This was the place where Pham would close into icy silence -- or blow up in rage. This day, he just cocked his head. "Ravna, Ravna. I know I need him.... And, and I'm glad I need him. That I don't have to kill him." Yet. Pham's lips quivered for a second, and she thought he might start crying. "The godshatter can't know Blueshell --" "Not the godshatter. It's not making me act this way -- I'm doing what any person should do when the stakes are this high." The words were spoken without anger. Maybe there was a chance. Maybe she could reason: "Blueshell and Greenstalk are loyal, Pham. Except at Harmonious Repose --" Pham sighed, "Yeah. I've thought about that a lot. They came to Relay from Straumli Realm. They got Vrinimi looking for the refugee ship. That smells of setup, but probably unknowing -- maybe even a setup by something opposing the Blight. In any case they were innocent then,
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复件 (4) 复件 air max, till Greenstalk was converted. And I know Blueshell was loyal even then. He knew things about my armor -- the remotes, for instance -- that he could have warned the others about." Hope came as a surprise to Ravna. He really had thought things out, and -- "It's just the skrodes, Pham. They're traps waiting to be sprung. But we're isolated here, and you destroyed the one that Greenstalk --" Pham was shaking his head. "It's more than the skrodes. The Blight had its hand in Rider design, too, at least to some degree. I can't imagine the takeover of Greenstalk's being so smooth otherwise." "Y-yes. A risk. A very small risk compared to --" Pham didn't move, but something in him seemed to draw away from her,
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mbt tupu, denying the support she could offer. "A small risk? We don't know. The stakes are so high. I'm walking a tightrope. If I don't use Blueshell now, we'll be shot out of space by the Blighter fleet. If I let him do too much, if I trust him, then he or some part of him could betray us. All I have is the godshatter, and a bunch of memories that ... that may be the biggest ########s of all." These last words were nearly inaudible. He looked up at her, a look that was both cold and terribly lost. "But I'm going to use what I have, Rav, and whatever it is I am. Somehow I'm going to get us to Tines' World. Somehow I'm going to get Old One's godshatter to whatever is there." It was another three weeks before Blueshell's predictions came true. The OOB had seemed a sturdy beast up in the Middle Beyond; even its damaged ultradrive had failed gracefully. Now the ship was leaking bugs in all directions. Much of it had nothing to do with Pham's meddling. Without those final consistency checks, none of the OOB's Bottom automation was really trustworthy. But its failures were compounded by Pham's desperate security hacks. The ship's library had source code for generic Bottom automation. Pham spent several days revising it for the OOB. All four of them were on the command deck during the installation, Blueshell trying to help,
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复件 (61) air max2, except that she'd never heard the like aboard the OOB. Pham and the Riders reacted with near panic; spacers don't like unexplained bumps in the night. Blueshell raced to the hatch, floated fronds-first through the hole. "I see nothing, Sir Pham." Pham was paging quickly through the diagnostic displays, mixed format things partly from the new setup. "I've got some warning lights here, but --"