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city and ask politely?"
    "Wasn't thinking about being polite, Helm."
    "San Diablo's clear across the continent," rumbled Gunnar. "If the bot-babe is right, we'd never make it there before they killed him."
    Rogue buried the remains of his meal and then picked up his helmet. "Bagman, check the digi-map. Where's the nearest airstrip?"
    "Searching... There's a Nort base about fifty klicks southwest, but it's a tough nut to crack. How about Pitt City? It's closer and the defences are lame."
    "Freeport, huh? Sounds like a plan. We'll slip in and find an atmocraft."
    "And how are you going to convince someone to fly us?" snapped Helm.
    Rogue picked up Bagman and walked out on to the sands. "I'll let Gunnar do the talking."

THREE
    ESCAPE KEY
     
    Ferris's breathing echoed about his chem-hood with every exhalation. He'd been running all day, dodging patrols and skirting the more heavily populated parts of Pitt City. It wasn't easy; the settlement was an aggregation of linked bubbledomes that sat in a fat ring around the mouth of the Pitt, the huge crater that a stray meteor-bomb had gouged in the Nu Earth landscape. There were only ever two directions you could go in Pitt City - for or against the clock - and that made it simpler to find someone on the run. The Milli-Fuzz were running a standard sweep for Ferris, two packs of MPs going around the ring in different directions. Eventually, he'd run out of places to hide.
    The army cops were cracking down; anyone who broke the rules was being prosecuted to the full extent of the Confederate Military Code of Justice, which usually meant a .50 calibre "pardon" to the back of the head. That worthless bug Gog had turned Ferris into a dead man running. Once the MPs got him, he was cold meat. The pilot paused in the lee of a hab-capsule, struggling to even out his breathing. He was out of condition; he wasn't cut out for the fugitive life. Ferris wondered why Gog hadn't just had him killed. It was just like the loathsome little insect to amuse itself by letting him scurry and run while the cops closed in on him. Hell, Gog probably had a betting pool going for how long Ferris would survive.
    He gave a hollow, dry cough, steaming up the murky faceplate of his civilian chem-suit. His air filter needed replacing and all this exertion wasn't helping the jury-rigged oxy-scrubber in his backpack. Ferris had to get to safety and un-hood, or it wouldn't matter about the MPs. They'd find him collapsed in a corner somewhere, choked to death on his own carbon dioxide. He crossed the mud-slick street and walked as quickly as he dared towards the shuttle pads, peeling back a ragged edge of chain-link fence instead of taking the suicidal route through the main entrance. His luck held; there was a Mili-Fuzz trooper on the gate, spinning his baton with idle menace, but the Souther never saw Ferris as he ducked and wove between fuel bowsers and bombed-out blockhouses. Not for the first time today, Ferris found himself wishing he had a gun; but he'd lost his pistol in a card game and had barely managed to keep hold of the dagger in his belt - a lot of good that would do him against a dozen MPs, if it came down to it.
    There were lots of shuttles, hoppers and assorted atmocraft parked on the Pitt City airstrip. It was always busy with cargo, military craft dropping in and civvie ships coming from other Freeports and Disputed Zones. The fuzz would never think of looking for Ferris here, because no one being hunted by MPs would be stupid enough to sneak onto an airfield crawling with Southers. Nobody except Ferris, of course.
    He had never felt this nervous before in his life, and his eyes were darting everywhere, desperately trying to look in all directions at once. The pilot almost screamed in fright when he saw something shapeless move at the edge of the rockcrete.
    "Damn!" Ferris recovered quickly, watching a bent figure wreathed in a camu-cape shambling toward the vent ducts from the launch pits. Just one of