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small space—almost that she was being cornered. The frigate’s lighting seemed dim and cloying compared to the arc lamps outside. She’d done everything she could think of to get away from Angus: she’d committed herself to this when she accepted the zone implant control. But now she caught her first glimpse of the place she was escaping to , the constricted passages of an unknown ship, and she nearly balked.
    Captain’s Fancy was a trap: she recognized that. For a moment the knowledge that she was going aboard another ship, another ship , where there was little hope and certainly no help, came close to seizing her muscles, paralyzing her like a spasm.
    Then all Nick’s people were aboard; and she had no time for paralysis. The airlock cycled closed. Nick Succorso took hold of her by the shoulders: he was about to put his arms around her. This was what he’d rescued her for—to possess her. The first crisis of her new life was upon her, when she was so full of alarm that she wanted to strike at him, drive his touch away.
    Nevertheless she had the presence of mind to stop him by saying, “No heavy g.”
    Morally more than physically, Morn Hyland was exhausted to the core of her bones. Under the circumstances, perhaps the best that could be said about her was that she was half insane from rape and gap-sickness, from horror and panic and Angus’ manipulation of her zone implant. During her weeks with him, she’d done and experienced things which would have sent her into caterwauling nightmares if she’d had the strength to dream. And then, despite everything, she’d saved his life. To all appearances, she’d been conquered by the desperate vulnerability which made the victims of terrorists fall in love with them.
    Appearances were deceptive, however. She hadn’t fallen in love: she’d made a deal. The price was that she was here , aboard Nick’s ship, at his mercy. The recompense was that she had the control to her zone implant in her pocket.
    Saving Angus may have been the only cold-bloodedly crazy act of her relatively young life.
    But if she’d lost her mind, she was still only half insane. No one who was totally mad could have come through that ordeal with the presence of mind to protest to Nick Succorso, “Please. No heavy g. Not without warning me.”
    She may have been cornered, but she wasn’t beaten.
    Her gambit succeeded. He stopped, stared at her oddly. She could see that he was suspicious. He wanted her. He also wanted to know what was going on. And he needed to get his ship away from Com-Mine.
    “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “You sick or something?”
    “I’m too weak. He—” She managed a shrug as eloquent as Angus’ name. “I need time to recover.”
    Then she forced her mind blank, as she’d done so often with Angus, so that her visceral abhorrence of any male contact wouldn’t make her do anything foolish—like kneeing Nick in the groin when he embraced her.
    He was accustomed to women who dropped dead with pleasure when he took them. He wouldn’t have been amused by the truth of how she felt about him.
    He also wouldn’t have been amused by the real reason she dreaded heavy g.
    That was the key to her gap-sickness, the trigger which made her truly and helplessly insane. It had caused her to wreck Starmaster , to attempt a total self-destruct, even though Starmaster ’s captain was her father and much of the crew was family; even though Starmaster was a UMCP destroyer which had just watched Angus Thermopyle slaughter an entire mining camp.
    Gap-sickness was the sole justification of any kind for the zone implant Angus had placed in her brain—or for the zone implant control she now held. And that control was her only secret; her only defense when she went aboard Captain’s Fancy. She would have tried to kill anybody who took it away from her.
    To deflect his suspicions, she was prepared to tell Nick as much about Starmaster as he wished, even though the ship was