Chance’s smile disappeared. He scowled at the White Prophet. “Jacobson, take the Controls. Selms doesn’t know everything about the drive. I might need to help him.”

“Will be, sir,” Jacobson said with cautious curiosity, and stood at the monitors.

Chance walked toward the door, stepping around the White Prophet. He did not want to discuss this with Corrin again. He knew that look she had. She wouldn’t stop pressing him till he either found something important to do or yelled at her to go away. He had no intention of showing the crew that a Prophet could get under his skin.

But Corrin followed him. He was tempted to close the door on her, but she was too quick on his heels. He couldn’t do that to a woman, Prophet or no.

“Why are you following me?” Chance asked as he walked down the corridor toward Bound’s second level. The narrow corridor was lined with the same dense carpet as the Control Room. The walls were square and the ceiling a little too low, nearly brushing Chance’s head. Chance wanted to fiddle with something, and there was always stuff to fiddle with in Mechanics.

“Do you always have to act like I’m trying to bite your head off every time I ask you why you’re out here?” Corrin asked with no edge at all to her peaceful voice. She kept a graceful pace as she walked. Chance could hear her dress swishing. Corrin sighed. “I’m only trying to help you, Chance.”

Chance stopped and turned to face her. He half hoped she’d run into him and stumble. She stopped flat and waited for him to say something.

“It hasn’t driven you off yet so I might as well change tactics,” Chance said.

They were alone in the corridor, and right next to the elevator. No one could hear them, and Chance let out his anger as he said, “I never wanted you on this ship and ever since we’ve taken off you’ve been nothing but an annoyance. I respect the Home Council’s decision to have you as an advisor, I do. But if I had it my way I’d have left you back at Home and never even considered wasting space with a useless Sevens Prophet who—”

“You knew we should have turned back,” Corrin said, and stopped him dead with this hard fact.

“What?” Chance tried to regain his anger. But he was shocked that the Prophet had seen right through him.

“The damage we took in the cluster. It could have destroyed us the moment we turned on the drive. But you didn’t turn back.”

“I tried to, remember?” Chance said, and opened the door to the elevator. It made a metallic crack as it stopped against the side of the wall. Corrin followed and Chance pressed the button to Mechanics.

“Yes. But you changed your mind once you found out you might not be able to go again,” Corrin said, and silently closed the door. It made a slight click when it locked in place.

The elevator began to move. “The damage wasn’t major. We’re fine, aren’t we?”

Corrin laughed. “You know very well that any damage to the drive could have resulted in an explosion.”

“I designed that machine myself, Corrin, I—”

“You know exactly how risky a decision it was that you made,” Corrin said as Chance turned away, scowling. She put a hand on Chance’s shoulder, trying to gently turn Chance around, but the captain stiffened and kept facing away. The elevator stopped. Corrin waited. The woman could wait out a rock if she wanted. And when the rock finally got up and ran away, she’d stick around for it to come back and apologize.

Chance pounded the door lightly and brushed off Corrin’s hand. “I don’t put my crew at risk, Prophet,” Chance said.

“Every time you go to space you put them at risk.”

“That’s why I wanted to install weapons,” Chance said through clenched teeth, and turned around to face the woman.

“Unnecessary,” Corrin said quickly. The topic had been shut down with more force than any other at the Council meetings. Chance still wanted the ability to defend his ship, though. “There is no danger, and Sevens doesn’t have space travel, Captain.”

“There’s still the risk of meeting another planet’s people isn’t there?” Chance bit.

“The crew knows the risk, too, and they accept it. Why can’t you?” Corrin smiled and leaned against the elevator door with her arms crossed. “I know why, Captain. It’s the same reason I’m here. You can’t resist the allure of discovery.” She smiled caringly and Chance ignored the momentary bond with the woman.

Stolen story; please report.

“This mission is foolish. I’ve always said it’s too risky,” Chance said, and tried to move Corrin away from the door.

“But you can’t resist its allure.”

Chance turned away, slightly embarrassed, and Corrin laughed.

“Don’t turn away, Captain, and don’t deny it either,” she said. “I’ve seen children asking me for sweets with less eagerness than you. You want to see this new planet as much as anyone else. More, no doubt.”

“We’ve found enough planets already,” Chance said. The words sounded childish to him.

“But you want to go further, to see the outermost reaches of space.”

Chance hated that she knew the truth, but wouldn’t let the Prophet have the satisfaction of being right. He stepped closer and scowled deeper. “Listen,” he said, wondering for a moment if he could throw the Prophet out the airlock. “We are going to do this mission. If I have to put up with you I will but if anything goes wrong I expect you to do all you can with your powers to help. I appreciate what you Prophets did in the past, I really do. Heck, I can trace back to a relative who had his life saved by a Gold. But like I said, if I had it my way we wouldn’t have any Sevens Prophets wasting our time.”

Chance turned and opened the door. He took a step out and stopped. He didn’t know why he felt like saying so, but he was too much of a gentleman to act completely disrespectfully. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, saying, “I am here, because Bound needs me.”

“And because I want to be here,” was what he wanted to say, but he kept that to himself.

“If you had it your way, Captain, we’d have completed this mission a year ago,” Corrin said.

Chance closed the door and went to Mechanics. This time, Corrin didn’t follow, smiling as she walked the other way.

Chance was all business as he entered the claustrophobic Mechanics and began looking over the machine he’d helped design. Mic was busy checking figures with a lower mechanic and didn’t notice the captain come in.

“Prophets,” Chance grumbled.

“Captain, didn’t see ya come in,” Mic said, and dismissed the lower mechanic, ducking under a pipe as he walked over.

“Have you finished the damage report yet?” Chance examined the manual override system for the drive, his design. The controls attached to the massive bulk of humming machines, with flashing monitor lights dancing every which way. Monitors and panels spread all over the small room crammed with tubes and pipes and bulks of machines.

“Just bout,” Mic said. “Manual override’s fine, Captain.”

“Yes, I see that,” Chance said, and stopped fiddling with it. “What’s hurt?”

“Minor damage ta power barrier gen’rators cause all the hits we took. Ma fault.”

“Not a problem, Mic.” Chance put the report under his arm, intending to go over it in detail later. “You got us through and that’s what counts. We can fix the barrier generators.”

Mic scratched his head.

“Anything else?” Chance asked.

“Still tryin’ ta figure out what’s hurt, Captain. Drive seems ta be runnin’ fine. It was risky to activate it. But it’ll be riskier if we do it again,” Mic said.

“And the cortex shifters?” Chance walked to the drive monitor, bending over the little blue box that contained the navigation part of the drive system. This controlled the drive functions, which were located in a large enclosed area on the floor below. Chance looked at its display and saw it showing only a minor power loss. It wouldn’t be near enough to cause any alarm.

“Damage was minimal. Just a fry in the wiring of the backup. Lucky it didn’t burn out.”

“Yeah, lucky.” Chance winced at the thought. “How about power? Did the damage affect the fusion generator? You know how risky it is to have to eject a generator while we’re in drive.”

“Power’s fine, Captain. No need ta get the backup gen’rator out. Damage was only ta the barrier gen’rators and drive subsystems.”

“All of which can be fixed?” Chance bent down closer to the control panel and checked the display for damages.

“As we speak, Captain. The drive entry was the only thing tha could have hurt Bound. Now tha we’re in drive we can fix it’all no worry.”

“Good. Help me get this panel off. I want to check on the drive system myself,” Chance said, and pulled a multi-tool from his pocket.

“Will be, sir.”

Corrin stopped the elevator on the third level. She needed something cool to drink. Her little conversation with the stubborn captain had been taxing, but she had done what she intended. Corrin always hated men who were easily upset, especially those who got so thickheaded they couldn’t see straight.

She knew the captain would need to be in the best of moods when he got to Alturin. But having her goal so close at hand made her feel great.

It’s the sole reason I came to Home, Corrin thought as she opened the elevator door and walked toward her bunk. I just need to get them to Alturin.

A few crewmembers leaving eats hall passed by her. She smiled at them and they smiled back. They reminded her that she’d told the captain she would wash dishes. A normal person would grimace at the thought of having to perform such a menial task. Corrin would live up to her word, though. It would give her time to think.

She opened her bunk door and went in. Letting out a sigh of contentment as she smelled her scented room, she flicked her hand and used her telekinetic power to shut the door. She poured a small cup of carbonated feln juice, a fruity concoction that Corrin had acquired a taste for during her time on the planet Graner, one of Home’s settled planets in their solar system, and sat down.

As she sipped the tart-yet-sweet drink, she readjusted her crown. The soft, pearly white object wasn’t really a crown at all but the source of her Prophet power. She remembered making it so long ago. Through much crafting, she had made it white as snow, taking weeks to shape and cut the volcanic rock. When she was finally done, she had set a diamond in the center of the seemingly fragile ornamentation.

Corrin had been all smiles when she had it Blessed. From then on, the white crown became more brilliant with the power it held inside. She had originally wanted to pursue the position of Blesser herself, but her want to unite the peoples had sent her elsewhere.

She redid the pins holding her crown in place, and set a shield around her room. She liked her privacy, and the captain had a tendency to want to know what she was doing, paranoid as he was.

“Alturin,” Corrin said, and giggled as she sipped. “I wonder if that name will hold.”

A twinge in the back of her head told her there was a use of power coming her way. She calmly set down her glass.

“Corrin,” said a voice in her mind.