It was very dark in the bubble. Plenty of stars, but nothing which looked particularly close. There was no way to tell whether the Phoenix was moving - the definition of 'moving' was unclear anyway - but at least they didn't appear to be spinning. That should make determining their location easier.

Mark flicked on the torch built into the top of the full helmet, and did the same for Keyop. Being able to see the familiar blue and red of the hull curving away made him feel better. He attached the end of the tether line to the strong point in the bubble's floor and checked it more times than was strictly necessary. Once the bubble opened, they would be outside the artificial gravity field. That tether line would be the only thing between the two of them and a long, cold death should he miss a handhold. Mark remembered all too well the exact specs for how far apart the handholds were, and how small. He was only too aware that his had been one of the loudest voices in favour of keeping the hull as smooth as possible to optimise the jump-field. Hindsight was a real bitch.

"Commander?" Keyop looked up at him expectantly.

"I'm ready. Let's do this." Mark took a deep breath, bent down to lock his grip around the handhold at the aft end of the bubble, and hit the control to open the bubble itself.

Gravity ceased to exist. Mark let his legs float up, remembering his training. 'Just swim along above the surface, holding on. It's like being underwater. Don't try to walk.' He hung on tight to the handhold, letting his body remember how this worked. Just like in the pool. Just like in the ocean. Nothing to worry about. He only belatedly remembered that Keyop was floating alongside him with no handholds at all.

"G-4, you okay?"

"Fine!" chirped a happy voice in his helmet. "Freefall's fun."

"Sure is." In a controlled situation. Out here, not such fun. "Hang on - I'm going to start heading for the engines."

It wasn't as bad as he'd feared. The six feet between handholds wasn't as far as it sounded once you were weightless, and every one had a clip for him to attach the tether line to the side of the ship, effectively sewing it along the hull. When they got back, he was going to find the designer he'd been so dismissive of in the meeting, and thank him personally for his persistence. Ten feet between handholds and no clips had been easy in the simulations, and would have increased the efficiency of the jump-field marginally. Mark was fairly sure he couldn't have coped with it in this situation.

"Hey, that looks like Betelgeuse!" Keyop piped up just as he swung for the sixth handhold. Mark jumped, flailed for the grip, and barely caught it. Five seconds of hanging on, forcing his breathing to slow, and he managed to speak calmly. "G-3, did you get that? Might help G-2."

"Yes - which direction, G-4?"

"Almost due aft. About ten degrees up, eight to port. Magnitude three. The colour's good for Betelgeuse."

"I see it. Thanks. How far along are you, G-1?"

"Getting there." Mark reached for the next handhold. This would never do. He needed to move much faster and more smoothly. It was absurd to be afraid of falling when he was tied on. Jason would be making a better job of it than this, space-sickness or not. He fixed his gaze firmly on the next handhold and told himself that this time he'd let the momentum carry him through to the following one. He could easily clip the line in as he changed his hands over.

Reach out left-handed, grab the handhold, bring his right hand across, lock the rope off as his hands came together, let go with the left hand and reach again as his body continued to drift aft. Once he'd got the rhythm going, it was a lot easier. Having less time to think helped, too. It was rather a shock when he reached out and found only the rim of the engine.

Mark stopped their momentum, and pulled his small passenger around so Keyop could hold on alongside him. "Where now?"

Keyop was grinning with delight, but Mark couldn't fault the professionalism of his response. "Give me ten feet of slack and I'll check the port engine. Can you get over to the starboard one?"

Mark looked unenthusiastically at the route over the curve of the hull. "Sure. Hold still a minute - I'll fasten you to the ship." He performed a careful textbook transfer of Keyop's tether, ignoring the fact that the engineer was practically dancing with impatience. "You going to be okay with one hand?"

Keyop's grin grew even wider. "Don't need two." He did a quick check of both ends of his safety line, and before Mark could stop him he had grabbed the edge of the engine with his good hand and launched himself round the corner. "Uh-oh."

Mark's blood froze, and he scanned the stars desperately for a drifting body. "Dammit, G-4, I can't see you!"

"Of course you can't." He sounded confused rather than terrified, and Mark started to breathe again. "There's a lot of damage here. Something exploded inside. It's bad. I think --"

"Start listing what we'll have to replace," Princess's voice cut in. "You two shouldn't stay out too long. It's not like you're wearing real spacesuits."

To Mark's surprise, Keyop didn't argue. Of course, he'd been immobile during their trip down the side of the Phoenix. Mark himself was still sweating. He'd have liked to believe it was from the exertion, but he had his suspicions. He needed to check the other engine as quickly as possible.

He listened in on Keyop listing one trashed part after another as he swung his way to the other engine. Here the damage was minimal, apparently caused by shrapnel from the port side, but there was a worrying jet of vapour sparkling in the light of his torch.

"G-4?"

"Yes, Commander?" There was an edge of strain in his voice which Mark didn't like at all.

"We're venting fuel."

Just for once, neither Mark nor Princess commented on Keyop's choice of epithet before he became all professional. "G-5? Lock down all the fuel tank valves."

"Done," came back the reply a few seconds later.

Mark held his breath and hoped, and just for once they got some luck. "It's slowed to almost nothing."

Keyop's voice shook. "That means it's one of the lines. I should have thought of it right away. Who knows how much fuel we've lost?"

"It's done, G-4. Move on." Truth be told, Mark was thinking much the same himself. It was Keyop's area of expertise, but he was hurt, and that made it the rest of the team's responsibility to pick up the slack. Jason hadn't been in a fit state to think of anything. Tiny had been occupied with patching up Keyop, and he'd put Princess onto trying the comm before she had a chance to do anything else. That left him - and he'd never even thought about it.

He needed to move on physically, too. Mark had started to get cold, and Keyop must be suffering by now.

Going back, Mark left the line fixed to the handholds - they were going to be coming backwards and forwards for a while, repairing the damage - and went hand-over-hand back down it to the bubble. It seemed much shorter than it had on the way out.

Even the one-tenth gravity they were still working in felt strange as the bubble closed around them. Taking the helmet off, though, was pure relief. Mark leant against the bulkhead and enjoyed breathing freely, letting Tiny strip him out of the EVA gear while Princess assisted Keyop.

He was very grateful to drop back into his seat.

"Commander?" That was Jason, sufficiently formal that it could only be bad news.

"Give it to me."

"We're in the middle of nowhere. Way too far from anywhere for standard radio to be picked up. About a fifth of the way between Vega and Earth - and be very glad you didn't wait another three seconds to abort, because there's a nice big dust cloud on the line of flight." He hesitated, then came to a decision and carried on. "We're directly on the line I'd expect."

Mark considered the implications of that last statement. "So it was mechanical failure, not a bad jump?"

"If there's a way to make a bad jump down the exact same line of a good one, I don't know what it would be. Something failed. Or was made to fail. I heard a big bang right before it all went insane."

Mark shuddered inwardly at what might have been. "Good work. Now let's have some better news. Keyop, can you give me any sort of repair schedule?"

The young man half turned from his station, where he was checking the list he'd dictated to Princess, and for a moment his stammer was so bad that he was entirely incomprehensible. He stopped, shook his head, and buried his face in his good hand.

"Hey - Keyop!" Tiny went over and knelt beside his chair. "Take it easy, kid. We'll fix it. It may take a while, but we'll get there."

Keyop raised his head and made a huge effort to speak normally. "I'm sorry. We c...can't fix it. The main jump drive chamber is fractured, and we don't carry a spare."

Jason's head snapped round, and from the look on his face Mark could tell it was bad.

"Surely we can weld it?" Tiny suggested. "Or - something?"

"No. Jason, t...tell him I c...c...can't."

Princess put her arm round the shaking Swallow, as Jason told them in a few bald words precisely why the chamber had to be utterly perfect, and why they didn't carry a spare. One of the components whose failure was never supposed to happen. Stronger than the ship itself. Except, it seemed, at the moment of entering jump.

"So we send Mark for help." Princess frowned. "Is this a problem?"

"How?" Keyop asked, and then his face lit up. "In the G-1! I forgot that."

"That's too far to jump in an atmosphere plane with a few extra thrusters," Tiny said slowly.

"If you have a better idea, let's hear it," Jason retorted. "Better make it quick, though. We're pretty low on fuel, and I don't fancy freezing to death while you try to superglue the drive chamber back together."

"Enough!" Mark snapped as the two men erupted to their feet. "I said enough! Sit down, both of you - that's an order."

He glared at the two culprits until Jason huffed and folded his arms, and Tiny dropped his gaze and came back to his seat.

"This isn't good enough. We don't have time for arguments. Now, G-2, I need the best guess you can get me for a jump-point within reach. I'm aware it's going to be a problem this far from anywhere. Just find me somewhere I can jump from."

Jason nodded silently, and applied himself to his console yet again.

"Commander," said a small voice from alongside him, "I'm sorry."

Tiny's face was showing more strain than he'd seen in a while. Probably they all were. "Don't apologise. Just don't do it again."

Tiny nodded. "If you're going to take the G-1, you'd better get some rest first. Let Jason take his time with those numbers. I don't care what he says, an hour here or there won't make that much difference and going out there already tired might."

Mark started to say no, then reconsidered. So far today he'd made two jumps - one of them horribly aborted - fought an admittedly simple battle against a Spectran mecha, and made only the second spacewalk of his career. He was cold and exhausted, and Tiny was absolutely right. He'd made precisely one jump in the G-1, along the well-defined and understood route between Earth and Riga, and it hadn't been much fun. This would be much further and from a totally new location. Probably a highly non-optimal one, given how far out they were. Most usable jump-points were close to planets or stars. He hated to admit it, but he needed at least an hour's sleep before he could even consider tackling it.

Jason finished the last of his calculations and leaned back, stretching the kinks from his shoulders. He'd done everything twice, which had been a complete waste of time since he'd known perfectly well that it had been right the first time. These results weren't going to get any better.

It was a lot colder in here than it had been when he started working. There was a quiet discussion going on to his right, with Tiny hanging over the back of Keyop's chair and Princess leaning across, and a single white wing trailing from Mark's chair in front of him.

Princess turned at his movement. "Done?"

"Done." He scowled at the numbers, as if that would make them somehow improve. "How about you?"

"Setting up a repair schedule. We've got most of what we need here, we can fix everything else and plug the chamber in when Mark gets back with it. We've got to get the Phoenix home if at all possible so the techs can tear her apart and figure out what happened and why. How are you feeling now?"

"I'm fine." He wasn't. He felt cold and sick, but not for any physical reason. The numbers on his screen led inescapably to one single course of action. He was going to have to face something he'd avoided for more than two years. To accept that all along he had been wrong and Anderson had been right. That there was no physical reason why he couldn't control the jump-drive any more. Mental block, pure and simple - and he was going to have to break through it, or they all died here.

Mark considered the screen for a long time, then looked back at his second. "Is that really the best option?"

"No, Mark, I spent an hour on a calculation I can do in seven seconds, and I still got it wrong."

If he'd snapped it, Mark wouldn't have thought twice about telling him to do it again and find a better answer this time. The weary tone was unexpected, though, and Mark looked more closely at Jason's haggard face before deciding against discussing it. "Then it'll have to do."

Jason continued to stare at the screen. "You know you can't make that jump. Not even if I got the figures perfect - which they won't be, because that jump-point's twelve miles from here and even with the sensors tuned as fine as they'll go the definition's lousy. You're not a good enough jump-pilot to pull it off."

"Jason!" Princess exclaimed. "What an awful thing to say!"

"True, though." Jason turned his screen towards her. "You know what the numbers mean, Princess. Look at those figures. Mark's never made a jump that hard even on a simulator. I have, though."

Four jaws dropped as the flight deck went silent.

"You think you can make a jump I can't?" Mark stared in bemusement at the gunner, who as far as he was aware simply wasn't a jump-pilot at all.

"If I can't, I'll fly through the jump-point feeling a real idiot, come back here, dock somehow, and you'll have to go. Whereas if you get it wrong you'll have jumped somewhere, and there'll be no second chance."

"The implant's talking to you again?" Princess queried.

Again. Mark had a deep suspicion this was going to be another of those times when the three original G-Force members would look at him innocently and say, 'but didn't you know?'

Jason swallowed hard. "I think so. Enough that it's worth a shot. If I fail, like I said, you've still got the G-1 and Mark can take a crack at it. I'd even have some better numbers for him once I've been there. It's not like I'm any use doing zero-g repairs, in any case. You're much better off if I'm the one who goes."

"No gravity generator on the G-1," Tiny put in.

"I'll be too busy to worry about it before the jump. Afterwards - well, once I'm in radio contact with Earth it doesn't really matter. I'll cope." His manner brightened. "What do you want me to ask for? Do you think the Phoenix would fit in one of those giant Rigan freighters?"

Keyop frowned. "Wingspan's too big. It would have to be in pieces."

Mark held up both hands. "This discussion stops now. No way am I sending you out there. I don't know what happened, but I do know you haven't made a jump in well over two years, and you can't have made more than a couple then. This is not the time to start."

He'd expected a blazing retort. What he got was silence, a glare which could have stripped paint - and an interjection from Tiny.

"Commander, can I have a word in private?"

Mark nodded and indicated the rear door.

"You should let him go," Tiny stated simply the moment the door closed on the flight deck.

Mark had wondered exactly what Tiny wanted to say. That hadn't even occurred to him as a possibility, and all he could manage was a bemused "what?"

The pilot's face was a mixture of embarrassment and determination. "Jason was one hell of a jump-pilot. I don't really know how to put this, but, well, his time for the Mars jump was about half of yours. He lost the ability to use the implant when the PTSD kicked in. If he can access it again, it's got to be worth a try."

"We get one shot at this. One." Mark tried to digest what he'd just been told. Jason's twice as good a jump-pilot as I am? Like hell he is. "Raw talent two years out of practise doesn't compensate for experience. No."

Tiny groaned. "Mark, it doesn't matter how well you hit the jump. I may not be a jump-pilot, but I can read an extrapolation curve just fine. We both know the G-1 simply won't hold together for forty minutes in jump-space. Jason's starting from a baseline of half your time, and he can calculate his own numbers. He has a chance."

Tiny's right. And forty minutes is an under-estimate. Mark sagged against the wall and slid down it, not even noticing the other leaving quietly. Two choices, both bad ones. Pick one. Get it wrong and the rest of the team dies slowly in the dark. Not the way any of them wanted to go out.

In the end, it was Jason's manner that decided it. He'd never said anything about being a jump-pilot. Never commented on Mark's times, never suggested he could have done better. Mark remembered with sick embarrassment how self-congratulatory he'd been when he'd taken Tring's Mars jump record. One minute fifty-two seconds, of which he'd been inordinately proud. He wondered whether Jason had broken the minute barrier he'd loudly proclaimed to be impossible, and how much it had cost his second to smile and congratulate him.

And now Jason was dead against him making this jump. Mark trusted him implicitly where the jump-calculations were concerned, always had done. Jason didn't make mistakes where jump was concerned. There was no reason for this time to be any different. Logically, much as he hated to admit it, Jason should be the one to go.

And when they got home, he was going to demand copies of every tape made of the original team's training missions and go through them with a fine tooth comb. This was becoming ridiculous - he was sure the information hadn't been kept from him deliberately, but if he didn't know to ask for it, it might as well have been. The time for secrecy was long past.

He went back onto the flight deck still unsure how he was going to present his decision, but in the end his instincts took over. Three steps over to his second's side and a quiet "You take her."

Jason nodded calmly, as if he'd expected it. "You want a Rigan jump-freighter, right? Even if it's not quite big enough to take the Phoenix whole?"

"Pieces be hanged, I want to take her home," Mark told them. "We need to know exactly what happened, and I don't see how we can do that if she's been hacked apart. Get them to bring the replacement chamber out and we'll fix her here." He couldn't tell whether the smile on his second's face was forced or genuine.

"I'll do that. Keyop, I'll take a copy of your list just in case. And a full data dump."

Mark was forced to laugh. "On the computer in the G-1? It'll just barely hold the sensor data from your jump approach. No room for anything else."

"I'll put as much as I can on CD," Tiny volunteered. "Mark, can I make a suggestion?"

Mark raised his eyebrows, wondering what on earth it was this time. "Sure."

"You do the preflight. One less thing for Jason to worry about." He looked with some concern at Jason, but this time there was no retort.

"Okay." Mark took a deep breath to calm himself and get his mind round the idea of his second as jump-pilot. "Jason, it's your call. Do you want to go now, or take a rest first?"

"Now." Jason wore his most determined expression. "I've spent an hour on those damned sensor readings. The longer I wait the more unreliable the data gets. And like you said, the G-1's systems aren't that good. Fine to compute a jump, but I don't want to rely on them to find the jump-point in the first place. Let's go."

"She's not as bad as all that," Mark said as they headed for the G-1's compartment. "Jump-drive feels a little different to the Phoenix - have you ever jumped the G-1?"

"Nope." Even Mark could pick up the undertone of 'I don't want to talk about this.' Now was not the time to push him further. He could ask the others once Jason was safely away.

Jason stopped abruptly at the end of the corridor. "I have no idea how this works."

Mark grinned and sat in the chair. "Commander's privilege." He cursed himself when he saw Jason's tense expression. "You won't need it. Follow me up and I'll talk you through the preflight. It's what, a couple of weeks since you and Rick spent all that time on the simulator?"

"Yeah."

Mark had half expected Jason to jump up in the low gravity, but instead he saw the cable fire then retract. Jason appeared through the hole, disentangled his weapon, and Mark popped the canopy so he could be heard. "Do you want to do this, or shall I?"

"You do it. It'll be quicker."

At the breakneck speed he was usually forced to employ, it would have been. This time he fell back into his old habit of talking himself through the checklist out loud - a gentle reminder of the controls couldn't hurt. They'd been very lucky - the explosion damage had come close to the bay door, and the floor was buckled and scorched in places. The G-1 itself was untouched.

"Once I'm out of the way, you'll be able to go out the back to get at the damage," Jason commented as Mark came to the end of his checklist. "Quicker than going all down the side from the bubble."

"Good thought." Mark swung himself out of the cockpit, resisting the urge to pat the seat in farewell. "She's all yours. Got everything?"

"3 CDs, a paper list and a bunch of numbers in my head." Jason clambered awkwardly into the pilot's seat. "See you at ISO."

"Good luck." Mark couldn't bring himself to say any more. He held a hand up in farewell as Jason sealed the cockpit, then jumped down through the empty shaft and returned to the flight deck, trying not to think about that dark helmet in his place. That was his plane going out there, being flown by his second, doing his job. He hated it.

"Coming up on jump-coordinates," Jason said into the radio, and turned his attention to the sensors. Compared to what he had on the Phoenix, they were severely limited. With a little tweaking, Keyop could probably patch the Phoenix sensors into the tiny screen he had on the G-1, and he'd suggest it for their next upgrade session. There was no time for it now. He'd have to cope with what he had..

He checked his heading again, and adjusted it fractionally. The simulator hadn't given him the feeling for just how light it handled. He'd very nearly put it into a spin just heading out after undocking. That would have been confidence-inspiring for the rest of the team. Thank goodness Mark had only asked him whether he'd jumped the G-1. It wasn't at all surprising that he hadn't. Now, if Mark had realised that he'd never even flown it other than in the simulator, his decision might well have been different.

"One minute to jump." The cold, sick feeling was rising again, and not just because of the lack of gravity. He forced it back. The numbers were fine. He could calculate a solution from here. Whether or not he could force himself to activate the implant and fire the jump-drive, even in these dire straits, was another matter.

It had been because of Don's death, he told himself yet again. Not a physical problem at all. PTSD, avoidance - he'd heard every psychological explanation over the years, and denied them furiously. Now he needed them to have been right. The cause was gone. Don wasn't dead. Don was secure on Earth, where he needed to go. Mark's interface with the jump-drive wasn't good enough for a jump this hard. The team was counting on him. He had to get beyond the mental block. He simply had to.

As the jump-drive began to cycle, the urge to panic and shut it down was almost overwhelming. It was working. For the first time in two years there was something responding to his commands. There was a sense of deep relief, of a huge weight being lifted off his shoulders - mixed with abject terror at what he had to do next. Even without a two year hiatus, without the first tendrils of space-sickness nipping at his concentration, jumping this cockleshell halfway across the galaxy would have been terrifying.

"Five seconds and counting." No more time to consider anything. Just refine his solution for the last time, reach mentally for the implant, and go.