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we’ve ever made. Sometimes you’re so cautious you blind yourself. And you —” He flicked his attention like the end of a whip at Mikka. “You’re just jealous.
    “There are a couple of interesting points here you seem to have missed,” he went on more nonchalantly. “The first is that Captain Thermo-pile must have known how to handle her problem, or else he wouldn’t have kept her. She would have been too dangerous. If he could do it, we might find it worth our while to try the same thing.
    “The other is that she must have a reason for telling us all this.
    “Personally,” he concluded, studying Morn with his scars pale as if he’d never been hungry for her, and never would be, “I would like to know what it is.”
    Morn tasted bile and triumph. No one had mentioned the zone implant control. That meant Com-Mine Security hadn’t mentioned it when they demanded her return—and nobody aboard Captain’s Fancy had guessed the truth. Not even Nick.
    As long as her fundamental secret remained safe, she could answer the challenges thrown at her.
    “Actually,” she replied with more steadiness than she’d felt for days, “I’m not hard to handle. As far as I can determine”—she tried to sound as clinical as she could—“my gap-sickness is specific to self-destruct sequences. I don’t feel driven to hurt myself or attack anyone else. And it passes pretty quickly when g eases. You can lock me in my cabin. Or you can do what he did—you can dope me up with cat until the ship is safe. The rest of the time, there’s nothing to worry about. I might even be useful.
    “I told you about it”—she tightened her grip on herself and concealed her triumph with bitterness—“because I think I can trust you. You weren’t planning to send me back when you called me to the bridge, and you aren’t going to send me back now. Unless I do something to make you change your mind—like hiding a problem that could be a danger to you.
    “I think there’s a reason you took me away from Security, and it doesn’t have anything to do with”—she fumbled because she couldn’t say the right words—“with me.” With sex or hunger. “It has to do with the fact that I’m UMCP.”
    “Go on,” Nick remarked. His smile had recovered its fierceness. “Crazy or not, you’re as entertaining as hell.”
    “You’re a pirate,” she answered boldly. “Your reputation is better than his, and after the things he did to me I’m sure the difference is justified—but you’re still a pirate. And you knew I was a cop. You knew that before you rescued me.
    “So what kind of pirate deliberately takes a cop on board? As long as I’m here, I’m a danger to you. I can testify to any crime you commit. Eventually you’ll have to kill me. And even that can get you in trouble. Everybody knows you took me. If I end up dead, you’ll have to account for it the next time you dock anywhere in human space.
    “Why would you put yourself in that position?”
    “I give up.” Nick flashed his smile around the bridge. “Why?”
    Without hesitation she replied, “I can only think of two reasons. One is that you’re a pirate. Whether you admit it or not, that means you do business with forbidden space. And that means I’m valuable to you. You can make quite a deal for me. If you can hand over a cop with her brain intact, you’ll end up so rich you’ll never have to do anything illegal again.
    “If that’s true, you’ve obviously got no intention of returning me to Com-Mine. Getting me here was the whole point of framing him.
    “But there’s a problem with that explanation. If you were planning to hand me over to forbidden space, you wouldn’t be traveling this slow, no matter what I wanted. You wouldn’t give Security time to reconsider your deal—you wouldn’t take the risk that they might change their minds and come after you. You would be using every kilo of thrust this ship has. You might even be willing to gamble on