“Pull”

Note:  The “Sanctuary” star cluster is located 97,600 light years outside of the galaxy and until a few years ago was just another small clump of suns for astronomers to note on their maps.  Then, through a means that is VERY closely guarded, a way was found to get from our galaxy to that cluster in very little time instead of the decades that would have been needed otherwise.  This grouping held a number of surprises, not the least of which is the fact out of the 3,289 stars in it there are 2,327 “living” (Earthlike/Homeworldlike) planets orbiting them.  That plus the fact that all of these stars are in their “youth” or barely into “middle-age” reignited the theory that one or more highly advanced “forerunner” species had made new stars and worlds around them.  Astronomers are reexamining other extra galactic clusters to see if any of them exhibit properties similar to this one.  Several worlds in Sanctuary have been approved for colonization and there is a very long list of people awaiting their chance to get there.

	The lop eared rabbit doe, Heather, glanced around the hanger bay as she followed her friend, Cynthia.  Both wore fitted vacuum suits and each carried a helmet tucked under one arm.  There wasn’t much going on which Heather considered a bit unusual as this place had been a veritable beehive of activity the previous times she’d been here.
	“One of the great things about being in Sanctuary is that there’s not a lot of traffic here so the new pilots and crews can dash about with no concern of crossing civilian lanes of travel,” Cynthia had told Heather.  “Gives the crews a real taste…experience for what they and their craft can do when you jam it to the wall!”
	The does came up to their craft, a sleek, deadly looking thing that the mere sight of sent a little quiver down Heather’s spine.  Everything about it triggered her flight desire that any sensible person would have to a nearby known predator.  The canopies to the two cockpits were open and the crew chief, a chunky figured ewe, came to attention and rendered a salute which Cynthia returned.
	“She ready to go, chief?” Cynthia asked.
	“Yes, Ma am!” answered the ewe
	“Climb on up,” Cynthia told Heather.
	Heather did so and eased herself into the back seat.
	“Out of that seat, girl!” directed Cynthia.  “You’re in front!”
	The order stunned Heather!  She was a civilian here for what amounted to a joy ride.  Front seat was for pilots, trained fliers, and even taking in to account the seven months of simulator time and training she had received she considered herself still very far from that august status!
	“You going to get out or do I have to drag you out?” said Cynthia.
	The silky tone in her friend’s voice told Heather that she meant business so she eased herself out and reseated herself in the front seat.  Cynthia watched Heather strap in then did a final check to be sure she was properly secured.
	“I’m proud of you, all correct,” she said.
	“Better be, considering the number of times you put me through the cockpit trainer!” huffed Heather.  “I think I’m going have recurring nightmares about that for some time to come!”
	“Spoken like a true trainee!” Cynthia tossed back as she settled herself in the back seat.
	The crew chief was on the wing beside the rear seat and inspected Cynthia’s seat restraints and gave thumbs up to say they were good.  Heather didn’t miss the speculative look the chief gave her before climbing down and removing the boarding ladder.
	“Helmet on!” Cynthia directed.
	Heather was already ahead of her on that, having just set it in place and securing the seals.
	“Hands clear of canopy ledges!”
	“Clear!” called Heather.
	“Good, now close them up,” said Cynthia.
	Almost automatically Heather’s left hand took hold of the canopy open/close lever, jacked it to the close position, and the canopies thunked down and slid forward and the “Closed and Locked” lights came on.
	“Goddess, I’m here and I still can’t believe it’s happening!” Heather thought.

	That was a phrase she had used over a year ago when, out of the blue, her and her husband’s request to emigrate to Sanctuary was approved and they were given thirty days to get things in order.  Normally such short notice would have been a nightmare but, to their surprise, there was a tremendous amount of help and support to get things done.  So, in the end, all they really had to do was show the movers what to pack, say so long to various friends and family, and prepare their two children for the move.  What was odd was that they ended up traveling, in fully enclosed starliner pods, from space station to space station for several weeks.  Then, after several days on yet another starliner pod, they were told they had arrived at Warren, the main colony world in Sanctuary.  When they got down to the surface and exited the shuttle….
	“Heather!!” yelled a very familiar voice.
	Cynthia practically slammed into her friend, grabbed her up, and swung the squealing doe around several times before setting her back down.  Then, Cynthia planted a long, hard kiss on the lips of her former girlfriend.  The sound of someone clapping their hands brought them up for air.
	“Aahhhhh, if I were a lesser man I’d be quite jealous right now,” said William, Heather’s husband.
	“You best keep her happy, buck boy!” stated a wickedly grinning Cynthia.  “You don’t I’ll have her back before you know it!”
	William threw his head up and back and placed one arm across his eyes.
	“Oh, woe is me!  How am I to compete against such determination?!” he cried in mock distress.
	The three adults laughed and Heather reintroduced her daughter and son to their “aunt” Cynthia.
	“There’s a place waiting for you right now,” Cynthia said as they entered the terminal.  “Bare bones furnishings right now; beds for you guys and the kits, couple of tables, some chairs, and the all of the kitchen stuff works just fine.”
	Heather gave her friend a questioning look.
	“I checked it all out myself,” Cynthia explained.  “The moving people should be delivering your stuff in two, maybe three, days at the most.”
	She looked at William.
	“There are a number of job offers awaiting your review when you have the time.  Don’t be afraid to take a couple or three weeks to settle in and unstress.  Even with all the assistance given this kind of move can get you wound up pretty tight.”
	Cynthia piled the family and their luggage into a hover van and drove to their new home; which, to their surprise, was several miles outside of the city.
	“Enjoy the peace and quiet while you can,” Cynthia said.  “I give it about ten to twelve years, at the most, before the edge of the port city reaches here.”
	The house was a spacious two story geodetic dome affair (with an observation copula center top, no less) with a detached garage/workshop all set on 22 acres of lightly wooded land.  Neither Heather nor William missed the fact that there were four other bedrooms over and above the one they would use plus the two for their kits.  Heather noted that the ‘frig and a couple of cupboards already had a variety of foods in them.
	“I’m amazed all of this is here,” William said.  “I had visions of us living out of an apartment until we found house to live in.”
	“Right now real estate is pretty cheap here.  The further out from a city the less pricy it is,” said Cynthia.  “Warren is competing with Raven, Oceana, and Centaur for people so having readily available, move in, housing is a plus.”
	“Oh, that brings up another question,” William said.  “What’s it cost for this place?”
	“You got twenty creds on you?” asked Cynthia.
	A bit mystified he hauled out his wallet and pulled out a twenty credit bill.  Cynthia took it from him and pocketed it.
	“You just paid two years rent,” she said.  “And you have the option to buy, if you so choose, at any time in the future.”
	Cynthia smiled at the flabbergasted looks on Heather and William’s faces.
	“I kind of got in on the ‘ground floor’ in land buying and development shortly after the way to the cluster was discovered,” she explained.  “And, no, you are not denying me any home if you choose to buy this place; I have several others to choose from.”
	After putting away their things the kits were let out to play while the adults watched over them from the back yard.  The three traded stories on things that had happened in their lives since they had last met nearly a year before.  It was getting dark when Cynthia suggested they go inside where they chatted more.
	“Oh, by the way, I found out what was the reason for the holdup on your application to come here,” Cynthia said.  “Seems some bureaucrat was sitting on nearly a thousand applications and yours was among them.  An investigation uncovered the problem and I hear that they have her, now, sorting through and counting rocks on some barren moon somewhere.
	“Isn’t that a little…extreme, if it’s true?” asked William.
	“It is, true, that is, and it’s not as bad as it could have been, believe it or not.  They want this cluster to have as many people come to it as possible and that act of idiotic laziness, or worse, did not help things any.”
	After the evening meal Cynthia gathered the four together.
	“There’s something I want you to see,” she said.
	Taking parents and kits upstairs Cynthia thumbed an ID plate and a telescoping ladder popped out of the ceiling and extended itself down to the floor.
	“Up, all you,” she said.
	They found themselves standing on the copula which was high enough to see over most of the surrounding trees.  Cynthia had the kits standing in front of their parents.
	“Heather, William, cover the kids eyes with your hands then close your own and keep them that way until I say otherwise,” she said.
	Several minutes passed then…
	“Open them and uncover them!” came the order.
	They did and, after a few blinks, their eyes adjusted to the…interesting light conditions they found themselves in.
	“Wow!” exclaimed Heather’s daughter.
	“Give it another hour and you’ll see almost all of it,” said Cynthia.  “With the moon ’down’ you get a real clear view.”
	She smiled indulgently; Cynthia always liked to see the faces of those who experienced their first galaxy rise.

	Cynthia told Heather to get the drives up and to power everything up.  Calling up the startup checklist to her helmet display she went through the steps and got things up and running.
	“Do all of it, even the atmospheric flight controls,” Cynthia said.  “One never knows….”
	“It all looks good,” came the crew chief’s voice over the comm link.  “Ready to launch.”
	Lights flashed, horns sounded, and sections of heavy durasteel walls emerged from the floor and the ceiling on either side of their craft.  The crew chief disappeared behind one such section.  Heather could swear she felt a “THUD!” when they connected.  A moment passed where the air was being pumped out.  Heather had completed a scan of the instrument board to be sure that what she saw on her helmet heads-up-display matched up with the board then looked up just in time to see the gate begin to open.  A few seconds went by and their way was clear.
	“Flight control center to Unlimited Alpha, you may launch when ready.”
	“Head back, deep breath, and let it out slow,” Heather instructed herself.
	“Punch it!” she heard Cynthia call.
	Heather squeezed the launch trigger and took a six gee “hit” as the craft was thrown into the element for which it was made, raw space.

	“Why don’t they use the inertia dampers during launch and landing?” Heather asked once.
	“The dampers throw out an interference field that’s a couple of thousand feet in diameter.  Most other ships have shielding that prevents that field from being a problem but fighters and other similarly sized craft don’t have the space to put all the shielding on.  They have enough to keep that interference from bothering their own systems but that’s about it,” Cynthia explained.  “They are working on giving the new carriers fully protected bays but that’s a bit in the future.  The bases we operate from here in Sanctuary are old decommissioned carriers that they bring here, pull out the drives, and add on additional crew accommodation plus work and storage spaces.  A lot of scrap metal folks are pretty disappointed that they won’t be able to obtain them for recycling.”
	Cynthia gave Heather an odd kind of…dreamy(?) look.
	“And for most there’s a rush that goes with feeling six to seven gees punching you back into your seat.”

	Heather felt a very faint tingle, something like a very low level static charge, in her fur.  It was the sensation that one got when the inertia dampers were on.
	“You’ll only feel it in the fighters,” Cynthia said at the start of Heather’s crash course.
	“And you get used to this?” Heather asked.
	“If you don’t you won’t be in the fighter biz for very long.”
	“Flight control, this is Unlimited Alpha.  We are jumping to area Centari Blue niner,” Cynthia called out.
	“Rodger that Unlimited Alpha, have a good trip.”
	“Jumping…now!”
	Even though she had seen something close to it numerous times in the simulator Heather was still amazed and a little confused by the conflicting inputs her eyes got from her helmet display and what was going on outside of the cockpit.  Her display showed a “tunnel” of multiple circles through which the icon that was their ship moved.  Beyond the canopy was a confusion of streaks, color bursts, and some things her mind just could not put a name to.
	“Concentrate on your helmet display,” prompted Cynthia.  “This is one of those times when instrument flying is all you can go by.”
	The flight lasted nearly an hour.  When they arrived Heather’s attention was claimed by an orange star that was off to her left.
	“Centari Blue niner, one of this clusters few stars that does not have a living planet orbiting it.  Has about everything else!  Several gas giants with lots of moons, asteroids, comets, stony planets with little or no atmospheres, and numerous dwarf planets.  It’s like someone took the refuse from the other star systems and dumped it here and a few other places.  They call this one ‘the hide and seek grounds’.  Here there’s enough junk to scramble your long range sensors and be a headache to your shorter ranged ones as well.  Pilots and crews come here to practice the use of natural objects for concealment while others do their best to find them.”
	From the profusion of sensor hits she was getting Heather did not envy the “seekers”.
	“There are enough raw materials in this system alone to construct every living world in Sanctuary to the level of Homeworld.” Cynthia added.  “And that includes orbital stations, shipyards, and such.”
	They cruised by one of the gas giants and Heather got a good close look at one of its moons as it spewed thin plumes of ice crystals off into space.
	“It’s believed that if this system were somewhat less…jumbled that this world would likely have a pretty impressive ring arrangement,” Cynthia said.
	Cynthia conducted another jump that took almost a hundred minutes to complete.  This system possessed a yellow star and according to Heather’s mapping data, had five stony planets, four gas giants, and three dwarf planets.  All of the stony worlds were located close to the sun while the others were further out, Heather saw that one inner world had a green color which designated it as a living world.
	“System Tao yellow seven,” said Cynthia.  “It’s pretty typical for this cluster, one living planet with a decent mix of others to kind of balance things out.  They’ve done a tentative survey on the live world and have a more detailed one scheduled a few years from now.  We’ve got a couple of recon pods tucked in the wings so we’re going to sweep in and make a few orbits to gather additional data.”
	“So, this is a ‘working’ trip as well as a joy ride,” Heather said in a humorous tone.
	“Don’t knock it.  Helps pay the bills, so to speak,” replied Cynthia.
	Once in a polar orbit Cynthia talked Heather through several maneuver changes so they could cover as much of the world as possible in just four orbits.
	“The moon here is almost the same as the one circling Homeworld,” Heather observed out loud.
	“Most of the living worlds here have similar moons as well,” said Cynthia.
	Once again Heather was talked through an orbital change that brought their craft close to the moon.  The direction they were approaching from had them on the “dark side” and they would end up going over the body’s south pole.
	“Shut off your helmet displays and watch straight ahead,” Cynthia instructed.
	Puzzled by the order Heather did as told and a few moments later she understood why.
	“Wow, that is something!” she said in an awed tone.
	“Galaxy rise is pretty impressive when seen from Warren, it’s even more so when there’s no atmosphere fuzzing up the view.  And it seems a touch more awesome when you’re seeing it off the nose of your craft. ”
	They departed the system jumping to yet another.
	“I hope she plans to end this soon,” Heather thought.  “Don’t want William and the kids to think I’ve abandoned them!”
	The jump took over an hour and they came out in another yellow star system.
	“We’re just going to do a quick in and out here,” said Cynthia.  “I want you to see something.
	Heather noted that they were approaching one of the system’s two living worlds.  Minutes later she saw something odd about it, it looked too…shiny; minutes after that she understood why.
	“A living world with a ring system?!” she exclaimed in astonishment as she maneuvered the fighter to “fly” just above the ring plane.  “How can that BE?!”
	“That has a lot of people scratching their head fur,” Cynthia said.  “The second world, which orbits exactly opposite of this one, has a ring system as well.  For me it pretty much confirms the idea that this whole cluster, likely even its stars, were made by some extremely advanced race.”
	“For what reason?” Heather asked.
	“Maybe as an experiment or, maybe, for artistic purposes.  They might have been…be advanced enough to see into the future and see that we would need a place to retreat to for additional species safety and set it up for us; mayhap to show off, to say to us ‘See what we can do?’.  Your guess is as good as anyone else’s,” Cynthia answered.
	The jump back to base took more than three hours; maneuvering to land and actual docking several more minutes.  With the gate closed and the space pressurized the walls separated and the crew chief stood there awaiting her craft. Not surprisingly, Cynthia had Heather do the drive and systems shut down then had her pop the canopies.  After releasing their harnesses the two does doffed their helmets, climbed out of the cockpits, and down the ladder.
	“How was the craft?” asked the chief.
	Cynthia looked to Heather.
	“What do you think?”
	“As best I can tell everything was fine,” Heather said.  “But I’m quite the amateur at this so I could have easily missed something, even several something’s.”
	“A good and honest answer,” Cynthia said.  “Chief, she was fine.  Code One.  Do your post flight and your preflight and put her to bed.  Oh, and be sure the recon pups download the data from the wing sensors.”
	One of the deck crew eased up to the chief as the pair of lapins walked off.
	“Who’s the lop eared doe?” she asked.
	“Hanged if I know,” answered the ewe.  “She must have a lot of pull though.  She’s had months of simulator training and has just rode front seat, my GOD, FRONT SEAT in one of the most advanced fighters there is around!  Cripes, most fighter jocks would give up their first child to get the flight she just got!  And all of the time she put in on this sortie is going to count on her records!  She even gets a month’s flight pay!”
	The sheep shook her head.
	“Don’t suppose the other one has something to do with it, do you?” questioned the deckhand.
	“If she’s got that kind of clout I don’t want to mess with her!” said the crew chief as she walked off to do her inspections.

	After a shower, grooming, and change into civilian clothes Cynthia and Heather had light meal then caught the shuttle back to “dirtside”.  All the time Heather grilled her friend for more information on those living ring worlds.
	“Ha, you think that world is something, wait until you see the other one in that system!” stated Cynthia.  “It’s got six rings around it….!”
	“Six?!” exclaimed Heather.
	“Yes.  A lot of people think it represents a carbon atom but, again, that’s just a guess.”
	“Six!” Heather repeated.  “All as well defined as the one we visited?”
	“Yes.  But, they are of differing diameters and angles in relation to one another.”
	“God and Goddess, the orbital dynamics to do that is…mindboggling!  The shepherding moons, ring renewing moons, the….!”
	Cynthia grinned at the look of awed wonder on her friend’s face.
	“That system has been driving the planetary science and the astrophysicists crazy since it was first discovered.  For some reason, they haven’t released any photos of the ‘carbon atom’ world to the general public.  Our sensor pods gathered additional data that will, maybe, be of some help unlocking the riddle of the one ring world.”
	She shifted in the shuttle seat so that she looked Heather square in the face.  The lop eared doe saw the serious look on her friend’s face.
	“Heather, how badly do you want to see that…’atom’, personally?”
	“Bad enough that I’ll take any other training you say I have to do it!” was her reply.
	“Good, because I’ve laid on three more recon runs to that system to gather more detailed data and you’re in the first seat for all of them.”
	Something in Heather’s head “clicked” and she opened her mouth to say something then glanced about at the other passengers in the half full shuttle and thought better of it and held her silence.

	Looking back into the back seat of the hover van Heather saw the two flight gear bags lying on the seat; one with Cynthia’s name on it and the other with hers.  She turned her head back to look out the front windshield once more and gave her head a little shake of disbelief.
	“I’m a housedoe with a loving husband and two kits and no ambitions beyond having two more and what am I doing…taking cram flight lessons from and at the urging of my former lover.  I’m not sure if mom is going to be proud or if she’s going to freak out when she finds out what I’m doing!” she mused to herself.
	That thought reminded her of something.
	“Cynthia?”
	“Yes?”
	“Isn’t the ship you’re assigned to a kind of exploration vessel?”
	“Well, yes.  That’s part of our mission these days.”
	“Part?”
	“Our ship is something of an…odd duck, if you will.  Until we got the new engine and power upgrades she was a rather dull training and supply replenishment vessel.”
	“With hard points for supply and even passenger pods to be attached to?”
	“Yes.  Easier to deliver already packed pods from place to place than put stuff into then pull it out of storerooms.  Same thing, in some respects, for barracks and passenger pods as well.”
	A couple of more tiny “clicks” snapped into place in Heather’s head.
	“And what’s the reason for your pushing me to be a pilot when we both know darn well I’m not going into the military to stick jock fighters?”
	“Sigh.  Heather, we are short of every conceivable type of qualified people here; everyone from farmers and techs and administration people to home builders, medical personnel, and civil engineers.  There are a number of folks working more than one job and some doing several with things likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.”
	Heather knew this, in her off time at home she processed administrative paperwork for a number of firms and was being asked to do more, a lot more.
	“Problem is that despite the perks and advantages of moving here a lot of people are not thrilled with the idea that once they’re here there is no going back.  Only we military types and a few very high-ups in the political class get to do that.”
	Cynthia glanced over to Heather, dropped her eyes to the doe’s midriff and then returned her eyes to the road.
	“The only other long term answer to the shortage of people is to conceive, birth, and raise as many of them as possible through the ones already here.”
	A wicked grin appeared on Cynthia’s face.
	“Are you and William up to having ten or more additional kits to help out with that?  They’ll even pay you for doing it,” she said in a sweet tone.
	That had been part of the in briefing she and William had received after their arrival here.  He and she planned on a big family but that was getting a wee bit too….
	“And there is a pilot shortage as well.  So, what am I going to be doing, flying shuttle runs?”
	“Hah!  You’d be bored out of your furry skull in the first month!” declared Cynthia.  “No, I’m hoping you will take up something more interesting.”
	“And that is?”
	“You ever hear the term ‘bush pilot’?”
	Head shake.
	“Not surprising.  It’s from the old pre-space days when Homeworld still had a lot of frontier areas.  The pilots, using prop. planes, flew stuff and people in and out areas that had no other access.  Did search and rescue and, even, surveying.”
	Heather caught on.
	“And since there’s so much of the cluster to still be investigated and so few pilots to do that…,” the doe mused.
	“Yes.  Annnnnd, since your interest is soooo piqued by those ring worlds, and, by the way, there are a few more of them here, plus many, many other intriguing things to see and survey there’s enough work to keep you going until your fur is so gray it’s silver colored, if you wish.  You can take on as much as you want, even hand pick of your missions.  The pay is very good and they’ll even throw in bonuses now then for some of the work.”
	“Okay, but why would the military let a nonmember pilot like me run stick on one of their most up-to-date fighters to do this?” she asked.
	“They won’t, at least, for most of the time.  There’s a section* of long range recon birds coming in in a few months and they fly a lot like that fighter so you’ll need only a little additional familiarization training to get used to them.  They’re set up for full scientific level work and have hard points for additional instrumentation as desired.”
	Heather watched a rueful expression come to her friend’s face.
	“There will be a couple of…’hazards’ in this, on and above the flight ones.  Once you get good at this you’re likely to be bombarded by all kinds of requests from the science types, them wanting you to give priority to this or that project.  They can’t force you to do any of that unless you want to so I’d expect them to try to ‘bride’ you with big bonuses, gifts, and possible perks and favors.  Again, you pick and choose the missions you want to go on.”
	“And the other ‘hazard’?” prompted Heather.
	“Is that, now and then, you’ll be asked to take some VIP as a tourist on a flight.  While you have the right to refuse I ask that you consider being…judicious in making your refusals.  We still need some goodwill from some of these people and being owed favors, in return, isn’t bad either.”
	Heather thought this over.
	“I’ll give it serious consideration but it can’t keep me away from my family for too long, and most anything over two weeks is too long!” she said, firmly.
	“Your terms, hon,” replied Cynthia.
	They rode in silence for a few minutes, then….
	“Cynthia, would you pull over to the side of the road and park this thing?” Heather said.
	“Hmmmm, want to make out?” said Cynthia in a sly tone of voice.
	“Hee, maybe!”
	When the vehicle had stopped Cynthia shut off the engine then turned to look at her friend.  The serious expression she saw on Heather’s face killed the half hope she had had about a little on the side road love making.
	“Cynthia, how did you get the military folks to agree to train me?” Heather inquired.
	“Who else is going to give you the necessary training?” answered Cynthia.  “There are a couple of local flight schools around but they’re aimed at teaching shuttle pilots and pilots for cargo runs; nothing like this.”
	“Okay, I understand that but…how did you get them to do this for me?  My dropping out of the Academy just a few months into it could not have looked all that encouraging for them so that means you had to persuade them to do it.”
	Cynthia thought for a few seconds and when she finally opened her mouth to answer Heather forestalled her with a raised hand.
	“To get them to teach me would take a lot of clout…pull.  You’re a good pilot of a special kind of ship but that’s not enough to get this done.  So, that means you have to have something…extra, something really special to be able to make this happen.”
	Silence.
	“Our request to move here was dragging then, all of a sudden, it was approved.  That happened shortly after I informed you of the delay.  When my family got here you were waiting for us; had a house, a house, ready for us, one that even took into account our plan to have a few more kits.  You said you in on the early exploration of this cluster and able to get in on some land buys as a result.  Then, there’s my pilot training….”
	Heather looked away to out of the windshield.
	“The only way I can think of for you to have that kind of…power is that you were not in on the early exploration of this cluster…,” she went on.
	The lop eared doe’s gaze returned to Cynthia.
	“…is that your ship made the original discovery of the way to this cluster.  And, somehow, you were an important, a very important, part of that discovery,” she finished.
	Franticly, Cynthia’s mind cast about for anything she could say that would knock Heather’s analysis apart.
	“Heather’s dang sharp so you had best have an absolutely foolproof explanation or all you’ll do is confirm her thinking,” the pilot’s Logic told her.
	In the end, there wasn’t any.
	“Heather?  Do you have any idea how serious…no, paranoid High Command is about keeping the way here, and the identities of anyone who has any real knowledge of it, secret?” she said in a serious voice.
	“Governments and militaries justify a lot of illegal, even murderous, activities under the heading of ‘national security’,” was Heather’s answer.
	“Then I take it that this conversation and everything connected to it goes no further and will never be brought up again?”
	Pause.
	“What conversation?” asked Heather, with a questioningly innocent expression on her face.
	And with that, Cynthia fired up the engine and drove her friend, and new pilot, home.

	*Section: A unit of six craft