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my father. Half the crew was my family. I didn’t want to die in their tomb.”
    “If that were true,” Mikka countered harshly, “you would have left him as soon as you reached Com-Mine.”
    “Jettison her,” Carmel pronounced. “We don’t need this.”
    The large, misshapen man at the data console spoke for the first time. In an unexpectedly timid voice, as if he were asking a question, he said, “I agree. If she stays, she’s going to cause trouble.”
    Nick glanced around the bridge, then returned his gaze to Morn. As if he were still laughing inside, he said, “You see? You’re simply going to have to do better.
    “And don’t tell me”—she heard the threat in his tone—“you did it because of your passion for me. I’ve heard that before. Women like that are fun to play with on station. I don’t take them into space with me.”
    Morn was cornered. But nobody had mentioned the zone implant control yet. And she’d spent hours trying to prepare herself for this. She went on fighting.
    “You’re right,” she said, not weakly, not as if she were defeated, but angrily, exposing as much of her outrage as she dared. “He knew something about me you don’t.
    “He knew I wrecked Starmaster .”
    Except for the faint hum of air-scrubbers and the low pressure of thrust through the hull, the bridge was silent.
    She didn’t say any more until Nick drawled, “Now why in hell would you do a thing like that?”
    Morn glared straight at him. “Because I’ve got gap-sickness.”
    That startled him. She could see the blood drain from his scars: he turned as still and ominous as a ready gun. Someone she didn’t know muttered a curse. Mikka Vasaczk drew a hissing breath; Vector watched her solemnly.
    “It comes on under heavy g.” The memory—and the fact that she was forced to admit it—filled her with bitterness; but she used gall and self-loathing to focus her anger. “It’s like a commandment, I don’t seem to have any choice about it. It makes me engage self-destruct. I would be dead myself, but my father managed to abort part of the sequence. Only thrust blew—the gap drive didn’t. The auxiliary bridge held. I was the only one there.
    “I did the same thing when Bright Beauty went after you. But he knew about the problem—he stopped me in time.
    “That’s why I stayed with him. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. If I can’t do heavy g, I’m finished as a cop. Until I destructed Starmaster , I could have hoped for a station job, UMCPHQ maybe. Now the only thing I can hope for is that they’ll give me a zone implant to keep me under control.
    “Do you want a zone implant?” she demanded. “Do you want somebody to hit buttons that turn you on and off? I don’t. So I let him rescue me. I stayed with him. I promised not to turn him in. I backed him up when he needed it. And I came to you when I got the chance because”—she nearly choked on the recollection—“because he is what he is. And you’d already beaten him. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
    “You bitch!” Lind was practically frothing; his walleye rolled. “What makes you think we want a gap-sick crazy here?
    “Jettison her!” he shouted at Nick. “Blast her back at Com-Mine. Let them have her—let her try her sickness on them. She’s a time bomb.”
    “She’ll paralyze us,” Mikka put in. “We can’t trust the gap drive. With her aboard, we can’t trust thrust, either. We won’t be able to maneuver at all—we’ll be a sitting target for anybody with ambitions against us.”
    “Mikka’s right,” asserted Carmel. “Com-Mine wants her. If she’s gap-sick, that’s all the excuse we need to give them what they want.”
    “That’s enough,” Nick said before anyone else could object. He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone demanded compliance. “You aren’t thinking. You’re crazy yourself, Lind—that’s why you hate crazies so much. Carmel, you’ve argued against every risky decision