A Grand Tour

insignia; like Flowker, she was barefoot. She jumped up when Mincio appeared but remained tangled in the baggy trousers of the girl who'd been entertaining her.

The third girl was by herself, but the green uniform jacket on the cushion didn't belong to her. A commode flushing in the adjacent room explained where the garment's owner was. The coat sleeves had gold braid, cuff rings with the legend Rienzi, and the shoulder flashes of the People's Republic of Haven. As elsewhere in Region Twelve, the Peeps were on very good terms with local League officialdom.

Mincio drew herself up to what she hoped was 'Attention.' 'Sir!' she said. She threw Flowker a salute as crisp as she could make it after fifteen minutes' coaching from Harpe — all there'd been time for.

It was a terrible salute, just terrible; her right elbow seemed to be in the wrong place and she couldn't for the life of her remember what her left hand was supposed to be doing. The saving graces were that the present audience might never have seen a Manticoran salute delivered properly, and that they couldn't have been more dumbfounded by the situation if the floor had collapsed beneath them.

'Who the hell are you?' Flowker said. He tried to stand but his legs were crossed; he rose to a half-squat, then flopped down on the cushion again.

'Commander Edith Mincio,' Mincio said, shifting her legs to something like 'Parade Rest.' 'First Officer of Her Majesty's Ship Ajax, on patrol from our Hope station. I'm here as representative of Captain Sir Hakon—'

A man burst from the commode, one hand holding up the uniform trousers he hadn't managed to close properly.

'—Nessler, Earl of Greatgap.'

'What's she doing here!' the Peep demanded, looking first to Flowker and then at the Gendarmerie major. 'You didn't tell me there was a Manticoran ship operating on Hope!'

'How the hell would I know, Westervelt?' said the liaison officer peevishly. 'Do I look like I know what she's doing here?'

As Flowker struggled to his feet — successfully this time — Mincio said, 'Sir, by long-established interstellar law, the armed vessels of belligerent powers are to leave the sovereign territory of neutrals within forty-eight T-hours of notice being given by one party to the conflict. I'm here to deliver that notice to you as the representative of the neutral power.'

'This is League territory!' Westervelt said. He was a tall, stooping man; soft rather than fat. His hair was impressively thick, but it didn't match the color of his eyebrows. 'You can't order me out of here!'

'Of course not,' Mincio agreed. The three girls in harem costumes had moved close together and were watching avidly. They'd unexpectedly become the audience rather than the entertainment. 'But Officer Flowker will do so under the provisions of interstellar law, and Ajax will most certainly attack your vessel upon the expiry of that deadline whether or not you've obeyed the League authorities.'

'Now see here…' said Flowker. He bent to grope at the cushion where he'd been sitting. His tunic lay crumpled against the back wall where he couldn't have located it without taking his eyes away from Mincio.

He straightened and continued, 'You can't attack the Rienzi in League space, and I'm not going to order them away. Look, go fight your war—'

'I beg your pardon, Officer Flowker,' Mincio said with no more emotion than the blade of a band saw. 'If you refuse to give the required notice, Air is no longer neutral territory. If your legal officer can't explain the situation to you, I'm sure your Ministry of Protectorate Affairs will do so in great detail during its investigation.'

She drew a chronometer, flat as a playing card, from the outer breast of her tunic. The timepiece was a useful relic of Nessler's naval service, and she entered the present time, then put the chronometer back.

'Good day to you, Officer Flowker,' she said, wondering if she ought to salute again.

'We don't need an investigation, Flowker,' the Gendarmerie major said, the first time she'd spoken. 'If they start looking at the staff payrol…'

'Goddammit, what do you expect me to do?' Flowker shouted. 'Does this look like it was my idea? I —'

'Look, Flowker—' said Westervelt with a worried expression.

'You get your ship out of here!' Flowker said. Turning his furious glare toward Mincio he went on, 'You both get your damned ships out of League space! Forty-eight hours, forty-eight minutes — I don't care, I just want you out!'

'I'll report your cooperative attitude to Captain Nessler, Sir,' Mincio said. Deciding not to risk another salute, she turned on her heel and strode from the office.

Westervelt spat at her back. He missed.

* * *

On the Ajax 's main optical screen a cutter maneuvered to dock with the Rienzi; it was the third in the past hour. The image appeared to rotate slowly because the two cruisers were in different orbits. The Rienzi 's pinnace edged toward the bottom of the display as it dropped for another load of spacers.

Mincio sighed. 'I'd begun to think they were going to ignore the deadline,' she said to Kapp. 'I wondered what would happen then.'

'The Peeps never manage to do anything to schedule,' the petty officer said, her eyes scanning ranks of miniature displays. She'd set her console to echo all the bridge screens; the other positions had only a Melungeon on duty. 'The Dole Fleet, they're even worse than usual. Thirty hours to do what'd take us twelve, that's about right.'

She and Mincio were the only Manticorans on the bridge. The others and most of the Melungeons were readying more anti-missile missiles for use.

At the moment only thirteen countermissiles were fully operable. Since a Peep heavy cruiser could launch more missiles than that in a single broadside, the pragmatic reality was more chilling than superstition could be.

The total stock of countermissiles aboard Ajax was fifty-six. Nessler said they might cannibalize enough parts from the junkers to add fifteen or sixteen more to the thirteen. After that, defense was up to the laser clusters. Mincio had already seen the vessel's lasers in operation.

'Well, at least we can make it look like a fight,' Kapp said. Somebody reliable had to be on the bridge; Nessler, as Captain, had decided it was her. She'd obviously prefer to be getting her hands dirty in a place she didn't have to watch the hugely superior Peep warship preparing for battle.

'Nessler…' Mincio said. 'That is, Captain Nessler says we're just going to launch one, ah, missile and run. Launch our pretend missile, that is. And hope the Peeps choose to give us a wide berth in case we might do better the next time.'

Kapp snorted. 'Right, the next time,' she said caustically.

She caught herself with a cough. 'That is, I think there's a damned good chance it'll work. It's quite, well, possible. Anyway, it's better than what happened to the cutters, and better than what those bastards'd do to us if they found us on Hope.' She gave Mincio a lopsided grin. 'Besides, it's our job, ain't it?'

'Yes,' said Mincio, 'it is.'

It was the job of every decent human being to fight evil; people who destroyed lifeboats were evil. It was a simple equation.

Unfortunately, Mincio was too good a historian to believe that evil always lost.

* * *

Ajax shuddered in dynamic stasis. The planet rotated beneath while the cruiser's reaction thrusters lifted her nose before her impeller wedge carried her into a higher orbit. The Rienzi 's impeller nodes were hot but the Peeps weren't underway yet. The 'Manticoran' ship's wedge came up, boosting her clear of the planetary parking patterns at a leisurely two hundred gravities. Hopefully, it looked like the leisure of the totally confident rather than the concession to a less than fully reliable inertial compensator which it actually was.

Behind them, Rienzi began to move at last. She climbed away from the planet, following roughly in Ajax 's wake, and Mincio licked her lips. By interstellar law, a