"Away Eight."

Climb alarm. "Thirty minutes. Commence target evaluation and selection."

"Magic numbers," I murmur. Seven and Eleven are the missiles that can't be launched.

"Eh?" My nearest neighbor gives me a puzzled look and headshake. The men think my brain was

pickled by civilian life.

The bugs don't give me a thing. Engineering is a graveyard peopled by specters reciting rosaries to Fusion and Annihilation. In Ops, Yanevich observes that the destroyer weathered the first pass

and was trying to run. The Commander's silence says this is no news to him. Nicastro ticks time in colorless tones.

Tension mounts faster than the temperature. Third time counts for all.

I amuse myself by nibbling tidbits of target evaluation data. Seven fusion warheads can do a hell

of a lot of damage.

Molten rock and metal and people are quickening into concave black glass lenses. A billion days

hence, perhaps, some eldritch descendant of a creature now wallowing mindlessly in a swamp will gaze on that lunar acne and wonder what the hell it means.

I wonder myself. What's the point?

Well, we can honestly say we didn't start this one.

Right now, with death a-stalk, the only question that matters is, How do we stay alive? The rest

is foam on the beer.

The universe is very narrow, here in Rathgeber's shadow. It's a long, lonely hallway through which even close friends can do little to ease one another's passage.

Again the ship lies panting in the embrace of that cold-hearted mistress of Climber warfare,

Waiting. Months of waiting. Climaxed by what? Eight scattered seconds of action. Damned minuscule flecks of meat in a huge, hard sandwich of time.

Almost indigestible.

My butt is driving me crazy. I can't count the times I've stayed seated longer, but those times I had the option of moving. Getting up could become an obsession. Got to move. Got to do something.

Anything...

Nicastro's countdown grows louder and louder. The ass-agony vanishes. Death is a bigger pain. I have a sudden, absolute conviction of my own mortality.

The orbitals will have their guns out. That hunter-killer will be ready. She'll be laying back, a big iron bushwacker eager for a dry-gulching.

Unless we were damned lucky and skragged her instel wave guides, she'll have howled for her packmates. They'll come whooping to avenge the base. We'll pull pressure off the squadrons stalking the convoy. I should be pleased with such success. But I can't get excited about the gospel according to St. Tan-nian.

The destroyers will be hours getting here. They'll be way too late to help Rathgeber. But I know they'll catch our trail. The way my life goes, it can't happen any other way.

Must be getting old. They say pessimism is a disease of the aged.

Here we go!

Missiles away. Energy weapons blazing. My little cannon sowing its seeds. There isn't much to see.

The same old bleached bones of an aborted worldlet acned by ground zeros. The silhouettes of startled beings in spacesuits. They'll remain forever in my memory, taking one futile step toward cover.

Ghostdom returns with a ship-wide shudder.

"Commander." Varese is speaking. Softly, metallically. "A low-intensity beam brushed us on the upper torus, at plates twenty-four and twenty-five. Damage appears minimal."

"Very well. Keep an eye on it."

Damned well better. Let's not buy any trouble we could avoid with a little attention to detail.

I secure the cannon board, then bestow a negative blessing on our illustrious Admiral. His madman's game put us in this predicament. Being a pawn on a galactic chessboard wasn't what I had in mind when I asked on. The rewards are too small, except in pain and doubt.

"Secure from general quarters," the Commander orders. "One hour, gentlemen."

I exchange glances with Piniaz. This is an unprecedented breach of Climb procedure. The crew is supposed to remain at battle stations any time the ship is in Climb.

No one argues. We all need to move around, to interrupt tension with frivolous activity.

Yet work goes on. I'm the one man free to stray far from my station. I duck into Ops when the hatches open.

Fisherman hasn't moved, though in Climb he and his station are useless. Yanevich, more the butterfly than usual, flutters round the compartment. Westhause and the Commander hug the astrogation consoles. Already they're trying to outguess the hounds.

Rose, Throdahl, and Laramie have a tricomer game of When I get back to Canaan going. It ignores the fact that we have missiles aboard. They're banking on the elevator damage's being irreparable.

The names, addresses, and special talents of loose women volley around, often accompanied by the hull numbers of the ships of the men who have primary claim to them.

Chief Nicastro is staying out of the way, imitating a statue. He moves just once that I see, to thumb a switch and announce, "Forty-five minutes."

I want desperately to badger the Old Man. Will he go norm and clear the elevator right away? Will

he run as far and fast as he can? I can think of arguments for both courses.

He has no tune to waste on me.

Time has turned its coat. It's gone over to the other firm. It's become their standard-bearer,

almost. Whatever the Old Man decides, he has to do it quick. The death hounds are slavering toward

Rathgeber.

No one has time for me. If they're not on station, they're busy scrubbing mold. They're losing themselves in ritual. I'll try Ship's Services and Engineering.

Same story. The Commander's ploy hasn't worked. After a moment of release, the men have grown tense again, retreating into themselves. Even Diekereide is stone-silent.

Trudging back, I note a lump in my hammock. "Where you been, fat boy?"

Fearless opens his eye, yawns, meows softly. I scratch his head listlessly. His purr has no heart in it either. "Going to be hard times," I tell him. He's getting lean. He's been on short rations lately.

Fearless is in one of his lonely moods. So am I. I'm a little hurt. They're shutting me out. We share a silent commiseration, the cat and I. My thoughts, when not lusting after hammock, wolf after other worlds, other times, other companions. I'm very sorry that I'm here.

The reporter, the observer, ideally, remains neutral and detached. However, I've altered the experiment simply by being here. I've tried to be both remote and intimate, bom Climber man and reporter. I've failed. My shipmates, so young, came to Navy with near-virgin pasts. Trying to mirror then: innocence, I've kept my own past fairly private.

And so I've been hiding from myself as well.

There with the cat, waiting and wishing I could sleep, I rediscover my once-had-beens and should- have-dones, the tortoise shell of pain and past all men drag with them forever.

A dam cracks. It begins as a leak... I understand why so many mouths are sealed.

This ship is filled with a conviction of imminent death, tainted with only the slightest

uncertainty.

Maybe now... Maybe in a few hours. The condemned man wants to order his life and explain everything. To, perhaps, make someone understand.