Free Duty Bound by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Page A

in all three places was the
back-net chat he would have found in an instant in the old days. In
the places he would normally have found Scouts he found nothing but
notes, signs, recordings: on temporary assignment, on vacation,
will return, in emergency please contact--
    Worse, at Chantor's orbiting Waystation
Number 9, in an otherwise dusty maildrop he'd maintained since his
training days, was a triple-sealed note with all the earmarks of a
demand for payment from a very testy correspondent. The return
address meant nothing to him but the message had chilled him to the
very bone.
    "Plan B is Now in Effect," it said in neat,
handwritten, Liaden characters.
    No signature. He recognized the handwriting,
familiar to him from his former life, when he had been Delm Korval
and this man had taken hand-notes of his orders. dea'Gauss. He felt
a relief so intense that tears rose to his eyes. dea'Gauss was
alive. Or had been. He blinked and looked again at the note. The
date was not as recent as Clonak's news.
    Plan B: Korval was in grave danger. He drew
a breath and felt Aelliana stir, take note, and finally murmur in
his ear: "Whatever has happened? Surely the Juntavas have not
caused this?"
    The intership chatter had been tense with
other rumors; civil wars, Yxtrang invasions, missing spaceships,
Juntavas walking openly in midports in daylight.
    Daav had debated destinations.
Lytaxin--world of a solid ally. Liad itself was surely to be
avoided with Plan B in effect!
    He sat to board, finally, and having thought
Lytaxin, his fingers unhesitatingly tapped in another code. This
was a destination only for Scouts and the adventuresome curious;
there was no trade there, nor ever had been. Well.
    "Well," Aelliana affirmed, and he gave the
ship its office.
    Now, with an hour yet to Jump-end, Daav
hesitated before switching his call signals. No need to give away
all his secrets, even to Scouts. He set the timer and moved back to
begin his exercises. Ride the Luck would call him before they
arrived at Nev'Lorn.
    * * *
    SHADIA REACHED TO the canister overhead,
pulling the red knob that was both handle and face mask. Obligingly
the canister gave up its package, the plate descending to shoulder
height. Grasping the disk carefully she twisted the red handle. It
turned properly in her hand and the initial three minutes of air
began flowing from the mask as the Cloak began taking shape. She
pushed it toward the floor, stepped into the tube, and as it
inflated by her head, she grabbed the blue handle and pulled. That
closed the Cloak over her head and with a twist of vapor from the
heat seal she was now inside the new Cloak while wearing the
old.
    Now she reached for the blade on her belt
and carefully pierced the diminished Cloak, and writhing awkwardly,
stepped out of it, perhaps spicing her language a bit to help, and
then a bit more as the old Cloak tangled on her ankle and left her
sitting in mid-air. With exasperation she used a few more choice
words, asked a couple of pungent questions of the universe at large
and cut a bit more with the knife. In another moment, the old Cloak
was a mere wrinkle of plastic and a disk, which she handed it
through the pockets of the new Cloak with relief.
    She stuffed it into the waste bin, which was
filling rapidly, and surveyed the work area, realizing as she did
that she hardly registered the more minor sounds of the space dust
on the hull.
    Over in the corner, Clonak ter'Meulen,
supervisor of Pilots, was tampering with a Scout issue spacesuit,
breaking thereby a truly impressive number of regulations. He had
replaced his Cloak nearly a Standard hour before and now sat
immersed in carefully deconstructing the suit, with an eye toward
keeping the electronics intact.
    More or less conversationally--the
atmosphere in the ship having gotten up to near 20 per. cent of
normal--he bellowed inside his Cloak.
    "Shadia, I hadn't realized you'd spent so
much time around Low Port..."
    She almost laughed and did manage