Until a few moments ago, Liberator's flight deck had been relatively quiet. Blake stood silhouetted against Zen's amber fascia, facing Avon across the console of the computer expert's flight station.

Avon's scathing tones were nothing less than he'd expected.

"As usual, I fail to follow your quantum leaps of pseudo logic, Blake."

With an indulgence he didn't really feel, Blake said, "Perhaps there's very little logic involved."

"I could have told you that."

"You just did," Jenna interjected from the pilot's station. To Blake, she added, "Course for Vaarn is laid in."

He nodded. "Zen, execute course for Vaarn in Sector 7, standard by four."

+CONFIRMED+

Blake came to stand near Avon's station. "It doesn't get very much simpler than cause and effect," he explained patiently. "Vaarn is the Federation's primary source of betonium ore for their FE missiles, and I intend to eliminate that source. Simple as that."

"With you, nothing is ever as 'simple as that.' We could be--"

Avon was interrupted by the whine of an alarm from the weapons console. Vila roused himself from a near-doze to turn it off.

Blake was beside him instantly. "What is it?"

Vila's hands moved hesitantly over the controls. "I dunno. Some minor fluctuation in the force wall energy field, or so it says. Zen's taking care of it. He...er...just needed the manual override cancelled."

Blake scowled at him. "Try staying awake, Vila."

"I am trying!"

"Extremely trying, most of the time," Avon said tersely.

Vila shot him a disgusted look, but ignored the insult. "It's all right now," he told Blake. "Zen's fixed it."

Satisfied, Blake turned away. But he'd no sooner drawn even with Avon than the computer tech resumed their argument as though nothing had ever interrupted it.

"The Federation are unlikely to have left Vaarn defenseless. In point of fact, a mining complex of that nature would undoubtedly be the most heavily guarded of all."

"He's right about that," Jenna added. "Otherwise it would only naturally be a prime target for every pirate with enough guns -- and nerve -- to hijack an ore carrier and get rich in a hurry."

"Sounds good to me," Vila put in, but as usual, no one acknowledged him.

Blake had drawn another tempering breath before he said, "I've already accounted for heavy defenses. We'll go in with the detector shield up, use the teleport to invade the main complex, then use their central control computers to set up a chain reaction explosion."

Jenna's eyes glittered. "Very neat."

"And very suicidal," Avon nearly cut her off. "You'll never get anywhere near the control complex. And the base is probably shielded, which means the teleport won't function."

Blake inclined his head, conceding the possibility. "I'll find another way in then."

Vila squirmed in his flight chair, aware that Blake's gaze had fallen on him.

"Well don't look at me. I gave up breaking into Federation complexes; it's bad for my life expectancy."

Avon grinned suddenly. "At long last, a voice of reason. Albeit from an unlikely source."

Blake saw Vila's face fall. As though alarmed that he had inadvertently agreed with Avon, the thief sat up straighter in his chair and said, "Now wait a minute. I didn't mean... That is, I don't think..."

"That's true. So why not try being quiet instead?" Avon turned abruptly back to Blake. "You're dragging us in blind with no possible prior knowledge of what we will be up against. And that is suicidal."

"Orac can advise us of the base defenses."

"Orac is only a machine. Even it cannot account for every contingency, particularly where human error is concerned."

Blake's patience was wearing thin, but he refused to allow Avon's goading to produce any visible result. "Yes," he said. "Well, no one can entirely account for that, I'm afraid."

+INFORMATION,+ Zen intoned, cutting into Blake's response. +ENERGY SHIELD MALFUNCTION HAS RESULTED IN MINOR BURN-OUT OF AUTO-NAVIGATIONAL CIRCUIT 12. THIS FAULT CANNOT BE ENTIRELY CORRECTED BY AUTOMATICS. ADJUSTMENT OF PRIMARY NAVIGATIONAL COMPUTER AT COMPONENT LEVEL WILL BE REQUIRED.+

Blake stifled a sigh, not sure whether he ought to be bothered or relieved. "That sounds rather like your province, Avon."

Glaring, Avon stepped down from the flight console. "Sooner or later, Blake," he said, voice a disquieting monotone, "you are going to push everyone aboard this ship too far."

Blake met the implied challenge head on. "And then what? They'll turn to you?"

The humorless smile returned. "There'll come a time."

For a protracted moment, Blake locked gazes with him. Then something in the tech's dark eyes made him break the contact, and he turned away uncomfortably, feigning disinterest.

"Just see to the computer, Avon."

Affecting a deliberate air of disdain, Avon fixed Blake with a final contemptuous look before he whirled and departed the flight deck.

Three people breathed audible sighs of relief in his wake.

"If looks could kill..." Jenna commented dryly.

"We'd all've been dead long ago!" Vila settled back into his chair again, but gave Blake a pleading look. "Do you have to antagonize him?"

"Me?" Blake vented a short laugh, trying unsuccessfully to relieve the tension. "I thought that was your forte, Vila. Some sort of honor-bound code among thieves, perhaps?"

"Eh?" Vila looked sorely affronted. "Oh now be fair. Avon's not actually a thief. Well, not in the real sense. I mean, he got caught, didn't he?"

Jenna exchanged an amused glance with Blake before she said pointedly, "So did you."

"Well that's different." A distinct pride edged Vila's voice. "I managed to steal something before I got caught. Several somethings. He never did."

Blake smiled. "Well he nearly did. Or so you've told me."

"Nearly doesn't count! We have a professional ethic about things like this you know."

"I'm sure you do."

"Same as smugglers' ethics, probably," Jenna teased. "Must make for terribly interesting company. Never know when one of them will put a knife through you."

Vila paled. "You speak for your friends, I'll speak for mine."

Blake's comment was forestalled by a soft voice calling his name. He turned to see Cally entering the flight deck, Gan close behind her with Orac in his arms. They moved to the lounge area, where Gan placed the activated computer on its customary stand.

"There's something I think you ought to hear," the Auron said tightly, and Blake was sure he heard a note of -- fear? -- in her voice. He sat down with the others as Gan took up a stance near Cally, Orac between them.

"We've just finished medical analyses on everyone aboard," the big man said. "Orac's been correlating data with the med-unit computers."

Vila moaned. "I knew it. I'm dying of something, aren't I? How long have I got, Cally?"

She didn't answer him. Instead, she said to the group, "Physically, we are all fine."

"Well that's nice to know," Jenna breathed. "So what's the problem then?"

Gan folded his large arms, glancing furtively at Cally. "Avon is the problem," he said.

"Avon's dying of something?" That was Vila again. "No, that can't be right. Nothing would dare."

Jenna shushed him. "He's down in the computer section," she told Cally, and started to rise. "I can call him if you--"

"No, not yet." Cally motioned her back. "I think you'd better hear what Orac has to say first."

Gan placed both hands on the little computer's transparent casing. "Orac," he said, "report on medical analysis, please. Psychological scan, subject, Kerr Avon."

Blake's head came up sharply at the mention of psychological scans, and he stared hard at Orac's flashing lights. "Well, Orac?" he said impatiently.

*I am working!* Orac snapped. *The complete report will require considerable time to relate.*

Cally scowled at it. "Then summarize."

*Very well. The final conclusion of psycho-analytical scan is that the subject, Kerr Avon, is psychologically unstable. Furthermore--*

Vila snorted. "Tell us something we don't know."

*Furthermore,* Orac repeated, *records and analysis concurrently reveal a marked hostility toward all forms of authority which has been evident from early childhood. As the probable result of prolonged exposure to Federation interrogation and mind probe methods, this hostility now verges on deep psychosis. The probability is high, though not accurately measurable, that this psychosis will result in homicidal action taken against the authority figure in closest proximity to the subject.*

Blake was on his feet, pacing to Orac's side in the stunned silence that followed the computer's pronouncement. Orac hummed noisily to itself, but offered no further information. Grim-faced, Blake asked, "Orac, with what evidence have you supported this conclusion?"

*As I have already told you, the conclusion was reached via lengthy investigation of Federation psychostrategy computer records, interpolated with in-depth analysis conducted by myself and Liberator's medical facilities. The evidence is incontrovertible.*

"Avon will try to kill me?" He had trouble saying the words, so inconceivable did he find the prospect.

*That is the contingency of highest probability, yes.*

Jenna's voice was cold. "Not if I have anything to say about it."

"The question is," Cally wondered aloud, "what do we do about it? What can we do about it?"

When Blake had no immediate answer, Gan looked down at the maze of multi-colored lights beneath his hands and said, "You have recommendations, Orac?"

*Toward what end?* the computer shot back.

"Toward stopping Avon killing Blake, you miserable plastic junk heap!" Vila's outburst was quelled by Blake's gesture for silence, but the thief went on glowering at Orac as though he might be wishing for a rock big enough to dent it with.

"Tell us how to prevent your 'high-probability contingency,'" Blake ordered, aware that he had just reworded Vila's statement and wondering if Orac were not being deliberately obtuse.

*Recommendation one,* the computer replied smugly. *Kerr Avon must be removed from all contact with Liberator personnel. Recommendation two: he must be further removed from contact with any human subject representational of authority and therefore likely to trigger--*

"Thank you, Orac, we get the picture." Blake interrupted. "Can you correlate with ship's computers to produce a hard copy of Avon's Federation medical record?" He wasn't sure why he'd asked for that. If nothing else, he had to admit a certain morbid curiosity about how Avon's experience with the Federation's interrogators might compare with his own.

*Of course I can,* Orac had responded peevishly.

"Then do so."

Blake moved away to the flight consoles, and Jenna came after, her expression both curious and analytical.

"What are you planning?" she asked quietly.

"It doesn't sound as though I have a great many choices, does it?" The words had come out more sharply than he'd intended, but Jenna's only response was a knowing look.

"So drop him off on the nearest unaligned planet," Vila offered from the lounger. "He's always saying he wants to go. So we'll let him go."

"It isn't that easy," Blake admonished.

"Isn't it?" Jenna's question was threat masquerading as innocence.

"No it isn't. You heard what Orac said. I'm not the only one he might endanger."

"Oh fine," Vila said dismally. "Don't we have enough problems without having to worry about the rest of the universe, too?"

Gan scowled at him. "Be quiet, Vila."

The thief ignored him. "So leave Avon someplace where there aren't any people then. A planet with only computers, maybe. He'd even like that."

Jenna had fixed Blake with a cold look that he found more than a little discomfitting. "You're overlooking the most obvious solution," she said.

Blake stared at her, shaken by the ease with which she made the suggestion. "Kill Avon?" he asked softly. It wasn't an option he'd have considered, let alone carried out, but it was obvious that Jenna harbored no such reservations.

"It's the surest way of seeing he doesn't kill you," she said.

The others fell silent, holding a collective breath. Blake turned away to study the flight console, spreading his fingers over the controls without seeing them at all.

"Could you kill him, Jenna?"

The answer was prompt, and seemingly without feeling. "If I had to."

He looked her in the eye again as the console began disgorging Orac's medical report. "In cold blood? No self defense, no threat, no cause? Just...kill him?"

"I'd have all the cause I needed, if he were to harm you." The anger and...something else...in Jenna's voice surprised him yet again.

"I don't believe what I'm hearing!" It was Cally's strident objection, coming from beside Orac. "Avon is ill, and you're standing there planning his execution. He needs our help, Jenna."

The blonde pilot lapsed into guilty silence while Blake extracted the lengthy sheet of plastisheet from a slot on Liberator's console. He perused it, rapidly at first. Then he slowed as the text reached details provided by the Federation's so-called 'psycho-strategists.' They went on at length. Graphic length.

Jenna came to stand beside him, unable to tolerate the silence any longer. "What is it?" she demanded.

Mutely, he handed the sheet across to her, whereupon the others immediately clustered around her to look on.

"Tell me anyone could have survived four months of that," Blake said solemnly, "and still remain 'psychologically stable.'"

Vila paled, and had to stop reading. "They did all of that to Avon?"

"I never thought..." Blake felt mildly ill, and irrationally, more than a little ashamed. "I've been so concerned with what their 'therapists' had done to me," he said miserably. "I never stopped to consider..."

Gan finished reading the report, disgust and sympathy both plainly etched on his broad, expressive face. "Four months is an unusually long interrogation period, isn't it? They never kept you that long."

"They never needed to," Blake told him, unpleasantly aware that the experience, like an unhealed wound, was still all too vivid. "All they had to do for me was eradicate my memory and replace it with a set of false ideals. That was easy."

"But they couldn't do it that way with Avon," Cally said.

"No."

"Because they wanted what he knew," Vila supplied, "about the computers."

"And they never got it." Blake returned to Orac's side. "That must have caused some heads to roll in Federation Security Central. They're supposed to be infallible."

"That," Gan said slowly, "was before they tried to match heads with Avon."

"Very probably."

Gently, Cally asked, "What will you do?"

"For the moment..." Blake pulled Orac's key, silencing the computer's whine. "...nothing. I'll need time to consider the alternatives."

Jenna's scowl spoke volumes. "That," she said, "could be more than a little dangerous."

Blake ignored the comment. "In the meantime, you're to say nothing to Avon. Any of you. Is that understood?"

Blank looks, then slowly, nods of assent, Jenna's last of all. Blake wondered how long it would be before the computer expert pieced it together anyhow: none of them, himself least of all, were as adept at the art of deception as Avon was.

By the time they entered orbit over Vaarn, Blake's nerves were very near the snapping point. Avon had continued to harry him about the inadvisability of this mission, and kept up the argument all the way down to the surface. Only when Vila had opened the final lock into the computer center (and then returned outside to teleport back to Liberator) had it seemed that Avon would cease challenging Blake's every move. He fell to programming the destruct sequence with practiced ease, while Gan watched the door and Blake set the initial explosive charge against the computer's housing.

"I've created an opening in the shield," Blake heard Avon say as he finished setting the explosive's timer. "We should be able to teleport from here with no difficulty."

"Good." Blake stood up, dusting his hands. "There's just one other thing."

Avon looked pained. "What now?"

"I saw something resembling an Istra decoding crystal in the next room. I want to have a look before we go."

"You should have thought of that before. There isn't time."

"Call the ship and go up then. Both of you. I'll be along in a moment."

"Blake--"

"Do as you're told, Avon."

It had been the wrong thing to say. The look in Avon's eyes told Blake another argument was imminent. Forestalling it, he turned to walk toward the interconnecting door, and Avon's voice came, chill with warning, from behind him.

"Blake, don't be an idiot."

He looked back, only to be faced with the impossible vision of Avon with his gun in hand. Another of Orac's prophecies fulfilled, he thought darkly. But surely he hadn't pushed that far? A simple command...

Any figure of authority, Orac had said, could serve as the trigger.

He thought, too late, to reach for his own weapon, though he knew he could never have beaten Avon's shot. There was no time. He heard Gan shout his name before the bolt streaked toward him -- and seared past his ear to the door. Glass popped, shattered. And on the other side of the ruined window in the door, a black-clad, helmeted figure toppled from view with a muffled cry.

Blake fell back against the wall, breathing heavily. "Thank you," he managed to say.

There was no response.

When he looked up, Avon's gun was still pointed at him. The dark eyes were focused on him, but they were...somewhere else...as well. The finger over the firing stud flexed once and then steadied, poised...

A small eternity crawled by.

"Avon..."

Something large interposed itself between them. Gan put out a tentative hand and moved, unafraid, toward the gun.

"Come on, Avon. It's all over now. We can go back to the ship."

Avon did not appear to hear him. When Gan gently slipped the weapon from his grasp, his eyes changed, found Blake, and went immediately cold again. The look made Blake want to shudder.

From somewhere, an alarm began to wail.

It was Gan who finally brought the teleport bracelet to his lips and said, "Bring us up, Jenna."

When the three of them materialized on the teleport platform, the tension was thick enough to slice, and was not lost on Jenna. "What kept you?" she asked. "The charges are going off now; you barely got out of there in time."

Ignoring her, Avon moved silently away from the others and disappeared down the corridor. Blake stared after him, knowing the shock he was feeling had to be evident on his face. He saw no point in hiding it. Gan had seen, had stopped it from happening, and the others would know.

"What is it?" Jenna demanded of Gan when Blake didn't answer. "What happened down there?"

"Orac's prophecy happened," the big man said. "Or it nearly did, anyway."

"Blake!" Vila's voice came urgently over the intercom. "Pursuit ships on zero-seven-zero; we've got to get out of here!"

As one, the three of them headed for the flight deck.

Moments later, their pursuit left far behind, Blake stood once again over the transparent, humming box that housed Orac, with Gan, Cally, Vila and Jenna gathered around him. Only Avon was absent from the flight deck.

"Orac," Blake said slowly, "I want to send a priority message to one Sais Javan, Pirathon Centre, Planet Lystra. It's in the 9th Sector. And as always, Orac, the signal should not be traceable to Liberator."

*Naturally,* the computer replied.

Blake rubbed his eyes wearily while Orac digested the request, clicking softly to itself and incredibly, not objecting to the task of relaying messages.

"Who is Sais Javan?" Cally asked beside him.

Blake held up a hand. "In a moment, Cally. Zen, I want flight time to Lystra at standard by ten."

+FORTY-FOUR HOURS, THIRTY-TWO MINUTES.+

*I have isolated the communications frequency for Pirathon Centre,* Orac announced.

Blake sat down again, and folded his hands. "All right," he said. "Message follows..."

Avon had no doubt that Cally could hear the argument approaching the teleport even from this distance down the corridor. He didn't particularly care. When he and Blake finally entered the room, the verbal war was raging in full.

"Don't patronize me, Blake."

"Patronize? Is that what I was doing?"

"You know damn well it is. First you divert us here without adequate explanation--"

"I told you precisely why we came here. We picked up Javan's message that his life support computers were malfunctioning."

"--And then you insist on teleporting into an unknown situation unarmed."

"I gave him my word."

"As I believe I've said before, you did not give him mine."

Blake's expression was aggravatingly smug. "As it happens, I did. I know Sais Javan. I trust him. Why don't you try trusting me?"

Avon glanced briefly at Cally behind the console before he said levelly, "Perhaps because you so seldom practice the reverse." Then, in his most scathing tone, he added, "What is it that you haven't told me, Blake?"

The other man turned deliberately away from him to clip on a bracelet from the teleport rack. "What makes you think there's anything?"

"Because for several days now, everyone aboard this ship has been behaving like captives on the way to a slave mine. Vila cringes if I so much as gaze in his direction. Come to that, he's been hiding from me more often than not. I want to know what's going on, Blake. And I want to know what is on this planet before I go down."

As before, Blake deftly evaded the question. "If you're so suspicious of Pirathon Centre, you can check it out yourself, before either of us goes."

"I have. Orac says it is a non-aligned medical research facility."

"So it is."

"But even Orac can be preconditioned, under certain circumstances, to mislead."

"And why would I want to do that?"

"You tell me."

"This rampant paranoia is all very interesting," Blake said flippantly, and handed him a bracelet. "But we're wasting valuable time. Now are you coming with me, or shall I try to muddle my way through Javan's computers on my own?"

Though his suspicions were entirely unalleviated, Avon accepted the bracelet. Sooner or later, he would learn what Blake was up to. But he was also certain that when he did, he wasn't going to like it.

As the teleport effect took them both, he caught a final glimpse of Cally at the controls. Strange. He could have sworn her eyes were shining with tears...

The tastefully decorated reception room in which they arrived betrayed no sign of any life support malfunction. Avon said so, and thought it odd that Blake had nothing to say in response. He seemed... nervous...somehow. And Blake was not usually nervous.

A door opened, admitting a silver-haired man in a close-fitting blue tunic. He looked, Avon decided, like an administrator. Or a diplomat. Perhaps he was both.

"Blake!" The man pumped his companion's hand. "Good to see you again. I'm sorry I'm late. I had a call and I--"

"Sais Javan," Blake interrupted him, seemingly impatient to get on. "This is Kerr Avon."

Javan took Avon's hand with rather less enthusiasm than he'd lavished on Blake. "Good to meet you," he said, and then immediately dropped the protocol. "Everything is ready. Would you come this way?"

Everything was ready? For what? Avon glanced questioningly at Blake, only to find the other man studiously avoiding his gaze.

Something was wrong. Very wrong. He didn't like the way Blake was behaving. There was something almost...guilty...in the way he moved and...

"Gentlemen?" Javan's polite prompt interrupted his thought. The administrator, or whatever he was, waited for them just inside a nearby doorway. Blake held out a hand to indicate that Avon should go first. Bristling, he did so, determined to drag an answer to this mystery out of Blake one way or the other.

He passed through the door -- and promptly found himself between two pairs of uniformed men, each with a gun trained on him.

"What the--?"

He whirled, rounding on Blake, still in the doorway. The guns were quite clearly not aimed in Blake's direction. Only in his own. And that could only mean one thing. One incredible, impossible thing...

"Go with them, Avon," Blake said quietly. "They won't hurt you. They've given me their word."

Avon grimaced, damning himself for several thousand varieties of fool. "Naturally. The reward for a breathing fugitive is higher. Or so I'm told."

Blake's response was not what he'd expected. He looked genuinely hurt by the accusation. "Avon," he said. "It isn't what you think."

"Isn't it?" Avon glared steadily at him, measuring his next words with care. "I should have killed you when I had the chance, Blake."

The hurt expression remained. "I'm sorry, Avon."

Before he could respond to that, the gunmen intervened to usher him away. Javan, he noted, had remained behind with Blake. Probably to discuss the dispersal of reward monies, Avon thought bitterly. One million credits was temptation enough for anyone, after all, and Blake had apparently found a way to collect it with impunity. Avon wondered darkly how he'd failed to see this coming; he had certainly given Blake all probable cause, particularly of late. And though he'd known something to be wrong, he had never once suspected this. Stupid of him...

His captors led him into a small room with nothing in it but a table on which a set of plain blue hospital clothes had been laid out.

"You will change into these," one of the four men said crisply, and when Avon made no move to obey, he lifted his gun ever so slightly and added tonelessly, "please."

He waited, defying them to make the first move. Eventually, one of them did, reaching out to firmly grasp his arm. Avon caught the man's hand and wrenched it toward him, intending to pin it back and take a hostage. But something crackled near him; an energy charge. One of the guns, he realized belatedly, and in the same moment he felt a burning sensation begin to make its way up his ribcage. Not a bullet or a plasma bolt. Those wouldn't...

His hand found the splayed tail of the dart then. Tranquilizer guns... Why would the Federation...? Ah, but they weren't Federation, of course. They wouldn't be. The Federation would come later.

He dimly remembered hitting the floor, and then, never quite losing consciousness, recalled that four pairs of hands had methodically stripped and redressed him in the hospital tunic. When his head finally cleared of the tranquilizing drug, he was firmly secured by cloth restraints to a diagnostic couch in what appeared to be a well-equipped surgery. Either that or a Federation interrogation unit...

Two of his former guards were busy elsewhere in the room. And a woman, blonde, middle-aged, passive-faced, had come twice to stand over him, checking the life-readings on the scanner overhead.

"How do you feel?" she asked solicitously, beside the bed again now.

He stared dully at her for a moment, then turned his head away. "Must we suffer the delusion that you care?"

She pretended not to hear that. "My name is Syene," she said. "And yours is Avon."

Well that was good news. He was delighted to know he was still Avon, though somehow he couldn't quite formulate the properly searing words to tell her so. She was still studying the medical scanner, intent on the heart reading. He could hear it bleeping softly, a rhythmic, slightly too-rapid rate.

"Why don't you relax?" she said placatingly. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

He ignored the pleasantry, still refusing to look at her. After a lengthy silence, he asked matter-of-factly, "When do they come?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The Federation." Her puzzled silence annoyed him. Surely she knew? "To...'collect'...me," he explained tightly. "Blake could not possibly have sold me without some form of go-between, and that has got to be you. Therefore the Federation must be on their way here."

She walked around the bed to look at him, that same unwitting confusion still in her eyes. "The Federation are not coming here," she said with such innocence that he almost found himself believing it. "And no one has 'sold' you to anybody."

Avon blinked, confused himself now. If this wasn't what he'd reasoned it to be, then it made no sense at all. And if it was, then what reason would she have to lie to him about it?

"If you are not go-betweens," he said, "and you are not Federation, then who...?"

"I told you there was nothing to fear. I'm a doctor. Nothing else. And this is a hospital."

A hospital... Not simply the medical research facility Orac had claimed it to be. So Blake had persuaded Orac to deceive him after all. Abruptly, several pieces of the puzzle slipped neatly into place, evoking a small, brittle smile. Orac. Blake saying "It isn't what you think."

"A mental hospital," he said.

"Yes."

He had to admit, it was an ingenious means of eliminating the primary competition. And so like Blake to opt for a contingency like this one. Not to kill him or maroon him or even simply turn him over to the Federation. But to leave him here...

"I assume," he said, "that you are still capable of contacting Blake."

Syene frowned. "I suppose so. But that shouldn't be important to you now." One of the guard/attendants had come to stand over the bed with a hypodermic needle in hand. Just as the Federation guards had stood over him, not very long ago...

He closed his eyes and fought the image back, embarrassed at the realization that the heart monitor had telegraphed his reaction. Impatiently, Syene waved the attendant away.

"What is wrong, Avon?"

Interesting, how genuine the concern in her voice sounded. Either she was an exceptionally good actress, or...

"There is no reason to be afraid," she went on. "I can assure you, the drug is quite harmless. You will feel nothing."

The man with the needle came furtively back again, waiting for Syene's nod of approval.

Avon interrupted it. "Before you do that," he said, "I want you to send Blake a message."

Distractedly, Syene, still studying the monitor, said, "What message is that?"

"Tell him that this changes nothing," Avon said coldly. "There is a way out of any prison -- even this one. And when I have found it...  When I have found it, I still intend to kill him."

Apparently unimpressed by the threat, Syene touched a control somewhere on the diagnostic panel and nodded tightly to the attendant.

"When you leave here, Avon, you will no longer have any such desire."

In Sais Javan's office, Blake rose and paced away from the monitor that had just shown him a live transmission of Avon's 'message.' One hand rubbed at the back of his neck apprehensively.

"This may have been a mistake," he said.

Javan watched Syene's assistant administer the sedative before he spoke. "Why? Because he's angry at being brought here against his will? What did you expect?"

"It's what Avon expects that worries me." Blake's eyes wandered back to the screen. "If I hadn't been half-blind I'd have seen it. I should have seen it."

"Seen what, exactly?"

"Your treatment room." Blake watched Syene inject Avon with yet another hypodermic, and noted that the heart monitor continued to race despite the sedative, a fact Syene appeared to find equally perplexing. "That room," he went on, "bears a discomforting resemblance to the Federation's interrogation chambers. Under the circumstances, I shouldn't be at all surprised if Avon is unable to recognize the difference."

Javan fingered the medical print-out Blake had given him from Liberator and nodded. "Ah yes. That would explain the reaction, I suppose."

"And you didn't brief Syene about his history before the treatment was to begin?"

Javan shook his head. "To be frank, just giving my people his name was risk enough. Political neutrality does not negate the sin of avarice, my friend."

Blake watched the heart monitor perpetuate its racing pulse over Avon's prone form. "You told me he wouldn't be harmed."

"He won't be. Syene knows her business." At Blake's dubious look, Javan leaned back in his chair, studying the rebel leader with calm indifference. "There are still no guarantees, my friend. You've explained your situation and I've agreed to one treatment. But we're hardly miracle workers. Psychosis isn't something you can just cure, you know, like a rash or a hangnail. The best we can probably hope for is a release of tensions. Defusing the prevalent anxieties. That sort of thing." After a lengthy silence, he added more softly, "I can hope for better, but I can't promise it, I'm afraid."

Blake had been staring at the monitor, the turmoil he was feeling manifest in his eyes. "And if he were to stay here longer... what then?"

Javan came upright in the chair, suddenly all business once again. "That, I'm sorry to say, is out of the question." At Blake's puzzled look, he gestured with the read-out of Avon's Federation file. "Even a neutral medical facility faces periodic inspection by the administration, Blake. I can see you're protected for a day, a week at the outside. But leave him here, and the Federation will be sure to find him. It would only be a matter of time."

Sitting down heavily, Blake watched Syene give Avon a third injection. The heart monitor, unabated, kept up its frantic pace.

"What exactly does this treatment of hers entail? It seems to be having nothing but adverse effects thus far."

"The medication induces a dream state," Javan explained "It has hallucinatory capabilities, but the results are, to a certain extent, controllable. It has a direct effect on the cerebral cortex via stimulation of..." He stopped himself, smiling slightly. "Oh, he'll know it was a dream, right enough. But in the course of that dream... well, you might say he'll simply be allowed to experience the thing he wants most in life. Syene's had some remarkable results so far. It's a treatment with a great deal of promise."

Blake had bitten back an angry response to Javan's unbridled enthusiasm. Sullenly, he turned back to the screen and determined to watch the rest of the 'treatment' in silence.

All the while, though, the bleak thought nagged at the back of his mind that the one thing Kerr Avon might want most in the universe just now was to kill Roj Blake.

Although he knew that the battle would ultimately be lost, Avon fought with all his strength to deny the sedatives. To succumb to sedation would be to lose all control of the barriers he had so carefully constructed around his life. And the surrender of that control would also re-admit the horror...

"He should have been under five minutes ago," someone said worriedly, and a feminine voice responded, "He will be."

Another voice, spectral, rose out of the horror and mocked him with a chiding laugh. "Attempting to resist the drugs will avail you nothing. We'll get what we want, one way or another..."

More voices now, all around him. No way to tell any more which were real and which...

"...the access codes. Tell us how you broke them. Tell us."

"Who helped you? Give us the names. All the names."

"Oh, we can stop the pain. All you have to do is answer the question. Simple. Just answer the question."

"...the people who helped you..."

"...access codes..."

"...names. All the names..."

A needle pierced the flesh of his arm, and he stiffened, waiting for the steady flow of fire into the veins, surprised when it did not come. Instead, he felt a peculiar, increasing euphoria. Soothing calm washed over him, enhancing an irresistible desire for sleep.

But he had to resist.

He had to...

Sunlight streamed through multi-paned windows, casting elongated patterns on the expensively carpeted floor. Avon keyed a final command into the computer before he left the wall-length bank of consoles and crossed to the balcony, stretching. The glass-paneled doors had already been opened onto the morning, the brocade draperies pulled back. Dolan must have been here while he was working. He hadn't noticed.

Beyond and below the pillared balcony, manicured gardens lay in peaceful symmetry, drinking in the rising sun. The air smelled of flowers and faint sea mist, the balcony itself of marble, new fabric and unbridled wealth; all sensations that the man who owned the planet found quite pleasing.

"Sir?"

Avon turned back into the room as a thin, balding man in gamma grade servant's liverie cautiously entered.

"Yes, Dolan, what is it?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you sir, but..." He hurried forward to hand Avon a computer print-out. "Communications just picked this up downstairs. Hadar's ready to bite on the gem deal, but he's only come up to three and a half million. You want us to hold out for the full four?"

Avon perused the message and with a deliberate air of boredom, handed it back. "No," he said. "Tell him I have another buyer."

Dolan's dismayed look made his already prominent eyes rounder. "But we don't--"

"I know that, and you know that..." Avon left the sentence incomplete, waving Dolan out with a dismissive gesture. "Tell him."

A hesitant grin crept onto Dolan's face. "Yes sir." He departed by the huge main doors of the chamber, and Avon instantly forgot him. Unfastening the clasps on his tunic, he moved to an inner door, went quietly through it and entered the still-shaded sleep chamber.

Anna stirred under the silk sheets of the canopied bed, and sleepily watched his progress to the sono-wash.

"Up all night again?" she asked when he'd returned from the shower.

She stretched, and the glistening fabric of the bed sheet clung to her. The invigorating effects of Avon's bath promptly paled in comparison.

"If I didn't know better," she went on teasingly, "I would swear there was another woman."

The clean tunic he'd intended to put on found refuge instead over the back of a nearby chair. He moved to the edge of the bed, grasped and gently slipped the sheet away before he lay down beside her.

"You," he said, grinning, "have a deviously suspicious mind."

"Mmm. Well I've been taking lessons... From one of the best."

Laughing, he pulled her closer to him. "So you have," he said, and drew her into a lingering kiss...

On a covered veranda outside Pirathon Centre's main complex, Blake watched rain slant down onto wet streets and drip from the synthe-canvas awnings. The grey day matched his mood. It had been four hours since he'd left Avon in Javan and Syene's temporary care. Javan had only moments ago left the veranda to retrieve Avon from the treatment room, and Blake was not looking forward to the confrontation to come. He wondered if the effects of Syene's drug-induced dream would be evident at all, and whether the result would be in any way positive... and whether this entire venture had been a grave error on his part to begin with. That Avon would take it for a betrayal should have been obvious, surely. Stupid of him, not to have seen...

The hum of the teleport beam drew him unwillingly out of his reverie. Jenna appeared not quite ten feet away from him, an extra teleport bracelet in hand. For the first time in hours, Blake's thoughts returned to Liberator.

"Something's wrong," he said instantly.

She shook her head, blonde waves shimmering under the patio's artificial lighting. "No, not yet. But if we hang around in orbit much longer something will be, neutral planet or no."

He ignored her implication and returned gruffly, "Why are you here then?"

"The comm unit on your bracelet isn't functioning." She came toward him, offering the extra device, and Blake took it, not bothering to vocalize his suspicion that the malfunction had merely been a convenient excuse.

"Thank you," was all he said.

Jenna gave the rain a disdainful glance. "How much longer are we going to hang about, anyway?"

Wearily, Blake sat down. "Not long. They're sending Avon out shortly. Then we can all go home."

Assuming, he added privately, that Avon still wants to go home.

Jenna's surprise at his words was undisguised. "But I thought..." she began.

"You thought, when you got Orac to tell you just what sort of hospital this was, that I intended to abandon Avon here. Well you were wrong."

Anger flashed in Jenna's eyes. "All right. So what was the point then?"

"I'm not sure of that myself," he admitted, and one hand ran itself nervously through the tight curls of his hair. "There may not have been one."

"Then for once in your life, listen to reason, will you? If those people can help Avon then why not leave him here?"

"Because it isn't safe! For us, yes; it would be an easy answer. But not for him. He'd be found. Identified."

"That's his worry."

Blake's sharp look silenced her, for the moment. At length, he inserted three soft words into the icy silence.

"I need Avon."

Jenna's tone dripped cynicism as acid as Avon's had ever been. "Do you?"

"Yes."

The emphaticism of his statement failed to deter Jenna at all. "And what of Orac's prediction, then? And that little incident down on Vaarn? Are we supposed to forget about that, just conveniently pretend it never was?"

"I haven't forgotten."

"Then you can't possibly consider--"

"Leave it, Jenna!"

She was still not prepared to back down. "How can I when you insist on putting all of us at risk?! Yours isn't the only skin Avon might decide to nail to his wall, you know. You said that yourself."

His anger dissipating, Blake permitted himself a small smile. "I don't seem to recall putting it quite so prosaically."

"Blake, you can't afford to ignore Orac's warning." Jenna, refusing to be humored, drove straight back to the point. "You know you can't."

"Hmph. For all his lofty claims to the contrary, Orac is only a computer. He can't judge human nature."

"And you can?"

"I think so."

He looked up at her, about to add that his judgment had kept them all alive this long, hadn't it? But the sound of a door opening had announced Avon's arrival. Jenna stiffened, cast Blake a final aggrieved look, then turned and marched down the concrete steps into the landscaped yard beyond, where she settled disgustedly on a bench to wait -- in the rain. Blake thought the weather must match Jenna's mood even more so than his own.

He turned back to the lone figure that had waited silently at the door until Jenna had moved out of earshot.

"Hello, Avon," he said, and immediately chided himself for the inanity of not knowing what else to say. The greeting engendered no response, however. Black eyes continued to study him, whether with accusation or acceptance Blake could not discern. Avon had been difficult to 'read' at the best of times; now, there was no inroad at all past the barrier of those eyes, no way to see if any fragile thread of trust or... he would like to have called it friendship... remained.

Rain pattered rhythmically on the overhead awning. Blake toyed with the extra bracelet for a long moment before he spoke again.

"I gather Javan has explained your options," he said.

Avon's habitual expression of boredom fell resolutely into place then. "He said that four shuttles leave the local launch pad for the primary port on Antilles every day, and I should feel free to use his credit, should I choose that contingency. Exceedingly generous."

"Javan is a generous man." Damn it, Avon. You're not about to make this easy, are you? "I'd rather hoped that wouldn't be the option you chose, though."

No surprise registered in Avon's eyes. No acquiescence, either. "Oh?" he queried tonelessly.

Frustrated, Blake allowed the teleport bracelet to clatter onto the tabletop. "I tried to tell you this wasn't what you thought. I never tried to sell you, Avon, or maroon you. Orac warned us there might be a problem, and after Vaarn, I knew it was true. I merely thought... hoped... that Javan and his people might be able to help. Perhaps I was wrong."

His outpouring met only cold silence: the dark eyes gave no quarter. Blake drew a deep and patient breath and rose from his chair, pointedly leaving the bracelet on the table.

"I want you with me, Avon. With us. But preferably as a friend and ally. I don't mind telling you you're a redoubtable adversary." He paused, then added quietly, "Stay with us. Prove to me that Orac can be wrong."

The glacial silence and unflinching gaze remained, a stone wall built against his words. Blake understood their message only too clearly. This was a decision he must allow Avon to make alone, just as Avon did everything alone. He would undoubtedly consider simply accepting the offer to return to Liberator undignified. And so it was Blake who would now be obliged to retreat, and wait. Avon's pride, he realized, would have it no other way.

Blake glanced at Jenna, still sitting in the rain. "Liberator will be in orbit for another hour," he said. "Vila's manning the teleport. If you..." He let the words die, victims of his own uncertainty and Avon's seeming indifference. Then with deliberation, he turned and followed in Jenna's wake down the rain-slick steps.

There was nothing else left to be said... Nothing more to offer.

Avon watched the two light pillars that were Blake and Jenna dissolve in the damp air. Beyond the cultivated lawn where they had stood, a natural copse of trees offered stark contrast, their skeletal winter branches an ashen tangle with the vegetation below. The previous night's frost had left ice daggers on the branches. They were melting now in the warmer rain, making a steamy mist rise from the chilled undergrowth.

Avon stared until the trees were nothing more than random patterns, no longer real. The one-sided conversation with Blake had left him in even more doubt as to which option he would exercise, which future he would choose.

Damn Blake and his obsessive crusade, anyway...

Avon didn't know whether to hate the man for this latest act of characteristic manipulation, or thank him for the inadvertent gift of a few stolen hours spent reunited with Anna... even an illusory Anna. For that alone, he might have emptied Liberator's storerooms, paid Javan and Syene any amount they demanded. But their answer to his plea had been a resolute no. To remain at Pirathon was not to be one of his choices. The dream would not be his again, and neither would Anna. Anna was dead.

Anna was dead, and somewhere on Earth, her interrogator -- her murderer -- remained free. That knowledge was a dormant agony that gnawed at him, incessant, demanding. Perhaps, were he to take the shuttle to Antilles and make his way back to Earth... No. He had little hope of penetrating Central Security and avenging Anna alone. At least with Liberator and the teleport, there was a chance. And yet, not a chance... because there was still Blake, who would never agree to a mission of personal revenge. Not while he 'commanded.'

The paradox evoked a bitter smile. Avon knew he was bracketed, fenced in by his own limitations on one side and Blake's implacable morality on the other. But then, an odds player always went where the chances were greatest, didn't he?

He reached for the bracelet, hesitating just short of picking it up.

I want you with me, Avon, Blake's words echoed. With us.

He'd nearly killed the fool, and still Blake wanted him back. That contradiction was only part of the greater mystery that was Blake. Only he had ever defied Avon's bleak expectations of humanity. And he defied the odds as well: they were all against him and yet he kept succeeding, winning battles despite the ultimate certainty of losing the war.

"Have you ever met an honest man?" Avon had once cynically demanded of Jenna. And she, looking pointedly at Blake, had said, "Perhaps."

Another piece of the puzzle.

An enigma named Blake.

Avon picked up the bracelet, turning it slowly in his hands. It caught and reflected the light, altering the alien patterns engraved along its side.

An odds player goes where the chances are greatest...

He reached to depress the communications stud.

"Put it down," said a voice behind him. "On the table."

The only betrayal of Avon's surprise was a slight widening of his eyes. He knew the voice. But when last he'd heard it, the words had been soothing platitudes about having nothing to fear.

"Syene," he said flatly, and turned to face eyes that were no longer empathetic in the least. Instead, they held a more familiar note of naked greed. The weapon she held trained on him was not, he noted, one of the institute's tranquilizer guns.

"Put it down," she repeated.

Abandoning the temptation to fling the bracelet at her, Avon complied, cursing the idiocy that had permitted this trap in the first place. Blake, as usual, had begun it by giving these people his true name. And he himself had stupidly volunteered most of the rest to Syene. The length of time he'd remained had doubtless allowed her to make further checks. Careless. Very careless.

"Come to administer further 'treatment'?" He made the words a sneer, deliberately not looking at the gun.

"Something like that. A million credits worth, in fact."

Avon's smile was far from pleasant. "So much for the quality of mercy."

The taunt had no overt effect. Syene jerked her head toward the steps Blake had so recently walked down. "Out there and to the right," she said curtly. "Move."

He went, stepping out into the still-falling rain. She came close after him, picking up the teleport bracelet as she passed the table. They traveled only a short distance around the building and entered a small, attached room filled with gardening supplies. Syene closed the door against a renewed downpour, and gestured with the gun.

"Over there."

Avon's eyes traveled to the wall she had indicated. Suspended from irrigation pipes bolted firmly to the plaster, several sets of medical restraints hung ready. Six sets.

His smile almost became a laugh. "Oh, you are prepared. And ambitious as well. A pity most of it will be for naught."

"I don't think so." Her voice was level, deceptively calm. "You're going to put one of those on, and then we're calling your ship. Move."

A few meters away from her, Avon met her gaze defiantly, and stood his ground.

"No," he said.

The response appeared to unsettle her a bit. A good sign. Avon took a tentative step toward her and found the gun promptly level with his eyes.

"Don't."

The easy and still-unpleasant smile came back to taunt her. His hands went out, palms up, in mock surrender. "Have you ever killed a man... doctor?"

The use of her title had been quite deliberate, and her eyes betrayed the answer to his question. Claiming an immediate tactical advantage, Avon took another step.

"I thought not."

The gun in her hand dropped back to chest level. "Stand still!" She shouted the words, but her voice was trembling. Things weren't going at all as she'd planned, and Avon was revelling in that knowledge.

"Nervous?" he queried sarcastically.

Some of her professional coolness returned then, denying his accusation. "You're wrong if you think I won't kill you."

"Possibly," he conceded. "But are you prepared to risk the consequences? Half of one reward opposed to six entire ones? A mere 500,000 against six million -- or thirteen, if you manage to deliver Orac and the ship as well."

His crass appeal to her greed brought a familiar light into the doctor's eyes. Avon knew it had often been seen in his own. "That," she said, "is precisely why you are going to call Blake." She raised her left wrist, on which she now wore the teleport bracelet. "After you put on those manacles. Now move."

He turned slightly as though to obey her command, and she made the anticipated error of moving one step closer behind him. It closed the gap between them just enough...

Avon's hand shot out to a cluster of metal posts that had leant against the nearby wall. They fell noisily, slicing between them and wrenching the gun from her grasp. Syene cried out and dived after the weapon, but she slipped on the rolling metal rods and fell awkwardly. Avon reached the gun mere seconds ahead of her. When she still tried desperately to grab for it, he kicked her viciously away. She landed amid the fallen poles, and Avon coldly levelled the gun at her.

"Goodbye, doctor."

She'd put both hands around one of the spikes and lifted it, cursing him, intending to hurl it in spite of the gun. But she had no chance to complete the action. Unremorseful, Avon pulled the trigger.

The metal stake clattered to the floor, and Syene fell on top of it, effectively muffling its noise. No trace of compassion marred Avon's face as he approached and calmly turned her over, surprised when he found her staring up at him, the blue eyes full of fear and pain.

She had seen and misinterpreted his expression. "What's the matter?" she asked bitterly. "Haven't ever killed a woman before?"

"In point of fact, I haven't." He spoke the words matter-of-factly, wresting the teleport bracelet from her arm. "But there is always a first time."

Syene never heard the final phrase. Avon tossed the gun disgustedly into the bins of plant fertilizer central to the room. He left Syene on the floor -- an awkward heap of something no longer human -- and wrenched open the shed's flimsy door.

The drizzle had transformed itself into a downpour. Heedless, he marched out onto the lawn and headed across it. The spongy grass squelched beneath his boots. Concrete tables and benches, stained dark with the rain, loomed and receded. Avon scarcely saw them. He found, to his horror, that he was fighting a welling sense of revulsion, not at Syene's death, but at the fact that he felt... nothing. No rage, no sorrow, neither regret nor triumph. Simply nothing at all. The last time he had killed, face to face... The man with the exit visas had nearly succeeded in killing him first, and Avon had taken a perverse and bitter pleasure in extinguishing the treacherous dealer's life. But now... He was drained. Emotionless. Incapable of caring anymore. And where once he might have welcomed the realization, now it openly frightened him -- because it was the same pain-suppressed emptiness that had last gripped him on Vaarn, when he had held his gun aimed at Blake.

He shuddered and trudged on through the pouring wet.

Reaching the stand of splintered trees, he plunged into them, rallied by the snapping of twigs underfoot. The skeletal branches grasped and tore at him, struggling to impede his progress. Avon ignored them.

Anna came, unbidden, back into his thoughts. The spectral Anna of the dream. Soft and sweet and willing Anna, a fantasy compliant to his needs in ways the living model had admittedly not been. The dichotomy struck home; a jarring intrusion of cold reality.

Anna was dead. Anna had been dead for two years, and no fantasy, however much he wished it to be true, would ever change that.

So he was left with reality. With banishing the dream. That had been Blake's doing, anyway. Yet another of the man's incessant, interfering manipulations. One day he must either escape Blake once and for all, or...

The spaceport, Javan had said, was accessible day and night. Shuttles to Antilles. He could go now, leave Blake and the others to fight their mad, idealist's war. To die fighting it, most likely.

Avon stopped walking abruptly, the thicket of tangled grey a canopy around and above him. The rain pounded through it unabated and crackled on the deep-piled carpet of the undergrowth. He sank into the sodden richness of that carpet, his back to the unyielding trunk of a spindly tree.

How long had Blake said the ship would remain in orbit, waiting for him? An hour? Two? He had no idea how much time had elapsed. Liberator might already be gone.

He raised his left arm to stare at the bracelet. Water beaded on its burnished surface and runneled away.

Acquitar and water, he thought grimly, were mutually repellent, chemical exclusives. Opposites.

Like Avon and Blake.

Damn Blake and his war and all the fools who followed him... What right did he have? What hold?

Why was it so inconceivably difficult for Avon to simply declare his independence, take the easier route, walk and keep on walking, to the spaceport, Antilles, and the ultimate freedom beyond?

Why?

The paradox of Blake rose up in answer.

Safety and threat.

Love and hate.

The enigma of an honest man.

A friend...

The rain ceased, almost as though some celestial hand had reached out to turn a faucet tap. Shedding more water, the ashen trees rattled angrily in the wind.

Avon stood, brushing futilely at his wet, soiled clothes. Thunder muttered in the clouds overhead, threatening to drench him again. He raised the bracelet to his lips and resolutely pressed the communications stud.

"Vila..."

Static answered. Interminable seconds ticked past, counted on rain-dripping tree limbs. Then, sleepily, a voice responded, "Avon?"

With an effort, Avon masked his relief, making sure instead that just the right hint of disdain infused his voice.

"Wake up, Vila," he said. "I'm ready to come up now."