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concentrated out. Neither disturbed McCrae by listing his accomplishments. Durant waited until the wrinkles above her eyes had smoothed out and some of the tenseness had visibly left her body before asking what the esplink conversation had involved.
    "Looks like Dan's instincts were right," she told them. "We've had trouble."
    "What's wrong, Kate?" Booth asked-quickly. "Problems with the hatch repair?"
    "Not exactly," she murmured. Her eyes were still closed. "It's Vincent. His tether broke. We almost lost him." Now she did blink, stared wide-eyed at them, stretching the muscles around each orb. "He's okay now. What about the regenerator?"
    Durant shrugged. "Did the best we could with what we had. But there were still a few items we couldn't find replacements for." He smiled wanly. "Just enough of them to cause the entire system to fail before we can get home . . . unless Dan and Charlie can do better, or can find a way to bypass what we haven't got."
    Suddenly he turned quiet, looked around in confusion. So did Booth. So did McCrae. Something had happened. There was something missing.
    They all realized what had happened at the same time. The turbulence, the jostling of the ship, had vanished.
    The ship was as still as the inside of a coffin . . .

Pizer leaned back in his chair. His muscles ached as if he had just finished a half day's workout in the Palomino 's compact gymnasium, though he hadn't moved from his position in all the time they had been playing dice with death.
    "Close," he murmured. "Too close. I want to be buried . . . but not yet."
    As if trying to cover his embarrassment at his outburst over Vincent, he spoke reassuringly to Holland. "Don't blame yourself, Dan. First we stumble into an impossible area of no-gravity around the Cygnus . Then we find out it's irregular in outline and uncertain in effect. You can't blame yourself for not foreseeing the instability of an impossibility."
    "Put that way, it makes me feel a little better," the captain admitted.
    "And, Dan?"
    "Yeah?"
    "I apologize for the way I acted, for what I said. You know."
    "Skip it. That close to a collapsar, everything's stability is a little twisted. Mine, too." He turned, spoke toward the com pickup.
    "Kate, we're going to set down on the Cygnus , How's Vincent doing?"
    Her voice came back to him a moment later. "Still with us and looking for a place to dock. I told him we're going in. He requests permission to remain where he is, for purposes of examination."
    "Permission granted. Tell him to keep his eyes open." It was an old joke, but he still grinned inwardly. Vincent had no eyelids to close with.
    "Charlie, you run the lights and scanners. I'll bring us alongside. If you spot anything that looks like an undamaged ship lock, or at worst a single-entry port, say so. A ship the size of the Cygnus should have many. I don't want to waste time hunting through the records for details of her construction. I'm betting we'll find something a lot faster visually."
    "Yes, sir."
    A powerful beam illuminated space between the Palomino and the Cygnus as the smaller vessel nudged nearer the dark hulk. They cruised slowly across the surface. Pizer played the light over the craft as they searched both visually and with more complex but less decisive instruments.
    Quite without warning, they found themselves drifting over a city. A thousand lights winked on below. Their brilliance smothered the single searching beam emanating from the Palomino . Ports and domes glowed radiantly. One moment the Cygnus had been a dead thing. Now she had shown herself to be alive with energy, if not with organic life. Something had finally reacted to their presence. The great ship had awakened.
    "What the devil's going on now?" Durant pressed his face to the lab port. He was straining to see into one or more of the glaring ports below, wishing for the use of a powerful portable scope.
    "Someone's alive down there!" McCrae's first reaction was more emotional than