eido is as anonymous as ever.

They're making a huge project of trying to predict first contact. To hedge the pool. They .run a fresh program every beacon call, buy more pool slips, and are convinced they're going to make a killing. The pot keeps growing as the weeks roll along. There're several thousand Conmarks in it already.

The compartment grows deadly still. Reverently, Throdahl says, "Here it comes."

"... convoy in zone Twelve Echo making the line for Thompson's System. Ten and six. Am in pursuit.

Eighty-four Dee."

I estimate quickly. We aren't that far away. We could get there if we hauled ass. Must be an important convoy, too. Six escorts for ten logistical hulls is a heavy ratio, unless they're battle units coincidentally moving up. The other firm likes to kill two birds with one stone.

The orders don't come. Climber Command won't abandon patrol routine to get something going.

Yanevich tries to raise my spirits by telling me, "We'll get our shot. Maybe sooner than you really want."

The Commander shouts down. "I'm going to give him a chance to work off his boredom, Mr. Yanevich.

Gunnery exercises next observation break. We'll see what he can do with his toy."

Now I know why Bradley has been hoarding waste canisters. They'll make nice targets.

Always something strange going on here. And no one explains anything till it's my turn in the barrel.

The Old Man is no help. For no reason I can fathom, he keeps every ship's order ultra top clam till the last second. What point security out here? The only rationale I can see is, he wants the crew ready for anything.

He is, probably, following Command directives. Logic never has much to do with security procedure.

Do those clowns think our competitors have an agent aboard?

Not bloody likely. There's a limit to the power of disguise.

Gunnery exercises are little more than gun error trials. Everything but the final firing order is handled by computer. A dull go. No sport. But a break in an otherwise oppressively monotonous routine. The Energy Gunners spear their targets on second shot. I batter mine to shrapnel with my third short burst. The range, however, isn't extreme.

Later, I suppose, there'll be exercises on full manual, or with limited computer assistance, simulating various states of battle damage.

I do find a constant error in gun train or gun train order. I enter a correction constant. So much for another exciting day.

Curious that gunnery exercises weren't scheduled till this late in the patrol. Did the Commander know there would be no action? The man nearest me is an Energy Fire Control Technician named Kuyrath. I ask him, "How come the Old Man put this off so long?"

"Typical crap, probably. Command probably sent us out knowing we wouldn't run into anything. Just for the hell of it. Just to have us jacking around. And you wonder why morale stinks?"

He has a lot more to say. None of it compliments Command. He hasn't a bad word for the Commander.

But now I'm wolfing off along a new spoor.

ITve decided that I've been overlooking an inexplicable undercurrent of confidence among the more experienced men.

As if they knew no action was imminent. If gunnery exercises are a signal, that should change. We shall see.

The changes comes, and sooner than any of us expect. With the possible exception of Climber Command.

The word is waiting at the next beacon, which is the contact-control for our present patrol sector.

There won't be time for manual gunnery exercises.

First Contact Pushing hell out of two months now. Same old zigzag. One step back, two forward. But...

Our baseline has twisted around. We're headed toward Canaan now. More or less. Westhause figures

about twelve years to get there at our present rate of approach. We're not taking it in one big rush.

We're turned around. That's the point. Something has happened. We have hunting orders. At last.

Like everything else about this patrol, they make no sense.

Command has targeted us a vessel crippled more than a year ago. She's been rediscovered, running in norm. Must be a crafty bunch, to have kept their heads down this long.

The Old Man doesn't like it. He keeps mumbling, "Coup de grace," and, "Why waste the time? The poor bastards deserve better." I've never seen him so sour.

None of the others are excited, either.

I'm nervous as hell. It's been a long time.

Yanevich says it could get complicated. The target is running for the hunter-killer base we called Rathgeber before the other firm took it away. She is pushing .4 c. That'll mean some fancy maneuvering when we engage her.

And some trick shooting. That's a lot of inherent velocity. We haven't the time or fuel to match it. "What are they doing for fuel?" I ask.

"Ramscooping, probably," Yanevich says. 'They may have tankers dumping hydrogen ahead of her."

Still, she must have been fat to start. Maybe she's a tanker herself. "Why the hell didn't they abandon her? Or, if she's that important, why didn't a repair ship come fix her generators?"

Yanevich shrugs. "Maybe they got a lot of pressure from our people back then. Maybe running in norm was their only option."

Our first chore will be to relocate the ship. Those aren't dummies running the other team. They'll know she's been spotted. She'll be running a jagged course.

First we'll run a search pattern surrounding a baseline drawn from the target's last known position to her suspected destination. During the search, Piniaz will decide how to tackle a vessel traveling almost too fast to track. Point-four c in norm. That's smoking.

The obvious tactic is to drop hyper ahead and shove a missile flight down her throat. Hitting the tiny, necessary relative motion window would be a trick, though. The target is moving too fast to hit from even a slight angle. Knowing that, she'll be running a constantly changing course.

Shooting down the throat means shooting blind. The target is moving too fast. (That's an endless refrain, like a song with only one-line lyrics.) She'll run over us if we take time to aim. The Fire Control system needs a quarter second, after detection, to lock and fire. In that split second our target will traverse more than thirty thousand kilometers.

"You're right," I say. "They aren't dummies. I don't see how we can stop them. I suppose Command says we can't waste missiles."

Yanevich smiles. "You're thinking Climber now. Damned right. Never waste a missile on a cripple."

More seriously, "We couldn't use one. No time to target and program in norm, not enough computation capacity to compute simultaneity close enough to plop one into their laps from hyper.

Tannian should send minelayers. Seed the target path."

"Why're we bothering?"