Sovereign 1 - The Big Acorn, by John Nowak

Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers are copyright and trademarked by the Disney corporation. No infringement is intended.

[Author's Note: the word "turbo" refers to turbines, but a "ramjet" is a simple jet engine without turbines or even moving parts. Thus, the term "turbo-ramjet" is contradictory on the surface of it. Yet, the beast does exist. A "turbo-ramjet" is a ramjet with an afterburning turbojet, which is used at speeds too low to support the ramjet. It was originally designed for the (scrapped) Republic XF-103 triplesonic interceptor in 1950, and to my knowledge has never seen operational use. This note is included to assuage those who might otherwise, with some justification, think I was mixing adjectives at random.

And, of course, Sparky's theories make no sense whatsoever. While the space-time "drag" he describes is real, the Earth is so small and light the effect is just barely measurable.

Syril Stacey appears with the kind permission of Aivars Liepa.]

1. Meanwhile

It was an unusually warm December, with temperatures hovering around ten Celsius, or the fifties, as it was New York. There had been some scattered snow earlier in the month, but to the disappointment of children and the cheer of adults, most of the precipitation this winter had been liquid. The song "I'm Dreaming of an Icecap Melting Christmas" was inching up the charts, as department-store Santas made jokes about water skis.

Above a cat food factory, the cat leaned backwards in his chair, sending rays from the rising sun through the diamond he held between his fingers. This particular diamond had vanished from the Raccoon and Packrat Museum of Naturally Glittery Things and had been replaced with a cubic zirconia purchased through the Home Shopping Network. The raccoons hadn't noticed yet. Some of his plans had been so subtle the Rangers had never suspected him.

A long-winged shadow flicked over the desk, and he started and clenched the diamond in his fist, as though to conceal it. He turned and felt relief when he saw it was an osprey, and not the Ranger Wing. A cat was worried about four rodents and a bug. What would mother say?

Even thinking about them bothered him. It wasn't so much the baubles they had cost him as it was the sheer arrogance they displayed - setting themselves, rodents, to judge what he, a cat, could or could not have. They were preventing him from taking what was his by right of his own cunning and strength, as though there was anything of antiquity or value on the continent which had not been wrested from its rightful owner, and re-wrested, a hundred times over. Including, of course, the continent. The Rescue Rodents were at least as bad as that Human who had fed him - Feline Reducing Diet, indeed!

Nobody stood between him and something he wanted. Not for long.

Fat Cat settled back into his chair and resumed staring at the diamond. This time, they'd lose, and ideally, they wouldn't even know it.



The horizon was visibly curved. But what captured her attention was something she hadn't expected. Space had an edge. From her vantage point, Gadget could see black space and deep blue atmosphere with a distinct border between the two. She knew it was an optical illusion, similar to the way rainbows seemed to move when you chased them, but it was a striking one.

The pressure in Gadget's helmet was slightly higher than that in her pressure suit; the pressure in her suit was slightly higher than that in the cabin; the pressure in the cabin much higher than that outside. Inhaling, the air inflated her lungs, while exhaling took an effort, like blowing out a candle.

Periodically, Gadget would flick the control stick or tap her foot on the rudder pedals, and a short blast from a reaction motor would fractionally adjust the attitude of the meter-long ceramic and titanium wedge she piloted. She was too close to space for control surfaces to work.

A red glow trailed backwards from the leading edges of _Falcon-C_. The technical term clicked in her head: hypersonic airflow stagnation. She was getting close to Mach 6. At these speeds, the air didn't have time to get out the aircraft's way. It got hot, and broke down into a plasma. _Falcon-C_ was quite literally flying in a sheath of flame. In a more nervous decade, the flight of _Falcon-C_ might have triggered alerts in the Strategic Air Command. Now that dragon slumbered peacefully, while one hundred kilometers over New York, a mouse challenged the speed record set by the X-15.

Another part of her mind scanned gauges automatically, never forgetting she was responsible for Ultra-Flight Laboratory's most complex and advanced project. She was running low on nitrous oxide. It was impossible to fly this high without an oxidizer. Once it was gone, the engines would flame out until she glided down to where the air was thick enough to sustain combustion. It would be safer to idle the engines and save the remaining oxidizer in case she needed power during her descent. So much for the speed record.

Reluctantly, she throttled back, pulling the plane into a climb on idle. _Falcon-C_ would never survive thicker air at Mach 5.95; she needed to go below Mach 4 before dipping below one hundred thousand feet. At speeds less than the hypersonic barrier around Mach 5, friction would still heat the airframe, but the air would flow past the leading edges instead of bunching up and forming a superheated plasma.

Gadget watched forlorn as the Machmeter spiraled downwards. Then she happened to notice the altimeter. It was approaching 340,000 feet.

Mesmerized, she watched the needle creep upwards. The X-15 record was 354,200. She was almost there already. It was odd to think of 14,000 feet as a little hump to glide up and over; it was roughly the operational ceiling of the Ranger Wing. She nudged the throttle for a little more power.

Moments later, the excited pilot emitted a whoop of triumph and took the black wedge home.



Widget leaned against the bridge of _Albacore_ and listened to the waves slap against her hull, the soft rush of water through her PumpJet. The submarine was barely making headway, moving in the center of the wake left behind the small, powerful tugboat that was guiding them into Staten Island City's new harbor.

She had mixed feelings whenever returning to shore, especially to cities. Just the sight of Manhattan's skyline reminded her of cold and hunger, of growing up a one-armed albino beggar. And worse. The city brought to mind why she had left it behind for the purity and mystery of blue water.

She wasn't a beggar any more. She was the mouse who made Professor Nimnul's generator practical. And earlier today, if her sources were correct, Gadget had broken flight records. This would probably be the first SRE convention where the two headliners were sisters.

Submersible Research Vessel _Albacore_ was not the largest rodent-built ship afloat, but at one time it was close to being the longest. A twenty-foot cylinder, three feet wide at the most, bristling with net-cutting saw blades, _Albacore_ did not behave well on the surface. She was too big for these tugboats to pull, so she was moving under her own power.

Widget's husband, Jürgen, was standing in front of the bridge and speaking into a small microphone. "Mrs. Shapiro, please give me port rudder. Just barely tap it and bring it back." He waited a moment and shook his head in silent vexation. "No, too much, better correct back the other way... perfect. Thank you."

Widget's sinking of a rodent cruise ship as part of a plan to destroy the Rescue Rangers (they got along better now) had generated a lot of publicity, and resumes to join the crew had poured in. They had taken on an extra five, bringing the total to twenty-eight. Mrs. Shapiro was a promising helmsman.

Widget peered forward, frowning. She didn't have the slightest idea why Jürgen had asked for the correction. As far as she could tell, _Albacore_ was on course. Then she saw the path they were cutting through the tugboat's wake waver slightly, first to the right, then to the left, then settle back in dead center. She looked at her husband sideways; quite properly, he was too intent on his job to notice. He had seen, somehow, they were drifting starboard and gave corrective orders before the designer of the boat had realized they were necessary. She shook her head. He did something similar once or twice a day. She never got tired of watching him; it was something like magic.

Jürgen had commanded U-boats back during the last war, before Widget had been born (she didn't care to dwell for long on the math involved). He was of medium height and slender, and his fur was just beginning to acquire a gray frost. She had designed the _Albacore,_ but Jürgen could run it. It was a partnership which had predated their marriage by over a year.

"There's a small problem," he said, keeping his eyes on the water.

"Where?" she asked, straining to see.

He looked at her with a grin and she knew they were talking at cross- purposes. "Admiral Feldmows invited me to dinner tonight. If I go, I'll miss the opening night of the Engineer's conference."

"We probably should keep our customer happy," Widget said, shrugging her right shoulder. Her left arm was artificial. It was almost as good as a real arm, but it was hard to shrug it. "Didn't Feldmows fight in the war?"

"Yes. Ironic in a way. I suspect the name was 'Feldmaus' before the clerk at Ellis Island."

"Did he serve with my father?"

Jürgen shook his head immediately, and Widget knew the same possibility had occurred to him and he had researched it. "Feldmows was on a United Species Navy destroyer. Your father was Rodent Air Force Coastal Command. It's not likely they ever met."

"Too bad." Widget had never met Geegaw Hackwrench since infancy; she was always eager to talk to people who knew her father. "I promised to drop by Mayor Catbane's before the conference starts. If you visit Feldmows, we can make nice with both the customers tonight."

"Jerome Catbane," Jürgen chuckled. Being a politician, Catbane had impressive reserves of charm; Widget was normally hard to get close to, but the aging plutocrat had made quite a hit with her. Catbane's first great- granddaughter had been born within a few days of Widget and Jürgen's own son. Catbane and Widget had been swapping baby stories within half an hour of meeting, which was incredible for the guarded and reserved engineer. "Where does a mouse get a name like that?"

"From the original. Sir George the Catbane, like in the stories."

"You are a joke making, yes?" he asked, surprise making him revert momentarily to German syntax.

"Nope. He actually existed, but I personally doubt the story about his climbing to the moon to bring back cheese. Jerome's his Great-to-the-thirtieth or something grandson. He doesn't make a big deal of it because dead ancestors don't go over well on this side of the Atlantic. If you see Feldmows and I see Catbane, we can compare notes."

"Sounds like a plan," Jürgen nodded, not moving his eyes off the water. "I'll see you tonight then."

Widget glanced up and down the length of the boat to make sure they were alone. "Don't be too tired," she said softly. They looked at one another and she turned, "accidentally" wrapping her tail around his waist and pulling it through his fingers as she walked inside. Jürgen watched his wife vanish into the bridge with a smile, before turning back to watch the water. He sucked breath in through his teeth. Urgently, he switched the mike on. "Five degrees starboard and hold."



Back on the ground, Gadget crouched to walk under the wing. She could feel the heat radiating from the titanium aircraft on her ears, as she stared at an empty pylon under the fuselage. On later flights, it would mount experimental scramjet engines. Was it long enough to project above surface turbulence?

She heard the whine of an electric motor of a car pulling up behind her, and turned away from the aircraft. A tall black squirrel was driving the converted R/C dune buggy. Clayton was the director of the Falcon project, and had given her the chance to fly the _Falcon-C_.

"Do you like it?" he asked, flashing her a grin.

"Golly, yes," she replied, "Thanks for letting me take it up."

Clayton got out of his car and looked serious. "It's because of you it's flying at all. You've got more right to fly it than anyone else."

Gadget shrugged. She had noticed Widget's part in the rebirth of _Falcon_ was generally overlooked, and sometimes it annoyed her. Gadget had to admit that Widget had taken a secondary role in the design walk throughs, but that had hardly been surprising given the medical circumstances. Gadget always felt her sister deserved more credit from Ultra-Flight than she got. "Are you taking me in for debriefing?"

"Yes. Let's go." He slapped her shoulder and smiled. _Not too obvious,_ he cautioned himself. The moment she realized what he was up to she'd balk out of sheer perversity. "Did you run into any problems with the control system?"

"It felt a little muddy between one hundred thousand and one hundred fifty thousand feet," She shrugged. "Still, the transition from aerodynamic control to reaction control was pretty good. It responded pretty much the same way throughout the flight." Gadget was peeling off and tossing her pressure suit into the back of the car, with Clayton's help. The light cotton longjohns she had under the pressure suit were more than most animals wore. She hadn't needed the "relief garment" under those, but she looked forward to divesting herself of it anyway; there was something annoying about diapers. Still, she was modest enough to feel uncomfortable about getting rid of it while Clayton talked with her.

They got into the car and drove off, Clayton timing his next words carefully.

"Good. Since the pilot's controls are read by a computer we can program the system to make the controls steadier through the envelope. We're going to need to add a third control mode, something that reverses the way the elevons work pitch control." They stopped and Clayton brought her through the door. "Instead of swinging up when you want to pull the nose up, they swing down. And vice-versa. We'll also reverse the rudders." The blockhouse crew nodded at her politely and she waved hello to them, clearly distracted by her conversation with Clayton. The squirrel felt like a fisherman with a tug on the line. He carefully kept his expression neutral.

They drew up to the conference room. "Why would you want to do that?" she asked, confused. Clayton swung the door open. By the sheerest of coincidences, the technical diagram of the answer was sitting on the table. Clayton tapped it absently, while Gadget stared.

"The next step is to add a booster," he said, trying to sound casual. "A large, winged, combination air breather and rocket. It's about twice the size of _Falcon,_ and _Falcon_ links to the front. Like a locomotive. We want to keep the booster simple, so the wings have no control surfaces -"

"...And _Falcon_ controls the entire assembly," Gadget said, nodding slowly, figuring out the point immediately. "Effectively, _Falcon's_ wings are used like canards, because we're ahead of the center of pressure. Then you jettison the booster, and they work like wings again."

"Exactly." He paused. "On the return from orbit. This is _Falcon-D._"

Gadget wasn't saying anything. She was staring at the diagram, entranced. As though he had just remembered, Clayton fumbled in his pocket. "Oh, I forgot. These are for you." He took out a small golden pin and fixed it firmly to Gadget's longjohns, below her collarbone.

Gadget looked down. She blinked. "Astronaut wings?"

"You reached an altitude over fifty miles. Congratulations."

Clayton couldn't resist a smile at Gadget's dumbfounded expression. Fortunately, it looked like he was happy for her, and not over the way his plans were working out.



"My babies!" screamed the sparrow, fluttering against the white ceiling of the mall. "_They'll be hungry! _" Another two took up her cry, and followed her, slamming their bodies helplessly and uselessly against their entirely unintentional prison.

Monty took in a deep breath and squinted. The sparrow was fluttering around one of the large halogen lights in a tremendous fully-enclosed mall. Monty took one hand off the control yoke and lowered his blue visor. Too dark; he waited for his eyes to adjust and held the Ranger Wing steady in a hover. Strange to be up against a ceiling, four stories over the ground.

Finding birds accidentally trapped inside malls and leading them out was one of the less glamorous tasks the Rangers undertook. In terms of lives saved, it was one of the most important. It could also be one of the most frustrating. Gadget could just wave and smile and they'd flock after her. Chip would tilt his fedora to a businesslike angle, and with a determined cry of "Follow me!" would have the panicked birds in a semblance of order in a few minutes.

Unfortunately, Gadget was somewhere in the stratosphere, the chipmunks were meeting the submarine _Albacore_ on Staten Island, and Zipper, of course, was home in the tree. Bringing the fly along to rescue panicked, hungry birds would be as dangerous as having Monty stroll through Cat Alley in a catnip vest.

"Ladies, ladies," Monty cajoled. "Please!" Two of the sparrows looked at him, but he couldn't see them well enough to read their expressions. "I can show you the way out-"

At that moment, a horrible clatter from over his left shoulder ripped the air. He dropped Ranger Wing's nose as the plane slewed sharply to the right. Subconsciously, he had realized the noise matched the RPM of the propellers - and that instead of hovering, he had been drifting, and the Ranger Wing had bumped a into a light fixture. He increased speed to gain stability, and noticed a slight and unpleasant vibration. He had chipped the propeller.

Once he was confident he had his vehicle under control, he looked back - to see the sparrows, terrified of the noise, scattering through the mall. Monty swore violently for several minutes.



Gadget waved goodbye to the Ultra-Flight test pilot, as he waved back smartly and took his Kestrel tiltrotor off the landing branch on the Ranger Tree. She turned and skipped towards the hangar. She noticed the Ranger Wing wasn't there, but it didn't quite register; in her mind she was still hearing the soft roar of turbo-ramjets and seeing plasma flicker past her cockpit, with the edge of space so near it seemed she could stretch and touch it.

She tilted her head back. The stars were coming out. She held the astronaut wings in her fist, tight and safe, and ran her thumb over the edge. Zipper watched, with a slight frown. She was ignoring him - well, actually, she hadn't noticed him. She looked so happy he wasn't sure if he wanted to interrupt or not.

For a moment, she had the odd sensation of flying the Ranger Wing at Mach 5+. She frowned; even for a daydream, it seemed too silly. Then she turned around and jumped back; Monty had just landed the Wing behind her. Her eyes immediately spotted the slight vibration in the port wing, and realized the propeller had been damaged.

"Are you okay, Monterey?" she asked, concerned.

Monty gave a half grin. "Nothin' I can't handle, love. Clipped the prop a mite; I'll replace it before we leave."

"How did it go in the malls?"

Monty exhaled slowly through his teeth. "I only got through one. How was your flight?"

Her face split into a smile. "I broke the altitude record." Zipper could tell she had been waiting impatiently for a chance to give the news.

"Again?" Monty grinned.

"The _Human_ altitude record. The _Human, unofficial_ altitude record."

Stunned, Monty emitted a low, slow whistle. Then he pulled her into his arms. "That's the girl," he said, and gave her just a bit of a squeeze.

"I'll tell you all about it on our way to dinner," Gadget was glowing, a broad, excited smile on her face. "Hi, Zipper!" Zipper buzzed back.

"You better," Monty said in a mock-threatening tone. "Oh, before I forget, when you get some time, could you do me a favor? I'd like these blue lenses swapped out for yellow," he said casually.

Gadget paused. Monty had turned and couldn't see her suddenly depressed expression. "Oh. Sure." Zipper lifted an eyebrow. It seemed like a normal request; why did it change her mood so much? "I'll see to it before we go."

Gadget was in her workshop, studying Monty's goggles. They were made of two layers of leather, with the translucent blue cellophane sandwiched between them. She had found some optical quality amber, and she picked carefully at the old stitches.

The leather was old, but still supple and basically sound. Stains and scratches on the lens and the leather testified to long and hard service under different skies and climates. She noticed evidence of old repair work - a stitch replaced, and retied, and wondered if her father had originally worked in some of the stitches she was working out.

Zipper rounded the door into her workshop. She had disassembled the goggles and was using the old blue lenses as a template to cut the new amber ones. She still seemed a little subdued - not depressed, not really. Still, the contrast with her earlier, high-charged enthusiasm was striking.

She glanced up. "Hi, Zipper," she said.

Zipper broached the subject as delicately as he could. Gadget's usual animation and openness was deceptive; she tended to cover up and deny much more than she revealed. At first, Zipper had thought her gloom was caused by returning to mundane concerns after an emotional high point. But another, nastier possibility had come to mind. As far as Zipper knew, no Ranger had asked her to work with a needle and thread before - perhaps she felt she was being asked to do "girl's work?"

Gadget looked up, surprised. "Golly, no! My fingers are a lot smaller than his. I've been sewing his buttons for months."

Then what?

Gadget lifted the helmet so she could look through the goggles. She put it down. "When you get older, your eyes start having problems adapting to darkness. You need to use a yellow lens instead of a blue lens." She went silent. "Monty admitted he's not as young as he used to be. I don't think he's had to do that before."

Zipper buzzed sympathy. He tapped the wristwatch on the wall pointedly.

"It's that late already?" Gadget asked rhetorically. Quickly, she tied a knot and trimmed the cord. "We had better leave right away. You know how to get to Staten Island?"



Foxglove hung from the branch, wings wrapped nervously around her. She had left the heated roost Gadget had made for her in the Ranger Tree to do a little hunting, and a rendezvous with destiny. The Human with the bat locator had passed by here at dusk for three nights running, and her stage fright was making her regret the decision she had reluctantly come to.

Punctual in the way of his species, the bearded man was soon visible, carrying the device that shifted the frequency of bat calls to something he could perceive. The device was attached by a cord to a tape recorder on his belt, and through the tape recorder to his earplugs.

He was convinced he had heard the whispering sonar of a California leaf- nosed bat the other day, but since it was patently ridiculous that a desert bat, incapable of migrating, could have wandered from the southwest to Manhattan he had to make a recording to be sure. A Macrotus Californicus somehow stuck in Central Park had little or no chance of surviving on its own because of the cold. And since that species relied heavily on passive sensors - eyesight, sensitive ears - it would be devilishly hard to find and rescue.

Soon, the parabolic mike was sweeping her way. Foxglove trembled wildly, certain she could never muster the courage to actually follow through with her Plan -

But then the mike was on her, and her nervousness vanished as she launched into the world debut of her ultrasonic Simon and Garfunkle pastiche.

The sky in darkness, day at end, and I am on the hunt again. My flexing wings take me to altitude Soaring above the bugs which are my food. And the signal pierces darkness and the echo, sweet, returns. This is the sound I see with.

Foxglove was quite strong in the high notes, but it had to be admitted hers was a singing voice that only a mother could love, and even then, only if the mother was a bat. The Human tapped his earplug quizzically.

All crickets, moths and horrid things, Try to evade my questing pings. Viffing, scissors, knifewing, all their tricks, will not save them when I'm on their six. and my wings bite the air and I eat up what I've swept on intercept, Found by the sound I see with.

Foxglove had her eyes closed and was doing an inverted moonwalk down her branch. Her only accompaniment was in her mind, but that was enough. Moths and other nocturnal insects heard her song and trembled.

The bugs that hear all try to flee the little AWACS which is me...

By this point, the Human had stopped listening and was trying to find the prankster. Foxglove was so caught up in her song she didn't notice until she happened to hear a large, nearby return echo. She opened her eyes in shock and saw the Ranger Wing, with Gadget and Monty, hovering below her.

Unaware they had interrupted a musical number, Gadget waved gaily. "Hey, Foxglove! We're on our way to a dinner. Want to join us?"

Foxglove hesitated a long moment. "Who's giving it?"

"The Society of Rodent Engineers. Down in Staten Island."

"I don't think so," Foxglove said thoughtfully. "I'm not a rodent, and I'm not an engineer, and I really should be getting dinner."

Moths trembled.

"I don't think Dale has a date yet..." Gadget mused.

Foxglove released her grip on the branch and did a half somersault in midair, landing in the rear seat. Gadget turned around to face her. "Will he be there? *Really?* " Eagerly, the bat pushed her face into Gadget's, leaning against the headrest of the seat in front of her and pressing the mouse against the control panel.

"Uhm, Foxy, I'm flying a plane here," Gadget said patiently as the Wing began to slide towards the tree, and Monty watched the impending collision, mesmerized.

"Sorry," said the abashed chiropterid, going back to her seat.

"No problem," Gadget assured her, stomping hard on the left rudder pedal. Ranger Wing had no rudders; yaw control was handled by increasing or decreasing power to one of the two big propellers. Since the propellers were tilted up, in hover mode, this made the left wing drop, and the aircraft skittered sideways away from the tree.

While Gadget let the torque of the right propeller turn the Wing to the left, Foxglove kept the conversation going. Understandably, Foxglove didn't realize how tricky flying could be to a ground walker.

"What have you been up to?" Foxglove asked.

Gadget grinned. It was a perfect setup line. "Three hundred fifty five thousand feet. I broke the unofficial record set by the X-15 in 1967."

"That's great! Will you be breaking the official record next?"

Gadget bonked herself mentally. She was so caught up in it she was having trouble speaking to laymen. "The official record's only about one third of that."

Foxglove blinked. "What makes it an unofficial record, then?"

"To set an official record, you have to take off and land under your own power. The X-15 was dropped from a bomber. Have you ever been to Staten City, Foxglove?"

2. Staten City

3. Most animals live a paw-to-mouth existence, getting what they can from plants, or one another, or what they can borrow or steal from the impossibly huge and wealthy Human civilization which dominates the world. Some don't.

There were quite a few animal cities, and the one on and in Staten Island was probably the biggest. Most of it was underground, grown out of the amalgamation of many small communities, connected by tunnels. Unusually for an animal community, Staten City's economy was founded on trade instead of subsistence agriculture. Even Thorn Valley was technically part of the Third World - over half its population were farmers.

Trade means transport, and despite the experiments Ultra-Flight Labs was performing on long-ranged aircraft, transport means cargo ships. Staten City was geographically well placed as a seaport; near a large Human city with two airports, and, unusually, little sea traffic; far enough south to be ice-free in all but the most severe winters. Any animal with a surplus for trade knew where it could be taken. Most small animals live and die within a few miles of their birthsite. Staten City bustled with animals from every continent.

Trade means wealth, and there wasn't a small animal anywhere who didn't dream of visiting Staten City. The bright lights in the Raccoon and Packrat Museum of Naturally Glittery Things, the music and neon of the Acorn Club, the Hubert the Human theme park, the Mole Museum of Packed Dirt (which had no lights - visitors had to feel their way around), these and other famous landmarks all contributed in their way to the drama and appeal of this underground metropolis, the "Big Acorn."

Trade means piracy, and piracy means police. Admiral Thomas Winston "Bullhead" Feldmows stood on the dock as _Albacore_ slid up against the pier. He was in full uniform, and the dockhands would have avoided him, but he was careful to stand out of their way. Submarines were hard to dock. Instead of multiple propellers across the stern which could be used to turn the boat, _Albacore_ had a single, large PumpJet - a ducted water turbine. One of the submarine's two rudders was out of the water. The job the dockhands were facing was more than complicated enough without tripping over an Admiral, and Feldmows knew this.

Jürgen, the _Albacore's_ captain, didn't spare him a glance as his boat slid gently into dock. The sleek monster slowed as its momentum died in the water, almost as smoothly and perfectly as though she was running on underwater tracks. It was hard enough to take any vessel in that cleanly, let alone a surfaced submarine, to an unfamiliar harbor. Feldmows shook his head ruefully and remembered the splintered wreckage of the dock when the pride of Staten City's fleet, the _Mahan_ had returned from her first sea trials. Jürgen knew his business.

Standing idly further down the dock were two chipmunks, carrying luggage. The one wearing a disreputable fedora and shabby bomber jacket tugged at the collar of the other's nausea-inducing Hawaiian shirt. The one in the Hawaiian shirt moved backwards, out of the way of a scurrying deckhand with a rope, and stepped into a coil. Moments later, the coil tightened and he was being pulled along the dock by _Albacore,_ hopping on one foot to keep from going over. His friend sprinted after him. Feldmows sighed. Some people were dangerous to themselves and others.

When the submarine came to a halt, Feldmows saluted the captain on his boat. Jürgen returned the salute smartly. "Permission to come aboard?" Feldmows asked.

"Of course, Admiral," Jürgen returned. While dockhands slapped a gangplank down, the two chipmunks jumped the gap and staggered momentarily on the rolling deck. Jürgen turned away briefly to shake hands. Feldmows couldn't hear what was being said.

Jürgen made introductions as he opened the door to the bridge. "Admiral," he said. "This is Chip and Dale of the Rescue Rangers. Chip, Dale, this is Admiral Feldmows of the Staten City Navy."

Feldmows shook hands and muttered a few words of greeting to cover up his amazement. The red nosed chipmunk he had just seen being pulled down the dock with a high-pitched yip yip yip had gone against Rat Capone, Professor Nimnul, and Fat Cat. And won. They didn't have to impress anyone.

They crowded onto the bridge. A young squirrel stood at attention and saluted. "Admiral on -" he started.

"Shh-hh," came a soft voice from the far corner of the bridge. It was Widget. She had unlocked her chair from its usual position and had wheeled it over to the diving station, her back towards the door. Her right hand was raised for emphasis and her left arm was folded in front of her. Immediately, a nervous hush descended over the bridge. When the designer of the boat suddenly asked for quiet, she got it. The diving officer watched her carefully, not touching any controls. He was as in the dark as anyone else.

Suddenly, Widget kicked the bulkhead in front of her, sending her chair shooting backwards across the bridge. She rotated about at the same time, facing her direction of travel. Admiral Feldmows tried not to show surprise. She was using her short cloak to cover up, but she was obviously nursing her six-month old son, Gimcrack. She dragged her feet and stopped next to the power plant station.

"Show me a DC power output graph," she ordered, looking at an LCD screen. Immediately, the officer manning the station touched some buttons on a keyboard scrounged from a digital data wristwatch. Silently, Jürgen and Feldmows moved to see the graph. To Feldmows, it was too irregular and spiky to read clearly; but that was typical of Nimnul generators.

"Show me generator revs for the past five minutes." The power plant officer changed the display to show a graph which started high, dropped low, and then crept slowly upwards.

Widget smiled, showing her teeth. It wasn't a pleasant sight, reminding Feldmows of a cat which had found dinner. Widget tapped the intercom to the engineering deck.

"Shiro-san," she said lightly. "Widget here. We're idling a little high - could you take care of it?"

"Uh... yes, ma'am," replied the voice of a startled and very uncharacteristic-sounding Shiro over the intercom. "Sumimasen."

Jürgen shook his head, amazed. She had heard the engine's spin rate going up, at the far end of the boat. At times he was convinced she was a magician. Still, berating Shiro-san over the intercom - although very gently - was probably not a good idea. He would talk to her about it later.

"New electric motor on the Nimnul generator," Widget explained cheerfully. "Idles a little rough." She seemed to suddenly realize who was aboard. "Oh, Admiral," she choked, and started to shift her son to balance him while standing.

"Please don't get up," Feldmows begged her. He felt slightly rattled. Mice in polite society tended not to nurse their young in public. Of course, in a sense, _Albacore_ was Widget's nest.

Feldmows had a certain affection for Gimcrack. Times without number, in design meetings, confronting Widget's glittering pink eyes over a maze of blueprints, the only thing which had sustained him and others through the contest of wills was the assured knowledge that the meeting would break periodically for Gimcrack's meals. In one particularly grueling, donut-free encounter, the Building Commissioner had come close to agreeing to scrap a cathedral to extend a dock an extra meter and a half. Then Gimcrack got hungry. The oldest rodent-built structure in the northeast had survived by only the most slender of margins.

The chipmunk who had been introduced as Dale walked towards Gimcrack with a grin. Feldmows decided Dale liked babies, which was true enough but it went a little deeper than that. Dale had helped at Gimcrack's birth and that formed a bond. "Hiya, Widget. How's Gimcrack doing? Did he like those presents from Gadget?"

Widget considered. "Well, the 3DF Balance Exerciser seemed a bit, uh ... old for him. But we modified it into a sonar mount." She pointed upwards.

Close to the ceiling, Mr. Fenton, a bat, waved back down. He was strapped into a chair in a Three Degrees of Freedom rig: two interlocking rings which allowed the chair to point in any direction. He could rotate the chair himself and locate the bearing of a sound with greater accuracy.

"Gimcrack really likes the Baby Ball," Widget went on. "It lets him crawl all over the boat without risking his falling into anything, or touching controls which might cause explosions or sink us or something. He's at the age where he wants to be mobile." She considered mentioning the time they had done a crash dive and he had rolled the entire length of the boat from the aft to the forward torpedo rooms. Gimcrack had enjoyed the trip so much the crew sometimes tucked him into the aft torpedo room right before an attack drill. It raised morale.

Dale noticed Jürgen and Feldmows had started their own conversation, apparently about the sonar rig. He knew Widget and Jürgen were doing some sort of work for and with the Staten City Navy and figured it would be best if he and Chip could slip out gracefully so Widget could spend more attention on the paying guest. "Maybe we can stow our gear and settle in," he suggested tactfully to Chip, who blinked and immediately got it.

"Yeah," Chip agreed. "I could do with a lay down before dinner."

"Ya mind?" Dale asked Widget, pointing at her son. Widget smiled and nodded. Gimcrack had finished and was nestling against her. Dale took him and lifted him up, turning him around so Dale could get a good look at his face, thereby flipping Widget's cloak over her shoulder. Chip slapped a hand over his eyes and ground his teeth together. The entire bridge crew showed great interest in their display panels, even though most were inactive. Jürgen and Feldmows' conversation withered and died as she disentangled and rearranged her cloak.

"Oops," Dale said.

"Oops," Chip agreed, drumming his fingers against his upper arm. He took out a notebook and made a single mark.

He was trying to cut down on bonks, but found going cold turkey was beyond him. When he got the urge to hit Dale, he made a single tally mark in his Bonk Log. Every fifth mark he give Dale a bonk. There were times waiting became unendurable but he was making genuine progress by taking it one day at a time.

Gimcrack looked solemnly at the red nosed chipmunk. He had last seen Dale only four months ago, but that was a long time for him. He leaned forward slightly and sniffed a few times; then he remembered and tucked himself into a hug against Dale's shoulder. Dale had held him before his own mother had.

Jürgen looked for a towel and grabbed a chamois used to clean lenses and screens. He passed it to Chip. "Tuck this under Gimcrack's chin. He might, uhm..."

"It will blend into the pattern of Dale's shirt," Chip said placidly, but he did as Jürgen suggested.

Dale was making his Baby Faces at Gimcrack, sending the infant into a paroxysm of high-pitched giggles. "Okay if I take him to the nursery?" he asked Widget. "See you in the cabin, Chip."

Widget nodded her head gratefully. "You're in B-14," she told them. "You know the way?"

"We'll find it," Chip assured her. With a nod, he took their luggage down the steep staircase leading to B-Deck, while Dale turned Gimcrack into an airplane and flew him through the door that led to his parents' cabin.



As a wedding present, Gadget had rearranged the bulkheads to combine Widget and Jürgen's cabins into a single, larger one, with a door that opened directly onto the bridge. It was split into two sections; a bedroom and a smaller nursery, separated for privacy by a light folding screen.

In this context, "larger" wasn't terribly big. Most of the room was taken up by a double bed in a loft, with two low desks and chairs below. The bed was too close to the ceiling to sit on without hunching over. There was no table for meals; they would eat in the mess with the rest of the crew. There was an odd, empty framework on the wall, a bit like a coat rack but not quite. Dale puzzled over it for a minute or two before realizing it was a brace for supporting Widget's arm when she wasn't wearing it. The harness which held it to her torso was quite elaborate.

The room was terrifyingly tidy, out of sheer necessity. There were no loose objects left out anywhere, and a bare minimum of personal effects. Dale felt quite pleased to note the mouse-sized copy of Neil Gaiman's _Mr. Punch_ sitting on one of the desks, where Widget could leaf through it in an idle moment.

There were a few photographs on the wall. Some were grainy black and white, others grainy color, and a few sharp color ones made with Gadget's Xenon flash unit, which produced enough light for a slow film. He was surprised to see a grainy black and white of Jürgen at his wedding, until he realized the bride wasn't Widget. It was someone considerably shorter and stockier. It had to be from Jürgen's first marriage. The photo was so bad Dale hadn't noticed how much younger Jürgen looked.

Dale looked more closely at the picture of Jürgen's first wife. What was her name ... Ilse? That sounded right. The picture was too grainy to show much expression, and Dale wondered if he could see some shadow of her ultimate fate in her features. He hoped not. He hoped there was nothing there but joy and glowing pride. How long had she lived after that photograph? Five years, more or less?

Near that was a sharp color portrait of Widget and Jürgen done soon after their wedding; she had gone to the trouble of sealing her ear notch temporarily with a bit of glue. The pose was a happy accident; they had intended to be staring off dramatically into the future, but they had caught one another's eyes and a spontaneous, loving smile had flashed over their faces just as the shutter was snapped. It was so good they kept it.

There was nothing from Widget's life before she met Jürgen. Nothing at all. Even the picture of her parents was a copy of a print from Gadget's collection. That saddened Dale on some level. Surely, there had to be something from that time she valued.

Dale saw all this because the door from the bridge opened into the bedroom. It was a choice between that and having it open into the nursery, and Gimcrack's parents had made the sacrifice. The nursery was considerably smaller, and consisted mostly of a crib and storage space. Gimcrack reached out to some books on a shelf and gurgled.

"Want me to read you a book?" Dale asked the baby. Gimcrack gurgled and smiled happily. Dale smiled back. Gimcrack was at an age where he was beginning to take notice of the world; he could see and recognize faces and scents and would respond to them. It would be very easy to fool one's self into thinking he actually understood what was being said and could converse.

Dale took a seat on a chest and slipped a book out of the shelf. The shelf was rigged to hold the books in place with a bar; removing it one handed was a bit tricky. He sat Gimcrack on his knee and read the title: _Hubert the Human and Boats._

Dale opened the book to a picture of a bright, sunny harbor. Hubert the Human pointed at the harbor and smiled. "'These are boats.'" Dale read. He paused a moment while Gimcrack looked at the pictures, and turned the page. "'Boats can float.'" Again, he paused and turned the page. "'Boats float because the mass of the water they displace equals the mass of the boat,'" Dale read. He blinked. "Whatever that means," he said in a parenthesis.

"Bee da ba de doo ba _dee_ be da," Gimcrack explained patiently, if not clearly.

"'The ratio of mass to volume is called density or specific gravity [see _Hubert the Human Measures The Universe._],'" Dale read. He looked at Gimcrack with a worried expression. "If you major in Fine Arts, you're in for the fight of your life."

Gimcrack nodded seriously while a dubious Dale turned the page.

"'Will a boat of mass M (g) and volume v (cm^3) float in pure water (specific gravity = 1g/cm^3) where M > v?'"

Gimcrack paused briefly and shook his head. Dale was frowning at the book and didn't notice.

"You know, this book is a little advanced for you," Dale said.

Gimcrack sighed. He hoped Dale wouldn't switch to the book about the little lost mouse boy - Gimcrack found that one jejune.



_Albacore_ was luxurious for a submarine. None of the cabins had more than two beds. In fact, Chip and Dale's cabin was better than the hotel room they had shared in Ottawa. There was a folding desk with a built in keyboard - Gadget had given them a list of email addresses - and the bathroom was shared with only one other cabin.

Chip had finished moving his stuff into the drawers under the lower bunk and was thinking of unpacking for Dale when his friend walked in. Dale had a children's book under one arm.

"How's Gimcrack?" Chip asked.

"Fine." Dale smiled. "I started reading this to him, and he went to sleep. It's got this little mouse boy who gets lost on Ellis Island. I wanted to finish it." Dale put the book on his bunk, tossed his bags onto Chip's, and opened the drawers under the upper bunk.

"These locks don't have keys," Dale pointed out, pulling open the drawers.

"They're not there to keep people out. They're there to keep them from opening in rough weather," Chip told him.

Dale blinked and looked at him. "You're kidding, right?" he asked seriously.

Chip swallowed a grin and shook his head solemnly. "Oh, no. You see, the boat is cylindrical." He lifted a pencil as a useful visual aid. "We don't have a keel to keep us stable. So we'll roll, and roll, first to the left, then to the right, as the waves wash over the deck, to the left, and to the right." He twirled the pencil to demonstrate, and rocked it back and forth rhythmically.

Dale watched the gyrations of the pencil, his usual smile fading.

"Even a small wave could roll us all the way over. It will be a bit like flying with Gadget in rough weather, except there is no land below us for shelter," Chip explained brightly. "See how the walls are padded?" Chip asked helpfully. Actually, it was a spongy anechoic layer to absorb noise, but Dale didn't know that, and Chip saw no reason to enlighten him. "That's in case we..." He twirled the pencil between his fingers, rolling it several times in succession while Dale paled.

"Y'know, Chip," Dale reflected, "I don't think it's a good idea for both of us to go -"

"We've been over that, Dale. You and I are the only Rangers close enough in size to fit in the same shellsuit. We both have to learn how to use it." Chip's eyes blinked, warm and without guile.

"Uhm."

"Before we leave dock," Chip went on seriously, "we'll have to find out what to do during emergencies. There's a lot that can go wrong on a submarine."

"Yeah," Dale agreed faintly.



Karl Jürgen pushed his black hair out of his eyes and grimaced at the banner over the entrance to the convention center: WELCOME 15th ANNUAL SOCIETY OF RODENT ENGINEERS. Being a mouse he was used to life in tunnels, but Staten City's were unique: half cylinders, flat on the bottom, averaging a meter across and half a meter tall. Building fronts emerged from the sides, and automobile headlights in the ceiling provided illumination. The sun never set because there was no sun. Staten City never slept. The crowds of pedestrians were unsettling, to say the least: if rodents ever got together in such numbers in a Human city and were found, the exterminators would appear within a few hours. It was this secrecy that made Staten City possible.

Karl was a handsome mouse, or he would be without his perpetual scowl. He was in his mid twenties, taller than his father, and more slender. Like his father, he had a wild mouse's fur pattern: brown back and white stomach. He wore a black turtleneck; the coat and tie in his hotel room was something he avoided wearing.

He had been in a bad mood since entering Staten City. Every trivial detail was annoying him, from the sound of the windup taxis to the Cheese Bun pushcarts on every corner. It was true that he had some legitimate reasons to be annoyed. The cheaper hotel he had agreed to stay in was clear across town; not the "convenient" location he had been promised. The flight over had been wretched, and Karl, who was prone to vertigo, had taken it worse than most. There was a rumor that Ultra-Flight Lab's technically fascinating but rather pointless _Falcon_ project had done something spectacular today. Karl's breakout session was scheduled to take place at the same as Ultra-Flight's. He would have shout very loud indeed to compete with that.

Another reason behind his irritation was something Karl would deny; indeed, he was barely aware of it consciously. One of his earliest memories was his mother's body being dug out from under a building collapsed by an American bomber, and Karl was in America. He would never argue his country had been in the right but first impressions are important.

With a sigh, he mounted the steps and found his way to the show floor, flashing his exhibitor's pass to a large rat guard.

The room was a vast cavern, filled with the bustle of hundreds of exhibitors alternately setting up equipment and cursing labor unions. The first thing he saw was a life-sized fiberglass mockup of _Falcon_ being hoisted above Ultra-Flight's exhibition area. KESTREL - FALCON - PEREGRINE - GOLDEN EAGLE, read a banner bigger than the one on display outside. WINGS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM. The Ultra-Flight symbol, the winged paw print, was on every vertical surface it could fit. Multimedia screens were being tipped into position. Others showed a montage of Ultra-Flight's magnificent aircraft, soaring, banking, landing, attaching themselves to Human passenger jets with suction cups. Booth Babes reread their scripts, their lips moving.

Across the aisle from this was his booth. The mockup's wing cast a shadow over the banner. Lemming 2000's booth had some chairs, and an unopened cardboard box with fliers. They hadn't been able to afford color printing. There were also a few small scale models, set up.

_We're doomed,_ Karl thought. He should probably set up and unpack, but now it seemed just as productive to go out and get drunk.

"I think that's the show to beat," came a voice from behind him. Karl turned about and saw a male shrew, fairly short, with sandy hair and muttonchop whiskers, glasses, and a likable smile. The shrew extended a hand confidently.

"David Crustsnatcher?" Karl asked, tentatively taking his hand. Karl had always wondered how a shrew had gotten a mouse name, but he didn't know David well enough to ask.

"Yup. You're Karl Jürgen?"

David and Karl had never met before, but they had been working on Lemming 2000 for several years. One of the reasons Karl had agreed to make the trip was to finally meet his long-term coworker.

"Ja. Just got here from hotel. You vait long?"

"I was out for some water." Karl couldn't place David's accent; it wasn't British and it didn't sound like any Americans Karl had met before. Karl knew David was Canadian, but the shrew's accent didn't seem to match that either. David looked over at the spectacular display and shook his head sadly. "If we're lucky, we can catch some of their overflow."

Karl sighed deeply. He didn't want to say anything, but he was hoping for much more from this show. Lemming 2000 needed it desperately. David shrugged and started to leave out piles of their fliers, in case anyone wanted to have one, which was starting to seem unlikely.

Karl was going to move to help him, when one of the Booth Babes from Ultra-Flight happened to wander in their direction. She was a lovely girl, with the solid colors normally seen in domestic mice; she had long blonde hair and peach-colored fur. She wore a lavender jumpsuit, which matched her eyes, and goggles. She turned her back on him and bent down to examine a model. Karl couldn't help but notice how long her tail was. And she wasn't wearing a ring.

Karl walked slowly over towards her while David grinned. She was probably just bored with studying her script, but Karl guessed it would be a good chance to rehearse, and he might even be able to get a dinner date out of it.

"Modular pontoon bridges," she said the moment she became aware of him. "Vulnerable to changes in water depth. Once they're up, they won't last long." She shot him a glance. "What are they for?"

"You are engineer?" he asked with surprise, and immediately kicked himself. It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Her look grew as sharp as aged Cheddar for a moment before she nodded. She seemed familiar, somehow - but he couldn't place a name.

"Sorry," he tried to apologize. He groped for an excuse. "I thought engineers not coming till tomorrow, and exhibitors all busy on their own displays." He held his breath. He was mangling his English again.

She hesitated a moment and smiled with a nod. He wasn't sure if she believed him, but she was willing to overlook his gaffe. She had a wonderful smile.

"Periodically, lemmings embark on mass migrations. So many drown trying to cross streams de Humans have a popular myth about mass suicide." Karl paused, and kicked himself. He had used the word "mass" twice in a paragraph - a bad technique. She was watching him, either interested or feigning it well. She nodded, encouraging him.

"The next big lemming migration vill most probably take place in the year 2000. Lemming 2000 examines vays - ways to keep the casualties down."

"Interesting," she said thoughtfully. She tapped a model. "You need to curve into the current."

"We're planning to anchor the modules to the stream beds."

"That'll help, but I'll bet you'll have a problem with deep water and fast streams." A pencil appeared from nowhere and she started sketching on the back of a flier. "See? Think of it as an arch on its side. The pressure of the water pushes the modules more firmly together instead of pulling them apart."

Karl rubbed his chin thoughtfully. She was making good points, but she was so ... distracting in herself that Karl was afraid his own judgment was being affected. "Anything that makes the modules more versatile is probably good idea," he agreed. "Still, how do you -"

Karl noticed a chipmunk in a leather coat and fedora, who was reading or pretending to read one of the fliers. He was probably wandering over in hopes of striking up a conversation with the girl. The chipmunk saw Karl look up, and took this as an invitation to ask questions.

"Have you got co-operation with the lemmings yet?" the chipmunk asked.

Karl ground his teeth slightly. That was, of course, a sticking point. "We're making progress there," he said, trying to put a positive spin on it. "Still, it's been difficult." About half the lemming population was convinced it wouldn't happen to them, despite the disaster staring them in the face. As though ignoring the problem made it go away.

"You've heard of these people?" the mouse girl asked.

The chipmunk nodded. "Article in the Journal of the Rescue Aid Society," he explained. Karl felt his spirits sink. That article had explained why the RAS decided not to support Lemming 2000, leaving the smaller organization scrambling for resources. It had been a terrible blow to Lemming 2000, made worse because RAS hadn't come up with a single issue Lemming 2000 wasn't aware of. The chipmunk met Karl's eyes seriously. "It's the hardest thing in the world, trying to help someone who doesn't think they need it."

"They're using pontoon bridges," the mouse said. "Some of the biggest bridges ever made were pontoon bridges. Xerxes and Caligula. The problem is they don't last long."

"So you need to build a lot of them, in a very short time." The chipmunk was frowning. "You'll need volunteers on the ground, unskilled labor, probably. Lots of it. And a small number of skilled specialists, moving from place to place..."

"Engineer cadres," the mouse said immediately. "Air mobile, as much as possible."

"Responding to the unexpected. That means real time communications."

"Piggyback on the Human cellular network."

"And redesign the bridges so they can be made with local materials," the chipmunk finished.

The mouse nodded. "Prefabricate the attachment points and make the floats on site."

Karl watched in silence. These two had just reinvented Lemming 2000's most recent high level strategy, by tossing ideas back and forth like children with a ball. He was becoming convinced they had worked together a long time. Karl looked at the chipmunk's bomber jacket. He guessed the chipmunk was a pilot, and the mouse a designer.

Monty, Dale and Zipper had drifted over to the Lemming 2000 booth. Monty and David had already struck up a conversation.

"New Zealand?" Monty asked.

David grinned. "Born there, moved at twelve. Never lost the accent, somehow."

"You're a long way from 'ome."

David looked down his nose at the large mouse and lifted his eyebrows. "No further than some," he pointed out.

A chipmunk with a red nose and a bat apparently attached at the hip looked at a stack of business cards and blinked. "Karl Jürgen?" he asked. The others visibly reacted to the name. Karl sighed deep inside - he had been confused for his father more than once. "You're Widget Hackwrench's -"

"Widget Hackwrench?" David interrupted before Dale could finish his sentence with "foster son", looking over dubiously at his co-worker.

Widget's notoriety had come up more than once, and Karl knew what was coming next - he would be asked if Widget was involved in Lemming 2000 (she wasn't) and if she was Karl's wife. If he explained the relationship, someone would be sure to ask, or think, the obvious question: wasn't Karl's father too old for her?

Karl had some time ago decided the best way to confront the issue was head on, to toss the comment back into the teeth of the speaker as savagely as possible, and make it clear he had no interest in defending his father's decision to marry someone roughly half his own age.

"It's my father who married Widget Hackwrench." Karl couldn't, ever, call her or think of her as his "mother." "I think she's a bit young for me." Actually, Karl was only two years older than Widget, but jokes about it bothered him so much it was better to preempt them.

Karl had never seen the jest fall so flat before. David smiled for a moment, but the others looked at Karl, speechless, as though wondering if they had imagined it. For a moment, Karl suspected he had accidentally voiced an obscene Americanism. The chipmunk with the fedora actually closed his eyes, painfully. With a shock, Karl realized the chipmunk had looked _past_ him before wincing.

And so, when he turned his head, he wasn't surprised to see Widget's albino-pink eyes drilling into his. Widget's mouth wasn't set into any particular expression, but Karl had seen eyes like that on a swooping falcon.

"I didn't hear, Karl," she asked lightly. "Who is too young for you?"

Widget didn't look angry; more like an explosion just about to go off. She had heard, of course, but wanted him to squirm a little, trying to decide how to defuse her. Knowing that didn't make it feel any better.

"Widget," the blonde mouse said gently.

Startled, Karl watched the two women lock eyes. Widget didn't seem to change her expression in the slightest, while the blonde mouse looked back, first steadily, and then with a gentle smile. Incredibly, Widget broke the gaze and looked away for a moment, composing herself before speaking.

"I'm sorry, Karl," Widget muttered. She looked back at him, her expression curiously neutral "That was rude of me."

Karl should have accepted the apology and offered one of his own. Unfortunately, his jaw had dropped and his voice stopped working. He would have wagered a great deal there was nobody Widget would back down for in public, not even her husband.

The blonde mouse filled the silence by stepping forward and hugging Widget. Their cheeks touched and Widget returned the hug, first with her right arm, then her left, as though hesitant. Karl had a second shock when he noticed the resemblance. _Coincidence,_ he thought desperately.

"Good to see you, Gadget."

"You're looking stronger, Widget. You're early, though."

_I was going to ask her to dinner,_ Karl thought dismally. _I was going to ask my father's wife's twin to dinner._ He closed his eyes and wished the floor would open up and swallow him.

"A bit. I wanted to check out the Navy booth."

"Say, Widget," Gadget asked, "I was wondering why you're building Staten City's navy."

Widget grinned. "The colony at Atlantis is doing well, but there's only _Albacore_ to bring supplies. If we sink, permanently, they'll need other subs to help out. Feldmows wants an entire navy, surface combatants first, so I've got to design them before he builds and mans the subs Atlantis needs. But thanks for reminding me. I've got to pay a courtesy call before dinner starts."

"On who?"

"Jerome Catbane," Widget replied.

Both Gadget and Monty looked startled at the news. Widget was a bit surprised; she had never figured Gadget for the type who would be impressed by celebrities.

"You ... you visit him?" Gadget asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Well, I'm building a navy for him," Widget replied, something about the fervor of Gadget's reaction disturbing her. Gadget seemed to be waiting for something. Chip frowned and looked at the blonde mouse. He was as confused as Widget. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I introduced you to him. I mean, your being a Ranger and all."

Gadget laughed and smiled. "I'd really like that. Can we go now?"

"Sure." Widget put an arm around her.

Monty smiled, hugely and wordlessly, and gave Widget's shoulder an affectionate thump. The gesture sent warning messages jangling through Widget's mind. Something, somehow, was wrong. Everyone was too happy.

She shook the thought off. It was from her own suspicious nature, so afraid of disappointments that she shied away from anything good. It had taken almost all her courage to admit she loved Jürgen; days wasted. She needed to be more optimistic.

David, the shrew, came racing towards them. Gadget hadn't noticed he had slipped away. He held a packet of sealed letters in his hands. He stopped before them and fixed Widget with a baleful glare.

"You are Widget Hackwrench, naval architect and designer of the practical Nimnul generator?"

Widget paused for a long moment. "Uh-huh," she finally admitted.

"It was you who sent the cruise ship _Minuscule_ to the bottom?" he accused.

Conversations began to die down around them. Widget rubbed her ear. "I guess. I'm really sorry."

"Then I suppose," David snorted, "you are searching for a way to repay the hideous karmic debt on your soul?"

Gadget took a step forward. "What do you want from her?" she asked, putting herself between her sister and a possible knife attack.

"I am one of the orphans of the _Minuscule,_ " David said grimly to the blonde mouse. "One of the pawns she sent to the icy waters of the night, in her symphony of revenge."

Gadget felt a catch in her throat and was speechless for several moments. But ...

"Nobody drowned when the _Minuscule_ sank," she pointed out.

David was slightly taken aback. "Well, my parents died a few years before. But I *am* an orphan."

"And the _Minuscule_ sank in daylight," Chip observed, rubbing his chin. "In June. So it really wasn't into the icy waters of the night."

"More like the brightly-lit slightly chilly waters of the afternoon," Monty nodded. "Within sight of land, too."

"That's splitting hairs," David exploded. He turned a savage eye at Dale. "I suppose you have something to say, too?"

"Well, since you ask," Dale mused, "You mixed your metaphors. You use pawns in games, not symphonies. So you were a pawn in her game of vengeance."

"Or an anonymous note in her symphony of vengeance," Foxglove chimed in.

"That's good," Dale commented. "Game of revenge is an overused metaphor - -"

"Didn't you guys all dress up like women to get on the lifeboats?" Gadget asked curiously.

David closed his eyes and seemed to compose himself.

"I think we're straying from the point here," he complained. "Your sister sank a ship which was very dear to me, since I was on it at the time. She nearly plunged me into the chilly waters of the *late* afternoon -- almost dusk -- using me as an anonymous note in her symphony of vengeance." He paused and looked at Foxglove. "You're right - that is better."

"Thank you," Foxglove said modestly.

The shrew returned to addressing the general audience. "Are there any more grammar flames, or do I have to remind everyone what 'pelagic' really means?"

The Rangers glanced at one another, but nobody could in all honor disagree with the shrew, and nobody wanted to be reminded what 'pelagic' really meant.

"Well," Chip admitted, "I guess Widget does owe you one."

"I can't really argue with that," Widget agreed.

"You have access to the home of Jerome Catbane?"

Widget hesitated. She had just admitted as much in public. "Yes."

David's lip quivered manfully. "Then take these," he said, thrusting the letters to Widget. "As you hope for salvation, take these past the keen noses of the seneschals, and deliver them to the living goddess whose name is inscribed thereon."

"Yeah, sure." Widget took the bundle and wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Gidget?" she asked.

David sighed. "To me, the name is a sacrament. Carry them with care, for in each letter is the hopes and dreams of two hearts entwined."

Widget pursed her lips. "Look, are you sure about this?"

"As we go through life, we live terribly alone. Our souls reached to one another on board the _Minuscule,_ through the darkness of life and existence. We were separated by the cruel hand of fate, and I have been denied her presence since by the willfulness of her family."

"Look, maybe they're doing you a favor. I ask because I could introduce you to - all right, all right," she grumbled, stuffing the envelopes into a pouch under her cape.

"Achieve this," he said huskily, "and I will be yours to command." He took her left hand to kiss. Widget quickly replaced it with her right just in time.

"Swell," Widget said with a nod, as Gadget hustled her out to safety.

"And remember," cried David in the middle of a ring of about one hundred fifty fascinated spectators, "Tell nobody!"

Soon Karl penetrated the dissolving ring and stood by his friend and coworker.

"She owes you a favor," Karl said absently, as though to nobody in particular, "Someone building a navy owes you a favor. Her sister's a Rescue Ranger. If anyone in this building were to make a top ten list of the most talented and respected engineers outside the genus Homo they'd both be on most of them. You could ask for help with Lemming 2000; you ask her to deliver love letters. This is not sharp thinking, David."

"At least I don't have the hots for my aunt," David pointed out.

"I didn't know she was my aunt."

"Besides, she's too young for you."

They looked at one another for a moment and they started laughing.

3. Relativity

4. Widget had never been particularly attentive to other people's moods. Still, there was something that bothered her about Monty's wordless thanks and Gadget's obvious agitation.

They sat in the back of a cab, careful to give the street address instead of the name "Mayor's mansion" to avoid sounding like tourists. The cab's clockwork motor whined and rattled. Widget looked over at her sister, who was almost vibrating with anticipation.

"Have you met Jerome Catbane?" Widget finally asked.

Gadget hesitated a moment, and seemed sad. "No, never." She squeezed her sister's hand and grinned. "Thank you."

The albino mouse was as rattled as when Monty thumped her shoulder. She was about to ask another question when Gadget cut her short.

"You seem to be very angry at Karl," Gadget pointed out.

Widget hesitated, and looked out the window. She always found it difficult to say things like this looking at someone.

"Karl and his father have ... issues. Karl's mother died during the war, when Karl was barely old enough to understand. Throughout the war, Jürgen was running U-boats. Afterwards, it was cargo ships."

"Jürgen couldn't be there for him," Gadget said quietly.

Widget looked over at her sister. Her throat closed, and she nodded and broke eye contact.

"I think Karl believes I'm final proof that his father never really cared."

Gadget hesitated. "Karl shouldn't expect his father to stop living."

"Besides, it's not his fault, but just by being around Karl reminds me ... Gadget, when Gimcrack's our age, we'll be about fifty and Jürgen will be almost eighty."

Gadget was barely breathing. "Do you regret marrying -"

Widget looked at Gadget with genuine surprise. "No! He's the best part of my life, Gadget. But our time doesn't overlap enough."

"You'll have Gimcrack. And maybe grandchildren."

"Grandchildren," Widget said thoughtfully. "It's a long time from now, isn't it?"

"126 Summer," the cab driver interrupted.



"Did you see the report from Feldmows?" Jerome asked Caitlin innocently.

Caitlin was a deer mouse, about Jerome's age. Both mice were silver gray with age; Jerome's fur was turning evenly. Jerome was a domestic mouse with a single shade of fur over his body while Caitlin had the wild mouse white-belly coloration., but her fur was so gray in bad light the pattern was invisible. Jerome blinked mischievously behind the glasses he needed for reading and that he only wore in private. The powerful have to look younger than they are. Caitlin wore her glasses constantly.

Caitlin had been working for the Catbane family for almost forty years; first as a nurse for Jerome's children, and later as Jerome's administrative assistant and confidant. He sat behind the desk in the dark, oak paneled office; but she pulled her chair up to the corner and worked across from him.

"Yes, I read the report, you old tyrant," she admitted while Jerome chuckled. "Piracy down eighty percent on ships coming in and out of Staten City harbor. Will you ever forgive me for being wrong about the Navy?"

It had been their single biggest disagreement over public policy in recent years. Feldmows' admiralty had pushed for a massive naval buildup to deal with the problem of piracy. Jerome had backed them; Caitlin had disagreed, and harped on each setback and cost overrun. The new fleet had gone into battle several weeks ago and performed brilliantly. As the Barbary Pirates had discovered two centuries ago, pirates could not confront a specialized, purpose-built war fleet and win.

"The question is if Feldmows will forgive you for being wrong about the Navy," Jerome continued more seriously.

Caitlin looked at him for a moment. It was typical of him to worry about her career. From a strictly selfish perspective, he might benefit from having his subordinates at one another's throats. Jerome was many things, but selfish was not one of them.

"I think he will, once I let him know I was wrong." She shrugged.

"We could ask for it as a wedding gift," Jerome suggested innocently.

She laughed. "We're not engaged, tyrant."

He took her hand and smiled at her. "And that's your second mistake. You've been a Catbane in all but name since ... well, for almost forty years." Since Jerome's wife had died, Caitlin thought.

She gripped his hand and kissed it. "Jerome, we've discussed this before. There are monarchies out there and leaving you free to negotiate weddings gives you a lever."

"I'm not Elizabeth the First."

"Besides, I like my freedom." She patted his hand.

"You don't use it."

"I didn't say that. Now about alternate side of the street suspensions for Ramadan--"

The intercom buzzed.

Since she often brought different engineers to speak directly with the Mayor, "Widget Hackwrench and Guest" was on the list of those who could get through without an appointment. Caitlin moved her chair slightly away from the Desk of Power. Jerome whipped off his glasses and tucked them into a drawer.

Jerome walked around the desk, walking to the door. Normally, he would have remained seated, but he was always happy to see Widget. He was sure there was a toy or something in his desk he could give her for Gimcrack. He saw two blurs, and an instant before they resolved themselves into people, he heard Caitlin gasp involuntarily.

He recognized the second blur first, or rather, he thought he did. It was like a blow to the chest; he shuddered under the impact. Then, before he drew another breath, he realized he was wrong, who it actually was.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, in a voice that had cut through and dominated agitated council meetings.

Gadget bit her lip. Widget jumped in. "*I* brought her here. Is there a problem?" Obviously there was. Inside, Widget cursed Gadget for not telling her. And herself for not asking, point blank.

She didn't expect everyone in the room to stare at her, shocked.

Caitlin was the first to recover. "Perhaps... we should step outside," she said gently. Widget glanced sharply at her, unable to see anything in her face but sympathy and pain. What the -

"You didn't know?" Gadget asked, horrified.

Widget shook her head. "Tell me." _I'll probably regret this._

Gadget closed her eyes for a moment. "Jerome Catbane is our mother's father."

Thing were very quiet, for a moment. Widget felt a slight, drifting sensation, and she knew she was about to faint.

"No," Jerome said formally. "Your mother ceased to be my daughter well before you were born. I'm sorry for the confusion." He pushed a chair over. "Do you need to sit down?" Unwisely, he put a hand on her left arm. He felt a moment's shock at how tense the muscles were.

"No," Widget lied. "You didn't know who I am," Widget said hopefully, and looked at Jerome. His eyes slid sideways. Gadget shook her head, slightly.

"You're my grandfather and you didn't tell me?" the albino mouse asked, wondering. She shook his hand off. Her body teetered for a moment, as though deciding how it would react. She might have fainted then, but the blood suddenly rushed to her face with a surge of rage and adrenaline. "You're my grandfather and you didn't tell me!" she shouted, turning the question to an accusation.

There was a scuffle outside, and a tall rat policeman threw the door open. Widget grasped her left wrist with her right hand and drew it up to her right shoulder, cocking special springs in her arm. Instantly, Gadget rested a hand on Widget's wrists. Gadget had taken a blow from that arm once. She doubted her sister consciously wanted to start a fight with a cop - but she probably wanted to break something, and the rat was available.

"It's all right, Herman," Jerome said placidly, concealing his agitation. "It's a personal matter."

Widget regained control of herself. She released the catch, and slowly moved her left arm back to its normal position, uncocking the spring.

Herman stood for a moment, suspicious and uncomfortable, and finally nodded and left the room.

"Why did you disown my mother?" Widget asked the moment the door closed.

Jerome had to sit down. He chose the edge of his desk. "It's a painful subject -" he began.

"My heart weeps for you."

Gadget took Widget's arm and tugged gently. "Widget, let's go."

Widget didn't move.

Jerome hesitated, but it was obvious Widget wasn't taking the hint. "In brief, I considered her marriage inappropriate. But, she was headstrong, and your father was stubborn."

"You thought he was a fortune hunter, and cut her off."

Jerome folded his arms. "I wouldn't put it that way."

"How would you put it?" she challenged.

"_Widget,_ " Gadget snapped. "Let's just go. Please."

Gadget watched the three of them. Caitlin looked like her heart would break. Gadget had most of her life to get used to the idea her grandfather wanted nothing to do with her, but her sister had taken the brutal shock in a moment. There wasn't a trace of sorrow in her face; she had made her choice between pain and anger. Their grandfather was placid, but no less implacable.

"Fine," Widget finally told her sister. "Mom didn't need him to bury her. I certainly don't need a relative like that." She turned quickly and made her way to the door. Jerome actually started to move forward, planning to get her a toy for Gimcrack, before he realized he'd be lucky if Widget didn't break it over his head. It was in that moment he realized how much he had come to value the friendship which had just dissolved.

The door slammed shut, and Jerome stood for a moment.

"I hope she'll finish the navy she promised us," he mused out loud, trying to cover what he was feeling.

Caitlin maintained a stony silence, which was what he expected.



They boarded another cab and sat silent as they drove off. Widget felt her anger slowly melt away, under her sister's eyes. The gray-haired mouse tried to start talking several times, before she finally succeeded.

"I'm sorry," she muttered.

Gadget shook her head. "It's not your fault. It's mine."

"There's no way you could have realized I didn't know." Widget glanced at her, and looked away again. "Now I remember. You mentioned I had other relatives. I never followed it up. I meant to."

"I'm like that too. Maybe they make organizers for mice. I could use one. Calibrate blade pitch control on Ranger Wing. Get milk. Tell sister about generation-old feud with grandfather. Oops. Well, best of three..."

Widget smiled. "We don't have a grandfather. His decision."

Gadget looked away. She could never accept Widget's statement. Somehow she had convinced herself someday her grandfather would accept her mother's decision, her husband, and their children. Still, it seemed too naïve to say out loud. Perhaps Widget's approach was the correct one - who could tell what was best for someone else? "Does this mean you won't get the submarines?" Gadget asked instead.

Widget sat for a while, and slowly shook her head. "No, they'll still be built. Staten City is a democracy, after all." She looked at her sister, getting absorbed in her thought. "The town's run by compromise, agreements, contracts. Not one old man's whim. And he's not like that, anyway. He sticks by his decisions and doesn't let sentiment interfere." She suddenly sat up straight. "Uh oh."

"What is it?"

Widget put her hand under her cloak and took out a bundle of letters.

"Let me," Gadget said. "I'll be seeing her tomorrow." She hesitated. "Want to come along?"

"I don't think so. Thanks." Widget stared at the bundle thoughtfully. "I'm not sure if we should, though."

"Why not?"

"Gadget, the person who wrote these letters embarrassed me in public and brought up issues I'd as soon let die away." She turned the letters over in her hand. "But I kind of like him anyhow. It would be nicer to dump them."

"I know what you mean," Gadget agreed. "Still, it's hard to help someone against their will, and it's usually a bad idea. So I better make sure they're delivered." She reached for the letters, and Widget let them pass into her hand.

"Thank you." They looked at one another a moment, and Gadget's features softened. This was the moment Widget had been dreading. The cold fury drained out of her, to be replaced with a sense of violation.

Widget grew up convinced her family had cast her out deliberately. The betrayal became the center of her life. Anger drove the pain out. And now she was being cast out again.

"How could he do that?" Widget asked, wondering. "Reject us for Mom's sake, and not for us." Then after hesitating, "It's the same thing I did to you."

"I wasn't thinking that," Gadget immediately lied. She pulled her sister under an arm and kissed her once. "You're always a Hackwrench," she said.

4. Old Battles

5. Anna Feldmows was being left out of dinnertime conversation again, but this time she couldn't work up any sense of anger over it. Her husband the admiral and their guest the submarine commander had found a battle in which they had both participated. On opposite sides, not that it seemed to matter in the least. Their conversation had evolved into a scale reproduction, with forks as cargo vessels, knives as destroyers, and spoons as U-boats. She decided to hold off taking out the main course as she watched them argue over the position of various utensils, crusts of bread, and salt shakers, nudging them slightly here and there.

She wished a naval historian were there to take notes. She wasn't able to follow exactly what was going on, but gathered it involved the virtual destruction of a twenty-ship convoy by a force of three submarines, one of which was lost. She gathered most of the disagreements centered around how many subs were involved, where they were, and where they had escaped to after making their attacks. As usual with these stories, the recurring theme was confusion. She had the impression submarines were good at generating that.

The German mouse tossed a final fork triumphantly into the dead pile. Knives circled on one part of the table, launching depth charges into an empty bit of ocean, while the last spoons slipped silently away. Crumbs in the bowls of the spoons indicated their approximate depth.

"And that," Jürgen concluded, "is why you need to stop work on the surface ships and finish up _Cuttlefish._ These U-boats," he pointed at the spoons, "could do maybe five knots, submerged. _Albacore_ can do twenty-five, _Cuttlefish_ thirty. Two Royal Navy subs chased the entire Argentine Navy into harbor after firing one torpedo."

"And your judgment has nothing to do with your wife's agenda for Atlantis," Feldmows said wryly.

"You remember the exercises." Jürgen suppressed a moment of impatience. If Feldmows had called Widget "_Albacore's_ owner and designer" or anything but "your wife" it probably wouldn't have annoyed him. As it was, the implication Jürgen was henpecked was inescapable.

Feldmows grinned. "Of course I do. Nothing's better at sinking ships than a sub." As a test, _Albacore_ had stalked the Staten City battle fleet. And had annihilated it, theoretically. "But we can't afford to build everything at once. _Cuttlefish_ will be built and kept operational, we're bound by our agreement. We'll almost certainly choose to build a second. But we're a small navy, still, and surface fleets are more versatile than sub fleets. We're going to build more battleships like _Mahan,_ and then build up a submarine arm." Jürgen was about to protest, so Feldmows quickly changed the subject. "Did you hear what the chief engineer on _Mahan_ said to your wife?"

"No." Jürgen felt cautious. Widget hadn't mentioned a conversation; at least not something worthy of a story. Was she concealing something?

"This was right after _Mahan's_ first sea trials," Feldmows explained. "When we wrecked the dock bringing her in?"

Jürgen nodded. Widget had been frantic with the notion she had made a botch of the control system. The board of inquiry eventually decided it was the regrettable but probably inevitable result of the learning curve with a ship that big and that heavy. It was true that _Mahan_ had never had a similar problem since.

"Anyway, she was watching the dockhands clearing away the wreckage, and staring at the stern of _Mahan_ like it was a personal affront."

Jürgen laughed. He could just see her doing it. The naval architecture design review committee had decided to cut almost two feet off the end of _Mahan_ to bring the total length down to the ten meter maximum which could be supported by Staten City's harbor. It had been a major sticking point; she had argued the bluff stern cut at least two knots off of _Mahan's_ maximum speed. But that seemed preferable to rebuilding the docks.

"Chester," the chief engineer aboard _Mahan,_ "happened to notice her and started giving her this glowing appraisal of everything from the layout to the paint scheme."

"Uh oh," Jürgen sighed. He could imagine the jovial, tubby chipmunk rattling off a list of praise while Widget waited impatiently for him to get to the good stuff. Chester was one of those rare engineers who didn't care for a chance to complain.

"You can see what's coming?"

"It took Mister Shiro a good three months to stop doing that. Let me guess. She cut him off and said she wanted to hear about the problems."

"Twice." Feldmows nodded. "The third time she said something like 'I find it hard to believe a competent engineer can't find _anything_ wrong with an entire battleship."

"Ooog."

"So Chester got his back up, and says, 'Ma'am, I guess you'll have to screw up the next one you do before we can talk.'"

Jürgen laughed.

"And the punch line," Feldmows finished. "Then Chester looks up at the _Mahan_ and says, "I'll bet you could add two knots to her flank speed if you gave her a proper boat tail..."

Jürgen grinned. "So they became friends?"

"Instantly." Feldmows snapped his fingers.



On their return, Gadget had taken a moment to explain something privately to Monty. When Foxglove noticed the rage which passed over Monty's face, she had involuntarily turned her incredible hearing in their direction. Monty flared up, then patted Gadget affectionately and sorrowfully on her shoulder. The bat was curious, but she didn't want to be rude.

Foxglove looked at the menu, mildly disappointed. She wasn't aware that complementary lunches and dinners at events like this were usually just one step above fast food and one step below a decent family restaurant. Catering prices were kept low by limiting the choices. There was a carnivore meal, a vegetarian meal, and something called "Insect Puree."

Well, she hadn't come along for the food, not really. She sighed and leaned a little more on Dale, who slipped an arm around her and ran a finger down a wing digit in the way she liked. Widget had paused at another table, giving Dale an opportunity to tell the story about _Hubert the Human and Boats._

"I mean, this book started going on about specific gravity and buoyancy and stuff," Dale said with a grin. Foxglove giggled, as much from the pure pleasure of being there with him as from the anecdote.

Chip grinned, Monty looked thoughtful, and Gadget nodded, waiting for the point of the story. Dale hesitated, and addressed her directly. "...And Gimcrack's six months old," he finished, lamely.

Gadget hesitated, and nodded again expectantly.



Mr. McKyle was a hamster, a medical student who had run out of tuition and signed aboard _Albacore_ as Pharmacist's Mate.

His mother had worked for Ultra-Flight, as an Air Traffic Controller for the Eagle parasite transports. The Screaming Eagles were designed to intercept Human commercial flights and ride them. Since they could only make a few hundred miles per hour, less than the cruising speed of a commercial jetliner, they had to catch planes during takeoff. The scheduling issues were complex and daunting.

Which reminded him of feeding time for Gimcrack. McKyle shifted the baby's weight in the chest carrier, making him giggle. McKyle smiled back. Like most of _Albacore's_ crew, he had a proprietary feeling towards the little mouse. In his case, the feeling was a bit stronger; during the "honeymoon" cruise after the marriage of Jürgen and Widget, McKyle had protested their dipping too deeply into the medical supplies kept for shore leaves. Gimcrack was the result of this rationing. McKyle often worried about Gimcrack. Intellectually, he realized that most mice babies were raised in a closed nest, but he still felt obliged to take Gimcrack through the busy display floor, to expose him to a stimulating environment.

They passed by the Navy booth. Gimcrack's mother had designed most of the things being shown off to the public here; the small hydrofoil patrol craft, the huge long-ranged _Mahan_ battleship designed to support the small hydrofoils in distant waters, the as-yet uncompleted _Cuttlefish_ attack submarine. McKyle had to admit, there was something attractive about a warship; the very distilled essence of a nation's aggression. Gimcrack cooed with delight and stretched his hands out to touch.

McKyle glanced down at the mouse baby, who was staring, fixedly at the model sub. This was more than just a little disturbing. At six months, Gimcrack had a habit of looking directly at something for a long period of time. Since he was far too young for an extended attention span, McKyle was becoming afraid the little mouse was having petite mal seizures.

Gimcrack sighed in frustration, sparing the model a longing glance as McKyle took him away. He enjoyed the long walks McKyle took him on, but he liked the way his mother would spend time savoring the things Gimcrack found interesting.



So, McKyle didn't see the tall, handsome white mouse with an eye patch. The mouse wore white, and was accompanied by a short, amiable hamster in a blue suit and glasses.

"I don't get it, DM," the hamster said, clearly befuddled. "Why are we in Staten City, when the K-219 sank in the Caribbean?" He spoke with a thick accent indicating he had been born within earshot of St. Mary-le-Bow.

"Because, Penfold, this is the sort of equipment you would need," Dangermouse explained in his cultivated, upper-class British accent, nodding towards the submarine, "to salvage equipment off the ocean floor."

"They're just models," Penfold said dubiously.

"Yes, Penfold," Dangermouse said patiently. "But the people who made them might be able to point us to the people we're looking for."

"I thought we weren't looking for people," Penfold said slowly. "I thought we were looking for -"

Dangermouse clamped a hand over Penfold's mouth. "Let's not mention what we're looking for," he told Penfold, "because if word gets out about what we're looking for, it could spark panic, fear, death and terror. Do you understand?"

"Hrmumph urhm mummf!" Penfold said.

This appeared to satisfy Dangermouse, who released his little sidekick with a nod. "Very good. Now shush." He raised his voice. "Excuse me, could you point me in the direction of a booth devoted to mid-ocean underwater salvage?"

The young lieutenant running the booth smiled politely. "So you're trying to recover something from the ocean?" he asked. "What sort of thing?"

"Atomic - ow eck!" said Penfold as Dangermouse deftly twisted his ear.

"Atomic what?" the lieutenant asked suspiciously.

"A tonic," Dangermouse coolly explained. "A Human hospital ship sank in the Caribbean, and the drugs may be salvageable."

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow," said Penfold.

"Oh," the lieutenant nodded, satisfied and relieved. "Well, if you're looking for a mouse with real long-term experience in working underwater, you might want to talk to the woman who designed most of what you see on display here ..."



It was easy for McKyle to find Widget in the restaurant. She lit up as McKyle handed Gimcrack to her, and cuddled her son briefly. Automatically, everyone with a line of sight grinned at the warm, maternal display. Widget glanced around, uncomfortable.

"I guess I can't really borrow a hotel room," she muttered. That left feeding him here, or going to the bathroom. The latter wasn't a good option, but it was probably better than the former: there were news photographers about and Widget didn't like the idea of being caught on film.

"Let's flock," Gadget suggested brightly.

"Flock? Great!" Foxglove said excitedly. Her life was a solitary one, and she had never actually flocked before. She was looking forward to the experience. The three of them got up. McKyle shook hands around the table and borrowed Gadget's seat.

Dale watched the bat stroll off, a little sadly. He sighed and decided to check out the appetizer buffet.

He was behind a tall white rat in a lab coat. There was something disturbingly familiar about him. The rat took another step closer to a neon light which had been turned off. The bulb began to glow faintly. The memories slid into place.

"Sparky!" Dale called out, nearly shaking hands with him until he remembered.

The taller rat turned, with a puzzled expression on his face. Then he looked down and grinned. "Hey! Don't I know you?" he asked.

"Sure, we met -"

"Let me think this out," Sparky interrupted. "I remember doing a memory trick. You had something to do with caissons..." He frowned, and concentrated.

Caissons? Dale remembered an old joke from elementary school. Dale waited a bit to give Sparky some time, and started to sing, helpfully.

"Over hill, over *dale,*

We have hit the -"

"Dusty!" Sparky cried out, and started pumping Dale's hand enthusiastically. Dale flinched with each crackling arc, and pulled his hand free the moment he could without seeming rude. "How is, uh, uhm, Little Boy, Fat Man ... Gadget. Yes, Gadget?"

"She's just fine, Sparky," Dale said, slapping at his right hand to stop his fur from smoking, "What have you been up to?"

"Oh, high energy research. I'm going to make antimatter by using the elevator shafts in the World Trade center as linear accelerators," he said proudly.

"Neat," Dale said. Then he remembered something he had seen on _Star Trek._ "But isn't antimatter really dangerous?"

Sparky frowned for a moment, and dropped his plate. Toasted cheese wedges bounced everywhere. He slapped at his pockets and withdrew a notebook, which he began to study.

"Oh, yeah," he finally said. "Here it is. 'Do this in orbit. Antimatter is dangerous.' Even had it circled." Sparky chuckled and shook his head. "Good thing I made a note about it, huh?"

"I guess," Dale agreed affably. Sparky seemed rather disorganized at times to Dale. And even Dale would admit that was saying something. "I guess you wasted the trip?"

"No, not really. I'm giving a talk tomorrow about ... uh... the Thorn Valley generators. They're trying to set up generating stations that aren't visible from the air."

Dale nodded. He remembered Widget mentioning she had submitted a proposal. "Weren't they going to use Widget's Nimnul reactors?"

Sparky looked blank and frightened for a moment. "Oh, no," he said. "Those things are *dangerous.* " He frowned and rubbed his chin. "I forget if I remembered to tell her..."

Dale stood, a fixed smile on his face. His plate slipped to the floor, unnoticed.



Dale rushed across the floor, Sparky firmly in tow. The engineers who didn't scatter were trampled underfoot.

"'Ello, Sparky," Monty said, wondering why Dale was so agitated.

"Where's Widget?" Dale asked Chip.

"I remember you," Sparky said. "Bill Mauldin? Something about Patton not liking you."

Chip pointed at the door marked WOMEN - FAMILY.

"Monty," Monty said with an understanding nod.

"Thanks," Dale told Chip, and turned and with determined tread, dragged the much larger rodent scientist towards the women's room.

"Thanks, Potato," Sparky told Chip. He looked forward just as Dale threw the door open. "Oh, I don't think we should go in there -" the door slammed shut after them.

"Potato?" Chip asked out loud.

Chip and Monty watched in stunned silence. A single, feminine scream was heard, muffled in the distance.

"We could say we don't know them," Chip mused.

"I suppose we should get 'em out of there," Monty suggested gently.

"After you," Chip said politely.

"Nah, after *you,* " Monty offered.



Foxglove had spent some time describing the acoustics to her hearing- challenged friends, and the conversation was beginning to turn to the usual Flocking subjects, when the door swung open. Four pairs of eyes and an active sonar sweep turned to the door as Dale let it slam shut behind Sparky. The lounge had a chair set up for nursing mothers, Gadget was standing nearby and Foxglove was relaxing, hanging inverted from a coat rack.

They looked curiously at the intruders. "I hope you have a good reason for this," Widget said. Foxglove and Gadget knew Dale well enough to assume this was the case.

"Widget, this is Sparky. Don't shake his hand," Dale said with an authority and dignity unusual to him. "Sparky said your Nimnul generators are dangerous."

"He did?" she asked, voice neutral. The three women looked at Sparky expectantly. There was a pause.

"Did I?" Sparky finally asked Dale.

A bead of sweat rolled down Dale's face. Widget looked at him narrowly.

Gadget patted her sister's shoulder. She knew Sparky and understood it was entirely possible he had forgotten. "Are Nimnul reactors dangerous, Sparky?"

"Oh, yeah," he said with a nod. "Professor Nimnul discovered static electricity opened a gate to another dimension and drains off energy. That's where socks in dryers go to. Eventually, the fabric of space-time is weakened to the point of total collapse. Then there would be a permanent gate to, uh..." Sparky looked long and hard at Gimcrack, blushed, and decided to say it anyway. "Aitch ee double hockey sticks. And who knows what might come creeping out." Gadget and Foxglove looked uncomfortably at Widget.

Widget relaxed noticeably. "If the generator is standing still relative to Einsteinian space-time," she agreed amiably. "But we're on a rotating sphere which is spinning around a star. I worked that out before I started building them."

"Except," Sparky persisted, "that Einsteinian space-time is dragged about with a rotating, massive object like Earth."

Gadget watched her sister closely, as she tried to come up with a reply. Gadget didn't consider herself an expert on the subject, but that was mostly her own modesty. And what Sparky said made sense to her. She waited to hear Widget's appraisal. Her sister was an expert.

The albino mouse finally said, "Omigosh."



Syril Stacey sat in a stall, feeling disgruntled. The SRE was all very well, but she generally preferred juicier meat. Her newspaper column was called "Crimes and Catastrophes", and this engineer convention seemed unlikely to offer any of either.

Then she noticed the voices from outside seemed to include a couple of guys. Understandably, she started to eavesdrop.

"First things first," came a woman's voice she couldn't quite place. "I think we're agreed there's no risk from mobile generators, like the one on _Albacore,_ the Peregrine aircraft, and some of the ships that use them."

"Oh, absolutely," agreed a male voice.

Syril peeked under the door to her stall. She immediately recognized the feet of Widget and Gadget Hackwrench. She had interviewed Gadget many times, and Widget had made it into her article on "The Five Animals Most Likely to Destroy All Life on Earth." Gadget's sister had stopped replying to Syril's email after that. Some people had trouble with criticism. With them was a male rat and a female bat she couldn't recognize, and a male chipmunk she guessed was Dale of the Rescue Rangers. It was hard to tell him from Chip when you could only see him up to his knees. Syril decided it would be worth taking notes.

"But," Widget continued in a lighter voice, "if the Nimnul Effect did significantly weaken space-time in a geographical area, you would expect laundromats to be veritable hotbeds of paranormal activity." She chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. Sparky agreed with a wry grin. Foxglove looked stricken and Gadget and Dale exchanged a solemn glance.

"Freddie," Foxglove gasped. "No, I mean Winifred - no!" she continued in a voice growing more strident and confident. "Freddie! Freddie! I'm not afraid of her, and I shall call her Freddie!"

Widget didn't know Foxglove's story, so she smiled encouragingly and nodded in hopes this Freddie person was somehow connected to the issue at hand. Foxglove, she suspected, was One Weird Chick. "Fine," she said cautiously. "You do that. Who's Freddie?"

"Freddie! Freddie! Fr- Freddie was a witch," Foxglove explained. "Or she was trying to be one. She set up shop in an abandoned laundromat."

Widget felt the hairs on her back begin to rise. "Omigosh."

"Drawn to the source of her power like Kablammo Man to heavy water," Dale whispered. The simile was obscure, but clear enough.

Gadget silently took out a pencil and pad. "I think we should start off with a worst case analysis. Widget, are there any stationary Nimnul generators?"

"Hey," Dale suddenly asked. "What is heavy water?"

"Deuterium oxide," Gadget whispered. Gimcrack nodded.

"Three," Widget nodded. "There's a test rig in Brooklyn, but that's just used intermittently. I can dismantle it. There's two working generators, one in Icelab 5 and one in the research station at Atlantis."

"Just one in each?" Gadget asked, surprised. "No backups?" That didn't sound like Widget.

Widget shook her head. "The emergency power supply for each is a radiothermal generator."

Gadget looked excited. "You're building nuclear batteries?"

Widget hesitated, considered Sparky, Dale, and Foxglove, and told the little white lie she had prepared as a cover story. "No, we got them off a Russian space probe that crashed into the Pacific on takeoff."

"Cool! Can I have one?" Gadget asked, excited.

Dale held his breath. In his imagination, Gadget was saying, "Gee, did it say never get within two meters of the generator, or two centimeters? I think it was centimeters."

Widget looked uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, but we only got three working. I'm using them to back up the generators for those two bases and on _Albacore._ Maybe we could get a fourth together."

Gadget looked disappointed, and Dale heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief. Reprieved.

"Worst case," Sparky said thoughtfully, "would be a wormhole leading to the inside of a star. There would be a large release of energy. I worked this out once. I don't think the orbit of the planet would be affected, but we'd lose a lot of atmosphere..."

Syril's pencil flew over the paper.

"That's really unlikely," Gadget interjected dubiously. "It's more probably something would come through."

"Something hungry," Dale said in a mysterious voice, trying to lighten the tension. Nobody smiled and Gadget nodded at him. "Oh." He gulped.

"Icelab 5," Sparky said, worried. "That's right near the North Pole, isn't it? That's bad."

"Because the rotational speed of the Earth is relatively low up there?" Gadget said for the benefit of Dale and Foxglove, making it sound like a question. Gimcrack nodded.

"I can warn them both," Widget suggested. "They can each operate on the RTGs until I can rig up replacements. They won't like it, but..."

"How long until there's a chance of any problems?" Gadget asked.

What followed was a long, involved conversation between Widget and Sparky, with Gadget occasionally interjecting a correction to an equation or volunteering obscure information like the angular momentum of the rotating Sun. Gimcrack was completely lost within the first few minutes, let alone Syril, Foxglove and Dale.

"Eighteen months at Icelab 5, six years at Atlantis," Widget said and smiled, relieved their worst case date wasn't in the past. "I'll email Atlantis and Icelab 5 right away - there's an Internet connection in the lobby. We'll get those generators shut down before morning." So much for the Thorn Valley contract, she thought, annoyed. At least the mobile generators on ships and aircraft weren't dangerous.

"Good," Sparky nodded.

Syril opened the door to the stall, and tried to leave as unobtrusively as possible.

"Syril?" Gadget asked, inquiringly.

"Syril Stacey?" came Widget's voice, the hiss of a snake.

Syril froze, and turned silently. Dale wondered if he should try to keep her from running. He had a mental image of a headline: RESCUE RANGER ATTACKS FEMALE REPORTER IN LAVATORY. Not good.

"We don't want to start a panic," Sparky said unwisely.

"Syril, Syril, Syril," Widget suddenly said, passing Gimcrack to Gadget and racing towards the reporter, enveloping her in a tight, sisterly embrace which made it impossible for her to bolt. "How is my favorite nationally- syndicated and influential journalist?"

Syril's rear claws skittered over the tiles. Widget's boots had rubber soles, giving her better traction as she pulled the reporter away from the door.

"Gee, Widget," Syril said, desperately flailing for the exit, "I'd love to chat, but I need to, uh, powder my nose."

"We're already in the bathroom," Gadget pointed out. Syril cast the blonde mouse a single angry glance.

Sparky looked around, with startled interest, "Y'know," he said suddenly, "You're right!"

"Gadget," Syril asked as she was drawn further from the safety of the door, "Do you believe in the sanctity of all life and the importance of a free press as defined in the Bill of Rights so if my life were in danger, you would feel obligated to intervene in my defense if I were to be faced with an attack from an assailant who happened to be your sister?"

"I guess," Gadget nodded.

Syril let out her breath in a long sigh.

"Why Syril," Widget asked, visibly hurt. "You don't think I'd want to see you come to harm, do you?"

"Not even after I called you a 'revenge-crazed menace?'" Syril asked suspiciously.

Widget chuckled. It was a strained chuckle, but a chuckle. "It was 'revenge-crazed Nemesis,' and I've never given it a second thought."

"I liked it when she called you 'Captain Nemouse,'" Dale laughed, and received elbows in the ribs from Gadget and Foxglove.

After the first shock, Syril settled down. "Widget, you know what my job is. Tell me what you want. I have a story to file."

Widget calmed herself. Actually, her grabbing Syril had been pure reflex. She'd have to offer some public explanation once she shut down the reactors, anyway.

"Wait until after the reactors are shut down to file the story, and I'll give you an exclusive interview about the risk. I'll even double check what you write for accuracy. Of course, you'll have final say on the text."

Syril chewed the inside of her cheek. The story would get more heat if it were printed while the generators were still a potential hazard, but at heart, Syril had a conscience. Generating adverse publicity for someone who seemed to be doing her best to prevent a crisis was hardly fair, and worse, might distract her from doing what she had to do. Still, Syril was suspicious of the pink-eyed mouse engineer. Theoretically, Widget might keep one of the generators running for days to prevent her from filing the story.

"How long will it take to shut the generators down?"

Widget considered. "It might take a few hours for both facilities to get the message - Atlantis sends a up a buoy for satellite link four times a day, and Icelab 5's so far north I'm not sure how often a satellite is in range."

"The Iridium constellation's in polar orbits," Gadget pointed out. "Icelab 5 should be in almost constant contact."

"Twenty four hours long enough?" Syril asked.

Widget nodded. "Done."

"Done," Syril agreed, shaking her hand.



"Male chipmunk inside the women's bathroom?" Chip asked innocently, and seemed to consider. "Sorry, I can't help you," he finally said honestly. The cop glanced suspiciously at Dale, who was engrossed in a conversation with Foxglove, but he nodded and moved on. Chip sighed. Dale would probably keep mum, and there was every chance Sparky had already forgotten. Chip had no particular problems with co-operating with Staten City's police, but he didn't see any reason to do so unnecessarily.

The entrees had not yet been wheeled out, and Dale was wondering at the delay. He had noticed something unusual about the layout of the restaurant; the SRE tables were arranged in a ring, as though for a dinner theater. His impression was proved right when a tall black squirrel - Clayton of Ultra- Flight - stepped out into the middle of the donut and lifted a friendly hand for attention.

Conversation died down.

"Sorry to interrupt," Clayton lied, "but I wanted to let everyone know before the press release." Syril whipped out her pad and pencil, as Clayton continued. "This afternoon, Ultra-Flight's aircraft Falcon Charlie One Two X- ray, piloted by Gadget Hackwrench, attained an altitude of 354,620 feet, or 108,090 meters. This exceeds the Human record."

"C-12-X," Widget said, peeking over Syril's shoulder.

"Pardon?" Syril asked.

"'Charlie' and 'X-ray' are phonetics for the letters 'C' and 'X'," Widget explained. "They're not part of the plane's name."

"Thanks," Syril nodded.



"That's it," Karl muttered. "We might as well pack up and go home. There's no way we'll ever get people interested now."

"That's the spirit," David snorted.



Clayton wasn't finished. "Gadget, could you come out here?"

Gadget reluctantly got to her feet. The applause started at the Rangers' table, and spread quickly, mounting into a thunderous racket. Gadget blushed and smiled, uncomfortable and proud. A few questions were called out from the audience, and Gadget answered them, first hesitantly, and then enthusiastically. The audience chuckled appreciatively for jokes Chip couldn't even begin to decipher. What could possibly be amusing about putting liquid oxygen on bagels? Gadget was obviously in her element, relaxed, comfortable, and happy.

Chip tried to ignore the ice starting in the pit of his stomach, and kept a smile on his face for her.



The entrees came out, and a dull look of shock came over their features.

Foxglove had seen more promising bugs stuck to windshields. She reached out with one of her mechanical arms and jiggled an exoskeleton in a vain attempt to make it look alive. She closed her eyes and popped it into her mouth.

Once she had ground up the exoskeleton, she was surprised and shocked to realize there was nothing left. If she had been alone and on the wing, she would have spit out the mess. As it was, she swallowed it, feeling it grate her throat on the way down.

"My wheat looks kind of ... chaffy," Gadget said delicately.

"Kind of?" Monterey asked, peeling a cellulose shell off a grain of wheat and glaring at it ominously.

"There's no juice in these bugs," Foxglove frowned. She stared at the plate and frowned. "They've all dried up." Monterey said a silent prayer of thanks Zipper was back at the tree.

Chip watched Dale as he peeled the chaff away from a grain and popped it in his mouth. Dale's teeth ground together once. Dale froze, and looked around, as though wondering if he could spit it back at whoever was responsible. He took a mouthful of water and swallowed. Chip pushed his plate away, untouched.

"It's all wings!" Foxglove cried out indignantly. "It's all wings and legs!"

"Foxglove, why don't we go to the restaurant on the top floor?" Dale suggested.

"I'll join you," Chip said, ignoring the his friend's gritted teeth.

Widget eyed her full plate. "Oh, gee, is that the time? I was going to meet Jürgen at a coffeehouse I know. There's going to be a poetry reading." Her look of regret fooled nobody.

Gadget looked at her own plate. "Can I come too?" she asked.

"I'll watch Gimcrack," Monty offered immediately.



"- And at best, ends with death," said the mouse with a beret. He lowered his eyes.

Scattered applause in the form of finger snapping rang through the coffeehouse as Ennui Weltschmerz finished his poem. Widget, eyes sparkling, snapped her right hand's fingers in the air, glad to be able to applaud one handed.

At least _she's_ enjoying herself, Jürgen thought sardonically. He was mostly snapping his fingers to be polite. Gadget was slumped in her seat. Jürgen was worried the poetry was affecting her, but he needn't have been; she was mostly hoping Ennui would not recognize her.

Gadget sipped another thimble of the house specialty: Depresso Espresso. The second thimble had left her feeling a bit nervous and jittery, and she was hoping a third would settle her down. Gadget hadn't noticed that Widget and Jürgen were sharing one between the two of them, and they had barely finished half of that. She was abruptly distracted (which happened fairly frequently with her) when she noticed her hand tremor was producing a perfect standing wave pattern in the black liquid. Quickly, she calculated the period of harmonic oscillation in kilohertz.

Ennui took a sip of water. The applause warmed his heart, making it difficult to maintain the right mood for his performance. He leaned on the cane he used since his fall from the Eiffel Tower, and when the crowd fell silent, he spoke.

Remember when a toy made you happy? The bright days, the laughter, the friendships? Before the gray cloak of indifference descended on your soul blotting the bright days forever. You are not a child. The bright days will never return. Nevermore.

Widget started the applause. It was long and loud. "Thank you," Ennui said. "You've been a wonderful audience. I almost feel reconciled to being alive." He limped off stage.

"He's finished for tonight," Widget said.

"Good," Jürgen couldn't help but say.

"We should probably head back," Gadget said, looking at a watch hanging on the wall.

"Yes," Jürgen agreed. "Gimcrack's probably getting hungry."

"Are you going to finish that?" Gadget asked, pointing at the thimble they were sharing. When they shook their heads, Gadget downed the remainder in a single gulp. Jürgen was impressed, and a little concerned. He had pounded down more cups of appalling coffee to stay awake on late watches than he cared to remember, but he was wary of this stuff's power. He comforted himself with the thought that Gadget certainly knew her own tolerance. Jürgen did not know Gadget well.

Gadget made it to the door first, wondering why the others were lagging behind. The three patrons she had unknowingly trampled underfoot staggered to their feet or feigned unconsciousness to discourage another attack. Her sister and brother-in-law had to jog to keep up.

Outside the vast cavern, it was well into night. Inside, the automobile headlights continued their 24 hour illumination. Gadget thought about the rotating restaurant at the Ratisson; she had arranged a meeting there. The thought of food reminded her of the best meal she could remember: a big plate of cheese pancakes her father had whipped up at three in the morning when she had found home after getting herself thoroughly lost. She had been about eight, half starved. "What did you think of the last one?" Gadget asked.

Jürgen grinned. "I remember this toy submarine I got when I was a little boy. It was all shiny and pretty. I must have slept with it for a week, and the first night I remember how hard it was to sleep, because I couldn't wait to wake up and play with it again." He mused for a moment. "I won't say it was the best thing that ever happened to me, but it made me intensely happy. I don't know if I've ever felt so strongly before or since."

"It made me wonder," Widget said. "You worry a lot when you have a baby. Am I a good mother? Are we being too indulgent? Do I spend enough time with him? Do we rely too much on the crew to take care of him?"

Gadget blinked. "I think every mother and father in the world worries about the same thing. Well, maybe not the bit about the crew."

"Besides," Jürgen said, "the crew doesn't mind - they love him. The CPO actually denies the crew baby sitting time as a disciplinary measure."

"Exactly," Widget fretted. "Where is he going to learn about the vast majority of people who are cruel, vicious, and hateful?"

Gadget and Jürgen's jaws dropped. Their eyes met, speechlessly, hoping the other would come up with something to say.

"Boarding school?" Jürgen finally suggested.

"You changed the subject," Gadget pointed out.

"No I didn't," her sister lied.

"Sure you did. We asked you about your childhood, and you're talking about Gimcrack's."

Her sister fell silent for a moment. It was hard to draw her out on that subject; they had had long conversations about the father Gadget knew and Widget hadn't, but Widget rarely took any chance to talk about herself.

"I don't agree with the last poem at all," Widget finally said. She spun about and skipped once, surprising her sister, who had assumed Widget was skip-impaired. She was walking backwards and facing her husband with a smile. "This is the best time of my life. I'm in love, and I'm loved." She closed her eyes and drew Jürgen into a kiss.

When it became obvious it was developing into more than just a quick peck, Gadget should have turned away politely to give them a moment of privacy. She didn't. Unconsciously, even innocently, she watched and wondered.

What would it be like to touch someone like that, to be touched by them? Not a quick hug or a fleeting contact in a moment of danger or fear, but any time you felt the urge to? And to know you had the right, that it was sanctioned and respectable and nothing to be ashamed of?

Gadget had been raised on hugs from her father, and Monty had kept that going, so touching by itself wasn't strange to her. She associated it with feeling warm and important, and maybe even protected. This was something else, though; something very different. Something exciting. She knew what it was like; a feeling of desire, and being desired. It was odd that the same words, "love", "kissing", "hugging", were used for both.

It wasn't something she was entirely unaware of. Before the Rangers there had been a flirtation which had lasted a few ugly weeks and had seemed to confirm some of the worst of Dad's warnings. That had left her hungering for solitude and a firm conviction to never get involved with someone who liked her less than she liked him. And, unfortunately, a healthy distrust of certain feelings.

In the first few months after the Rangers had been formed, there had been one or two incidents with the chipmunks. Dale had even kissed his way from her wrist to her shoulder. It had been flattering, playful. And well ... it had been fun, but afterwards it had left her feeling uncomfortable and guilty, as though she knew her father would not approve. She had started to stand off a little, and the chipmunks had gotten the hint. Eventually.

Widget and Jürgen were about to come up for air, so Gadget turned her eyes away. She was feeling a little anxious, anticipatory, and she attributed it to the caffeine.

By the time they made it back to the Ratisson, the stimulant had kicked in big time. She was across the lobby in two bounds and talking to Monty.

"Hi Monty Widget and Jürgen and I were just at this coffeehouse and that mouse we met in Paris who fell off the Eiffel Tower when we were fighting Fat Cat's cousin read some of his poems and he's okay, I guess, I can't really remember but I'm pretty sure he had that limp before he fell, at least I hope he did because I'd feel kind of guilty if he got hurt and we were responsible, but I guess you would too and we didn't have anything to eat yet, and I remember that Chip asked me to go to dinner with him and with Foxglove and with Dale, and that he asked that I show up a little late, which I guess I did, ha ha ha ha, and hey is Zipper here because I hear buzzing, and anyway Chip said something about wanting to trick Dale tonight, and I think he's trying to get Dale to admit that he really really really likes Foxglove or something, and I hope he does because I think he does, and it would make Foxglove so happy, and golly I'm just famished, and all they had at the coffeehouse were these little biscuits and they really didn't look very good so you know what I didn't have any of them at all so I guess I'll be going off to dinner now, bye!"

"'Ello, Gadget," Monty finally said, just as she skipped into the empty elevator.

After it closed, Monty turned slowly, and cast a disturbingly neutral eye at Widget and Jürgen.

"Exactly _what_ kind of place did you take 'er?" he asked, too quietly.

Widget and Jürgen smiled nervously.



The Ratisson, like most buildings in Staten City, was built with a "ground level" some distance underground. Unlike most, it penetrated the surface and went nearly fifty feet into the air. Disguised as a water tower, this was topped with a rotating restaurant It took a fair amount of time for the elevator to get that high. Gadget tapped the buttons nervously. There had to be some way to get the elevator to go faster. Taking out a mouse-sized Leatherman tool, she started to dismantle the panel.



Clayton was in the restaurant, and feeling tired. He had definitely had one walnut martini too many. He desperately wanted to get back to his room. He mashed the down button again, watching as the lit numbers slowly blinked on and off.

The lights seemed to be moving more quickly now - perhaps the elevator had entered an express zone. It was getting close to the restaurant. Strange they didn't seem to be slowing down.



"Isn't this great?" Chip asked, beaming at his friend across the table. "You can see for miles out there. Isn't that view spectacular?" There were two rings of tables in the restaurant, the outer one right by the window, the inner one raised to see over the outer ring. The chipmunks wore their tuxedos, as required by the dress code. Chip's was a conservative black, Dale's a mix of International Orange and fluorescent yellow which had been made by a color- blind tailor and looked like it.

Dale tapped the table, a little glum. Foxglove had just taken a trip to the euphemism, leaving Chip and Dale alone. "I like Foxglove and all, but two's company, if you get my drift."

"I was just thinking the same thing," Dale said under his breath.

"Why, Dale," Chip said, eye glinting, "You wouldn't want me to find another table so you can be alone with Foxglove, would you? Hmm?"

Dale looked at his friend suspiciously. "You wouldn't be doing this deliberately so I'll be forced to admit I like her, would you?"

"Why Dale," Chip asked innocently, "would I do that to my bestest buddy in the whole world?"

Dale's response was swamped by the loud and unmistakable crash of an elevator blowing through the roof.

Chip jumped to his feet. "Get Foxy. Now."

"She's in the bathroom -" Dale protested.

"You're experienced," Chip snapped.

Dale was saved the embarrassment when Foxglove rounded a corner, wide eyed. Although she had not been with the Rangers the last time Gadget had done this, her ears and more importantly, the audio recognition and imaging firmware in her brain gave her an uncanny ability to analyze sound input. "Wow!" she said. "That sounded just like an elevator going through -"

"Foxy," Chip interrupted, "you have to catch the passengers." He grabbed the table. "Dale, help me make her an exit."

Since most of the patrons of the restaurant didn't recognize the sound of an elevator going through a roof, they were running two or three steps behind the Rangers and Foxglove. Since they hadn't anticipated the necessity of smashing a window to let the bat outside, they were startled when two chipmunks, carrying a table between them, leaped from the raised platform onto their table with a single bound and a terrifying war cry of "Pistachioooo!!" Batter fried brine shrimp, drinks, and other appetizers scattered to the four winds as the chipmunks rammed the window with their table, blasting it outwards in jagged shards which cascaded to the ground below. The chipmunks immediately let go of their battering ram, letting it fly out the new exit.

The table barely had time to clear the window before it was followed by the streaking form of Foxglove, hurtling herself airborne. Once through, she spread her wings and soared into a climb.



As the elevator shot out through the roof like a spitball from a schoolboy's milk straw, Gadget realized she had very probably overlooked something. It may seem quite obvious that things needed to slow down before they stopped, but it was a cognitive weak point for Gadget. "Not again," she said mournfully.

Making a parafoil out of things laying around an elevator and stuff in one's pockets is not as easy as it might seem, but Gadget had been in similar tight spots before and she was, she flattered herself, getting rather good at it. So, as the elevator neared the apex of its flight, and thus was close to an airspeed of zero, Gadget popped the doors open and stepped out.

As Foxglove continued to climb, she was shocked to see Gadget jump deliberately out of the elevator. She was somewhat less surprised to see the dirt-absorbing mat from the elevator unfold into a Rogallo wing hang glider braced with interior panel framework and strung together with elevator cables. The elevator dropped rapidly away as Gadget took wing.

Foxglove was soon gliding next to her. "Hi, Gadget." She didn't bother to ask if Gadget had been the only passenger; Foxglove would have heard anyone else, and more importantly, it was impossible to imagine Gadget abandoning strangers.

"Hi, Foxglove. Excuse me for not waving," she apologized, "but I really need both hands to fly this."

"Perfectly understandable. You're gliding a little heavy, I think."

"Uhm," Gadget said non-commitally. The fact Foxy had to flap now and then to keep up was probably a bad sign. "I didn't have time to whip up an airspeed indicator or a barometric altimeter, so I'll take your word for it. What's our drop rate?" Gadget's three dimensional vision was only good out for a meter or so; her eyes were too close together. Being unfamiliar with the size of the hotel they were circling, she couldn't judge their altitude.

Foxglove pinged the hotel. "I'd say about sixteen centimeters a second."

Gadget went into a wide circle, so she could land back on the hotel roof. "That's a little fast."

The elevator smashed through the roof, making a second hole.



Bleary eyed, Clayton turned in the direction the crash, to see the elevator half embedded in the floor. He wondered why it had appeared in the middle of the hall, and decided he was probably even more tired than he thought. He stepped in, noticing the vandalism with disapproval, and mashed the button for the fifth floor.



"Look, officer, I don't see what the problem is," Chip said, annoyed. "The elevator went through the roof, and we broke the window so our friend, a bat, could rescue the passengers."

"Uh-huh," agreed Officer Olivia Cagney. She scribbled on her notebook. She and Lacey had been on bathroom duty, laying in wait to capture the hordes of male chipmunks who had reportedly been harassing the occupants of the ladies' room. It had been boring, with no action until now. "And where, exactly, is this bat?"

"Right here," Foxglove announced with fine dramatic sense, coming in through the stairway door. Gadget followed her.

"So you're the bat that rescued the passenger in the elevator?"

"Who," said Dale, enunciating with some difficulty over the batter fried brine shrimp he was eating. "'You're the bat _who_ --'"

"Yes," Gadget agreed. "She created a downdraft that generated a ground effect that slowed my hang glider to a safe landing speed."

"So you were in the elevator with a hang glider?" Officer Cagney asked.

"Well, I built the hang glider," Gadget admitted modestly. "Not one I'm proud of. The glide rate was just terrible -"

"Wait, wait, wait," Cagney waggled her pencil, threateningly. "Let's start from the beginning. Why did the elevator blow through the roof?"

To make matters more confusing, a black clad female mouse appeared from where she had been examining said elevator. Her eyes glittered with determination and anger and she carried a thimble with a cap in her right hand.

"Sabotage!" she hissed. Cagney looked at the interloper, worried.

Widget placed the thimble carefully on a table, and put her mechanical left arm into Vengeance Position #1: fist clenched and raised threateningly at the forces of Fate. A breeze started to blow in through the shattered window and Widget moved to take advantage of it, so it blew her hair and cape dramatically. She took a deep breath and drew on the courses she had taken on ranting at the Ratigan Institute in London.

"The elevator was modified by some sick, twisted mind --"

"Hey," frowned Gadget.

"-to continue accelerating until it reached the destination floor. Since this was the top, it made like the last scene in _Willy Wonka_. It can only have been a murderous plot directed at the next person going to the restaurant."

"A disgruntled waiter, maybe," Chip mused.

"Well, actually -" Gadget began with a nervous chuckle.

She was interrupted by her sister. "The minions of the law may view this lightly, but I swear upon the graves of she who bore me and he who sired me the heart's blood of this transgressor will flow in libation to -"

"Oh, ick!" cried out Dale and Foxglove.

"-The wild, cruel gods of crunchy retribution." Widget closed her eyes and sighed, her mouth set and determined.

"Please don't," Gadget said with a weak smile.

"Right," Chip snapped. "I'll see if we can find an employee who -"

Gadget cleared her throat. "Actually, it's kinda my fault. I wanted to get to the restaurant in a hurry."

Widget fell silent.

"It was an accident, Widget," Gadget explained, embarrassed.

Widget didn't say anything.

"Maybe it takes her a little while to come down off a rant," Dale suggested.

Actually, Widget's left arm had jammed in Vengeance Position #1. She couldn't try to unfreeze it with her right arm without advertising the fact it was artificial. "Well," she said slowly, "accidents happen."

"You must have been in the next elevator," Gadget said, wondering why Widget didn't lower her arm.

"Yeah," Widget said, her conversational tone contrasting with her threatening gesture. "You had a lot of coffee, so I brought you something to help you get to sleep."

"What's in the cup?" Cagney asked, suddenly suspicious. She took it up, flipped off the top, and took a deep whiff. Her eyes glazed, and she fought for balance before losing and crashing to the floor in a heap.

"Ether," Widget explained, an uncomfortable expression on her face.

"Let's get out of here," Chip suggested.

"But the police officer -" Dale began.

"You don't hear her complaining, do you?" Chip asked reasonably.

Gadget was staring out the window. "So this is the rotating restaurant," she said. She brightened. "Say, guys, I'll bet it would be even cooler if it spun faster -"

"No," said everyone in earshot.

"Gadget, I've got a problem," Widget whispered to her sister, partly to distract her from her new and exciting project. "My arm's seized up."

"Uh oh," Gadget looked around. Fixing it unobtrusively was out of the question. Maybe they could find something for Widget to hold so the pose looked more natural...

Foxglove heard the whisper; not that she was trying to, but she heard most whispers. "Will it help if I block with my wings?" she asked.

Widget looked at her. "You know about my arm?"

"It's hard to keep things like that from a bat," Foxglove evaded. In fact, the artificial arms Gadget had built her were modified versions of Widget's, and Gadget had mentioned that once by mistake.

Gadget returned carrying something under one arm. "Can you block me while I rotate the wrist a bit?" she asked Foxy.



Clayton was taking another elevator down, with the Rangers, Widget and Foxglove.

"I'm an albino," Widget said in reply to his question. "I should stay out of the sun as much as possible."

Clayton nodded slowly. That would explain the brightly colored paper drinks parasol Widget was holding above her head. Still, there was something that didn't quite fit...

"It's night time," he finally observed.

"I can never keep that straight," Widget explained with a self- deprecating shrug. "The sub runs on Greenwich time."

"Oh. But we're inside."

"I'm planning on going outside," she said, her voice becoming a little testy. If Clayton hadn't come along, she and Gadget could have unjammed the mechanism in her arm. As it was ...

"But Staten City's underground," Clayton observed. "It doesn't make sense."

"You're probably a little drunk," Chip suggested.

That seemed to satisfy Clayton. The elevator stopped at his floor and all wished him an enthusiastic good night. The moment he was gone, Chip hit the Stop button, and Widget started to tug down her left sleeve while Gadget pulled out her tool set.



"I'm sorry, sir," said the bartender, "but we can't serve minors here."

Gimcrack looked up at him with a sigh. It was the third time he had heard that one.

Monty forced a chuckle. "Jest a root beer for me."

"Me too," said Jürgen. "Did you keep him in the bar all the time you were baby-sitting him?"

"Well ... part of it," Monty shrugged.

"Why did you do that?"

Monty sighed. "It's easiest with a demonstration. Gimcrack, do your thing."

The solemn little mouse nodded, and opened his eyes wide and smiled, giggling happily. The was a high speed "zip" noise, and Jürgen was startled to see they were surrounded by six of the prettiest mouse women in the bar, eyes shining as they stared at his son.

"Awwww," they chorused. "How cuuute!" They released synchronized sighs.

Impressed, Jürgen nodded. "If only I had known you when I was single and on leave," Jürgen told Gimcrack.

Monty winked. "At least somebody did."



"Monty said we could meet him at the bar," Chip said.

Widget lifted a dubious eyebrow. Her arm was unjammed and Dale had taken a fancy to the parasol, which he opened and closed to Foxglove's fascinated amazement. "With my son?" she asked.

Jürgen was wiping lipstick off Gimcrack, while Monty shuffled through the phone numbers he had just collected. "How did you get him to do that?" Jürgen asked.

"Promised 'im flyin' lessons for 'is fourteenth birthday." He sniffed one of the sheets of paper and smiled. Cheddar perfume.

"Isn't that a bit young?"

"'Is grandfather did."

The group descended on Monty and Jürgen. "Monty," Chip said casually, "we should probably leave the hotel for a bit."

"Trouble?" Monty asked, a grim smile coming over his face.

"Not if we're gone before the cop wakes up," Dale said.

The bartender dropped a shot glass.



"Widget Hackwrench?" David told the tall white mouse. "She's over there by the bar."

"Thank you. Come, Penfold."

Monty scarfed a final Cheddar flavored cracker as the white mouse came up behind them. "Excuse me, I'm looking for a Widget Hack -"

Widget started to turn when she heard her name. She and Dangermouse locked eyes.

"Fifi!" gasped Dangermouse.

"Dangermouse!" gasped Widget.

"Fifi?" asked Jürgen.

"Widget?" asked Dangermouse.

"Penfold!" gasped Dale.

"Dale!" gasped Penfold.

"Dangermouse?" asked Jürgen, his voice a little harder.

"Do not say 'Chief,' 'McCloud,' 'Rocky,' or any variation," Chip ordered.

"Shucks," said Dale.

An irked Penfold lept onto the bar and advanced on Widget, trembling with rage. He met her eye to eye while she regarded him curiously.

"And so, we meet again!" he hissed. "This time, you will find Dangermouse immune to your feminine wiles, temptress! The moth is wary for having been burned once by that flame!"

Dangermouse surreptitiously popped a breath mint and grabbed some flowers from a table to make a field-expedient bouquet.

"Excuse me," Jürgen said politely, cleaning his fingertip claws with a dagger, "did you just call my wife a temptress?"

"Me best mate's little girl?" asked Monty, tying a knot in a bar stool.

"My sister?" asked Gadget casually, adjusting the tension on her plunger harpoon.

"Oh, eck," said Penfold.

"Wife?" asked Dangermouse, flowers wilting in his palm.

He immediately recovered, tossing the flowers away and spinning back to face the others with a smile. "You misheard," he explained. "He said 'tempest,' not 'temptress.'"

"I don't think so," Jürgen said politely.

"Please," Widget interrupted. "Dangermouse is an old friend and I'd really prefer the weapons were put away. Dangermouse, my husband Jürgen, my son Gimcrack, my overprotective unofficial uncle and sister Monterey Jack and Gadget. These are the Rescue Rangers, a small but valiant group which stands alone between the animal population of Manhattan and savage chaos."

Chip pretended to shift uncomfortably and blush. He hoped Gadget had brought their newspaper clippings.

"Pleased to meet you," Jürgen forced himself to say while shaking Dangermouse's hand. "I've heard so little about you."

"Of course. Dangermouse is one of the world's top secret agents," Widget said, pretending to misunderstand.

"So you know Widget?" Jürgen asked, still not entirely mollified.

Dangermouse shrugged. "Not all that well, I'm afraid. We dated a bit, went potholing, a bit of trainspotting, saw a film or two, met for dinner and breakfast -not in that order, of course, heh heh -"

"Skiing in Switzerland," Penfold reminded him helpfully. "Diving off Hawaii -"

"Yes, thank you Penfold," Dangermouse said through clenched chisellike incisors.

"And there were that cruise aboard the -"

"Penfold, shush," Widget and Dangermouse said simultaneously.

"Fifi?" asked Gadget, trying to change the subject.

"I'm using my birth name now. 'Fifi' was my adopted name," Widget explained.

"You were adopted?" Dangermouse asked, surprised.

"So when did that cruise take place?" Jürgen asked.

"This was before we met," Widget told him. "I was working on plans for _Albacore_."

"And your plan to sabotage NATO's Sound Surveillance System," Dangermouse said with a smile. "Possibly threatening the balance of strategic power."

"Oh, let's not bring up old arguments, DM," she chided him. "Why were you looking for Widget Hackwrench?"

Dangermouse hesitated. "Can I rely on the discretion of you and your friends?"

"Implicitly," Widget said flatly. Chip looked at Dale, who had caught his nose in a glass of lemonade, and kept his thoughts to himself.

"Have you ever heard of K-219?" Dangermouse asked.

Widget and Jürgen blinked and looked at one another in horror. "No," they said in unison.

"Gee," said Dale, voice made nasal by the tumbler. "Isn't that the Soviet Yankee-class ballistic missile submarine that sank in the Caribbean in 1985 carrying twenty-eight 50-megaton nuclear warheads? There was a special on TV," he explained to his surprised friend Chip.

"Oh, that K-219," Jürgen laughed nervously. His wife smiled weakly.

"Dale, if you exhale gently through your nose, you'll break the suction," Gadget said helpfully. Shortly afterwards, the lemonade glass took flight and hit the mirror behind the bar, cracking it.

"Well, the Russians sent down a remote camera, and found that a number of the silos had been forced open and the missiles and warheads removed," Dangermouse told them.

His audience gasped in horror.

"Naturally, they were taken by my cousins in the CIA," Dangermouse explained.

His audience sighed in relief.

"Except four, which remain unaccounted for."

His audience gasped in horror again.

"And you think some animal took them?" Chip asked, terrified.

"It's a distinct possibility," Widget said with a forced chuckle.

"Can you imagine an animal evil enough to use weapons of mass destruction?" Chip berated Dangermouse. "That is a level of criminality that leaves Fat Cat in the pale - a grotesque, conscienceless monster capable of - of Human levels of cruelty!"

"Hey," Widget frowned.

Jürgen sighed and shook his head, as the others turned to stare at his wife.

"I didn't give them to anyone, and I'm not planning on using them," Widget explained reasonably. "Besides, you can do nifty things with the spare plutonium. They're just a fun little project of mine to relax. I built a 3F fifty megaton, and a neutron bomb, and a little two kiloton device I call 'Firecracker.' Cool, huh?"

"Fun little project?" asked Dangermouse, incredulous. "Fifi - uh, Widget, what kind of demented mind thinks like -"

"You'll probably need some fresh tritium," Gadget observed.

Widget nodded. "Yeah -- the two fusion bombs are mostly just for show."

Chip looked on, aghast. "Widget, if some Humans find those, you might start a war!"

"Then you built the radiothermal generators with the plutonium from the third stage fission shells?" Gadget asked excitedly.

"Why didn't you tell anyone --" Chip started to ask.

Widget and Gadget paused in their conversation so Widget could deal with the interruption. "I'll tell you why," Widget said politely. "Because people act just like you're doing. You tell them you've got nuclear weapons, and they over-react."

Chip scanned the slightly annoyed expressions of the two sisters and swallowed. He looked over at the horrified, slack-jawed faces of Monty, Dale, and Dangermouse. Reassured he was basically sane, he drew a deep breath.

"Didn't you say something earlier 'bout leaving before the cop woke up?" Monty suddenly said.

"Golly, that's right," Gadget said. She patted Dangermouse's hand. "Look, just tell Colonel K the bombs are in good hands, and that everyone can rest easy. Okay? I'm sure nobody will mind."

"But -" Dangermouse began.

Widget said, "I really need that plutonium. I intend to keep it. Nice seeing you, DM." She picked up her son. "How's Mommy's angel?" she asked him with a smile he fleetingly returned.

"C'mon, guys," Chip said, pushing his fedora to a rakish angle. They scuttled off, leaving Dangermouse and Penfold alone.

"They don't seem very worried about this," Penfold observed. "Maybe it's a Second Amendment issue."

"Before the cop wakes up?" Dangermouse asked slowly.

5. Collision Course

6. "Smile," said Gadget.

The mouse wearing the Hubert the Human walkaround costume shifted the weight of the remarkably calm mouse baby and reflexively smiled. At least this one wasn't crying, and immediately turned to the camera, almost as though he understood what was happening. He wondered why the baby was wearing his aunt's goggles, and then he wondered why the baby's mother turned away and covered her eyes with her hands. He soon found out.

Gadget's Xenon Flash turned the already brightly lit street in People Town into a canyon filled with painful light, a light so brilliant it seemed to penetrate the skin, and left one with the urge to Duck and Cover. A mole with his eyes closed was surprised to see he was able to read a map through his eyelids.

"Thank you," Widget said politely, retrieving her son from the stunned and silent Hubert. Figuring he would probably be out of it for the next few minutes, she took no offence. She handed Gadget's goggles back to her.

Gadget adjusted them with a smile. She had noticed that Jürgen had subtly arranged to split the group, ostensibly so the others could go on some rides that were probably too old for Gimcrack. What had surprised her was Chip's acquiescence; Jürgen had almost certainly set something up.

The only reasons Gadget could think of for the others to conspire to send her off with her sister and nephew were to either prepare a surprise for one or all of them, or because Widget wanted some time alone with her. Either way, she was willing to go along with it.

"Does Gimcrack have any Algebra Blocks?" Gadget asked.

"Not yet. I'll get a set before I leave."

"I remember Dad would put away my Algebra Blocks so the equations didn't balance, and I'd cry and cry..."

"Why didn't you adjust them?" Widget asked.

Gadget laughed lightly. "Oh, Widget, this was before my hands worked!"

Widget smiled and laughed back. "Of course. I wasn't thinking." Her voice went slightly wistful. "I never got Algebra Blocks."

Gadget nodded, hoping she could keep Widget talking. "What was your favorite toy?"

"I had a blanket."

"A blanket?"

"Oh, yes. There was a time I'd no more leave the nest without Baba Blankie then I'd do it now without wearing Kevlar. Yours?"

"I've got to say Floppy. This little rag mouse baby doll I got for Christmas."

"I've met Floppy," Widget nodded. "We didn't ... celebrate Christmas. Not really. My first Christmas present was a coffee thimble the crew gave me before you and I, uh, met. They painted 'World's Most Byronic Mouse' on it."

"What did you celebrate?"

"Well, nothing really."

"Your foster mother never gave you presents?" Gadget was shocked. "Widget, that's terrible!"

Widget looked uncomfortable and nodded. "Gadget, I've got a favor to ask you."

Gadget nodded. "Sure."

"What you said before about every mother worrying. I guess that's true, but I'm really afraid about me. I don't think I was raised well. But that's where you learn how to raise kids. I'm just afraid I'm really going to screw it up."

Gadget nodded. Widget was probably applying her own methodical approach to her own qualifications: Widget saw herself as an inexperienced mother who had blown her apprenticeship, and needed close supervision. "Don't be so gloomy. It's obvious Gimcrack loves you."

"That doesn't mean much. Trust me."

Gadget was about to ask when something caught her eye and distracted her. It was a white tent, covered with stars, put up in a vacant lot reserved for traveling exhibits. It was a mouse-sized version of a tent she had seen a long time ago.

"Cassandra?" she asked.

"Who?"

Gadget grinned. "Cassandra. A gypsy moth fortune teller I know. We've got to check this out."

"Fortune teller?" Widget shook her head and laughed. "Gadget, shame on you."

Gadget knew better than to argue - the Rangers' previous experience had been so bizarre there was little or no doubt in her mind, but it was unreasonable to expect someone who hadn't shared that to believe. "It'll be fun. C'mon."

Widget let Gadget pull her into the tent. They sat down, Widget holding her son on her lap. They were illuminated by a small cyalume light stick, since candles and open flames were discouraged in Staten City.

"So more have arrived to see into their futures?" came an accented voice from the shadows in the roof of the tent. Widget was reminded of a friendly Maria Ouspenskaya from one of the films she had watched with Dale.

"Hello, Cassandra," Gadget called out. "I don't know if you remember me - "

Cassandra swooped down, her jewelry tinkling. Truth be told, Cassandra was more than just a bit nearsighted, and she never wore her glasses at work because they clashed with her headband and brightly colored dress. "You're Monterey Jack's friend, pretty little Gadget!" she exclaimed, pinching her cheek. "Still no ring on that finger, such a sad waste!"

Gadget blushed. "This is my sister and nephew, Widget and Gimcrack." The albino woman nodded politely and the baby regarded Cassandra coolly.

"Please don't say any more about them, Gadget dear." Cassandra smiled directly at Widget. "Your sister expects a demonstration of blind reading."

Cassandra's comment had exactly the effect she hoped for; Widget looked startled and tried to cover up.

"What's blind reading?" Gadget asked.

"Blind reading is one of the ways fortune tellers without the sight stay in business," Cassandra explained. "Sureluck Jones was a master of the technique, which is why I suspect your detective friend was less than impressed last time. May I have your hand, Widget dear?"

Widget silently held out her right hand and steadied Gimcrack with her left, determined to give Cassandra as little to work with as possible.

"I'm not offended that you doubt me," Cassandra said chattily, taking Widget's right forepaw in her hand. "After all, _Nomen ist Omen,_ as your husband might say. Your son takes after his father, who is not an albino."

"Very good," Widget said with a nod.

"How did you do that?" Gadget asked.

"Two albinos can't have a baby who isn't albino," Cassandra explained. "Since fur color is the most obvious trait, Gimcrack must look more like his father than his mother. Wedding rings are often worn on the right hand in Germany."

"And why were you sure Gimcrack's a boy? He's not wearing blue."

Cassandra lifted an eyebrow. "You introduced him as your nephew."

"Golly." Gadget looked abashed.

"Don't feel silly; it's amazing how often you can just repeat things back to someone and have them convinced you came up with it yourself." Cassandra held Widget's hand lightly and rubbed her fingers.

"Your pads are very soft, but your fingers are strong. I'd say you don't work with your hands often, but you have in the past. In fact, your pads feel so soft I don't think you make a habit of running on all fours. This makes me think there might be something wrong with your left foreleg. I also notice you wear a glove on your left hand and that your cloak covers your left arm, which makes me suspect you dress to conceal it. It may be visibly misshapen. So, you may wear your wedding ring on the right hand to draw more attention from your handicap."

Gadget held her breath and Widget whistled, impressed.

"Next, you have an ear notch. These are invariably the results of injuries, and the fact it wasn't sewn up to heal correctly means it happened when you couldn't get to a doctor. Yet, you seem rather well to do. So, you have probably come up considerably in the world."

Widget hesitated, and nodded.

"Of course, if I were really trying to fool you," Cassandra said, "I'd play that all up as much as possible, with gasps and melodrama and all that." Cassandra rubbed her hands briskly. "So," she said brightly, "now that I've shown I know a few tricks, let me show you what I can really do."

"Just a moment," Gadget interrupted. "I've been thinking a lot about what you can do, and I think knowing what will happen isn't helpful."

"Very perceptive," Cassandra said approvingly.

"It isn't?" Widget asked, surprised.

"No," Gadget explained. "Because if it's going to happen, even if you know it's going to happen, you can't avoid it. So instead of looking into my future, warn me about the biggest danger the Rangers have to deal with." She smiled, confident she had found a way to tame the forces of fate.

"Answering direct questions is tricky," Cassandra said slowly. "I may not see anything."

Gadget shrugged. "That's okay. Then I'm no worse off than before." The experiment would be interesting, if nothing else.

Cassandra flew up into the shadows and turned on a 40-watt bulb. She flew around it, staring into the surface, pausing now and then. Horse races... no. Wall Street Journal from next Friday - she made a mental note to adjust her stock portfolio. Then she peered closely.

...

The year was 2036. The newly-elected President of the United States sat down at his desk in the Oval Office, with the most trusted members of his cabinet. He leaned awkwardly over the table, keeping his head carefully upright. Terrifyingly, his jaw unhinged, like a snake's, dropping down ninety degrees. A tiny rope ladder unrolled to the surface of the table, and down climbed a handsome, athletic mouse just entering middle age.

"It was a tough campaign, but now our real work begins," Gimcrack said confidently.

...

Cassandra turned about and faced the infant.

"Gimcrack, people ... will take you seriously when you're older," she assured him.

Gimcrack smiled and gurgled happily. Cassandra shrugged to herself - some things were better left ambiguous.

...

Another message, this one in symbols - in words - instead of pictures.

...

"A warning - for you, or one close to you," Cassandra intoned, pointing to Gadget. "A defenseless mouse is both loved and threatened by a friend."

Gadget's breath caught in her throat.

Cassandra flew back to the naked bulb. She knew she had said she would look for Widget's future, but she had a strange, gnawing curiosity about her past. When she had first met Gadget, she had been struck by the mouse's sense of isolation. Surrounded by friends who loved her and she loved back, she had still possessed a feeling she was the last surviving leaf of a tree. Discrete inquiries of Monterey had confirmed Gadget was an only child, an orphan. And here she was, suddenly with a sister and nephew. They had a family resemblance and Cassandra didn't doubt they were blood relatives, but there was still a mystery here.

...

It was a cold day, a day that seemed to draw the heat and life out of one's body. It was not really snowing, but there was snow in the air, blown by the bitter wind, imparting a sense of chill without collecting and temporarily beautifying the lifeless, dirty city streets. The sky was the same color as the river, a dead steel gray that blended with the mist, and made the horizon a barely discernible line between the two. It was a raw, ugly day, and it was easy to imagine life itself had died.

Travis twitched his whiskers and wrapped his cloak more tightly around his shoulders; the concrete was like ice against his feet, making him glad to adopt a bipedal stance, sparing his fingers from the chill. Altogether, it was not a day an old mouse should be out, and, as he told himself for the hundredth time, it was absolutely absurd for him to out looking for a fifteen year-old girl to do her a favor. Hot chocolate was waiting for him back in his lab, and warm air from the ventilation shaft.

He didn't turn back.

Fifi was sitting about where he expected to find her. She spent much of her time idly staring at the water. Travis believed she was usually off in a mental world of pulleys and forces and gears he could barely comprehend, occasionally visiting back to create in reality the things she had imagined, like the mouse-sized controls for the Human-sized microscope in his office. The poncho and hood she wore certainly couldn't keep her as warm as she seemed. She was so unaffected by the bitter weather he wondered if she was drawing strength from the brackish, gray water which emptied into the sea a few miles south.

Fifi had to avoid the sun, so this sort of weather agreed with her. Her ragged hair was almost the same color as the water, and her fur matched the snow in the air. Her pink eyes were narrowed in a habitual squint, and he couldn't tell if she was wearing her plastic left arm under her poncho. She probably was; it was more for looks than utility, but she usually insisted on it.

Travis tried to put a little anger in his voice, to put a young girl in her place. Unfortunately, his voice caught and it sounded more apologetic than anything.

"I expected you in my office," he said.

She barely turned her head. "Dominant homozygous mice can't have a child with a recessive phenotype, right?"

He was caught so far off guard he answered immediately, without considering the implications. "Uh ... no, you're right. They can't."

"Ah." She turned back to the river.

"I have the prescription for your mother," he said, now beginning to feel genuinely angry.

"Yes," she said absently. "My mother. I'm sorry. I was thinking of something else."

Travis felt a moment of suspicion. She hadn't found the test records in his office, had she?

"Thinking of what?" he asked.

She looked at him strangely, as though she had never imagined being asked that question. She gestured with her right paw. "About that," she said.

She could only be pointing to one thing. Visibility was so bad the old aircraft carrier jutting into the Hudson River turned invisible halfway down its length. And, of course, it was painted to blend with the sea and fog.

"It's just something Humans built to kill other Humans," he shrugged indifferently.

"She is magnificent," Fifi contradicted him, in tones that did not even deign to disagree. "They built her to carry propeller-driven planes, before they even invented jet power or radar. But she served long enough to recover spaceships out of the ocean. They were able to keep modifying her through all that. She was hit so badly and so often they said she was jinxed. But there she is. What a survivor that lady is."

"I don't understand. What does that have to do with homozygous genes?" For the first time in his life outside of a medical examination, he put his hand on her. She looked up, startled. "Fifi, did you see the results of the test I ran on myself?"

"On you?" she asked.

"Fifi, your mother and I have ... issues. I don't want them to concern you. But I want you to know, I had myself tested to see if I had the right to take you from her."

At one time, it would have been a lie. The relief he had originally felt on finding out that Fifi could not be his daughter had quickly been replaced by sympathy for the infant trapped in the crossfire between him and a lover who had abandoned him.

"Oh." Fifi looked away. "The prescription?"

He was shocked back to his original errand. "Yes." He handed her a foil envelope, with some sugar mixed with a smaller amount of salt. "Mix a handful with a thimbleful of water. She should drink as much as she can. There's more than enough in there. Don't bother to bring what's left back; it won't store well."

"Thank you." She took the envelope and stood up. She turned away from him before she spoke.

"Travis," she said, "I would have liked you to be my father."

He felt warmth, spreading from within despite the weather. She had never expressed a desire to him before. "I would like to be," he told her. "You could move in with me when your mother's better."

"No. It wouldn't be real." She was lying. The only people she knew well were herself and Anne, and she was afraid of meeting the dark side she knew Travis had to posses.

He fought to keep disappointment from his voice. He couldn't beg her. "It would be as real as you would let it be."

The envelope vanished under her poncho and she began to walk away. "Fifi," he said urgently. She paused, and he tried to think of something to say. "I ... wanted to thank you again for building those controls for the microscope. It's speeding up my work a lot. You really helped the community. You're saving lives."

Her expression darkened for a moment. Travis wanted to shake her shoulders and scream. He had no idea how what he said could anger her. Fifi's mind was like that, clicking away like some machine, relating things he never could follow. Maybe that was why she could look at machined junk and see a tool; maybe it made her a genius, maybe it made her more than a little mad.

He watched her walk off, and hated himself for feeling a little relieved at her rejection. Travis cared about Fifi, deeply and sincerely, the same way he felt about most of the mice who came to his clinic. But there was too much about Fifi that frightened and repelled him. He didn't really believe he could ever love her.



Help the community, she thought sarcastically. Pick a hundred mice on the street and call it a "community." Throw a woman and a girl together and call them a "family." Idiotic. Sentimental.

...

"Cassandra?" Gadget asked doubtfully.

The moth stared, jaw opening, shaking, her wings moving barely enough to keep her up. Even Widget doubted it was theatrics.

...

It was warm in the tunnels, but that was about their only virtue. The noise of the nearby subway made it like living in a thunder cloud. The tunnels were damp, and water constantly ran down the slopes. Fifi walked on her hind legs, ignoring the chatter of the other mice, most of whom scampered on all fours. She was constantly ducking and stooping; since she was missing her left foreleg, she found it easier to walk bipedal. It served to remind her of the vast gulf between her and the others. Almost half of them didn't even have clothes.

Three newcomers were huddled together, wearing everything they owned. Fifi's sensitive nose caught a faint whiff of the poison gas Humans used to control the rodent population in the subways. The child was too young to forage on its own, and Fifi immediately noticed the strange fact there were no siblings. The two adults, a male and a female, huddled the child while they tried to get it to eat a thin broth. Refugees from lower downtown, Fifi guessed; a husband and wife and their only surviving child, fleeing the gas. They hadn't found a burrow, and couldn't dig one of their own in the concrete.

"There's a clinic outside," she heard herself saying. "Go out the crack in the wall back there, and head uptown about three blocks. It's a green building, go in through the southeast corner."

They looked up at her, stunned. She was probably the first local to tell them anything.

"Thank you," the husband said, suspicion in his voice. She knew he was wondering if this was a trick to get their place or their cache of food.

"Did you bring that food with you?" Fifi asked.

"We haven't had time to forage for anything new -" the mother began.

Fifi felt irritated. "Then it's probably contaminated. Don't leave it here. Someone will steal it and poison themselves."

The couple looked at one another. It made sense, but ...

Fifi sighed and pulled off her poncho. "And you better wrap the kid in this. Your clothes are probably all contaminated too. You'll need them for the walk to the clinic, but you better change out of them as soon as you can."

She felt her left arm slip, dislocating off the harness. Instantly both of them looked at the obviously fake object in her left sleeve. "Oh!" gasped the mother. "You poor thing!"

Fifi colored and stormed off, ignoring their stuttered apologies. The moment of warmth she had felt was gone, swamped by embarrassment and anger. It was always like that. People were stupid, sentimental, and their worst enemies in that they hurt themselves. She was no better. The plastic arm was worse than useless; if she had an empty sleeve, they would never have drawn attention to it. She had to improve the harness, to make it perfect. Then, nobody would dare feel sorry for her. Ever.

The burrow Anne had built and Fifi had improved had three rooms; two for sleeping and a bathroom Fifi had made using Human plumbing. It was simple, but it was far ahead of what most mice lived in and the sound of the running water helped mask the roar of the subway. The two bedrooms were an unusual luxury for mice, set up in a silent recognition of the fact Fifi and Anne could barely tolerate the other's presence. It was lit using fiber optics and power from the Humans. Fifi had installed that the year before.

Fifi found Anne in the bathroom, as was a good bet from the nature of her illness. She was too weak to do much more than move herself from her bedroom to the bathroom. Fifi should have extended the ordinary courtesy of waiting outside, but she didn't.

Anne was tired, violently ill, and so weak most of the usual fire of her personality was dulled and muted. "You got something from the old quack?" she finally asked.

Fifi looked at Anne for a moment, a pause to make it clear she was answering in her own good time. "Albinism follows classic Mendelian inheritance," Fifi said casually. "It's a recessive trait."

"I don't care. That plastic arm looks really ridiculous on you. I hope you didn't go out like that."

Fifi's jaw worked for a moment. "I think it's important you care. I really do."

There was something frightening in Fifi's voice. Suddenly, Anne was acutely aware that Fifi had a prescription for her, and that the girl could be out the door before Anne could stand.

"Is something bothering you, Fifi?" she asked, slowly. "Did he say something to you?"

"Someone with two dominant genes can't have a baby who shows a recessive trait," Fifi said. "It's impossible."

"Mommy doesn't understand, sweetie."

"Who's my mommy, mommy?" Fifi asked, spitting out the last word like a curse.

The only thing Anne felt was a wish she had dropped that part of the masquerade a long time ago. Anne's life was a long record of using others; she was a master at it. And she was certainly, she flattered herself, smarter than any kid, even one who liked to tinker with machines.

"I was hoping you would never find out," Anne sighed dramatically.

"I'll bet," Fifi agreed.

"They didn't want you."

Fifi's jaw dropped. Anne sighed.

"Fifi, Fifi, you're smart, but you're still just a kid. And there isn't a little girl in the world who doesn't have a fantasy that her real mommy and daddy are wonderful people who live in a castle and will whisk them off to a life of happiness. But that's not how it really happens. They didn't lose you by accident. They got rid of you."

"Why -- ?" The question tore out of Fifi in a choke, and Anne smiled inwardly. There was no doubt the kid bought it. She put a kind expression on.

"They had _healthy_ children. They saw you and tossed you out the burrow. Look in a mirror. Can you really blame them?"

Fifi's one good hand gripped into a fist, and trembled.

"Do you know who they are?" she asked, tight-voiced.

Anne decided to gamble. "Yes," she lied.

"Tell me."

"When I'm better."

Distrust flicked over Fifi's face, but Anne didn't budge. Anne felt relief flood her as the little monster slowly nodded agreement. Anne knew she'd have to figure out something to tell her soon after her health improved, but Anne lived her life a day at a time and that didn't bother her.

...

"Do you trust Anne?"

Widget's jaw dropped.

"I asked you a question," Cassandra said angrily. "Do you trust Anne?"

"No!"

"Widget, who's Anne?" Gadget asked.

...

The stars shone with unusual clarity. Fifi didn't notice; she was intent on the broken cinderblock in front of her. She took a careful step forward with her left foot. The brace around her leg transmitted the motion to the rear right leg of the apparatus she wore. Like a mechanical centaur, she moved closer to the cinderblock. She moved a switch into the armed position.

Two braces swung down and locked against the ground. An armored, polarized face shield slid down over her eyes, momentarily blocking all her vision. Then sparks flew in front of the air cooled nozzle and it burst into life.

The plasma jet lit the night so brightly she could see despite the polarized shield. The reaction of the cutting torch pressed against the rear legs and braces, shuddering. The electromagnetically accelerated plasma was more like that produced by a rocket engine or a shaped charge explosive than a simple blow torch; instead of burning through the concrete, it cracked and shattered it. Shards rattled off the shielding as the dully roaring jet wore slowly through the block.

The Automatic Mousehole Cutter was Fifi's ticket to recognition. Ultra- Flight Labs was sponsoring a competition for young mouse inventors; it wasn't hard to guess they were looking for apprentices.

Anne had recovered weeks ago, and refused to live up to her side of the bargain. Every time Fifi had asked, Anne sidestepped the question and behaved mysteriously. Fifi had half expected it; Anne had a habit of using any advantage to wring every drop she could out of everyone she knew. Perhaps Anne didn't know. Or, just as bad, that she knew but was aware it was the last thing she had Fifi wanted from her.

Anne had been wheedling Fifi for drugs, since her usual supplier had left. Fifi had refused so far. A bit of withdrawal might make her more likely to tell the truth. Fifi had spent a solid week away from her; this evening she'd have it out with Anne, if the Mousehole Cutter ran all right today. Perhaps feigned indifference would work.

Burnthrough, in only fifteen minutes. The tiny breach rapidly grew as the edges crumbled in white-hot fragments. Shortly after, she had made a hole wide enough to take the torch through. Grinning in triumph, she cut power and disarmed the system.

She took a careful step forward, and decided to give the cinderblock time to cool. The inside of the cinderblock had been in shadow before; now her eyes were so dark adapted because of the shield, she could see the far wall. It must, at one time, have been inside some sort of public rodent dwelling, because the wall was covered with posters.

The cinderblock had been part of a building on the lower east side, torn down years ago. It had then been part of a field-expedient bookcase, in the apartment of a student on the upper west side. It had been tossed onto the rubbish heap less than two months ago. Since the poster was inside, it had been protected from the sun and rain which had destroyed most of the others. Since the building had been torn down, it had not been covered with another or cleaned off. The fact it was there and legible would later make her wonder if some miraculous force had been at work; but the rational side of her mind realized so many had been made and posted it was practically inevitable she would see one eventually.

It hung sideways, because the block had rolled over in the last fifteen years. Lit by the glowing shards of cinderblock, Fifi could read the headline: LOST BABY.

Her throat closed. Her hand was shaking as she undid the straps that held her in, all the while part of her mind was telling her not to be ridiculous - there were probably hundreds of lost baby mice. She scrambled through the breach, ignoring singed fur and paws.



LOST BABY

Widget, born June 12th, girl mouse.

Albino, Missing left foreleg.

Contact Geegaw Hackwrench

C/O Ultra Flight Laboratories

REWARD



Fifi inhaled through her teeth and she realized she had been holding her breath. Another poster that slightly overlapped this one was for a concert, and the year was right.

Albinism was common among mice, with so many domestics about - but the missing left foreleg was a clincher.

"Widget Hackwrench," she said out loud. She could barely hear it.

She cleared her throat and tried again. "My name is Widget Hackwrench."

She ran outside, fell down, got up. "MY NAME IS WIDGET HACKWRENCH!" she screamed at the stars. The stars, of course, were not impressed.

"They had _healthy_ children. They saw you and tossed you out the burrow. Look in a mirror. Can you really blame them?"

Anne's voice nagged at a corner of her mind.

Had Anne lied to her? It seemed odd and out of character that Anne had not taken advantage of the offered reward. In order for any of the posters to survive, it seemed likely there had been hundreds, or thousands. Anne had to have seen one. Widget didn't know the posters had all been down on the lower east side, and that Anne had taken her across Manhattan in an attempt to get alimony from Travis.

But if Anne had told the truth, what was the poster for? Perhaps it was part of a token search, to satisfy others he was looking for his baby girl. The fact this "Geegaw Hackwrench" could be contacted through Ultra-Flight implied he worked for or with them. They might take a dim view towards abandoning a baby.

She rotated her new left arm at the shoulder and leaned against the cinder block. She could power one joint at a time. Crude, but better than the inert plastic one. Facing down, she breathed hard, confused, mind racing in tight circles. Was she abandoned or not?

Over it all, like a dark angel whispering with Anne's voice, hovered the single bleak thought that every time she had hoped or wished for something beautiful and good she had been brutally disappointed.

"There isn't a little girl in the world who doesn't have a fantasy that her real mommy and daddy are wonderful people who live in a castle and will whisk them off to a life of happiness."

She said it out loud.

Every time she had seen happiness or love on the horizon it had been a delusion. She was learning to defend herself, to watch her own reactions and to mercilessly burn out anything that might reflect wishful thinking. A part of her mind was screaming at her, telling her she had known nothing from Anne but lies, and that she should, at least, give this Geegaw Hackwrench - give her father - a chance to explain. Another part of her mind doubted her father ever loved her, simply because she knew how desperately she wanted him to.

She had to talk to Anne. Tonight. Now. She had to find out if she was Widget or Fifi.

On the way home, she found a shard of broken glass. It fit her good hand perfectly. She would get answers. Even if she had to cut Anne's tail off a millimeter at a time.

...

"Why didn't you go to your father?" Cassandra asked.

"He ... was dead," Widget said weakly.

"Don't lie to me again," Cassandra snapped.

Gadget stared at her sister. "Widget, you knew when he was still alive?"

Cassandra turned back to the bulb.

...

The moment she stepped into her burrow, the unfamiliar scent of baking bread filled her nostrils. Hot food. Warmth. Laughter. Affection. Something was wrong.

A baby mouse looked away from a toy truck, looked at her, and grinned, a big happy, baby grin. Widget stared at the infant as though it rode a pale horse. She couldn't say anything.

"Darling, dinner's almost ready!" a woman's voice from the other room. Widget's - Fifi's old room. She stepped out, saw Fifi, and jumped. For a long moment, they stared at one another.

"Is this your burrow?" she finally asked.

"I - uh - no. Did Anne leave an address?" Fifi asked, confused. She wasn't sure why she denied living here. Part of her suspected she might get blamed if she admitted it.

Immediately, the woman wiped her hands sadly on her apron and came closer to her. She put a hand on Fifi's shoulder.

"Dear, I'm sorry. The woman who lived here died."

It rocked her. Anne was worthless, but she was all Fifi had ever had.

"We found her the day before yesterday. We buried her down the block. Her name was 'Anne?' We didn't know."

"Thank you." The words were automatic. "I had better go."

She had imagined Anne's death many times. It was one of her favorite fantasies. But she was completely unprepared for the sense of loss that washed over her. She had come ready to torture or kill, and she missed her.

"Please, can't we offer you dinner? You're the girl who gave us your poncho, aren't you? You lived here, didn't you?"

Fifi wanted to cry, wanted to scream, wanted to embrace this stranger and babble out a hundred little kindnesses Anne had performed over the years. At the same time, she felt physically ill. She could deal with it. Sentimentality was a traitor; this was just another proof of that fact.

But it wasn't that way for everyone. This family had turned the burrow into something she never had been able to accomplish, despite her own cleverness. It was a home now. And she knew she had to leave, before she sucked the joy out of the place, like the dark monster she was.

"No. Thank you. I'm sorry I troubled you."

She didn't ask how Anne had died.

...

"You wasted a lot of opportunities, young lady."

Widget set her jaw. "I know."

...

Two days later, Fifi sat in an unused hangar at Kennedy International Airport, crowded with more small animals than she had ever seen together before. That was nerve-wracking enough, but she still wasn't over Anne's death, and was waiting impatiently through a ceremony which would announce if her Automatic Mousehole Cutter was deemed Worthy.

Ultra-Flight Labs had created the ceremony to generate publicity, and to remind the community what wonderful things they were doing. Food was offered, but Fifi was so shaken she wasn't hungry. Tense, she wanted it all to be over. Winning the contest wasn't important; she just needed to do well enough to be noticed. Even so, the drama and excitement being expertly evoked by the presentation was close to killing her. She concealed it well, but she was an emotional wreck.

The Mistress of Ceremonies was a ferret named Nibbles, and Fifi watched her with some interest, because she was a Real Live Engineer. Maybe Fifi would even work for her. But much of what Nibbles said through the evening was lost; disjointed words Fifi couldn't assemble.

Finally, Nibbles flashed a grin. "Now the part you've all been waiting for."

Fifi snapped alert.

"It wasn't easy to judge this contest," Nibbles assured the audience.

Fifi's mind glazed over. Yammer yammer yammer...

"Still, somebody had to win. The winning design is - an Automatic Mousehole Cutter -" Fifi's spirit soared " - designed by Gadget Hackwrench."

I told you so, whispered Anne's voice in her mind. You thought something good was going to happen? You're an idiot.

A pretty little blonde mouse girl worked her way to the front. Fifi rose and mechanically worked in the opposite direction.

When Gadget mounted the stage next to Nibbles, she saw the tip of a white tail flash out through the door. Something about the finality of that bothered her, despite the buoyant feeling from her success. Something told her it was important the owner of the tail be stopped, that by bringing her back something terrible could be avoided. Her father grinned at her and winked, but even that didn't entirely dispel the pensive feeling of something important undone. However, Gadget was in front of a large crowd for the first time in her life, and her instinctive mousey shyness prevented her from doing anything striking.

So, Fifi didn't hear Nibbles explain that two entrants had developed Automatic Mousehole Cutters. Gadget's drill based design had edged out Fifi's plasma torch because it was quieter and threw less debris into the air.

Though they tried for weeks, Ultra-Flight never was able to track down Fifi; the family living in the burrow she gave as her address had no idea where she had moved to.



On the bus back to Manhattan, four words echoed in her mind. The Fix Is In. Ultra-Flight test pilot pulls some strings with some friends, swaps two names and gets his daughter a prize. Ironically, he had stolen it from his other daughter. It was really pretty funny if you looked at it the right way. At least she knew what kind of man he was. She supposed she should be grateful she hadn't tried to contact him. It was all for the best, so why couldn't she stop crying?

She wanted someone to hug her and tell her everything was all right. She wanted a daddy. Travis would help her over this, then she could decide what to do next.

The bus came to her stop. She was riding underneath, sitting on the chassis. All she had to do was jump off. Travis would help.

She froze.

You're a fool, she heard Anne saying. How many times do you have to get slapped down before you understand? Good things are for other people. Stop wandering around like a sheep, baa baa, bleating for attention and crying when the world laughs at you. It was better to make the world cry instead.

Angrily, she rubbed her eyes. She'd have to be strong but she could do it. She never saw Travis again.

She folded her arms, and rested her chin on them. The bus started up. Pink eyes flashed in the night as Fifi started to laugh.

...

"Your past frightens me, girl," Cassandra said lightly. "I don't know if I want to see your future."

Gimcrack saw his mother's expression and immediately started crying. Widget held him closer and rocked him, shushing him.

"Cassandra -" Gadget began, angrily.

Cassandra regarded Gadget for a long moment. "I don't offer comfort, or justification. Just truth."

"If you did, you'd be much wealthier," Widget said with a cynical smile.

Cassandra looked at her sharply, and laughed. "Yes," she agreed, "That is probably so. But every profession has its ethics. Widget, you should visit Travis. It's from a past you'd prefer to forget, but you owe it to him. He must have been worried about you."

Widget hesitated for a moment before nodding.



They had agreed to meet the others outside of the Abandoned Mine ride.

"Defenseless mouse loved and threatened by a friend," Gadget said thoughtfully. "There's you and me, and Monty and Jürgen, none of whom I'd call defenseless."

"We all have chinks in our armor. To me, it sounds like a jealous lover."

"Me too. Of course, nobody's in love with me, romantically at least," Gadget bit her lip and frowned in concentration.

Widget turned dubious eyes at her sister, while Gimcrack sighed in exasperation. "How about a baby with a loving but extremely bad mother?" Widget suggested lightly. Gimcrack hugged his mother a little closer.

The truth was that Gadget had come to the conclusion that was probably it. Still, it wouldn't do to say it out loud. "Something funny about Cassandra's predictions," she said at last. "Sometimes they make themselves come true. They happen because you do things to keep them from happening. You could also hurt him by driving him away because you're scared you'll hurt him."

"Which puts us back at the starting point," Widget observed.

"Yeah," Gadget admitted reluctantly. "If we pretend for a moment that I'm the defenseless mouse, it means that someone who loves me also threatens me. And while that's probably the case, statistically speaking, who can live without trusting love?"

"I took a shot at it," Widget pointed out.

"Would you want to again?"

"I'd die first," she admitted.

"It could even mean someone we haven't met yet," Gadget mused.

The exit doors of the ride opened, and the last group of thrill seekers came out. Actually, they did not so much come out as they oozed out; even while they were wandering in different random directions, falling down, and tripping over one another, statistics and the funnel-like design of the exit ramp dictated that in all probability they would all eventually stagger back outside. All in all, Gadget had seen more organized crowds leaving one of Clarise's performances at the Acorn Club.

Monty almost made it through the gate, stopping abruptly halfway through with a blank and confused expression. The others, by bumping into his back at random and bouncing off induced enough momentum to overcome his inertia and slide him outside. Gadget deftly steered him out of the path and knocked him over, so he would have time to come back to his senses. Chip was next. He had adopted a bizarre means of locomotion by standing on his head and rotating slowly, toplike; upon exiting he began to precess and toppled over, rolling conveniently next to Monty and coming to a halt. There was a wait until Jürgen came out. Aware of his impairment, he had elected to emulate an inchworm, reasoning he couldn't be hurt if he had no distance to fall. Since Widget was busy with Gimcrack, Gadget fielded Jürgen by blocking his path, herding him against Chip.

Dale and Foxglove stepped out gaily, arm in wing. Eyes shining and ignoring the groaning, retching mass of small animals about them, they addressed Gadget with wide grins.

"That," Dale enthused, "was the best ride ever!"

6. Five in Three

7. The tapestry of George the Catbane hanging in his descendant's bedroom had been made nearly two centuries after the death of the subject. The colors muted, it had survived upheaval and the passage of time, had come to this continent fighting through the U-boats. Typical of medieval art, the portrait lacked perspective, both literally and artistically. By the time it was done, George the Catbane had become an iconic symbol and had ceased to be a person. In the portrait, in anachronistic armor, he skewered the dreaded Cat of Lindesfarne effortlessly with his spear, arms no more strained than if they lifted a toothpick. Even the Cat seemed barely distressed by the spear tip jutting out through his back.

Ever since she had started to work for Jerome, Caitlin had wondered about that portrait, tried to strip away the iconography to the reality behind it. She imagined George had actually braced the spear butt on the ground and allowed the cat to impale himself in a leap. It seemed unlikely any mouse, even a powerful one, could have driven the spear hard enough to go through an entire cat.

"I wonder what he was really like," Caitlin mused.

Jerome, still awake beside her, hesitated and shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted.

"I imagine he was really a tough, canny roughneck. Someone with enough aggression to take on a cat and enough brains to pull it off. A lot like the granddaughter you don't admit you have."

"Gadget?" he asked, smile on his lips.

"No." Caitlin shook her head. "Say what you like about him, but Geegaw brought her up right. She's decent, caring, and gentle. She wouldn't hurt you or yours and you're quite safe treating her the way you do. I mean the one without a safety catch."

"Widget's not dangerous."

"Jerome, what _would_ you consider dangerous? Widget's used to fighting for herself. She has an attack submarine. She tried to kill Gadget."

"You've seen her with Gimcrack."

"Like a cat with her kitten."

"And she's devoted to Gadget now."

"Gadget let Widget be her sister. You lost a chance to bind her to you. It was a mistake, quite apart from being bloody, bloody, evil." One of the strangest, if not the strangest thing about their relationship was that she said this in tones of infinite tenderness, stroking his face sadly. "I can't marry a man who could do that."

He froze for a long moment, and took her hand. "That man on the tapestry. You were wondering what he was really like." Jerome leaned back, spoke while looking at the crude figure. "To me, it doesn't really matter the sort of man he was. Ever since I was a pup, he was always held up to me as a paragon. And that's how I'll always see him."

"I understand."

"Any time I wondered if I was doing something because it was easier than the right thing, I'd ask myself if George there would approve. If the answer was no, I wouldn't do it." He paused. "It would be so easy to acknowledge those two. From what I've seen, they're the best of the lot," he said with honest pride. "But, I ... made him a promise when my daughter married that pilot. It was the only way I could convince her I was serious. It was hard to keep. Maybe I was wrong to do it, but I did."

"And that pilot cared for your daughter till the day she died, and he raised a hero. Except she won't kill cats, because she respects life too much."

"I was wrong about Geegaw," Jerome admitted sadly. "And I'll regret that until I die."

And that, unfortunately, was that. It was the flip side of honor - the same thing that made it impossible for Jerome to take advantage of anyone, the same thing that made him the most trusted mouse in Staten City, worked against him here. Caitlin sighed and rested herself against the infuriating, impossible man she loved more than anything.



"You probably shouldn't have criticized Mr. Shiro over the intercom," Jürgen told the ceiling.

Widget shrugged, dismissing it. "You know how the docking procedures are. Once the reactor's set to idle, the engineers have to run all over the place shutting things down. There wasn't anyone back there monitoring the reactor. The power plant emergency siren would have gone off long before there was any risk."

"So why did you do it?"

Widget grinned. "Because I didn't want the power plant siren going off with an admiral on the bridge. Look, Mr. Shiro didn't do anything wrong. It was salesmanship."

"You should tell Mr. Shiro that, in front of his crew," Jürgen observed, idly. Mr. Shiro was touchy that way, and tempers could flare on a sub. Jürgen was responsible for running the submarine and Widget was usually good about taking advice.

"I will," she nodded. Widget nestled against her husband. As he stroked her arm, she looked into his eyes steadily, echoing his smile.

That was something Jürgen still marveled at. Ilse had never lost a tinge of shyness - not fear, of course, she was never afraid of him - but he had always been able to get her to blush. Not Widget, not ever... mentally, he bonked himself. He had been incredibly lucky in life, finding two women he could love. Comparing one to the other, as though they were different marks of submarines -

"You're thinking about Ilse?" Widget asked casually.

Jürgen cleared his throat. "Uh -"

Widget smiled, pleasantly. "It's okay. If I die, I hope you'll think of me."

"Every second, for years," he said, stroking her ear gently.

"When you're happy," she corrected.

"How well did you know Dangermouse?" he asked, running a hand over her neck.

She smiled. "Oh, it wasn't anything too serious. He caught me on the rebound."

"He took advantage of you?" Jürgen clouded.

"No, no -" she said quickly. "He didn't realize I was on a rebound."

"Why is it I am not surprised?" he asked the ceiling. "Who were you rebounding from?"

"If you persist in asking me, I'm liable to think you're jealous."

"I don't think you'd like it if I never mentioned Ilse," Jürgen pointed out.

She studied him for a moment. "You're right. I'm sorry. He was a chipmunk named Stripes." She snuggled under his arm and he pulled her nearer. "No matter how bad things got, he was always able to make us all laugh. I think that's what attracted me to him at first."

"Was it serious?"

"Yes. Very."

"What happened to Stripes?" he asked casually.

He was prepared for anything but the look of fear and pain that flashed over her face. She tried to turn it into a laugh. "Well..."

Jürgen knew he was on slightly dangerous ground. Widget was always a little stressed when she was in the city. She had told him what had happened in Catbane's office, and later what she had heard from Sparky.

Atlantis had already shut down their Nimnul generator. Dr. Buckeye of Icelab 5 had been harder to handle. While Atlantis' operations would be curtailed on backup power, Icelab 5 would almost have to shut down entirely. The email had turned into a loud, long, late night argument over the phone, with Widget finally threatening to take _Albacore_ to Icelab 5 and send in a team to destroy the reactor. Buckeye had agreed to shut the generator off. Jürgen wasn't entirely convinced the argument had been all Dr. Buckeye's fault. She had not had a good day.

Before their marriage, she had confessed a great deal to him, most of it immoral and some of it actually criminal. Her childhood and teen years had been brutal and ugly, and she had not survived it innocent. It disturbed him there was more, but her feelings came first.

"I'd like to hear about him, when you're ready." She flinched and he forced himself to smile. "Don't be afraid you'll shock me. Was he married?" Another possibility, that Widget had had another baby, entered his mind and was dismissed. Dr. Skinner's firm professional opinion was that Gimcrack was and would remain her only child.

She laughed. _If only,_ she thought. "No, nothing like that. I ... uh..."

Seeing how uncomfortable she was, Jürgen lay a finger on her lips. "Later?" he asked.

Widget nodded gratefully. "Later," she agreed. She rested her head against him, and thumped when he found her ticklish spot.

"We have plenty of time," he smiled, kissing her throat, and then moving lower. She laughed, deep and low, and held him to herself. He loved hearing her laugh.



The Dark One stood in his temple, surrounded by renaissance martyr statuary - appalling figures of torment and death. He moved closer to the innocent, pure maiden on the altar, holding in his hand an image of terrible, irresistible temptation. She moved towards it, entranced, reaching out her hand.

Chip crashed through the stained glass window, rolling and coming to his feet. Somehow he knew, he knew, that if she but touched the object in the Dark One's hand of her free will, she would be lost to him - forever. And her hand was a scant few millimeters from the dark and menacing shape.

"Don't touch it, Gadget!" Chip's voice rang out, pleading. "All he has to offer you is a rewarding career doing what you love most!"

All things considered, it was not one of his more convincing speeches.

Gadget looked at him, startled. Her eyes softened. She looked at the black aircraft, a bluff delta, in the squirrel's hand. She looked back at Chip. Then back at the plane.

"Uhm... canIthinkaboutit?" she asked, her voice pitching upwards.

The mutilated statues nearest Chip wrapped their arms around him, pinioning him helplessly. A marble hand, fleshless, held shut his muzzle. His screams were muffled.

Clayton waved the model of Falcon-C back and forth. Bands of color began to radiate out from Gadget's irises across her eyes. Her nose moved with the plane, hypnotized, like a charmer's snake.

"Airrrr...planezzzzzz..." she said through a widening grin.

As her fingers came closer to the plane, Clayton teased her - and Chip - pulling it a bit out of her reach. She lunged for it, missing each time, as Chip's pleading was forced back into his throat and Clayton's triumphant, mocking laughter echoed through the desecrated church...



Bathed with sweat, Chip screamed and sat upright in bed. Dale, who was wearing boots which hung him upside down from the upper bunk, looked up over his comic.

"Gadget dream?" Dale asked.

Chip's face turned red. "I don't have dreams about her," he stammered.

"Of course not," Dale agreed affably, and turned back to Sonic the Hedgehog # 47.

"Dale..." Chip started, slowly and reluctantly. Dale paused and made eye contact with his friend. Chip had problems admitting things bothered him; the only way to draw him out was to pretend it was the most casual thing in the world. "Have you ever wondered what would happen to the Rangers if Gadget left?"

"Not really," Dale admitted. He thought of all the times Gadget had yanked some minor technical miracle out of the air at the last moment, of how much time they spent in the Ranger Wing... "It would be a big problem," Dale said slowly.

Chip was staring up at the bunk above him. "It would shut us down," he said finally.

"Are you serious?" Chip didn't reply, so Dale went on. "Chip, we're not helpless without her."

"It's too dangerous. Remember the booby egg? That was her operation -"

"How about Shureluck Jones? That was yours. Chip, has she said anything to you?"

"Did you see her at the convention? She could go to any table in the exhibit hall and get a better job like that," Chip said, snapping his fingers.

"So she hasn't said anything to you?"

Chip hesitated for a long moment. "No..."

Dale sighed. "Chip, don't you like it when somebody's mother thanks you for saving their kid?"

Chip looked over at Dale, puzzled. "Of course I do."

"I think Gadget does, too." He turned his attention back to the comic.

Chip considered that for a while, and smiled. He looked over at his oldest friend.

"Thanks, Dale."

"Don't mention it."

"By the way, you're getting good at hanging upside down."

Dale smiled. "Thanks, Chip."

7. Settling Accounts

8. It was very late by the time Gadget, Monterey and Foxglove flew back to the Ranger Tree. Zipper was waiting impatiently.

Why didn't you call in? he asked. Even up here, I heard what was going on at the convention!

"Going on at the convention?" Monty asked, befuddled.

Chipmunks harassing women in the bathrooms, gangs of rodent thugs knocking out police! Zipper explained angrily. Didn't you know about that?

Monterey considered a while before answering. "I suppose we 'eard about it," he evaded.

And you didn't do anything? It was a perfect case for the Rescue Rangers!

Monterey coughed. "I don't really think so, pally. Look, I'll explain later, okay?"

A premonition began to sink in to Zipper just as Gadget bounced in, all grins and energy. "Hey, guys," she cried out, "I'll be heading back tomorrow about eight - you want me to wake you?"

Even Foxglove shuddered and wordlessly turned to walk towards her heated perch. Monty pretended to ponder. "I think I'll sleep in, love." He patted her head and dragged himself to bed.



The morning was bright but cold; it was beginning to feel a bit like winter. The Ultra-Flight Kestrel tiltrotor touched down lightly on the flight deck of the USS _Intrepid._ The pilot looked over at his passenger, worried.

"Are you sure you want to go alone, ma'am?" he asked. "This neighborhood can be tough."

Widget looked back and smiled. "So can I."

It wasn't a bad neighborhood, not really, she thought as she walked uptown. A little poor, maybe, and probably with more than its share of problems, but this early most of them were still asleep. There was a playground with some mouse children already racing about and shouting; the baby who had startled her in her home would be about ten now. Incredible how long ago it all was.

She made her way to the southwest corner of an old green building, and ducked through the hole she remembered. She found him still in his old lab, fussing over some files, just like he did nearly ten years ago.

"Travis?" she asked. He didn't respond so she called his name again, a bit louder.

His hearing wasn't what it was, and he was considerably grayer, but she was surprised by how little he had changed.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely.

She was taken aback for a moment. Had she changed that much?

"It's me." When he still looked doubtful, she raised her left arm and tugged the sleeve down, showing the chrome.

"Fifi?" he gasped. And he was hugging her like a daughter. "Do you have any idea how worried I was about you?"

"I found my birth parents," she said. "I'm Widget Hackwrench."

He smiled, wide. "That's wonderful! Did you bring them?"

"I'm afraid I'm an orphan."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Don't be. I've got a sister, Gadget -"

"*The* Gadget Hackwrench?" he asked, impressed.

She nodded. "That's her. And I'm married, and I have a little boy who's six months going on twelve years."

They spent about half an hour catching up before he made her some coffee and they sat down. He tried to bring up a subject gently, and realized it probably wasn't possible.

"You know, Anne died right about the time you went away."

"I know."

"Widget ... did you have anything to do with Anne's death?"

"No," she said. "I'll admit I thought about hurting her, though."

He smiled sadly. "I understand. Believe me."

"Travis," she said slowly, "I'm trying to understand how I feel about her. It's hard."

"You've got a right to be angry at her."

"I know. I understand that. But when I found out she was dead, I just felt so sad. I think one of the reasons I left was to get away from her ghost. I couldn't stand it."

"Ah," he nodded. "You're feeling ambiguous. As though you can't decide to leave flowers on her grave or dance on it."

"And it doesn't make any sense. Even when she saved my life, it was just so she could use me to hurt you. Where is she buried, by the way?"

"I'm sorry. The Humans put up a mini-mall."

She took a long sip.

"Travis," she said finally, "there's no sense in love, is there? She did terrible things to you and me, but I still miss her. I thought about putting her in her grave, but now that she's there, I'd give almost anything to have her back. Why is that?"

Travis leaned back and studied her for a while. "It's called forgiving."

Widget looked back at him.

"She's dead," he shrugged. "you let go of your hate and anger, and you mourn the good in her. If there's anything better than that, I'd like to hear what it is." He grinned. "You can't live your whole life for retribution."

Widget sat silently for a very long time, and when she spoke, she was more surprised to hear it than Travis.

"No," she agreed. "I guess you can't."