POLARIS 
Jack McDevitt 



This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s 
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business 

establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. 


Polaris 
AnAce Book / published by arrangement with the author 
All rights reserved. 
Copyright ©2004 byCryptic, Inc. 
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Electronic edition: November, 2004 



Contents 

PrOLOG 

ONe 
TWO 
THree 


FOUr 
FiVe 
SiX 
SeVeN 
eiGHT 
NiNe 
TeN 
eLeVeN 

TWeLVe 
THirTeeN 
FOUrTeeN 
FiFTeeN 
SiXTeeN 
SeVeNTeeN 
EiGHTeeN 
NiNeTeeN 
TWeNTY 
TWeNTY-ONe 
TWeNTY-TWO 
TWeNTY-THree 
TWeNTY-FOUr 
TWeNTY-FiVe 
TWeNTY-SiX 
TWeNTY-SeVeN 
TWeNTY-eiGHT 


ePiLOG 



A DF Books NERDs Release 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the 
product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to 
actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely 
coincidental. 

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is 

http://www.penguinputnam.com 

For Bob Carson, 
the world’s finest history teach 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


I’m indebted to David DeGraff of Alfred University, and to 
Walter Cuirle, for technical assistance; to Christopher 
Schelling for his patience, and Ralph Vicinanza for many 
years of encouragement. To Athena Andreadis, whose 
compelling bookTo Seek Out New Life (Three Rivers Press, 
1998) was helpful; and to Michael Shara, whose excellent 
article “When Stars Collide” (Scientific American, November 
2002) inspired the setup. To Ginjer Buchanan, for editorial 
guidance. To Julie E. Czerneda and Maureen McDevitt, who 
helped with early versions of the manuscript. And to Sara 
and Bob Schwager for their insight. 


PrOLOG 


I. 
It no longer looked like a sun. When they’d arrived, only a few days ago, Delta 
Karpis had been a standard class G star, serene, placid, drifting quietly through the 
great deeps with its family of worlds, as it had done for 6 billion years. Now it was a 
misshapen bag, dragged through the night by an invisible hand. Its mass seemed to 
have shriveled beneath the tidal pressures; and a stream of radiant gas, millions of 
kilometers long, jetted from the neck of the bag, connecting the stricken star with a 
glowing point. 

Apoint. Chek Boland looked at it a long time, marveling that something so small 
as to be virtually invisible could be so disruptive, could literally distort asun. 

You haven’t seen anything yet, the astronomers from the other ships were 
saying. It hasn’t even begun. 

He turned his attention to Klassner. “Nine hours left, Marty,” he said. 
“Showtime.” 

Klassner was sitting in his favorite chair, the gray-green one with the side table, 
his unfocused eyes fixed on the bulkhead. Gradually he blinked and turned toward 
Boland. “Yes,” he said. And then: “Showtime for what?” 

“The collision.” 

He was wearing the puzzled expression that they saw all too often now. “Are we 
going to hit something?” 

“No. The dwarf is about to hit Delta Kay.” 

“Yes,” he said. “Itis remarkable. I’m glad we came.” 

The telescopes revealed the point to be a dull red disk surrounded by a ring of 
shining gas. It was a white dwarf, the naked core of a collapsed star. Its electrons had 
been torn from their nuclei and jammed together, producing an object one step short 
of a black hole. A year ago, it had penetrated the planetary system, scattering worlds 
and moons, and now it had become a dagger aimed directly at the heart of Delta 
Karpis itself. 

Klassner had been lucid last evening, and they’d been talking about the human 
tendency to project personality onto inanimate objects. To develop loyalty to a ship. 
To think that a childhood home welcomes one back. Now they could not escape a 
sense of sadness, watching the death struggle of the star, as if it were a living thing, 
somehow conscious of what was happening to it. 

Nancy White had been part of the conversation. Nancy was a popularizer of 


science and had produced shows watched by millions. She’d commented that it was 
nonsense, that she couldn’t bring herself to indulge in that particular fantasy when a 
genuine catastrophe was taking place on the third world, which was home to large 
animals, living oceans, and vast forests. They called the place Kissoff in sullen 
reaction. Kissoff had, so far, survived the general turmoil in the system caused by the 
presence of the interloper. Its orbit had become eccentric, but that was of no moment 
compared with what was about to happen to it and its biosphere. Within the next few 
hours, its oceans would boil off, and the atmosphere would be ripped away. 

On a different scale, watching the approaching destruction of Martin Klassner 
was also painful. Klassner had demonstrated, after thousands of years of speculation, 
that alternate universes did exist. It was the breakthrough everyone had thought 
impossible. They’re out there, and Klassner had predicted that one day transportation 
to them would become possible. Now they were called Klassner universes. 

Last year he’d come down with Bentwood’s Syndrome, which induced 
occasional delusions and bouts of memory loss. His long, thin hands trembled 
constantly. The disease was terminal, and there was doubt whether he’d survive the 
year. The medical community was working on it, and a cure was coming. But Warren 
Mendoza, one of two medical researchers on board, insisted it would be too late. 
Unless Dunninger’s research held the answer. 

“Kage.” Klassner was addressing the AI. “What is its velocity now?” He meant 
the white dwarf. 

“It has increased slightly to six hundred twenty kilometers, Martin. It will 
accelerate another four percent during its final approach.” 

They’d just finished dinner. Impact would take place at 0414 hours ship time. 

“I never expected,” said Klassner, turning his gray, watery eyes on Boland, “to 
see anything like this.” He was back. It was amazing the way he came and went. 

“None of us did, Marty.” The frequency of such an event anywhere within the 
transport lanes had been estimated at one every half billion years. And here it was. 
Incredible. “God has been very kind to us.” 

Klassner’s breathing was audible. It sounded whispery, harsh, labored. “I would 
have wished, though, if we were going to have a collision,” he said, “it could have 
taken place between tworeal stars.” 

“A white dwarf is a real star.” 

“No. Not really. It’s a burned-out corpse.” Part of the problem with Bentwood’s 
was that, along with its other effects, it seemed to reduce intelligence. Klassner’s 
enormous intellect had at one time glowed in those eyes. You could look at him and 
literally see his brilliance. There were times now when it seemed he was on 
automatic, that no one was behind the wheel. It would not have been correct to say 
that his gaze had turned vacuous, but the genius was gone, save for an occasional 
glimmer. And he knew it, knew what he had once been.It’s a burned-out corpse. 

“I wish we could get closer,” Boland said. The link to the bridge was on, and he 
intended the comment for Madeleine English, their pilot. 


“As far as I’m concerned,”she responded,“we’re already too close.” Her voice 
was cool and crisp. She wasn’t impressed by the six celebrities who constituted the 
entire passenger list for thePolaris. 

TheSentinel was somewhere above Delta Kay’s north pole; theRensilaer lay on 
the far side of the dwarf. Both were filled with working researchers, measuring, 
counting, recording, gathering data that specialists would still be analyzing years 
hence. One of the major objectives of the mission was to measure, finally, the natural 
curve of space-time. 

The conversations among the ships had grown increasingly enthusiastic during 
the buildup.You ever see anything like this? I feel as if everything I’ve done has been 
leading up to this moment. Look at that son of a bitch. Cal, what are you getting on 
acceleration? But it had all died away during the last few hours. The comm links 
were silent, and even Boland’s fellow passengers had little to say. 

They’d all gone back to their cabins after dinner, to work, or read, or while away 
the final hours however they could. But the herd instinct had taken over, and one by 
one they’d filtered back. Mendoza in white slacks and pullover, always a brooding 
figure, absorbed to the exclusion of everything else by the drama playing out in the 
sky. Nancy White, scribbling notes to herself between exchanges with Tom 
Dunninger, Mendoza’s occasional colleague. They were microbiologists. Dunninger 
had earned an extraordinary reputation in his chosen field. He’d dedicated the latter 
years of his career to pursuing a way to stave off the ageing process. And Garth 
Urquhart, who had for two terms been one of the seven councillors of the Associated 
States. 

On the screens, the torture of Delta Karpis grew more intense. The solar bag was 
becoming more and more stretched. “Who would have believed,” said Mendoza, “that 
one of these things could become that distorted without blowing up.” 

“It’s coming,” said White. 

The hours counted down, and the conversation never wandered from the 
spectacle.What’s the mass of that thing anyhow? Is it my imagination, or is the sun 
changing color? The ring around the dwarf is getting brighter. 

Shortly before midnight they set up a buffet. They wandered around the table, 
sampling fruit and cheese. Dunninger opened a bottle of wine and Mendoza offered a 
toast to the dying giant outside. “Unmarked for six billion years,” he said. “All that 
time just waiting for us.” 

Unlike the researchers in theSentinel and theRensilaer, they were no more than 
casual observers. No work was being done, no measurements taken, no records kept, 
by any of them. They were there simply to enjoy the show, which consisted of slices 
of feeds from all three ships and from dozens of probes and satellites. They would sit 
quietly, or noisily if they preferred, and watch. Survey and the scientific community 
were saying thanks for their assorted contributions. 

ThePolaris wasn’t designed as a research vessel. It was a supplemental carrier, a 
luxury vehicle (by Survey’s spartan standards) that transported VIPs whom the 
director wanted to impress. Usually, these were political figures. This, however, was a 


different sort of occasion. 

The images of Delta Karpis and the white dwarf on the wall screen were better 
than anything they could see with the naked eye. Still, Boland, who was a 
psychiatrist, noticed they all had a tendency to station themselves near the viewports, 
as if that were the only way to be really present at the event. 

Huge explosions erupted periodically from the surface of the sun and vast waves 
of glowing gas were flung into the darkness of space. 

A streak of white light ripped outward from the dwarf. “Looks like a piece broke 
off,” said Urquhart. 

“Not possible,” said Klassner. “Nothing’s going to break off a neutron star and 
float away. It was gas.” 

Boland was the youngest of the passengers. He was probably forty, with black 
hair, trim good looks and a self-confident demeanor that never failed to turn women’s 
heads. He had started out doing mind wipes and personality reconstruction for violent 
criminals, converting them into contented—or at least, law-abiding—citizens. But he 
was best known for his work in the neurological sciences, and for the Boland Model, 
which purported to be the most comprehensive explanation ever devised of how the 
brain worked. 

Delta Kay’s remaining worlds moved serenely in their orbits, as if nothing 
unusual were occurring. Except for the innermost, which had been a gas giant so close 
to the sun that it literally sailed through its outer atmosphere. That was Delta Karpis I. 
It had no other name, and now it was gone, swallowed by a flare. They’d seen it 
happen. It had plunged in, but only a couple of its moons had emerged on the other 
side. 

When the dwarf arrived, a year ago, Delta Kay had possessed a planetary system 
containing five gas giants, six terrestrial worlds, and a couple of hundred moons. The 
outermost was still there, a world of blue crystal and brilliant silver rings, with only 
three satellites. Boland thought it the loveliest celestial object he’d ever seen. 

Kissoff was also still relatively untouched by the disaster. Its oceans remained 
placid, and its skies were quiet except for a hurricane in one of the southern seas. It 
was just getting started, but it would not have an opportunity to develop. Most of the 
other worlds had been dragged from their orbits and were now outbound. Delta 
Karpis IV had been a double planet, two terrestrial worlds, each with a frozen 
atmosphere. They’d been ripped apart and were now headed in almost diametrically 
opposite directions. 

The dwarf was smaller than Rimway, smaller even than Earth. But it packed 
more mass than Delta Kay, and Boland knew that if somehow he could reach the 
surface of the object, he would weigh billions of tons. 

At 2:54A .M., the dwarf and its shining ring slipped into the chaos and disappeared. 
Urquhart said he didn’t care what anybody said, something that small couldn’t 
possibly avoid getting swallowed by the conflagration. Tom Dunninger commented 
how it could just as easily have been a sun warming one of the Confederate worlds. 


“It’s a sobering moment,” he said. “Makes you realize nobody’s safe.” 

The comment seemed pointed, and Boland wondered if he was sending a 
message. 

Huge explosions ripped through the stricken sun, and the AI reported that 
temperatures on its surface were soaring. Its basic yellow-orange hue was fading to 
white. Wild forest fires had broken out on Kissoff. And enormous clouds of mist were 
rising out of the oceans. Abruptly, the picture went blank. 

“Lost at the source,”said the AI. 

Delta Kay V was adrift, sucked in toward the collision. It was normally ice-
covered, with only a wisp of atmosphere. But the ice had melted, and its sky was full 
of thick gray clouds. Two of the satellites orbiting the gas giant Delta Kay VII 
collided. Its rings, brown and gold like a sunset, began to shimmer and break apart. 

Maddy’s voice sounded over the link:“The Rensilaeris saying the sun’ll put out 
as much energy during the next hour as it has over the last hundred million years.” 

TheSentinel reported that it was taking more radiation than it had been prepared 
for and was withdrawing. Its captain told Madeleine, in a transmission mistakenly 
relayed to the passengers, to be careful.“That’s bad weather out there.” 

Madeleine English stayed on the bridge. Usually she did not hesitate to join her 
passengers in the common room when circumstances allowed, but at the moment 
conditions demanded she remain in the pilot’s seat. She was a beautiful woman, with 
blue eyes, lush blonde hair, perfect features. But there was no softness in her, no 
sense that she was in any way vulnerable. 

Mendoza asked whether they were too close. 

“We’re at a safe distance,”Maddy said.“Don’t worry. At the first sign of 
overload, we’ll skedaddle.” 

One hour, eight minutes after it had vanished into the inferno, the dwarf 
reappeared. It had plowed directly through the sun,sailed through, according to the 
experts on the other ships, like a rock going through fog. The solar stream that had 
reached out toward it during its approach had collapsed back into the turbulence, and 
a new one was forming on the opposite side, dragged out of the dying star by the 
enormous gravity. Then a titanic explosion obscured the view. 

“I’m closing the viewports,”said Maddy.“You’ll have to settle for watching the 
feeds now. If it goes prematurely, we don’t want anyone blinded.” 

Dunninger napped. And even Mendoza. Nancy White looked tired. She’d tried to get 
some rest during the day, but it didn’t matter. Circadian rhythms were what they 
were, and it happened that ship time coincided with Andiquar time, so it really was 
close to 4:00A .M. She had taken something to stay awake. Boland didn’t know what it 
was, but he knew the symptoms. 

Boland was startled by the tug of the ship’s engines. Madeleine appeared briefly 
at the door to report that it was getting “a little bit hot outside,” and she was going to 


withdraw to a safer distance. “Everybody belt down.” 

They secured Mendoza and Dunninger without waking them. And then Boland 
settled into his own harness. 

Incredibly, it didn’t seem as if the dwarf had even slowed down. It was still 
dragging the entrails of the sun behind it. The scene reminded Boland of a cosmic 
taffy pull. 

The senior expert on stellar collisions was on theSentinel. He’d predicted that the 
sun would collapse during the course of the event. Final demolition would occur, he 
said, when the various forces generated by the passage of the dwarf had time to 
penetrate the outer layers. Delta Karpis was more massive than their home sun by 
about a quarter, more massive than Sol by a third. 

Maddy piped in the voice of one of the experts from theRensilaer :“Any minute 
now.” 

They woke Mendoza and Dunninger. 

“It’s starting to go,” said Klassner. “What you’ll see first is a general collapse.” 
Moments later, that character-switch came over him, and he was someone else. He 
looked first puzzled, then sleepy. Boland watched his eyelids sag. Within minutes, 
Klassner was asleep. 

What they saw first was a bright white light that blew all the pictures off the 
monitors. Somebody inhaled, but no one spoke. Mendoza, seated beside Klassner, 
looked toward Boland, and their eyes locked. Boland knew Mendoza well. They’d 
been friends a long time, but something deeper passed between them in that moment, 
as if they were comrades standing on a dark shore. 

They jumped out past the orbit of the fifth planet, to a prearranged location, where 
they rejoined the other ships. Klassner woke during the jump and looked devastated 
when they told him it was over. “You slept through it, Marty,” said Mendoza. “We 
tried to wake you, but you were seriously out.” 

“It’s okay,” White told him. “You’ll get another chance.” From this range, the 
explosion hadn’t occurred yet, was still forty minutes away, and the researchers were 
able to set up and wait for the event to happen again. Klassner swallowed his 
disappointment, and commented that his daughter wouldn’t be a bit surprised when he 
told her what had happened. Boland understood that Klassner had no children. 

From their present range, Delta Karpis would normally have been a relatively 
small disk. But the disk was gone, replaced by a yellow smear twisted into the shape 
of a pear. 

Nancy White was sitting with a notebook, recording her impressions, as if she 
would one day publish them. Her reputation had come from creating and moderating 
a series of shows,Nancy White’s Fireside Chats, in which she talked science and 
philosophy with her audience; andTime-Out, a panel discussion that allowed her to sit 
each week with simulated historical figures ranging from Hammurabi to Adrian 
Cutter to Myra Kildare to discuss the issues of the day. The show had never been 
enormously popular, but—as the producers liked to say—the people who counted 


loved it. 

Urquhart talked quietly with Mendoza. Dunninger had opened a book but wasn’t 
really paying any attention to it. 

They counted down, and it all happened again. Except at this range it was less 
painful to watch. The pear buckled, and the light coming through the viewports 
alternately brightened and darkened. And finally subsided into a hostile red glow. 

It was odd, living through an event twice. But that was what FTL did for you. 
When you could outrun light, you could travel in time. 

Within two hours, Delta Karpis was gone, and the light in the solar system had 
gone out. Only a blaze of luminous gas, and the bright golden ring around the dwarf, 
remained. They watched while the neutron star proceeded quietly on its way. 

II. 
Rondel (Rondo) Karpik was chief of the communications watch at Indigo Station, 
near the outer limits of Confederate space. His title,chief, was largely nominal since, 
except during major operations, he was the only person on the watch. The Delta Kay 
mission had ceased to be a major operation. Sensor packages had been laid at 
strategic points, data from the three ships had been relayed and stored, the on-station 
experts had expressed their admiration for the efficiency with which the researchers 
had carried out their assigned tasks, but they were predicting it would be months 
before we knew what we’d learned. There had been a journalist with theSentinel, 
reporting to a pool. The pool had filed stories that went on about the majesty of it all 
until Rondo thought he was going to throw up. Then the fleet had announced its 
homebound schedule, and the experts and journalists had retired down to Cappy’s 
gumpo shop, and he hadn’t seen them since. 

There was still some tracking data coming in, and a few other odds and ends, but 
the excitement was clearly over. Well, he had to admit he’d never seen a star blow up 
before, at least not from close by. 

“Indigo, we’re ready to make our jump.”Bill Trask’s image gazed at him from 
the center of the room. Bill was captain of theRensilaer and, in Rondo’s view, the 
biggest horse’s ass among the assorted skippers who passed through Indigo. He had 
no time for peasants, and he let you know exactly how you rated. He was big, 
ponderous, with white hair and a deep, gravelly voice, and everybody was afraid of 
him. At least all the communications people.“We estimate timely arrival Indigo. Keep 
the stewpots warm.” 

The message had been sent fifteen hours earlier. Trask signed off, and his image 
vanished. 

Rondo opened a channel but kept it audio only. “Acknowledge,Rensilaer, ” he 
said. “We’ll be looking for you.” 

All three ships would, of course, stop there before proceeding to Rimway. Indigo 
was a cylinder world, orbiting Planter’s Delight, which had been settled less than 


thirty years before and already boasted 17 million inhabitants. Indigo had almost half 
a million more. 

The past few days had been historic, but it was hard to get excited. He was up for 
a department manager’s job, and that was all he cared about at the moment. Events 
like this were a hazard. They were no-win situations. Handle them right, and nobody 
would notice. Screw up somewhere, say the wrong thing to one of the journalists, and 
it would be bye-bye baby. So he concentrated on maintaining a professional attitude. 
Keep the experts happy. And make sure the assorted hyperlight transmissions were 
received in good order, made available, and relayed to Rimway. It was simple 
enough. All he really had to do was to let the AI handle the details, be on his best 
social behavior, say good things about everybody, and keep close in case of a 
problem. 

He watched theRensilaer ’s status lights, and when they went blue, he informed 
operations that the ship had made its jump, and he gave them its ETA. 

Ten minutes later, theSentinel ’s captain appeared, Eddie Korby, young, quiet, 
studious. Look at him and you thought he was timid. The last person in the world 
you’d think would be piloting a starship. But he always had an attractive woman on 
his arm. Sometimes two or three. 

“Indigo,”he said,“we’ll be departing in four minutes. I hope you got to watch 
the show. Delta Kay literally imploded. The passengers seem pretty happy with the 
mission. See you in a couple of weeks. Sentinelout.” 

Next up was Maddy.“Coming home, Rondo,” she said.“Departure imminent.” 
Behind her, on his operational screen, the dying star gave her an aura. She looked 
positively supernatural, standing there, silhouetted against the conflagration. A first-
class babe, she was. But there was something about her that warned himdon’t touch. 
“ Polarisout.” 

He took another sip of his gumpo, which was an extract from a plant grown on 
the world below, and to which he’d long since become accustomed. Lemon with a 
sting, but when it settled, it provided a general sense of warmth and well-being. 

Sentinel’s status lamps went blue. On her way. 

He passed it on, not that anyone in Ops really cared, but it was procedure. He 
checked the logbook, made the entry for theSentinel, and waited forPolaris ’s lights to 
change. 

The lamps showed white when the ship was in linear space, and they would go to blue 
when she’d made her jump. Twenty minutes after Maddy said they were ready to 
leave, they were still white. 

That shouldn’t be. “Jack,” he told the AI, “run a diagnostic on the board. Let’s 
make sure the problem’s not at this end.” 

The systems whispered to one another, status lamps winked on and off, turned 
yellow, turned green, went back to white.“I do not detect any problem with the 
system, Rondo,” said Jack. 


Damn. He disliked complications. He waited another few minutes, but the lamp 
remained steadily, defiantly, unchanged. 

White. 

He hated problems. Absolutely hated them. There was always a big hassle, and it 
usually turned out that somebody had fallen asleep. Or hadn’t thrown a switch. 
Reluctantly, he informed operations. 

“Polaristwenty-five minutes after scheduled jump. Unaccounted for.” 

Rondo’s supervisor, Charlie Wetherall, showed up a few minutes later. Then one of 
the techs, who’d heard what was happening. The tech ran tests, and said the problem 
was at the other end. At forty-five minutes, the first journalists arrived. Heard 
something was happening. What’s wrong? 

Rondo kept quiet and let Charlie do the talking. “These things happen,” Charlie 
said. “Communications breakdowns.” Sure they do. 

What Rondo couldn’t figure was why they hadn’t heard from Maddy if she’d 
been unable to jump. 

“Busted link,” said Charlie, helpfully, using his expression to suggest that Rondo 
not say anything alarming to the journalists. Or to anyone at all. 

“Then you don’t think they’re in trouble?” one of them asked. Her name was 
Shalia Something-or-other. She was a dark-skinned woman who’d sulked for weeks 
because they hadn’t made room for her on the mission. 

“Hell, Shalia,” said Charlie, “for the moment we just have to wait until we have 
more information. But no, there’s nothing to be worried about.” 

He ushered the journalists into a conference room and found someone to stay 
with them, talk to them, keep them happy. He promised to let them know as soon as 
the station heard from thePolaris. 

Charlie was small and round. He had a short temper when people made mistakes 
that impacted on him, and he was obviously thinking that Maddy had screwed up 
somehow, and he was getting irritated with her. Better with her, Rondo thought, than 
withme. Back in the comm center, they replayed thePolaris transmission. It was audio 
only.“Coming home, Rondo. Departure imminent. Polarisout.” 

“Doesn’t tell us much,” said Charlie. “What’simminent mean?” 

“Not an hour.” 

“Okay. I’m going to check with upstairs. Stand by.” 

Ten minutes later he was back with the station’s director of operations. By then 
there was a crowd, and the journalists, who had broken out of their holding cell, were 
back. The director promised to make a statement as soon as he had something, and 
assured everyone it was just a technical glitch. 

They played Maddy’s transmission over and over. The director confessed he had 


no idea what the situation might be and asked Charlie whether anything like this had 
happened before. It had not. 

“Give it another hour,” the director said. “If nothing changes by”—he consulted 
the time—“by five, we’ll send somebody in. Can we turn one of the other two ships 
around?” 

Charlie consulted his display. “Negative,” he said. “Neither has enough fuel to 
make a U-turn.” 

“Who else is out there?” 

“Nobody who’s close.” 

“Okay. Who’s not close?” 

Rondo tapped the screen to show his boss. “Looks like Miguel,” said Charlie. 

Miguel Alvarez was the captain of theRikard Peronovski. Carrying supplies to 
Makumba and running some sort of AI tests. 

“How long’ll it take him to get there?” 

While Charlie watched, Rondo ran the numbers. “Four days after he reorients 
and is able to jump. Add time for the request to reach him, and for maneuvering at 
Delta Kay, figure a week. No less than that.” 

“Okay. If we don’t hear by five, tell him to go find thePolaris. Tell him to 
expedite.” The director shook his head. “It’s a bitch. Whatever we do here, we’re 
going to have some very unhappy people. What’s the captain’s name again, Charlie?” 

“Miguel.” 

“No. On thePolaris. ” 

“It’s Maddy. Madeleine English.” 

“We ever have trouble with her before?” 

“Not that I know of.” He looked at Rondo, who shook his head. No. Never any 

trouble. 

“Well, I’ll tell you, when this is over she better have a good story, or we’re going 
to have her license.” 

Rondo turned the comm center over to his relief and retired to his quarters. He 
showered and changed and went down to the Golden Bat, where he had dinner, as he 
customarily did, with friends. He started to describe what had happened, but word had 
already gotten around. 

He was midway through a roast chicken when Talia Corbett, an AI specialist, 
showed up and told them that nothing had changed, they had not yet heard anything 
from thePolaris. The call had gone out to thePeronovski. Miguel was riding to the 
rescue. 


There was a lot of talk that there must have been a major comm malfunction 
because nothing else could explain what was happening. Other than a catastrophic 
event. When you saycatastrophic event in a situation like that, you tend to get a lot of 
attention. 

He’d been trying to coax Talia into his bed for the better part of a year. That 
night he broke through. Afterward, he concluded that the business with thePolaris 
had, in some way, been responsible. It’s an ill wind . . . he thought. Meantime, 
thePolaris lamps remained white. 

III. 
Delta Kay’s surviving worlds and moons were scattering. A great ring of light marked 
the progress of the dwarf star. Near the position from which thePolaris had sent its 
last transmission, a set of lights blinked on, and the iron gray bulk of theRikard 
Peronovski appeared apparently from nowhere. 

Miguel Alvarez, who usually rode alone in the big freighter, was glad to have a 
passenger along this time. If thePolaris was really in trouble, another hand would be 
helpful. 

He knew Madeleine. Not well, but well enough to know she was no dummy. It 
had been almost six days since Maddy’s last transmission, and there’d been no word 
from the ship since. A communication problem, no doubt. Had to be. He did not 
expect to find anything in the area, because Maddy was undoubtedly in Armstrong 
space, her comm systems down, but headed home. If that was the case, she would 
arrive back at Indigo in another ten days or so. 

ThePeronovski was transporting general supplies, food, spare parts, 
environmental gear, and assorted odds and ends to the newly established colony at 
Makumba. Survey had elected to use the opportunity to test Mariner, which was, as 
his passenger insisted on calling it, a deep-space intelligence and docking system. The 
passenger was Shawn Walker, an AI specialist. 

Miguel had expected to be overtaken en route by a second message,It’s okay, 
we’ve heard from them, continue your scheduled flight. But Indigo’s hourly 
updates,Nothing yet, Still no word, simply confirmed his suspicion that the ship was 
homeward bound, hidden in the folds of Armstrong space. He imagined Maddy’s 
frustration, aware that they’d be scrambling to find her but unable to communicate 
with anyone. 

Walker was on the bridge with him when they arrived. Miguel wasn’t sure what 
he expected to see. His instruments told him that vast clouds of gas were out there, 
but nothing was visible other than the ring of light around the neutron star. 

Shawn Walker was about forty, average height, a bit overweight. He didn’t look 
particularly smart, and maybe he wasn’t. He was one of these guys who knew his way 
around AIs, and didn’t seem to care much about anything else in the world. When 
they sat and talked at meals, it was all shop. Walker was married, and Miguel 
wondered if he was like that at home. 


He turned toward the last-known position of thePolaris, accelerated, and began 
scanning for the ship he didn’t expect to find. Miguel sent off a message to Indigo, 
bringing them up to date. Then he asked Sebastian, Shawn’s experimental AI, when 
they could expect to locate the lost vessel. 

“If it is in the area,”Sebastian said,“and if it maintained course and speed, as 
one would expect, we should see it within a few hours.” 

“What happens,” Shawn asked Miguel, “if they’re not there?” 

“We’ll look elsewhere.” 

“No. I mean, what happens if they’re on their way back to Indigo?” 

“I guess,” Miguel said, “we’ll be stuck here until Indigo tells us they’ve shown 

up.” Walker looked distressed. “You okay, Shawn?” 

“I know Warren. Mendoza. He was on board. He’s an old friend.” 

“I’m sure they’ll be all right.” 

“And Tom Dunninger, too. Not well, but I met him.” 

They had dinner, played cards, watched a video, went back to the bridge, and 

looked out at the relentless sky. 

Miguel didn’t sleep well. He wasn’t sure why. He’d done a rescue mission once 
before, bailing out a ship whose engines had exploded. That had been theBorealis. 
Ten years ago. They’d been lucky: The captain had eleven people on board, and ten 
had survived. They’d given him a citation for that, and the rescued passengers had 
thrown a party for him. It had been one of the great moments of his life. 

But there was something different about this. He wasn’t sure what was bothering 
him, but his instincts kept him from closing his eyes. Kept him from relaxing at all. 

In the morning there was still no sign. He had an early breakfast, then an hour 
later sat drinking coffee while Shawn ate. Sebastian was still reporting empty skies. 

He prowled through the ship. He wandered from the common room to the bridge, 
took the zero-gee tube down to the cargo hold, glanced toward the two additional 
cabins they maintained just off the main storage bins, and inspected the Makumba 
shipment, which they were supposed to deliver in a couple of days. Eventually he 
climbed into the shuttle and took a seat. Shawn came down and asked if he was okay. 

“Sure,” he said. “I’m just not anxious to spend the next two weeks here.” 

“Miguel.”It was Sebastian.“We have searched the entire area in which they 
should be. The Polarisis not there.” 

“So they jumped?” 

“Or changed course. Or accelerated.” 

Miguel had no doubt thePolaris was on its way home. “Okay,” he said, “if we 


have to hang around, let’s do it right. Sebastian, expand the search. Let’s assume they 
got blown off course by the event. We’ll look deeper. Away from wherever the 
central luminary used to be. 

“Waste of time and money,” he grumbled. “But we’ll do it by the book.” 

Miguel was becoming annoyed with Maddy. It would have been thoughtful of her to 
leave a satellite at the place where the ship should have been, informing any potential 
rescuer that she was okay and on her way to Indigo. It would have saved all this 
hassle. 

They played some more cards. He started the latest Chug Randall thriller, in 
which Chug has to outwit a gang of interstellar pirates who are after a shipment of 
priceless works of art. He watched some talk shows. (Miguel loved watching people 
argue. He didn’t much care what they argued about, as long as it got loud and 
passionate. And nothing got louder than panels on politics and religion.) 

He was eating more than he would have on a normal flight. And skimping on his 
daily workout. He promised himself that he’d get back to his routine the next day. 

Then they were at the end of another evening, and he said good night to Shawn, 
who seemed able to entertain himself going through Sebastian’s specs. Miguel had 
not slept well the first night because he was worried that they would find thePolaris. 
Now he didn’t sleep well because he was bored and annoyed. He’d mention it to 
Maddy next time he saw her. 

He finally dropped off at about 0200 hours. And Sebastian woke him ten minutes 
later.“Miguel, I can see the Polaris.” 

It was substantially off course, moving at about forty degrees off its original heading. 
And angled down, out of the plane of what used to be the planetary system. It was 
running at a lower velocity than he’d been led to expect. He sent off a transmission to 
Indigo, then woke Shawn. 

The specialist looked relieved. “At least we know where they are,” he said. 

But why are they here? There was no simple explanation that didn’t involve 
either catastrophe or an unlikely breakdown of both comms and propulsion. There 
was a possibility he’d pushed to the back of his mind: They might have been 
punctured by debris, by rocks blown away from the dying sun. Or maybe a burst of 
radiation had penetrated the shielding. 

“Range, Sebastian?” 

“Six point six million kilometers.” 

“Open a channel.” 

“Channel open.” 

“Polaris,this isPeronovski. Madeleine, is everything okay?” Miguel took a deep 
breath and settled down to wait. Round-trip for the signal would be almost a minute, 
plus whatever time Maddy needed to respond. 


“Power signature is normal,”said Sebastian. An image of thePolaris appeared 
on the shuttle screen. It was running without lights. 

He counted off a minute. Then two. 

“Maddy, please answer up.” 

Shawn wiped the back of his hand against his mouth. “What do you think?” he 
asked. 

“Don’t know. Madeleine, are you there?” 

Silence filled the bridge. 

“Sebastian,” he said, “can you contact the AI?” 

“Negative, Miguel. There is no response.” 

“Okay,” he said. “Shawn, let’s go have a look.” 

ThePolaris was small and showy. It was silver and black, with a flared rear end and 
teardrop pods along its flanks and a swept-back fuselage and a wraparound bridge 
over the prow. None of these features was necessary, of course. The only things a 
starship needs are symmetry and engines. Beyond those, appearance doesn’t matter 
much. But thePolaris had been intended to impress VIPs, so Survey had spent money. 

They went over in the shuttle, and he inspected the hull. There was no sign of 
damage. And no indication of movement on the bridge. “Depressurize the cabin, 
Sebastian. And take us directly alongside the main airlock.” 

The AI complied. Miguel and Walker checked each other’s pressure suits, and, 
when the lamps turned green, left the shuttle and jumped to thePolaris. 

The outer hatch responded to the control panel and swung open. They entered 
the airlock, the hatch closed behind them, and the air pressure started to rise. When it 
reached normal, the inner door opened. 

The artificial gravity was on, but the interior was dark. Temperature was within 
normal range. They switched on wrist lights and removed their helmets. “Kage,” he 
said addressing the AI, “hello. Answer up, please. What’s going on?” 

Shawn flashed his lamp around at a table and chairs. They were in the common 
room. And other than the fact the lights were off, and nobody was there, everything 
looked normal. 

“Kage?” 

He would not have been able to give instructions to the AI, but she should 
respond to him. 

Shawn tried his luck and shook his head. “She’s not functioning,” he said. 

Miguel looked on the bridge. Nobody there. And no visible damage. 


“Are they dead?” asked Shawn. 

“Don’t know.” 

“Any way that could happen?” 

“Not without leaving a hole in the hull.” 

“How about a madman? Maybe somebody went berserk.” 

“Somebody running amok with an ax?” Ridiculous. Especially among this 
crowd. Every one of them had led an exemplary existence. He’d checked their 
backgrounds while they were en route. Pillars of the community. All of them. But the 
prospect chilled him nonetheless. Had there been a maniac, he’d still be on board. 

“We need light,” Miguel said. He crossed the bridge and sat down in the pilot’s 
chair. The control board looked standard. He threw a couple of switches. Lights came 
on. “Kage,” he said, “do you hear me?” 

The silence rolled back. Shawn knelt and opened a black box at the base of the 
pilot’s chair. “The circuits seem to be intact.” He touched a switch, pushed it forward. 
“Try it now.” 

“Kage, are you there?” 

“Hello.”A female voice.“To whom am I speaking?” 

“Captain Miguel Alvarez. Of thePeronovski. Kage, what happened here?” 

“Captain, I am sorry, but I do not understand the question.” 

“You were supposed to start back to Indigo six days ago. Instead, you’re adrift 
near Delta Kay. Where Delta Kaywas. What happened?” 

“I don’t know, Captain.” 

“Did somebody turn you off, Kage?” 

“Not that I’m aware of.” 

He peered into the black box. Someone could have disconnected one of the core 
circuits without her being aware it was happening. That would have shut her down. 
But if that’s what happened, they went to the trouble to reconnect, but did not throw 
the switch to reactivate the AI. Why would anyone do that? 

“Kage, what are your last recollections?” 

“We were getting ready to make the jump into Armstrong space. At the end of 
the mission.” 

“And then what happened?” 

“That’s what I remember. Next I was talking to you. I am not aware of the 
passage of time between those events.” 


“Kage,” he said, “where’s Madeleine?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t see her.” 

“How about the others?” 

“I don’t see anyone.” 

“Miguel,” said Shawn, “she has a restricted view of the ship. AIs always do. 
We’re going to have to find them ourselves.” 

They put the lights on and started aft. Through the common room. Down the main 
passageway, which was lined with doors, four on each side. Miguel had never before 
been aboard thePolaris, but he knew that these were the quarters for the captain and 
her passengers. 

“Madeleine?” he called. “Hello? Anybody home?” His voice echoed through the 
ship. 

“Spooky,” said Shawn. 

“Yes, it is. Stay close until we figure out what’s going on here.” He touched the 
pressure plate on the first door, the captain’s quarters, and it opened. It was empty, 
but Maddy’s clothes were hung up. 

The cabin across the passageway was also empty. As were the others, and each 
of the washrooms. 

“What’s below?” Shawn asked, his voice barely a whisper. 

“Cargo, engine room, and lander.” 

They went down and looked. There was nobody in cargo. 

“This is crazy,” said Shawn. 

Miguel led the way into the power room. Nobody lurking in the spaces between 
the engines. Nobody in storage. Nobody in the launch area. 

They approached the lander, which was the only place on the ship where they 
hadn’t looked. Alvarez opened the hatch and peered in. 

Nobody in the front seat. Nobody in the back. 

The place felt haunted. “What the hell,” he said, “is going on?” 

There was a spare washroom on the lower deck, but it was empty. Cabinets lined 
one bulkhead. Several of them were big enough to hide in, so he opened them one by 
one. They were also empty. 

They found two pressure suits. “Kage,” he said, “how many pressure suits are on 
board?” 

“Four, Captain.” 


“We’re looking at two of them.” 

“There are two more on the bridge.” 

“They’re there now?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“So all four suits are accounted for.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

And the lander lay snugly within its restraints. “They have to be here 
somewhere.” 

There were clothes in seven of the eight compartments. That figured, since there 
had been a captain and six passengers. Shoes were laid out in two of the rooms, 
personal gear in drawers everywhere. Readers, toothbrushes, combs, bracelets. In one, 
a copy ofLost Souls had fallen onto the deck. 

“What could have happened?” asked Shawn. 

“Kage, is there any place in the entire system currently habitable?” 

“Negative, Captain. Not now.” 

He’d forgotten. The sun had gone out. That seemed a trivial point at the moment. 
“There was a living world here, wasn’t there?” 

“Yes. Delta Karpis III.” 

“Would it have supported humans?” 

“Yes. If they were careful.” 

“No point to this,” said Shawn. “They had no way to get off the ship.” 

They turned out the lights and set thePolaris for power-save mode. Then they went 
back out through the airlock, left the outer hatch open, and boarded the shuttle. 

He was glad to get back to thePeronovski. He hadn’t realized how chilled he’d 
been until the warm air hit him. Then he activated the hypercomm. 

“What are you going to tell them?” asked Shawn. 

“I’m still thinking about it,” he said. He sat down and opened the channel, but 
before he said anything for the record, he directed the AI to move well away from 
thePolaris. “Give us some space,” he said. 

ONe 

Say what you will, murder is at least a straightforward 


crime, honest and direct. There are other acts far 
worse, more cowardly, more cruel. 

—Edward Trout, during the penalty phase of the 
trial of Thomas Witcover 

SIXTY YEARS LATER. 
1428TH YEAR SINCE THE WORLD 
FOUNDATION OF ASSOCIATED STATES 
(RIMWAY). 


I would probably never have gotten involved with thePolaris business had my boss, 
Alex Benedict, not figured out where the Shenji outstation was. 

Alex was a dealer in antiquities, although he could be infuriating because his 
passion for artifacts inevitably took second place to his interest in profits. He was in it 
for the money. His job consisted largely of schmoozing with clients and suppliers, 
and he liked that, too. Furthermore, his career choice brought him more prestige than 
he could ever have earned as an investment banker or some such thing. 

The truth is that I did most of the work at Rainbow. That was his corporation. He 
was the CEO, and I was the workforce. But I shouldn’t complain. The job was 
intriguing, and he paid me well. 

My name’s Chase Kolpath, and I was with him during theCorsarius affair, 
twelve years earlier. Which, as you might know, led to some rewriting of history. And 
a small fortune for Alex. But that’s another story. 

In his chosen profession, he was a genius. He knew what collectors liked, and he 
knew where to find it. Rainbow was primarily a wheel-and-deal operation. We 
located, say, the pen with which Amoroso the Magnificent had signed the Charter, 
talked its owner into selling it to our client, and took a generous commission. 
Occasionally, when the prices looked especially appealing, we bought the objects and 
turned them over at prices more commensurate with their value. During all the years I 
worked with him, Alex seemed invariably to be correct in his judgments. We almost 
never lost money. 

How he managed that without giving a damn about the objects themselves, I’ve 
never understood. He kept a few around the country house that served as his private 
residence and corporate headquarters. There was a drinking cup from the Imperial 
Palace at Millennium, and a tie clasp that had once belonged to Mirandi Cavello. That 
one goes back two thousand years. But he didn’t really connect with them, if you 
know what I mean. They were there for show. 

Anyhow, Alex had located a previously unknown Shenji outstation. In case you 
don’t stay up with these things and have no idea what an outstation is, corporations 
used them as bases when travel around the Confederacy tookweeks, and 
sometimesmonths. I know I’m dating myself when I admit that I was a pilot in the 
days before the quantum drive, and I remember what it was like. You left Rimway 
and headed out and it took a fullday to go twenty light-years. If you were doing some 
serious traveling, you got plenty of time to improve your chess game. 


Outstations were placed in orbit at various strategic points so that travelers could 
stop and get refreshed, pick up spare parts, refuel, replenish stores, or just get out of 
the ship for a while. Some were run by governments, most were corporate. Unless 
you’ve been on an old-style flight, you have no idea what sitting inside one of those 
burners for weeks at a crack can be like. It’s all strictly eyeblink now. Turn it on, and 
you can be halfway across the Arm before you finish your coffee. No limit other than 
the one imposed by fuel. Alex gets credit for that, too. I mean, he was the one who 
found the original quantum drive. And I won’t be giving away any secrets if I tell you 
that it hasn’t made him happy that he was never able to cash in. It seems you can’t 
patent historical inventions that somebody else, uh,invented. Even if no living person 
knew about it anymore. The government gave him a medal and a modest cash prize 
and thanked him very much. 

If you’ve read Alex’s memoir,A Talent for War, you know the story. 

The outstation was orbiting a blue giant whose catalog number I’ve forgotten. 
Doesn’t matter anyhow. It was close to six thousand light-years from Rimway, on the 
edge of Confederacy space. If the sources were accurate, it was eighteen hundred 
years old. 

Outstations are almost always reconfigured asteroids. The Shenji models tended 
to bebig. This one had a diameter of 2.6 kilometers, and I’m talking about the station, 
not the asteroid. It was in a seventeen-year orbit around its sun. Like most of these 
places that have been abandoned a while, it had developed a distinct tumble, which, 
of course, tends to shake up whatever might be stored inside. 

It was the first time in its history Rainbow Enterprises had discovered one of 
these things. “Are we going to register it?” I asked. We would do that to claim 
ownership. 

“No,” he said. 

“Why not?” It would have been just a matter of informing the Registry of 
Archeological Sites. You gave them a brief description of the find, and its location, 
and it was legally yours. 

He was looking out at the station. It was dark and battered, and you could easily 
have missed seeing what it was. In its glory days it would have said hello and invited 
you over for some meals and a short vacation. “Off-world law enforcement doesn’t 
exist,” he said. “All we’d be doing is giving away the location of the site.” 

“Maybe that’s what we should do, Alex.” 

“What is?” 

“Give it away. Contribute it to Survey. Let them worry about it.” 

He stuck his tongue into the side of his jaw. “That might not be a bad idea, 
Chase,” he said. We both knew we could carry off pretty much everything of value, 
short of the site itself. Giving it to Survey would generate goodwill with an 
organization that had always supplied well-heeled clients. And Rainbow Enterprises 
would get plenty of free publicity. “Exactly what I was thinking, my little urchin.” 


Most of its space had been given over to docking and maintenance. But there had also 
been a couple of dining areas, living accommodations, and recreational facilities. We 
found the remains of open spaces that had once been parks. There’d been a lake. And 
even a beachfront. 

It was all gray and cold now. Eighteen centuries is a long time, even in near 
vacuum. 

There was no power, of course, hence no gravity. And no light. But that was 
okay. We had made a serious strike, and Alex, usually staid, complacent, one might 
even saydull, became a child in a toy store as we toured the place, dragging spare air 
tanks with us. 

But the toys turned out to be pretty well smashed. Personal items left behind by 
the inhabitants were afloat everywhere, going round and round with the station. 
Chairs and tables, stiffened fabrics, knives and forks, notebooks and shoes, lamps and 
cushions. And a lot of stuff that was beyond recognition, bits and pieces of 
everything, whatever might have broken off over the years. The place was turning on 
its axis every seven and a half minutes, an action that sent clouds of loose objects 
bumping around the bulkheads. “The thing’s a giant blender,” said Alex, trying to 
swallow his disappointment. 

Shenji culture is best remembered today for its flared towers (which look like rockets 
waiting to roar into the sky), their asymmetric architectural designs, their affinity for 
showy tombs, the dramas of Andru Barkat (which are still periodically revived on 
some of the snobbier stages around town), and their descent into the series of 
religious wars that eventually destroyed them. And maybe their drive to find 
nonhuman civilizations, which went on almost without pause, and without noticeable 
result, for two millennia. The Shenji were not people who gave up easily. But during 
their golden age, before the prophet Jayla-Sun showed up, they were convinced there 
were others out there and that the human race wouldn’t fulfill its destiny until it could 
sit down with them and talk philosophy. Even that effort was largely a religious thing, 
but if it cost a lot of resources, it caused no damage. The common wisdom now is that 
there is nobody else anywhere in the Milky Way, except us, and the Ashiyyur. The 
Mutes. (All this with the Shenji, of course, happened before Gonzalez discovered the 
Mutes. Or, if you want to be factual, before they discoveredhim. ) And I don’t mind 
telling you that it wouldn’t be a bad thing ifthey would pack up and move on. 
Andromeda would be a good place for them. 

There are still a few people walking around who claim to be pure-blooded 
Shenji. I don’t know why they would. Their history is a mixed bag at best. When they 
weren’t exploring, they were running pogroms and inquisitions; but they’ve been 
dead and gone a long time, and that fact alone seems to make them intriguing to some 
folks. Alex has commented that being dead for a sufficiently long time guarantees 
your reputation. It won’t matter that you never did anything while you were alive; but 
if you can arrange things so your name shows up, say, on a broken wall in a desert, or 
on a slab recounting delivery of a shipment of camels, you are guaranteed instant 
celebrity. Scholars will talk about you in hushed tones. You will become a byword, 
and an entire age might even be named for you. History used to be simpler back when 
there wasn’t so much of it. 


Historians are forever announcing how they’d like to sit down with someone 
who’d actually hung out at the Parthenon during the years of Athenian hegemony, or 
had attended a Shenji parade. A survivor, if one could be found, would be hustled 
around town in the most luxurious skimmers, treated to the best meals, and taken to 
see the Council. He would show up as a guest onThe Daylight Show. 

Go to Morningside today, the Shenji home world, and you’ll find a modern, 
skeptical, democratic society populated by waves of outsiders, people from all over 
the Confederacy. The tribes of true believers are gone, everybody’s a skeptic, watch 
your purse, and if you really think there are more aliens out there, I have a bridge I’d 
like you to look at. 

Alex had the kind of looks that could get lost easily in a crowd. His face was sort of 
bureaucratic, and you knew immediately that he liked working in an office, that he 
preferred a regular schedule, no surprises, and took his coffee with a sweetener. That 
was all true, actually. Although I have to confess we had a brief romantic fling years 
ago. But he was never going to commit to marriage, and I wanted him as a friend 
rather than a lover anyhow. So there you are. 

He was about average height, brown hair, dark brown eyes, and he looked out of 
place in a pressure suit. Or in an ancient outstation, drifting down dark corridors, with 
a lamp in one hand and a laser cutter in the other. 

He was reasonable, quiet, and he thought well of himself. He had never liked 
starships. In the early years, when we were using the old jump engines, he used to get 
sick every time we made the transition into or out of Armstrong space. He was 
interested primarily in number one. Liked making money, liked wielding influence, 
enjoyed being invited to the right parties. But at heart he was a good guy. He’d take 
care of a stray cat, always kept his word, and watched out for his friends. I should add 
that he was a reasonable boss. If occasionally erratic. 

We needed the cutters because the hatches, both inside and out, were 
nonfunctional, so we had to slice our way through a lot of them. My job was to do the 
slicing and pack any salable objects. His was to point out the stuff we’d take back. 

But after three days wandering around the station we had virtually nothing to 
show for it. 

He’d figured out the location of the place from clues left in Shenji archives. Just 
finding this outpost of Shenji culture would have considerable public relations value, 
but it wasn’t going to bring a cascade of wealth, which was what he’d expected. 

His good humor began to drain. As we fished pieces and bits, knobs and filters 
and chunks of dishware and broken glass and shoes and timers out of the debris, he 
took to sighing, and I’m sure inside the helmet he was shaking his head. 

I’d seen him like that before. What happens is that he begins to talk about the 
historical value of the artifacts and what a loss it is to the human race to find them in 
such terrible condition. He becomes a great humanitarian when things go wrong. 

The original plan had been to set up a base inside the station, but Alex wondered 
whether it was worth the effort. So every evening when we got tired, or bored, 


wandering around the place, we returned to theBelle-Marie for dinner. And then we 
looked at whatever we’d salvaged. It was a depressing time, and when I told him that 
maybe we should just close up shop and head home, he replied that I was giving up 
too easily. 

On the sixth day, when we were getting ready to pack it in, we found a chamber with 
odd damage. It appeared to be a conference room. It contained a table that could have 
seated about ten, and gray mottled bulkheads, one of which might once have been a 
display screen. The screen was smashed. Not smashed because objects were getting 
rolled around the room, because nothing was moving in there with much force. But 
smashed the way it would be if someone had taken a hammer to it. 

The table and chairs and some gunk that might once have been fabric were 
working their way across the overhead. The only thing that held us upright was our 
grip shoes, and I should tell you that standing there watching everything move around 
the room tended to make your head spin. 

“Vandals,” Alex decided, standing in front of the wall screen. He hated vandals. 
“Damn their hides.” 

“It happened a long time ago,” I said. 

“Doesn’t matter.” 

The next room might have been a VR chamber. We checked the equipment, 
which was locked in place, and in fact everything in that room was secured, and the 
door had been closed, so it was in decent condition. Not that the equipment would 
work, of course. But it looked good. And I could see Alex brighten, mentally tagging 
some of the gear for shipment home. 

Then we found more signs of vandals, more damage to stationary objects. “They 
probably came in on a looting expedition,” he said. “Got exasperated at the 
conditions, and started breaking things up.” 

Yeah. Those looters are just terrible. 

But maybe they’d gotten discouraged too soon. We eventually wandered into 
what appeared to be the control room. And that was where we found the jade bracelet. 
And the corpse. 

The bracelet was on the left wrist. It was black, and engraved with an ivy branch. 

The corpse was in pieces, and the pieces were adrift. The torso was moving 
across the deck when we moved in. At first I didn’t know what it was. It was 
mummified, and it looked as if it had been either a woman or a child. While we were 
trying to decide about that, I discovered the bracelet. The arm was the only limb still 
attached. 

It wasn’t readily visible unless you handled the remains. Don’t ask me why I did. 
It was just that the corpse shouldn’t have been there, and I wondered what had 
happened. 

And there was the bracelet. “I think she got left behind,” I told Alex. There was 


no sign of a pressure suit, so she hadn’t been with the vandals. 

We had nothing to wrap her in, no way to secure the body. Alex stood staring at 
her a long time. Then he looked around the room. There were three control positions. 
They opened the outer doors remotely, maintained station stability, managed 
communications, kept an eye on life support, probably controlled the bots that 
serviced the living quarters. 

“I think you’re right,” he said at last. 

“Probably didn’t check when they left to be sure they had everybody.” 

He looked at me. “Maybe.” 

She was shriveled, dry, the face smoothed out, the features missing altogether. I 
thought how it must have been when she realized she’d been left behind. “If it really 
happened,” Alex said, “it had to have been deliberate.” 

“You mean, because she could have called them? Let them know she was here?” 

“That’s one reason.” 

“If they were shutting down the station,” I said, “they’d have killed the power 
before they left. She might not have known how to turn it back on.” He rolled his 
eyes. “So what other reason is there?” 

“They’d have used a team for a project like shutting down the station. There’s no 
way someone could have been here and not noticed what was going on. No. This was 
deliberate.” 

Three walls had been converted into display screens. There was lots of electronic 
gear. The rear wall, the one the corpse was climbing, was given over to an engraving 
of the mountain eagle that for centuries was the world symbol of the Shenji 
Imperium. Two phrases were inscribed below the eagle. 

“What’s it say?” I asked. 

Alex had a translator. He poked the characters into it and made a face. “The 
Compact.It’s the way the Shenji of that era referred to their nation, which was a polity 
of individual states.The Compact. ” He hesitated. “The second term is harder to 
translate. It means something likeNight Angel. ” 

“Night Angel?” 

“Well, maybeNight Guardian. OrAngel of the Dark. I think it’s the name of the 
station.” 

An outstation always had a dozen or so rooms set aside as accommodations for 
travelers. You want to stay overnight, and maybe even sneak someone into your 
apartment without the rest of the world finding out, this was the place to do it. The 
room usually consisted of a real bed, as opposed to the fold-outs on the ships. Maybe 
a chair or two. A computer link. Possibly a small table and a reader. 

The compartments at the Night Angel were located two decks above the control 


room and about a kilometer away. We were looking to see if any appeared to have 
been lived in, but the passage of time was too great, and the contents of the rooms too 
thoroughly scrambled, so it was impossible to determine whether any of them might 
have been used by the victim. 

Eventually, we opened an airlock and, after retrieving the bracelet, gave the body 
to the void. I wasn’t sure it was the proper thing to do. After all, she’d been dead a 
long time and had herself become an object of archeological interest. I had no doubt 
Survey would have liked to have the corpse. But Alex wouldn’t hear of it. “I don’t 
like mummies,” he said. “Nobody should be put on display after they’re dead. I don’t 
care how long ago they died.” 

Sometimes he got sentimental. 

So we watched her drift away, then we went back inside. The best finds came 
out of one of the dining rooms. Fortunately, everything there had been locked down, 
and it was in good condition. We spent two hours gathering glasses and plates and 
chairs, and especially stuff that had the station’s name on it,Night Angel. That’s where 
the money is. Anything with a seal. We also collected circuit boxes, switches, 
keyboard panels whose Shenji inscriptions, after a careful cleaning, were still visible. 
We removed vents and blowers and the AI (a pair of gray cylinders) and a water 
nozzle and a temperature gauge and a hundred other items. It was by far our best day 
at the outstation. 

We found a group of seventeen wineglasses, carefully stored, each glass 
engraved with the image of the mountain eagle. That alone would be worth a small 
fortune to a collector. We needed two more days to haul everything back to theBelle-
Marie. 

Alex, celebrating our success, gave me a raise and invited me to take a couple of 
souvenirs. I picked out some settings, dinner dishes, saucers, cups, and silver. 
Everything except the silver was made of cheap plastic, but, of course, that didn’t 
matter. 

When we’d filledBelle ’s storage area, there were still some decent items left 
over. Not great stuff, but okay. We could have come back to get them, made another 
flight, but Alex said no. “It’ll be part of the bequest to Survey.” 

By God he was a generous man. 

“We’ve got the pick of the merchandise,” he continued. “Survey will send the 
rest of it around to every major museum in the Confederacy. And they’ll be 
representing us. Everywhere they go on display, Rainbow will be mentioned.” 

As we slipped away from the platform, Alex asked what I made of the corpse. 

“Left by a boyfriend,” I suggested. “Or a husband.” 

Alex looked at me oddly, as if I’d said something unreasonable. 

TWO 


History is a collection of a few facts and a substantial 

assortment of rumors, lies, exaggerations, and self-

defense. As time passes, it becomes increasingly 

difficult to separate the various categories. 

—Anna Greenstein, 

The Urge to Empire 

We left the Shenji outstation just after breakfast on the tenth day. We used nine hours 
to charge the quantum drive, so we were back in the home system in time for a late 
dinner. Of course, we needed another two days to travel from the arrival point to 
Skydeck, the Rimway orbital station. 

I was in favor of calling a press conference to announce our find, but Alex asked 
me coolly who I thought would come. 

“Everybody,” I said, honestly surprised that he didn’t see the advantage in 
culling maximum publicity out of the discovery. 

“Chase, nobody cares about a two-thousand-year-old space station.You do, for 
obvious reasons. And a handful of collectors. And maybe some researchers. But to the 
general public, it’s not sexy. It’s just a piece of leftover junk.” 

So okay. I gave in, grumbling a bit over a lost opportunity to talk to the media 
people. I confess I enjoy the spotlight, and I love being interviewed. So while we 
cruised into the inner system, I contented myself by putting together an inventory and 
writing a cover letter detailing what we’d found. Alex changed the emphasis here and 
there, and we transmitted it to our assorted clients and other possibly interested 
parties, and also to most of the major museums on Rimway. It described a dozen or so 
of the objects we’d brought back, advising prospective buyers to get in touch if they 
wanted to see the complete inventory. So when we docked at Skydeck, nobody was 
there, and no bands played. But we already had a few bids. 

And that evening, back in Andiquar, we had a celebratory dinner at Culp’s on 
the Tower. 

By morning we’d had more than a hundred responses. Everybody wanted details, 
most inquired about starting negotiations, and others wanted to know when they could 
see specified objects. I referred the money issues to Alex, while I arranged to have the 
merchandise shipped down from orbit. 

Rainbow had always been a profitable venture for him, and it had provided a 
good situation for me. It paid better than running around in an interstellar bus, it was 
less disruptive to my personal life, and in fact I loved the work. 

It’s an odd thing about collectors. The value of an artifact tends to be in direct 
proportion to the proximity the object would have had to the original owner, or at 
least the degree to which it could have been seen or handled by him. That’s why 
dinner plates and glasses are so popular, why a collector will pay good money for a 
panel board, while turning thumbs down on the recycler or generator that it 
controlled. 

If Alex had been one of those people given to framing an epigraph and hanging 


it on the wall, it would have read,THE PAYOFF ’S IN FLATWARE. People love dishes and 
cups and forks and, if the historical background is right, they’ll pay almost anything 
to own them. Especially if a ship’s seal is present. The truth about our customers was 
that none of them was going to show up at the bargain store. In fact, it had become 
obvious to me that, unlike standardized goods, antiquities tend to become more 
sought after as the price goes up. 

The routine work took several days. By the end of the week money had begun to 
come in, and we were shipping off the first Night Angel objects. Although we hadn’t 
communicated directly with Survey, they’d learned of the find, as we knew they 
would, and the director got in touch with Alex. Where was the outstation? Was there 
any chance they could see it? Alex said he would try to arrange something. It was, of 
course, the signal for us to demonstrate our munificence. “How did you want to 
handle it?” I asked. 

“Youtake care of it, Chase. Go see Windy.” 

“Me?Don’t you think you should do this personally? Give it to Ponzio himself? 
You’re making a pretty big donation.” 

“No. I’d have a hard time containing myself. If we’re going to get maximum 
value out of this, humility is the way to go.” 

“You’re not good at that.” 

“My thought exactly.” 

Winetta Yashevik was the archeological liaison at Survey, and an old friend. We’d 
gone to school together. She didn’t approve of Alex because of his profession. 
Turning antiquities into commodities and selling them to private buyers struck her as 
grossly incorrect. When I’d gone to work for Rainbow twelve years earlier she told 
me it was a sellout. 

But she listened carefully while I described what we’d seen. She gazed at the 
ceiling with a help-me-stay-calm-Lord expression when I told her we’d taken “some” 
of the artifacts, and finally nodded solemnly when I announced the gift. 

“Everything you couldn’t carry off, I presume?” We were sitting on a love seat 
in Windy’s office. Old pals. It was a big office, on the second floor of the Kolman 
building. Lots of pictures from the missions on the paneled walls, a few awards. 
Winetta Yashevik, employee of the year; Harbison Award for Outstanding Service; 
Appreciation from the United Defenders for contributions to their Toys for Kids 
program. And there were pictures of dig sites. I recognized the collapsed towers at 
Ilybrium, but the others were just people standing around excavations. 

“We could have gone back,” I said. “We could have stripped the place clean.” 

She stared at me intensely for a moment, then relented. Windy was tall, dark, 
send-in-the-cavalry. She’d trained originally to be an archeologist, and had some field 
experience. She had a lot of good qualities, but she wasn’t someoneI’d have put in a 
position that required diplomacy and tact. “How’d you find it?” she asked. 

“The archives.” 


A water clock in a corner of the room made a gurgling sound. “Incredible,” she 
said. 

“There’s something else,” I said. “We found a corpse. A woman.” 

“Really? You mean anold corpse?” 

“Yes. It looked as if she was left behind when they cleared out.” 

“No idea why? Or who she was?” 

“None.” 

“We’ll look into it when we get there. Maybe we can turn up something. I don’t 
suppose you brought it back with you?” 

I hesitated. “We put it out the airlock.” 

Her eyes closed, and she stiffened. “You putwhat out the airlock?” 

“The corpse.” I wanted to say, hey, it wasn’t my idea, it was Alex, you know 
how he is. But I didn’t want her going after my employer and saying how I’d pointed 
the finger at him. 

“Chase,” she said, “youdidn’t. ” 

“Sorry.” 

“Hell of a time for you two to get a conscience.” 

The windows began to darken. Storm coming. It seemed like a good time to 

change the subject. “Alex thinks there are a dozen more of them out there.” 

“Corpses?” 

“Outstations.” 

“As far as we can tell, the Shenji built a lot of them.” People had started 
establishing outstations almost as soon as they’d left the home world. “Listen, Chase: 
If he finds another one, how about letting us take a look first? Before you guys charge 
in.” 

“This one took him the better part of two years.” 

She sighed at the injustice of it all. “We’ve had people devote whole lifetimes 

and come away empty.” 

“Alex is pretty good at what he does, Windy.” 

She got up, walked over to the window, turned her back to it, and half sat against 

the sill. “You want nothing in return?” she asked. 

“No. It’s free and clear.” I handed her a chip. “This is the location. And the 
transfer of all rights.” 


“Thank you. We’ll see that you get full credit.” 

“You’re welcome. I hope you find it useful.” 

She opened a drawer in her desk and put the chip inside. “I’ll have the director 
get back to Alex. Express his appreciation.” 

“That would be nice,” I said. “And by the way I have something foryou. ” I’d 
brought a couple of samples with me, pieces from the life-support system, a section of 
tubing, a filter, and a tiny motor. I took them out of my carrying case and held them 
out to her. Now this is not going to seem like much to the casual reader, but I knew 
Windy, and I watched the tension drain away and saw her eyes light up. She reached 
out tentatively for them, and I put them in her hands. 

She held them, letting the centuries flow through her, then she put them on the 
desk and hugged me. “I appreciate it, Chase,” she said. “You’re okay.” 

“You’re welcome,” I said. 

“But I still think you two are grave robbers.” 

Ten minutes later she was walking me into the office of the director. His name was 
Louis Ponzio. A man of boundless importance. Ramrod straight. Used to giving 
directions. Took himself very seriously. 

He was a little guy, narrow eyes, narrow nose, lots of energy. Always ready to 
shake your hand and take you into his confidence. You and I know how things are, he 
seemed to say. We can trust each other. You always knew when he was in the room. 
And you knew he was accustomed to getting his way. He wasDr. Ponzio. Nobody 
would ever have called himLouie. 

Windy explained about the Shenji platform, and Ponzio smiled and tried to look 
overwhelmed by it all. I didn’t know him that well, but he was a mathematician and a 
political appointment. That was a double whammy. Political appointments were 
inevitably people who were getting paid off. And I’d had several bad experiences 
with mathematicians over the years. Never knew one who could get passionate about 
anything other than sex and numbers. And not necessarily in that order. 

We shook hands all around. Filled the glasses for everyone. He’d always 
admired Rainbow’s efforts. If there was anything he could do, please don’t hesitate. 

I always say that when you do the right thing, you get rewarded. Windy did some 
research and was able to date the outstation a little more precisely than we had, to the 
end of the Imperium years. 

A couple of days later she called me at home in a state of suppressed excitement. 

“I think I know who the victim was.” 

I’d slept late, and was just getting out of the shower. Since I wasn’t appropriately 
dressed, we stayed on audio. “Who?” 

“Lyra Kimonity.” 


“Is she someone I should know?” 

“Probably not. She was the first wife of Khalifa Torn.” 

Ah. Torn I knew. Attila. Bogandiehl. Torn. Three of a kind. He had finished off 
the Imperium, seized power for himself, and ruled four years, murdering millions, 
before his own guards took him out. He had seen no need for the outstations, which 
were simply a drain on the treasury, so he shut them down. 

“Torn liked to sleep with the wives of his staff and officers. Lyra made a fuss.” 

“Ah.” 

“She disappeared.” 

“What makes you think it was her at the outstation?” 

“Most historians think he exiled her. His stooges might have misunderstood his 
intention, because later he changed his mind. Tried to get her back. Or maybe he just 
forgot his original instructions. Anyhow, the person he’d given her to couldn’t 
produce her. When he found out the details of what had happened—the archives don’t 
specify whatthatwas—he executed the people responsible. One of them was” —she 
paused to look at her notes—“Abgadi Diroush. And there was a second one whom he 
personally drowned. Berendi Lakato. Lakato was responsible for shutting down the 
outstations. And Diroush headed up the team that actually did the work. In any case, 
Lyra was never seen again.” 

“Well,” I said, “that’s good news.” 

That startled her.“How do you mean?” 

“Makes the artifacts more valuable. Everybody loves a monster. You don’t think 

he ever visited the station personally, do you?” 

She let me see that she was shocked.“No,” she said,“I don’t think so. He didn’t 
like to travel. Afraid somebody might seize power while he was gone.” 

“That’s a pity.” 

“I sent you a picture of her.” 

I put it on-screen. Lyra had been a red-haired beauty. Big almond eyes. A 
fetching smile. I wondered how she’d gotten involved with Khalifa. And it occurred 
to me it’s not always an advantage to look good. 

“Look at the wrist,”she said. 

I knew what I was going to find: the jade bracelet. And there it was. I could even 
make out the sprig of ivy. 

“Is it the same as the one you found?” 

“Yes.” 

“That confirms it, then.” 


“Yeah.” Lyra was maybe twenty-two when the picture was taken. “How old 
would she have been?” 

“We can’t get it exactly, but she was still young. Twenty-seven, maybe.” 

I thought about her, marooned on the station. I wondered whether they’d at least 
left the lights on for her. 

“Something else,”Windy said.“You brought back a boatload of artifacts, right? 
From the Night Angel.” 

“We salvaged a few items, yes.” 

“I was thinking that we might provide you with some publicity. Help you sell the 
merchandise.” 

“What did you have in mind, Windy?” 

“Why not put the artifacts temporarily in our hands? We could create an 
exhibition at the museum. Put everything on display for, say, a month. I suspect that 
sort of event would enhance their value considerably.” 

“We might consider making some of them available,” I told her. “What do we 
get in return?” 

“I beg your pardon?” 

“You get a Shenji exhibition. What do we get?” 

“Chase, you’re going to get a ton of museum exposure.” 

“I think Survey comes out way ahead on that arrangement.” 

“Okay. I’ll tell you what. Let us have the artifacts, and I’ll let your boss in on 
something.” 

“Nothing up this sleeve,” I said. 

“Hear me out.” 

“What’s the something?” 

“We’re approaching the sixtieth anniversary of the loss of thePolaris.” 

I tossed the towel into a hamper and pulled on a robe. “You alone, Windy?” 

“Yes.” 

I went out to the living room and switched over to visual. She was sitting behind 
her desk. 

“Must be nice to be able to keep those kinds of hours,”she said. 

“I’m paid for what I know.” 

“Of course. I’ve always thought that.” 


“What’s the something you’re prepared to offer?” 

“Next week, to mark the anniversary, several books are being released. A major 
studio production has been put together, and one of the networks even has a psychic 
who’s going around explaining what happened.” 

“Aboard thePolaris? ” 

“Yes.” 

“What’s he say? The psychic?” 

“Ghosts got ’em.” 

“Why am I not surprised to hear that?” 

“I’m not kidding. Ghosts. More or less. Some sort of supernatural fog. Goes 
right through the hull.” 

“Okay.” 

“The guy’s good. He’s got a track record.” 

“I’m sure.” 

“The point is that there’ll be a lot going on about thePolarisover the next couple 
of weeks. We’re doing a banquet, inviting some VIPs, and we’ve been holding off on 
the dedication so we could do everything at once.” 

“The dedication?” 

“A new wing. For thePolaris.” 

“You’re just getting around to it now?” 

She laughed.“You’ll have to ask somebody else about that, Chase. I’ve only been 
here a few years. But, off the record, I suspect it was always a bit too spooky for 
Survey. Seven people vanish off a ship? It was a downbeat story for a long time. I 
don’t think they wanted to remind anybody. Now it’s mostly legend. You know what I 
mean? Anyhow, we’re going to make it into a two-week-long extravaganza. Now what 
I think you’ll be interested in is that we’re going to sell off some Polarisartifacts. At 
auction.” 

“Artifacts?” That was a surprise. “I didn’t know you had any.” 

“They were stored at the time of the event. They’re personal items mostly, slates, 
pressure suits, pens, mugs, you name it. And some gear, but not much.” 

“Why? I mean, why’d they go into storage?” 

“There were a lot of investigations. When the big one was done, the Trendel 
Commission, they sold the ship and probably forgot about the stuff. Or maybe 
somebody thought it’d be worth hanging on to.” 

Artifacts from thePolaris. They’d be worth a fortune. 


“Anyway, we’ll be issuing invitations to the banquet for you and Alex.” 

I couldn’t help a wide smile. “You get access to the Night Angel artifacts, and 
we get an invitation to dinner.” 

She actually managed to look hurt.“It’s not just a dinner. Some of our most 
important supporters will be there. It’ll be very exclusive. It’s going to get coverage.” 

“Windy,” I said, “I tell you what I’ll do. We’ll let you have selected artifacts on 
loan for a month. In return, we get the dinner invitations—” 

“—And?” 

“—We get fifteen of thePolaris artifacts at no cost prior to the auction. We’ll 
take a look and let you know what we want.” 

“You know damned well I can’t do that, Chase. I don’t have that kind of 
authority.” 

“Talk to Ponzio.” 

“He won’t agree. He’d think I’ve lost my mind. So would I.” 

“Windy, do I need to remind you that Survey is getting anoutstation from us?” 

“That was a gift. No strings, remember? You can’t start trying to deal for it 

now.” 

“Okay. That’s fair enough. Not very appreciative, but fair.” 

“Look, Chase, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you first crack at the artifacts. A 
preauction sale. You can take a look at the stuff, and if we can agree on a price, 
you’re in business.” 

“A reasonable price,” I said. 

“Yes. Of course. We wouldn’t try to take advantage of Rainbow.” 

“Windy, you know as well as I do there’ll be an initial explosion in prices, then 
they’ll settle down.” 

“I’m sure we’ll have no problem on that score. But I won’t be able to see my 
way clear to makefifteenavailable.” 

“How many did you have in mind?” 

“Two.” 

Bargaining room. I looked appropriately shocked. “I beg your pardon?” 

“Two. Two artifacts. That’s the absolute best I can do.” 

We went back and forth and finally settled on six. 

After she was off the circuit, I brought up the Memorial Wall in the Rock Garden, 


which is located behind Survey’s administrative center. It’s a tranquil place, a glade, 
with a loud brook, a few stones left over from the last ice age, a wide range of 
flowering plants, and the wall itself. It’s separated from the rest of the grounds by a 
line of galopé bushes, so that you get a sense of being in a forest. This is the memorial 
set aside for those working under Survey’s auspices who have given their lives “in the 
service of science and humanity.” There are more than a hundred names, covering 
almost two centuries, carved into the wall, which is really a series of shaped rocks. 

ThePolaris passengers and their captain are there, of course. Whenever more 
than one person is lost in a single incident, the names are grouped and placed 
alphabetically, with the date. That put Chek Boland at the head. Maddy was listed 
third. There’d been a twelve-year delay before they were officially added to the roll 
call of lost heroes. The ceremony had been, at long last, an official recognition of 
their deaths. A concession. 

Windy had called me on my day off. Afterward, I arranged to meet Alex for lunch. I 
wanted to tell him that we had an inside track for some of thePolaris artifacts, but I 
saw right away that he was distracted. “You okay?” I asked. 

“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.” 

He listened while I explained what the deal was, and he nodded and looked 
pleased. “When do we get to see them?” 

“She’s making an inventory available. Visuals. So we can look at them at our 
leisure.” 

“Good,” he said. “I have something else.” 

“I thought you might.” 

We were in Babco’s, on the Mall. Out back, in the courtyard, overlooking the 
Crystal Fountain. It was supposed to be a mystical place. If you’d lost your one true 
love, you tossed in a few coins, concentrated, and he would come back into your life. 
Assuming you wanted him to. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that Rainbow could expand into a new field. 
Something no one’s ever done before.” 

“And what might that be?” 

“Radioarcheology.” 

“What’s radioarcheology?” I asked. 

“We deal in antiquities. We collect, trade, and sell all kinds of dishware, pottery, 
electronic equipment. You name it.” 

“Right,” I said. 

He looked at me, and his eyes glowed. “Chase, what is anantiquity ?” 

“Okay. I’ll play your game. It’s an object that has an identifiable history. From a 
remote period.” 


“Isn’t that redundant?” 

“Well, maybe. What else did you want to know?” 

“You saidobject. Are you implying that an antiquity has to be physical, in the 
sense of something you can hold in your hands?” 

“Only the ones that lend themselves to selling.” Traditions, stories, customs were 
all antiquities of a sort. 

“Has to be physical for us to sell it?” he said. 

“Of course.” 

“I’m not so sure. I think we’ve been missing something.” 

“How do you mean?” 

Sandwiches and drinks showed up. 

“What about transmissions?” I must have looked baffled. He smiled. “We 
already use radio broadcasts to locate things. That’s the way we found theHalvorsen. 
” 

TheHalvorsen was a corporate yacht whose captain and passengers had died 
back at the turn of the century when the ship was fried by a gamma ray burst. We’d 
found and tracked their Code White. It was a quarter century old by the time we ran it 
down. It was the last transmission, but it gave us a vector. It wasn’t much, but it 
turned out to be enough. We tracked it back, calculated for drift, and there was 
theHalvorsen. Okay, it wasn’t quite that easy, but it worked. 

“I’m not talking about using transmissions to find things,” he continued. “I mean 
collecting them for their own value.” 

I took a bite from my sandwich. It was cheese and tomato. “Explain,” I said. 

He was delighted to oblige. Nothing made Alex happier than enlightening the 
slow-witted. “Six hundred years ago, when the Brok terrorists were trying to bring 
down Kormindel, and it looked as if the entire population was on the edge of panic, 
Charles Delacort broadcast his famous appeal for courage.‘More than our lives are at 
stake, my friends. It is our future through which these lunatics wish to drive a stake. 
We must hold fast, for ourselves, for our children, and for everyone who follows after. 
Generations unborn will remember that we took a stand.’ Remember?” 

“Well, I don’t exactly remember, but I know about it, sure.” At the critical 
moment, Delacort rallied the nation. Today, every schoolkid is familiar with the 
appeal. “I’m still not following.” 

“It’s lost, Chase. The appeal. We don’t have it anymore. We know what he said, 
but we don’t have the actual broadcast. But it’s out there somewhere. We know 
approximately when it happened, so we know where it can be found. What stops us 
from going out, tracking it down, recording it, and bringing it back? Intact. All we 
have to do is get in front of it, and we can recapture one of our great moments. What 
do you think such a recording would be worth?” 


A couple of quegs flapped past, landed in a tree, and turned their attention to the 
fountain. Someone had thrown bread into it. Quegs are not shy. They sat for a minute 
or so, then launched themselves, flew over our heads, splashed down, and began 
feeding. 

“It’s a nice idea, Alex, but a broadcast doesn’t last that long. Not nearly. There’s 
nothing out there to recover except a few stray electrons.” 

“I’ve done some research,” he said. 

“And?” 

“The Delacort Address was forwarded to several off-world sites. That means 
directed transmissions. Not broadcasts. Add the kind of power they used during that 
era, and the transmissions might still be recoverable.” 

“Is there a way to pin down the transmission vectors?” Worlds and bases move 
around a good bit. 

“We have the logs,” he said. “We know exactly when the transmissions were 
made. So yes, it should be possible to work out the direction.” 

I was impressed. It sounded plausible. 

“There’s a lot of history out there,” he said. “Brachmann’s Charge to the 
Dellacondans. Morimba holding the fort against the religious crazies on Wellborn. 
Arytha Mill’s address at the signing of the Instrument. Damn, we don’t even have that 
onewritten down. But it all went out in directed transmissions, and in every instance 
we can nail the time.” 

“We might be able to do it,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever considered the 
possibility before.” 

He looked pleased with himself. “Something else.” 

“Okay.” 

“There’s a lot of entertainment out there, too.” 

“You’re talking about holodrama.” 

“I’m talking about a substantial portion of broadcast arts over the last few 
thousand years. Most of it, or at least much of it, was packaged and forwarded to 
orbitals and ships and everything else. It’s all out there. You want to hear Paqua Tori, 
we can get her for you.” 

“Who’s Paqua Tori?” 

“The hottest comedienne on Toxicon during the Bolerian Age. I’ve heard her. 

She’s actually pretty funny.” 

“Does she speak Standard?” 

“Not hardly. But we can do translations, and keep her voice and mannerisms.” 


“Tastes change,” I said. “I doubt there’ll ever be a wide audience for antique 
comedy. Or drama, or whatever.” 

“Sophocles still plays.” He was all smiles. “As soon as we get thisPolaris 
business taken care of, we’ll look into some antenna enhancement forBelle. ” 

THree 

Antiquities are . . . remnants of history which have 
casually escaped the shipwreck of time. 

—Francis Bacon 

The Advancement of Learning 

We received our invitations to the banquet and auction the day after I spoke with 
Windy. Later in the week, she called again.“Chase, I wanted to let you know we’ve 
put together a reception tomorrow evening. There’ll be some VIPs on the premises.” 

“Okay.” 

“At eight. We’d like you and Alex to come and be our guests. You could look 
over the stock at the same time.” 

“That’s very kind of you.” Alex liked events. Especially something like this. It 
meant free food and drinks. And he’d inevitably come away with a new client or two. 
“Thanks, Windy,” I said. “I’ll have to check with the boss, but I suspect we’ll be 
there.” 

Then she surprised me.“Good. Something like this wouldn’t be complete without 
Rainbow. Come fifteen, twenty minutes early, okay? I’ll meet you in my office. And by 
the way, I’ll need your birth date. And Alex’s.” 

“Why?” 

“Security.” 

“Security?” 

“Yes.” 

“You think we might try to steal the artifacts?” 

“Of course not.”She arched an eyebrow.“You wouldn’t, would you?” And then 
a grin.“No. It has nothing to do with that. But I can’t talk about it.” 

“Why not?” 

The eyebrow went up again.“I can’t tell you that, either.” 

ThePolaris, of course, was old news. It had happened long before I’d been born, and 
the story had an unreal aura about it. It almost suggested the existence of a 


supernatural power out there somewhere, something capable of invading a sealed ship 
before an alarm could be sent. Something able to shut down the AI. A force that stole 
humans for purposes of its own. It sounded too much like a fable, like something that 
had happened outside history. I had no more idea what might have occurred on board 
than anyone else did. But because the events as reported seemed to defy explanation, 
I was convinced that the report was in some way simplywrong. That something had 
been left out. Or added in. Don’t ask me what. 

I’d done some boning up on the incident after Windy told me about the auction. 
Aside from the disappearance of the people inside, there was something else that was 
very odd. When Miguel Alvarez went on board, the AI was not operating. ThePolaris 
had sustained no damage, hyperlight communications worked fine, and all systems 
were functional, except that the AI was down. It appeared, Alvarez testified during 
the hearings, that it had simply been turned off. Tests indicated it had stopped 
functioning within minutes after that last transmission had been sent.Departure 
imminent. 

Alex had also become interested. Usually, his juices only got flowing when there 
was money to be made. But thePolaris was something different. He commented that 
shutting down the AI eliminated the sole witness the investigators might have had. He 
wanted to know how one did that. How did you turn off an AI? 

“The easiest way,” I said, “is simply to tell it to shut itself off.” 

“You can do that?” 

“Sure. It’s done all the time. The AI records everything that happens on the 
bridge, in storage, and in the engine compartment. And maybe one or two other areas. 
If you want to have a conversation on the bridge, but you don’t want a record kept, 
you tell it to shut down.” 

“How do you turn it back on?” 

“Sometimes there’s a key word. Sometimes a switch.” We were standing on the 
porch outside the Rainbow office, which was located on the ground floor of Alex’s 
country house. It was raining, a cold, driving rain that beat against the trees. “But 
that’s not what happened on thePolaris. ” 

“How do you know?” 

“If you tell an AI to deactivate, it retains a record of having received the 
direction. When thePolaris AI was turned back on, a few minutes after Alvarez had 
boarded, it recalled no such instruction. That means somebody disconnected it 
manually.” 

“Is there any other possibility you can think of? Anything that might account for 
the shutdown?” 

“A power failure would do it. Ships are required to have backup power sources, 
but those regs aren’t enforced now, and probably weren’t enforced in 1365. But we 
know nothing like that happened, because thePolaris was still powered up when 
thePeronovski reached her.” 


“So how do you explain it?” 

“Somebody physically turned it off. Disconnected one of the circuits. Then he, 
or she, must have reconnected it later, because everything was where it should be 
when thePeronovski found them.” 

“You’re telling me that if they reconnect, that doesn’t start up the AI 
automatically?” 

“No. You have to use the enabling switch.” 

“Why would an alien force go to the trouble to do that?” 

“Well, the theory about the alien force is that it just threw up a field of some sort, 
and that shut her down.” 

“Is that possible?” 

“I guessanything’s possible. If you have the technology.” 

After locating thePolaris, thePeronovski had stayed in the area three days but 
found nothing. A salvage vessel arrived several weeks later and brought thePolaris 
home. After an intensive examination produced no explanation, Survey mothballed 
her, pending future investigations. In 1368, the ship was sold to the Evergreen 
Foundation. They changed its name to theSheila Clermo. 

I talked with Sabol Kassem, who’d made a study of the case. Kassem was at 
Traeger University in the Sunrise Islands. He’d done his doctoral thesis on thePolaris. 

“According to the archives,” he told me, “people riding theClermo were 
‘uncomfortable’ aboard her. Didn’t sleep well. Heard voices. There were reports of 
restless electronics, as if Madeleine English and her passengers were somehow 
trapped inside the control units. Marion Horn rode on the ship while he was in the 
process of making his architectural reputation, and he swore he always had the feeling 
he was being watched.‘By something in pain.’ And he added,‘I know how that 
sounds.’ ” Kassem was seated on a bench in front of a marble facade, on which was 
engravedTRUTH ,WISDOM ,COMPASSION . He looked amused. “The most famous—or 
outrageous—claim came from Evert Cloud, a merchandising king who was one of 
Evergreen’s top contributors. Cloud claimed to have seen a phantasmic Chek Boland 
standing by the lander. According to Cloud, the spectre pleaded with him to help it 
escape from thePolaris. ” 

When I passed all that on to Alex, he was delighted. “Great stories,” he said. 
“They’ll do nothing but enhance the value of the artifacts.” 

Sheila Clermo, by the way, was the daughter of McKinley Clermo, the longtime 
guiding force behind Evergreen’s environmental efforts. She died at fourteen in a 
skiing accident. 

Jacob put together a pictorial history of Maddy English. Here was Madeleine at age 
six, with ice cream and a tricycle. And at thirteen, standing with her eighth-grade 
class in the doorway of their school. First boyfriend. First pair of skis. Maddy at 
eighteen, playing chess in what appeared to be a tournament. Jacob found a partial 


recording ofDesperado, in which, during high school, she played Tabitha, who loved, 
alas, too well. 

He showed me Maddy at flight school. And at Ko-Li, where she qualified for 
superluminals. There were dozens of pictures of her certification, standing proudly 
with her parents (she looked just like her mother), celebrating with the other 
graduates, gazing over the training station just before her final departure. 

I knew the drill pretty well. I’d been through Ko-Li myself, and, though it has 
evolved and adjusted during the seventy-odd years since it counted Maddy among its 
graduates, it is still, in all the ways that matter, unchanged. It is the place where you 
are put to the test and you discover what you can do and who you are. 

It’s fifteen years since I went through, and I grumbled constantly while I was 
there. Two-thirds of my class flunked out. I understand that’s about average. The 
instructors could be infuriating. Yet my time there set the standard for me, for what 
I’ve come to expect of myself. 

I’m not sure any of that makes sense. But had I not graduated from Ko-Li, I 
would be someone else. 

I suspect Maddy felt the same way. 

There was a picture of her with a middle-aged man at Ko-Li. They were standing 
in front of Pasquale Hall, where most of the simulations were conducted. 

The man looked very much like Urquhart! 

“As an adolescent,”said Jacob,“she was something of a problem. She hated 
school, she was rebellious, she ran off a couple of times, and she got involved with the 
wrong people. There were some arrests, and her parents could do nothing with her. 
Urquhart met her when he toured a juvenile incarceration facility. They were already 
talking about a partial personality reconstruction. He was apparently impressed by 
something he saw in her, persuaded the authorities he’d take responsibility for her. 
And he did. It was a bumpy ride, but he got her through high school. A few years later 
she completed her degree work, and eventually he got her the appointment to Ko-Li.” 

He ran a clip. Maddy on a ship’s bridge being interviewed for a show to be 
presented at the Berringer Air & Space Museum:“I owe everything to him,” she said. 
“Had he not come forward, God knows what would have happened to me.” 

The Department of Planetary Survey and Astronomical Research was a 
semiautonomous agency, one-quarter supported by the government and the rest by 
private donation. In an age when disease was rare, the great majority of kids had two 
parents, and everybody ate well, there were few charities for those who enjoyed 
helping out, which seems to be a substantial fraction of the population. Makes me 
hopeful for the future when I think about it. But the point is that social conditions 
meant there was lots of money available for kids’ athletic associations and research 
organizations. Of those, none was quite as visible or romantic as Survey, with its 
missions into unexplored territory. There are tens of thousands of stars in the Veiled 
Lady alone, enough to keep us busy well into the future. And, if the history of the last 
few thousand years is any indication, we’ll probably keep at it indefinitely. It’s 
always been an effort that engages the imagination, and you never really know what 


you might find. Maybe even Aurelia, the legendary lost civilization. 

Survey was controlled by a board of directors representing the interests of a 
dozen political committees and the academic community and a few well-heeled 
contributors. The chairman, like the director, was a political appointee, rotated out 
every two years. He, or she, had a nominal scientific background but was primarily a 
political animal. 

Survey’s administrative offices occupied six prime acres on the north side of the 
capital, along the banks of the Narakobo. Its operational center was located halfway 
across the continent, but it was in administration that policy decisions were made, 
where the missions were approved, and the choices taken as to where they would go. 
It was where technical personnel were recruited to man the starships and researchers 
came to defend their proposals for missions. There was also a public information 
branch. The latter was the unit Windy worked for, the people who were running the 
auction. 

Survey had moved its headquarters about three years earlier from a battered 
stone building in center city to its current exclusive domain. Alex liked to think it had 
something to do with a resurgence of interest in heritage, sparked by his work on the 
Christopher Sim discoveries; but the truth was that a different political party had 
come to power, promises had been made, and real estate is always a good showpiece. 
But I’d never tell him that. 

As requested, we showed up fifteen minutes early and were conducted into Windy’s 
office by a human being rather than the avatar that usually got the assignment if you 
weren’t somebody they especially cared about. Windy was in a white-and-gold 
evening gown. 

I should comment that Alex always knew how to dress for these occasions, 
and—if I may modestly say—I looked pretty good myself. Black off-the-shoulder 
silk, stiletto heels, and just enough exposure to excite comment. 

I got a knowing smile from Windy, who made a crack about the hunting 
available that night. Then she was all innocent modesty while Alex fondled her with 
his eyes and told her how lovely she looked. 

The office was illuminated by a single desk lamp. She might have turned up the 
lights, but she didn’t. Everybody looks more exotic when you can’t see too well. 
“Who gets the proceeds?” Alex asked, when we’d settled into chairs. “From the 
auction?” 

“Not us,” she said. 

“Why not? Where’s it go?” 

“Survey is funded by the Council.” 

“I understand that. But thePolaris was Survey’s baby. It’s your equipment. Your 
mission. Anyhow, the bulk of the funding comes from private sources.” 

Windy sent out for a round of drinks. “You know how it is with government,” 
she said. “In the end, they own everything.” 


Alex sighed. “So what’s the occasion for the party? Who’s in town?” 

She had a malicious smile for that one. “The Mazha.” 

He did a double take. 

I probably did, too. “He’s a thug,” I said. That got me a warning glance. Don’t 
make waves. 

The Mazha was the ruler of Korrim Mas, an independent mountain theocracy on 
the other side of the world. It was one of those places that never changed, that hung 
on generation after generation no matter what was happening around it, that 
steadfastly refused to seek admission to the Confederacy, largely because they 
couldn’t meet the democratic requirements. 

They believed that the end of the world was imminent and that the claim that 
humans had originated elsewhere was a lie. They denied the existence of the Mutes, 
insisting there were no aliens, and if there were, they wouldn’t be able to read minds. 
The population lived reasonably well except that some of them disappeared from time 
to time, and nobody ever criticized the authorities. It was the oldest continuing 
government on Rimway. It had always been an autocratic state of one kind or another, 
its people apparently incapable of governing themselves. Every time they got rid of 
one dynasty, another bunch of gangsters took over. 

“He’s a head of state,” Windy said. She waited for a response, got none, and 
went on. “He’ll be arriving shortly. When he gets here, they’ll show him to the 
director’s suite in Proctor Union. We’ll be there, along with the other guests. And, if 
he’s not averse, we’ll wander over and say hello.” 

“Good of him,” I said. “What ifI’m averse?” 

Alex sent another cease-and-desist signal. “Why are we involved?” he asked. “Is 
he here to see the artifacts?” 

“Yes. And to be seen at a Survey event.” 

I commented that I thought he didn’t believe that starships existed. 

“You’ll have to askhim about that.” She grinned, refusing to take umbrage. I 
knew her pretty well, and she would have skipped it herself had she been able. But 
Windy’s loyal. And she liked her job. “Actually, Alex, he’s heard of you. When the 
director mentioned you’d be here, he asked explicitly to be introduced.” 

The drinks arrived. A sea spray for Alex, red wine for Windy, and dark cargo for 
me. Windy raised her glass. “To Rainbow Enterprises,” she said, “for its unwavering 
efforts in the search for truth.” 

That was a little bit much, but we played along. I guess we needed a change of 
subject anyhow. I drank mine down and would have liked a refill, but I wasn’t sure I 
wanted to slow down my reflexes on a night when I was going to meet the most 
murderous individual on the planet. 

The bureaucratic workings, however, made the decision for me. A second round 
arrived. And I took the lead this time: “To the passengers and captain of thePolaris, 


wherever they are.” 

Alex drank his down, then stood, examining the glass. “I assume we’ve given 
up. Is there any kind of effort at all still being made to find out what happened?” 

“No.” Windy drew the word out. “Not really. There’s an ad hoc committee. But 
it’s not going anywhere. They’ll respond if anything turns up. And every once in a 
while somebody writes a book, or does a show on it. But there’s no concerted effort. I 
mean, Alex, it’s been a long time.” She put her glass down. “When it happened, they 
sent the entire fleet out there. To Delta Karpis. They searched everywhere. Checked 
everything they could think of for light-years in all directions.” 

“With no result whatever?” 

“Zip.” 

“Was there never any indication at all,” I asked, “what might have happened?” 

“No. They never found anything.” She glanced down at a bracelet. “We better 
get going. He’s on the grounds.” She got up and opened the door for us. 

I hesitated. “I’m not sure I want to socialize with this guy,” I said. 

Alex was on his feet, straightening his jacket. “You don’t have to be nice to him, 
love,” he said. “He’s not going to be interested in us.” 

Windy stood by the doorway. “I understand how you feel, Chase. I’m sorry. I’d 
have warned you, but they swore us to secrecy. There are too many people around 
who’d like to kill him. The Mazha.” Through her windows, I could see a pair of 
skimmers coming down onto the grounds. “But I’d be grateful if you came. You’ll 
brighten the place up.” She smiled. “And how often do you get to meet a bona fide 
dictator?” 

“That’s a point.” I glanced at Alex. 

“It’s all in the interests of diplomacy and science,” he said, pushing me gently 
before him. 

FOUr 

Everyone should have an opportunity to party with a 

tyrant. Inevitably, he dances well. 

—Tasker LaVrie 

The artifacts were in the auditorium on the ground floor of Proctor Union, one level 
down from the director’s suite. Proctor Union is a large, rambling structure, part 
administrative offices, part museum, part conference center. It was located beyond the 
western loop of the Long Pool, which was actually an elongated figure eight, the 
infinity symbol. 

Ordinarily we could have descended from Windy’s office and gone directly 


through a connecting corridor, under the waterway, but everything was closed off as a 
security measure. So we bundled up and went out through the front door. Windy led 
the way. The night was damp and blustery, and the moon was a luminous blur in a 
churning sky. The people loose on the grounds had their heads bent and were 
hurrying along. No casual strollers that night. 

We crossed the Long Pool on one of its several bridges. There was no sign of the 
quocks, which usually flocked there at this time of year. 

Windy pulled her coat tightly around her. “A lot of VIPs will be here,” she said. 
She began rattling off names and titles. Senators and judges, CEOs, and lawyers. 
“The movers and shakers of this town.” Meaning, of course, since Andiquar was the 
world capital, movers and shakers on a very large scale. “When they heard the Mazha 
was coming, they all wanted to join the party.” 

These were the same people who’d be attacking him and talking about morality 
on the talk shows the next day. I didn’t say anything. Just kept walking. 

“There won’t be a large crowd, though,” Windy continued. “The invitations went 
out at the last minute.” 

“Security again?” asked Alex. 

“Yes. His guards don’t like long-range plans.” 

“I guess not.” 

Proctor Union was the administrative center of the complex, designed with a 
swept-back, ready-to-launch appearance. Rooftops rolled away in several directions, 
but all were angled to give the impression that the structure was aimed at the far side 
of the Narakobo. The river itself, visible through a line of trees, was dark and 
brooding. There was something unsettling about that night, some whisper of 
approaching catastrophe that was getting mixed up with the elements. 

Two of the Mazha’s security guards were standing silent and watchful outside 
the front entrance. You couldn’t have mistaken them for anything else. Their clothes 
weren’t quite right, although they must have been trying to blend in. But a thug is a 
thug. Their eyes swept across us, and one whispered into a bracelet. Perfunctory 
smiles appeared as we approached, and somewhere in the strained silence we 
identified ourselves and received permission to proceed. 

“I don’t guess,” said Alex, keeping his voice low, “they think we’re very 
dangerous.” 

“You were preapproved,” Windy said. We climbed the twelve marble steps onto 
the portico. 

Doors opened, and we went into the lobby. We got rid of our wraps, turned into 
the main corridor, and saw that the event had already spilled out into the passageway. 
A couple of guests saw us, sawWindy, and came over to say hello. Windy did 
introductions, and we traded small talk before moving on. 

“Iam surprised,” said Alex, “that he’d be here, of all places. Doesn’t a facility 
dedicated to science compromise his religious position?” 


“I think it’s just a role he plays,” she said, “for the folks back home. He couldn’t 
be that stupid and hold on to power.” 

A couple of people who I assumed belonged to Windy’s office were recording 
everything. “But they’ll see all this,” I said. 

“There’ll be a different story in Korrim Mas. The faithful will hear how he came 
to stand up to the infidels.” She laughed. “Mustn’t take these things too seriously, 
Chase.” 

Blue-and-gold bunting decorated the walls. “His national colors?” asked Alex. 

“Yes.” 

We turned through a set of double doors into the reception room. There were 
maybe thirty people inside, glasses in hand, enjoying the evening. I recognized a 
couple of senators, and the executive science advisor, and several academics. And, of 
course, Dr. Louis Ponzio. 

He broke away from the group he was with and came over, letting us see how 
pleased he was that we’d arrived. “Alex,” he said, offering his hand, “good to have 
you on board for the occasion. Did Windy tell you about our guest?” 

“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” said Alex. 

He obviously couldn’t remember who I was, although he pretended to. Windy 
reminded him as surreptitiously as she could. “His Excellency is especially anxious to 
meet you both,” he said. 

I didn’t know about Alex, but I was pretty sure I’d feel just as happy if His 
Excellency had no clue who I was. Or where I could be reached. “Why is that?” Alex 
asked. 

“He approves of the work you’ve done. You shook the historical establishment 
to its roots a few years ago. You provided him with ammunition.” 

Alex frowned. “Forgive me, Dr. Ponzio, but I’m lost. Ammunition to do what?” 

“To demonstrate to his countrymen that acquired knowledge is a slippery thing. 
That one can never be too sure of what the facts really are. It fits in with his position 
that they are best off if they simply rely on the sacred scriptures. And on him.” He 
must have seen how Alex was taking all this because he laughed and clapped him on 
the shoulder. “It’s all right, Alex. Had it not been you, it would have been someone 
else. Eventually the truth would have come out. You can’t hide things forever, you 
know.” A brunette in green and white raised her hand slightly, caught Ponzio’s eye, 
and nodded. “He’s here,” the director said. Immediately, the noise in the room 
subsided, and people moved toward the walls and faced the entrance. 

We heard doors open and close. Then voices filled the corridor. And laughter. 

The Mazha swept into the room like a tidal wave. Three or four aides and a couple of 
security people accompanied him. The other guests fell back, regrouped, and finally 
moved tentatively forward. Dr. Ponzio was, as far as I could tell, the only person there 


who stood his ground. He offered a polite smile and a bow to the dictator. “Your 
Excellency,” he said, “it’s an honor to meet you. We’re delighted to have you with us 
this evening.” 

I’d seen his picture, of course. But pictures don’t always prepare you for the real 
thing. I was expecting him to look like Dracula. But it didn’t turn out that way. 

He was shorter than I’d expected. Not quite average height. Black hair, clean-
shaven. He looked a little heavier in person. He wore a white jacket and dark gray 
slacks. Medals and ribbons clung to the jacket, and a red sash was folded over his 
right shoulder. 

He returned the director’s bow, said something I couldn’t hear, and offered a 
hand. Ponzio clasped it with great respect and let go quickly. 

Celebrity gets you forgiven for anything. Here was a guy with blood on his 
hands, whole tubs of it, and he was being welcomed like somebody who’d just made a 
major medical contribution. 

His propaganda machine always claimed that his victims were killers and rebels 
who wanted to destabilize Korrim Mas. Or the Faith. That they were the worst kind of 
miscreants. That they were extremely dangerous, and that they thought nothing, if 
given the opportunity, of shedding innocent blood. The Mazha had no choice but to 
send them, however reluctantly, to the Almighty. It might have been less cruel to use 
mind-wipe technology, but there was a religious prohibition against that. 

After a while, he advanced on us, turned to me, mentally licked his lips, and took 
my hand. I could see that he knew precisely what I was thinking and that he didn’t 
care. He had the gaze of a sixty-volt laser. “Ms. Kolpath,” he said, bowing slightly. 
“It is always a pleasure to meet one so beautiful. And talented. I understand you are a 
pilot.” He actually sounded sincere. And damned if the son of a bitch couldn’t make 
himself likable. 

Already he knew more about me than Dr. Ponzio did. “Yes,” I said, trying not to 
wilt under the attention, trying not to say it was really nothing, anybody could pilot a 
superluminal. There was something about this guy that made you want to abase 
yourself. “I’m responsible for theBelle-Marie, Rainbow’s corporate vessel.” 

He nodded. His next comment was directed at Alex, but he kept me squarely in 
his sights. “Lost in the sky with one so lovely,” he said. “It takes the breath away.” He 
considered the sheer rapture of it all. “And I must say,” he continued, “that it is an 
honor to meet the man who wrung the truth from the stars.” So help me, that’s exactly 
what he said.“. . . Wrung the truth from the stars.” And if you’re thinking none of 
this sounds much like Dracula, I’d agree. He wasn’t tall. Wasn’t overbearing. Wasn’t 
quietly sinister. None of the stuff you normally associate with intimidation. And he 
wasn’t intimidating. I kept thinking he seemed like the sort of guy you’d want to have 
over for dinner. “I understand,” he said, with a bare trace of an accent, “that you have 
recently scored still another coup.” Someone put a glass of wine in his hand. 

“The Shenji outstation,” Alex said. “You are quite well informed.” 

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Would that it were so.” He raised the glass. “To the 
outstation. And to the man who engineered its recovery.” He barely sipped the wine, 


held it out without taking his eyes from Alex, and let go of it. An aide was on the 
spot, made the save, and handed it off to someone else. “We are indebted to you, Mr. 
Benedict.” 

“Thank you, Excellency.” 

My pulse was up, and I was thinking that being lost in the sky with this guy 
would not be the way I wanted to spend a weekend. And yet— 

“I would have preferred,” said the Mazha, still looking at Alex, but speaking to 
me, “that we might have the opportunity to spend some time together. Unfortunately, 
at the moment I have obligations.” 

“Of course,” said Alex, who saw exactly what was going on and made points 
with me by not volunteering anything. 

Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit flustered by all the attention. I found 
myself imagining how it would feel to be in his arms, on a moonlit balcony 
overlooking the sea. To make the situation complete, Windy looked annoyed. I had 
the feeling she was staring straight into my head. 

“Perhaps, Alex, you might find your way clear to visit me in the Kaballahs.” The 
chain of mountains that was home to Korrim Mas. “And when you do I hope you will 
bring your beautiful associate with you.” His eyes found me again. 

“Yes,” Alex was saying. I suspected he was having a hard time suppressing a 
smile. But he looked absolutely correct. “I’d like very much to do that when occasion 
permits.” And, to me: “Wouldn’t we, Chase?” 

I was standing there like a dummy, wondering why I’d been running around with 
Harry Lattimore. But that’s another story. “Yes,” I said, with more enthusiasm than 
I’d intended. 

“Good.” The Mazha turned to an aide. “That’s settled then. Moka, get contact 
information.” 

And he was gone, headed toward a group of politicians, which opened to receive 
him. Moka, who was a giant, collected Alex’s code, smiled politely, and rejoined the 
dictator. 

I should mention that, although I can hold my own with other women, nobody’s 
going to mistake me for a former beauty queen. Nevertheless, during the next few 
minutes, those eyes rotated back to me several times. Reflexively, despite everything, 
I returned a smile. Couldn’t help it. Alex watched the byplay and made no effort to 
conceal his amusement. “Caught your heart, has he?” he asked. 

The Mazha seemed right at home. Whatever else he might have been, he was a 
consummate politician. He had a broad, warm smile for everyone. If I’d met this guy 
on the street, my first impression would have been that he was a thoroughgoing 
charmer, in the best sense of the word. Since that night, I’ve never entirely trusted my 
judgment. 

Meantime we circulated. There was much shaking of hands and a flood of 
introductions. Let me present the commissioner of the waterworks. And this is 


Secretary Hoffmann. And Professor Escalario, who did the dark matter work last 
year. Jean Warburton, who’s special aide to the chief councillor. Dr. Hoffmann, the 
official record holder as the person who has traveled farthest from the Confederate 
worlds. 

Windy took us aside before we went into the exhibition room. “Alex,” she said, “the 
Mazha will probably be buying some of the artifacts, too.” 

“Anyone else?” 

“No.” 

“You’re kidding? All this political clout walking around, and you’re not letting 
them in the door?” 

“The media will be at the auction tomorrow.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t 
think anybody here, other than you and probably the Mazha, really cares about the 
artifacts themselves. What they want is to get their pictures taken during the bidding, 
contributing money to a popular cause, then probably giving the item itself to a 
museum back home. We told them there’ll be lots of press coverage tomorrow. That’s 
what they want.” 

“That surprises me.” 

“They’re all political critters, Alex. One way or another.” 

The Mazha had an appetite for liquor, and he loved a good laugh. You could 
hear him throughout the hour or so that we wandered around the reception room and 
the lobby, chuckling, unrestrained, his eyes illuminated. I began to suspect I’d get an 
invitation before the evening was over. His security detail strolled about with glasses 
in their hands, but I don’t think they were drinking anything hard. 

Then, with a bit of fanfare, Windy’s people got everyone’s attention and opened 
the doors to the exhibition hall. We looked in at a series of long tables supporting 
hundreds ofPolaris items, articles of clothing, pressure suits, cups, glasses, spoons, 
boots, and an array of electronic devices. There were a chess set, game pieces, 
playing cards (with the ship’s insignia embossed on their backs), and even a crystal 
containing musical recordings made by Tom Dunninger. (A data card stated that 
Dunninger had been an accomplished musician.) Most of the items were sealed inside 
display cases, each accompanied by an inventory number. 

The walls were hung with banners portraying Maddy English and her 
passengers. There was Nancy White tromping through a jungle somewhere, and 
Warren Mendoza bent over a sick child. Martin Klassner sat beside a sketch of a 
galaxy. Garth Urquhart talked with journalists on the steps of the capitol. Chek 
Boland was done in silhouette, apparently deep in contemplation. Maddy was in full 
uniform, gazing serenely out across the room. Finally, Tom Dunninger, in a print of 
the famous painting by Ormond, standing in a graveyard at night. 

The Mazha, leading the way, paused to take it all in. Then he glanced back at 
Alex. Obviously, he’d been briefed about who else was enjoying the benefits of the 
preauction special. 


Once in the room, he turned his attention exclusively to the items on display. 
Other people, for the most part, laughed and talked in his wake, paying little attention 
as they filed past the tables. But he walked slowly, absorbing everything that lay 
around him. Occasionally he spoke to an elderly aide, who nodded and, I thought, 
recorded his comment. Or perhaps the catalog number. 

Some of the items were imprinted with names. A light gray shirt was marked 
with the initialsM.K., and a carryall wore a metal tag readingWHITE . The ship’s 
jumpsuits were dark blue, withPolaris shoulder patches. Each patch contained the 
ship’s registry, CSS 117, and its logo, a single star set above an arrowhead. Three of 
them were available, with the namesWarren, Garth, andEnglish stenciled in white 
letters above the right-hand breast pocket. The captain’s own jumpsuit. “What do you 
think?” Alex asked me. 

“It’s just the thing,” I said, mentally checking off a client. “Ida would be 
thrilled.” 

He signaled Windy. She complimented him on his taste, used her card to open 
the display case, and removed the jumpsuit. She handed it to a young man standing 
nearby. He placed it in a container, and we moved on. 

The Mazha signaled that he would take Urquhart’s suit. “The ship’s emblem is 
clever,” he said to no one in particular. When one of the politicians trailing in his 
wake asked him to explain, he looked surprised. “Polaris was Earth’s north star at the 
beginning of the age of expansion, Manny,” he said. “Thus the lone star. And, of 
course, the compass needle started out as a metal bar and gradually morphed into an 
arrow.” 

So much for religious fervor. 

There was a jacket with a pocket patch readingDUNNINGER , a comm link with 
Boland’s initials, and a paper notebook with Garth Urquhart’s name on the brown 
leather cover. 

Several pressure suits had been hung near the wall. One of them readCAPTAIN 
across the left breast. Madeleine’s gear again. Maddy, as she was known. A certified 
interstellar captain, single, beautiful, everything to live for. Where had she gone? 

Alex was studying a gold chain bracelet withNANCY engraved on the connecting plate. 
“How much?” he asked Windy. She consulted her inventory. Enough to buy a good-
sized yacht. He turned to me. “For Harold,” he said. “What do you think?” 

Harold was one of Rainbow’s charter clients. He’d become a friend over the 
years. He was a good guy, but his tastes were limited. He liked things that sparkled, 
things he could show off, but he had no real sense of historical value. “It’s lovely,” I 
said. “But I think you could make him happy for a lot less.” 

“You underestimate him, Chase.” He signaled Windy that we’d take it. “He has 
the gavel that was used in the first trial in his hometown. And he owns a circuit board 
from the Talamay Flyer.” The first overwater antigrav train in the Parklands. The 
Flyer had made its initial run more than three hundred years ago between Melancholy 
Bend and Wildsky. The trip was still a subject of legend, a race against Suji bandits, a 


cyclone, and, finally, an apparently lascivious sea serpent. 

Windy passed the bracelet to the retainer and Alex decided the time had come to 
negotiate for more selections. “Winetta,” he said, “I have several people who would 
love to have items from this collection—” 

She looked pained. “I wish I could help, Alex. I really do. But the agreement is 
six. I’m not authorized to go any farther.” 

“We’re more than willing to pay fair prices, Windy. I shook hands with your 
dictator. And Chase made a play for him. That should be worth something.” 

She pressed her lips together, imploring him to keep his voice down. “You have 
my gratitude, Alex. Really. And you, too, Chase.” That seemed below the belt. “But 

there’s no negotiating room.” 

“You could say you had to make the commitment to get me over here.” 

“Look.” She sighed. “I’ll toss in an extra one. Make it seven. But that’s all.” 

“Windy, look at all this stuff. Nobody’ll ever miss it. I need twelve pieces. You 
have enormous influence here, and it would mean a lot to me.” He actually managed 
to look downcast. I knew the routine. I’d seen him in action too often. He was good. 
He always made you feel sorry for him. “How many times have I spoken to audiences 
here about the Christopher Sim thing?” 

“A lot,” she admitted. 

“Have I ever declined an invitation?” 

“No,” she conceded, “you haven’t.” 

“Have I ever charged a korpel?” 

“No.” 

“It must all have been volunteer work?” 

“Yes, Alex, it was all volunteer work.” 

“You bring other speakers in at a hundred per. Benedict does it free.” 

The reason for that, of course, was that Benedict saw his appearances at Survey 
as an important channel for meeting and impressing prospective clients. Windy’s eyes 
slid shut. She was no dummy, and she knew the routines, too. But she didn’t want to 
offend him. 

“You run the place, Windy. Everybody knows that. Whatever decision you 
make, Ponzio will go along with.” 

“Nine,” she said, finally. “And so help me, Alex, that’s it.Fini. Completo. ” 

“You’re a hard woman, Winetta.” 

“Yes, we can all see that.” 


He smiled. “We’ll try to get by. And thanks. I’m grateful.” 

She looked at him sidewise. “When I get fired, Alex, I hope you can find room 
for me at Rainbow.” 

“Windy, Rainbow will always have a place for someone with your talents.” 

There were countless items, tableware, safety goggles, VR bands, towels, washcloths, 
even a showerhead. 

“Windy,” I said, “where are the ship’s logs?” 

She looked around, checked her pad. “Over in the corner.” She indicated the rear 
of the room. “But we’re holding them back.” 

“Why?” 

“Actually, we’re not putting everything up for sale. We’re saving a few items for 
thePolaris exhibition.” 

It turned out they were withholding some prime stuff. In addition to the logs, 
there was Martin Klassner’s leatherbound copy of Sangmeister’sCosmology, with 
comments penned in the margins, many of them believed to have been done during 
the flight (according to the data card); Garth Urquhart’s notes, which had allowed his 
son to complete the memoirs of his political years, published a decade after his 
disappearance asOn the Barricades ; and Madeleine English’s certification for 
interstellars. There was also a picture of the pilot and her passengers taken on the 
space station just prior to departure on that final flight. Copies of the picture, a data 
card said, would be available in the gift shop the next day. Alex picked up a glass 
imprinted with the ship’s seal. It was long-stemmed, designed for champagne. For 
celebrations. “How do you think this would look in the office?” he asked. 

It was gorgeous. Arrowhead. Star.CSS 117. “You could never drink from it,” I 
said. 

He laughed. The glass went into the container, and we moved on. 

He found a command jacket that he liked. It was Maddy’s, of course, blue and 
white, with trimmed breast pockets and aPolaris shoulder patch. He asked my opinion 
again. 

“Absolutely,” I said. 

He turned to Windy. “Why weren’t the personal items returned to the families?” 

We’d stopped beneath the banner depicting Nancy White. Even in that still 
image, she was a woman on the move, her eyes penetrating the jungle, while she 
listened, perhaps, to the rumble of a distant waterfall. “Quite a woman,” said Windy. 

“Yes. She was.” 

“The personal stuff was retained during the investigations. But they went on for 
years. Until recently, they’d never really stopped. At least not officially. I guess 
Survey just never got around to giving the stuff back. The families probably forgot 


about it after a while, or lost interest, so it just remained in storage.” 

“What would happen if the families came forward now?” 

“They no longer have a claim. They get seventeen years, after which the items 
become Survey’s property.” She looked down at a pendant. “Another reason they 
weren’t anxious to return this stuff was the possibility it might be contaminated in 
some arcane way. With a virus or maybe a nano.” 

“A nano that makes people disappear?” 

She softened. “What can I tell you? I wasn’t there. But they must have been 
desperate for some kind of answer. They put everything into safekeeping, assuming 
that eventually something might be needed. I don’t guess it ever happened. They even 
sterilized the hull, as if a plague might somehow have caused the problem.” 

“And eventually they sold the ship.” 

“In 1368. To Evergreen.” Windy sounded unhappy. “Evergreen got a bargain 
price. ThePolaris became theSheila Clermo, and last I heard she was still hauling 
engineers and surveyors and assorted VIPs around for them.” She smiled and checked 
the time. Got to move on. “Now,” she said, “what else would you like to look at?” 

We picked up a leather-bound Bible with Garth Urquhart’s name on the inside 
title page. And a plaque commemorating the eight earlier missions of thePolaris. 
Koppawanda in 1352, Breakmann in 1354, Moyaba in 1355. That was a Mute world. 
Or at least, it was in their sphere of influence. 

“They thought they’d found a white hole,” said Alex, reading my mind. 

Windy smiled. “Nowthat would have been earthshaking.” But they don’t exist. 
Theoretical figments. White holes sound good, sound like something that should be 
there because they’d add a lovely symmetry to cosmic processes. But the universe 
doesn’t pay much attention to our notions of esthetics. 

Other destinations were listed, all places they’d named as they arrived, usually 
after one of the passengers. Sacarrio, whose sun was going to go supernova within the 
next ten thousand years; Chao Ti, once thought to be a source of an artificial radio 
signal; Brolyo, where a small settlement had taken root and prospered. The mission 
durations had extended as long as a year and a half. 

I was headed toward a notebook, which, according to the attached certificate, 
had belonged to Nancy White. Its contents, to respect her privacy, had been deleted. 
That, of course, considerably reduced its value. But it was good to know there was 
still some integrity in the world. Alex lowered an eyebrow and went instead for a 
vest. It was the one Maddy could be seen wearing in some of the pictures from the 
flight. “Priceless,” he said, shielding the remark from Windy. 

“That’s seven,” I told him. 

Before we’d arrived, he’d remarked that the items connected with Maddy would 
be especially valuable. I had my doubts. “She was carrying celebrities,” I told him. 
“Historical figures.” 


“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The captain is the tragic figure in this. Add to that 
the fact that she’s beautiful.” 

“White looked pretty good.” 

“White didn’t lose her passengers. Take my word for it, Chase.” 

He’d always been right before on such matters. So we added one of her uniform 
blouses (there were two available), and paused over a dark green platinum etui 
decorated with flowers and songbirds. It came with a certification that it had been the 
personal property of Madeleine English. Alex picked it up and opened it. Inside were 
a pen, a comb, a wallet, a string of artificial pearls, a set of uniform bars, and two 
pairs of earrings. “This all included?” he asked Windy. 

She nodded. “It had cosmetics in it, too,” she said. “But they were rotting out the 
interior.” 

They agreed on a price that I thought was high, but it was a nice package, and 
Alex smiled benignly, the way he did when he wanted you to think he’d paid too 
much and was already having regrets. He gave it to Windy, and she handed it over to 
the aide, who showed us that we’d used up our allotment. 

We wandered through displays of furniture and equipment across the back of the 
room. The captain’s chair, a conference table, display screens, even a vacuum pump. 
VR gear. But these kinds of items, except the chair, were impersonal and would 
provoke less interest. 

“You got the pick of the lot,” Windy said. She looked as if she meant it. 

When we left, the Mazha was in the process of examining a wall plaque depicting the 
ship’s schematic. “How many ishe getting?” I asked. 

She cleared her throat. “They didn’t put a limitation on him.” 

“That doesn’t seem fair.” 

“He’s a head of state.” She allowed herself a smile. “When you take over a 
government, we’ll do the same for you.” 

We headed finally into an adjoining room, followed by the young man with the 
case. He wasn’t much more than a kid. Nineteen, at most. While Windy tallied up the 
bill I asked him where he was from. 

“Kobel Ti,” he said. West coast. 

“Going to school here?” 

“At the university.” 

While we talked, Alex transferred payment. The aide told me how happy he was 
to have met me, made a self-conscious pass, and handed over the items. I decided it 
was my night. 

Windy gazed down at the case and asked whether we wanted her to have it sent 


over to the office. “No,” Alex said, “thanks. We’ll take it with us.” 

I noticed the Mazha leave the exhibition room, surrounded by his people, and 
pass quickly into the corridor. He looked worried. 

We were starting for the exit when a security guard appeared in midair. A 
projection.“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said,“we’ve received a warning that there 
may be a bomb in the building. Please evacuate. There is no cause for alarm.” 

Of course not. Why would anyone think there was cause for alarm? Suddenly I 
was being swept along by Alex. He had me in one arm and the container in the other. 
Windy, trailing behind us, called out that she was sure there was a mistake 
somewhere. Who would put a bomb in Proctor Union? 

It became a wild scramble. The exit was through a doorway that would 
accommodate no more than three people at a time. A few of the less mobile ones went 
down. Alex told me gallantly to have no fear, and when we stopped to try to help a 
woman who had fallen, the crowd behind us simply pushed us forward. I don’t know 
what happened to her. 

“Stay calm,”the projection was saying. Easy enough for him. He was probably 
in another building. 

The crush in the passageway was a nightmare. People were yelling and 
screaming. I was literally carried through the front door without my feet touching the 
ground. We exploded out onto the portico. Alex briefly lost the case, and he risked 
getting trampled to retrieve it. 

Security officers kept us moving.“Please stay well away from the building,” 
they were saying.“Keep calm. There’s no immediate danger.” 

Nobody needed persuading. The crowd was scattering in all directions by then. 

The security force directed the flow toward the bridges across the Long Pool. 
But they’d already jammed up as we came down the stone steps. So they changed 
tactics and moved the rest of us across the face of the buildings, out past the wings. I 
noticed Ponzio ahead of me. Windy, to her credit, was one of the last people to come 
out through the doors. And she barely got clear before Proctor Union shuddered and 
erupted in a fireball. 

FiVe 

These watches and books and blouses are all that are 
left of the lives of their owners. It is the reason they are 
precious, the reason they have meaning. In most 
cases, we do not know the details of the person whom 
they served. We do not know what he looked like, or 
what color his eyes were. But we know he lived as 
surely as you and I do, that he bled if injured, that he 
loved the sunlight. One day, in another spot, others 
may congregate to gaze in awe at my shoes, or the 


chair in which I will sit this evening. It is why such things 
matter. They are simultaneously the link that binds the 
generations, and the absolute proof, if we needed it, 
that someone lived here before who was very much like 
ourselves. 

—Garth Urquhart, 
from the dedication of the Steinman Museum 

The warning had come just in time. It helped that everything in the place was flame-
resistant, so after the initial blast there was no fire. Nevertheless, it was a bad 
moment. The blast knocked us all off our feet. Hot debris rained down on us. A big 
piece of something hissed into the Long Pool, and a statue of Reuben Hammacker, 
one of Survey’s founding fathers, was decapitated. 

Emergency vehicles arrived within minutes and began picking up the injured. 
Other units showed up and sprayed water or chemicals on what remained of Proctor 
Union. A large cloud of steam formed overhead. I heard later that the Mazha was 
bundled into his skimmer and lifted away within seconds. We didn’t know what kind 
of condition he was in, but at that point no one was thinking much about him. 

The building was demolished. A smoking ruin. My first thought was that there 
had to be ten or twenty dead. We staggered around in a kind of daze. Everyone was in 
shock. I’d twisted a knee at some point during the panic and collected a couple of 
burns. Nothing major, fortunately, but it hurt. Alex complained that his jacket was 
torn, something I really needed to hear. He seemed otherwise okay. When I got 
myself together I went looking for Windy. But the place was boiling with confusion, 
people wandering around screaming and crying, searching for friends, trying to figure 
out a way to get home, asking one another what had happened. 

I couldn’t find her, although I found out later she was okay. Knocked down by 
the blast, but she came away with a few cuts and bruises and a broken ankle. One of 
the rescue workers corralled me and asked if I was all right and when I told her I was 
fine she insisted on looking in my eyes and the next thing I knew I was being loaded 
into a skimmer along with several others, and we were hauled off to a hospital. 

They did an exam and told me everything was superficial, don’t worry, gave me 
some painkillers, and suggested I have someone come get me. 

Alex had followed the emergency vehicle, and he came to my rescue. While he 
filled out the forms, I talked on the circuit with a trim, blond, impeccably dressed man 
who identified himself as an agent from the NIS. Wanted to ask about the explosion. 
What did I recall? 

“Just the bang,” I said. 

“You didn’t see anyone suspicious?”He was good. He operated in low key, and 
he seemed sympathetic. 

“No.” 

“Areyouokay, Ms. Kolpath?” 

“Just bumps and bruises,” I said. 


“Good. Did you happen to notice whether anyone left early?” 

What the hell. “We were all leaving a bit early.” 

“I mean before the warning.” 

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t have noticed. I wasn’t really paying attention.” 

Alex signed me out of the casualty ward. They insisted on putting me in a 
wheelchair, and helping me get to the pad, where I was loaded into the company 

skimmer. 

“Assassination attempt?” I asked. 

“That’s what they’re saying.” 

“That’s pretty vicious,” I said. “They were prepared to take out all those people 

just to get him.” 

“Don’t be too harsh on them. The guy needs killing.” 

“ButI don’t.” 

“Look at it this way, Chase. It’s a major break for us.” 

I must have stared at him. “Have you lost your mind, Alex?” 

“Think about it a minute. Rainbow now owns the only surviving artifacts from 

thePolaris. Other than the ship itself.” 

“Well, good for us.” 

We lifted off the rooftop, turned west, and headed for my place. “I’ll take you 

home. Then, if you want, I’ll get us something to eat.” 
It was late, well after midnight, but I suddenly realized I hadn’t had much dinner, 

and, in spite of everything, I was hungry. “That sounds good,” I said. 

“Take the next couple of days. Stay off the knee until you’re feeling okay.” 

“Thanks. I will.” 

“You can conduct any business that comes up from your place.” 

“You’re the world’s greatest boss.” 

He smiled. “Kidding.” 

We passed over Lake Accord. I saw a boat down there, lit up, having a party. 

“All that security,” I said. “I wonder how they got the bomb past the guards.” 

“They didn’t have to. Whoever did it planted it in the storage area. On the lower 
floor, under the auditorium. The media are saying they came in the back way.” 

“They didn’t have the back sealed off?” 


“Apparently not. They’d blocked off the stairways. You could get into the lower 
floor, but you couldn’t get up to the auditorium. As it turned out—” 

“—It didn’t occur to anyone somebody might bomb the place?” 

He fought back a yawn. “When’s the last time you heard of anybody bombing 
abuilding? Withpeople in it?” 

“Do we have any idea who’s responsible?” 

“I’m sure they know. How many people in Andiquar want to kill the Mazha?” 
We were approaching the far shore of the lake. He lapsed into silence. I’d taken one 
of the painkillers at the hospital, and a feeling of general euphoria was settling over 
me. 

We started down. 

“There were several bombs,” he said. 

“Several?” 

“Four, they think. Whoever did it was taking no chances on missing the Mazha.” 

“Except that the police found out before the blast.” 

“They got a call.” 

“Damned lucky. If the things had gone off three minutes earlier—” 

“They were planted directly under the exhibition area.” 

“Isn’t this the second assassination attempt against him?” 

“Third.There’ve been three in the last six months.” 

Ponzio sent flowers, his regrets, and best wishes for my speedy recovery. The 
message was handwritten, which, of course, isde rigueur on these occasions. He was 
happy to report that no one had been killed, although there were a few serious 
injuries. 

At about the same time, Survey announced that the entirePolaris collection had 
been destroyed. Reduced to rubble. That wasn’t quite true, of course. Alex had the 
nine artifacts we’d purchased. 

I got checked by my doctor, and the brace came off a couple of days later. The 
burns were gone by then, so I was feeling pretty good. Alex came by with dinner, and 
we talked a lot about crazy people with bombs, and how no doubt I could return to the 
office in the morning. 

That evening, after Alex had left, I received a call from Windy. She was still 
hobbled, but she assured me she’d be fine, told me she’d heard I’d been carted off as 
well, and wondered how I was. 

“Just a bent knee,” I said. “It’s okay.” 


“Good. I hope you managed to salvage your purchases.” 

“Yes. Fortunately, we got everything out.” 

“Glad to hear it. Thank God something survived.”She looked genuinely 
relieved. 

“It’s a major loss,” I said. “I hope when they catch these people they hang them 
up by their toes.” I knew that when they were caught we’d wipe their minds and 
reconstruct their personalities. I’ll confess I was never a fan of letting criminals off 
like that when they did horrendous stuff. The bombers, whoever they were, tried to 
kill the Mazha and had no compunctions about blowing up a lot of strangers because 
they were standing too close to the target. I was in favor of taking them up a few 
thousand meters and dropping them into the ocean. But, of course, that’s not civilized. 
It seemed grossly unfair to respond to what they did by giving them a couple hundred 
and a fresh start. Which is what mind wipes amounted to. 

“I understand completely, Chase.”Long pause, which told me this was about 
more than the state of my health.“I wonder if we might talk about the artifacts for a 
moment.” 

“Of course,” I said. “The media are saying everything was destroyed.” 

“Unfortunately, that’s correct.” 

“I’m sorry to hear it.” 

“Yes. It’s thrown a wrench into our plans.”She was in her office, behind a desk 
covered with folders, chips, books, and paper. A sweater had been laid across it. She 
was getting ready to go home. I was the last piece of business for the day.“Chase,” 
she said,“you understand that the situation has changed dramatically.” 

“I beg your pardon.” 

“Survey would like to buy back the artifacts we sold Rainbow. To return your 
money. With a generous bonus.” 

“Windy, I don’t really have authority to return them. They don’t belong to me.” 

“Then I’ll talk to Alex.” 

“That’s not what I mean. We’ve promised them to clients.” 

She hesitated.“You know we were planning a Polarisexhibit. A full-scale model 
of the ship’s bridge. Avatars. People would be able to sit and talk with Tom 
Dunninger, or Maddy English, or whomever. We had the Urquhart holo, Last Man 
Standing.Some of the Nancy White programs. Actually, a lot of planning and 
preparation has gone into it.” 

“And without a few artifacts, you don’t think it’ll work.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Windy, I doubt the artifacts would make all that much difference. But I’ll pass 
your request along to Alex. I’m pretty sure, though, he’ll feel compelled to decline. I 


think you’re underestimating the public. Set the exhibition up the right way, get your 
PR people on it, and it’ll do fine.” 

I could see that she’d not expected anything more. She simply nodded.“I’m glad 
you’re feeling better, Chase,” she said, and blinked off. 

And we had better not need any more favors from Survey. 

Over the next few days, several of the Mazha’s countrymen living locally were 
rounded up and questioned, but no arrests were made. It was Andiquar’s worst 
criminal act in living memory. For the first time in my life, people were calling for a 
return to the death penalty. The public’s blood was up. We needed to send a message. 

The Mazha’s government apologized and promised to send money to the victims 
and underwrite reconstruction of Proctor Union. I was surprised to receive a call from 
the Mazha himself, now safely back in his mountain retreat (or maybe not so safe). 
He’d seen my name among the injured. Was I healing well? Would I recover 
completely? 

It was an odd feeling, to sit there on my sofa, in my own living room, talking 
with the world’s most feared human being.“I wanted to apologize for the imbecility of 
the would-be assassins,” he said.“They lack a basic sense of decency.” 

“Yes,” I said. 

“We tried to be careful. But one can never be certain about the lengths to which 
these fanatics will go.” 

“I know. You’re absolutely right, Excellency.” 

“Be assured, Chase, that we know who is behind this, and we are in the process 
of seeing to it that they will harm no one else.” 

“Yes. Good. I’ve no sympathy for them.” 

“As you should not.”He was in a leather chair, wearing black slacks and a white 
pullover. A gold chain hung around his neck, and he wore a gold bracelet on his right 
wrist. He looked quite dashing.“But I’m pleased to discover that your injuries are 
superficial.” 

“Thank you.” 

“I was worried.” 

It occurred to me I hadn’t inquired about him. “You look well, Highness. I 
assume you were not harmed?” 

“No. Thank you. I came away untouched.”The wall behind him was filled with 
books.“I wanted to extend an invitation to you and to Alex to visit Korrim Mas as my 
guests. We have excellent accommodations, and I can assure you that you would find 
it an enthralling experience.” 

Okay. I know what you’re thinking. That I was sitting there making nice with a 
guy who does mass executions and runs torture chambers. But he’d been polite tome, 


so I found it impossible to say what I really thought. I told him I appreciated the offer, 
but that I was soon to be married, and that I was unfortunately quite busy. I 
considered suggesting that, after the ceremony, my husband and I would be delighted 
to accept his kind offer, but it occurred to me he might say yes, by all means, let’s 
have both of you to my mountain retreat. 

“May I ask whether the fortunate man is Alexander?” 

“No,” I said. “My fiancé is a person I’ve known for a long time.” 

“Excellent.” 

“He’s a good man.” Dumb. 

“Well, Chase,”he said,“please accept my best wishes for a long and happy 
future. And congratulate the lucky groom for me.” 

“I will. Thank you.” 

“I’ll arrange to extend the invitation again, perhaps when life settles down a 
bit.” 

Rainbow had some decisions to make. We’d taken orders from nine clients and come 
away with a total of nine artifacts. If that sounds like good planning, it wasn’t. Two, 
the command jacket and the glass, were reserved for the office. Of the remaining 
seven, Nancy White’s gold bracelet would go to Harold Estavez. Maddy’s blouse was 
headed for Marcia Cable, a longtime and valued client. And her jumpsuit was 
earmarked for Ida. Vlad Korinsky, a philosophy professor at Korchnoi University, 
would get the plaque, with its history of prior missions. Maddy’s etui and its assorted 
contents would go to Diane Gold. That left only Urquhart’s Bible and the vest to be 
divided among the four remaining aspirants. 

“We have an obligation to keep our commitments,” I told Alex. “You have 
enough for everybody. Forget about keeping stuff ourselves.” 

“Ilike the idea of having some of it in the office,” he said. “Reminds us what 
we’re about.” 

“Of course it does. But that’s not the point.” 

I could see he was not going to be moved. “There’s really no compelling reason 
to give it up, Chase. Everybody knows what happened. We have forty messages 
telling us our clients are glad we walked away okay. Nobody even knows, except a 
couple of people at Survey, that any of the artifacts survived.” He was sitting by the 
window, drinking something that reflected the sunlight. “So that’ll be the reason we 
have to disappoint a couple of them. They’ll get over it. Hell, they’ll appreciate the 
fact that we were almost killed trying to fill the order. We’ve already taken care of 
five of them. It seems to me it’s easy enough to assign the Bible and the vest, and call 
the two who are left to pass along our apologies. Couldn’t possibly have foreseen 
anything like this, terrible waste of excellent merchandise, thanks for your interest, 
sorry we couldn’t oblige, maybe next time, et cetera.” 

“And what happens the next time they call the office and see Maddy’s jacket 


framed on the wall? Or the glass?” 

“That’s simple enough. We’ll put them both out of visual range.” 

“Isn’t that defeating the purpose of having them here?” 

He cleared his throat. “We’re just determined to throw up roadblocks this 
morning, aren’t we?” 

After we decided how the artifacts would be distributed, he made the calls 
himself to the two who weren’t getting anything. I’ll give him that. I’ve worked for 
people who wouldn’t have hesitated to saddle the help with delivering the bad news. 
He called from the living room, seated on his sofa, the view of the Melony behind 
him. (He traditionally did things that way. I called from the office; he called from the 
sofa.) And he was good. He described the carnage, how horrified he’d been, how 
unfortunate that so much had been lost. He phrased everything carefully and told the 
truth, more or less. (Because he knew that eventually the truth would come out.) He’d 
managed to rescue a handful of objects, but unfortunately not the one he’d earmarked 
for the client, blah, blah, blah. He hoped next time that we’d all be more fortunate. 
And he would, of course, find a way to make it up. 

It’s okay, Alex, both clients said. Not to worry. I know how these things can be. 
Thanks for trying. 

When he’d finished he flashed a satisfied smile at me. I told him I was 
embarrassed for him. That earned another grin, and he turned the pleasant task of 
notifying the successful aspirants over to me. 

I called each, described the event, and showed the prizes to their new owners, the 
captain’s vest to a laughing Paul Calder, the plaque to a stoic but obviously delighted 
Vlad Korinsky. 

The vest was accompanied by a mounted picture of Maddy wearing it. Calder 
raised a fist in triumph. He’d wanted to pilot interstellars, but he suffered from 
defective color vision and could never qualify. It’s a foolish requirement, actually, 
because corrective action can be taken, but the rules say your eyes have to meet the 
standards on their own. 

Diane Gold beamed when I showed her the etui. We couldn’t have done better, 
she said. Gold was an architect, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but one with 
whom I suspect no man would want to live. She gave a lot of directions, always knew 
a better way to get things done, and started wearing on you five minutes after she 
walked in. She was personally angry with the bombers, who might have destroyed her 
etui and, incidentally, could have killed me. “Death’s too good for them,” she said. 

The Bible went to Soon Lee, a book collector and a wealthy widow who lived on 
Diamond Island. Marcia Cable wasn’t home when I called, but she got back to me, 
breathless, within the hour. 

“You got a uniform blouse,” I told her. “Maddy’s.” 

I thought she was going to collapse. 

The most melancholy moment came when I showed Ida Patrick the jumpsuit. 


She listened and swayed a little and asked what else had been in the exhibition. 
“Glasses and books,” I said. “Flatware and jackets. There were two other jumpsuits.” 

“Whose?”she asked. 

“Urquhart’s and Mendoza’s.” 

I could almost feel her physical presence in the room. The color drained from her 
face, and I thought for a moment she might be having a heart attack.“And they were 
destroyed in the bombing?” 

“Yes.” 

“Barbarians,”she hissed.“Don’t have enough common decency to do the 
assassination responsibly. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, Chase.” 

In its own way, each of the artifacts was intriguing, and I enjoyed having a chance to 
spend time with them while preparing them for shipment to their new owners. The 
one that was most fascinating was Garth Urquhart’s Bible. It had gold trim, was well-
worn, and it pages were filled with notes that were sometimes mournful and 
invariably incisive. Urquhart, whose public persona had suggested a relentlessly 
optimistic man, showed some doubts about where we were going. In Genesis, beside 
the passage, “Be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and 
multiply therein,” he commented:We’ve done that. Resources soon will start to 
become scarce. But it’s okay. At the moment we have what we need. Our children, 
however, may be another matter. 

That was a fairly bleak appraisal. But there was a degree of truth to it. Toxicon 
and Earth and a couple of other Confederate worlds were suffering from crowding. 

I spent an hour or so with it, and, had I been able to keep one of the objects, that 
would have been my choice. 

Some of his comments were sardonic. “I am going the way of all the earth,” from 
the Book of Joshua, was accompanied by his scrawled notation,As are we all. 

“His family,” Alex said, “didn’t really want him to make the flight because they 
thought it was dangerous. Deep space, unknown country.” 

“He should’ve listened.” 

“Originally there were only to be two ships going to Delta Karpis. Then 
somebody at Survey, apparently Jess Taliaferro, the operations chief, got the idea of a 
VIP flight. Send out a few people who had made extraordinary contributions. 
Recognize their accomplishments by providing the show of a lifetime.” 

“It must have seemed like a good move at the time,” I said. 

“They had people come in for the launch and make speeches. They even had a 
band.” 

“How old was Urquhart?” 

“In his sixties.” Still relatively young. “He had one son.” 


In Ecclesiastes, “Be not righteous overmuch,” Urquhart had written, 

All things, even virtue, are best in moderation. 

“He served two terms on the Council,” said Alex. “One of the best we had, 
apparently. But he was defeated in 1361. It seems he wanted people to stop having 
babies.” 

I showed him the passage inGenesis. 

Alex nodded. “I’m not surprised. He was concerned about unrestrained 
population growth. You don’t see it here, of course, but there are a lot of places that 
have serious problems. He grew up destitute in Klymor. His closest boyhood friend 
developed anemia and never really recovered, his mother died in childbirth when he 
was four, his father drank himself to death. Read his autobiography when you get a 
chance.” 

And St. Luke: “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.”A caution to authors. 
And politicians. 

In the Book of Ruth, he’d marked her famous promise:Whither thou goest, I will 
go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. . . . Under the circumstances of his 
disappearance, an eerily appropriate line. 

“He made a lot of enemies in his time,” Alex said. “He didn’t like special 
interests. He couldn’t be bought. And he apparently couldn’t be intimidated.” 

“Sounds as if he should have been chief councillor.” 

“He was too honest.” 

I was still turning pages. “Here’s another one from St. Luke: ‘This night thy soul 
shall be required of thee.’ ” He’d underscored the passage but left no comment. I 
wondered precisely when he’d done that. 

“One of his biographers,” said Alex, “quotes him as telling Taliaferro that 
having the opportunity to watch a sun get destroyed had forced him to think how 
different the scales were between human and cosmic activity. Given time, he’d said, 
who knew what Delta Kay might have produced?” 

SiX 

We have a clear obligation to Madeleine English and 
her six passengers to seek the truth and not to rest until 
we find it. 

—From the founding documents of thePolaris 
Society 

Garth Urquhart had piqued my curiosity. I looked through the record and watched 
him in action during his years as a senator and later on the Council, watched him 


campaign for himself and for others, watched him accept awards for contributions to 
various humanitarian efforts, watched him lose an election because he refused to 
budge on principle. 

In 1359, six years before thePolaris, he’d been invited to address the World 
Association of Physical Scientists. He’d taken advantage of the opportunity to sound 
a warning. “Population continues to expand at a level that we cannot absorb 
indefinitely,” he said. “Not only here, but throughout the Confederacy. At current 
rates of growth, Rimway will be putting a serious strain on planetary resources by the 
end of the century. Prices for food and real estate and most other commodities 
continue to rise while demand increases. But there’s a limit, and beyond that limit lies 
catastrophe. We do not want to repeat the terrestrial experience.” 

It hadn’t happened. Technological applications in agriculture and food 
production had combined with a growing tendency to keep families small. The so-
called ‘replacement’ family had become the norm not only on Rimway, but through 
much of the Confederacy. The general population had increased, but by no more than 
two or three percent. 

If he was wrong in his predictions, Urquhart was nevertheless an able speaker. 
He was persuasive, passionate, self-deprecating. “Too many babies,” he’d said. “We 
need to slow down a bit. And let nature catch her breath.” 

Corporate Rimway had wanted a growing population precisely because it 
brought rising prices. And they’d gone after him with a vengeance. “Urquhart Doesn’t 
Like Children!” became the battle cry of his opposition in 1360. Organizations like 
Mothers Opposed to Urquhart arrived on the scene. He refused to back down, and he 
was beaten. 

My kind of guy. 

I shipped everything off to the new owners, except the vest and the etui. Calder and 
Gold lived nearby and preferred to come to the Rainbow office to pick up their prizes. 

Under the circumstances, Alex could have renegotiated the prices with his 
clients. Everything had multiplied several times in value as a result of the attack. But 
he charged only his cost plus the usual commission. Ida responded with a bonus that 
didn’t begin to cover the new value of the jumpsuit. Alex tried to refuse it, but she 
insisted. “We did the right thing,” Alex commented afterward. “We held no one up 
even though the opportunity was there, and nobody would have blamed us.” Of 
course, Rainbow’s demonstrated integrity wouldn’t hurt its reputation in the least. 

Marcia Cable sent us a recording of herself appearing on a talk show in her area, 
showing off Maddy’s blouse. She was literally glowing. 

Meantime Alex found some assignments for me and sent me off around the 
globe to represent the company in a couple of auctions, to do some negotiating with a 
few Neeli who had found some curiosities in the Neeli Desert, and to fill in for him at 
the annual World Antiquities Convention. I was gone ten days. 

When I got back, I heard there’d been talk that Survey would make an effort to 
restore some of the artifacts damaged in the explosion. But there’s an odd thing about 
antiquities and damage. If you have, say, a vase that’s been scorched by a laser, and it 


happened during the useful days of the vase, it might actually enhance the value of the 
object. Especially if we know whose troops were firing the lasers and who was 
holding the vase. There’s nothing quite so priceless as a pistol that came apart while 
its heroic owner, say Randall Belmont, was using it to fend off the Hrin during the 
Last Stand. (The pistol exists, as you probably know, but I doubt there’s enough 
money on the planet to buy it.) 

But inflict the damageafter the object is recovered from the soil, maybe by a 
careless archeologist cutting too close to it, and the value does a crash dive. 

So the attempt went nowhere. Shortly after the restoration rumor first surfaced, 
Survey announced that it was abandoning the effort. And a few days later, the entire 
lot of mangled pieces was sold for a song. 

Harold Estavez was delighted with White’s bracelet. 

He was tall, solemn, a man for whom a smile seemed painful. An initial 
impression suggested he’d never learned to enjoy himself during a long life. He was 
overcast and gloomy, always awaiting a storm that never arrived, convinced the worst 
would happen. Alex told me that Estavez felt he’d lost the one great love of his life. I 
suspected every other woman in the area would have bolted as well. 

“Sorry to hear about it,” I said. 

“A half century ago. He never got over it.” 

However that might have been, I had the pleasure of watching him light up when 
he received the bracelet. 

He called us as soon as the box arrived, and he unwrapped it in our presence. 
Until that moment he didn’t know precisely what he’d gotten. (He’d shushed me 
when I tried to tell him what we were sending.) But his eyes went wide when he saw 
gold. And wider still when he saw the engraved name on the bracelet. 

Nancy. 

By that time, we were getting calls from all our clients, almost everyone on the 
list. Everybody was interested in thePolaris. They’d all heard we’d salvaged some 
artifacts. Was there perhaps a piece available? 

Terribly sorry, we told them. Wish we could oblige. 

I was glad we kept the jacket and the long-stemmed glass. Alex told me he’d 
intended to get something for me, too, and if I liked the glass, he’d be willing to part 
with it. But I could read the nonverbals. He wanted me to decline. I’d have loved to 
have it at home in my den. But better, I thought, was to have the boss feeling indebted 
to me. So I told him it was okay, keep it, think nothing of it. I’d see it every day 
anyhow. He nodded, as if he were doing me a favor by retaining it. 

The ship’s registry number, CSS 117, had been retired ten years after the 
incident. No future vessel would ever be so designated. Nor, I suspected, would there 
be anotherPolaris. The people who name superluminals aren’t superstitious. But why 
tempt fate? 


Alex bought a lighted display case for the jacket, which went into a corner of the 
office, near a cabinet and away from the imager. I folded and refolded it until it 
looked the way it should, with Maddy’s name (which was sewn over the left-hand 
breast pocket) visible. We closed and locked the case, and stood for a minute or two 
admiring our new possession. 

But where to put the glass? We needed a place where it couldn’t be knocked 
over and wouldn’t get dusty. And where there’d be at least a degree of security. 

Bookshelves were built into two of the walls. There was also a Stratemeyer 
antique bookcase, a half century old, that Alex had inherited from his uncle. It had 
glass doors and could be locked. “Yes,” he said. “It’s perfect.” 

Not exactly. We had to move it out of range of the imager, so we found 
ourselves rearranging most of the furniture in the office. But when we were done, it 
looked good. 

Alex stood back to admire the arrangement, opened the bookcase doors, made 
room on the top shelf, and handed the glass to me to do the honors. 

Later that afternoon I got a call from Ida.“Check the news on sixteen, Chase,” she 
said.“There’s a weird piece about the Polaris.” 

I asked Jacob to take a look, and moments later a man and woman materialized 
in the office. The woman was Paley McGuire, who was one of CBY’s reporters. They 
were standing beside five packing crates on the dock at Skydeck. A ship’s hull 
protruded into the picture, its cargo doors open. 

“—In orbit around the sun, Mr. Everson?”Paley was asking. 

“That’s correct, Paley. It seemed the appropriate way to handle this.”The crates 
stood higher than he did. But they were, of course, in low gravity. Somebody picked 
one up and carried it through the cargo doors. 

“But what’s the point?”she asked. 

Everson was about twenty-five. If you could overlook his age, he had a scholarly 
appearance, reinforced by a black beard. He was conservatively dressed. Gray eyes, a 
deportment that suggested maturity beyond his years, and the long thin hands of a 
pianist.“In a sense,” he said, “these objects are almost sacred. They should be 
treated with respect. That’s what we’re doing.” 

“Jacob,” I said, “what’s in the boxes? Do you know?” 

“One minute, ma’am, and I’ll review the program.” 

Paley watched another one get hauled away.“How far out will you be going 
before you jettison them?” 

“One doesn’t jettisonthiskind of cargo,” he said.“One releases it. We’ll lay it to 
rest.” 

“Chase,”said Jacob,“the crates contain the debris from the bombing at Survey.” 


“You mean the artifacts?” 

“Yes. What is left of them.” 

“So how far,”asked Paley,“will you go before you release them?” 

“Just to the moon. We’re going to leave Skydeck when it lines up with the sun. 
When the moon lines up with the sun, that is. That’ll happen tonight. About 0300 up 
here. We’ll still be on this side of the moon when we let everything go.” 

“Mr. Everson, I understand the containers will be going into a solar orbit.” 

“Not the containers. We’re keeping the containers. Only the ashes will be 
released—” 

“Ashes?” 

“We thought it appropriate to reduce everything to ashes. But yes, they’ll be in 
solar orbit. Their average distance from the sun will be eleven point one million 
kilometers, which is one percent of the distance they were from Delta Kay when they 
were last heard from.” 

McGuire turned and looked directly at Chase.“So there you have it, folks. A final 
farewell to the seven heroes of the Polaris.Sixty years later.” 

I called Alex in. Jacob patched on the beginning, which consisted of no new 
information, and ran the program again. “You ever hear of this guy?” I asked, when it 
was finished. 

“Never. Jacob, what do you have on Everson?” 

“Not much, Alex. He’s independently wealthy. Born on Toxicon. Has been on 
Rimway six years. Owns an estate in East Komron. He runs a school of some sort up 
there. Morton College. It’s a postgrad school for high-IQ types. Not married. No 
known children. Plays competitive chess. Apparently quite good. And he’s on the 
board of directors of thePolarisSociety.” 

“ThePolaris Society? What’s that?” 

“It’s a group of enthusiasts. Branches around the world. They stage a 
convention in Andiquar every year. It’s traditionally on the weekend after the date 
that thePolariswas scheduled to arrive home.” 

“Which is—?” 

“This weekend, as it happens.” 

I asked Alex offhandedly whether he’d be interested in going. It was intended as a 
joke, but he took me seriously. “They’re all crazy people,” he said. 

Actually, it sounded interesting, and I said so. “They have panels, entertainment, 
and it might be a chance to meet some new clients.” 

He made a face. “I can’t imagine any ofour clients showing up at something like 


that. But you go ahead. Have a big time.” 

Why not? I went to the Society’s data bank and read about them. It didn’t take 
long before I decided Alex was right; they were fanatics. The descriptions of the 
convention made the point: They read pseudoscholarly articles to each other; they 
played games based on thePolaris; they debated the finer points of the incident, 
whether the onboard lander had been disabled (some swore this had been the case); 
whether the AI had been a late substitution for the original system; whether the Nancy 
White who got on board was not the real Nancy White but an evil twin of some sort, 
and the real one had been living all these years in New York. 

They were meeting for three days at the Golden Ring, a midlevel hotel 
downtown. I showed up the first evening, just as they were getting started. 

The Golden Ring is located in the park district. Beautiful area, a patch of forest 
filled with streams, cobbled walkways, fountains, granby trees, and statuary. It was 
cold, and the fountains had been turned off. A brisk wind was blowing out of the 
north. 

I went into the lobby, paid my admission fee, got a badge with my name on it, 
collected a program schedule, and took the elevator up. 

Several meeting rooms had been set aside on the second and third floors, and 
events seemed to be running simultaneously in all of them. I stopped at the bar, 
picked up a drink, and looked around to see if I recognized anyone. Or, maybe closer 
to the truth, if there was anyone who might recognizeme. Walking into a convention 
of this sort is a bit like showing up at a meeting of astrology buffs or the Gate Keepers 
(which, if you haven’t been paying attention, claim to have the truth about the next 
world), or that reincarnation group, Onward. But I was surrounded by strangers, so I 
figuratively pulled up my collar, and stopped outside an open door that saidALIEN WIND 
PANEL . 

There weren’t more than about fifteen people in the audience, maybe a quarter of 
the room’s capacity. But it was early yet; people were still coming in. “The alien 
wind,” one of the panel members was saying, “was more like a gale. It blew through 
the ship. It was able to do so because it consisted of anti-particles. They don’t interact 
with regular particles; therefore, the hull doesn’t present a barrier.” The speaker was 
well along in years, dignified, the kind of guy you might have mistaken for a 
physician, almost persuasive. But I knew just enough science to know he was talking 
nonsense. 

The audience seemed to take him seriously, though. At least seriously enough to 
agree or, in some cases, to try to refute the argument. One energetic woman protested 
vehemently that such a thing could not happen, and the debate wandered into talk 
about electrons and properties of space curvature and momentum. 

The topic was, I thought, appropriately named. I moved down the corridor to the 
next room. 

They were discussing whether one of the human worlds, most probably Toxicon, 
had sent a mission to co-opt thePolaris, grab the passengers, and put them to work in 
a secret project. An elderly woman whom everyone called Aunt Eva pointed out that 
the passengers included two medical researchers, a cosmologist, a science 


popularizer, a politician, and a psychiatrist. The politician and the cosmologist were 
retired. What sort of project would require the services of such a diverse group? 

The answer came back that the kidnappers only wanted Dunninger and 
Mendoza. The neurobiologists. Did the audience know they were working on life 
extension? 

Of course it did. 

Somebody pointed out that the way to find the culprits was to look for a world 
whose politicians had stopped ageing. 

The most popular explanations inevitably involved aliens. It provided an easy 
response to all difficulties. If there was a threatening alien presence, and the ship was 
ready to jump into Armstrong space, why didn’t it do so? Answer: The aliens had a 
device that prevented it. Why didn’t Maddy send a Code White? Same answer. 

What were the aliens up to? There was widespread disagreement. Some thought 
they wanted a few humans to dissect. Others, that they were measuring human 
capabilities. That was why they’d selected this particular mission, with its all-star 
passenger list. That notion led to a whole other line of thought: that the aliens lived 
unknown among us and might take us at any time. That they looked like humans, but 
inside one would find a heart of darkness. 

Some pursued a culinary argument, that the aliens merely wanted to find out 
whether we were digestible. Or tasty. Apparently, judging by the fact there’d been no 
incidents since, we did not suit their palate. 

Dr. Abraham Tolliver read a paper arguing that thePolaris was indeed seized by 
an alien force, that the Confederacy and the Mutes had been aware of the existence of 
this force since pre-Confederate times, that the long on-again, off-again conflict 
between humans and Mutes was a hoax. What was actually happening, he said, was 
that both species recognized the presence of a lethal threat “out there somewhere,” 
and that the war had been trumped up between two allies to mask an arms race that 
would provide for the day when the attackers actually came. 

ThePolaris had its historians as well as its speculators. I wandered into a panel 
titled “Why Did Maddy Become a Star-Pilot?” 

The credit, or the blame, was laid on her father’s shoulders. Maddy was one of 
six kids for whom the bar was set high, for whom no accomplishment was ever 
sufficient to merit praise. The father, who had the unlikely given name Arbuckle, was 
a small-town merchant who was apparently unsatisfied with his own life and 
consequently sought to taste success through his children, three of whom eventually 
needed psychiatric help. 

One panelist thought Maddy had chosen her field in a failed attempt to satisfy 
him. (He was reported to have told her, at the graduation ceremony, that she should 
keep striving, that she could do better.) Another panelist thought she’d done it in 
order to get as far as possible from him. 

Tab Everson was at the convention. He was scheduled to give a presentation, so 
I went. When he was introduced, he received loud applause for having given proper 


disposition to the remnants of thePolaris artifacts. 

He thanked the audience and explained that he had been aboard thePolaris a 
couple of years earlier. “They call it theSheila Clermo now,” he said, “but we all 
know what’s really inside the Foundation trappings.” He talked about Evergreen, 
which specializes in adapting crops and vegetation for use in off-world settlements, 
and in environmental pursuits. He had pictures of the CEO who had bought the ship, 
of the youngSheila, of the interiors, of the ship itself as it left dock on the day he’d 
visited. No theories anywhere, just a tour. He was in fact one of the more effective 
presenters of the evening. 

A young woman on a panel titled The Grand Illusion insisted she’d seen Chek 
Boland less than a year earlier. “It was right here, beneath the statue of Tarien Sim at 
the White Pool. He was just standing there, gazing across the gardens. Last summer. 
Last summer, it was. 

“When I tried to talk to him, he turned away. Denied everything. But I’d know 
him anywhere. He’s older, of course. But itwas him.” 

Then there was the Black Ship session, with four panelists and a crowded room. The 
panelists were described by the moderator as various sorts of experts on thePolaris. 
Apparently all had published something on the subject, which seemed to be the 
prerequisite for being recognized as an authority. 

Each made a brief statement. In essence, two of them maintained therehad been a 
black ship; the others insisted there had not. 

“What’s a black ship?” I whispered to a young man next to me. 

The question seemed to startle him. “The conspirators,” he said. 

“What conspirators?” 

“It’s the ship that took them away. Maddy and the passengers.” 

“Oh. Toxicon again?” 

“Of course not.” He might have been annoyed because I’d become a distraction 
to the quarrel that was breaking out in the front of the room. 

A man who looked and talked like a lawyer had the floor. “The Trendel 
Commission,” he was saying, “ruled that out at the time. During the incident, no 
interstellar was unaccounted for.” 

The idea seemed to be that a small private group, with the connivance of one of 
the persons on board thePolaris, had arrived in the neighborhood and succeeded in 
gaining entry before anyone realized their purpose. The intention was to demand 
ransoms for the return of the passengers. Because of their celebrity, the payoff would 
have been substantial. 

The problem with this theory was that no ransom demand had ever been 
received. But that could be explained, too. The victims were taken aboard the other 
ship, awaited their chance, and stormed the bridge. In the ensuing melee, the black 
ship was damaged and was floating through Armstrong space, where it could never be 


found. An alternate theory was that during the fighting, one or more of the kidnap 
victims had been killed, thereby making it too risky to return the others. Again, there 
was a difficulty with both scenarios: No ship had gone missing during the target 
period. 

A woman wearing a gold scarf was trying to shoot down that objection. “All it 
needed,” she said, “was for somebody to gundeck the data. Damn, why is everyone so 
blind?” 

So the debate went round and round. 

At the height of all this, Cazzie Michaels showed up. He came in and sat down 
beside me, but I didn’t notice he was there until he reached over and tugged on my 
arm. “Hi, Chase,” he said. 

Cazzie was an occasional client. He had a passion for anything that came from 
the preinterstellar period. Which was to say, terrestrial artifacts. There just aren’t 
many of those around anymore. 

I smiled back and, to my horror, he told mewe’d straighten everything out about 
the black ship, and rose to be recognized. The moderator addressed him by name. 

“Frank,” he said, “we have Chase Kolpath with us.” I cringed. “She pilots 
superluminals, and could probably settle some of these questions.” 

“Good.” Frank looked at me and canted his head. Cazzie kept urging me to 
stand, and there was nothing for it but to comply. “Ah,” he said, “is that true, Chase? 
You’re a pilot?” 

“Yes,” I said. To my surprise, I got a round of applause. 

“Chase, help us here. Is it possible to assign limits to where starships can be at 
any given time?” 

“Even with the quantum drive,” I said, “there are limits. But during the period 
you’re talking about, they were much more pronounced. Then, government and 
commercial carriers were required to send movement reports to the controlling station 
every four hours. If a report went missing, alarms went off. So they always knew 
where you were. Private vehicles—and there just weren’t very many of those—could 
participate if they wanted. Some did, some didn’t. 

“So it’s easy enough to rule out the vast majority of the fleet. With the ships that 
are left, you can look at their ports of call and determine whether it was possible for 
any of them to get close to the target area. My understanding about thePolaris 
incident is that Delta Karpis is too far, and the commission was able to eliminate any 
possibility of another ship.” 

The audience stirred. Someone said, “I told you so.” 

One session employed an avatar of Jess Taliaferro, the Survey operations chief who 
had organized the mission. He talked about how pleased he’d been at the opportunity 
to give something back to Klassner and the others, how carefully they had planned 
everything, and how devastating the news had been. 


I was standing beside an elderly couple loaded down with items from the 
souvenir shop. They had books, chips, a model of thePolaris, aPolaris scarf, and 
pictures of Maddy and her passengers. 

I said hello, and they smiled. “I remember when it happened,” the man said, 
trying not to drop anything. “We didn’t believe it. Nobody did. Thought the early 
reports were mistaken. That they’d turn up belowdecks or something.” 

The formal part of the presentation ended. It had been almost over when I 
walked in. “Unfortunate man,” said the woman. 

She meant Taliaferro. “I suspect,” I said, “the experience marked him the rest of 
his life.” 

She had gone gray and seemed frail, yet she possessed a robustness of spirit that 
flashed in her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “Look at what happened to him afterward.” 

“What happened afterward?” I asked. 

Both seemed surprised at the question. “He disappeared, too,” she said. “Never 
got over the shock, I suppose. Two, three years afterward he walked out the front door 
of Survey’s operations center, and nobody ever saw him again.” 

They’d opened the floor for questions, and the audience couldn’t resist asking 
where Taliaferro had gone that afternoon fifty-seven years ago.“It was a bright 
summer day,” the avatar said.“Nothing out of the ordinary had been happening. I 
cleared off my desk, cleared everything,which was unusual for me. So it was obvious I 
knew that would be my last day on the job.” 

“So what happened to you, Dr. Taliaferro?” asked a man in front. 

“I wish I knew.”The avatar had Taliaferro’s personality, and whatever 
knowledge the data systems had been able to load into him, and whatever Taliaferro 
himself had chosen to impart.“But I honestly have no idea.” 

There was a collector’s room, filled with books about the event,Polaris uniforms, 
models, games, pictures of the captain and passengers. And there again was 
Ormond’s painting of Dunninger gazing across the country graveyard. Several dealers 
had lines of clothing emblazoned with the ship’s seal. The most interesting item, I 
thought, was a set of four books certified as being from Maddy’s personal library. I’d 
have expected treatises on navigation and superluminal maintenance. Instead, I saw 
Plato, Tulisofala, Lovell, and Sim’sMan and Olympian. There was more to the lady 
than a pilot’s license and a pretty face. Had the asking price been reasonable, I would 
have picked them up. 

My sense of the convention was that the attendees treated the entire business as a 
means of escape rather than a serious exercise. They weren’t really as caught up in 
the historicalPolaris as they would lead an outsider to believe. Rather, it was a means 
to make the universe a bit more mysterious, a bit more romantic, and maybe a lot less 
predictable than it actually was. I concluded that nobody there really believed in the 
alien wind. But it charged them up to pretend, for a few hours, that it just might have 
happened that way. 


The evening was mostly hyperbole. It was part celebration, part speculation, part 
mythmaking. And part regret. 

SeVeN 

The wind passeth over it, and it is gone. . . . 

—Psalms, CIII 

ThePolaris convention provided just what I needed: a rationale to get away from my 
usual routine and an evening so full of whimsy and nonsense that it became pure 
pleasure. When the scheduled presentations ended, the attendees threw a round of 
parties that extended well into the night. I got home close to dawn, slept three hours, 
got up, showered, and staggered over to the office. It was my half day, and I knew I 
could make it through to lunch. But I hoped nothing would come up that would 
require me to think clearly. 

More calls were coming in, mostly from people outside our regular circle of 
customers, asking whatPolaris artifacts we possessed, querying prices or, in some 
cases, making offers. The word had gotten around. 

The bids were, I thought, on the high side. Even accounting for the loss of the 
rest of the exhibition. But Alex nodded sagely when I reported the numbers to him. 
“They’ll be through the roof before it’s over,” he said. “By the way”—he looked 
innocently at the ceiling but couldn’t restrain a smile—“how’d it go last night?” 

“It went fine.” 

“Really? What did they decide about thePolaris? That the ghosts got them?” 

“Pretty much.” 

“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” He saw that I wanted to ask something. 
“What?” he said. 

“You’re sure you want to hang on to these?” I was talking about the jacket and 
the glass. “We could get a lot for them. Guarantees your bottom line for the quarter.” 

“We’ll keep them.” 

“Alex, this is a period of peak interest. I agree that they’ll go still higher, but 
that’s probably a long time away. In the short term, there could be a falloff. You 
know how these things are.” 

“Keep them.” He walked over and looked at the glass, which was front and 
center in the bookcase. 

Next morning, CBY announced that the Mazha had been assassinated. Apparently by 
his son. With a knife, while the guards watched. 


“Just as well,” Alex commented. “Nobody’s going to miss him.” 

I hadn’t said anything about the call. It was embarrassing to have been a social 
contact of sorts with a monster. But when the news came, I told Alex everything that 
had happened. 

“You must have made an impression,” he said. 

Despite myself, I was sorry for him. 

Alex was a good boss. I was responsible for day-to-day operations, and he left me to 
take care of things without trying to give a lot of directions. He spent most of his time 
entertaining clients and sources, but he always made it a point during the middle of 
the week to pull me out of the office and take me to dinner. 

A couple of days after the convention, we went to dinner at Molly’s Top of the 
World, which is located at the summit of Mt. Oskar, the highest peak in the area. He 
was excited because he’d located an early-German coal stove. The thing was worth a 
fortune, and the owner needed the money and wanted to make a quick sale. Usually, 
we simply put buyers and sellers together, but the price was so good, Alex was 
thinking of buying the unit himself. 

We spent the hour talking about stoves and European antiques. He solicited my 
opinion, and I told him sure, buy it, what can we lose? The decision made, we fell 
into small talk. It was late when we finished, and normally he’d have taken me home, 
but I had work to do, so we rode back to the office. 

The house had originally been a country inn, a solitary structure built atop a low 
rise. It had catered to hunters and travelers until Alex’s uncle Gabe bought it and had 
it refurbished. Alex spent much of his boyhood in it. In those early days it had been 
surrounded mostly by forest. There’s an ancient graveyard just off the northwestern 
perimeter. The markers and the statuary are worn smooth from the centuries. Older 
boys had told Alex the occupants went wandering at night. “There were evenings,” he 
said, “if I was alone in the house, I hid behind a sofa.” That didn’t sound at all like the 
Alex I knew. 

Gabe had fought a long, and ultimately losing, battle against development. He’d 
been something of a fanatic on the subject, and he would not have approved of the 
surfeit of neighbors the house had acquired over the years, or the loss of large 
sections of forest. 

It was a glorious house, four stories and lots of windows overlooking the 
Melony. Furnished in the reserved traditions of the previous century. Rooms 
everywhere, several with VR, another with workout gear, another with a squabble 
table, another for sitting and watching the river go by. Some rooms were held aside 
for visitors, and others were pressed into service to store the occasional pieces of 
other civilizations that Gabe had brought back from his travels. 

It was completely out of sync with the other houses in the neighborhood, which 
were modern, sleek, utilitarian, no space wasted. Practical. Land was at a premium 
outside Andiquar, and you didn’t find many houses that weren’t part of a designed 
community. You’ll understand then that the country house stood out. You could see it 


from a couple klicks away when approaching from the city. Except, of course, at 
night. 

We passed over the Melony, adjusted course, slowed, and drifted down through 
the treetops. 

It was about an hour after sunset. The moon was down, but the stars were out in 
force. The house, and the landing pad, normally lit up as we approached, but on that 
evening they remained uncharacteristically dark. 

Alex jiggled his comm link. “Jacob,” he said, “lights, please.” 

No response. 

“Jacob?” 

We eased gently to the ground. 

“I don’t think he’s there,” I said, as the engine stopped, and the skimmer’s exit 
lights winked on and threw shadows along the front and side of the house. The cabin 
doors opened, and a cool breeze blew through the aircraft. 

“Stay put,” said Alex. He climbed out. 

The area was crowded with other houses. They pushed up to the edge of the low 
stone wall that marked the northern and eastern perimeters of Alex’s property. They 
were all illuminated, so whatever was going on, it wasn’t a general power failure. 

The landing pad is in a slight depression. Once you’re down you can only see the 
upper stories. He started up the incline toward the front door. I got out and fell in 
behind him. I’d never seen the place completely dark before. Burglars are virtually 
nonexistent nowadays, but you never really know. “Careful,” I said. 

The walkway was chipped stone. It crunched underfoot, and we could hear a 
mournful wind moving through the trees. Alex kept his ID remote in his ring. He 
strode up the front steps and pointed it at the door. It opened. But slowly. The power 
was low. 

He pushed through. I hurried up beside him and grabbed his wrist. “Not a good 
idea.” 

“It’s okay.” He waved me back and walked into the living room. The lights tried 
to come on but faded almost immediately. “Jacob,” he said, “hello.” 

Nothing. 

Starlight came through the windows. He had an original piece of art, a Sujannais, 
hanging over the sofa. I was relieved to see it was still there. I stuck my head in the 
office. Maddy’s jacket remained folded inside its display case. And thePolaris glass 
was in its accustomed place among the books. Had there been a burglar, they should 
have been the first things taken. 

Alex came to the same conclusion. “I think Jacob just went down,” he said. 
“There’s no sign of a break-in.” 


“Did Jacob ever do a blackout before?” 

“No. But AIs go down all the time.” 

Actually, they almost never do. 

He looked past me into the kitchen. “Maybe you should wait outside, Chase. Just 
in case.” He opened a cabinet door, fumbled around, and produced a lamp. 

Jacob’s internals were located inside a wine cabinet in the dining room. A red 
warning light was blinking. 

The power came by way of a laser link through a dish on the roof. I went 
outside, far enough away from the house that I could see past the overhang. The 
receiver was missing. I found it on the ground in back. The base was scorched where 
someone had cut it down. 

I told Alex and suggested he get out of the house. “Just a minute,” he said. He 
can be frustrating at times. I went in and dragged him out. Then I called the police. 

A woman’s voice responded.“Please give your name,” she said,“and state the 
nature of the emergency.” 

I complied and told her that we’d probably had a burglar. 

“Where are you now?” 

“In the garden.” 

“Stay there. Do not go inside. We’re on the way.” 

We watched the front door from a safe distance, back within running range of 
the skimmer, so we could jump aboard and skedaddle if we had to. But the house 
stayed quiet, and after a few minutes lights appeared overhead. A police cruiser. My 
link chimed.“You the lady who called?” 

“Yes.” 

“Okay, ma’am. Please stay well away from the house. Just in case.” 

The cruiser assumed station directly overhead. 

Alex and I had talked before about security at the office. But burglaries were so 
rare as to be almost unheard-of, and Alex couldn’t be bothered upgrading his alarm 
system. “But I guess I’ve learned,” he said. There’d been two break-ins in the area 
over twelve years, and he’d been the victim of both. “We’ll do something about it this 
time.” 

“Mr. Benedict,”said the voice from the cruiser,“we’ve scanned the house. It’s 
clear. But we’d prefer you don’t go inside just yet.” 

The police drifted down and landed beside the skimmer. There were two 
officers, male and female, both tall, neatly pressed, courteous. The male, who had 
dark skin and enormous shoulders and a vaguely northern accent, took charge. He 


questioned us about what we knew, then they went inside while we waited. After 
about ten minutes we were invited in, but told not to touch anything. “They used a 
laser on your dish,” the male said. “Took you right off-line. You’re on backup 
power.” He was middle-aged, had been on the job a while, and obviously thought 
citizens should take better care of their property. Maybe invest in decent security 
systems. I could see it in his eyes. He had thick arms and a heavy black mustache. 
“We found a set of footprints that we followed out to the road. But after that—” He 
shrugged. “Whoever did it must have worn a suit. He left nothing we can trace.” 

“I’m sorry to hear it.” 

“Have you noticed any strangers in the area? Anyone behaving oddly?” 

Not that either of us could recall. 

“Okay, why don’t you folks look around? Let’s find out what’s missing.” 

The thieves had taken Alex’s collection of Meridian coins—about two thousand years 
old but not particularly valuable—and a few first editions. Nothing else seemed to be 
gone. 

The officers linked Jacob to a portable power source, and the lights came back 
on. Alex activated him and asked what he remembered. 

“Have I really been off-line?”he said.“It appears I’ve lost two hours, forty-six 
minutes.” 

“Not that long after we left,” said Alex. 

We watched while the AI produced pictures of the missing books and coins. The 
officers asked about estimated value, and they seemed to have an idea how the thieves 
would get rid of the property. “Anyone who’s shown an unusual interest in any of this 
stuff?” the female asked. She looked puzzled. 

We couldn’t think of anyone other than Alex who had even seen the coins during 
the last year, although they’d been in plain sight in one of the upstairs rooms. As to 
the books, everybody knew about them, but they, too, weren’t all that valuable. 

“Mr. Benedict,” said her partner, “am I safe in assuming that you have some 
jewelry on the premises?” 

“Yes, I do. But it’s still there. I checked it.” 

“Anything else you’d describe as a likely target for thieves?” 

He thought it over. “Just the collectibles. Fortunately, it doesn’t look as if they 
knew what they were doing.” 

“You mean they missed the good stuff.” 

“That’s exactly what I mean. There are other things, a lot easier to carry than 
books, that they might have taken.” There was, for example, a Kulot bowl and a 
recorder from ancient Canada, both in the living room, and in the study a necklace 
worn at the beginning of the century by Anya Martain. Not to mention thePolaris 


glass and Maddy’s jacket. All in plain sight. 

“Odd,” he said. 

Alex shrugged. “If they were smart, they wouldn’t be thieves.” 

The intruder had cut through the back door, which would have to be replaced. 
The male took a deep breath, suggesting a world-weariness. “You have the nicest 
house in the neighborhood, Mr. Benedict. If a thief is going anywhere, he’s coming 
here.” 

“I guess.” 

He slapped the cover shut on his notebook. “I think that’s about all we can do for 
now. If you find anything else we should know, get in touch.” He handed Alex a 
crystal. “Here’s a copy of the record, with your case number.” 

Alex managed a smile. He was not happy. “Thanks.” 

“No trouble, Mr. Benedict. We’ll keep you informed. You can keep the 
generator until you get up and running again.” They wished us good evening and got 
back into the cruiser. “I don’t think you need to worry,” he said. “They never come 
back. But keep your doors locked anyhow.” 

I went out onto the roof, hauled the dish back up, reset it in its housing, taped it down, 
and was gratified to see that it worked. “It should be all right for tonight,” I said. 
“We’ll want to get somebody over in the morning to take a look at it.” 

We sat down and began running pictures of the house, room by room, on a split 
screen, as it had been at the beginning of the day, and as it was now, to see whether 
we’d missed anything. But everything looked unchanged. Cushions were arranged as 
they had been, kitchen chairs were in the same positions, a cabinet door left half-open 
in the dining room remained half-open. “It doesn’t look as if they were very serious,” 
he said. 

“Maybe they’d just started when we arrived and scared them off.” 

“That can’t be. Jacob says he was down well over two hours.” 

“Then they must have known exactly what they wanted.” 

He frowned. “The coin collection andThe Complete Fritz Hoyer? ” 

“Yeah. I don’t understand it either.” 

The kitchen before and after flashed on the wall screen. The dining area. The 
living room. 

The living room had four chairs, a sofa, a bookcase, and side and coffee tables. 
A book lay open on one of the chairs. The drapes were drawn. Vina, the pagan 
goddess of the Altieri, stood fetchingly atop a globe representing the world, her long 
arms outstretched. The book wasMy Life in Antiquity, and it was open to the same 
page in both displays. Pictures were distributed around the walls. These were of 
Alex’s father (whom he had never known) and Gabe, of Alex and some of his 


customers, and a couple of Alex and me. 

Finally, he sighed, told Jacob to shut it down, and we took to wandering through 
the house, studying drapes and windows and tables and bookshelves. “They went to a 
lot of trouble,” he said. “There must have been a reason.” 

So much of the stuff should have begged to be taken, onyx religious figurines 
from Carpalla; a ninth-century drum from the obscure rhythm group, Rapture; a set of 
eight-sided dice from Dellaconda. “Don’t know,” he said. “Makes no sense.” We 
gave up finally, went back to the office, and sat down. 

We sat there for a couple of minutes in puzzled silence. It was late, and I was 
ready to go home. He was looking at Maddy’s jacket. 

“Gotta go, boss,” I said, getting to my feet and pulling on my coat. “Tomorrow 
comes early.” 

He rose also, nodding, but paying no attention. Instead he walked over to the 
case holding the jacket, stared at it for a minute, and tried the lid. It was still locked. 

“You look surprised,” I said. 

The lock was electronic, designed to keep children or idle adults from handling 
the contents. It wasn’t the sort of thing that would have deterred a burglar. He opened 
it and pursed his lips. “They’ve been into it,” he said. 

You already know the angle of the imager didn’t give us a picture of the jacket 
as it had appeared earlier. But it was still folded. It looked okay to me. “Alex,” I said 
patiently, “if they’d done that, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to put it back. 
And relock the case.” 

“You got me there, love.” He grimaced. “Thisis different from what it was, 
though. Look at Maddy’s name.” 

It had been clearly visible before. It still was, actually, but it was partially around 
the fold. “This isn’t the way it was,” I said. 

“No. They took it out, refolded it, and put it back.” 

“That can’t be right. Why would a thief do that?” 

“Why would a thief leave the jewelry? Or the Sujannais?” He walked over to the 
bookcase, turned its light on, and looked at the long-stemmed glass. The lock was an 
old-fashioned one requiring a metal key. It could have been opened, but, unlike the 
display case, not without breaking it. “It hasn’t been touched,” he said. 

Advanced Electronics showed up next day, shook their heads a lot, and wondered that 
we’d left so much to chance. “Well, no more,” they told us. “From now on, anybody 
tries to knock out your dish, you’ve got a serious backup. Anybody manages to break 
in, Jacob will call the police, and the intruder will be lying on the floor when they get 
here.” They collected the police generator and announced they’d return it. 

That was the day we started the paperwork to implement the idea about doing 
some radioarcheology. But Alex was distracted by the break-in. “We better assume,” 


he said, “that they got into the records.” 

“Did you ask Jacob whether he can make a determination as to whether that 
happened?” 

“He says he has no way of knowing. So we have to assume the worst.” 

“Okay.” 

“Chase, we need to inform everyone with whom Rainbow has done business 
recently, say, the last two years, that the details of all transactions have been 
compromised and may be in the hands of thieves.” 

While I was taking care of it, he went to lunch with someone, and I got a call 
from Fenn Redfield. Fenn was a police inspector, and also a friend. He’d handled the 
original burglary years before.“When you get a chance, Chase,” he said,“you and 
Alex might want to drop by the station.” 

“Alex isn’t here,” I said. “He’s off working with a client.” 

“Then yourself will do fine.” 

Fenn has an unusual history. In another life, literally another life, he’d been a 
small-time thief, apparently not very competent. In the incident that ended that career, 
the owner of a house he was burglarizing walked in on him. There was a struggle, the 
owner got pushed through a second-floor window and died of his injuries. Fenn, who 
had a different name in those days, was caught leaving the premises. The jury found 
him guilty, a fourth conviction. The judge pronounced him incorrigible and a danger 
to society, so they’d done a mind wipe and a personality adjustment. Nobody in 
Fenn’s new life is supposed to know that.He didn’t even know it. He received a new 
identity, a new address halfway across the country from where the crimes occurred, a 
new set of memories, and a new psyche. Now he had a wife and kids and a 
responsible job. He worked hard, seemed to be competent, and showed every sign of 
enjoying his life. 

I knew all this because the victim’s sister was a Rainbow client. She’d wanted 
the killer dead, and she’d shown me pictures from the trial, and there was Fenn. 
Incredible. I pointed out to her that the killerwas dead, as surely as if he’d been 
dropped in the ocean. 

But I’ve never said anything to anyone, not even Alex. And I doubt this memoir 
will ever be published. In any case, I won’t allow it until I’m sure it can do no harm. 

I thought his summons meant they’d caught the intruder. Probably trying to 
break into someone else’s place. 

The police office is located on the lip of a ridge about a kilometer away from the 
country house. The day was unseasonably warm, so I decided to walk over. 

It’s an old run-down stone building, a former courthouse, with a lot of space in 
back and upstairs that they’d sealed off because they had no use for it and wanted to 
avoid the expense of climate control. 

The front looks like a neglected thirteenth-century portico. Lots of fluted 


columns, curving steps, and a fountain that doesn’t work anymore. A bit pretentious 
for a police station. I climbed the steps and went in. The officer on duty showed me 
directly into Fenn’s office. 

Fenn was short and heavy, with a voice down in the basement somewhere. Off 
duty, he enjoyed a good party, a good joke, good VR. But when he put the badge in 
his pocket, his personality changed. Not that he became unduly formal, but anything 
not related to the business at hand was clearly perceived as inconsequential. 

He had large jaws, riveting green eyes, and a talent for making people feel that 
everything was going to be all right. A plastene bag stood on the floor at his feet. 
“Don’t know what we’re coming to, Chase,” he said, looking up from a document and 
waving me to a seat. “Getting so people’s homes aren’t even safe anymore.” 

He lifted himself out of his chair, came around in front of the desk, and used it to 
prop himself up. The office was small, with a single window looking out on the house 
next door. The walls were covered with awards, commendations, pictures of Fenn 
standing by a police cruiser, Fenn shaking hands with important-looking officials, 
Fenn smiling broadly as someone pinned a set of bars on his shoulders. A blackened 
Fenn carried a child out of a disaster site. 

“Did you catch them?” I asked. 

He shook his head. “No. Afraid not, Chase. Wish we had. But Ido have good 
news for you.” He reached down beside the couch, picked up the bag, and held it out 
to me. 

It was the coins. 

“That was quick,” I said. “Where’d you find them?” 

“They were in the river.” 

“In the river?” 

“Yes. About two klicks downstream.” 

The satin-lined container that had housed the collection was ruined. But the 
coins were okay. 

“A couple of kids were making out on a landing. Skimmer comes by, swings low 
over the river, and dropsthat and the books. Everything was in a weighted sack.” He 
produced one of the books. It was a soggy mess. I couldn’t even read the title. 

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why steal stuff, then throw it in the river? Were they 
worried about getting caught?” 

“I have no idea. It happened the same night they were taken. Next day, the boy 
came back to the spot with a sensor.” He examined one of the books under a lamp, 
holding it carefully as if it were something unclean. “He thought it was strange, and 
he called us. This one”—he consulted his notes—“isGod and the Republic. ” 

“Yep. That’s one of ours.” 

“Leather cover.” His jaw muscles worked. “I don’t think it’s of much use now.” 


We sat staring at one another. 

“Sounds as if somebody has a grudge,” I said. 

“If they did, Chase, Alex wouldn’t have had a house to come home to.” He ran 

his fingers through his hair and made a series of pained faces. “It doesn’t make a lot 
of sense. Are you sure nothing else is missing?” 

“How do you mean?” 

“Sometimes thieves really want an ID, but they take other stuff so the owner 
doesn’t notice right away. That way they can go on a spree.” 

I looked down at the bracelet that carried my data disk and thought about it. 
“No,” I said. “We checked that possibility last night. Did the kids get a look at the 
skimmer?” 

“It was gray.” 

“That all?” 

“That’s it. They didn’t get the number.” He squinted at one of the coins. 

“Where’s it from?” 

“Meridian Age. Two thousand years ago.” 

“On Rimway?” 

“Blavis.” 

“Oh.” He put it back. “The inspecting officer told me there were other valuables 

that the thieves missed.” 

“That’s correct.” 

“And that some of them were out in the open.” 

“That’s true, too. You’ve been over there, Fenn. You know what it’s like.” 

The green eyes narrowed. “You and your employer need to get serious about 

security.” 

“We already have.” 

“Good. It’s about time.” 

I thought we were ready to change the subject. “By the way,” I said, “have you 
made any progress toward catching the people who planted the bomb at Proctor 
Union?” 

He grunted. “It’s not my case. But we’ll get them. We’re checking out every 
Kondi in the area.”Kondi was a disparaging term for anyone from Korrim Mas. His 
lined face acquired a bulldog look. “We’ll get them.” 

“Good.” 


“The bomb was homemade. From chemicals available over the counter. And 
insecticide.” 

“Insecticide? Can you really make a bomb out of that?” 

“Yes, indeed. And it packs a wallop.” 

I sent the boy who’d found the package in the river a couple of rare coins, and 
judging from his reply, he was smart enough to understand their value. A few days 
later Fenn confessed they were having no luck tracking down the thieves, and he said 
that we’d have to be patient, that eventually they’d make a mistake, and he would 
catch them. What he seemed to be saying was that the police were waiting for them to 
burgle somebody else. 

At about the same time I got a call from Paul Calder. He materialized in the 
office, wearing a gray military-style jacket over a blue shirt. He was outside on his 
veranda.“Chase,” he said,“I wanted you to know how much I appreciated your 
getting Maddy’s vest for me.” He’d already thanked us. That, and the fact that he 
looked embarrassed, told me something had happened.“I’m sending you another four 
hundred.” 

“Was there something else you wanted to buy?” 

“No. Call it a bonus.” 

We’d already been paid. “That’s generous of you, Paul. But why?” 

He was about average height, a bit overweight. He wore an unruly black beard in 
an effort to appear intellectual, but he just looked unkempt. Calder was afflicted with 
runaway piety. Lots of references to the Almighty.“I really liked that vest.” 

I noted the past tense. “What happened to it?” 

Another grin.“I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.” 

I believe, had he been physically in the room, I’d have throttled him without a 
second thought. “Paul,” I said, “tell me you didn’t sell it.” 

“Chase, they doubled my money.” 

“Wewould have doubled your money. Damn it, Paul, I told you that thing was 
worth a lot more than you’d paid for it. Do you still have it in your possession?” 

“He picked it up this morning.”I sat there shaking my head. He cleared his 
throat and pulled at his collar.“I know what you said, about what it was worth, but I 
thought you were exaggerating.” 

Paul’s money was inherited. He’d never known what it took to create wealth, so 
he’d never taken it seriously. Money was just something he spent when a whim took 
him. More or less, I thought, the way he took his religion. There was a superficiality 
to it. Lots ofBless you’s andGod willing’s but I never got the sense he thought in 
serious terms about what a Creator might be like. Or what the implications were. 
Nevertheless, he was a difficult man to stay angry with. He literally cringed while 


waiting for me to react. So I calmed down. “Any chance you can cancel the deal?” 

“No,”he said.“I wrote a receipt, took the money, and gave it to him.” 

“No escape clause?” 

“What’s an escape clause?” 

I found myself thinking about the thief poking around in the Rainbow data 
banks. “Paul,” I asked, “how’d he find out you had it?” 

“Oh, that’s no big deal. Everybody knew. I didn’t make a secret of it. And 
anyway I took it with me the other day to the monthly meeting of the Chacun 
Historical Association.” 

“How’d they react to it?” 

“They loved it. Friend of mine even brought a sim of Garth Urquhart.” 

“Paul, the person who bought it, did you know him? Prior to the purchase?” 

“No. But he was at the meeting.”He tried grinning again.“Little guy. Name’s 
Davis.” 

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know.” 

“I’m sorry if I upset you. Selling it seemed like the right thing to do.” 

“Maybe it was. I’m not upset, Paul. You doubled your money so I guess you 
came out of it all right.” I thought about returning the bonus he was sending us, but 
there was really no point in that. I’d just earned it. 

I stared at the empty space Paul’s image had occupied. How could he be so dumb? 
But there was nothing to be done about it. 

Even though we were no longer involved withPolaris artifacts, I was still curious 
about the incident itself. I began to think I’d never rest easy until I could at least 
construct a rational sequence of events that could have resulted in the disappearance 
of Maddy and her passengers. “Jacob?” I asked. “Is there a visual record of thePolaris 
departure?” 

“Checking.” 

While he looked, I went to the kitchen and got a cup of tea. 

“Yes, there is. Do you want me to set it up?” 

“Please.” 

The office morphed into a Skydeck terminal. And they were all there. Maddy 
and Urquhart, Boland, Klassner (looking barely alive), White, Mendoza, and 
Dunninger. Along with a crowd of about fifty people. And a small band. The band 
played a medley of unfamiliar tunes, and people took turns shaking hands with the 
voyagers. 


Martin Klassner was propped against the back of his seat, talking to a rumpled 
man, whom I recognized immediately as Jess Taliaferro, the Survey director who’d 
organized the mission and had himself eventually disappeared. It was an odd scene, 
Klassner and Taliaferro, two men who’d walked into the night on different occasions, 
and never been seen again. Klassner’s lips barely moved when he talked, and his 
hands trembled. I wondered that they’d send a man so obviously ill on such a journey. 
There was a physician on one of the accompanying ships, but that hardly seemed 
sufficient. 

Nancy White stood near a souvenir shop. She was trim, attractive, dressed as if 
she were headed out of town for a holiday. She was talking quietly to a small group, 
one of whom was a tall, dark-complexioned, good-looking guy, who looked worried. 
“Her husband, Michael,” said Jacob.“He was a real estate developer.” 

Urquhart was surrounded by journalists. He was smiling, holding up his hands, 
no more questions, folks, I really need to get on board, okay just one more. 

Chek Boland was flanked by two women.“He’s been described as the man who 
solved the mind-body problem.” 

“What’s the mind-body problem, Jacob?” 

“I’m not clear on it myself, Chase. Apparently it’s an ancient conundrum. The 
issue seems to revolve around the nature of consciousness.” 

I thought about asking him to explain, but it sounded complicated so I let it go. 
Tom Dunninger and Warren Mendoza were holding forth for another group near the 
ramp.“The one next to Dunninger,” said Jacob,“is Borio Chapatka. Ann Kelly’s 
there, too. And Min Kao-Wing —” 

“Who are they?” I asked. 

“At the time, they were the major biomedical researchers.” 

There was a fair amount of gesturing and raised voices. Whatever they were 
talking about, it was loud and open to debate. Ann Kelly appeared to be making notes. 

Madeleine English, crisp and blonde and very efficient, came out of a side 
passageway with a tall man. He was a looker. Big, red hair, dark eyes, and a faintly 
lascivious smile. Probably a few years younger than she was.“That’s Kile Anderson,” 
said Jacob.“He’s a journalist. Assigned to Skydeck. It’s how he met her.” 

“This was her boyfriend?” 

“One of them.” 

Boland looked up, straight across the terminal at me, almost as if he knew I was 
there. He had classic features, with dark bedroom eyes. One of the women with him 
looked familiar.“Jessica Birk,” said Jacob. She’d later become a senator. 

Birk eventually detached herself and wandered through the boarding area, taking 
a couple of minutes with each of the passengers, giving the journalists a clear shot 
whenever possible, shaking hands with all.Good luck. Enjoy the flight. Wish I were 
going with you. 


Maddy disappeared with her male friend up the tunnel leading to the ship. 
Moments later he came back down alone, looking forlorn. He surveyed the people 
around him, shrugged, and walked off. 

Klassner, assisted by Taliaferro, got to his feet and started for the ramp. Several 
of the onlookers crowded around to shake his hand. I could read their lips.Good luck, 
Professor. 

Klassner smiled politely, and said something. 

Nancy White joined them and gave him her arm to lean on. Taliaferro answered 
a call on his link. He nodded, said something, nodded again. Looked at White. Sure, 
she told him, go ahead. 

He looked apologetic. I could make outSomething came up. Have to go. Sorry. 

He made a quick round of the other voyagers, wished them luck, then was 
pushing through the crowd. Within moments he’d disappeared down the concourse. 

There was an announcement that thePolaris would be departing in ten minutes, 
please board, and everyone began moving toward the ramp, saying their good-byes, 
waving for the cameras. A journalist cornered Boland, asked a couple of quick 
questions,What do you expect to see out there?, andAs a psychiatrist, will you be 
more interested in the reactions of the other passengers than you are in the collision 
itself? Boland answered as best he could.I’m on a holiday. You don’t get to see 
something like this very often. 

One last round of farewells, and they drifted into the tunnel, all smiles. 

eiGHT 

The investigation into the circumstances surrounding 

the loss of thePolaris passengers and its captain 

continues, and we will not rest until we are able to 

deliver a full and complete explanation. God willing, we 

will know everything before we are done. 

—Hoch Mensurrat, 
Spokesman for the Trendel Commission 

Rainbow Enterprises does not deal in run-of-the-mill antiquities. We trade almost 
exclusively in items that can be defined as having historic value. We aren’t the only 
business of our kind in Andiquar, but if you’re serious, we’re the ones you want to 
talk to. 

A couple of days after Calder let the vest get away, I received a call from Diane 
Gold. She was furnishing a house that she’d designed. Getting ready to move in with 
her third husband, I think it was. The house was on top of a hill on the western edge 
of the city, with a view of Mt. Oskar, and she was trying to establish a Barbikan 
theme. You know, flashy drapes and carpeting, lots of cushions and throw rugs, and 
wooden furniture that looks as if it’s about to take flight, everything contrasted 


against period artwork, with its exaggerated sense of the ethereal. I’ve never cared for 
the style myself. It seems to me to be pure shock value, but then I have an old-world 
taste. 

Could I put her in touch with somebody who could supply the art? Some 
figurines, two or three vases, a couple of paintings? She was relaxed in an armchair. 

Whenever Diane’s image showed up, I felt a surge of envy. I am by no means 
hard to look at, but she played in a higher league than the rest of us. She was the sort 
of woman who made you realize how dumb men could be, how easily they could be 
managed. Blond, blue eyes, classic lines. She managed to look simultaneously 
attainable and beyond reach. Don’t ask me how, but you know what I mean. 

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll put together a catalog and send it over this afternoon.” In 
fact, I could have produced the catalog on the spot, but that would leave her with the 
impression there was no personal input on my part. 

“I appreciate it, Chase,”she said. Her hair was cut in the San Paulo style, just 
touching her shoulders. She was wearing a clingy white blouse over dark green 
slacks. 

“I’m happy to help.” 

She lifted a cup, drank from it, and smiled at me.“Chase, you really must come 
out to the house sometime. We’ll be having a party for Bingo at the end of the month. 
If you could make it then, we’d be delighted to see you.” 

I had no idea who Bingo was, other than that he was not the third husband. He 
sounded like a pet. “Thanks, Diane,” I said. “I’ll try to be there.” 

“Good. Plan on staying the weekend.”When Diane Gold threw a party, it tended 
to be a marathon event. I was busy and wanted to break away, but you can’t just do 
that with clients. “What did you decide to do with Maddy’s etui?” I asked. 

“I haven’t decided where to put it yet. I was going to set it in the dining room, in 
the china closet, but I’m afraid the kori will knock it over.”For anyone unfamiliar 
with Rimway, a kori is a feline, greatly favored by pet owners. Think of it as a cat 
with the attributes of a collie. 

“We don’t want that.” 

“No. By the way, I have an odd story to tell you.” 

“I’m all ears.” 

“I won a cash prize last week. Two-fifty.” 

“For what?” 

“That’s what makes it odd. They said it was from the Zhadai Cultural 
Cooperative. For my work on the Bruckmann Tower.” 

“Congratulations.” 

“Thank you. They called, a woman who described herself as the executive 


assistant, to tell me about it. Her name was Gina Flambeau. She made an 
appointment, came out to the house, and presented me with the award and the cash.” 

“It’s nice to be appreciated, Diane.” 

“Yes, it is. She told me how much they admired my work, not only on the 
Bruckmann, but some of the other stuff as well.” 

“So what’s the problem?” 

“Doesn’t that strike you as an odd way to present a trophy? I mean, usually, you 
get invited to a banquet, or at least a lunch, and they give it to you there. In front of 
an audience. Everybody gets some publicity out of it.” 

I didn’t know. I’d never received an award. At least not since the sixth grade, 
when I got a certificate for perfect attendance. “Yes,” I said, “now that you mention 
it, it does seem a bit out of the ordinary.” 

“I got curious, so I looked into their award history.” 

“They usually throw banquets?” 

“Invariably, dear.” 

“Well, it looks as if they’ve changed their policy.” I tried laughing it off and 
made an inane remark about how banquet food generally tastes insipid anyhow. 

“There’s more to it. I called them, Chase, on the pretext of saying thanks to the 
president of the Cooperative. I met her once, years ago. She, uh, didn’t have the 
faintest idea what I was talking about.” 

“Are you serious?” 

“Do I look as if I’m making this up? Moreover, she said there’s no Gina 
Flambeau in the organization.” 

“Uh-oh. You check your account?” 

“The money’s there.” 

“Well, I’d say you’re ahead on this one.” 

“I have a plaque.”She asked her AI to post it for me and it showed up on the 
wall screen. It was an azure block of plastene. A plate read:In Recognition of 
Outstanding Achievement in the Design and Construction of the Bruckmann Tower. 

Et cetera. Done in traditional Umbrian characters. 
“Looks official.” 

“Yes. I showed it to the Cooperative president. That’s her signature at the 
bottom.” 

“What was her reaction?” 

“She told me she’d get back to me. When she did, she apologized profusely and 
said somebody was apparently playing a practical joke. They had made no such 


award. She also told me that in her opinion I deserved to be noticed by the 
Cooperative, and I should be assured I was under consideration for next year.” 

The sunlight angled through the big front windows and made rectangles on the 
carpet. I didn’t know what to make of the story. 

“I thought of it,”Diane said,“because of your question about the etui. Gina 
Flambeau asked me about it. Said she’d seen I had acquired it, and wondered if I’d 
show it to her.” 

“And did you?” 

“Of course. That’s the whole point of having it.” 

“But she knew you had it? In advance of coming?” 

“Yes.” 

“How did she know?” 

“Everybody knew, love. I gave a couple of interviews. Didn’t you see them?” 

“No,” I said. “I must have missed them. What was her reaction?” 

Diane shrugged.“She was suitably impressed, I thought.” She looked at me 
carefully. 

“Did she actually handle it? Physically?” 

“Yes.” 

“She didn’t do a switch, did she?” 

“No. It’s the same box.” 

“How can you be so sure?” 

“It was never out of my sight.” 

“You’re positive?” 

“Absolutely. You think I’m an idiot?” 

“You least of all, Diane. But put it somewhere safe.” 

“Security’s pretty serious here, Chase.” 

“Okay. Let me know if anything happens.” 

“If anything happens,”she said,“they’ll find bodies in the 

river.” 

When I mentioned the incident to Alex, he grew thoughtful. “What was the name of 
the man who bought the vest from Paul?” he asked. 

“That was the Chacun Historical Association.” 


“What was the name of the representative?” 

After a moment’s thought I came up with it. “Davis.” 

“Call them. Find out whether there’s a Davis on the membership list.” 

“Why?” I said. “What do we care?” 

“Just do it, please, Chase.” 

He wandered out of the room to tend the flowers in back. Alex was a botanist by 
inclination, and he had a wide array of hydrangeas and damned if I knew what else. 
I’ve never been big on greenhouses. 

I called Chacun and got the AI.“Why, yes, Ms. Kolpath,” he said.“You’re 
probably referring to Arky Davis.” The voice was male, a measured baritone, the sort 
of voice you hear in drawing rooms out on the Point. 

“Can you give me a code for him?” 

“I’m sorry. But Association policy prohibits our giving out that kind of 
information. If you like, I can forward a message.” 

“Please. Give him my name and code. Tell him I’d like very much to see the vest 
he just bought from Paul Calder. I’m hoping he intends to make it available for 
inspection by the general public. If so, I’d appreciate being informed.” 

Davis didn’t reply until late in the afternoon.“I have to confess, Ms. Kolpath,” 
he said,“that I’m not sure what we’re talking about.” His voice had a gritty quality. 

He was seated in an armchair in a dark-paneled study. I could see drapes behind 
him and a couple of talba heads on the wall. A hunter. He was wide, with a large nose 
and a thick gray mustache. He wore a dressing gown (even though it was 
midmorning), and was sipping a purple-colored drink.“I think there may be some 
confusion here somewhere,” he continued. He was about eighty, and he lookedbig. 
It’s always hard to tell a person’s size when all you have to work with are virtuals. If 
you’re comparing him to, say, custom-made furniture, you don’t know where to start. 
But the way Davis straightened up in the chair, the way he shifted his weight, his 
whole demeanor told me he was not someone you’d think of as small. How had Paul 
described Davis?A little guy. 

“I may have the wrong person,” I said. “I was looking for the Mr. Davis who 
bought a rare vest a couple of days ago from Paul Calder.” 

He took a long pull at his drink.“You’re right. It wasn’t me. I don’t know a Paul 
Calder. And I sure as hell didn’t buy a vest from anybody.” 

“He was at the last meeting of the Chacun Historical Association. Had the vest 
with him, I believe.” 

Davis shrugged.“I wasn’t at the last meeting.” 

He was about to cut the link when I held up my hand. “Is there anybody else in 
the organization namedDavis ?” 


“No,”he said.“We have thirty, maybe thirty-five members. But no other 
Davises.” 

“Something’s going on,” said Alex. “Get in touch with everybody who got one of 
thePolaris artifacts. Warn them to be careful. And ask them to notify us if anybody 
they don’t know shows undue interest.” 

“You think somebody’s trying to steal them?” 

We were on the back deck, adjacent to the greenhouse. He’d been watching a 
couple of birds fluttering around in the fountain. “I honestly don’t know. But that’s 
what it feels like, doesn’t it?” 

I dutifully talked with everyone. “We don’t know for sure that something out of 
the way is happening,” I told them. “But take precautions to safeguard your artifact. 
And please keep us informed.” 

Alex stuck his head in the door between calls. “Got a question for you,” he said. 
“ThePolaris was a special trip to a special event. Every scientific figure on Rimway 
wanted to go. Yes?” 

“That’s the way I understand it, yes.” 

“Why were there only seven people on board? ThePolaris had accommodations 
for eight.” 

I hadn’t noticed. But he was right. Four compartments on either side of the 
passageway. “Don’t know,” I said. 

He nodded, as if that was the answer he expected. Then he was gone again. 

I had a few other duties to attend to, and they took me well into the afternoon. 
When I’d finished I had Jacob pull up the contemporary media accounts of thePolaris 
story. At the time, of course, it had been huge news. It dominated public life for 
months. The entire Confederacy was drawn into the search, largely because of a 
suspicion there was something hostile beyond known space. Entire fleets came from 
Toxicon, Dellaconda, the Spinners, Cormoral, Earth. Even the Mutes sent a 
contingent. 

The general assumption seemed to be that Maddy and her passengers had been 
seized bysomething. No other plausible theory could be produced. And that meant 
that a force with extensive capabilities existed somewhere out there. And that it had 
aggressive inclinations. 

For more than a year, the fleets spread out through the Veiled Lady, across 
thousands of star systems, looking for something,anything, that might provide a clue. 
For trying to help, the Mutes got attacked regularly by commentators and politicians. 
They were a silent species, endowed with telepathic abilities. That fact made a lot of 
people nervous, and, of course, they didn’t look much like us. So they were accused 
of spying. As if they could get any useful information about Confederate defenses by 
going to Delta Karpis. 

To a casual reader it sounds like a thorough search, but the reality is that the 


volume of space involved was so large that it couldn’t be adequately examined in a 
year’s time with the resources available. In fact, they wouldn’t have come anywhere 
close. Meanwhile, the hunt cost money, and gradually the public lost interest. In the 
end, the seven victims were simply written off and declared dead. 

For as long as anyone could remember, people had thought of the wilderness 
beyond the known systems as human territory by implied right, by default, to be 
claimed when we got around to it. Even the discovery of the Mutes, and the on-again 
off-again conflict with them, hadn’t altered that. But thePolaris incident made the 
outer darkness reallydark. We were reminded that we didn’t know what was out 
there. And, in Ali ben-Kasha’s memorable phrase, we suddenly wondered whether we 
might be on somebody’s menu. 

All that has long since gone away. There were no subsequent disappearances, no 
encounters with the suspectalien wind by the research ships that continued to push 
deeper into the unknown, no indication of a dark genie. And people forgot. 

Alex came inside, sat down beside me, and watched the reports as Jacob posted 
them. “All that effort,” he said. “And they never found anything.” 

“Not a hair.” 

“Incredible.” He leaned forward, frowning. “Chase, they examined thePolaris 
when it came back. And they didn’t see anything unusual. If something hostile 
wanted to get into the ship, the captain or the passengers had tolet it in, right? I mean, 
can you get through an airlock if the people inside don’t want you to?” 

“Well,” I said, “you can’t really lock the outer hatches. If someone, or 
something,gets to the hull, he can let himself in. Although you could stop that easily 
enough if you wanted to.” 

“How?” 

“One way is to pressurize the airlock. Then the outer hatch won’t open no matter 
what.” 

“Okay.” 

“Another way would be to accelerate. Or slam on the brakes. Either way, the 
intruder goes downtown.” 

“So for something to get in, the people insidehad to cooperate, right?” 

“Or at least not take action against it.” 

He sat for several minutes without saying anything. Jacob was running a report 
from the team that had investigated the interior of thePolaris after it had been 
returned to Skydeck.No indication occupants were at any time in distress. 

No sign of a struggle. 

No evidence of hurried departure. 

Clothes, toiletries, and other items present suggest that when personnel 


departed, they took with them only what they were wearing. 

Open copy ofLost Soulsin one of the compartments and half-eaten apple in the 
common room imply ship was taken completely by surprise. Book is believed to have 
belonged to Boland. Towel found in the washroom had Klassner’s DNA. 

“I wonder who directed the search,” he said. 

“Survey did.” 

“I mean,at Survey.” 

“Jess Taliaferro,”said Jacob. 

Alex folded his hands and seemed lost in thought. “The same guy who 

disappeared himself.” 

“Yes. Thatis an odd coincidence, isn’t it?” 

“They never found him either.” 

“No. He left his office one day, and nobody ever saw him again.” 

“When?” he asked. 

“Two and a half years after thePolaris. ” 

“What do you think happened to him, Chase?” 

“I have no idea. Probably a suicide.” 

Alex considered the possibility. “If thatis what happened, would it have been 

connected with thePolaris ?” 

“I wouldn’t be surprised. The common wisdom is that Taliaferro was distraught 
by the disaster. He dreamed up the idea to send a group of VIPs out to watch the 
event, to accompany the research ships. He knew Boland and Klassner personally. 
They were both past chairs of the White Clock. Of which he was a contributor and 

fund-raiser.” 

“The old population-control group,” said Alex. 

“Yes.” I told Jacob to shut down. He complied, the curtains opened, and bright, 
dazzling sunlight broke into the room. “When the search found nothing, according to 
Taliaferro’s colleagues at Survey, he got depressed.” I could see it happening easily 
enough, the idealistic bureaucrat who had lost a ship’s captain and six of the most 
celebrated people of the age and couldn’t even explain what had happened to them. 
“I’ve been reading about him. After thePolaris, he used to go to Carimba Canyon 
sometimes and just stand out there and watch the sun go down.” 

Alex’s eyes had become hooded. “He might have jumped into the Melony. Been 
carried out to sea.” 

“It could have happened that way.” 


“But there wasn’t a suicide note?” 

“No. Nothing like that.” 

“Chase,” he said, “I wonder if I could persuade you to do me a favor?” 

Georg Kloski had been with the team of analysts that went over thePolaris when it 
was brought back. He had to be older than he looked. He could have passed for a guy 
in his midforties, but he was at least twice that age. “I work out,” he said, when I 
commented on his appearance. 

He was about medium size and build, affable, happily retired on Guillermo 
Island in the Gulf. I introduced myself, told him I was collecting information for a 
research project, which was true enough, and asked whether I could take him to 
lunch. It’s always more convenient, of course, to ask questions over the circuit. But 
you can get a lot more out of people if you treat for tea and a steak sandwich. 

He said yes, of course, he’d never decline lunch with a beautiful woman. I knew 
right away I was going to like this guy. I flew down next morning and met him at a 
waterfront restaurant. I think it was called the Pelican. There are, of course, no 
pelicans on Rimway, but Georg (we got quickly to a first-name basis) told me the 
owners were from Florida. Did I know where Florida was? 

I knew it was on Earth somewhere, so I guessed Europe and he said close 
enough. 

He lived alone. Some of his grandkids were nearby on the mainland. “But not 
too close,” he said with a wink. His hair was thick and black, streaked with gray. 
Broad shoulders, lots of muscle, a helping of flab. Good smile. Every woman in the 
restaurant seemed to know him. “I was mayor at one time,” he said, by way of 
explanation. But we both knew there was more to it than that. 

So we sat for the first few minutes, getting acquainted, listening to the shrieks of 
seabirds. The Pelican was located off a stone walkway that ran along the waterfront. 
The island has a much balmier climate than Andiquar. Hordes of people in beachwear 
were strolling past. Kids trailed balloons and some folks rode in motorized coaches. 
Guillermo was popular because it had real thrill rides, glider chutes, tramways, boat 
rides, a haunted house. It was a place for people who wanted something a bit more 
challenging than the virtuals, which induced the same heart-stopping effects, but were 
always accompanied by the knowledge you were actually sitting in a dark room, 
perfectly safe. Which some folks thought took the edge off things. 

From the Pelican we could see a parachute drop. 

“It was a terrible time,” he told me, when I finally steered the conversation 
around to thePolaris. “People didn’t know what to think.” 

“What didyou think?” I asked. 

“It was the lander that really threw me. I mean, it would have been easy enough 
to imagine that they’d all decided to go for a joyride somewhere and gotten lost, or hit 
by an asteroid. Or something. At least it would have been a theoretical possibility. But 
the lander was still moored in the launch bay. And that last message—” 


“—Departure imminent—” 

“—Imminent.It still sends a chill down my back. Whatever happened, happened 
very fast. Happened within the few seconds between the time she sent the message 
and the moment she’d have initiated the jump. It’s as if something seized them, shut 
them down, cut off their comms, and took the people off.” 

The sandwiches arrived. I tried mine, chewed on it for a minute, and asked 
whether he had any ideas at all how it could have happened, other than superior 
technology. 

“Look, Chase,” he said, “it has to be something out there way ahead of us. I 
mean, on their own, it wouldn’t even have been physically possible for them to leave 
the immediate area of the ship. Not without the lander. Maddy had four pressure suits 
on board. They were still there when thePeronovski arrived on the scene.” 

There was a tourist artist out on the walkway, sketching a young woman. She 
wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and smiled prettily for him. “Georg,” I said, “is it 
possible there could have been some kind of virus or disease that drove everyone 
insane?” 

Two young women in see-through suits strolled past. Followed by a couple of 
guys. “Shocking what people wear these days,” he said with a smile. His eyes never 
left the women until they disappeared past the window. “Anything’s possible, I 
suppose. But even had something like that happened, had they been rendered 
incompetent by a bug of some sort that subsequently became undetectable to the 
cleanup crew, so what? It still doesn’t explain how they got off the ship.” 

The tea was good. I listened to the roar of the surf. It was solid and real and 
reassuring. 

“No,” he continued. “The suits were still there. If they went out one of the 
airlocks, they were either already dead, or they died a few seconds later. You ever 
been on a ship, Chase?” 

“Occasionally.” 

“The outer hatch won’t move until the air pressure in the airlock goes to zero. 
Anybody trying to leave who doesn’t have a suit is going to be in pretty bad shape 
before the door even opens. But let’s say he holds his breath and doesn’t mind that 
things get a little brisk. He jumps out. It’s a good jump. Say, a meter a second. 
ThePeronovski gets there six days later. How far away is the jumper?” 

“Not very far,” I said. 

He pulled a napkin over, produced a pen, and started scribbling. When he’d 
finished he looked up. “I make it at most five hundred eighteen kilometers. Round it 
off to six hundred.” He tossed the pen down and looked at me. “That’s easily within 
the search range of thePeronovski ’s sensors.” 

“Did they do a search?” 

“Sure. They got zero.” He sighed, and I wondered how many times he’d thought 
about this during the past sixty years, whether he’d ever been free of it for a full day. 


“If I hadn’t lived through it, I’d say that what happened to thePolaris wasn’t 
possible.” He ordered a lime kolat and sat staring at the window until it came. 

“When they brought the ship back,” I said, “did you find anything you hadn’t 
expected to? Anything out of the ordinary?” 

“No. Nothing. Their clothes were all there. Toothbrushes. Shoes. I mean, what it 
looked like was that they’d all stepped out for a minute.” He leaned over the table. 
His eyes were dark brown, and they got very intense. “I’ll tell you, Chase. This was 
all a long time ago, but it still scares me. It’s the only really spooky thing I’ve seen in 
my life. But it makes me wonder if sometimes the laws of physics just don’t apply.” 

Georg looked like a guy who ordinarily enjoyed his food. But he only nibbled at 
his sandwich. “We spent weeks inside the ship. We pretty much stripped it. Took 
everything out and labeled it and sent it to the lab. The lab didn’t find anything that 
advanced the investigation. Eventually, they put the stuff in a vault somewhere. Later 
the Trendel Commission came in and sorted through it. I was there for that, too.” 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but how thorough were you?” 

“I was only a tech. Fresh out of school. But I thought we were reasonably 
thorough. The commission brought in outside people so nobody could claim cover-
up. I knew one of the investigators they brought in. Amanda Deliberté. Died early. In 
childbirth. You believe that? She’s the only case of a childbirth fatality we’ve had 
during the last half century. Anyhow, Amanda wasn’t given to screwing around. But 
they didn’t find anything more than we did. I’ll tell you, Chase, there was nothing 
there. Whatever happened to those people, it happened fast. I mean, it had to, right? 
Maddy didn’t even have time to get off a Code White. Not a blip. People talk about 
some sort of alien whatzis, but how the hell could they get through the airlock before 
she’d sent off an alert?” He tried the drink and looked at me across the top of the 
glass. “I’ve never been able to come up with any kind of explanation. They were 
justgone, and we didn’t have any idea, any at all, what had happened to them.” 

I watched a couple of people seated against the wall trying to mollify a cranky 
kid. “Your team took everything out of thePolaris, right?” 

“Yes.” 

“Everything?” 

“Well, we left the fittings.” 

“How about clothes? Jewelry? Books? Anything like that get left behind?” 

“Yeah. I’m sure we left some stuff. We were looking for things that would have 
thrown some light on what happened. Look, Chase, it’s been a long time. But we 
wouldn’t have left anything of consequence.” 

NiNe 

The disappearance of Jess Taliaferro embodied more 


than simply the loss of a supremely competent 
administrator. It would perhaps be an exaggeration to 
describe him as a great man. But he was the sort of 
person who works behind the scenes to make great 
men (and women) possible. We tend to overlook him, 
because he never aspired to political office. He never 
won a major award. He did not show up on the 
newscasts, save as the spokesman for a befuddled 
Survey when seven people walked off thePolaris into 
oblivion. But he was an inspiration and a bulwark to all 
of us who wanted to provide a better life and a brighter 
future for everyone. 

——Yan Quo,Taliaferro: The Gentle Warrior 

Alex told me to take the next day off to compensate for the travel, but I went in 
anyhow that afternoon. When I got there, he was looking at screens filled with 
information about Jess Taliaferro. 

The onetime director is the subject of three major biographies. He has appeared 
at least tangentially in dozens of histories of his era. I’d thumbed through much of the 
material by then. It was not that he was a towering political or scientific figure, or that 
the Department of Planetary Survey and Astronomical Research broke new 
boundaries during his thirteen-year tenure at its helm. But he seemed to know all the 
groundbreakers of the era. He was constantly in the company of councillors and 
presidents, major show business personalities, Galaxy prizewinners, and other news-
makers. But more important from my point of view was that he seemed to be a man of 
iron principle. He was a champion of humane causes. Take care of the environment. 
Arrange things so nobody gets too much power. Make sure we educate, rather than 
indoctrinate, our kids. Find a way to establish a permanent peace with the Mutes. 

He was unstinting in his exertions, and he never backed away from a fight. He 
supported efforts to reduce government corruption, to achieve stable populations on 
the worlds of the Confederacy, to reduce the power of the media, to control corporate 
thieves. He battled developers who were willing to destroy archeological sites and 
pristine wilderness. He did what he could to protect species in danger of extinction. 

He, Boland, and Klassner were close allies in these culture wars. “People never 
appreciated him,” one biographer observed, “until he closed up his office that last 
evening, said good night to his staff, and walked away from the world.” 

In those days, Survey was located in Union Hall, an old stone building that had 
once been a courthouse. When Taliaferro was ready to go home, his skimmer 
routinely picked him up at the rooftop pad. But on that final day, he instructed his AI 
that he would be dining out and that he’d call for transportation if and when he 
needed it. 

With whom was he planning to eat? 

“Nobody knows,”said Jacob.“When investigators tried to figure out what had 
happened, they discovered he’d pretty much cleaned out his bank accounts, except for 
a modest sum that eventually went to his daughter, Mary. His only child, by the way.” 


“What about his wife?” 

“He was widowed. She died young. Boating accident. According to friends, he 
never stopped mourning her. But there was another woman later in his life.” 

“Who was that?” asked Alex. 

“Ivy Cumming. She was a physician.” 

“How much money did he have?” 

“Millions.” 

That surprised Alex. “Where’d it come from?” he asked. 

“It was old money,” I said. “His family’d been wealthy for generations. When its 
resources came under his control he began using it to support various causes. He 
seems to have been utterly unselfish.” 

I had dinner with a friend, went home, and decided to take a whack at the Taliaferro 
avatar. I’d seen it briefly at thePolaris convention, of course, when I didn’t even 
know who he was. Now I had a few questions. 

There’s always a problem, of course, with an avatar. It looks like the person it’s 
representing, but you know it’s really just a projection backed by a data retrieval 
system. People trust data retrieval systems, though, and the avatars look absolutely 
real. They’re convincing, so everyone has a tendency to take these things at their 
word, when in fact all the information is based on the input provided by the subject 
himself, which is to say, it’s somebody putting his best foot forward. And there might 
be additions by interested persons with agendas of their own. Consequently, they’re 
no more reliable than the subject himself might have been. If you’re approaching one 
of these conversations to learn something rather than to be entertained, you have to 
bring along a healthy skepticism. 

Jess Taliaferro appeared standing on a rocky beach. He was a small man, 
middle-aged, with fading auburn hair that would not stay down and eyes that seemed 
a bit too far apart. He had too much stomach and not enough shoulder. When he 
moved, as he did constantly during our conversation, he was awkward, weaving from 
side to side in a flatfooted manner. There was much of the camaroo about him, the big 
southeastern bird that one finds waddling along shorelines looking for stranded 
sealife. He was quite ordinary in appearance. I would not have thought of him as a 
driving force. But there you are. You just never know. 

“Hello, Ms. Kolpath,”he said.“You were at the convention, I believe.” 

“Yes, I was. I enjoyed your presentation.” 

“Very kind of you.”He stopped by a stone bench, facing out to sea. It seemed to 
be the only structure in the area.“May I?” he asked. 

“Please,” I said. 

He sat down.“It’s lovely here at night.” He was dressed in the antique manner of 
his era, colorful shirt, wide-open collar, cuffed trousers, a rakish blue hat with a 


tassel. 

“Yes,” I said. 

“How may I help you?” 

How, indeed? A long wave broke and rolled up the beach. “Dr. Taliaferro, please 
tell me about yourself. What you care about. What you’re proud of. How you felt on 
the day thePolaris set out. What you think happened.” 

“About myself?”He looked surprised. 

“Yes,” I said. “Please.” 

“Most people want to hear about thePolaris.Not about me.” 

“You know why.” 

“Sure. But it’s as if I never did anything in my life except send those people to 
Delta Kay.” 

He talked about his family, his dreams, his years of service to Survey. 

“Did you ever have any indication at all,” I asked, “that there might be 
somebody else out there, other than the Mutes?” 

His eyes slid shut.“No,” he said.“Oh, look, we knew there would be other 
sentient life somewhere. We’ve always known that. The universe is just too big. It 
happened twice that we knew about, so we understood that it necessarily existed 
elsewhere. Once you had that much, once you knew it wasn’t the result of some 
virtually impossible combination of events, then there had to be others. Had to be. 
The real question was whether they were scattered so far in time and space that we 
would never encounter another in the lifetime of the species.” 

There were lights moving at sea. 

“An intersection seemed so unlikely that we never seriously considered it. I 
mean, we had a policy in place, guidelines on what to do if anyone actually saw 
another ship out there. But we never believed it would happen. And we certainly 
assumed that if it did, the aliens would not be hostile. Cautious, perhaps, but not 
hostile.” 

“Why not? The Mutes are hostile.” 

“They’re hostile because there was a series of incidents at the beginning, when 
we first discovered each other, that created conflict. It was mishandled on our end, 
and to a degree, on theirs. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t anybody’s fault. People 
were surprised by an unprecedented situation and they reacted badly. Some of it’s in 
the genes. We can’t stand to be near them. Have you ever been close enough to a 
Mute to feel the effect?” 

He wasn’t simply talking about their mind-reading abilities, but the fact that they 
touched something revolting deep in the bone. It was hard to say why; they were 
humanoid. But people reacted to them the way they did to large spiders, or snakes. 


Add to that the knowledge that, in their presence, your brain lay open to the sunlight. 
That you had to struggle not to think of anything that would embarrass you. That the 
creature knew more about you than you did because all the walls were down, all the 
rationalizations and pretensions set aside. They knew, for example, precisely how we 
reacted to them. It made diplomacy difficult. 

“No, I’ve never seen one.” There weren’t many of them running around inside 
the Confederacy. They didn’t like us very much either. “Are you sure they weren’t 
involved?” I asked. 

“We looked into it. You know, of course, they’d have to come through the 
Confederacy to get to Delta Karpis. Or go exceedingly far out of their way.” 

“Is that the only reason?” 

“Not at all. Things had been quiet between them and us for a long time when 
thePolarishappened.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at the moon. It 
wasn’t Rimway’s moon. Too big, and hazy with atmosphere. In fact, it had oceans. 
“We couldn’t see any motive they’d have to kidnap the people on the 
Polaris.Certainly none worth risking war over. We talked to some of them. I 
personally talked with a representative.” He made a face at the memory and tried to 
shake it off.“He said they had nothing to do with it. I believed him. And I’ve seen no 
reason to change my mind.” 

“Why would you take his word? There don’t seem to be any other likely 
suspects.” 

“Because whatever else you want to say about them, Chase, they are notoriously 
poor liars.” 

“Okay.” 

“Furthermore, I couldn’t see how they could have accomplished it. They 
couldn’t have approached thePolariswithout being seen. Had that happened, Maddy 
would surely have sounded the alarm. We’d have known.” 

“Afterward,” I said, “you mobilized everything you had to look for them.” 

“Yes. In fact, a sizable portion of the Confederate navy went out and conducted 
the search. And, although we didn’t encourage anybody, at least not officially, a lot of 
corporate and even some private vessels helped. The hunt went on for more than a 
year.” 

“I assumed there’d been a campaign to get everyone involved.” 

“We didn’t need a campaign. You don’t know what it was like at the time. 
People were scared. We thought something new had shown up. Something with 
hostile intentions and advanced technology. Something completelydifferent.It was 
almost as if we’d discovered a supernatural entity. It was so bad there was even talk 
of an alliance with the Mutes. So a lot of corporate types sent their ships out. Became 
part of the effort.” He moved some sand around with his feet. He was wearing 
sandals.“It generated good publicity for them. For the corporations.” 

“And never a sign of anything at all out of the ordinary?” 


“That’s correct. We never found anything.” 

One of the vents came on and delivered cool air into the room. We sat quietly, 
listening to it. It was reassuring, evidence that basic physical law still ruled. “Dr. 
Taliaferro,” I said, “do you have a theory? What do you think happened to them?” 

He considered it.“I think they were taken,” he said finally.“By whom, or for 
what purpose, I don’t know.” 

His bench was placed just beyond the reach of the incoming tide. We watched a 
wave play out and sink into the sand. “Why was there an empty compartment on 
thePolaris? ” 

“You mean, why were there only six passengers instead of seven?” 

“That’s the same question. But, yes.” 

“That’s easy to explain. The eighth compartment was reserved for 
me.I’dintended to go.” 

“For you?” He nodded.” 

“You were fortunate. Why did you change your mind?” 

“Something happened at the office. I just don’t know what it was. I was never 
informed. I, the avatar. Whatever it was, it was serious enough that I felt constrained 
to cancel out of the flight.” 

“It was at the last minute.” 

“Yes. We were literally boarding thePolaris.” 

I pressed for an explanation, but he insisted he had none. Whatever it had been, 
Taliaferro had kept it to himself. And I recalled seeing the director leaving early at the 
Skydeck launch. “Dr. Taliaferro, how about your disappearance? Why would you 
have walked off the way you did?” I should mention that it was a rhetorical question. 
No answer would be forthcoming.This Taliaferro was a construct of what was known 
of the man. It was, in effect, only his public persona. I wasn’t disappointed. 

“Itisstrange, isn’t it?” 

“Yes. What do you think?” Might as well push the point. I’d heard the question 
asked at the convention, and he’d offered no explanation. But the atmosphere was 
better on that beach, alone and in casual surroundings as opposed to the clamor in the 
meeting room. 

“I have to think I met with foul play. There were people who would have liked to 
see me dead.” 

“For example?” 

“Barcroft. Tulami. Yin-Kao. Charlie Middleton, for God’s sake. They’re too 
numerous to name, Chase. But it’s all in the record. Easy enough for you to find, if 
you’re really interested. I stepped on a lot of toes in my time.” 


“Any who might have been willing to take your life?” 

He thought about it.“No,” he said.“I wouldn’t have thought so. But it appears 
someone did me in.” 

“When you were at the convention, you mentioned that you’d cleared off your 
desk that last day. You said that was uncharacteristic.” 

“Did I say that?” 

“Yes, you did.” 

“I may have exaggerated. For effect. I mean, you appear at a convention, there’s 
always a little show business involved, right?” 

“And you removed everything that was in your accounts.” 

“Yes. Well, that does sound as if I was thinking about leaving.” 

“Any chance you might have committed suicide?” 

“I had everything to live for. A good career. I was still relatively young. Only in 
my sixties. In good health. I was in a position to help a number of causes that needed 
assistance.” 

“Which causes?” 

“At the time, I was active in efforts to improve public education. And I was 
helping the Kern Group raise money.”The Kern Group was a nonprofit organization 
that sent volunteers and supplies to places like Talios, where famine was common. 
(Talios, of course, was not on Rimway. Not many people ever miss a meal on 
Rimway.)“And I’d recently met a woman.” 

Ivy Cumming. After Taliaferro’s disappearance Ivy waited a few years before 
giving up and marrying an academic. She eventually gave birth to two children, and 
was herself still alive. 

“No,”he said.“I was ambushed. I understand how it looks, about the bank 
accounts. But I still don’t think I’d have gone voluntarily.” 

I’d dropped by Windy’s apartment shortly after the bombing to see how she was 
doing. By then she was on her way to recovery. The day after I talked with 
Taliaferro’s avatar, Alex announced he thought it incumbent on him to pay a visit. 

“Why?” 

“Because,” he said, “I want to reassure myself she’s okay.” 

“She’s fine.” 

“I should let her see I’m concerned.” 

“We sent her flowers. I stopped by. I can’t see there’s much point. But if you 

really want to—” 


“Civic obligation,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.” 

So we went. She was back at work by then, and the only trace of the injury was a 
blue cane left in a corner of the office. From her window, had she been so minded, 
she could have watched construction bots clearing off the last of the debris of what 
had been Proctor Union. 

We’d brought candy, which Alex presented with a flourish. He could be a 
charmer when he wanted. She was receptive, and you would have thought they were 
the best of friends. There was no sign of the annoyance I’d seen over our refusal to 
return the artifacts. 

We talked trivia for a few minutes. Windy had gone back to playing squabble, 
which required good legs. And gradually we worked around to our real reason for 
coming. Alex segued into it by mentioning that he’d just finished Edward 
Hunt’sRiptides, a history of the various social movements of the last century. An 
entire chapter was dedicated to Taliaferro. “Did you know,” he asked innocently, 
“that he was supposed to be on thePolaris? ” 

“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s right. If you look at the pre-op passenger manifest, 
you’ll see his name.” 

“What happened?” 

“Some last-minute thing. I don’t know.” 

“The last minute—” 

“They were loading up and getting ready to leave.” 

“And you have no idea at all why he backed out?” 

“No. The story was that he got a call, some sort of problem at the office. But I 
don’t know the source. And you won’t find it recorded anywhere.” 

“Were there any problems at Survey at the time? Something so serious that he’d 
have canceled out?” 

She shook her head. “There’s nothing on the logs for that date. Therewere calls 
to Skydeck during the departure, but nothing official. It was all just to wish everyone 
good luck.” 

“Maybe it was personal,” I said. 

“He told Mendoza it was a call from the office.” She was bored with the subject. 
“Of course, it could have been personal. Could have been something they were just 
relaying. Does it matter?” 

“Do we know,” Alex persisted, “whether he returned to the Survey offices that 
day?” 

“The day thePolaris left? I really have no idea, Alex.” She tried to look as if her 
head was beginning to hurt. “Look,” she said, “we have no record of the call. And it 
was all a long time ago.” 


I asked Jacob what we had on Chek Boland. 

Boland’s specialty was the mind-body problem, and his tack had been that we’d 
always been deceived by the notion of duality, of body and soul, of the mind as an 
incorporeal entity distinct from the brain. Despite thousands of years of evidence to 
the contrary, people still clung to the old notion. 

Boland had done the breakthrough work, mapping the brain, showing why its 
more abstract functions were holographic rather than embedded in a specific location. 
Why they were part and parcel of the way a brain was supposed to function. 

Boland had been the youngest of Maddy’s passengers. He had dark eyes and 
looked like one of those guys who spent two or three hours at the gym every day. I 
watched him in the visual record, watched interviews, presentations at luncheons, 
watched him accept awards. The Penbrook. The Bennington. The Kamal. He was 
self-deprecating, easygoing, inclined to give credit to his colleagues. It appeared that 
everybody liked him. 

Despite his accomplishments, he seems to be best known as the onetime mind-
wipe expert, who worked with law enforcement agencies for thirteen years to correct, 
as they put it, persons inclined to habitual or violent criminal behavior. 

Eventually, he resigned, and later he became an opponent of the technique. I 
found a record of his addressing a judicial association about a year after he’d 
terminated his own law enforcement career.“It’s akin to murder,” he said.“We 
destroy the extant personality and replace it with another, created by the practitioner. 
We implant false memories. And no part of the original person survives. None. He is 
as dead as if we’d dropped him out of an aircraft.” 

But he’d spent thirteen years performing the procedure. If that was the way he 
felt, why did he not resign sooner? 

“I thought it was useful work,”he said in an interview.“It was satisfying, 
because I felt I was removing someone’s felonious characteristics and replacing them 
with inclinations that would make him, and everyone who had to deal with him, 
happier. I was taking a criminal off the streets and returning a decent, law-abiding 
citizen. It was painless. We reassured the victim that everything would be fine, and he 
would be back out in the world again by dinnertime. That was what I told them. Out 
by dinnertime. And then, God help me, I took their lives. 

“I can’t answer the question why I was so slow to accept the reality of what I 
was doing. If there is a judgment, I hope I’ll be dealt with in a more lenient manner 
than I have dealt with others. I can only say now that I urge you to consider 
legislation banning this barbaric practice.” 

TeN 

She crash-landed among the classics, and never fully 
recovered. 


—Bake Agundo, 

Surfing with Homer 

A day or two after I’d looked through Boland’s background, we took several clients 
to dinner. When it was over, and they’d left, Alex and I stayed for a nightcap at the 
Top of the World. We were just finishing when I got a call from Marcia Cable. 

“Chase, you told me to get in touch if anything unusual happened about Maddy’s 
blouse?” 

We were sitting looking out over the vast tableau that Andiquar presents at night, 
the sky teeming with traffic, the two rivers filled with lights, the city aglow. “Yes,” I 
said, not quite focused yet. “What’s going on?” 

“There was a guy just left here who came to look at it. It was the damnedest 
thing.” 

“How do you mean?” I asked. Alex signaled for me to turn up the volume so he 
could hear. 

“He told me he wanted to buy it. Offered a barrel of money. Damned near three 
times what I paid for it.” 

“And—?” 

“I’m not sure whether I’d have sold it or not. I’ll be honest, Chase. I was 
tempted. But after he looked at it he changed his mind.” 

Marcia came from money. She’d gone to the best schools, married more money, 
was a skilled equestrienne, and specialized in taking over failing companies and 
turning them around. She had red hair, dark eyes, and a low tolerance for opposing 
opinions. 

“He withdrew the offer?” I said. 

“Yes. He said it wasn’t quite what he expected and that he’d decided it wouldn’t 
go well with his collection after all. Or words to that effect. Thanked me for my time, 
turned around, and left.” 

Alex said hello and apologized for breaking in. “Marcia,” he said, “you say 
helooked at it. Did hehandle it?” 

“Yes, Alex. He did.” 

“Any chance he could have done a switch?” 

“No. After what Chase told me, I never took my eyes off him. My husband was 
there, too.” 

“Okay. Good. What was his name?” 

She paused, and I heard the bleep of a secretary.“Bake Toomy.” 

Alex shook his head. The name was not familiar. “Did you ask how he came to 
know you had the blouse?” 


“I think everybody knew. I told most of my friends, and I was on theTerry 
MacIlhenny Showwith it.” 

“That’s the one you sent us?” I said. I’d noticed it in the queue, but hadn’t really 
gotten around to watching it. 

“Yes.”She was trying to decide whether she should be worried.“I was 
wondering if he was trying to pin down where we keep it. Maybe he’s going to try to 
steal it.” I told Alex, out of range of the link, that I hoped we weren’t getting people 
upset for no reason.“I asked him,” Marcia continued,“if he knew you, Alex. He said 
he did.” 

“What did he look like?” Alex asked. 

“He’s a young guy. Not very big. Midtwenties. Auburn hair cut short. Sort of 
old-fashioned style.” 

“Did he leave contact information?” 

“No.” 

“Okay. Marcia, I have a favor to ask.” 

“Sure. Alex, what’s this about anyhow?” 

“Probably nothing. Just that somebody’s showing unusual interest in thePolaris 
artifacts. We don’t know what’s going on. But if you hear from him again, try to find 
out where he can be reached and get in touch with us. Right away.” 

Young. Not very big. Midtwenties. Auburn hair cut short. Old-fashioned style. 

“Maybe he’s legitimate,” I said. “Just wanted to look and changed his mind. No 
big deal about that.” 

A call to Paul Calder confirmed that Davis, the purchaser of Maddy’s vest, fit the 
description of Bake Toomy. It seemed to be the same person. 

Marcia lived in Solitaire, on the northern plains. Paul was a local. “Whoever this 
guy is,” Alex said, “he gets around.” He instructed the AI to check the listings in 
Solitaire for anyone named Toomy. “Can’t be many,” he said. “The population’s only 
a few thousand.” 

“Negative result,”said the AI. 

“Try the general area. Anywhere within a six-hundred-klick radius.” 

“I have eighteen listings.” 

“Anybody named Bake, or any variation like that?” 

“Barker.” 

“Any others?” 


“Barbara. But that’s it.” 

“What do we have on Barker Toomy?” 

“He’s a physician. Eighty-eight years old. Attended medical school—” 

“That’s enough.” 

“Not our guy, Alex.” 

“No.” 

“Bake Toomy might be unlisted.” 

“He might. But that would be unusual for a collector. Or a dealer. Check our 

clients. You won’t find any of them who aren’t listed.” 

“Alex,” I said, “you think this is the same guy who did the break-in?” 

“I don’t think it’s much of a leap.” 

“I wonder if he’s connected with the woman who gave the bogus award to 

Diane?” 

“I suspect so. Maybe not directly, but they’re after the same thing.” 

“Which is—?” 

“Ah, my sweet, there you have hold of the issue. Let me ask a question. Why did 

our intruder find it necessary to open the display case, but not the bookcase?” 
I watched a taxi rise past the window and swing out toward the east. “I have no 

idea. Why?” 

“Because the glass was in the bookcase. And you can’t hide anything in a glass.” 

“You think somebody hid something in one of the artifacts?” 

“I don’t think there’s any question about it.” 

I was trying to digest it. “Then the thief took the coins and books—” 

“—As a diversion.” 

“But why notkeep them? It’s not as if they weren’t valuable.” 

“Maybe he didn’t know that,” he said. “Maybe he doesn’t know anything about 

collectibles.” 

“That can’t be,” I said. “This whole thing is about collectibles.” 

“I don’t think it is. This whole thing is about something else entirely, Chase.” 

We sat looking at one another. “Alex, if there’d been something in the pockets of 

the jacket, Maddy’s jacket, do you think we’d have noticed?” 


“Oh, yes,” he said. “I always inspect the merchandise. I even examined it for the 
possibility that something had been sewn into it. In any case, we know they didn’t 
find what they wanted at the house, or they wouldn’t still be hunting for it.” 

My apartment building is a modest place, a privately owned three-story utilitarian 
structure that’s been there a hundred years. It has four units on each floor and an 
indoor pool that’s inevitably deserted in the late evening. We came in over the river 
and drifted down onto the pad. I heard music coming from somewhere, and a peal of 
laughter. It seemed out of place. We sat in the soft glow of the instrument lights. 
“You looked through the Bible?” he said. 

“Yes. There was nothing there.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Well, I didn’t check every page.” 

“Call Soon Lee and ask her to look. Let’s be certain.” 

“Okay.” 

“And talk to Ida. She has the jumpsuit, right?” 

“Yes.” 

“Tell her to look in the pockets. And check the lining. Let us know if she finds 
anything. Anything at all.” 

I opened the door and got out. Something flapped in the trees. Alex joined me. 
He’d walk me to the door and see that I got safely home. Ever the gentleman. “So 
who,” I asked him, “had access to the artifacts? Somebody at Survey?” 

He pulled his jacket around him. It was cold. “I checked with Windy a day or 
two after the burglary. She insists they’d been secured since the Trendel Commission, 
until the vault was opened a few weeks ago and they were inventoried for the auction. 
That means, whatever they’re looking for, it had to have been placed during the 
period of time between the opening of the vault and the attack. Or during the first 
months of the investigation, in 1365.” 

“There’s another possibility,” I said. 

He nodded slowly. “I didn’t want to be the first to say it.” Someone on 
thePolaris might have left something. 

Soon Lee called to report there was nothing in the Bible. She said she’d gone through 
it page by page. There was no insert of any kind, and she could find nothing written 
on its pages that seemed out of place. Ida assured me there was nothing hidden in the 
jumpsuit. 

The only thing we had in our inventory with a direct connection to any of 
thePolaris victims was a copy of Pernico Hendrick’sWilderness of Stars. It had once 
belonged to Nancy White. I had some time on my hands, so I dug it out and began to 
page through it. It was a long history, seven hundred-plus pages, of environmental 


efforts undertaken by various organizations during the sixty years or so preceding 
publication, which took it back to the beginning of the fourteenth century. 

There weren’t many notations. White was more inclined to underline sections 
that caught her interest and draw question or exclamation marks in the 
margins.Population is the key to everything, Hendrick had written.Unless we learn to 
control our own fertility, to stabilize growth, all environmental efforts, all attempts to 
build stable economies, all efforts at eliminating civil discord, all other courses, are 
futile. Three exclamation marks. This was the precursor to a long series of citations 
by the author. Despite advanced technology, people still bred too much. Hardly 
anybody denied that. The effects were sometimes minimal: There might be too much 
traffic, not enough landing pads. At other times, states collapsed, famines struck, civil 
wars broke out, and off-world observers found themselves unable to help.It doesn’t 
matter how big the fleet is, you can’t ship enough food to sustain a billion people. The 
book detailed efforts to save endangered species across the hundred worlds of the 
Confederacy, to preserve the various environments, to husband resources, to slow 
population growth. It described resistance by government and by corporate and 
religious groups, the indifference of the general public (which, Hendrick maintains, 
never recognizes a problem until it’s too late). He likened the human race to a 
cancerous growth, spreading through the Orion Arm, infecting individual worlds. 
More exclamation marks. 

It was hair-raising stuff, and somewhat overheated. The author never settled for a 
single adjective where two or three could be levered in. 

But the book was well thumbed, and it was obvious that Nancy White was more 
often than not in agreement. She quibbled now and then on factual information and 
technical points, but she seemed to accept the conclusion: A lot of people died, or 
were thrust into poverty, and kept there, for no very good reason other than that the 
species couldn’t, or wouldn’t, control its urge to procreate. 

I showed it to Alex. 

“The guy’s an alarmist,” he said. “So is she, apparently.” 

I stared at the book, depressed. “Maybe that’s what we need.” 

He looked surprised. “I didn’t know you were a Greenie wacko.” 

I was on my way home the following day, approaching the junction between the 
Melony and Narakobo Rivers when Vlad Korinsky called. Vlad owned thePolaris 
mission plaque. Ultimately, I thought it might prove to be the most valuable of the 
artifacts that survived the explosion. There was no way to know where it had actually 
been located in the ship, but if Maddy had adhered to tradition, it would have 
occupied a prominent position on the bridge. Vlad was a traveler and adventurer. 
He’d been to Hokmir and Morikalla and Jamalupé and a number of other 
archeological sites on- and off-world. His walls were decorated with pictures showing 
him standing beside the shattered ruins of half a dozen ancient civilizations. He’d had 
a little too much sun over the years, and the winds of a dozen worlds had etched their 
lines into his face. 

He was shopping. Refurbishing his den. He’d been looking through our catalog. 


Was there anything new in the pipeline? 

“You called at exactly the right moment, Vlad,” I said. “It happens that I can put 
my hands on a comm link from Aruvia. Four thousand years old, but it’s in excellent 
condition. It was lost during the Battle of Ephantes.” 

We talked it over, and he told me he’d think about it. I knew his tone, though. He 
was hooked, but he didn’t want to look like an easy sell. 

I liked Vlad. We’d been out together a few times, in violation of the general 
principle that you don’t get involved in personal entanglements with clients. Alex 
knew about it and looked pained whenever Vlad’s name came up. But he didn’t say 
anything, relying, I suppose, on my discretion. Or good sense. I hope not on my 
virtue.“How are youdoing, Chase?” he asked. 

He sounded worried, and I figured out why he’d really called. “Good,” I said. 
“I’m doing fine.” 

“Good.”A sprinkle of rain fell across the windscreen.“You have anything yet on 
the guy who’s trying to steal the artifacts?” 

“I didn’t say anyone was trying tosteal them, Vlad.” 

“The implication’s clear enough.” 

“Actually we’re not sure what’s happening. We just want you to be careful.” 

“Well, I wanted you to know there’ve been no strangers around here.” 

“Good,” I said. 

“If I see anybody, I’ll let you know.” 

It was my night, I guess. When I got home the AI told me that Ida Patrick was on the 
line. 

Ida was the sort of middle-aged, well-educated, precise woman you might find 
playing orinoco and sipping fruit juice on weekday afternoons down at the club. 
Nothing roused her indignation quite like improper behavior. For Ida, the world was a 
clean, well-lighted place, decorum the supreme virtue, and anyone who was 
uncomfortable with those standards should simply apply elsewhere. Her indignation 
had soared when I suggested there might be a thief abroad. Nevertheless, she loved 
intrigue. 

“Chase,”she said.“I’ve had a call.” She dropped her voice conspiratorially. 

“About the jumpsuit?” 

“Yes.”She drew out the aspirate. 

“From whom?” 

“He said he was an historian. He tells me he’s writing a book about 
thePolaris,and wanted to know if he could take a look.” 


“What’s his name?” 

She consulted a piece of paper.“Kiernan,” she said.“I think the first name was 
Marcus.” 

Marcus Kiernan. I ran a quick search. 

Two Marcus Kiernans came back. One was halfway around the globe; the other 
was in Tiber, which was twenty klicks west of Andiquar, close to Ida’s residence. The 
local one had written two popular histories, both on famous disasters of the last 
century.Palliot reconstructed the loss of the celebrated airship that went down in 
1362, taking with it 165 passengers, including the literary giant Albert Combs; 
andWindjammer traced the disappearance of Baxter Hollin and his show business 
passengers, who sailed into the Misty Sea in 1374 and vanished without a trace. The 
second Kiernan was seventy. 

“What’s he look like, Ida?” 

“Reddish hair. Good-looking. Young.” 

“How tall is he?” 

“I can’t tell. I haven’t seen him in person. On the circuit he looks about 
average.” 

“When’s he coming?” 

“Tomorrow evening. At seven. He wanted to come tonight, but I told him I was 
busy.” 

We checked out the other Marcus Kiernan, just to cover our bases. Despite the 
name, it turned out to be a woman. 

We could have simply alerted Fenn. But Alex wanted to see who this individual 
was and hear what he had to say. “For the moment,” he told me, “there might be more 
to this than Fenn would be prepared to deal with.” 

Ida lived alone in a magnificent old-world house outside Margulies, on Spirit Lake, 
eighty kilometers west of Andiquar. The house had directional windows and a domed 
roof and a wraparound upper deck. A glass tower guarded the eastern wing. Inside, 
the furnishings were eclectic. Whatever caught her eye. A modern split-back chair 
sitting next to an Altesian sofa and a mahogany table. It wasn’t the kind of décor I’d 
have wanted, but in Ida’s house it seemed correct. 

Alex had arranged to have a replica of the jumpsuit made up, and we brought it 
with us. He handed it to Ida, who compared it with the original. “Marvelous,” she 
said. “Can’t tell one from the other. Do you expect him to try to grab it?” 

“No.” Alex sounded reassuring. “I don’t think anything like that will happen. 
But if he does, don’t try to stop him.” 

“Is he dangerous?” she asked. 

“I’m sure he’s not, Ida. Chase will be with you, though, so you’ll be safe.” (Yes, 


indeed!) “And I’ll be right behind the curtains. The thing you should be aware of, 
though, is that he isn’t who he says.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Well, let me put it this way: If he’s the person we think he is, he uses a different 
name every time we hear from him.” He suggested she have the AI make a visual 
recording of the entire conversation. 

We had decided that Alex should stay out of sight because of the possibility our 
visitor would know him. He was a public figure and easily recognizable. So it came 
down to me, which was probably just as well. 

Ida appeared to be having second thoughts. “Whatdo you expect him to do?” 

“I think he’ll look at the jumpsuit, tell you how much he admires it, and possibly 
make an offer.” 

“If he does, how do I respond?” Her voice suggested she was getting seriously 
into the spirit of the occasion. 

Alex thought it over. “I’d like you to tell him thanks, but you can’t accept it. The 
jumpsuit isn’t for sale.” 

“Okay.” We went into the study, opened the glass cabinet in which she kept 
Maddy’s suit. As at our place, Maddy’s stenciled name was prominently displayed. 
She removed it and inserted the substitute, arranging it as lovingly as if it were the 
original. “This is exciting,” she said. 

She folded the original carefully and put it inside a chest under a quilt. 
“Actually, I’m disappointed you don’t think he’ll try to grab it and run.” 

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “Maybe we could persuade him—” 

“—In case he tries anything,” she continued, “I’m equipped with sonosound.” 

“Isn’t that illegal?” he asked. Her AI could take down an intruder with a directed 
sonic strike. It had been known to be fatal, and owners had been charged with 
manslaughter. 

“If there’s a problem,” she said, “I’d rather be the one in court answering the 
charges.” 

Marcus Kiernan descended onto the pad promptly at seven in an unpretentious gray 
Thunderbolt. A three-year-old model. The kids who’d seen our stuff get dropped into 
the river hadn’t gotten a good look at the skimmer because it was dark. But they’d 
said it was gray. 

I watched the cabin hatch open, watched our guy literally bounce out. He looked 
around at the manicured grounds and the lake, and started up the brick pathway to the 
house. 

Ida and I had returned to the living room and were seated beneath some artwork 
by a painter I’d never heard of. Alex retreated behind the curtains. The AI, whose 


name was Henry, announced that Dr. Kiernan had arrived. Ida instructed Henry to let 
him in, the front door opened, and we heard him enter. He traded comments with the 
AI, then came into the room. 

He wasn’t as tall as I am. In fact, I’m taller than a lot of guys. But Kiernan didn’t 
reach my ears. He looked clean-cut and law-abiding, someone you could instinctively 
trust. My first thought was that we’d been wrong about him, that this was not the man 
we were looking for. But then I remembered how I’d liked the Mazha. 

Kiernan reminded me of somebody. I couldn’t think who. He had an ingenuous 
smile and amicable green eyes, set a bit far apart. “Ms. Patrick,” he said, “good 
evening. This is a lovely house.” 

Ida extended her hand. “Thank you, Doctor. Chase, this is Dr. Kiernan. Doctor, 
Chase Kolpath, my houseguest.” 

He bowed, smiled, and said how pleased he was to meet two such beautiful 
women at the same time. I reacted about the way you’d expect. And I got an 
association with thePolaris convention. He’d been there, but I still couldn’t place 
him. 

We shook hands and sat down. Ida served tea, and Kiernan asked me what I did 
for a living. 

“I pilot superluminals,” I said, deciding that my connection with antiquities 
would be best left unmentioned. 

“Really?” He looked impressed. “That must mean you’ve been all over the 
Confederacy.” 

He was smarter than I was. I realized it immediately, but it didn’t help. I started 
rattling off names of ports of call, trying to impress him. And I knew that Alex, 
listening behind the curtains, would be sneering. But I couldn’t help myself. And 
when he nodded and said, yes, I’ve been there, some beautiful places, have you seen 
the Loci Valley, the Great Falls, I began to feel a connection with him. 

I wouldn’t want you to think I get swept away by every good-looking young 
male who shows up. But there was something inherently likable about Kiernan. His 
eyes were warm, he had a great smile, and when anyone spoke to him, he paid strict 
attention. 

“So tell us about the book,” said Ida, who was also impressed, and was making 
surreptitious signals to me, indicating no, this guy is a sweetheart, he just couldn’t be 
up to any harm. 

“The title will bePolaris, ” he said. “I’ve interviewed over a hundred people who 
were connected with it in one way or another.” 

“And do you have a theory as to what happened?” she asked. 

He looked nonplussed. “Everybody has a theory, Ida. Is it okay if I call you 
Ida?” 

“Oh, yes, by all means, Marcus.” 


“But what happened out there isn’t the thrust of the book.” 

“It isn’t?” she said. 

“No. In fact, what I’m doing is examining the political and social consequences 
of the event. For example, did you know that spending on armaments during the eight 
years following the incident increased twelve percent? That formal attendance at 
religious worship around the globe went up by almost aquarter during the next six 
months? Twenty-five percent of three billion people is a substantial number.” 

“It certainly is.” 

“The statistics elsewhere in the Confederacy were similar.” 

“That doesn’t mean,” I said, “that thePolaris had anything to do with it.” 

“I don’t think there’s any question it was a reaction to thePolaris, Chase. The 
public mood changed during that period. You can document it in a lot of ways. People 
began storing food and survival equipment. There was a surge in the sales of personal 
weapons of all kinds. As if you could fight off an advanced alien technology with a 
scrambler.” A smile touched the corners of his lips. But there was something sad 
about it. “Even the Mutes were affected, though to a lesser degree. Some aspects of 
the reaction were only temporary, of course. But even today ships going beyond the 
bounds of known space frequently take a small armory with them.” 

We gabbled on for about half an hour. Finally, Ida apologized that we were 
taking so much of his time and no doubt he’d like to see the jumpsuit. 

“It’s a pleasure, ladies,” he said. “But yes. I would like to take a look, if I may.” 
We got up and headed for the study. Alex would have to watch the rest of the show 
on a monitor. He’d be only a room away if needed, but everything seemed under 
control. 

We walked down the long central hallway, Ida in front, Kiernan bringing up the 
rear. The passageway was lined with original oils, mostly landscapes, and he stopped 
twice to admire the work and compliment Ida on her taste. He seemed quite 
knowledgeable, and Ida was clearly struck by him. 

Eventually we reached the study, and she told Henry to unlock the display 
cabinet. 

“You keep ithere, ” he said, “in this room? I assumed you’d have it inside a vault 
somewhere.” It was a joke, but his tone suggested he was serious.It’s precious. Take 
care of it. There are unprincipled persons about. 

“Oh, it’s perfectly safe, Marcus.” She opened the top of the case and removed 
the duplicate jumpsuit, lifting it by the shoulders and letting it fall out full length. It 
was dark blue, the color of the sea at night. ThePolaris patch was on the left shoulder, 
andENGLISH stenciled in white over the right-hand breast pocket. 

Kiernan approached it as one might a relic. “Magnificent,” he said. 

Unaccountably, I felt a pang of guilt. 


He reached out with his fingertips and touched it. Touched the embroidered 
name. 

ENGLISH 

Maddy. I think, in that moment, I understood why passengers riding theSheila 
Clermo felt the presence of Mendoza and Urquhart and White and the others. And 
especially Maddy. Poor tragic Maddy. Nothing worse can happen to a captain than to 
lose the people who travel with her, who depend on her to bring them safely through 
whatever obstacle might arise. Ida must have felt it, too. Her eyes were damp. 

Kiernan stood as if drawing strength from the garment, and finally he took it in 
his own hands. “I can hardly believe it,” he said. 

“Marcus,” I asked, “have you been on board the ship?” 

“TheClermo? Oh, yes. I’ve been on it.” His expression changed, became 
troubled. “Years ago.” 

“Is something wrong?” 

“No. I was just thinking that Survey should never have sold it.” 

“I agree,” said Ida, with indignation. 

“It’s of immense historical value.” 

I looked at the jumpsuit. And at him. He had to raise it a bit to keep it off the 
floor. Maddy had also been taller than he was. 

We all gazed at it. At the smooth dark blue cloth, at the shoulder patch, at the 
pockets. Six in all, breast pockets outlined in white trim, back and cargo pockets 
plain. 

“Nothing in them, I suppose?” he said. 

“No,” said Ida. “I should have been so lucky.” 

Casually, as if it were an afterthought, he looked. Opened each pocket and 
peeked in, smiling the whole time, saying how you never know, shaking his head 
sadly that no scrap ofPolaris history had drifted forward inside the suit. He had me 
almost believing it was the original. “Pity,” he said, when he’d finished. “But it’s 
enough that we have this.” He refolded the jumpsuit and gave it back. “Thank you, 
Ida.” He looked at the time. “It’s gotten late. I really must go. It’s been a pleasure to 
meet you, Ida. Andyou, Chase.” 

He started toward the door. 

“You’ve come a long way, Marcus,” said Ida. In fact we weren’t at all sure how 
far he’d come. “Can I offer you anything before you leave?” 

“No,” he said. “Thank you, but I really must be on my way.” 

Bows to both of us, and then we were all walking toward the front door. It 
opened, and he swung out into the sunset, waved, climbed aboard his skimmer, and 


rose into the evening sky. 

I collected the duplicate jumpsuit, and I was putting it carefully into a plastene 
bag when Alex charged into the study. 

“Let’s go,” he said. 

“Where?” 

“Ida.” He beamed at her. “You were exquisite.” And, glancing at me, “Both of 
you.” We were headed toward the front door. “Thanks, Ida. I’ll get back to you. Let 
you know what happens.” He took the duplicate jumpsuit and put it under his arm. If 
nothing else, we had “Kiernan’s” DNA. 

We paused in the shelter of the house to watch the skimmer moving out over the 
treetops. Gave it a moment to get clear. “He seems like such a nice young man,” said 
Ida. 

When we thought it was safe to do so, we climbed into our own vehicle. “What’s 
the plan?” I asked him. 

“Let’s see if we can find out where he lives.” We lifted off, and Alex opened a 
link to Ida. “Probably best, Ida,” he said, “if you don’t mention this to anybody.” 

“Why?”she asked. 

“Just a precaution. Until we find out what it’s about.” 

“What do you want me to do if he contacts me again—?” 

“Let us know right away.” 

“And keep the doors locked,” I said. 

I asked Alex whether he thought she was actually in any kind of danger. 

“No,” he said. “Kiernan got what he wanted—” 

“—An opportunity to search the jumpsuit—” 

“Exactly. There’s no reason for him to come back. But it’s just as well to be 

safe.” 

“Your notion that they’re looking for something—” 

“Yes?” 

“—Looks as if it’s on target.” 

We could see Kiernan in the fading sunlight, headed east toward Andiquar. 

“Follow it,” he instructed the AI. We rose above the trees and began to accelerate. He 
turned in my direction. “What did you think of him?” 

“Actually, he seemed like a nice guy.” 

He smiled. “I’m willing to bet you and Ida were just talking to the man who set 


the bombs at Proctor Union. Or knows who did.” 
I had to run that through a second time. “What makes you say that?” I asked. 

“Why would Kiernan try to kill theMazha ?” 

“He didn’t.” 

“I’m sorry, Alex; I’m not following the conversation.” 

“What I’m saying is that he took advantage of the Mazha’s presence to destroy 

the collection and make it look like something else.” 

That was hard to believe. “You don’t think it was an assassination attempt?” 

“No, I don’t. And they got away with it, Chase. The investigators are looking for 

an assassin. Not aPolaris conspirator.” 

“But I still don’t see—” 

“They didn’t want anyone to realize what was really happening. They don’t want 

people asking a lot of questions. It was a perfect opportunity. They find out the 
Mazha’s visiting, and nobody is surprised when assassins try to finish him off.” 

“That’s incredible. But why? If there’s something they’re trying to find, why 
destroy everything?” 

“Maybe they just want to be sure that whatever’s there—” He hesitated. 

“—Doesn’t fall into somebody else’s hands,” I finished. 

“Yes. Now think about the bombs again.” 

“They turned the artifacts to slag.” 

“It’s obvious Kiernan doesn’t know where to find the thing he’s looking for. It 
might have been in Maddy’s jacket. Or in her jumpsuit. Or in her blouse.” 

“It’s always Maddy,” I said. 

“That might be an illusion. Most of the stuff we took from the exhibition 
belonged to Maddy. So we need to withhold judgment a bit.” 

The sky was getting dark. Below us, lights were coming on. “But what could it 
be?” I asked. 

“I don’t know.” 

“How’d they find out the Mazha was coming? There must be a leak someplace.” 

“I suspect there were leaks in a lot of places. Organizations like Survey aren’t 
used to keeping secrets. That’s why he came with a small army of bodyguards.” He 
jabbed an index finger at Kiernan’s aircraft. “They didn’t want to kill anyone, so they 
called in the bomb threat minutes before it went off.” 

“It was a close thing.” 


“Yes. Whatever they’re looking for, they’re willing to risk killing a few people if 
that’s what it takes to find it. Or to make sure no one else does.” 

“Hey, that means Tab Whatzis-name is involved.” 

“Everson.” 

“Yes. Everson.” The guy who’d bought the debris, incinerated it, and launched 
the ashes toward the sun. 

“Are we beginning to see a pattern?” 

“But what could be that important?” 

He looked at me. “Think about it, Chase.” 

“ThePolaris. There’s something that would tell us what happened.” 

“That’s my guess.” 

“You think somebody wrote a note? Left a message of some sort?” 

“Maybe. It may not be that clear-cut. But there’s something that somebody’s 
afraid of.” 

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Even if there had been some sort of conspiracy, 
everybody who could have been involved in it is long dead or out of power.” 

Kiernan was still headed east. We were gaining on him, trying to get closer 
without being spotted. “Let’s go to manual, Chase. Move up, but stay in traffic.” 

I disabled the AI and activated the yoke. “We’re in legal jeopardy here,” I said. 
Going to manual wasn’t strictly an offense, but God help you if you did it and then 
got involved in an accident. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. 

“Easy for you to say.” 

Kiernan’s Thunderbolt joined the east–west stream along 79, over the Narakobo. 

It was the middle of the week; traffic was moderate and moving steadily. “I still think 
we should call Fenn,” I said. 

“What do they charge him with? Fondling Maddy’s jumpsuit?” 

“At the very least, they ought to be able to bring some sort of charges against a 
man who wanders around the countryside gaining entrance to people’s homes while 
using false identities.” 

“I’m not sure that’s illegal,” he said. “Anyhow, all it would do is let him know 
we’re onto him. If we want to find out what this is about, we need to give him a 
chance to show us.” 

Ahead, we could see the lights of Andiquar on the horizon. The Thunderbolt 
rolled into the northeast corridor and headed toward the estuary. 


“He’s going out to one of the islands,” I said. 

The night was alive with moving lights. Aside from the air traffic, some were on 
the river, others on the walkways. Compared to most Confederate capitals, Andiquar 
is a horizontal city. There are towers at its four corners, and the Spiegel and Lumen 
towers downtown, but otherwise the tallest buildings run to about six stories. It’s a 
beautifully designed amalgam of parks and piers, monuments and elevated walkways, 
fountains and gardens. 

It was a cold, still evening, no wind, the moon not yet up. We passed a hot-air 
balloon. 

“Late in the season for that,” said Alex. 

Kiernan was staying with the flow, doing nothing to draw attention to himself as 
he passed over Narakobo Bay and headed out to sea. There are hundreds of islands 
within an hour’s flying time of Andiquar, and in fact they hold almost half the 
capital’s population. 

As we drew abreast of the city, we started picking up heavy traffic. “Let’s get a 
bit closer,” said Alex. Most of the aircraft were running between altitudes of one and 
two thousand meters. The long-range stuff was higher. I dropped down to about eight 
hundred and moved in behind the Thunderbolt. 

“Good,” said Alex. 

I should have realized immediately something was wrong because a sleek yellow 
Venture that had been down at the same altitude now pulled up behind us. 

Alex hadn’t noticed. “He’s talking to somebody,” he said. 

“You mean there’s someone else in the skimmer?” 

“No, I don’t think so. He’s on the circuit.” 

The Venture swung to starboard and began to crowd me. 

Alex’s attention was riveted on the Thunderbolt. “I’d love to hear what he’s 
saying.” 

The hatch on the Venture popped open. That never happens in flight. Not ever. 
Unless somebody wants a clear shot. “Heads up, Alex—!” 

I swerved to port but it was too late. There was a flash of light, and, in that 
instant, I felt the downward jolt of normal weight slamming back, and we began to 
fall. 

Alex yelped. “What are you doing?” 

I tried accelerating to provide more lift for the wings. Skimmers, of course, are 
designed to function with antigrav pods. During operation, the aircraft weigh about 
eleven percent normal. So it doesn’t take much wingspan, or much thrust, to keep 
them airborne. Consequently, the wings are modest, and the vehicles are slow. You’re 
not going to get past 250 kph with any of them. And that’s just not enough to keep 


you in the air when you’re carrying full weight. 

We were sinking toward the ocean. I fought the controls but couldn’t get any lift. 
“Going into the water,” I told him. “Get ready.” 

“What happened?” 

“The Venture,” I said. It was accelerating away, pulling out of the traffic as we 
fell. 

A male voice broke in over the circuit:“You okay in there? We saw what 
happened.” 

And another, a woman:“Try to get down. We’ll stay with you.” 

I got on the link to the Patrol. “Code White,” I told them. “I’m in free fall.” That 
wasn’t quite true, but it was close enough. 

The surface looked dark, cold, and hard. “Hang on,” I said. 

We got a voice from the Patrol.“I see you.” I love how those guys keep calm 
when somebody else is falling out of the sky.“We are en route.” 

I didn’t have enough velocity even to get the nose up. “Try to keep loose,” I told 
Alex. He managed to laugh. I had to give the guy credit. 

Water can be hard. We blasted down, bounced, flipped, turned sideways, and crashed 
into a wave. The roof tore away. Skimmers are routinely driven by AIs, and they 
never collide, either with each other or with anything else. Furthermore, the lighter 
they are, the more efficiently they run. Consequently, they’re not built to withstand 
impact. Even the seat belts are intended only as a precaution against rough weather. 

Water poured in on us. I had a glimpse of lights, then we went under. I could feel 
myself rising against my harness. 

I checked what was left of the overhead to make sure we had clear passage to the 
surface. When I saw that we did, I released my restraints, but held on, and twisted 
around to see how Alex was making out. At that moment, the power failed, and the 
lights went off. 

He was struggling with his belt. He didn’t know where the manual release was. 
That was no surprise; he’d probably never had to use it before. It was located in the 
center of the aircraft on the board between the seats. But I had to push his hand out of 
the way to get at it. It was a bad situation because at that moment he thought he was 
going down with the skimmer and was fumbling desperately and in no mind to accept 
help. I literally had to rip his hand clear before I could thumb the release. Then I 
pushed him up. He went out through the top, and I followed. 

The Patrol picked us up within minutes and wanted to know what had happened. I 
told them. An unknown person in a late-model yellow Venture had taken a shot at us. 
Apparently she had hit the antigrav pods. 

“You sayshe. Did you know who it was?” 


“No idea,” I said. 

The interviewing officer was a woman. We were seated on the deck of the rescue 
vehicle. “Why would she do that?” 

“Don’t know,” I said. “No idea.” 

“But itwas a woman?” 

“I think so.” Not much help there. 

We were both drenched and shivering with the cold and wrapped in blankets. 
They gave us coffee. When the Patrol officer allowed us a moment alone, Alex asked 
whether I’d thought to rescue the duplicate jumpsuit. 

“No,” I said. “I thought you had it.” 

He looked at me and sighed. 

eLeVeN 

He looks here, he looks there, he looks, by heaven, 
everywhere. He searches the dark corners and all the 
shadows, behind the doors, and down in the cushions. 

—Chen Lo Cobb, “I Put It Here Somewhere,” 
fromCollectibles 

When Fenn caught up with us, he was indignant. How could we not have confided in 
him? We were at the country house the morning after we got dunked, and the police 
inspector was on the circuit. He was parked behind his desk, a glowering angry 
bulldog, while I wondered what had become of the light-footed thief he had been in 
that earlier life.“You could have gotten yourselves killed.” 

“We didn’t think it was dangerous,” Alex protested. 

“Ah,”he said.“You’ve got someone stealing artifacts, and you didn’t think it 
would be dangerous.” 

“He wasn’t actuallystealing artifacts.” 

“Why don’t you tell me precisely what hewasdoing?” 

So Alex explained. Someone looking at objects salvaged from thePolaris. 
Searching through them, actually. Changing his name from place to place. A woman 
involved too. One Gina Flambeau. We showed him pictures of Kiernan at Ida’s 
house. 

“Is Flambeau the woman who was driving the other vehicle?” 

“Don’t know. But she was doing the same thing as Kiernan. Trying to get a look 
at aPolaris artifact. In her case by pretending to give one of our clients a monetary 


award. 

“Pretending?” 

“Well, the clientdid get the money. But that’s not the point.” It all sounded lame. 
Except that someone had tried to kill us. 

Fenn was reluctant to believe the Survey attack was anything other than an 
assassination attempt. There had, in fact,been a plot to kill the Mazha while he was in 
Andiquar. Members of two independent groups had been arrested. They’d denied 
everything, and both were telling the truth. To the authorities that simply meant there 
was a third group. Or a lone rider. 

“There’s one thing about it that’s strange, though,”said Fenn.“The experts tell 
me these people don’t like to use bombs for assassinations. In Korrim Mas they’re 
considered too impersonal.” His voice dripped sarcasm.“The correct way to do an 
assassination is with a knife or gun, up close. Lots of eye contact. Anything else is 
unsporting. 

“There are rules.”He couldn’t resist laughing.“In any case, I’m glad you’re 
both okay. This is what happens when civilians get involved in these things. I hope 
next time, we can see our way clear to do it by the book.” 

He looked directly at me, as if it were my responsibility to look after Alex. 

Alex, without hesitation, said, “Absolutely.” Something in his voice implied that, 
had I not been along, he’d have gone to the police forthwith. He even looked over at 

me as if suggesting that Fenn knew very well how it had happened. 

“Did you get their number?”the inspector asked. 

“We have the Thunderbolt.” 

“But not the Venture?” 

“It happened too fast.” 

More disapproval.“Okay, let’s see who the Thunderbolt belongs to.” 

When he got back to us, late that afternoon, he was frowning.“It was leased,” he said. 

“By whom?” Alex asked. 

He was looking at a data card.“According to this, by you,Chase.” 

“Me?” 

“That your address?”He showed me the document. 

I don’t have to tell you it was unsettling that these people knew where I lived. 
That during the entire conversation at Ida’s place, Kiernan had known exactly who I 
was. 

“We talked to the leasing agency. It was picked up three days ago. The 
description of the lessee fits your boy Kiernan. But he had identification that said he 


was Chase Kolpath.”He settled back into a frown. 

“Maybe,” said Alex, “you should switch to a gender-specific name.Lola would 
be nice.” 

“It’s not funny, champ.” 

“Anyhow, we’re working on it. I’ll let you know when we find him.”He took a 
notebook out of his pocket and studied it.“It looks as if they used an industrial 
beamer on you. Took the pods off, and part of the right wing. You’re lucky to be here. 
One of the other drivers saw it all. She didn’t get the hull number either. But you were 
right about the woman driver. Young, apparently. Black hair.” 

“You’ll want to check with the leasing agencies,” Alex said. 

“Good idea. I’d never have thought of doing that myself.”Alex mumbled an 
apology, and Fenn continued.“I don’t think it’ll take long before we get a handle on 
this.” 

“Good.” 

“You say you got this guy’s DNA on a jumpsuit?” 

“It went down with the skimmer,” I said. 

“Was it bagged? The water’s not that deep at the crash site. We can send the 
diver back down.” 

Alex shook his head. “We didn’t seal the bag,” he said. 

He was back next morning.“Good news. We got both fingerprints and DNA off the 
front door at the Patrick estate. Kiernan’s real name, we think, is Joshua Bellingham. 
Name mean anything to you?” 

Alex glanced at me, and I shook my head no. “We never heard of him,” he said. 

Fenn checked his notebook.“Bellingham was an administrative officer at ABS, 
Allied BioSolutions, which manufactures medical supplies. People there say he’s a 
hard worker, good at his job, never in trouble. Nobody knows much about his social 
life, and he doesn’t seem to have a family. 

“He’s lived in the area for just under five years. Has no criminal record, at least 
not as Joshua Bellingham.” 

“You say youthink that’s his real name?” 

“Well, it’s an odd business. Prior to the time he arrived at ABS, Bellingham 
doesn’t seem to have existed. There’s no record of his birth. No ID number. We 
checked the employment application he filled out for the job. The work history is 
fabricated. They never heard of him at the places he claimed were former 
employers.” 

“So ABS never checked them?” 

“No. Employers usually don’t bother. Most companies do a personality scan. 


Tells them if you’re really reliable. If you know what you’re talking about. They don’t 
need much more than that.” 

“Are you going to arrest him?” 

“We’d like very much to talk to him. So far, we don’t know that he’s broken any 
laws. But, for the moment, he’s missing. Hasn’t reported for work since the day you 
saw him. Hasn’t called in.” 

“He’s not at home, either?” 

“He lives on a small yacht. The yacht’s gone.” 

“So who is he really?” That should have been an easy question to answer. 
Everyone was in the data banks. 

“Don’t know, Alex. He might be from Upper Pisspot or some such place. There 
are a few countries that don’t subscribe to the registry. Or he might be an offworlder. 
But we’ve got his picture on the hot board, so as soon as he walks in front of 
one of the bots, or gets spotted by a patrol, or by an alert citizen, we’ll be in 
business.”Which I suspect translated to as soon as he walked into police central and 
gave himself up. 

Despite his casual manner with Fenn, Alex had been visibly shaken by the incident. I 
guess I was, too. When somebody tries to kill you, you tend to take it personally, and 
it changes your perspective on a lot of things. He returned to his old work habits, 
which is to say he was out enjoying the night life with the clientele when he wasn’t 
wandering around in the greenhouse. But he was quieter than usual, more subdued, 
almost somber. We didn’t talk about it much, probably because neither of us wanted 
to reveal the degree to which we were bothered by the experience and by the 
probability that there was still a threat out there. He spent a lot of time looking out 
windows. Fenn installed something he called an early-warning system at both my 
apartment and at the country house. It was just a black box with its own power unit 
that he tied into the AI’s. It would monitor all visitors, block doors, disable intruders, 
notify police, shriek, and generally raise hell if anybody tried anything. It was 
probably the end of privacy. But I was willing to make the trade to sleep peacefully. 

The day after the black boxes were installed, Fenn called again to report that 
they’d tried to locate Gina Flambeau, the woman who’d visited Diane Gold to present 
her with her award, apparently for the sole purpose of inspecting Maddy’s etui. 
“There’s no such person,” he said.“At least, not one who fits the description.” 

“Did you try for a DNA sample?” Alex asked. “She handled the etui.” 

“You mean the little jewel box?” 

“Yes.” 

“Half the people in the village have handled it.” 

Every time I thought about Marcus Kiernan, I got an echo from the convention. 

The people who belong to thePolaris Society refer to themselves as Polarites. 


That’s not an entirely serious appellation, of course. But it fits the mood of things. 
The head Polarite was a woman from Lark City whom I couldn’t reach. Out of town. 
Doesn’t take a link with her. Doesn’t care to be disturbed, thank you very much. 

The number two Polarite was an electrical engineer from Ridley, which is about 
ninety kilometers down the coast. I called him and watched his image gradually take 
shape along with a burst of starlight. I’m always a bit suspicious of people who use 
special effects in their communications. You talk to somebody, it should be a 
conversation, not showbiz. He had narrow eyes, wore a black beach jacket, looked 
generally bored. Better things to do than talk with you, lady.“What can I do for you, 
Ms. Kolpath?” he asked. He was seated in a courtyard in one of those nondescript 
polished tan chairs that show up on front decks everywhere these days. A steaming 
drink stood on a table beside him. 

I explained that I’d been to the convention, that I’d enjoyed it, and that I was 
doing research for a book on the Society and its contribution to keeping thePolaris 
story alive. “I wonder,” I said, “if an archive of this year’s meeting is available?” 

His demeanor softened.“Have you actually published anything?” 

“I’ve done several,” I said. “My last was a study of the Mazha.” 

“Oh, yes,”he said. 

“The title isThe Sword of Faith. ” 

“I’ve seen it,”he said solemnly. 

“It’s been well received,” I said. “Now, I was wondering whether you have an 
archive I could look at?” 

“We always put one together for the board.”He had a raspy, high-pitched voice. 
The kind you associate with somebody who yells at kids a lot.“It helps with planning 
next year’s event. Did you just want to see the one from this year? We have them 
going back to the beginning of the century.” 

“At the moment, I only need the current one.” 

“Okay. I can take care of it.”Delivered with a sip of his brew. 

A few minutes later I was fast-forwarding my way through the convention. I 
skipped the stuff I hadn’t seen during my original visit. I dropped in on the alien wind 
panel again. Saw myself. Moved on to the Toxicon kidnap plot. Watched the man 
who’d been on board thePolaris after it became theSheila Clermo. And there he was! 
Kiernan was sitting six rows to my rear on the left. Almost directly behind me. But I 
couldn’t recall having noticed him back there. I associated him strongly with the 
convention, but there was a different version of him at the back of my mind. 

Alex asked me to get Tab Everson on the circuit. Everson was the man who’d reduced 
the artifacts to ashes and put them in solar orbit. “What do we want to talk to him 
about?” 

“ThePolaris, ” he said. “I think he’ll be receptive.” 


He was right. Everson’s AI at Morton College put me through to a private 
secretary, a gray-haired, efficient-looking woman. I identified myself and explained 
why I’d called. She smiled politely and asked me to wait. Moments later she was 
back.“Mr. Everson is busy at the moment. May I have him return your call?” 

“Of course.” 

Alex told me that when the call came, he wanted me to sit in, using an offstage 
chair. Everson would not know I was there. An hour later he was on the circuit. 

Tab Everson was president of a food distribution firm, although his primary 
interest seemed to be Morton College. The data banks put his age at thirty-three, but 
he looked ten years younger. He was casually dressed, white shirt, blue slacks, and a 
checkered neckerchief. A windbreaker embossed with the name of the college hung 
on the back of a door. His office was filled with mementoes from the school—awards, 
certificates, pictures of students playing chess and participating in seminars and 
standing behind lecterns. He was a bit more than average height, with black hair and 
piercing gray eyes.“I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Benedict,” he said. He was seated 
in an armchair framed by a picture window. Outside, I could see a hilltop and some 
trees.“It’s a pleasure.” 

Alex had taken the call in the living room, as was his custom when representing 
the corporation. He returned the greeting. “You may know I’m an antiquities dealer,” 
he said. 

Everson knew.“Oh, I think you’re a great deal more than an antiquities dealer, 
Mr. Benedict. Your reputation as an historian precedes you.” Well, that was a bit 
much. But Alex accepted the compliment gracefully, and Everson crossed one leg 
over the other.“What can I do for you?” he asked. 

There was a maturity about this guy that belied his age. He leaned forward 
slightly, conveying the impression he would be intrigued with whatever Alex was 
about to say. Yet he managed to signal that time was a factor and that a long interview 
was not in the cards. Say what you have to say, Benedict, and stop taking my time. I 
had the feeling he knew why we were there. Which put him a step ahead of me. 

“I was struck by your disposition of thePolaris artifacts,” said Alex. 

“Thank you, but it was the least I could do.” 

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment. It must have occurred to you that, even in 
their condition after the explosion, they might have retained some value to historians. 
Or investigators.” 

Everson let us see he had no sympathy with that view.“I really can’t imagine 
what an historian might have hoped to find among them. And the debris would not 
have engaged any collector’s interest. Not in the condition it was in. Did you by any 
chance see what was left of the artifacts? After the bombing?” 

“No. I did not.” 

“If you had, Mr. Benedict, you’d not need to raise the issue. By the way, I 
understand you were there that night.” 


“Yes. It wasn’t a pleasant evening.” 

“I would think not. I hope you weren’t injured.” 

“No. I came away fine, thank you.” 

“Excellent. These madmen.”He shook his head.“But they did eventually get the 
thugs, didn’t they? Or did they?” He allowed himself to look momentarily puzzled.“I 
don’t know what’s happening to the world.” He got up from the chair. Well, terribly 
sorry. Have to get back to work.“Was there anything else?” 

Alex refused to be hurried. “You obviously have had some experience with 
antiquities.” 

“Well, in my own small way, perhaps.” 

“Anyone who deals with them learns quickly the value of anything that links us 
to the past.” 

“Yes.” 

“Would you explain, then, why you—?” 

“—Why I reduced everything to ashes before releasing it into orbit? In fact, 
you’re asking the same question again, Mr. Benedict, and I will answer it the same 
way. It was out of respect. I’m sorry, but that will have to suffice. It is the only reason 
I have.” 

“I see.” 

“Now, perhaps I may ask you a question?” 

“By all means.” 

“What is it you really want to know?” 

Alex’s face hardened. “I think the bombs at Survey were aimed at the exhibition, 
not the Mazha.” 

“Oh, surely that can’t be—” 

“A few nights ago, there was an attempt to kill me and an associate.” 

He nodded.“I’m truly sorry to hear it. Why would anyone do such a thing?” 

Whatever else he might have been, he wasn’t a good actor. He was hiding 

something. At the very least, prior knowledge of the attempt on our lives. 
“I think there’s something in the exhibition that somebody finds threatening.” 

“Sufficiently threatening to kill for?” 

“Apparently.” 

He looked shocked. Then insulted.“And you think —” 


“—I think you know what it is.” 

He laughed.“Mr. Benedict, I’m sorry you feel that way. But I have no idea what 
you mean. None whatever.” He cleared his throat. Departure imminent.“I wish I 
could help. But unfortunately I can’t. Meantime, if you really believe I’d do 
something like that, I suggest you go to the authorities. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I 
must get back to work.” 

“Why did we do that?” I asked. 

“This guy is part of it, Chase. I wanted him to know we understand that. It lets 
him know that if anything happens to us, somebody will be around to ask more 

questions.” 

“Oh, well, that’s good. It could go the other way, too.” 

“How’s that?” 

“They dumped us in the sea to stop us from following Kiernan home. But if 
you’re right, you may have persuaded Everson that we’re getting too close to 
whatever it is they’re hiding and that they have no choice but to get rid of us. And do 
it right this time.” 

That possibility seemed not to have occurred to him. “He wouldn’t be that 
foolish, Chase.” 

“I hope not. But the next time we decide to do something that puts both our lives 
on the line, let’s talk about it first.” 

“Okay.” He looked sheepish. “You’re right.” 

“You really have no doubt about it, do you? That Everson’s involved?” 

“None.” He headed for the coffee. “I’ve been in touch with Soon, with Harold, 
with Vlad. Nobody’s been to visit them. No one’s interested in the stuff they have.” 

“The plaque, the Bible, and the bracelet.” 

He gave me his victory smile. “Am I right?” 

“None of them have places where you could hide anything.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Except maybe the Bible.” 

“You can stash a piece of paper in the Bible. Other than that, it doesn’t work 
very well.” 

“So it’s not a note. Not a message.” 

“Not a note, anyhow.” 

“Whatever it was, it probably got blown up,” I said. “Ninety-nine percent of the 


artifacts got taken out by the blast.” 

We wandered out onto the deck, which was heated and enclosed. The wind blew 
steadily against the glass. “Not necessarily,” he said. 

“Why do you say that?” 

“They would have searched the debris before they burned it. They didn’t find 
what they were looking for.” 

“If that’s the case, why did they burn everything?” 

“Call it an abundance of caution. But I think we can assume that, whatever it is, 
it’s still out there.” 

Maddy’s jacket and the ship’s glass remained in the office. I got up and walked 
over to them. ThePolaris seal, the star and the arrowhead, seemed almost prophetic, 
somehow to predict the destruction of Delta Karpis by the superdense projectile that 
had lanced into its heart, that had shattered it and charged on. 

Next day, we heard from Fenn again. He looked tired. I remembered his telling me 
once that police officers were like doctors: They shouldn’t work on cases in which 
they had a personal interest.“I need to speak with Alex,” he said. 

I hadn’t seen him all morning, but I knew he was in the house. ThePolaris 
business was beginning to weigh on him. I was pretty sure he was sitting up half the 
night trying to construct a workable explanation. 

The problem was that he was letting the company slide. He was doing the social 
stuff okay, but he also was responsible to scan the markets to see what was available, 
what might be coming on-line, what was worth our time. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t 
have the background. Or his instincts. My job was communicating with the clients on 
administrative details and keeping them happy. But without Alex bringing stuff on 
board our bottom line was beginning to look vulnerable. 

Jacob told me he was out back. “Tell him Fenn’s on the line.” 

Minutes later he wandered into the office.“You look exhausted,” the inspector 
told him. 

“Thanks,” he said. “You look pretty sharp yourself.” 

“I mean it. Chase, you need to take better care of him.” 

“What can I do for you, Fenn?” 

“We know who was driving the Venture.” 

Alex came to life. “Good man. Who is the bitch?” 

“Gina Flambeau.” 

“Okay. No surprise there. You have her in custody, right?” 


“Not exactly. She’s gone missing.” 

“She’s missing,too ?” 

“Yep. Without a trace.” 

“How’d you find who she was?” 

“We had her description from Diane Gold. There aren’t that many Ventures in 
the Andiquar area, so on a hunch that Flambeau would turn out to be the person who 
attacked you, we pulled out pictures of all the young women owners and lessees who 
fit the general description and showed them to Gold.” 

“What do we know about her?” 

“Her real name’s Teri Barber. She’s a schoolteacher. Twenty-four years old. 
Born off-world. On Korval.” 

“We were taken out by aschoolteacher? ” I said. 

He shrugged.“She came to Rimway four years ago. According to her documents 
she’s from a place called Womble. Graduated from the University of Warburlee. With 
honors. Majored in humane letters.” 

I couldn’t restrain a laugh. 

They ignored me. Alex said, “You think she might have gone home?” 

“We’re looking into it.”Korval was a long way off, literally at the other end of 
the Confederacy.“There’s no record that a Teri Barber went outbound over the last 
few days, but she could be traveling under a different name.” An image took shape 
off to one side of Fenn’s desk. Young woman, black hair cut short, good features, 
blue eyes, red pullover, gray slacks. Alex came to attention. 

“She has an exemplary record as a teacher, by the way. Everybody at the school 
says she’s a princess. The kids, administration, they all love her. They think she walks 
on water.”He braced his chin on the palm of his hand.“The Venture’s leased. Long-
term. The leasing company has the same address we do.” 

It was hard not to stare at the raven-haired woman. I could see why everybody— 
at least all the males—had such good things to say about her. She reminded me of 
Maddy. She had the same charge-the-hill, no-nonsense look. Not quite so 
pronounced, maybe, but then she was considerably younger than Maddy had been. 

“Our best guess is that Barber waited near Ida Patrick’s house to make sure 
Kiernan wasn’t followed. They knew you folks were on their track. The fact that 
Kiernan used Chase’s name to rent the skimmer tells us that much.”He frowned.“I’d 
guess that was intended to send you a message to back off.” 

Alex was silent for a moment. “Barber gave that an exclamation mark,” he said 
at last. “Fenn, when you catch her, I’d like very much to talk to her.” 

“We can’t allow that, Alex. Sorry. But I’ll do this much: When she explains 
what’s going on, I’ll pass it to you. Now, there’s one more thing.” 


“Name it.” 

“We’ve locked down her quarters. It occurs to me there might be a connection 
somewhere we’re not aware of. I’d like to have you, and maybe Chase, too, take a 
virtual tour of her place. You might see something that’ll help.” 

It’s always struck me as odd that despite the vast range of building materials 
available, people still prefer to live in houses that look as if they’re made of stone, 
brick, or wood. They rarely are, of course. Haven’t been for millennia in most places, 
but it’s hard to tell the difference. I suppose it’s something in the genes. 

Teri Barber had lived in a log-style home atop a wooded hill on Trinity Island, 
about four hundred kilometers southeast of Andiquar. Big enclosed deck, looking out 
over the sea. A place where the wind blew all the time. There was a landing halfway 
down the hill, connected by a creaky wooden staircase on one side with the house and 
on the other with a pier. The yellow Venture waited on it. A few meters away, a canoe 
rested in a rack at the edge of the pier. 

“Rental property,”said Fenn. 

Alex was visibly impressed. “Where did she teach?” he asked. 

“Trinity University. She taught the basic syntax course for first-year students. 
And classical literature.” 

We went down to the pad and inspected the Venture. It was sleek, with swept-
back lines. Ideal vehicle for kids, except that it was pricey. “Any sign of the laser?” 
Alex asked. 

Fenn shook his head.“No weapons of any kind on the premises or in the 
vehicle.” The dock rose and fell.“We aren’t finished with it yet, but it doesn’t look as 
if it’s going to tell us much.” 

We looked inside the Venture but saw no personal belongings.“This is the way 
we found it,” Fenn said.“She didn’t leave anything.” 

We went back to the house. Two rockers and a small table stood on the deck. A 
stack of cordwood was piled against the wall. On one side of the house you could see 
a stump she apparently used as a chopping block. 

The place was well maintained. It was one of those two-story big-window 
models from the last century. Something about it suggested fourteenth-century 
sensibilities. Maybe it was the big porch and the rockers. 

“She live here alone?” asked Alex. 

“According to the rental agent, yes. She’s been here four years. He didn’t get up 
here that often, but he said there was no sign of a live-in boyfriend, or anything along 
those lines. He also said he didn’t realize she was gone.” 

The scene changed, and we were inside. My impression of an antique 
atmosphere was confirmed by the interior: The furniture was immense: a padded sofa 
big enough for six; two matching chairs; and a coffee table the size of a tennis court. 


Thick forest green curtains were drawn over the windows. You sank into the carpets. 
Quilts were thrown across the sofa and one of the chairs. 

“How long has she been missing?” Alex asked. 

“We’re not sure. The school was on a semester break. Nobody can recall having 
seen her for about a week.”He glanced out the window.“Nice place. I understand 
they have a waiting line if it becomes available.” 

“You think she might be coming back?” 

“I doubt it.”He tugged at his sleeves.“All right, this is obviously the living room. 
Kitchen’s over there, on the other side of the hallway. Washroom through that door. 
Two bedrooms and another washroom upstairs. Everything pretty well kept.” 

“But only one person living here.” 

“She has money,” I said. 

“That’s what’s strange. We checked her finances. She’s comfortable but not 
well-off. This apartment is an extravagance. Unless—” 

“She has accounts under other names,” said Alex. 

There were several prints on the walls. An old man deep in thought, a couple of 
kids standing on a country bridge, a ship gliding past a ringed planet.“It’s a furnished 
unit. Everything belongs to the owner. She left clothes and some assorted junk. But no 
jewelry. No ID cards.” 

“She knew when she left,” Alex said, “that she wasn’t coming back.” 

“Or that that there was a chance she wouldn’t, and she wanted to be ready to 
run.” 

Her bedroom was in the back of the house, overlooking the ocean. It was cozy, 
dark-paneled walls, matching drapes and carpet. The bed was oversized, with lots of 
pillows. It was flanked by side tables and reading lamps. A couple of framed pictures 
stood atop a bureau: Barber laughing and having a good time with a half dozen 
students; Barber posing with a male friend on the front steps of what was probably a 
school building. 

“Who’s the guy?” I asked. 

“Hans Waxman. Teaches math.” 

Alex took a close look. “What’s he have to say?” 

“He’s worried about her. Says she’s never done anything like this before. Just 
taken off, I mean. They’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship over the last year.” 

“And her students like her, you say?” 

“Yeah. They say she was a good teacher. Nobody seems to know anything about 
her personal life. But they really like her. They couldn’t understand why we were 
interested in her.” 


“Did you tell them?” 

“Only that we wanted to talk to her because we thought she might have been a 
witness to an accident.” 

The guest bedroom was a bit smaller, with a view of the chopping block. A 
chair, a table lamp, a picture of Lavrito Correndo leaping across a stage. 

“Anything ring any bells?”Fenn asked. 

“Yes,” said Alex. “What’s missing?” 

“How do you mean?” 

“Your office has pictures of your entire career, from when you first started. At 
the house, I can walk around and see pictures of your folks, of your wife and kids, of 
you on the squabble team. Even, if I recall, of me.” 

“Oh.” 

“She has pictures,” I said, pointing to them. 

“Those are from last week. Where’s her past?” Alex held up his hands as though 
the apartment were empty. “Where was she before she came to Trinity?” 

An ornate mirror hung over the sofa. The drapes were pulled back, and sunlight 

poured in through a series of windows. 

“How about you, Chase? See anything?” 

“Actually,” I said, “yes. Let’s go back downstairs.” There was a dark blue quilt 

thrown over one of the chairs. Embroidered in its center was a white star inside a ring. 
It had to be handwoven, and it looked as if it had been around a while. 

“What is it?”asked Fenn. 

“Who do you think owns the quilt? The landlord?” 

“Why do you ask?” 

“It has a connection with somebody who pilots superluminals.” 

Fenn squinted at the quilt.“How do you know?” 

“Look at the seal. Here, let me show you.” I killed the picture, and we were back 
at the country house. I touched my bracelet to the reader. The screen darkened, and 
my license appeared on it: . . .That Agnes Chase Kolpath is hereby certified to 
operate and command superluminal vessels and vehicles, class 3. With all 
responsibilities and privileges appertaining thereto. Witness therefore this date— 
Signatures were attached. 

“Agnes?”Alex said. “I didn’t know that was your given name.” 

“Can we proceed?” I asked. 


They both laughed. 

The background symbol on the document was, of course, Diapholo’s ring and 
star. “It’s named for the fourth-millennium hero,” I said. “He sacrificed himself to 

save his passengers.” 

“I know the story,” said Alex. “But I don’t think the design is quite the same.” 

“The style has changed over the years.” I returned us to Barber’s living room and 

adjusted to a better angle on the quilt. “This is pretty close to what it used to look 
like.” 

“When?” 

“Sixty years ago. Give or take.” 

“So who could the pilot have been? Her grandfather?” 

I shrugged. “Anybody’s guess. But the quilt looks like an original. Does it 
belong to her or the landlord? And you might have noticed Barber looks a lot like 
Maddy. Maybe they’re related.” 

Fenn called again that afternoon. He’d talked with the landlord. The quilt belonged to 
Barber. He also reported that the Teri Barber who graduated from the University of 
Warburlee was not the same Teri Barber who’d been teaching the last few years at 
Trinity. 

Superluminal certification records showed no listing for anybody named Barber. 
So Alex and I fed her image to Jacob. “See if you can find anyone,” I told him, “who 
has or had a license who looks enough like her to be a relative.” 

“That’s fairly vague,”he complained.“What are the search parameters?” 

“Male and female.” I looked at Alex. “You think she might actually have been 

born in Womble?” 

“Probably not. But it’s a place to start.” 

“How far back?” 

“All the way. The certification design’s been around a while.” 

“Anywhere over the last sixty years,” I told Jacob. “Born in, or lived in, 

Womble. On Korval.” 

“Looking,”he said. 

“Take your time.” 

“Of course this is very nonscientific. It calls for an opinion.” 

“I understand.” 

And, after a few moments:“Negative search.” 


“You don’t need to find a duplicate,” I told him. “Anybody who looks remotely 
like her would do.” 

“There are no persons, male or female, licensed to operate interstellars, who at 
any time lived in Womble on Korval.” 

“Try the same search,” said Alex. “But go planetwide.” 

He produced three pilots, two male, one female. I didn’t think any of them 
looked much like Barber.“It’s the best I can do.” 

“Proximity to Womble?” asked Alex. 

“Closest one is eight hundred kilometers.” 

Detailed information on the families was blocked under the privacy laws. 
“Doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “I don’t think Teri Barber exists. Let’s try something 
else. Same search, substitute Rimway. The Associated States.” 

I wondered whether Fenn would institute a search of college yearbooks from, 
say, 1423 to 1425. “She had to graduate from somewhere.” 

“The database would be pretty big,” said Alex. “Anyhow, who says she had to 
graduate from somewhere?” 

“I have a hit,”said Jacob.“A female pilot.” 

“Let’s see her, Jacob.” 

Shelooked like Teri Barber. She was wearing a gray uniform and her hair was 
brown instead of black. But the certificate was dated 1397. Thirty-one years ago. 
“She’s a pretty good match,” Alex said. The woman would now be in her midfifties. 
Barber was no more than twenty-five. 

“What’s her name?” I asked. 

“Agnes Shanley.” 

“Another Agnes.” Alex smiled. Not a real smile. More like a reflexive one. “Did 
Agnes have any daughters?” 

“It doesn’t say. She married in 1401. To one Edgar Crisp.” 

“Do we have an avatar for her?” 

“Negative.” 

“How about a locator? Can we talk to her?” 

“Yes,”said Jacob.“Her file’s been inactive for twenty-five years. But I have a 
locator code.” 

“Good. On-screen, please.” 

“We should pass it to Fenn,” I said. 


Alex ignored me. He does that when he doesn’t want to deal with me. But I 
wasn’t so sure I wanted to get directly involved again. This was precisely the sort of 
behavior that had gotten us into trouble already. 

“If we tell Fenn,” Alex said, apparently judging that the silence between us had 
become strained, “he’ll shrug and say the fact that she looks like Barber is irrelevant. 
I can hear him now: You look through every pilot certified worldwide over the last 
sixty years, of course you’ll find someone who looks like her.” 

“Actually,” I said, “that’s a pretty strong argument.” 

He laughed. “You have a point.” 

“I still think—” 

“Let’s just stay with it for a bit. I want to know what’s so important that 
somebody tried to kill us.” I heard anger in there somewhere. Good for him. Alex had 
always seemed to me to be a bit too passive. But I wondered if we weren’t picking a 
fight with the wrong people. I get a little nervous around bomb throwers. He turned 
back to the AI. “Jacob, see if you can get me on the circuit to Agnes Shanley Crisp.” 

Jacob acknowledged. I got up and wandered around the room. Alex sat listening 
to the birds outside. They were especially noisy that afternoon. Then Jacob was back: 
“Alex,” he said,“it appears the code is not currently in service.” 

TWeLVe 

There’s a lot to be said for doing a disappearance. You 
bamboozle the bill collectors, upset the relatives, rattle 
the local social group, and give them all something to 
talk about. It’s an easy way to become a legend. And it 
feels good. I know because I’ve done it several times 
myself. 

—Schaparelli Cleve,Autobiography 

Alex had some questions to ask Hans Waxman, the math teacher. But Waxman didn’t 
know us and would probably be reluctant to talk to strangers about his girlfriend. So 
we looked for a better way. 

Waxman ate breakfast most mornings at a quiet little place called Sally’s, just off 
the northern perimeter of the Trinity University campus. Several days after we’d 
toured Teri Barber’s apartment, I arranged to be waiting for him. 

I’d selected a table near the front window. Alex waited in a park across the 
street, relaxing on a bench, trying to look inconspicuous. I wanted Waxman to be able 
to see the passing traffic, so I put my hat on the chair that had its back to the window. 
I set my reader on the table and brought upThe Mathematical Dodge. It’s a collection 
of puzzles and logic problems, and I made sure I angled it so he could see the title as 
he came in the door. 


He arrived at his usual time, looking thoughtful and distracted, his mind 
presumably on that morning’s classes. He was, as they say in the girls’ locker, a juicy 
piece—tall, blond, nice jaw. Looked even more congenial in person than he had in the 
picture. We made eye contact and I smiled and that was all it took. 

He came over, shuffled his feet a bit, and said hello. “I see you enjoy doing 
puzzles,” he added. 

“Just a hobby.” My. Hewas attractive. In an innocent sort of way. The kind of 
guy you don’t see around much anymore. 

I’d ordered a fruit plate with hot chocolate. The chocolate arrived while he was 
considering how to pursue the gambit. I decided to save him the trouble and held out 
a hand. “Jenny,” I said. 

The smile widened. It was a shy grin, made all the more appealing in a guy who 
should have been able to get anybody he wanted. “Nice to meet you, Jenny. My 
name’s Hans. May I join you?” 

The truth is I started regretting the lie before I delivered it. Alex had instructed 
me to avoid using my name, but I was thinking, yes, he was a bit young for me, but 
what the hell. Now, with the deception, he was forever off-limits. “Sure,” I said. 

He picked one of the remaining chairs, with the window view that I wanted him 
to have, and sat down. “Are you a teacher, Hans?” I asked. 

“Yes. Math. How did you know?” 

I nodded toward the book. “Most people would take no notice.” 

“Oh.” The smile widened. “Am I that obvious?” 

“I wouldn’t put it that way. But we’re close to the school, and you look as if you 
belong—” I stopped, canted my head, and let him see I was impressed. “I don’t think 
I’m getting this right.” 

“It’s okay, Jenny. Thank you. In fact, I have a class in forty-five minutes.” He 
ordered eggs and toast, and I asked where he was from. He started talking about far-
off places. My fruit dish showed up, and things went swimmingly. He wondered what 
I did for a living. 

I admitted to being a financial advisor finishing a vacation on Trinity. “From 
Wespac,” I said. Wespac was safely in the middle of the continent. “Going home 
tomorrow.” 

His face dropped. He looked genuinely distressed, and I have to confess I was 
charmed. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “It would have been nice to be able to get 
together again. Assuming you’d have been willing.” He picked up the menu but 
didn’t look at it. “Are you by any chance free this evening? I’d love to take you to 
dinner.” 

I hesitated. 

“There are some excellent restaurants on the island. But you know that.” 


“Yes. I do. And I wish I could, Hans. But I’m committed.” Sweet temptation. I 
would have enjoyed doing it and letting the rest of the evening play out as it would. It 
wasn’t a reaction I usually had with strangers, even handsome ones. I was thinking, 
though, that it would be a way to get back at Barber. Take her guy and show him the 
time of his life. But that would have been an indecent way to treat Hans. 

“What’s funny, Jenny?” 

“Nothing, really,” I said. “I always meet the good-looking guy as I’m headed out 
of town.” I let him see I wasn’t entirely joking. 

I steered the conversation back to teaching, to his passion for mathematics, to his 
frustration that his students rarely recognized the elegance of equations. “It’s as if 

they have a blind spot,” he said. 

“How long have you been at Trinity, Hans?” I asked. 

“Six years. Ten if you count my time as a student.” 

“I have a friend who teaches here. In the literature department.” 

That got his attention. “Really? Who?” 

“Her name’s Teri.” 

He smiled. “I know her,” he said. Noncommittal. 

“I’d expected to surprise her, but she seems to have gone off somewhere.” 

His eggs came. He tried one, commented how good it was, and bit into the toast. 

“She left the island. I don’t know where she is.” 

“You mean, since the accident?” 

“You know about that?” 

“I know a skimmer went into the ocean. The police were looking for her. They 

think she saw it happen.” I paused. “I hope she’s okay.” 
“So do I. I don’t know the details. But I think the police believe she was 

responsible for it.” 

“I heard the same thing. But I don’t believe a word of it.” 

“Neither do I.” He shrugged it off. 

Sally’s was automated. Our bot showed up and refilled my hot chocolate. 

“Hans,” I said, “I got the impression last time I talked to her, a few days before the 
accident, that something was on her mind.” 

His gaze met mine. Steady. Worried. “Me too. She’s been down a bit lately. 
Depressed.” 

“It was unlike her in the old days. She was always upbeat.” 


“I know.” 

“Any idea what it might be about?” 

“No. She wouldn’t tell me anything. Denied anything was wrong.” 

“Yeah. That’s what she told me, too. I wonder what happened?” I was trying to 
be casual, yet sound concerned. Not easy for somebody whose acting skills are pure 
wood. 

“Don’t know,” he said. 

“How long has she been like that?” 

He thought about it. “A few weeks.” He made a guttural sound. “I hope she’s 
okay.” 

I wanted to bring thePolaris into the conversation, but couldn’t think of an 
indirect way to do it. So I just blurted it out: “She used to be fascinated by thePolaris. 
” 

“The ghost ship, you mean?” he asked. “I didn’t know. She never mentioned it.” 

I wasn’t quite finished with my meal, but I moved the plate off to one side. That 
was a signal to Alex, who was armed with a projector. 

“It was a strange business,” I said. I went on for a minute or two in that vein, 
recounting the many times I’d heard Teri wonder aloud what had happened to the 
people on the mission. Meantime, Marcus Kiernan’s simulacrum, projected by Alex, 
came strolling along the sidewalk. In full view of Hans. Of course, there was no way 
for Hans to know it wasn’t actually Kiernan himself out there. The simulacrum 
stopped just outside the door to study the menu. 

Hans was pointed directly toward the window. Couldn’t have missed him. But he 
gave no sign of recognition. He simply went on quietly eating his breakfast. He did 
not know, and had never seen, Marcus Kiernan. 

After Hans left for his classes, I strolled outside and went across the street into 
the park. 

Alex was waiting. He’d heard the conversation on my link. I detailed my 
impressions for him while he sat casually, watching a couple of toddlers riding swings 
under their mother’s supervision. It seemed to me we hadn’t learned anything helpful. 
Other than that he didn’t know Kiernan. 

“I’m not so sure,” he said. 

“In what way? What else do we know now that we didn’t know before?” 

“He said the change in her mood began a few weeks ago. That puts it about the 
time Survey announced it would auction the artifacts.” 

That night I was at home reading a mystery when Alex called.“I found something in 
the archives,” he said. 


He sent it over and stayed on the circuit while I dimmed the lights, put on my 
headband, and looked at it. 

We were inside a paneled room. Book-lined walls. Bokkarian artwork. Flowers. 
Old-fashioned furniture. Lots of people milling around, shaking hands, embracing. I 
saw Dunninger. And Urquhart. “Where are we?” I asked. 

“University of Carmindel, the evening before thePolarisflight.” 

“Oh.” I spotted Nancy White in a corner of the room. And Mendoza. And there 
was Maddy, striding among the giants like a goddess. 

“They held a celebration for everyone associated with thePolaristhe night before 
they left.” 

Mendoza was talking with two women.“The younger one,” said Alex,“is his 
daughter.” 

Jess Taliaferro was engaged in an animated conversation with a man whose 
dimensions dwarfed him. A Tupelo. Connections somewhere with a low-gravity 
world. Taliaferro himself was smiling, nodding, looking earnest. Obviously feeling 
good. He was well turned out for the occasion: blue karym jacket, white neckpiece, 
gold buttons and links. 

“Martin Klassner’s over by the table.” 

Klassner sat beside a middle-aged woman and a little girl. The little girl was 
playing with a toy skimmer. Zooming it around and landing it on Klassner’s arm. He 
seemed to be enjoying the attention. 

“He was pretty sick,”Alex said.“I’m not sure what it was.” 

“Bentwood’s,” I told him. It was ironic that Klassner would be traveling with 
two of the great neurological research people of the age, but no one could do anything 
for him. Bentwood’s, of course, is beaten now. You go down to the clinic, and they 
give you a pill. But then— 

“The woman is Tess, his wife. And the little girl is a grandchild.”Tess looked 
worried. 

Chek Boland stood in a small mixed group near a window.“The caption 
indicates those are all people from the literature department. One of them, the one in 
the white gown, is Jaila Horn. A major essayist in her time.” 

“I never heard of her.” 

“It says she’s pretty much forgotten today. Only read by scholars. She was 
planning to write about the collision. About Delta Kay. She saw lots of analogies 
between what was going to happen to the star and what institutional authority does to 
individual freedom. Or something like that.” 

“She didn’t go?” 

“She was on theSentinel.” 


Nancy White had been cornered by a group of young people who, I suspected, 
were graduate students. White had managed several careers. One of them consisted of 
doing shorthand biographies of the great scientists. But her most famous work 
wasOut of the Trees, an attempt to reconstruct the early progress of knowledge. 
Where was the first evidence that we’d begun to believe that the universe worked 
according to a system of laws? Who had first realized that the cosmos was not 
eternal? Why did people instinctively resist the notion? How had scientists first come 
to understand the implications of the quantum world? Who had first understood the 
nature of time? 

Well, I didn’t understand the nature of time. And neither did anybody I could 
think of. 

Occasionally I was able to make out a comment.“Wish I were going with you.” 
“Is there any danger?” “Not going to happen again within traveling range probably, 
for a hundred thousand years.” 

“Is there a point to all this?” I asked. It felt like a rerun of the other farewell, on 
Skydeck. 

“Let me fast-forward.” 

He rippled through, and the celebrants raced around the room at a ferocious rate, 
gulping down drinks and raiding the snack table. Then he returned to normal, and 
they were saying good-bye, moving toward the doors. Final shaking of hands. Tell 
your brother I said hello. 

White extricated herself from her attending party and circled the room, nodding, 
accepting embraces. “Is that her husband at her side?” I asked. 

“The big one?” 

“Yes.” 

He nodded.“They’ve been married nineteen years. His name’s Karl.” 

Dunninger and Mendoza carried small crowds with them as they passed out of 
the room. Maddy English waited near the bar, talking earnestly with a red-haired 
olive-skinned man.“Sy Juano,” Alex said.“He’s a financial manager, it says here.” It 
seemed as if she smiled past him, her thoughts concentrated elsewhere. The 
conversation seemed to be ending. Juano was nodding yes, then he leaned over and 
kissed her. She looked a bit reluctant. 

The picture went off, and the AI brought the lights up. “Well, that was 
interesting,” I said. 

Alex looked at me as if I were the slow kid in the classroom.“You didn’t 
notice?” 

“Notice what?” 

“Teri Barber.” 

“I’m sorry?” 


“I thought you’d pick her out right away.” 

“Teri Barber was there?” 

“Well, not Barber herself. It might have been Agnes.” 

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Where?” I asked. 

“Take another look.”He told Jacob to rerun the last two minutes. Dunninger and 
Mendoza and their satellites trying to squeeze through the door. Maddy allowing 
Juano to kiss her. He hung on, chastely pressing his cheek against hers, as if he knew 
they were in the center of the picture. 

“Freeze it,” I said. 

“Well, what do you think?” 

I stared at Maddy. At the same blue eyes, the perfectly sculpted jaws, the pert 
nose, the half smile playing about the full lips. A few more lines. Otherwise—“Yes,” 
I said. “If she were younger, they’d be very close.” 

“Make her twenty-three, Jacob. And change her hair color. Go with black.” 

Her features softened. The intensity gave way to a leisurely innocence. The 
creases that were just appearing on her brow and at the corners of her mouth went 
away. The skin around the jaws tightened. 

Add the black hair, shorten it. 

“You thought Teri Barber resembled Maddy?”he said. 

Well, I’d been right. Shewas Maddy. They were identical. 

The record said that Madeleine English had never borne a child. But there was 
an army of nieces and cousins, and when we looked through the pictures of current 
family members, we found three who resembled Teri Barber and seemed to be about 
the right age. One in particular, Mary Capitana, was a dead ringer. But Mary was a 
medical intern at a Kubran hospital in the middle of the Western Ocean, and the other 
two also had careers that would have prevented their living on Trinity Island in their 
spare time. 

We couldn’t find any record on Agnes Lockhart Shanley prior to her superluminal 
certification in 1397. Whatever she’d told the board about her background was 
subject to privacy laws. Her only known address was in a resort town with the 
ominous name Walpurgis, eleven hundred kilometers up the coast. She’d left there 
two decades ago, in 1405, according to the data file. After which there was no further 
record. 

Current residence was unknown. 

Walpurgis is one of those places that was bypassed in the boom of the last ten 
years. For whatever reason—you’d have to find a sociologist to explain it—the 
crowds have abandoned the northern coastal resorts for the islands. 


Not that the area is poor. But when Alex and I got there it looked as if most of 
the inhabitants lived off the minimum subsistence income and didn’t do much else. 
The center of town was anchored by large crumbling hotels built in the last century, a 
few restaurants done up in gaudy colors, and some sporting palaces. A plethora of 
walks and ramps overlooked the ocean, and the entire south side was dedicated to a 
vast warpark, which had probably gone bust when big-time gaming faded a few years 
ago. Nothing was moving in its streets. 

We were riding Rainbow’s new skimmer, purchased to replace the one that had 
been lost. It located Shanley’s old address and brought us down onto a public pad 
near a fading, two-story house on a corner near the western edge of town. An elderly 
woman with a white dog was coming out of a store, her arms filled with packages. A 
few kids were playing in a nearby schoolyard. Otherwise, there was no sign of life. 

“This place has seen better days,” said Alex. 

Well, I thought, so have we all. 

Lawns were overgrown and full of weeds. The houses leaned in one direction or 
another. Creepers were strangling the trees, and it didn’t look as if anyone had 
touched the hedges for years. It was a gray, dismal day, threatening but not delivering 
rain, and we could see lights in most of the windows. A cheer went up from the 
schoolyard. Kids are amazing. Feed them, give them a toy, and they never notice the 
wreckage around them. 

The walkway wound past the school and a run-down park with climbing bars 
and a ball field. The house Agnes and her husband had lived in stood near a cluster of 
stacia trees. It was green and white, but the colors had faded. The front porch sagged, 
the shutters needed replacing, and a post light leaned at an unseemly angle. 

“Yes?”said the AI as we approached.“May I be of assistance?” 

The front door was big, heavy, and scored by too many years of wind and sand. 
“Yes,” Alex said. “My name’s Alex Benedict. I’d like very much to talk with the 
occupant. I’ll only take a moment of his time.” 

“If you’d care to state your business, Mr. Benedict, I’ll inform her.” 

“I was admiring the house. I’m interested in a possible purchase.” 

“One moment, please.” 

“You have no shame,” I said. 

“What do you suggest? Tell him we’re here to ask questions about a missing 
starship captain?” 

“I could seeyou living here.” 

“It’s a nice out-of-the-way place.” 

“That’strue.” 

Alex stepped down off the deck and looked up, pretending he was inspecting the 


roof. Abruptly the door opened and a tired-looking woman in her fifties appeared. She 
looked suspiciously from one of us to the other. In this part of the world, visitors were 
never good news. 

She resembled the neighborhood, listless, passed-by, dilapidated. In an age when 
no one is hungry, no one need go without shelter, and in which one need not even 
work if he, or she, chooses a life of leisure, I remain surprised that there are still 
people who seem unable to put their lives together. Or maybe the lack of necessity is 
the reason. “Mr. Benedict,” she said, throwing a suspicious glance my way, “the 
house has not been put up for sale.” 

“I’m interested nevertheless.” 

She studied us, decided she had nothing to lose, and stepped aside so we could 
enter. The interior was more or less what you would have expected: worn furniture, 
no curtains, bare floors. A few family pictures decorated the walls. Everyone was 
either very young or very old. 

“My name is Casava,” she said. “Casava Demmy.” 

We completed the introductions, and Casava showed us around. The house was 
musty, but not disheveled. While we walked, we asked about the property. How much 
would she want for it? What kind of neighbors did she have? How long had she been 
living there? 

“Eighteen years. It’s a nice house. Needs some work, as you can see. But it’s 
very solid.” 

“I can see that. Yes.” 

“Close to the beach.” 

“Yes. Itis quite nice. It looks as if the former owner took good care of it, too.” 

“Yes, he did. Tawn Brackett. Good man, he was.” 

“Before Tawn was here,” said Alex, “a couple owned the house. Ed and Agnes 
Crisp.” 

Casava’s expression hardened. “Is that what this is about?” she asked. “The 
murder?” 

Alex did a double take. “What murder?” 

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “It was supposed to have been 
an accident. But I doubt it.” 

“Who got murdered?” 

“Why, her husband. Ed.” She shook her head at the depravity of the world. “You 
knew about the Crisps, but you didn’t know what happened?” 

“No. What happened?” 

“He died in a fall. Off Wallaba Point. She was with him at the time. They’d only 


been married a few years.” 

“Did you know her?” asked Alex. 

Suddenly she looked reluctant. “Just in passing,” she said. 

Alex showed her his comm link. He transferred some funds. I couldn’t see how 

much. “What can you tell us about Agnes?” 

She took a moment to retrieve her own link, which was in a table drawer. She 
checked her account, looked at both of us as if trying to decide what our interest was, 
and shrugged. “Yes. I knew her. We were the same age. Dated some of the same men, 

in fact. Before she got married, of course.” 

“Of course. Was she a friend?” 

“I wouldn’t go that far.” 

“What kind of person was she? Why do you say she killed her husband?” 

“It’s a long time ago, Mr. Benedict. I never really knew her that well.” 

“It’s okay,” he said. “It won’t go any farther.” 

We were back in the living room. She was looking closely at Alex, then she 
turned her gaze on me, and I could have sworn she was asking me whether she could 
believe Alex. I nodded yes, of course. “I wouldn’t want you to think,” she said 
finally, “that I don’t trust you, but a moment ago you were telling me you wanted to 
buy my house.” 

We waited. A dog started barking outside. 

“It just seemed strange. They went walking one night, and he didn’t come home. 

I think she got tired of him.” 

“Did she give you any reason to believe that?” 

“She struck me as someone who’d get tired of any man pretty quick.” 

“What else can you tell us?” 

“She was a pilot of some sort. She had a pretty high opinion of herself. Thought 
she was better than everybody else. I was living over in Brentwood when she first 
came to town. I was at that time just out of school. We both belonged to a theater 
group. That’s how I met her.” 

“You did some shows together?” 

“Yes. I had a good voice then.” 

“Do you know what she piloted?” 

“I was a singer,” she said. She listed a few of the shows she’d been in. We 
listened, tried to look impressed, and Alex asked his question again. “Starships,” she 
said. “Like I told you. She used to be gone for long periods of time. Off to the stars. 


She’d drop out of sight for months. Even after she got married.” 

“Did they have any children?” 

“No. No time for kids, I guess.” 

“Did they have any family that you knew of?” 

“I really don’t remember, Mr. Benedict. Actually, I’m not sure I ever knew.” She 
shook her head. “The only thing I can tell you is that she was gone a lot. Then her 
husband died. And not long after that she took off for good, and we never saw her 
again.” 

“But she sold the house first.” 

“I guess so. I don’t know.” 

“Did she tell anyone she was leaving?” 

“If she did, I didn’t know about it.” She shrugged again. This time I thought I 

saw regret. “Don’t know what happened to her.” 

“How long did she live in Walpurgis? Do you know?” 

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe ten years.” 

We went down to the city hall, logged in, and began scrolling through the public 
record. 

The first item of interest was the dead husband. We found that easily enough in 
news accounts dated over a twelve-day period in late autumn, 1404. 

CASINO EMPLOYEE FALLS TO DEATH FROM PRECIPICE 

And, eight months later: 

Police denied today they are working on the assumption that Agnes Crisp’s 
disappearance is connected with the death of her husband last year. 

There were pictures of Agnes, in uniform and in civilian clothes. Some wedding 
pictures. She and Ed made a handsome couple. 

Ed had been a young worker at one of the casinos. The reports jibed with what 
Casava had told us. They’d gone out walking one night. To Wallaba Point. According 
to friends, they went there frequently. It was part of a workout routine. But on that 
particular evening Agnes admitted there’d been a quarrel. Apparently there was some 
pushing and shoving, although Agnes denied that she’d sent him over the edge.“He 
lost his footing,” she’d insisted.“I loved him.” Apparently the police uncovered no 
convincing evidence to the contrary. No arrest was ever made. 

What had the argument been about? 

“We were trying to decide about kids. I didn’t think we were ready to do that 


because he didn’t earn that much, and I’d have to give up my career.” 

We checked the almanac. It had been a moonless night, dark and overcast. 

Crisp had had the build of a moonball player. Young, athletic, good features. He 
wore his black hair cut short in the style of the day. He’d had dark, penetrating eyes, a 
broad forehead, dark skin. Neatly clipped beard and mustache. Was employed as a 
host at the Easy Aces Casino. He didn’t look like the sort of person who would 
accidentally stumble off a cliff. 

There was no avatar available. 

Police had questioned Agnes for several days. People who knew them said there 
were no problems between them. They were good together, everyone seemed to think. 
(I wondered if anyone had questioned Casava.) Nevertheless, suspicions in the town 
ran high. 

Ed Crisp reminded me of somebody. 

“Again?” asked Alex. “Who this time?” 

I was running my interior catalog. Clients. Relatives. People from sims. “James 
Parker,” I said. The actor. 

“Everybody you see,” he said, “reminds you of somebody else. He doesn’t look 
at all like Parker.” 

Actually he didn’t. But therewas someone. Well, I’d think of it later. 

Casava and her husband had bought the house near the school in 1409. Brackett 
had picked it up three and a half years earlier. 

The media archives revealed that, on a pleasant day in the late spring of 1405, 
eight months after Crisp’s death, Agnes had sold her house, left Walpurgis, and not 
returned. No one knew where she had gone. 

She’d bought the house in 1396. There was no mention of a former husband. Or 
of children. That seemed to suggest she wasnot Teri Barber’s mother. It looked as if 
we were chasing the wrong rabbit. 

“Maybe not,” said Alex. “When people leave a place, they usually stay in 
contact withsomebody. Right? A friend. Someone they’d worked with. Or people 
down at the club. Agnes did theater.” 

“I don’t—” 

“People don’t do theater without getting close to other people. Can’t be done.” 

“How do you know?” 

He laughed. “I don’t. But I think it has to be true. Yet this woman stayed in 
touch with nobody.” 

“Nobody that we know of.” 


“Okay. Anyhow, what I was getting at: Who else did something like that?” 

“You mean walked off and disappeared? Taliaferro. But that’s an odd sort of 
link.” 

“Odd ones are the best. Teri Barber would have been three or four at the time all 
this happened.” 

“But we don’t have a connection between Barber and Shanley. Other than that 
they look alike.” I began to suspect we were seeing patterns where none existed. 
There were all kinds of studies that showed people tended to find the things they 
looked for, even if some imagination was required. 

Several weeks after Agnes had gone, there was a final piece of news: 

Attempts to identify Edgar Crisp’s family and notify them of his death have 
been unsuccessful. Crisp was a native of Rambuckle, in the Rigellian system. 
He came to Walpurgis in 1397. 

“About the same time as Agnes,” I said. 

“Yes.” Alex’s brow furrowed. “Why couldn’t they locate his family?” 

“I don’t know. What are the rules on Rambuckle? I’ve never been there.” 

“Maybe they don’t maintain a directory.” 

“I guess not.” 

He was making faces, the way he always did when he was trying to puzzle 
something out. “But I wonder whether we’re looking at somebody else with a 
fictitious identity.” 

“Oh, come on, Alex. If you were going to adopt a pseudonym, would you opt 
forEdgar Crisp? ” 

THirTeeN 

Stride the mountaintops and survey the world. But 

watch your step. 

—Tora Shawn,Firelight 

In the data banks we found pictures of Agnes’s home. It had looked pretty good at the 
turn of the century. It was smaller then. A wing had been added since, and that 
sagging front porch. One of the pictures, taken during a snowstorm, showed a 
glowing post light—the same one that now leaned sharply toward the walkway—and 
two people gazing out through the front window. Agnes and Ed? We couldn’t tell. 
The illumination behind them didn’t reach their faces. 

The media stories described Agnes as a superluminal pilot and indicated she was 


often gone on long cruises. (In those days, of course, flights could take months. Or 
even years, if you could pile enough food on board.) They also mentioned that she’d 
captained the Echo flight. “Incredible,” Alex said. 

“Why?” I asked. “What’s an Echo flight?” 

He took his time answering. “You know the notion that the loss of the people on 
thePolaris was a supernatural event?” 

“Yes.” 

“In 1400, on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the mission, a few people belonging 
to the Arrowhead Club decided to reproduce the voyage, as nearly as possible.” 

“What’s the Arrowhead Club?” 

“You know it as thePolaris Society today. It was a group of enthusiasts. They 
chartered theClermo from Evergreen. ThePolaris. What they wanted to do was to try 
to re-create the original circumstances to see whether the occult event would manifest 
itself a second time.” 

Sometimes it’s hard to believe the extent of human gullibility. I saw a report 
recently that more than half the population of Rimway believes astrology works. “I 
remember hearing about it. The loony flight.” 

“Then you know the rest.” 

“Refresh my memory.” 

“They rechristened the shipPolaris, held a launch ceremony, put six passengers 
on board, five men and a woman, and went shopping for a female pilot. I guess they 
wanted a Madeleine English look-alike. So they settled on Agnes.” 

“Did they make her dye her hair?” 

“Don’t know. I guess their big problem was that they thought the occult event 
they were looking for was connected with the collision between the star and the 
dwarf. They thought it had released, as I recall, something called ‘psychokinetic 
energy.’ But they couldn’t very well stage a second smash-up, so they had to settle for 
hoping that whatever had arrived in 1365 was still hanging around out near the 
collision site.” 

“But this is what, thirty-five years later? The dwarf star was a long way off by 
then, and so was whatever was left of Delta Kay. Which, if I recall, was zip.” 

“That’s correct. But I guess they were nothing if not optimistic. They figured out 
where the debris from the destroyed sun would have gone, and, I suppose, where they 
could expect to find the spiritual forces. And that’s where they went.” 

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Alex.” 

“Who does?” 

“They must have had some money.” 


“I assume.” 

“So what were they hoping? That they’d all disappear, too?” 

“They took six passengers, like the original flight. One of them was a spiritualist, 
who thought that if they burned the right sort of candles and set lasers at the right 
frequency, they would be able to control whatever appeared.” 

“No drums?” 

“Not as far as I know.” 

“How come you know so much about this?” 

Alex smiled. Man in charge. “This kind of stuff fascinates me. And, from a 
professional perspective, it’s significant. I always knew there’d be a pile of money to 
be made if Survey ever turned the artifacts loose. Even artifacts from the Echo flight 
command a decent sum.” 

That brought up another issue. “Why did Survey sell thePolaris ? They must 
have realized it was going to be worth serious money one day.” 

Alex closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s hard to understand the 
bureaucratic mind, Chase. My best guess is that they knew it would take time for the 
ship to appreciate. And that means the sale gets made on somebody else’s watch. 
Meanwhile thePolaris hangs around reminding everybody of the organization’s most 
spectacular failure. Did you know people were actually afraid of it?” 

“Of the ship?” 

“Read the accounts. They were seriously spooked. If an otherworld force could 
make the passengers disappear, what couldn’t it do? Some people even thought that 
something might have come back with it.” 

“So what happened on the Echo flight?” 

“They supplemented the AI with black boxes, to record everything. In case itdid 
happen again.” 

“Because the AI had been no help on the original flight.” 

“Right. The black boxes were supposed to have been specially designed to 
withstand supernatural forces. And continue recording. They were going to trigger 
and start transmitting as soon as anything out of the ordinary happened.” 

“How’d they define that? ‘Anything out of the ordinary’?” 

“I told you. The presence of psychokinetic forces. The Arrowhead got a lot of 
publicity, gave all kinds of interviews and whatnot, and took off.” 

“And they didn’t see anything,” I said. 

“They claimed later there were apparitions. That several of the passengers from 
the original flight made appearances. I forget which ones. A couple of the Arrowhead 
people came back claiming they understood what had happened, but that humanity 


wasn’t ready for the truth.” 

“Sounds as if they were reading too much Stepanik Regal.” 

“Yeah. There were stories that the apparitions begged for help. Floated through 
the ship. Nothing more than spectres. They also said that the candles and lasers kept 
infernal presences at a distance. There were even some pictures, I believe.” 

“Pictures of what?” 

“Haze, it looked like to me. Wisps of fog in the engine room. I remember one of 
them really looked as if it had eyes.” 

We got names and addresses for neighbors who’d been around when Agnes was in 
town. We commandeered a booth on the first floor of the city hall and started making 
calls. I explained that my name was Chase Shanley, that I was a niece of Agnes Crisp, 
and that the family was still trying to find her. “We haven’t given up,” I told them. 

“She had a nice life here,”one elderly woman said.“She seemed to have enough 
money, she had a lovely house, and a good husband.” 

“She must have been very unhappy, though,” I said, “when Ed was lost.” 

Some said she hardly went into mourning at all. Others claimed she was 
distraught. A former casino employee who’d worked with Crisp told us she’d been hit 
hard by the experience.“She loved Ed,” he said.“It was hard enough on her when she 
lost him. Then the town turned on her and decided she’d killed him. The truth is that 
the town was jealous of her. She was a beautiful woman; she goddam flew 
starships.So, of course, they didn’t like her. That’s why she left. It didn’t have 
anything to do with feeling guilty, which was what they were all saying. She just got 
fed up.” 

In fact, everyone spoke well of her. That’s what happens, I guess, when you 
claim to be a relative. We located a couple of former boyfriends, but both seemed 
reluctant to give details.“I’m a happily married man,” one said.“She was a nice lady, 
but that’s all I know.” 

Nobody remembered a daughter.“She liked gardening,” a neighbor said. And 
she was a skilled chess player. Played down at the club.“Beat everybody, I hear.” 

“Was she capable of pushing someone off a cliff?” Those who knew her 
personally thought not. She was friendly, they reported. Kind to kids and dogs. She’d 
never hurt anybody. Although she might have been a bit standoffish. “In what way?” 

“Well,”one woman said,“I always got the impression she thought she was kind 
of elite. But I never saw a serious flash of temper. Or got mistreated by her.” 

No one had any idea where she’d gone. 

Several believed she might have thrown herself off the same summit that had 
claimed her husband. The forest was thick at the base of the precipice. Police had 
looked, but some said not very thoroughly because they never subscribed to the 
theory. 


“I don’t believe it either,” said Alex. 

Ed Crisp had fallen from a place called Wallaba Point. It was three kilometers 
northwest of Walpurgis, where the land rose sharply into the foothills of the Golden 
Horn, a range that comes in from offshore, arcs around the town, and runs southwest 
almost to the Gulf. There was a fence at the site when Alex and I visited it. 

We got there in the early evening. It was cold and overcast, with a few flakes in 
the air. 

I don’t mind heights when I’m in an aircraft, but I always get a bit queasy on a 
stationary perch. It was all I could do to lean out over the fence and look down. The 
sun had just set. The foot of the precipice was buried in thick forest. There were a 
river, a few boulders, and, in the distance, a ramshackle shed. It wasn’t really a long 
way down, but it was sheer and you were going to bounce pretty high when you hit 
bottom. 

We paced back and forth, measuring possibilities, wondering precisely from 
which point Edgar had fallen. Even without the fence, which hadn’t existed when the 
accident occurred, I couldn’t see how a grown man in possession of his faculties 
could wander off the edge. The news accounts said no alcohol or drugs had been 
found. There were no trees near the summit, no bushes, nothing to disguise its 
existence. The woods ended about fifteen meters away. 

“Couldn’t happen,” I concluded. 

Alex wasn’t so sure. “No moon. Acrimony in the air. She wants to keep her job. 
He wants kids. But he doesn’t make much, and probably doesn’t have much of a 
future. So it goes back and forth and he’s not watching what he’s doing.” 

I didn’t believe it. “It’s not possible.” 

“Happens all the time, sweetheart.” 

“It doesnot happen all the time.” 

“Seriously, Chase, people get excited, and they can lose sight of everything. 
He’s backing away from her, throws up his hands, trips on a loose rock, and over he 
goes.” 

“I just can’t see it. Nobody’s that dumb.” 

The hiking trail we were following ran right along the edge. If you decided to 
play tag up there, you’d back off a good bit, move back by the trees. Your instincts 
wouldn’t let you do anything else. “I think she killed him,” I said. 

He nodded. “You too? Why?” 

“I think it’s the only way it could happen. They come up here, maybe she’d 
discovered he’d been cheating, maybe she’d gotten tired of him. They’re in, what, the 
third or fourth year of their marriage. That’s about the time you find out whether 
you’ve got a real marriage or not.” 


“When did you become an expert?” 

“It doesn’t take a specialist, Alex. We’re talking about stuff every woman knows 
but apparently not many guys. If she did it, I doubt it had anything to do with whether 
they were going to have kids. Anyhow, she probably decided she had an easy way 
out, she was probably angry, or frustrated, so you get a quick push, and it’s over. 
Who’d ever know the difference?” 

We walked back through the woods to the skimmer. It felt good to get into the cabin, 
where it was warm. We were in a glade, about a half kilometer from the summit. Alex 
sat listlessly, not saying anything, just staring out at the trees. I felt it, too. There was 
something depressing about that windblown hilltop. “It’s the weather,” I said. 

Alex made a rumbling sound in his throat. “Louise,” he said, speaking to the AI, 
“see what you can get on Edgar Crisp.” He’d left me to pick the name for the system, 
and I picked one at random that seemed warm, friendly, and nonthreatening. Alex 
wasn’t overwhelmed, but he didn’t say anything. 

There wasn’t much on Crisp. Birth. Death. Parents came to Rimway in 1391. 
Graduated from the Indira Khan Academy in Lakat, which was halfway across the 
ocean. Licensed to operate a skimmer 1397. Gained title to a skimmer 1398. Lived 
three years on Seaview Avenue in leased quarters before marrying Agnes. Employee 
of Allnight Recreation Services, the owner of the Easy Aces Casino. Died at twenty-
eight. 

That was it. Edgar’s passage through the world had been unremarkable. He’d 
disturbed nothing, changed nothing, had only called attention to himself by the 
manner of his death. It was almost as if he’d never existed. I wondered who had 
attended his funeral. 

“That’s the way for most of us,” Alex said. “Birth, death, and good riddance. 
The world takes no note. Unless you’re lucky enough to overturn somebody’s favorite 
mythology.” 

I laughed. Alex was persuaded he’d achieved immortality by the Christopher 
Sim discoveries, and he was very likely right. 

“Louise,” he said, “check the graduation lists for the Khan Academy. Make it 
1395 and 1396. See if an Edgar Crisp shows up.” 

“You don’t think the media had it right?” I said. 

“Just following my instincts.” 

Louise needed only a few seconds.“Lakat does not subscribe to the registry.” 

“Is there any way to verify his background? Short of going there?” 

“There is no off-line arrangement.” 

A couple of kids wandered past with backpacks. Headed toward the Point. If 
they were planning on staying outside, it was going to be cold. 


“Another one with no history,” I said. “How’d you know?” 

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence we keep running into people who come from 
places that don’t maintain a register.” 

I started the engine. “You think any of these people are going to turn out to be 
who they say they are?” 

“Don’t know,” he said. “What I’m wondering is where they’re coming from.” 

The Walpurgis Cemetery was less than a half hour’s walk from the home once 
occupied by Agnes and Ed Crisp. It occupied roughly a square kilometer, mostly on 
gently rolling hillside. The markers, like the town, were old and worn. It wasn’t used 
much anymore, because the local population had declined significantly and also 
because having one’s ashes given to the winds or the sea is now generally favored 
over other forms of disposal. 

We had heard that some of the graves went back eight hundred years, although 
we saw nothing that old. They were crowded together, three and four people in each 
plot, and I saw no part of the cemetery that wasn’t lacking space. It was crowded, and 
the town was empty. 

Markers were designed in a wide range of styles, depending mostly, I guess, on 
the wealth of the occupant and also, to some extent, on the era. Fashions come and go. 
Some were simple slates, set in the ground, with a name and dates. Others were 
larger, more elaborately carved headstones, expressing the sentiments of those left 
behind.Beloved father. Left us too soon. On some, the characters had become too 
smooth to read. 

Statuary ranged from modest to elegant to overblown. Angels stood guard, a 
young boy cradled a lamb, biblical figures bowed their heads, doves flew. 

It had gotten dark by the time we arrived. The snow had stopped, and the night 
was very still. I thought briefly of Tom Dunninger, who’d devoted his genius to life 
extension, who’d said he hated cemeteries, who was reported to have been on the 
track of a major breakthrough before he joined his colleagues on thePolaris. Well, 
Tom, nothing has changed. At best, people still live for maybe 120 or 130 years, tops, 
which is the way it’s been for a long time. Dunninger himself was pushing it when he 
headed out to Delta Kay. A hundred twenty-something, as I recall. I could understand 
his interest. All of us would like to think there’s a way of shutting down the ageing 
process, but if it hasn’t been done by now, I suspected that meant it couldn’t be done. 

We walked among the headstones, exchanging irrelevancies, contemplating 
mortality, trying to keep warm. 

Crisp’s grave was in the fold of a hillock, his marker one of four clustered 
together. It was unpretentious, a white stone, engraved with his name and dates, and 
the legendIn loving memory. Someone had planted a sabula bush beside the 
headstone. It wasn’t much to look at in the face of approaching winter, but in the 
spring it would become a golden glory. 

The ground was a bit worn. When the weather got warm, the grass would grow. 


“I wonder who he is,” Alex said. 

Back in the skimmer, Alex called Fenn, told him where we were and what we’d been 
doing, and asked whether he could get an exhumation order for Crisp. 

I suppose I could say Fenn was reluctant.Irritated might be closer.“You’re not 
supposed to be involved in this,” he said. 

“I’m not breaking any laws, Fenn.” 

“Whoever this is you’re looking for, they’re dangerous, Alex. Can’t you just 
leave things alone?” 

Alex was good. He was skilled at dealing with people, and his professional 
persona surfaced. “Fenn,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve got the identity right on this 
guy. Find out who he is, and you might find out why somebody tried to kill us.” 

“Oh, c’mon, Alex. A guy who died twenty years ago?” 

“I think there’s a very good possibility that all this is connected. Fenn, I don’t 
ask for much—” 

They went back and forth for a couple of minutes, Fenn growing less adamant. 
Finally, he began to cave.“I would if I could, Alex. But you’re talking about 
something that’s really old news. What’s your evidence?” 

“There are too many people involved in this who seem to come and go without 
leaving tracks. Barber. Agnes, who may or may not be her mother. Crisp. Maybe even 
Taliaferro.” 

“Taliaferro has a long history, Alex. He did not walk in out of nowhere.” 

“No. But he walkedoff. And seven more people disappeared out of thePolaris. I 
think it would be helpful if we could find out who’s in Crisp’s grave.” 

Fenn held up both hands, the way people do when they want you to calm down. 
Or when they’re pretending you’re hysterical.“Look,” he said,“Crisp died when? 
Fourteen oh-five? Oh-four? And nobody has seen Agnes Shanley since.” He pushed 
back in his chair.“I’ll pass along what you’ve told me to the jurisdiction up there. 
With a recommendation they take a second look at the case. Okay? Will that satisfy 
you?” 

“Are they likely to take a look at the body?” 

I could see him debating whether to tell us what he really thought.“No,” he said 
at last.“From their point of view, no matter who’s in the grave, there’s nobody to 
prosecute anyhow. So why bother?” 

FOUrTeeN 

People should only die when they fall off bridges. Or 


swim with the sharks. No one’s lights should go out 

because a clock hidden in his cells has struck midnight. 

We seem to have a notion that when nature decrees 

we self-destruct, it is somehow wrongheaded to do 

anything about it, and we should go contentedly to our 

graves. Me, I’m looking for a detour. 

—Thomas Dunninger, 

Right to Life 

Nature cares only that you reproduce and rear the kids. 

After you’ve done that, get out of the way. 

—Charmon Colm, 

Chaos and Symmetry 

Alex talked about digging him up ourselves. I don’t know how serious he was, but I 
pointed out that there were severe penalties for grave desecration. And I wasn’t sure 
what good it would do even if wedid find out who was buried there. It was a guessing 
game. Alex admitted that. And he backed off the idea when I started suggesting what 
the headlines would look like. 

ANTIQUITIES DEALER TURNS GRAVE ROBBER 
BENEDICT CHARGED IN DESECRATION PLOT 


Sitting in the skimmer on the perimeter of the cemetery, watching the moon drift 
through the sky, I found myself thinking of Tom Dunninger, who had dreamed of 
doing away with graveyards. Or, at least, of reducing the need for them. 

We decided to stay over in Walpurgis. Most of the restaurants and the larger 
hotels were closed for the season, but we got a suite overlooking the ocean at the 
Fiesta and ate in the dining room, which was inauspiciously named Monk’s. But the 
food was good, and a few other people drifted in, so we weren’t completely alone. 

I don’t remember what we talked about. What I remember is that I kept thinking 
about the grave, and wondering whether it had been an accident or a crime of passion. 
Or whether it had been something else entirely: Had someone found it necessary, or 
expedient, to kill Ed Crisp? Had he known something? 

I had trouble sleeping. I got up in the middle of the night and fixed myself a snack. 
The sky was full of gauzy clouds, giving the moon a halo effect. For reasons I don’t 
understand, other than maybe because I associated him with graveyards, I called up 
Tom Dunninger’s avatar, which materialized in the center of the room and said hello. 
He was tall, dark-skinned, with somber features and white hair. He didn’t look like 
the kind of guy who enjoyed a good laugh. 

I had settled onto the sofa, with a donut and coffee at my disposal.“What can I 
do for you, Chase?” he asked. He was impeccably dressed in creased slacks, a blue 
jacket, and a white shirt with a string tie. 

The last update to the avatar had been made in 1364, a full year before 


thePolaris flight. This was a Dunninger whose face was lined with age. His knees 
appeared to be giving him trouble, and he grimaced as he sat down. 

“Can we just talk for a bit, Professor?” 

“My time is yours,”he said. He glanced around the room.“A hotel?” 

“Yes.” 

“Where are we?” 

“Walpurgis.” 

“Ah, yes. The resort. You know, I don’t believe I ever took a vacation. In my 
entire adult life.” 

“You didn’t have time?” 

“Didn’t have the interest.”He smiled.“I don’t think I’d have enjoyed myself in 
these sorts of places.” 

“Probably not,” I said. “Professor, you achieved a great deal during your 
lifetime, but you’re best known for your pursuit of life extension.” 

“It’s nice of you to say so, that I made some contributions. But I didn’t manage 
the one that mattered.” 

“—Because people still get old?” 

“Yes. Because people are still betrayed by their bodies. Because they live only a 
relative handful of years before they begin to decay.” 

“But isn’t that the natural way of things? What would happen if people stopped 
dying? Where would we put everybody?” 

“It’s the natural way of things that people run through the forests of Earth, 
chasing deer and wild pigs, I would guess. And getting chased. And huddling around 
fires on nights like this. Is it as cold out there as it looks?” 

“Yes.” 

“Is that how you’d prefer to live your life? The way your distant ancestors did?” 

“I’m not much into hunting. No.” 

“Or being hunted. So the first argument is turned out of court. And you ask, 
what would happen if people stopped dying? I’d argue, to begin with, it’s the wrong 
question. Rather, we need to know what would happen if people were able to retain 
youth and vigor indefinitely. I propose, to begin with, that we would remove, at a 
single pass, the bulk of human suffering. Not all of it, of course. It’s beyond our 
power ever to do that. But if we can stop the automatic funeral, kill it dead in its 
tracks, if we can stop the slow degradation that leads eventually to the grave, we will 
have given the human race a gift beyond measure.” 

“Professor, a lot of people feel death is not necessarily a bad thing. That a life 


that goes on too long becomes terribly dull—” 

“—It only becomes dull because the body becomes stiff and fragile. Things break 
easily. The energy level declines.” 

“—That it becomes a burden both to the individual and to his family—” 

“—Again, because of weakness. Of course the extremely old are a burden. I 
proposed to prevent that very condition.” 

I hung in there as best I could: “It might be that art arises from our sense of the 
transience of beautiful things. That death is part of what makes us human. That people 
need to get out of the way so their children can move on.” 

“Hogwash. Chase, you’re babbling. All that is fine when you’re talking in the 
abstract. Death is acceptable as part of the human condition as long as we mean 
somebody else. As long as we are only talking statistics and other people. Preferably 
strangers.” 

“But if you succeeded, where would we put everybody? We don’t have limitless 
land space. Or resources.” 

“Of course not. There’d be a price to be paid. Humans would have to stop 
reproducing.” 

“They wouldn’t do that.” 

He smiled in a way that suggested he had heard all this before.“You think not?” 

“I’m sure of it.” 

“Then I would put it to you that if you offer a young couple the choice between 
having children, or living forever in young bodies, never having to lose one another, 
that their response would not be the one you predict.” 

“You really believe that?” 

“I have no doubt.” 

“So we stop having kids.” 

“We’d have a few. Have to have a few, to replace those lost in accidents. It 
would be necessary to work that out, but it would be only a detail.” 

“What about evolution?” 

“What about it?” 

“The race would stop evolving.” 

“That probably happened shortly after we climbed down out of the trees.”He 
sighed.“Okay, that was over the top. But do you really believe that some far-off 
descendent of yours will be smarter than you are?” 

Well, no. But I thought other people could stand a lot of improvement. 


When I didn’t respond, he plunged on:“We have no obligation to give nature 
what it wants. Our obligation is to ourselves, to make ourselves comfortable, to 
provide the means to live fruitful lives, to eliminate the pain and degradation allotted 
to us by the natural order, to preserve individual personalities. As far as the 
evolutionists are concerned, if they like dying so much, let them volunteer to be 
carried out. If we truly want to see stronger bodies, genetic engineering can already 
take care of that. If we want smarter people, we have enhancement techniques.” 

“I don’t know, Professor. It doesn’t seem right.” 

“That’s because people have been getting old and dying for several million 
years. We’ve gotten used to it. And like any other necessity imposed by nature, 
because we couldn’t do anything about it, we pretend to approve. Wouldn’t have it 
any other way. I’ve actually heard people—women, primarily—say they wouldn’t 
want to live their lives again under any circumstances. 

“But we don’t like dying. That’s why we have religion. We’ve always tried to 
circumvent it, to tell ourselves that we’re immortal. So we embrace physical death 
and at the same time pretend it doesn’t happen.” 

“Professor, somebody said the human race progresses one funeral at a time. 
People become less flexible mentally as they age. Wouldn’t we end with a lot of 
elderly cranks in young bodies?” 

“Oh, well, you have something there. There’d be some problems. Bosses would 
never retire. Never die. You get very little fresh talent. Funeral directors would have 
to branch out. Find another line of work. Politicians would try to hang on literally 
forever. But we’ve always shown ourselves to be an adaptive species. I think, for one 
thing, that if people did not have to face the ageing process, they’d be less likely to 
defend lifelong opinions. They tend to be crutches, principles people hold on to ever 
more desperately as the end approaches. But if no end is approaching—”He held out 
his hands, palms up. What could be more obvious?“There would be a period of 
adjustment. But I think the end result would be more than satisfactory.” 

“What happened to you?” I asked. 

“How do you mean, Chase?” 

“Most of us accept death and loss as the price we pay for our lives. What 
happened toyou ? Did you lose someone especially close?” 

“Listen to yourself, Child. Who has not lost someone especially close? A father, 
a sister, a daughter. A friend. A lover. We sit at memorial services and pretend 
they’ve gone into some sunny upland. We talk about the happy hereafter and how 
they’re better off. We tell each other we are immortal, and that there is a part of us 
that lives on. But the truth, Chase, as everyone who’s thought about it knows in his 
heart, is that dead is dead. Gone. Forever. 

“You can see I’m not young. But if you want to know why I’ve worked on the 
problem, it’s because I’ve watched too many people die. It’s that simple. I want it 
stopped. And I saw a way to do it.”The room was illuminated by a single lamp. He 
gazed at it a long moment.“We love the light,” he said. 


“What’s the stumbling block? I mean, I know we’re able to get cells to 
reproduce indefinitely. That should mean virtual immortality, right? But it doesn’t 
happen.” 

“What’s your background, Chase?” 

“I sell antiquities.” 

“Really?” 

“Well, I also pilot superluminals.” 

“Ah. Would you be interested in life extension for yourself? If I could offer it?” 

“No. I’m satisfied with what I have.” 

“A sensible position, my dear. But self-deluding. And ultimately dishonest.” 

“I accept the terms on which I received my life.” 

“Oh, Chase, you’re beginning to sound shrill. You’re still young. Give it time. 
Wait for the first effects of winter to settle in your joints. Feel the first flutter of your 
heart, the numbness in your fingertips, the growing chill deep in your stomach as the 
horseman gallops closer. And he is coming. At a gallop, as you’ll learn. Youth is an 
illusion, Chase. We are none of us young. We are born old. If a century seems like a 
long time to someone like you, let me assure you that the annual round of seasons and 
holidays becomes a blur as the years pass.” 

He was right, of course. None of us ever admits directly to wanting something 
we know we can’t have. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a house, a lover, or avoiding 
getting old. We just go on pretending. “Professor, am I correct in assuming that it’s 
true you did not succeed?” 

His eyes grew intense.“Look at me,” he said.“Do I strike you as a man with the 
secret of immortality?” 

I said nothing and he broke into a broad smile.“The problem is fundamental. It is 
not sufficient simply to cause cells to reproduce indefinitely. They must also 
communicate with one another.” 

“Synapses.” 

“Very good. Yes. Synapses. That capability is the very core of life. Brain cells 
collaborating to make a decision that it would be prudent to get out of the way of a 
flood. Digestive cells working cooperatively to extract nutrition from one’s most 
recent meal. Cells in muscles taking directives from cells in nerves. 

“When a human being reaches 125 or thereabout, cells simply cease talking with 
one another. For a long time we did not know why.” 

“And we do now?” 

“Ioline,”he said. 

“That makes communication possible?” 


“That makes ithappen.When the body’s supply of ioline runs out, processes 
begin to break down. We tried to stimulate internal production, tried adding synthetic 
concoctions. Nothing works. Except for a very short time. There seems to be a clock, 
a timer, something that determines when the lights go out. It’s called the Crabtree 
Limit.” He launched into a detailed explanation, and I was lost from the start. But I 
listened closely, nodding occasionally as if I understood. When he’d finished, I asked 
whether he had any hope the problem could be resolved. 

“It has been the scientific grail for millennia,”he said.“Barcroft thought he’d 
solved it at the City on the Crag two centuries ago, about the time it was getting 
attacked by the Mutes. He was killed, and the lab destroyed. Nobody knows how close 
he might have been.” His eyes clouded.“Stupidity is always expensive.” He stared 
past me, focusing on something I could not see. Then he shrugged.“In the last 
millennium, Torchesky might have found a way to persuade the body to continue to 
manufacture ioline, and there was even talk that a few immortals were actually 
created. That they’re still alive out there somewhere, hiding themselves from the rest 
of us. Legend, of course. The work was taking place in a politically unstable climate. 
A lot of people were frightened by what they heard he was doing. There was 
theological turmoil. Eventually he and his work were seized by a pious mob, and that 
was the last anyone ever heard of it. Or him. 

“There’ve been other reports of breakthroughs, maybe valid, maybe not. But 
unfortunately nothing that’s made an impact.” 

“Are you close?” I asked again. 

“Yes,”he said.“It’s imminent.” 

Imminent.The word kept popping up. 

It was time to go home. 

We loaded up on sandwiches and coffee, checked out, and went up to the roof. It 
was another cold, overcast day, no sun, and maybe snow coming. We retrieved the 
skimmer and climbed in. Alex took the driver’s seat. “Louise,” he said, “take us 
home.” 

A sudden gust blew in off the ocean. There were only three other vehicles parked 
up there, which gives you an idea how busy the hotel was. 

“Louise? Answer up, please.” 

Nothing. 

The AI lamp was dark. “She’s down,” I said. 

Alex shifted his weight impatiently. He didn’t have a lot of tolerance for 
glitches. Moreover, when one occurred, he always concluded it was somebody’s fault. 
And, of course, never his. “Brand-new vehicle,” he said, “and trouble already.” 

He tried the toggle, but there was no sign of activity. “Probably a loose 
connection,” I said. 


He grumbled. “You always claim these things don’t go down.” He switched over 
to manual and turned on the engine. “We’ll have to drive.” He extracted the yoke and 
engaged the pods. That always feels good, when nine-tenths of your weight drains off. 
There’s another project that’s been going on for a long time: trying to find a way to 
reduce antigrav engines to something you could wear, say, on your belt. If you could 
walk around all day feeling the way you do in a skimmer . . . But that’s another one of 
those things that I doubt we’ll ever see. 

“We should take it back to them tomorrow,” he said. “Get her repaired.” That, of 
course, would be my job. 

He checked the screens for other traffic, touched the vertical thrusters, and we 
lifted off. I made a show of pulling on my harness to make sure I was securely belted. 
He grinned at me and told me to hang on. We swung around, passed over the edge of 
the roof, and turned south. The core thrusters fired, and we began to accelerate. 

A couple of kids were walking on the beach. And somebody in the downtown 
park was flying a kite. Otherwise, Walpurgis might have been deserted. 

If you had to drive, this was the kind of area you wanted to be in. There was 
nothing else in the sky, save a lone vehicle coming from the west. We soared out over 
the marshlands, which dominate the land immediately south of the city. A few klicks 
out, we passed into a gray haze. The sensors showed no traffic ahead, but I knew Alex 
didn’t like driving when he couldn’t see. So he took us higher, and we emerged into 
sunlight at about two thousand meters. A few minutes later, the clouds broke up and 
we glided out over Goodheart Bay. There were a few boats, and I thought I saw a 
long tentacle rise out of the water and slide back in. 

I told Alex, and commented they better stay alert. 

Alex enjoyed driving. He didn’t get to do it often. But I think it made his 
testosterone surge. 

The bay is big, 150 klicks before we’d hit land again, and Alex didn’t seem 
disposed to talk, so I closed my eyes and let my head slip back. I was almost asleep 
when I realized my hair was rising. 

“Something wrong,” I told him. 

“What? You’re not feeling well?” 

“Zero gee.” That wasn’t a good sign. “We’ve lost all weight.” 

He looked at the instrument panel. “You’re right. How’s that possible?” 

“I don’t know. What’d you do?” 

“Nothing. Are we going down?” 

“Up.We’re goingup. ” 

I know everybody reading this rides his or her skimmer around and never thinks 
much about the mechanics of it. As I always did prior to the incident I’m about to 
describe. The vehicles are usually equipped with two to four antigrav pods. The 


standard setting for them is .11 gee. You switch them on, eighty-nine percent of the 
weight cancels out, and you can lift off and go where you want. The way it works is 
that the pods create an antigrav envelope around the skimmer. The dimensions and 
arrangement of the envelope differ from one vehicle to another, but it’s designed for 
economy: The envelope is no larger than necessary to ensure that the entire aircraft, 
wings, tail assembly, whatever, is enclosed. If you could see it, it would resemble a 
tube. 

The pods can be dangerous, so to change the setting you have to open a black 
box located in the central panel and do it manually. Alex looked down at it. He didn’t 
like black boxes. But he pulled the lid up, pressed the control square, and waited for 
the gravity to come back. 

Nothing happened. 

He tried again. 

We were still going up. 

I took a shot at it and got the same lack of result. “It’s not working,” I said. Alex 
made a face that told me that wasn’t exactly news. I pried the face off the unit and 
pulled a couple centimeters of cable out of the system. “It’s been disconnected.” 

“You mean deliberately?” 

I thought about it. “Hard to see how it could happen on its own.” 

The skimmer was a dual, which is to say it had two antigrav units, both mounted 
beneath the aircraft, one just forward of the cockpit, one toward the rear between the 
cabin and the tail. The control cable, which I held in my hand, divided in two and 
linked into both pods. When I tugged again on the individual strands, there was still 
no tension. “It’s been disconnected at both ends,” I said. “Or cut.” 

“Can we fix it?” 

“Not without getting under the skimmer.” 

The color drained out of his face, and he looked down at Goodheart Bay, which 
was beginning to look pretty small. “Chase,” he said, “what are we going to do?” 

We were passing three thousand meters, going up like a cork in a lake. “Lower 
your flaps,” I said. “And kick in the thrusters.” 

He complied. We accelerated, and the rate of climb slowed. But it wasn’t going 
to be nearly enough. 

He got on the radio and punched in the Air Rescue frequency. “Code White,” he 
said. “Code White. This is AVY 4467. We are in uncontrolled ascent. Request 
assistance.” 

A woman’s voice responded.“AVY 4467. Please state the nature of your 
emergency.” I wondered if it was the same person we’d talked to last time we got in 
trouble.“Be as specific as you can.” 

“I thought I just did that.” Alex’s temper surfaced. “The pods are on full, and I 


can’t cut them back. We are stuck at zero gee. Going up.” 

“AVY 4467, there is a manual control for the pods, usually located between the 
front seats. Open the—” 

“Rescue, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.” 

“Understood. Wait one.” 

Alex looked out at the sky, looked at me, looked at the black box. “We’ll be 
okay,” he said. I think he was reassuring himself. 

We rose into a cumulus cloud, passed through, and came out the top. 

“Four four six seven, this is Rescue. Assistance is on the way. ETA 
approximately thirteen minutes.” 

We didn’t have thirteen minutes, and we both knew it. We passed through four 
thousand meters. The numbers on the altimeter were blurring. 

“Rescue, that will probably be too late.” 

“It’s our nearest aircraft. Hang on. We’ll get to you.” 

“Chase,” he said, “help.” 

Suddenly I was in charge. The only thing I could think of wasWe could jump. 
Get outside the bubble and the ascent would stop quickly enough. “I don’t see an easy 
way, Alex.” 

Lines creased his face. “Air’s getting thinner.” 

Skimmers are not designed for high-altitude flight. They have several vents, and 
if the oxygen gets scarce outside, the people inside are going to feel it. My head was 
beginning to hurt, and there was already pressure in my chest. “Breathe faster,” I said. 
“It’ll help.” 

I looked around the cabin. There was a time that these things carried parachutes 
or glide belts, but accidents were so infrequent that more people died from 
experimenting with the escape gear than from crashes, so it was eventually decided 
that it was safer in an emergency for ordinary citizens to ride the aircraft down. But 
that assumed the aircraft wasgoing down. 

“How about,” he suggested, “we shut off the pods?” 

“We don’t have that option,” I said. “They’re on and disconnected, so they’re 
going to stay on.” 

We cleared five thousand meters. 

“Well,” he said, “if you’ve an idea, this would be a good time.” He was speaking 
more deliberately by then, inhaling and exhaling with every couple of words. 

“You have any cable in this buggy?” I was climbing into the backseat, to get 
access to the cargo compartment. “Something we can use for a tether?” 


“I don’t think so.” 
I made a show of looking around, but I knew there was nothing like that. 
“Okay,” I told him. “Shut down the thrusters and take off your shirt.” 
“I don’t think we ought to be joking around.” 
“Do it, Alex.” He complied while I opened the cargo compartment and found the 


tool box. I took out a pair of shears, a wire cutter, and the key. The key, of course, 
was a remote that would open panels on the bottom of the aircraft. 

“What are you going to do?” 

I pulled off my blouse. “I’m going to try to give you back control of the pods. Or 
at least one of them.” He handed me his shirt, and I used the shears to cut it and my 
blouse into strips. 

He demanded to know how I intended to do that. But we were a trifle short of 
time, and I was in no mood to go into a long explanation. “Watch and learn,” I said. 

I slipped the key into a pocket. Then I climbed back into my seat and tied the 
cloth strips into a line. I looped one end around my waist and tied the other end to my 
seat anchor. “Wish me luck.” I opened the door, and the wind roared through the 
cabin. It was frigid. 

Alex was horrified. “Are you crazy? You can’t go out there.” 

“It’s safe, Alex.” We were both shouting to get over the wind. “It’s zero gee out 
to a couple meters from the hull. All I have to do is not drift too far away.” Or get 
blown off. “But I need you to keep us as steady as you can. Use the verticals if you 

have to, and hang on to the yoke. Okay?” 

“No!” He pushed back in his seat. “I can’t let you do that.” 

I was halfway out the door. “It’s not as dangerous as it looks,” I yelled at him. 

And damned sure less dangerous than doing nothing. 

“No! You stay here.I’ll go.” 

We both knew he didn’t mean it. In his defense, I’d argue that he thought he did, 

but I couldn’t see Alex climbing outside an aircraft under any circumstances. Even on 
the ground I don’t think he’d have tried it. Moreover, he didn’t know what to do. 

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can handle it.” 

“You sure?” 

“Of course. Now, listen: When the pods reactivate, these two lamps’ll go on. But 
don’t do anything until I’m back inside.” I was trying to hold the door open against 
the wind. “If anything goes wrong—” 

“What?” 

“Nothing. Never mind.” He’d have no way out. 


One section of the tether was midnight blue, composed of strips of the most 
expensive blouse I owned. I sighed and climbed out the door. The wind howled. I 
wasn’t really prepared for it, I guess. It caught me and ripped me off the fuselage and 
tossed me partially outside the envelope. My weight came back and my lower limbs 
felt like a bag of bricks. The skimmer was still going up, and it dragged me behind it. 
I suddenly became aware that I was dangling several thousand meters in the air. 

I hadn’t thought things out very well. The tether was wrapped around my waist 
instead of under my arms, and when it snapped tight it knocked the wind out of me. I 
needed a minute to recoup. Then I began to haul myself back up the line, hand over 
hand. The drag was horrific, but I’d been smart enough (or lucky enough) to make the 
tether no longer than I had to. Had I been tossed completely outside the bubble, I’d 
not have been able to do it. 

As I climbed, the antigrav field took hold of my hips and legs again, and my 
weight went away. I grabbed a tread, got onto it, and tried to catch my breath. I now 
had access to the underside of the aircraft. It hadn’t been pretty, but I was there. 

Each of the pods had an access panel. What I would have liked to do was open 
both panels and reconnect the control leads to the terminals. The forward pod was 
within easy reach. But the one toward the tail would be impossible to get to because 
the tread didn’t extend that far. And I couldn’t just float back there because of the 
wind. Nor would my tether have been long enough. 

It was getting progressively harder to breathe. A darkness was beginning to 
gather around the edges of my vision. I took the key from my pocket, handling it 
carefully so the wind didn’t blow it away, and punched the purple button. Both panels 
opened. 

In the forward compartment, I could see the loose cable. It was simple enough: I 
hung on to a strut with one hand and reconnected it. (I’d brought the wire cutters in 
case I had to splice.) There was nothing I could do about the rear pod. 

When it was done I closed the panels. 

We were still going up, of course. We passed through another cloud, and for the 
moment I couldn’t see anything except cumulus. 

When we cleared I climbed back into the cabin, fell into my seat, and pulled the 
door shut. “I’ve only got one light,” he said. 

“That’s because you’ve only got one pod,” I replied. “It should be enough.” 

He hit the button and the status lamp glowed green and we got some weight 
back. The rate of ascent began to slow. The rear of the skimmer went up, and the nose 
dipped. That figured since the tail still weighed nothing. Gradually we nosed over and 
continued to rise more slowly until we hit apogee. Then we began to fall. 

“Okay.” I reset the black box to zero. 

“What are you doing?” he asked. We were looking straight down at the ocean. 

“Preventing a crash. If we jiggle it a bit on the way down, turn it on, turn it off, 


we won’t hit too hard.” 

“We’re going to crash again?” he asked. 

“Probably,” I told him. “But the air’s going to feel better.” 

We drifted down the sky. Alex clapped a shaky hand on my shoulder and told me I’d 
performed like a trouper. Made him proud. 

The Patrol appeared and moved alongside. The bay got closer, but only slowly. 
We were descending like a leaf, while the Patrol encouraged us and told us to keep at 
it. My heart settled back inside my ribs, and color returned to Alex’s cheeks. 

Alex tried to manage things to keep us out of the water, but the position the 
aircraft was in prevented any kind of maneuver except up and down. Forty minutes 
after we’d begun to fall, we hit the surface. But unlike last time we slipped gently into 
the waves. It was nice and gradual, and the people in the rescue vehicle actually 
cheered. 

FiFTeeN 

We have solved every major scientific problem except 
the one that matters most. We still die too soon. I 
propose to set a worldwide goal that a child, born 
before this decade has ended, may look forward to a 
life span counted in centuries. 

—Juan Carillo 
Counsel General, Aberwehl Union, 4417 C.E. 

I can tell you that your perspective changes on a lot of things once you get the idea 
that somebody’s out to kill you. It’s bad enough, I suppose, if you’re caught up in a 
war, and they want to take you out because you’re wearing the wrong uniform. But 
when the situation comes down to where you’re a personal first-name up-close target, 
you just don’t sleep so well anymore. 

I was scared. I wouldn’t admit it, especially since Alex was describing me to 
everybody he knew as a daredevil. “You should have seen her climbing around out 
there,” he told Fenn. And Windy. And one of the guys I was dating. And probably 
every client within range. And everybody else who touched base with us over the next 
couple of days. “She was outstanding.” 

Oh, yes. 

In any case, that was how, for the second time in two weeks, we went into the 
ocean. Well, into Goodheart Bay, actually. But that’s a technical point. 

We came out of it okay. Rescue pulled us from the water. The power went off in 
the new skimmer, and it headed for the same neighborhood where the other one was. 
We filled out another round of forms, answered more questions, probably made the 
patrol’s list of people to look out for. One of the Rescue guys suggested that next time 


we drive over water, if we’d let them know in advance they’d keep a unit ready. 

It was too much for Universal, Alex’s insurance company, which informed him 
he was henceforthpersona non grata. Me, I went down to Broughton Arms to buy a 
scrambler. I gave them my link, and they ran the record. When it cleared, I picked up 
a small nickel thirty-volt Benson. It was efficient-looking, shaped, of course, like a 
pistol, capable (according to the manual) of putting somebody on the ground for a 
half hour or so by knocking out his circuitry. 

Scramblers could, of course, be manufactured to resemble comm links or 
compacts or virtually any other kind of metal object. But my philosophy is that if 
someone has a weapon pointed at him, he should know about it. 

Fenn lectured us again. “I wish you’d stop the nonsense,” he told us. “Either stay 
home, where you’re safe. Or clear out altogether until we settle this matter. Don’t you 
have anything planned that would get you away from here for a while?” 

Actually we did. But eventually we’d have to come back. And there was no 
reason to believe that Fenn would be any closer to a solution in six days or six 
months. The problem the police have is that there are almost no crimes. So when one 
happens, they’re more or less at a loss. I doubt they can resolve anything unless they 
happen to be in the neighborhood when the lawbreaking happens, or the perpetrator 
makes the mistake of bragging to the wrong people. Or does something equally 
stupid. 

“I have a couple of specialists,” he continued, “who aren’t doing a great deal at 
the moment. It might be prudent if I assigned them to look after you. But you’d have 
to abide by their judgment.” 

Alex made a face. “You mean bodyguards.” 

“Yes.” 

“That’s really not necessary. We’ll be fine.” 

Speak for yourself, big fella. Fenn looked at me. Personally, I’d have felt more 
comfortable with a cop at my side. But I took Alex’s lead. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be 
careful.” 

Fenn shook his head. “I can’t force you to accept them.” 

“We haven’t been in a situation,” Alex said, “where having a bodyguard would 
have changed anything.” We were all sitting in the Rainbow office. “Has the 
investigation been making any progress?” 

“Of course,” he said. 

“Did the exhumation order for Crisp go through?” 

“Yes. I told you it would.” 

“Are they going to dig him up?” 

“No. They didn’t even take it to a hearing. They told us the case was closed a 


quarter century ago.” 

I took to reading and watching everything I could find about thePolaris and the 
people who had ridden her on that last mission. 

Nancy White was possibly best known for her fireside forays into the natural 
world. Her living room (or the set, whichever it actually was) looked extraordinarily 
cozy, comfortable, snug. White customarily sat in an oversized armchair, in the soft 
glow of an antique lamp on a side table. She was usually sipping a drink and talking 
to the viewer in a tone that implied we were all good friends, enjoying an evening 
together. There was inevitably a storm beating at the window, sometimes thunder and 
lightning, sometimes heavy snow. But it added to the warmth and good feeling inside. 

This was a living room, she liked to remind us in one of her signature comments, 
that looked out on the cosmos.“Like your own.” She specialized in drawing parallels 
between natural processes and the human condition. Nothing is forever, not even a 
black hole. Springtime on Qamara, a world with (as she put it) too much ellipse in its 
orbit, was brief and quickly buried beneath a years-long winter, but the flowers were 
all the more valued for that reason. 

Early in each of the White conversations, we leave the living room and sail 
among galaxies, or watch the fierce harridans of Dellaconda glide through the valleys 
of that distant world, or plunge into the fiery interior of Regulus, or soar through the 
churning atmosphere of a newly born world. If there was a recurrent theme, it was the 
significance of the moment. Life is not forever. Take the cup and drink. Seize the day. 
Enjoy the jelly donut. 

One of her more moving shows used the ancient outstation Chai Pong as its 
central symbol. During the golden days of the Kang Republic, twenty-six hundred 
years ago, several successive heads of state engineered a major push into the Veiled 
Lady. The Kang set themselves an ultimate goal of mapping the nebula, a task that 
would take centuries, even for an exploration fleet many times the size of the forty-
plus ships they had available. But they made the commitment and devoted their 
wealth and energy to the enterprise. They built outstations (one of which was Chai 
Pong) and established bases and for centuries they moved among those far suns, 
discovering and recording living worlds, including the one at Delta Karpis. In a show 
recorded exactly one year before thePolaris departure, she observed that the Kang 
had established an outstation, since lost, somewhere in the Delta Kay region. (It was 
the Kang who initially found the incoming white dwarf and predicted the eventual 
collision.) 

Locating another technological species had not been their stated mission. They 
simply wanted to know what was out there. The habitable worlds were too far to 
establish settlements, even had the Kang been of a mind to make the effort. But the 
point that White stressed was that in all those years, amid all those missions, no living 
civilization was ever discovered. 

“It has always been argued that placing ourselves at the center of creation is an 
act of supreme arrogance,”she said from the Chai Pong control room.“But in a very 
real sense, it is nonetheless true that humans are central to the scheme of things. 
Cosmologists tell us that we cannot ask whythe universe exists. We cannot ask about 
its meaning. These are misleading questions, they say. It exists, and that is the sum of 


all we know on the subject.” She stops at this point and lifts a cup to her lips.“Maybe, 
in a narrow sense, they’re right. But in a broader context, we can argue that all the 
workings of the cosmos seem designed to produce a conscious entity. To produce 
something that can detach itself from the rest of the universe, stand back, and 
appreciate the vault of stars. Birds and reptiles are not impressed by majesty. If we 
were not here, the great sweep of the heavens would be of no consequence.” 

In the end the Kang, exhausted in spirit and treasure, abandoned their 
outstations, gave up, and went home. 

Chai Pong orbited a rocky world in the Karaloma system. The platform, the 
world, and the system had been all but forgotten.“Given enough time,” White said, 
“it’s what happens to us all.” 

Alex had a combination den and workroom at the back of the house. He’d covered the 
walls with pictures of thePolaris passengers, all in settings that emphasized their 
humanitarian contributions. Warren Mendoza looking down a line of injured patients 
in a surgical hut on Komar during one of its endless guerrilla wars. Chek Boland 
helping give out coffee and sandwiches at St. Aubrey’s in a poor section of a 
terrestrial city. Garth Urquhart landing with a relief unit in a famine-stricken village 
in South Khitai. Nancy White helping rescue workers in flood-ravaged and disease-
ridden Bakul, also in South Khitai. A middle-aged Martin Klassner sitting behind a 
set of drums for the Differentials, a group of scientists with, maybe, musical talent, in 
one of a series of fund-raising events for survivors of a civil war on Domino. And, of 
course, there was the celebrated picture of Tom Dunninger, gazing at sunset across 
the West Chibong Cemetery. 

It was supposed to be a day off. I’d gone in to conduct some minor piece of 
business. Alex, seeing that I was staring at the walls, stopped what he was doing. “It’s 
common to all of them, isn’t it?” he asked. 

“You mean that they were all humanitarians?” 

“They were all true believers.” 

“I suppose you could put it that way. It strikes me that the people who make the 
contributions are always true believers.” 

“That may be,” he said. “But somewhere in the mix, people need to be 
pragmatic.” I asked what he was suggesting, but he just shrugged and denied any deep 
significance. “I do have a surprise for you, though,” he said. 

After what we’d been through, I thought I was about to get a bonus or a raise or 
hazardous duty pay. So it came as something of a disappointment when he handed me 
a headband. “Jacob,” he said, “show her.” 

I was in a dining room, seated, facing the head table. It was a big room, and I 
saw the logo of the Al Bakur Hotel. 

“Never heard of it,” I told Alex. 

“It was torn down,” he said. “Forty years ago.” 

The attendees numbered about three hundred. There was a constant buzz of 


conversation, and the clink of silverware and glass, and I smelled lemon and cherries 
in the air. 

A chime sounded and a heavyset middle-aged woman seated at the center of the 
head table stood and waited for the room to quiet. When she had everyone’s attention, 
she welcomed the audience, told them how pleased she was to see the turnout, and 
asked the organization’s secretary to read the minutes of the previous meeting. 

Alex leaned in my direction. “We don’t need to see this,” he said. The speaker 
and the diners accelerated and blurred. He stopped it a couple of times, shook his 
head, and finally arrived at the place he wanted. 

“. . . featured speaker for the evening,”the heavyset woman was saying, 
“Professor Warren Mendoza.” 

“This is 1355,” said Alex, as applause broke out. 

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”A relatively young and slim Mendoza rose 
and took his place behind the lectern. ThePolaris was still ten years away.“It’s my 
pleasure to be here with you this evening. I want to thank Dr. Halverson for the 
invitation, and you folks for the warm reception. 

“I won’t mince words. I want you to know that you have my full support. There is 
no more important work being done today than the effort to stabilize population.” 

“It’s the White Clock Society,” said Alex, keeping his voice low. 

Bonewhite, I thought. And it keeps ticking. It counts the time left before 
Rimway’s population outruns its resources to the degree that people begin to die in 
large numbers. Their slogan was on the wall behind Mendoza: 

WECAN,ORNATUREWILL. 

“Unless we persuade people there is a problem,”Mendoza was saying,“we will 
never be able to arrange a solution. Despite all our technology, there are hungry 
children on Earth, disease-ridden adults on Cordelet, economic dislocations on 
Moresby. Members of the Confederacy, during the past ten years, have suffered 
literally dozens of insurrections and eight full-blown civil wars. All are traceable, 
either directly or indirectly, to scarcity of resources. Elsewhere, economies go 
through their standard cycles, taking wealth from all and impoverishing many. This 
isn’t the way it was supposed to be.” 

“Am I hearing this right? This is the guy who’s trying to extend life spans.” 

“No,” Alex said. “That’s Dunninger.” 

“But Mendoza was helping him.” I looked at Alex. “Wasn’t he?” 

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” 

Mendoza talked for twenty-five minutes. He used no notes, and he spoke with 
passion and conviction. When it was over, he got a standing ovation. I’ve never 
worried much about overpopulation, but I wanted to join the general cheering. He was 
good. 


Alex shut the program down and picked up a folder. “There’s something else 
that’s interesting. I’ve been looking into Taliaferro’s career.” 

“What have you got?” 

He opened the folder. “In 1366, a year after thePolaris, he conceived of, and 
pushed hard for, the Sunlight Project.” 

“Which was what?” 

“Accelerated educational opportunities for select graduate students. He made the 
project work, but in the long term it broke away from Survey and received direct 
government funding.” 

“Why is it significant?” 

“It became the Morton College.” 

That afternoon, when I had some spare time, I had Jacob post the convention archive 
again. Alex told me I was consumed by thePolaris. He had room to talk. 

I looked through it, thinking that if Bellingham/Kiernan had been there, then 
Teri Barber might have been present as well. That meant I had to look at everything 
this time, not just the events I’d attended. Barber was a distinctive woman and would 
have been easy to spot. But there was no sign of her. 

Alex joined me, though, and we spent the day at it. He got interested in the 
convention itself, and we listened to parts of several presentations. 

I remembered my impression that the attendees were people trying to escape the 
routine of life, to add a bit of romance, to reach out and touch a less predictable kind 
of world. I saw the guy who thought everyone from thePolaris was alive and well and 
hidden in the woods somewhere. And the woman who’d claimed to have seen Chek 
Boland by the White Pool. 

And the avatar of Jess Taliaferro. 

I’d seen it at the convention and spoken privately with it later. But I froze the 
image and looked at it again, at the auburn hair turning prematurely gray. At the 
awkward middle-aged body. At the slightly puffy features. “Alex,” I said, “who is 
that?” 

Alex chewed his upper lip and jabbed an index finger at the image. “Damn,” he 
said, “it’s Marcus Kiernan.” He tried to remember the alias. “Joshua Bellingham.” 

Fenn called.“Alex, we don’t have a DNA record for Teri Barber.” 

Alex frowned. “I thought everybody local was on record.” 

“Well, all the law-abiding types. We got a sample from her apartment, but 
there’s nothing to match it to. And that’s not all. There’s nothing on Agnes either.” 
Someone caught his attention. He nodded and looked at us.“Be right back.” 


“Well,” said Alex, “now it’s beginning to make a little sense.” 

“What makes sense? You got this figured out?” 

“Not entirely.” He lowered his voice. “But it’s a darker business than we 

thought.” 

Fenn reappeared.“We also ran an archival search on Crisp,” he said.“The 
results are just in.” 

“And?” 

“Ditto.” 

“No record?” 

His large heavy features were creased.“Not a thing. Other than what’s known 
about his life at Walpurgis. It’s as if he never existed prior to moving there. Alex, I 
don’t know what’s going on, but it looks as if it goes back a lot of years.” He looked 
up again at another distraction.“I have to go.” 

“Okay.” 

“Look, I’m not sure what we’re into. But I want you two to be careful.” 

“We will.” 

“I’ve talked to the people at Walpurgis. We’re taking another run at the 
exhumation order. If we can find out who Crisp was, maybe we’ll get an idea why he 
fell, or was pushed, off the cliff.” 

During the next several days I hardly saw Alex. Then, on a cold, frosty morning 
minutes after I’d arrived, he walked into the office, dragged me away from a 
conversation with a client, and hustled me into the VR room. “Look at this,” he said. 

Another party. 

“This is about six weeks before thePolaris. ” Mendoza was front and center, 
smiling and talking with a small group of men and women in formal clothing. They 
all had drinks in their hands, and banners hung from the walls proclaimingYUSHENKO . 
“It’s the opening of the Yushenko Laboratory,” Alex said. 

I must have looked puzzled. 

“You never heard of it?” 

“No.” 

“No surprise, I guess. It went under seven years later when the financial manager 
ran off with the funds, and contributions subsequently dried up. But for a while it 
looked like a researcher’s dream.” He pointed over my shoulder. “There’s 
Dunninger.” 

We were on our sofa, in the center of the room, while the action swirled around 
us. Dunninger looked uncomfortable in formal wear. He stood near a long table, 


loaded with snacks. He also was attended by several people. 

The sense of actually being present was undercut by the fact I could not hear 
what anyone was saying. We got a distant buzz of conversation, and occasionally it 
was possible to catch a phrase or two, but for the most part we were doing guesswork 
and trying to read nonverbals. 

Mendoza seemed to be watching Dunninger. When Dunninger excused himself 
and left the room, Mendoza also broke away and arranged to be waiting for him when 
he came back. He took Dunninger aside and walked him back out into the corridor. 

Just before they disappeared, Dunninger shook his head no,vehemently no. 

They were gone about five minutes. When they returned, Dunninger was leading 
the way. He looked angry, and the conversation had apparently ended. 

They were colleagues. Dunninger had been working almost four years at the 
Epstein Retreat. Mendoza, at Forest Park, had been the man against whom Dunninger 
bounced ideas. 

Dunninger crossed the room, picked up his drink (which he’d left on a table), 
and rejoined his group. But he looked furious. 

Alex brought us back to the office. “What do you think?” he asked. 

“Just a disagreement.” 

“You don’t think there was more to it than that? I thought it looked pretty 
serious.” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “When you can’t hear anything, it’s hard to tell.” 

Alex went through a series of facial contortions, puzzled, annoyed, sad. Then he 
exhaled. “I think it was the last chance,” he said. 

“For what?” 

He looked up at the tall-stemmedPolaris glass in the bookcase. “Answer that, 
and everything else might fall into place.” 

Alex had dinner with potential suppliers that evening. When he’s out entertaining, he 
always reroutes his link so that any call gets diverted to me. Which is okay, but 
there’s no provision for me to reach him. His theory was that nothing could come up 
that I wasn’t qualified either to handle or defer. I could have had it inscribed in bronze 
and put in the office. Company motto. 

So it happened that, as I was getting ready to pack it in for the day, Jacob 
informed me that a gentleman was on the circuit asking to speak with Alex.“Audio 
only,” he said. 

“Who is it, Jacob?” 

“He doesn’t seem to want to identify himself, Chase.” 

Ordinarily, I’d have told Jacob to refuse the call. Sometimes we get contacted by 


unscrupulous types who have lifted something from a museum, or made off with it in 
some other dubious way, and they want to have us take it off their hands. It’s a 
magnificent piece of work, they say. And you can’t beat the price. These kinds of 
people always stay away from the visuals. Usually, though, they will give us a name. 
It just won’t be the right one. 

But in the present climate, I thought I should hear what it was about before 
terminating things. So I told Jacob to put him on. 

“Hello?”The voice was subdued and anxious. 

“Go ahead. This is Chase Kolpath.” 

“I wanted to speak to Mr. Benedict.” 

“I’m sorry. He’s not here. Can I help you?” 

“Can I reach him? It’s important.” 

“I’m afraid not. I’d be happy to help if I can.” 

“Do you know when he’ll be available?” 

“What’s your name, please?” 

I heard a distinct sigh.“It’s me, Chase. Marcus Kiernan.” 

That got my attention. “Marcus, I’m sorry, but I really have no way to get to 

him. You’ll have to talk to me.” 

He took a deep breath. In the background, I could hear the buzz of conversation. 
He was in a public place, trying to ensure that we didn’t track him. 

“Mr. Kiernan, are you still there?” 

“Yes.” 

“If you want to talk to someone, it’ll have to be me. What can I do for you?” 

“Meet me.”He said it a bit louder than necessary, as if he’d just taken a difficult 
decision. 

“Why?” 

“I’ve something to tell you.” 

“Why not just tell me?” 

“I don’t want to broadcast it.”Another pause.“Come alone.” 

“Why? Did you want another shot at me?” 

“That wasn’t me.” 

“It was your girlfriend, Barber. What’s the difference?” 


“Please,”he said. 

I let him wait while I listened to my heartbeat. “All right,” I said. 

“Chase, if anybody’s with you, I’ll clear out.” 

“Where are you going to be?” 

He thought for a moment.“In the lobby of Barkley Manor. In one hour.” 

I don’t know what kind of impression I make on people, but I don’t like to think 
I look dumb. “No,” I said. “I’ll be at the base of the Silver Tower in forty minutes. I’ll 
wait five minutes, then I’m gone.” 

“I don’t think I can get there in forty minutes.” 

“Give it your best.” 

Andiquar is the Confederate seat of power, and the Hall of the People constitutes the 
visible symbol of its presence. It’s a magnificent, sprawling, marble structure, four 
stories high, roughly a half kilometer long. At night, it’s bathed in soft blue light. The 
flags and banners of the Confederate worlds snap along its front in the winds off the 
ocean, and thousands of visitors arrive every day to gawk and take pictures. At night, 
the dazzling light display draws even larger crowds. 

The Council meets there; the executive offices are located symbolically on the 
lower floors; and the Court convenes in the eastern wing. A series of fountains feed 
the White Pool, which runs the length of the building. 

The Archive, which houses the Constitution, the Compact, and the other 
founding documents, is adjacent the Court. At the opposite end of the White Pool 
stands the Silver Tower of the Confederacy. In the daytime, visitors can go inside the 
Tower and take the elevator to the top, where a balcony circles the building. There are 
substantial crowds at almost any hour. Which was why I’d chosen the location. 

I called Fenn. He was out of the office. At home. I had the code for his place, but 
he’d not be able to reach the Tower in time. So I left a message for Alex, grabbed my 
scrambler and put it in my jacket, jumped into my skimmer—it was now the only one 
we had left—and took off. Then I started to call Fenn again. But I hesitated. He’d 
send somebody from the station and maybe scare Kiernan away. 

In a crowd, on the ground, I should be reasonably safe. If it was a setup, I 
thought I’d taken the initiative away from him. 

It was starting to snow as I lifted away from the country house. But traffic was 
light going downtown, and I made good time, dropping onto one of the capitol 
landing pads with ten minutes yet to get to the Tower. 

I patted my jacket, reassured by the bulge. I wished I had something lethal, but 
you can’t really get your hands on a serious weapon without going through a lot of 
red tape. If it came to it, though, the scrambler would put his lights out, and that 
would be sufficient. 

In case you’re wondering, I was qualified to use the weapon. I wasn’t exactly an 


expert, but in my full-time piloting days there’d been places I’d gone that you didn’t 
want to visit unarmed. 

The snow had all but stopped. There hadn’t been enough to get any 
accumulation, but it felt as if more was coming. 

The landing pads are on the roof of the Archives. You ride down in an elevator 
and come out one of the ramps into Confederate Square, close to the statue of Tarien 
Sim. The usual sight-seers were thinning out, most headed for dinner, some just 
getting out of the weather. I hurried along the perimeter of the White Pool toward the 
Tower. 

It was closed for the evening when I got there, but there were still people 
gathered around its entrance, looking up toward the illuminated balcony. It was an 
obelisk, not really all that high. Only a few stories, actually. But it was a brilliant 
piece of craftsmanship—reflective, seamless, polished. It had been erected more than 
two centuries ago as a tribute to the men and women who had come to the aid of the 
Dellacondans and their allies in the long war against the Mutes. That was the action 
that had led directly to the formation of the Confederacy, which marked the first time 
in its long history that the human family had stood united. Well, almost united. There 
were always places like Korrim Mas. 

It occurred to me belatedly that I should have worn a wig, or done something 
else to change my appearance. 

I scanned the crowd, looking for Kiernan. There was no sign of him, but I was 
still a few minutes early. I stayed close to a group of tourists who were gathered at the 
edge of the pool. They were mostly standing with their heads back, looking up. I did 
much the same, while trying to keep an eye on my ground-level surroundings. 

I’d assumed coming out that I was reasonably safe. But I began thinking how 
easy it would be to pick somebody off at that location. There were lots of bushes and 
trees lining the pool, and still more scattered across the Square. Any of them could 
hide a sniper. For that matter there was nothing to stop a killer from walking up 
alongside me and using a knife. It would be over before I knew there was a problem. 

So I kept my back to the pool, tried to watch the shrubbery, tried to watch 
everything. 

A family of three paused in front of me and took pictures of the Tower. On the 
far side of the pool, someone squealed in delight, and I saw running kids. 

It was past the designated hour. 

If he’d been unable to get here, he would have called. Right? Tried to get a 
delay. 

A security bot wheeled past. 

An older man with three or four people in tow explained how young he had been 
when he’d first gone there, and how the city had changed since then. 

A couple of lovers strode by, holding hands, absorbed in each other. 


A skimmer drifted down, hovered over the pool, then hurried away. A couple of 
people tossed coins into the water and smiled at each other. 

The crowd opened up a bit, but I still saw no sign of Kiernan. 

A group of young boys, all about twelve or thirteen, invaded the area. A 
kuwallah team, judging by their jackets. Two men were with them. The kids charged 
to the front of the Tower, and one of the men tried to slow them down. 

I imagined Kiernan speeding through the night, trying to get there before I left to 
tell me—what? That it had all been some sort of terrible mistake? Nothing personal, 
you understand. 

Off to my right, in the direction of the Archives, someone screamed. I heard the 
sound of running, then spotlights began to come on. It was a frosty sort of 
illumination. 

People were moving toward the Archives. 

Whatever was happening, I decided it was prudent to stay clear, to remain where 
I was. Lights appeared in the sky and began to descend. Security bots hurried past and 
cleared a perimeter. Within minutes, emergency and police units had arrived. 

Word got passed around that someone had fallen from the roof of the Archives. 
“A man,” they said. 

The emergency vehicles touched down. I threw caution aside and tried to get 
close. I arrived just in time to see somebody carried into a med unit. Moments later it 
lifted away. 

Police officers fanned out through the crowd looking for witnesses. 

Kiernan never showed up. 

I wasn’t entirely surprised when Fenn called in the morning to tell us about the man 
who’d been killed at the Archives. “Identified him from Ida’s pictures,” he said. “It’s 
Kiernan. The same guy. No question.” 

Alex told him I’d been there. Fenn’s expression hardened.“You’re not going to 
be satisfied until you get yourself killed, are you, Chase?” 

“I tried to call.” 

“Next time try harder.” 

“It won’t happen again,” said Alex. 

“You keep telling me that. I can’t protect you if I don’t know what’s going on.” 

I told him about Kiernan’s call. He listened. Nodded. Scribbled something down. 
“All right,” he said.“Thanks. We’ve got his DNA, and we are working now on 
establishing who he is.” 

“Good. Let us know, okay?” 


“If you hear anything more from these people,anything, would you be good 
enough to contact me? Right away?” 

SiXTeeN 

We cannot excise death from the process. If we 
sincerely wish to keep grandparents and elderly friends, 
and eventually ourselves, in full flower for an indefinite 
period, we had best be prepared to give up having 
children. But do that, and the creativity and the genius 
and the laughter will abandon the species. We will 
simply become old people in young bodies. And all that 
makes us human will cease to be. 

—Garth Urquhart, Freedom Day Address, 1361 

The AI at the Epstein Retreat, Dunninger’s longtime lab, had been named Flash, after 
a pet retriever. Three days after the departure of thePolaris, campers had gotten 
careless. The timber was dry, a fire wasn’t properly put out, and the woods caught. 
The lab was completely destroyed. 

When we’d gotten tired trying to figure out what Kiernan had wanted to tell us, 
we went back to trying to decipher the nonverbal communication between Dunninger 
and Mendoza. Eventually we got around to looking at the news coverage of the fire. 

The blaze was already out of control when the media arrived. The fire brigade 
was only a few minutes behind, but by then the area was an inferno. 

Epstein was located on a bank of the Big River. The facility consisted of two 
white one-story mod buildings, the living quarters, and the laboratory. At one time 
they’d been a boating facility and restaurant. There’d been rumors that Dunninger had 
been close to a solution to the Crabtree problem, but I had trouble believing he’d have 
gone off to a distant star system if he’d been on the verge of making the greatest 
discovery in history. 

The fire had completely engulfed the lab. The buildings themselves, of course, 
resisted the flames, but the forest came all the way out to the water, so everything 
around them had burned. Lab materials burst into flame, or melted. In the end, the 
Epstein structures still stood, charred and smoking, but nothing else survived. 

There was no serious effort to save the facility. Apparently some private homes 
along the western rim of the valley had been in danger, and the firefighters went there 
first. By the time anyone got near the laboratory it was too late. Judging from what we 
learned of the blaze, it wouldn’t have mattered in any case. There’d been a long 
drought, and the trees went up like tinder. 

Flash was gone, too. The AI, not the dog. The core material for Dunninger’s 
work on life extension, which he called, simply, the Project, had not yet been 
submitted for peer review. It was gone as well. Up in smoke, you might say. Had he 
maintained a duplicate data bank elsewhere? Probably. But no one knew where it 


might be, or how it might be accessed. 

There were no fatalities during the incident, and most of the homes on the 
western perimeter were saved. The rescue services congratulated themselves, and the 
media reported how fortunate everyone was, how it could easily have been a disaster. 

Alex wanted to hear how Dunninger had responded when he heard the news, but 
his reaction never made the public nets. We dug around and discovered that his 
response to the damage was listed in the Environmental Service archives. But to get 
into those we’d have to make application and provide an explanation for the request. 
“We should take a run out there tomorrow,” he said. “Get a look at the records.” 

“Okay,” I said. 

“Afterward we can go to lunch.” Alex enjoyed his lunches. 

The Environmental Services Department is located along the perimeter of a preserve 
named Cobbler Green, about ten kilometers southwest of Andiquar. It’s a quiet area 
favored in the daytime by young mothers and in the evening by lovers. Sable trees, 
flowering bushes, sculpted brooks, curving walkways, traditional and virtual statuary. 
The building itself is, in the spirit of the neighborhood, an unadorned two-story 
structure covered with vines. 

We walked into the main lobby, which was manned by an autoprocessor.“Good 
morning,” it said in a gender-neutral voice.“How may I help you?” 

Alex explained that we wanted to see thePolaris record that would detail 
Thomas Dunninger’s response to the news that his laboratory had been destroyed. 
“Thirteen sixty-five,” he added. 

“Very good,”it said.“There is a corresponding archive. The application forms 
are displayed. Please use the designated headbands.” 

We sat down at a table, put on the headbands, and the applications appeared. We 
each completed one, citing antiquity background (whatever that might mean) as the 
purpose. A few minutes later, we were directed to an inner cubicle. A bored-looking 
middle-aged man in a Forestry Service uniform appeared and introduced himself as 
Chagal, or Chackal, or something like that. He directed us to a screen, told us to call 
him if we needed help, turned, and left. An access board powered up, and the screen 
turned on. 

We got some numbers and a tag identifying the date and time of the desired 
communication. Fourth day of the flight, 1365, audio only. We listened to a station 
comm officer inform thePolaris, attention Dr. Dunninger, that a forest fire had 
destroyed the Epstein laboratory.“At this time,” the officer said,“reports indicate 
complete destruction of the facility. Nothing of value is believed to have survived 
other than the buildings, and they are damaged. This includes, unfortunately, the AI.” 

A reply came back two days later. It was Madeleine’s voice:“Skydeck, the news 
of the fire has been passed as you requested. If there’s anything additional, please let 
us know.” Then she signed off. 

“That’s it?” I asked. 


Alex exhaled. “Damn.” 

“I thought he’d get on the circuit and demand details. How it happened. Whether 
there was anything at all left. Stuff like that.” 

“Apparently not. Of course,complete destruction pretty much says it.” We got up 
and started for the door. 

“So what now?” I asked. 

“How far’s Epstein?” 

The Epstein Retreat had been located in West Chibong, in the north country. We 
booked a flight, left that evening, and got into Wahiri Central shortly after midnight. 
Not good planning. We checked into a hotel and set out the following morning in a 
taxi. 

West Chibong is exactly what it sounds like: isolated, remote, one of those 
places where, once you get beyond the town limits, there’s nothing for a hundred 
kilometers in any direction except mountains and forest. The Big River runs through 
the area, providing good fishing, according to the locals, and, of course, it features the 
Wainwright Falls. 

Alex told the taxi to pass over the Epstein site. It didn’t have any idea what he 
was talking about so he sighed and directed it instead to take us to Special Services, 
which housed Air Rescue, Forest, and Environment. 

It was headquartered in a big, grungy, domed building downtown. Not exactly 
ramshackle, but close. The interior was impersonal, drab, damp, not a place where 
you’d want to work. I’d expected to find pictures of the rescue services in action, 
skimmers dropping chemicals on blazing trees, emergency technicians tending to 
victims, patrols chasing a runaway boat through rapids. But the walls were 
undecorated, save for a few dusty portraits of elderly men and women you probably 
wouldn’t have wanted to have over for dinner. There’d been a time when I’d thought 
briefly about doing something like this for a living. The rescue services especially had 
always seemed glamorous. And it would have been nice to dedicate my life to helping 
people in trouble. But I either grew out of it or found out the pay wasn’t very good. 

“Yes, folks,”said an AI.“What can I do for you?” Sexy voice. This was going to 
be a unit made up primarily of young males. 

“My name’s Benedict,” Alex said. “My associate and I are doing research. I 
wonder if I could speak with someone for a few minutes? I won’t take much time.” 

“May I ask the subject of your research, Mr. Benedict?” 

“The forest fire in 1365.” 

“That’s a long time ago, sir. Just a moment, please. I’ll see if the duty officer is 
available.” 

The duty officer, despite my expectations, was a woman. She was a tiny creature, 
early thirties, brown eyes, brown hair. She wore the standard forest green uniform and 


looked happy to have visitors. “Come on back, people,” she said, leading us down a 
passageway and into an office. “I understand you want to talk about one of the 1365 
fires.” 

Uh-oh. “You had more than one?” 

She introduced herself as Ranger Jamieson. There was something irrepressible 
about her. I never saw her again after that interview, but to this day I remember 
Ranger Jamieson. And I’ve promised myself I’ll find a reason to go back again one 
day and say hello. 

She brought numbers up on her monitor. “Looks like seventeen. Of course, that 
depends on how you define the term.” 

“You had seventeen fires that year?” 

She nodded. “It’s about average for this region. We only cover a narrow area, 
but we get droughts on a regular basis. It has to do with the winds. And we have lots 
of campers, some of them not too bright. We also get a fair number of lightning 
strikes. In summer or fall, it doesn’t take much to start a blaze.” 

“The one I’m looking for took out the Epstein Retreat.” 

She looked blank. “I beg your pardon?” 

Well, there you are. We were assuming everybody on the planet knew about the 
Epstein lab, but as a matter of fact, a few weeks earlier I hadn’t heard of it myself. 
Alex explained what it did, who’d worked there, what might have been lost. Its 
connection with thePolaris incident. 

“How about that?” she said when he’d finished. “I know about thePolaris. 
That’s the starship that disappeared back in the last century, right?” 

“The passengers disappeared. Not the ship.” 

“Oh. Yes, of course. That was odd, wasn’t it?” 

“Yes, it was.” 

“And they never figured out what happened?” 

“No.” 

Her eyes brushed mine. Okay, so she didn’t exactly know about thePolaris 
either. That’s not really big news in most people’s lives. “And you think there’s a 
connection with the fire?” 

“We don’t know. Probably not, but the fire happened right after thePolaris left.” 
Alex gave her the specific date. 

“Well, let’s see what we have, Mr. Benedict.” She sat down in front of a display. 
“Thermal events, 1365,” she said. Data appeared, and she began running down the list 
with her index finger. “You know, the problem here is that we’ve never kept very 
good records. Especially before 1406.” 


“Fourteen oh-six?” 

“Don’t quote me.” 

“Of course not. What happened in 1406?” 

“We had a scandal and there was a reorganization.” 

“Oh.” 

She smiled. “Well, here we are.” She studied the screen, brought up fresh 
displays, shook her head. “I don’t think we have anything that’s going to be much 
help to you, though.” She got out of the way for us, and we looked through the data. It 
was all technical details, when the fire started, its extent, estimated property loss, 
analysis of the cause of the blaze, and a few other details. 

“What exactly,” asked the ranger, “did you want to know about the fire?” 

What did we want? I knew Alex: He was operating on the assumption that he’d 
recognize it when he saw it. “It says here the cause was careless campers. How much 
confidence would you have in that conclusion?” 

She flicked back and forth in the record, and shrugged. “Actually,” she said, “not 
much. We always determine the cause of a fire. In the sense that we announce a 
cause. But—” She paused, cleared her throat, folded her arms. “We’re a little more 
exacting, now. In those years, if they had lightning on a given night, and later there 
was a fire, lightning was ascribed as the reason unless there was some specific 

circumstance indicating otherwise. You understand what I’m saying?” 

“They made it up as they needed to.” 

“I wouldn’t want to put it quite that way. It was more like taking a best guess.” 

She smiled, carefully distancing herself from those long-ago rangers. 

“Okay,” Alex said. “Thanks.” 

“I wouldn’t want you to think that’s the way we operate now.” 

“Of course not,” said Alex. “You wouldn’t have any way of determining where 

the lab was located, I don’t suppose?” 

“I can ask around.” 

“It was somewhere along the riverbank,” he said. 

She brought up the same news report we’d looked at earlier and zeroed in on a 

river. “That’s the Big. It’s about forty-five klicks northeast of here. I can give you a 
marker.” 

The marker would allow the skimmer to find it. “Yes, please.” 

“Something else. There’s a man you might want to talk to. Name’s Benny 
Sanchay. He’s been around here a long time. Kind of a regional historian. If anybody 
can help you, he can.” 


Benny was well into his second century. He lived in a small cabin on the edge of 
town, behind a cluster of low hills. “Sure,” he said, “I remember the fire. There were 
some complaints later that the rangers let the lab go. Didn’t bother with it because 
they didn’t think it was important.” 

“Was it important?” I asked. 

He squinted at Alex while he thought it over. “Must have been. All these years 
later and here you folks are asking about it.” 

Benny Sanchay was small and round. He was one of the few men I’ve seen who 
had no hair left on his skull. He wasn’t given to shaving, and his eyes were buried in a 
mass of whiskers and wrinkles. I wondered whether he’d spent too much time looking 
into the sun. 

He invited us inside, pointed to a couple of battered chairs, and put a pot of 
coffee on. The furniture was old, but serviceable. There was a bookcase and a 
general-purpose table. The bookcase was sagging under the weight of too many 
volumes. Two large windows looked out on the hills. The thing that caught my eye 
was a working range. “That would be worth a fair amount of money,” Alex told him, 
“if you wanted to sell it.” 

“My stove?” 

“Yes. I could get you a good price.” 

He smiled and sat down at the table. There were pieces of notepaper stacked on 
it, a pile of crystals, a reader, and an open volume.Down to Earth. By Omar 
McCloud. “What would I cook with?” he asked. 

“Get some hardware, and your AI’ll do it.” 

“My AI?” 

“You don’t have one,” I said. 

He laughed. It was a friendly enough sound, the kind you get when someone 
thinks you’ve deliberately said something silly. “No,” he said. “Haven’t had one for 
years.” 

I looked around, wondering how he stayed in touch with the world. 

He glanced at me. “I’ve no need of one.” He propped his chin on his elbow. 
“Anyhow, I enjoy being alone.” 

So we were in the presence of a crank. But it didn’t matter. “Benny,” Alex said, 
“tell me what you know about the loss of the lab.” 

“It’s not good for you,” he continued, as if Alex hadn’t spoken. “You’re never 
really alone if you’ve got one of those things in the house.” I got the sense he was 
laughing at us. “What was it you wanted to know?” 

“The lab.” 


“Oh. Yes. Epstein.” 

“Yes. That’s it.” 

“The fire was set deliberately. It started near the lab. They did it when the wind 

was blowing east.” 

“You know that? Know it for a fact? That it was deliberate?” 

“Sure. Everybody knew it.” 

“It never came out.” 

“It didn’t become a story because they never caught anybody.” He got up, 

checked the coffeepot. “Almost ready.” 

“How do you know it was deliberate?” 

“Do you know what was going on at the lab?” 

“I know what they were working on.” 

“Eternal life.” 

“Well,” I said, “I think they were talking about life extension.” 

“Indefinite.That was the term they were using.” 

“Okay. Indefinite. What are we getting at?” 

“There were a lot of people who didn’t think it was a good idea.” 

“Like who?” I immediately began thinking about the White Clock Society. 

He laughed again. His voice changed tone, and he began to sound as if he were 
talking to a child. “Some folks don’t think we were meant to live indefinitely.Forever. 
We had a local church group, for example, thought what Dunninger was trying to do 
was sacrilegious.” 

Now that I thought of it, I remembered having heard something about that. “The 
Universalists.” 

“There were others. I remember people coming in from out of town. They were 
doing meetings. Writing letters. Collecting signatures on petitions. Getting folks 
upset. I always thought that’s why Dunninger took off.” 

“You think he believed he was in danger?” 

“I don’t know whether he thought they’d try to kill him or anything like that. But 
they were trying to intimidate him, and he didn’t strike me as a guy who stood up well 
to bullies.” He went back to the stove, moved the coffeepot around, decided it was 
okay, and poured three cups. “And religious types weren’t the only ones.” 

“Who else?” I asked. 


“Lamplighters.” 

“The Lamplighters? Why would they care?” They were a service organization 
with outposts—that’s what they called their branches—in probably every major city 
in the Confederacy. They were a charity. Tried to take care of people who’d been left 
behind by the general society. The elderly, orphans, widows. When a new disease 
showed up, the Lamplighters put political pressure where it did some good and made 
sure the funding got taken care of. Several years ago when an avalanche took out a 
small town in Tikobee, the local government moved the survivors out and arranged to 
get everybody patched up, but it was the Lamplighters who went in long term, took 
care of the disabled, spent time with people who’d lost spouses, and saw to it that the 
kids got their education. Urquhart and Klassner had been Lamplighters. 

“Yeah, they did a lot of good,” said Benny. “I’ll give you that. But it’s not the 
whole story. They can be fanatics if you get on their wrong side. If they decide you’re 
dangerous, somebody’s going to pollute the streams, or you’re fooling with 
something that could blow up, they could get pretty ugly.” 

The coffee was good. The flavor was a little off what I was used to, a little 
minty, maybe. But it was better than the stuff I got at home. Benny shook his head at 
the sheer perfidy of the Lamplighters and how people like us could not know them for 
what they really were. 

He had to be exaggerating. I thought of the Lamplighters as people who were 
forever arriving on disaster scenes to pass out hot beverages and provide blankets. 

“They sent representatives to the lab to ask Dunninger what they were going to 
do to prevent the human race from stagnating when people stopped dying.” 

“How do you know, Benny?” 

“Because they always made sure everything they did got plenty of publicity. And 
the other side got put in the worst possible light. They thought death was a good idea. 
Gets rid of the deadwood. So to speak. They actually said that. And when they didn’t 
get anywhere with the lab they got on the media. For a while we had demonstrators 
out there.” 

“At Epstein.” 

“Yes.” He rubbed the back of his head. “And then there were the Greenies.” 
People who worried about the effect of population on the environment. 

“Other people said they’d have to do away with the minimum subsistence 
payouts, because the government wouldn’t be able to afford to pay all the people 
who’d become eligible. 

“It got so bad they had to hire security guards. At the lab.” 

“Did you know any of them, Benny? The guards?” 

He broke into a wide, leathery grin. “Damn, Alex,” he said, “Iwas one.” 

“Really?” 


“Oh, yes. I worked up there about six months.” 
“So you knew Tom Dunninger.” 
“I knew Mendoza, too. He was here a couple of times.” 
“Did they get along?” 
“Don’t know.” His face scrunched up while he considered the question. “My job 


was mostly outside.” 

“How did Dunninger react to the opposition?” 

“Well, he didn’t like it much. He made some efforts to reassure everyone. Gave 

interviews. Even attended a town meeting once. But it seemed as if it didn’t matter 
what he did, what he said, things just got worse.” 

“How about Mendoza?” 

“I don’t know that he ever got involved with the demonstrators. No reason for 
him to. I mean, he was just in and out a couple of times.” 

“Were there any incidents while you were there? Anybody try to break into the 
lab?” 

He swung his chair around, pulled a hassock forward, and put up his feet. “I 
don’t think anybodyever actually got into the lab who shouldn’t have been there. Not 
while I was there, anyhow.” He thought about it. “They got close. Right up to the 
doors a couple of times. People sticking signs under my nose. Making threats.” 

“What kind of threats?” 

“Oh, they were saying they’d close the place down. It got so that Dunninger 
wouldn’t go into town. We did his shopping for him. But conditions never really got 
completely out of hand. The idiots came and went. Sometimes for whole weeks we 

wouldn’t see anybody. And then they’d start showing up every day.” 

“The police must have been involved.” 

“Yes. They made some arrests. For trespassing. Or making threats. I really don’t 

remember the details.” He squinted. “People can really be sons of bitches when they 
want to.” 

“What’d you think about it?” 

“I thought the protestors were damned fools.” 

“Why?” 

“Because anybody who knew anything understood he wasn’t going to succeed. 
We weren’t intended to live forever.” He thought about it. “On the other hand, if 
somebody actually figured out how to do it, I sure wouldn’t want to see anybody stop 
him.” 


Twenty minutes later Alex and I were drifting over the Big River searching for the 
Epstein ruins that the marker said were down there. It turned out there weren’t any. 
Benny had warned us there’d be nothing left, but we thought he was exaggerating, 
that there’d besomething, a scorched wall, a few posts, a collapsed roof. 

The trees came out to the river’s edge. They were relatively new growth, the 
older trees having been destroyed in the fire. There were still signs of destruction, 
fallen trunks, blackened stumps, but whether they were from the 1365 fire, or another 
one, there was really no way to know. Nor, I suppose, did it matter. 

“Look for a bend in the river,” Benny had told us. “You can see a small island 
out there with a lot of rocks piled on it. The lab’s located just west of the bend, on the 
south bank.” 

We found a few pipes sticking out of the ground, some buried paving, and the 
remnants of a power collector submerged in heavy brush. That was all. 

The river was wide at that point. The island with the rocks would have taken a 
few minutes to swim to. I stood on the bank and wondered how the past sixty years 
might have been different had the fire of 1365 not happened. 

SeVeNTeeN 

People seem to be hard-wired to get things wrong. 
They confuse opinion with fact, they tend to believe 
what everyone around them believes, and they are 
ready to die for the truth or whichever version of it they 
have clasped to their breasts. 

—Armand Ti,Illusions 

“I think,” Alex said, “it’s time we paid a visit to Morton College.” We were in our 
hotel suite at West Chibong. 

“Everson’s place?” 

“Where else?” 

“But if you’re right about Everson—” 

“—I am—” 

“—Wouldn’t that be taking a horrendous chance?” 

“Staring back at the Gorgon,” he said. “Chase, we’d be safer there than we are 
here.” 

That hardly put me at ease. “What makes you say so?” 

“Everson knows we wouldn’t go out there without informing someone. He 
wouldn’t want us to turn up dead or missing when we were known to be visiting the 


college.” 

“Okay. That makes sense.” 

“When can we be ready?” 

“This afternoon,” I said reluctantly. “I have some work to do.” 

“Let the work go. See if you can arrange transportation as early as possible. It’s a 
long run, and I’d like to get there today.” 

“If you want.” 

“All right.” I waited for him to say something more. But he turned on his heel 
and started for the door. 

“Alex,” I said, “are we actually going to inform someone?” 

“Jacob will. If we don’t come back.” 

“And what will we be looking for?” 

“I want to confirm an idea.” 

Morton College is located in the Kalo Valley in the far northwest, almost on the 
ocean. It’s a cold, bitter climate, forty below on a pleasant day, with winds ranging to 
seventy kilometers per hour. There aren’t many mountains, but the land is broken up 
by ridges, gullies, rills, and chasms. There’s a huge waterfall in the area that, were it 
in a more hospitable place, would have been a major tourist draw. 

The nearest town is Tranquil, a village with a population at that time of six 
hundred. Census figures revealed that people had been leaving Tranquil at a steady 
rate for about thirty years. The town was originally a social experiment, an attempt at 
an Emersonian lifestyle. It worked for about three generations. Then people 
apparently started getting fed up. I asked Alex if he knew why, and he shrugged. 
“One generation’s ideals don’t necessarily fit the kids,” he said. 

The college was six kilometers northeast of Tranquil. It occupied a substantial 
tract of land, maybe twelve acres, most of it wilderness. There was a complex of four 
buildings, all in the ponderous, heavy style of Licentian architecture. Lots of columns, 
heavy walls, curved rooftops, and a sense that the buildings would last forever. The 
grounds were buried by unbroken snow, so we knew the facility was tied together by 
passageways. 

According to the data file, Morton College presently had eleven students. And a 
dean, whose name was Margolis. It limited itself to postgraduate work, and granted 
doctorates in humane studies, in biology, physics, and mathematics. 

Despite what we’d been led to expect, the day was bright and warm. Well, warm 
in a cold, crackling way, in the sense that you knew it could have been alot colder. An 
energy collector on the main building was aimed at the sky. We could see lights in 
some of the windows. 

But there was no pad. Presumably it was under the snow. 


“Hello,”said a cheerful female voice on the link.“Are you looking for 
something?” 

“I was hoping,” Alex said, “we might come by for a visit. My name’s Benedict, 
and I was considering making a donation.” 

“Alex,” I told him, covering the link, “if Everson is involved, these people know 
your name. Maybe it would have been a good idea not to tell them who you are.” 

“Give them credit, Chase,” he said. “As soon as we walk in the door, they’ll 
know.” 

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Benedict,”said the voice on the circuit,“but donors 
usually proceed through Mr. Everson. If you want to give me contact information, I’ll 
see that he gets it.” 

“I understand that. But we were in the area, and I haven’t really made a decision 
yet. I hoped you might allow me to take a look at the school.” 

“Just a moment, please.” 

We circled for several minutes before the voice came back.“Professor Margolis 
says he can’t spare much time. He’ll meet you at the ramp.” 

The snow cover north of the complex broke open. Two doors rose into the air, 
the snow slid back, and we were looking into an underground pad. We descended and 
eased down past several meters of snow. The doors closed overhead, and we were in. 
“That was easy,” I said. 

The space was bigger than it looked from the air. Two other skimmers were 
parked, one on either side. We climbed out, and the voice told us to exit to our right. 
A door swung back, revealing a tunnel. More lights came on. 

Margolis was the teacher you always wanted to have. Congenial smile, right-to-thepoint 
attitude, a voice like water running over rocks. He was about seventy, with a 
shock of prematurely white hair, a neatly clipped beard, and sea blue eyes. His right 
hand was wrapped in a protective sheath. “Broke it in a fall,” he explained. “You get 
old, you get clumsy.” He looked at me. “Don’t ever do it, young lady. Stay right 
where you are.” 

The place was paneled with light-stained wood. There was a bust of the 
dramatist Halcón Rendano, and another of Tarien Sim, and a couple of paintings of 
people I didn’t recognize. It was the sort of room in which you instinctively lowered 
your voice. 

He indicated chairs for us, introduced himself, and asked whether we would like 
some refreshment. Coffee, perhaps? 

That sounded good, and he whispered an instruction into his link, and lowered 
himself into a hardwood chair, the least comfortable-looking chair in the room. “Now, 
Mr. Benedict,” he said, “how may I be of service?” 

Alex leaned forward. “You can tell me a little about the facility, if you will, 


Professor. How it works. What the students are doing, and so on.” 

Margolis nodded. Pleased to be of service. “We are strictly an independent-study 
institution. We take students whom we perceive to be especially gifted, we provide 
the best mentors, and we, I suppose you would say, turn them loose.” 

“I assume the mentors are not physically present.” 

“No. That’s correct. But those who are part of the program make themselves 
available on a preset schedule. We try to provide an atmosphere that fosters 
development. Talent mingling with talent, we find, often produces spectacular 
results.” 

“Synergy.” 

“Precisely. We give our students a place to live, where they can congregate with 
others like themselves, where they have access to unlimited academic resources. Our 
objective is that they have the opportunity to communicate with the best minds in 
their fields of interest.” 

“Is there any charge to the individual student?” 

“No,” he said. “We are completely funded.” 

A bot rolled in with the coffee and pulled up in front of me. There were two 
cups, both inscribedMORTON COLLEGE , with a coat of arms. I took one, and the bot 
proceeded to serve Alex. 

“Freshly brewed,” said Margolis. 

After the cold air in the landing portal, it was just what I needed. 

“I’m interested,” Alex said, “in some of the collaborating mentors. Who’s 
participating?” 

A broad smile appeared on Margolis’s weathered face. This was a subject he 
enjoyed. “There are quite a few, actually, depending, of course, on who is currently 
enrolled at Morton. We have Farnsworth at Sidonia Tech, MacElroy at Battle Point, 
Cheavis at New Lexington. Morales at Lang Tao. Even Hochmyer at Andiquar.” 

The roll call was unfamiliar to me, but then I really didn’t follow the academic 
world very closely. Alex seemed to be impressed. I decided I should make a 
contribution, and cast about for an intelligent question. “Tell me, Professor,” I said, 
“the college seems so small. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to specialize in, say, the 
humane arts? Or in AI technology?” 

“We don’t strive for efficiency, Ms. Kolpath. At least not in that sense. In fact, 
with a worldwide faculty from which to draw, we have no need to limit ourselves. 
Here at Morton, we remain open to a wide range of fields. We recognize the 
contributions made by science, which improves our lives, and by the arts, whichfill 
our lives. We have numbered among our students physicists and pianists, surgeons 
and dramatists. We set no limits to human endeavor.” 

“Professor,” Alex asked, “what was the Sunlight Project?” 


The smile broadened. “You’re looking at it. It was the inspiration for what we’ve 
become, a way to provide for able minds to develop. It was the way we started, and it 
has changed very little.” 

“Over sixty years. I’m impressed.” 

“Over ten thousand years, Mr. Benedict. We like to think of Morton as a direct 
descendent of Plato’s Academy.” 

“Would it be possible,” asked Alex, “to speak with some of the students?” 

“Ah. No, I am sorry, but they’re at study. We never interrupt them, save for an 
emergency.” 

“I see. Admirable custom.” 

“Thank you. We try very hard to ensure the best possible atmosphere conducive 
to—” He hesitated. 

“—Learning?” I suggested. 

“—Perhaps rather tocreation. ” He laughed. “Well, I know how that sounds. 
Can’t help it sometimes. But so often we perceive learning as an essentially passive 
exercise. Here at Morton, we have no interest in producing scholars. We’re not trying 
to assist people to appreciate Rothbrook and Vacardi. We want to find thenew 
Rothbrook.” 

Rothbrook had been a mathematician of note in the last century. But I couldn’t 
tell you why. Vacardi’s name rang a bell, but I had no clue why he was important, 
either. It struck me that Morton would never have let me in the door. 

“Could we possibly tour the facility?” asked Alex. 

“Of course,” he said. “It would be my pleasure.” 

For the next twenty minutes we wandered through the complex. Doors opened as 
we approached. Here was the community room, in which the students spent much of 
their leisure time. “We encourage social development,” Margolis said. “There are too 
many examples of potential greatness unrealized because an inability to interact with 
other persons created roadblocks. Hasselmann is a good example.” 

“Of course,” said Alex. 

And this was the gymnasium. With its attendant pool. One student was in the 
water, doing laps. “Jeremiah just came to us this year,” said Margolis. “He’s already 
done some interesting work in time/space structure. He operates on a different 
schedule from the rest of the world.” He seemed to think that was something of a 
joke, laughed heartily, and looked disappointed when we didn’t react accordingly. 

And our library. And our lab. 

And our holotank. “Used more frequently for exercises, but occasionally for 
entertainment as well.” 

A young woman appeared. Redheaded. Quite formal. She smiled apologetically. 


“Excuse me,” she said. “Professor, Jason Corbin is on the line. He needs to talk with 
you. Says it’s very important.” 

Margolis nodded. “That’s the Education at Sea program.” He shook his head. 
“They’re always having problems. But I’m afraid I’ll have to break off. It’s been a 
pleasure talking with you both. I hope you’ll come back and see us again when 
perhaps we’re not quite so rushed.” He looked at the redhead. “Tammany will show 
you out.” 

And, that quickly, he was gone. 

Tammany apologized. “Things are always a bit frantic here,” she said. 

We ate in Tranquil at the Valley Lunch. It was the only eatery in town, a small place 
with small windows overlooking a row of dilapidated buildings. There were other 
customers, and they all came in wearing heavy jackets and boots. 

A bot took our orders, and while we waited Alex got up and walked over to the 
service desk, where he engaged the attendant in conversation. She was about fifty, 
probably the owner. They talked for a couple of minutes, and he fished a picture out 
of his pocket and showed it to her. 

She looked at it and nodded. Yes. Absolutely. No question. 

When he came back, he told me there reallyare students at Morton. 

“Did you doubt it?” I asked. 

“I heard voices upstairs,” he said. “And there was the kid in the pool. But I 
wasn’t sure they weren’t putting on a show for us.” 

“If you’re thinking that way, Alex, how doesshe know they’re students?” 

“Well, she doesn’t, actually. At least, she doesn’t know they’restudents. But 
there are warm bodies in the place.” Our sandwiches came. He took a bite. “I want to 
check to see if the scholars he named are really at the places he says they are, and if 
so whether they’re actually part of the program.” 

“Why are you so suspicious about the place, Alex? If it’s not a school, what else 
could it be?” 

“Let it go for a bit,” he said. “Until we’re sure.” 

Irritating man. “All right,” I said. “Whose picture were you showing her?” 

He pulled it out of his jacket. I’d caught enough of a glimpse to know it was a 
male, and I thought it might turn out to be Eddie Crisp. Don’t ask me why; my head 
was beginning to spin. But it was a stranger. Lean, average looks, early twenties, 
brown wavy hair, brown eyes, friendly smile, high forehead. 

“One of the students?” I asked. 

“She’s seen him. But she doesn’t think he’s a student.” 


“An instructor, then?” 
“I assume. Though probably not this semester.” 
“Who is he, Alex?” 
He smiled at me. “Don’t you recognize him?” 
More guessing games. But yes, Idid know him. “It looks like a young Urquhart,” 


I said. 

On the way home, he spent his time with a notebook. We’d been aloft less than an 
hour when he told me the guest professors were where they were supposed to be. 
“Proves nothing, of course.” 

He buried himself in the data banks, while I slept. Shortly before we were 
scheduled to arrive in Andiquar, he woke me. “Take a look at this, Chase.” 

He turned the notebook so I could see the screen: 

MAN KILLED IN FREAK SKIMMER ACCIDENT 

Shawn Walker, of Tabatha-Li, near Bukovic, died today when the antigravity 
generators on his skimmer locked at zero, causing the vehicle to become weightless, 
and to rise out of the atmosphere into the void. It is believed to be the first accident of 
its kind. 

Walker was retired, a former employee of CyberGraphic, and a native of 
Bukovic. He is survived by his wife, Audrey, and two sons, Peter, of Belioz, and 
William, of Liberty Point. There are five grandchildren. 

The report was dated 1381, sixteen years after thePolaris. 

“It is,” he said, “the only instance I can find of this sort of incident. Other than 

our own, of course.” 

“But Alex,” I said, “this is forty-five years ago.” 

“Yes.” His eyes narrowed. 

“So where’s Bukovic?” 

He commented that it was nice to be getting back where the weather was decent, 

then responded: “It’s on Sacracour.” 

“You’re not suggesting we want to go there?” 

“You got anything hot pending?” 

“Not exactly. That doesn’t mean I want to go for another trip. Off-world.” 

“I think it would be prudent to get out of range of the psychos anyhow for a bit.” 


He blanked the screen and looked meaningfully at me. “CyberGraphic’s specialty was 
AI installation and maintenance.” 

“Okay.” 

“The corporation doesn’t exist anymore. They created a series of maladjusted 
systems, were responsible for some elevator accidents, of all things, and went 
bankrupt in an avalanche of lawsuits. That was about fourteen years ago. 

“What’s fascinating is that Shawn Walker was the technician on board 
thePeronovski when it went to the aid of thePolaris. ” He looked at me as if that 
explained everything. “Audrey, the widow, is still alive. She remarried and was 
widowed again. She’s still in Tabatha-Li.” 

“I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but why do we care?” 

And there came that self-indulgent smile, as if he knew something I didn’t. He’s 
maddening when he’s like that. “Reports at the time,” he said, “suggested Walker’s 
skimmer had been sabotaged.” 

“Did they catch anybody?” 

“No. Nothing ever came of it. People who knew him claimed he had no enemies. 
Nobody could think of anyone who wanted him dead.” 

I read the story again. “Let’s go talk to the lady.” 

EiGHTeeN 

A secret may be sometimes best kept by keeping the 
secret of its being a secret. 

—Henry Taylor,The Statesman 

We did the research. Shawn Walker had done well with CyberGraphic, but had been 
forced out in what the industrial reports described as a power grab in 1380, a few 
months before his death, and fifteen years after his historic flight with thePeronovski. 
There’d been some suspicion that his untimely end was connected with events at the 
corporation, but no charges had ever been filed. 

His wife Audrey married again several years later. The second husband was 
Michael Kimonides, a chemistry professor at Whitebranch University. He’d died 
eight years ago. 

We let Fenn know where we were headed, and received his heartfelt wish that 
we stay away until he was able to complete the investigation. He told us, by the way, 
that they had found no record on Kiernan.“Why am I not surprised?” he grumbled. 

Earlier I said that traveling around the local galactic arm was just eyeblink stuff. 
And that’s true, up to a point. But the generator has to charge before you make the 
transit. That takes time, at least eight hours forBelle, and maybe a lot more depending 


on how far you’re going. And, of course, you always give yourself plenty of leeway at 
the destination so you don’t arrive inside a planetary core. Twenty million klicks is 
the minimum range. I’m inclined to increase that by fifty percent. So that means at 
least four or five days transit time. 

The quantum drive has been a godsend for Alex, who used to get deathly ill 
during the jump phases with the old Armstrongs. It was a major problem because the 
nature of his work required him to travel extensively. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he 
enjoyed it during the time I’m describing, but heading out at least no longer involved 
him in minor trauma. 

While we waited for clearance to depart skydeck, Alex settled in the common 
room, which was located immediately aft the bridge. When I went back after setting 
up, he was scribbling notes to himself and occasionally consulting his reader. 

“Maddy,” he said, by way of explanation. “She’s central to this whole thing.” 

She’d begun her professional career as a fleet pilot and had taken out a Mute 
destroyer during an engagement near Karbondel. She’d been decorated, and when it 
turned out that the strike had taken place shortly after a cease-fire had gone into 
effect, nobody had cared. The Mutes, after all, had initiated the attack. At least, that 
was the official version. 

She had apparently been an independent spirit. Didn’t like having to deal with 
superior officers, and had left at the end of her obligated time to become a freelancer. 
She’d hired out to corporate interests, but got bored hauling passengers and freight 
between the same ports, and finally, at Urquhart’s urging, signed on with Survey. It 
didn’t pay as well, but it meant flights into places no one had ever gone before. She 
liked that. 

Sacracour orbited the gas giant Gobulus, which was 160 million kilometers from its 
swollen red sun. The sun was expanding, burning helium, and would, during the next 
few million years, swallow its four inner worlds, one of which would be Gobulus, its 
rings, its vast system of moons, and, of course, Sacracour. 

The planet’s biosystem was eight billion years old. It featured walking plants, 
living clouds, and, arguably, the biggest trees on record, skyscrapers twice the size of 
Earth’s Sequoias. Martin Klassner had predicted that humans would eventually learn 
to juggle stellar development and would stabilize the local sun. Sacracour would be 
forever. 

The first settlers had been members of a religious order. They’d built a 
monastery in a mountain chain, called it Esperanza, and they were still there. And 
prospering. Some of the prime scholars and artists of the past few centuries have 
made it their home, including Jon Cordova, who, by many accounts, is the greatest of 
all playwrights. 

Most of the planet’s contemporary inhabitants—there are fewer than three 
hundred thousand altogether—live along a seacoast that’s usually warm and 
invigorating. Lots of beach and sun. Great sky views. They haven’t yet achieved tidal 
lock, so if you time things right you can sit out on the beach and watch Gobulus, with 
its rings and its system of moons, rise out of the ocean. 


The hitch was that the section of seacoast to which we were headed was 
experiencing mid-winter. 

The orbital transport brought us down to Barakola in Bukovic at night in the 
middle of a sleet storm. We were on the near side of Gobulus, facing away from the 
sun, and the gas giant itself had set an hour earlier. The darkness was almost absolute. 
We rented a skimmer, checked in at our hotel, changed clothes, and headed for 
Tabatha-Li. 

It was an island, home to Whitebranch University, two hours from the hotel. We 
outran the storm and the clouds and sailed out under a canopy of moons and rings. 
Directly ahead of us, just off the horizon, we saw an oscillating blue star. 

“What is it?” asked Alex. 

“It’s Ramses. A pulsar.” 

“Really? I’ve never seen one before. It’s a collapsed star, right? Like the one that 
hit Delta Kay?” 

“More or less,” I said. 

It dimmed and brightened. Dimmed and brightened. He didn’t approve. “Having 
that thing in the sky all the time would give you a headache.” 

Tabatha-Li was quaint, quiet, and old-fashioned, but not in the way Walpurgis had 
been. This was last-century style with money. The island was a favorite location for 
retired technocrats and government and media heavyweights. This was one of the 
places local interviewers visited when they wanted commentary on some contentious 
political or social policy. 

Audrey Kimonides, the former Audrey Walker, lived in a luxurious turtle-shell 
house on the north side of the campus. There was stone art on the lawn and a Marko 
skimmer by the pad. Audrey did not want for resources. 

Icicles hung from the roof and the trees. Snow was piled up everywhere. Lights 
were on inside and out. Audrey had known we were coming, and the front door 
opened before we were on the ground. 

If you’re visiting a centenarian, you expect to see someone who’s come to terms 
with mortality and exhibits a degree of composure and resignation. It’s never 
expressed, of course, but you can see it in the eyes and hear it in the voice, a kind of 
world-weariness, a sense of there being nothing left that can yield a surprise. 

Audrey Kimonides, on the contrary, was a bundle of barely suppressed energy. 
She strode purposefully out the front door, a book in her left hand, a wrap thrown 
around her shoulders. “Mr. Benedict.” She exhaled a little cloud of mist. “Ms. 
Kolpath. Do please come inside. You didn’t pick the right time of year to come 
visiting.” She led the way back, warned us that the house was full of drafts, and 
settled us in front of a fire. “May I get you something to fight off the cold?” she 
asked. 

“By all means,” said Alex, warming to her immediately. 


She broke out a decanter of dark red midcountry wine and, when Alex offered to 
help, insisted he sit and relax. “You’ve had a long flight,” she said. “I’ll take care of 
it.” She popped the cork, filled three glasses, passed them around, and offered, as her 
toast, “The world’s historians, who never really get things right.” 

She beamed at Alex to let him know that she understood exactly who he was and 
that she admired people who upset applecarts. “Mr. Benedict,” she continued, “it’s 
such a pleasure to meet you. And Ms. Kolpath. The two of you. Here at my home. I 
can hardly believe it. I can’t tell you how much I would have given to have been with 
you when you made your discovery.” 

She was a trim woman, not tall, with startling blue eyes and the erect posture of 
someone half her age. Her hair was white, but her voice was clear and vibrant. She 
put the decanter on a coffee table, where we could all reach it, and sat down in an 
armchair. “I assume you wanted to ask me about Michael.” 

Michael was the second husband, known for his work on the Columbian Age. 
“Actually,” Alex said, “I was interested in Shawn.” 

“Shawn?” She looked at me for confirmation.No one’s ever really interested in 
Shawn. “Well, of course. What did you want to know?” 

There were pictures atop a bookshelf and on a side table. An audacious-looking 
young Audrey and a dreamy-eyed Shawn Walker. And a much older Audrey with 
another man, formal, white whiskers, officious-looking. Kimonides. 

“I was wondering if you’d tell us about him, what kind of work he did?” 

“Certainly,” she said. “It’s simple enough, I suppose. He designed, installed, and 
maintained AIs. He worked thirty years for CyberGraphic before starting his own 
company. But I assume you know that.” 

“Yes.” 

“May I ask why you’re interested? Is there some sort of problem?” 

“No,” said Alex. “We’re trying to figure out what happened to thePolaris. ” 

She needed a moment to process that. “Shawn always wondered about that 
himself.” 

“I’m sure.” 

“Yes. Odd thing, that was. I never understood how it could happen. But I don’t 
see how I can help.” 

“Good wine,” I said, to ease the pace. 

“Thank you, dear. It’s from Mobry.” 

I doubt either of us had any idea what or where Mobry was, but Alex nodded 
sagely. “Ms. Kimonides—” he said. 

“Oh, please, do call me Audrey.” 


“Audrey, yes. Shawn was on thePeronovski. ” 

“That’s right. First ship on the scene. He and Miguel Alvarez—Miguel was the 
captain—were the ones who found thePolaris. ” She looked momentarily regretful. 
“Everybody knew about Miguel Alvarez, of course. The captain. But if you’re the 

number two guy, nobody notices.” 

“Did he ever talk to you about it? Did he tell you what happened out there?” 

“Alex, he told the world. If you’re asking me whether he said things in private 

that he didn’t reveal to the commission, the answer’s no. Except his personal 
feelings.” 

“How did he feel?” 

“Spookedwould probably be the appropriate word.” I could see her looking back 
across the years and shaking her head. “It was an unnerving experience. He knew 
Warren personally, you know.” 

“Mendoza?” 

“Yes. They were close friends. They grew up together. Stayed close over the 
years.” Her eyes slid shut, then opened again. “Poor Warren. In the early days we 

used to socialize with them. He and his wife, Amy.” 

“Did Shawn know anybody else on the flight? Did he know Tom Dunninger?” 

“Not really. We met him once. But I wouldn’t want to say we reallyknew him.” 

“Audrey, I don’t like bringing up a painful memory, but there was some 

suspicion that Shawn’s death wasn’t an accident. What do you think happened?” 
“It’s not a problem, Alex. I got past it long ago. I assume you want to know 

whether I think he was murdered?” 

“Do you?” 

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.” 

“Who stood to gain by his death?” 

“No one that I know of. May I ask what this could possibly have to do with 

thePolaris ?” 

“We’re not sure it has anything to do with it. But a couple of days ago, someone 
sabotaged the antigravity pods in our skimmer. Very nearly killed us.” 

Her eyes got wide, and she looked over at me, then at something far away. 

“Well, isn’t that strange? I’m so glad you’re both all right.” 

“Thank you.” 

“You were luckier than Shawn.” 

“I was fortunate to have this young lady along,” said Alex, giving me full credit. 


Deservedly, I suppose. He described what I’d done, embellishing it substantially so it 
sounded as if I’d been doing handstands on the wings. 

When he finished she refilled our glasses and offered a toast to me. “I wish 
you’d been with Shawn,” she said. A tear rolled down her cheek. “It got a lot of 
coverage here, naturally.” I could see her replaying old memories. “And you think 
there’s a connection with Shawn’s death.” The lines around her eyes and mouth 
deepened. “But surely—” She thought better of what she was going to say and let it 
go. 

Alex wrote something in a paper notebook. He often took notes when he dealt 
with clients. He’d learned long ago to avoid recording whole conversations, because 
it had the effect of making people reluctant to speak. “Had there been any indication 
your husband was in danger? Any threat? Any warning?” 

She sipped her wine and placed the glass, still half-full, on the table. “No. 
Nothing like that. There was just no reason I knew of that anyone would have wanted 
to harm him.” 

“Audrey,” I said, “forgive me for asking, but if there had been a problem, would 
he have told you?” 

That prompted a hesitation. “Earlier in our marriage, he would certainly have 
said something. During the later years”—her brow wrinkled, and she looked 
uncomfortable—“he never gave me reason not to trust him, Chase. He was a decent 
man. But I did feel he had secrets.” 

I thought she immediately wished she could recall the remark. But it was too 
late, and she only shrugged. 

“About the problems at CyberGraphic?” 

“No. Not really. I knew about those. They were all trying to get control of the 
operation, three of them, and I’m not sure Shawn was any better or worse than the 
others. Not that they were vile, or anything like that. They were all just competitive. 
Opportunistic. Money and power were important to them.” Her eyes met mine. “You 
know what I mean, dear.” 

“Yes,” I said, not sure what she was suggesting. 

“Audrey,” said Alex, “what made you think he had secrets?” 

She sat back and thought it over. “He changed,” she said. 

“In what way?” 

“It’s hard to put a finger on.” 

“Did he not confide in you as much as he had?” 

Those blue eyes became suddenly suspicious. “Is any of this for publication, 
Alex?” 

“No, ma’am. Listen, somebody tried to kill us. We think it’s the same somebody 
who blew up the exhibition at Survey last month. And it might be the same somebody 


who arranged Shawn’s accident. If I may ask, where were you and your husband 
based when thePolaris incident occurred?” 

“We were at Indigo.” 

“But, of course, he wasn’t with you when thePolaris docked there on its way to 
Delta Kay.” 

“No. He’d been gone for a couple of weeks. On thePeronovski. ” 

“This change in attitude, did it occur after thePolaris incident?” 

She thought about it. “It’s hard to remember, but yes,” she said finally. 

Alex nodded. “How long were you at Indigo?” 

“Three years. The standard tour.” 

“Audrey, how would you describe those years?” 

Her eyes brightened. “That was a good time. Best years of my life.” 

That surprised me. “Most people don’t much care for duty on the outstations,” I 
said. 

Audrey glowed. “We were a small group, the technical support people. We 
shared the same interests, and we all got along quite well. No, they were good days.” 

“Not like here?” 

“Well, not like the corporate world. At Indigo, he was isolated from the movers 
and shakers. Out there we were together, and there was no one else there except 
friends.” 

Alex made another notation in his book. “You left there in 1366?” 

“Yes.” 

“ThePolaris and the other two ships docked at Indigo on the way out to Delta 

Kay. A year earlier.” 

“Yes, that’s right.” 

“You remember it, then?” 

“Oh, yes. It was a major event. Six celebrities on thePolaris. Everybody was 

excited. They did interviews. People went down to the dock hoping to see one or 
another of them. It became a holiday.” 

“Did you see Mendoza during that time?” 

“Yes. We had lunch together, as a matter of fact. At dockside, I believe it was. 
They weren’t in port long. Hardly a day, as I recall.” 

“Was he excited about going to Delta Karpis?” 


She frowned. “I don’t know. He seemed kind of quiet that afternoon.” 

“Was that unusual?” 

“Yes, I thought so. I’d always found him outgoing. Nonstop jokes. Everything 

was funny to Warren.” 

“But not that day?” 

“No. I thought at the time that he was overawed by the nature of the mission.” 

“That might explain it.” Alex looked thoughtful. 

She got up and went over and poked the fire a couple of times. “I had a 
renaissance sandwich. Funny how you remember something like that. Renaissance 
and iced tea. And bamberry sauce. I don’t know why it sticks in my mind. Maybe 
because as it turned out, I never saw Warren again.” 

“They left next day?” 

“First thing in the morning. I went over and watched them shove off.” 

“Was there anything unusual about your conversation with him?” 

“Not that I can recall.” 

“Were there any contacts at all between your husband and Warren? Any 

messages pass between them?” 

“I don’t think so. At least nothing that Shawn ever mentioned.” 

“Audrey,” I said, “how did your husband react when you first heard what had 

happened to thePolaris? ” 

“Well, understand he was out on thePeronovski. He’d been gone a couple of 
weeks. They were on their way to some place or other, I really don’t remember 
where, but it was Shawn’s job to calibrate the AI. That’s what he did, design and 
smooth out the AIs. At that time the company had been marketing a new system, or 
upgrading an old one. I’m not sure which. I’m trying to remember the name. Sailor. 

Voyager. Something like that.” 

“Mariner,” I suggested. 

“Yes. That’s it. He took it out to run tests.” 

“Mariner,” I said, “became a precursor for the Halo series.” Belle was a Halo. 

“So how’d he react?” 

“I used to hear from him every day or so. When the news first got to him, he sent 

me a message and told me he was sure everything would be okay. He said it was 
probably just a communication breakdown.” 

“When they found thePolaris, did he continue to keep you abreast of things?” 


“No. Captain Alvarez ordered him to stop all personal communications. I 
received a notification to that effect from the comm center telling me I wouldn’t hear 
any more from Shawn for a while.” She smiled. “It was very upsetting. They told me 
Shawn was okay, but we all knew something terrible had happened.” 

“How long was it before they revealed that the passengers had been lost?” 

“Three or four days, I think.” 

Alex finished his wine, and put the glass down. “What can you tell me about 

your husband, Audrey?” 

“What’s to tell? He was a good man, mostly. He was a good father.” 

“How many children did you have with him?” 

“Two. Two sons. They’re both grandfathers now. He worked hard, Alex. He was 

a good provider. Liked to play simulated war games with the boys. They went on 
sometimes for weeks.” She smiled. “I was just out of high school when I met him.” 

“Love at first sight?” 

“Oh, yes. He was the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.” 

“I don’t know how to ask the next question.” 

“It’s all right. He never cheated. Never showed any interest in other women.” 

“No. That’s not really where I was headed. Was he honest in his dealings with 
other people?” 

“Why, yes. Of course.” 

“Could he be bought?” 

“To do something dishonest? No, I don’t think so.” 

Alex showed her pictures of Agnes Crisp, Teri Barber, and Marcus Kiernan. “Do 
you by any chance know any of these people?” he asked. 

She studied them and shook her head. “No, I’ve never met any of them.” She 
focused on the two women. “They look a lot alike. Styles are different, hair color. But 
aren’t they the same person?” 

Alex said no, he didn’t think so. “I wanted to thank you for talking to us,” he 
said, “and for the wine.” 

We came out the door, stood a moment in the cold air, then walked between the banks 
of snow and got into the skimmer. We lifted off and headed out to sea. “Okay,” I said, 
watching the lights of Tabatha-Li recede. “What was that all about?” 

“Shawn Walker was killed because he knew something.” 

“What did he know?” 


“Let me ask you a question first,” Alex said. “What can you tell me about 
thePeronovski? ” 

“Class II freighter. Sheba model. Obsolete. They don’t build them anymore.” 

“There were two people on board, Alvarez and Walker. How many people could 
thePeronovski support?” 

“It had two cabins topside, and, as best I can recall, two below.” 

“Damn it, Chase, I didn’t ask about cabins. How manypeople ?” 

“No need to get excited,” I said. “It was designed to accommodate three 
passengers plus the captain. Four in all. The rule of thumb is that your life support can 
normally handle fifty percent more than the official capacity. That makes six 
maximum.” 

“What happens if they go for more than that?” 

“Brain damage,” I said. “Not enough air. Why? What are you thinking?” 

Alex was staring down at the sea. “I think I knowwhy it all happened. What I’m 
trying to figure out ishow. ” 

“Tell me why.” 

“I think Dunninger had the formula he was looking for. I think the other five 
passengers were involved in a conspiracy to see that it never saw the light of day.” 

“That can’t be right,” I said. “Those people were heavyweights. They weren’t 
going to get involved in a kidnapping.” 

“You want me to play Mendoza’s address to the White Clock Society again? 
You’ve heard what they think. All five were committed to the idea that most human 
misery is in a direct cause-and-effect relationship with overpopulation. And here’s a 
guy who’s going to prevent people from dying? Who’s going to see that the 
population of the Confederacy goes up by hundreds of millions every year?” 

“So they kidnapped Tom Dunninger? And Maddie?” 

“They kidnapped Dunninger. That’s why they destroyed the Epstein lab. To get 
rid of everything. To ensure nobody else could repeat the work.” 

“But why do something so complicated as thePolaris? If they were going to 
kidnap him and burn the lab, why not just do it?” 

“Because, first, they knew they’d get caught if the authorities began 
investigating a kidnapping. It would have resulted in a massive manhunt. And, 
second, because they didn’t want people to know that Dunninger was on the right 
track. Everybody assumed then, as they assume now, that it can’t be done. So what 
they needed was an elaborate illusion. The Delta Kay business provided the perfect 
opportunity.” 

“My God, Alex. You really think it happened that way?” 


“I have no doubt.” 

“But where’d they go? How’d they manage it?” 

“I don’t know. I thought at first they might have come back on thePeronovski. 
With Walker’s collusion.” 

“That’s not possible.” 

“Even with extra air tanks installed?” 

“It would have been difficult. And Alvarez would have had to be in on it, too. 
Not to mention a couple of technicians.” 

“Too many outside people.” 

“I agree. They’d never have been able to keep it quiet.” 

When we got back to the hotel, they had us sign a statement that we wouldn’t go onto 
the beach for the next few nights because it was the mating season for the yoho and if 
we did go out and something happened, we would not hold the hotel liable. 

“What,” I asked Alex, “is a yoho?” 

We were in the lobby. The snow had stopped, and the sea was gray and misty. “I 
don’t think we want to know,” he said. 

NiNeTeeN 

It (the pulsar) is like those of us who seek final answers 
from the sciences: It casts its beams wildly about in all 
directions, but they touch nothing, reveal nothing, and 
in the end they lead only to confusion. 

—Timothy of Esperanza,Journals 

It became an interesting evening. The snowstorm renewed itself and turned into a 
howling blizzard, there was an earthquake warning at about the time we were going to 
bed, and a few hours later they evacuated the hotel because a yoho got into the 
building. 

The yohos, it turned out, were arthropodic creatures with a taste for people. 
Fortunately, they only showed up five days out of the year, which coincided with 
their breeding season, and on those occasions they rarely left the beach. After an hour 
standing in the snow, we were informed by management that the yoho had gone, 
everything was okay, and we could go back in. When we got to our suite, we 
inspected it carefully and locked the doors. 

The quake hit shortly after we got back inside, but it amounted to nothing more 
than a series of moderate tremors. By then I had no interest in turning off the lights, 
so I went into the sitting room and spent time with Alex, who was engaged in a VR 


conversation. He handed me a headband. I put it on, and Chek Boland’s avatar 
appeared. He was relaxed on a beach in a collapsible chair, wearing khaki shorts and 
a pullover and a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off. There was no ocean visible, or 
audible, however. The beach went on forever. 

“. . .one son,” he was saying. “His name was Jon. He was twenty at the time of 
thePolaris.” 

“What happened to your marriage, Dr. Boland? If you don’t mind my asking.” 

“I think Jennifer and I got bored. That’s inevitable in any long-term 
relationship.” 

“You don’t really believe that?” 

“I’m a psychiatrist. I see it all the time.” 

Alex was nothing if not traditional about such matters. He allowed his 
expression to reflect his disapproval of the comment, as if he were talking with a real 
person. “I read somewhere,” he said, “that sixty percent of all marriages endure. That 
they stay together.” 

“They tolerate each other, usually from a sense of duty. To the kids, generally. 
To their vows. To an inability to inflict pain on someone they think loves them.” 

“You’re pretty pessimistic about the institution.” 

“I’m a realist. Long-term marriage is a trap that has survived from our 
beginnings in the forest, when it was the only way to guarantee species survival. That 
is no longer the case. Hasn’t been for thousands of years.” 

“Then why has it survived?” 

“Because we’ve invested it with so much mythology. It’s the sanctum sanctorum 
of adolescent giddiness. It is the sentence we impose on our lives because we watch 
too much romantic drama. And maybe because people are too scared of being 
alone.” 

“Okay.” 

“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”He glanced down at his arm 
and made a face.“Getting burned,” he said. A new shirt appeared, with longer 
sleeves. 

“Yes. There is something more.” In the background I could see a gathering dust 
storm. It’s the sort of thing that some folks use not too subtly to suggest they have 
more important things to do than continue the conversation. But this was an avatar. 
Boland, I decided, had had a sense of humor. “You were a crusader,” continued Alex. 
“You gave time and energy to all sorts of causes.” 

“Nonsense. I made an occasional contribution. No more than that.” 

“You supported sweeping changes in education.” 

“We’ve never known how to ignite a thirst for knowledge in our kids. Individual 


parents sometimes figure it out. But the institutions? They’ve been an unmitigated 
disaster for as long as anyone can remember.” 

“You were a spokesman for Big Green.” 

“People on Rimway don’t notice yet the damage they’re doing. But spend a few 
weeks on Earth. Or Toxicon. Now there’s a world that’s well named.” 

“You were an advocate for population control.” 

“Of course.” 

“Is there really a population problem, Doctor? There are hundreds of summer 
worlds out there, with hardly anybody living on them. Some are empty.” 

“Where are we now?” 

“Sacracour.” 

“Ah. Yes. A perfect example of your point. As of the last census, there are two 
hundred eighty-eight thousand six hundred fifty-six persons living on Sacracour. 
Almost all of them are concentrated along the eastern coast of one of its continents.” 

“If you say so.” 

“Three other major land masses, including a supercontinent, are virtually 
empty.” 

“That’s exactly my point.” 

“The population on Earth is currently eleven billion. Plus or minus a few 
hundred million. They are pressed very hard.” 

“But we could move them elsewhere. We have options.” 

“Yes, we do. But moving whole populations to even the friendliest of worlds is 
not one of them.”His features hardened.“Do the math, Alex. Do the math.” 

“You’re talking about resources to move people?” 

“Of course.” 

“So we dedicate everything we have to the operation.” 

It was time for me to break in. “There aren’t enough ships, Alex,” I said. “No 
matter what, there aren’t enough ships.” 

“The young lady is right. There are currently one thousand sixty-four 
superluminals in the Confederacy, with an average passenger capacity of twenty-
eight people. Three will accommodate more than a hundred; many, as few as four. In 
fact, if you use the entire fleet, you still don’t have enough capacity to move thirty 
thousand people. Assuming you make a round-trip every week with everything you 
have, which would be pushing it, you might be able to transport one million five 
hundred sixty thousand people a year. Round it off to one point six million. 

“Toxicon’s population growth is less than one percent. That shows restraint. But 


it still comes to five million births annually. So the population of Toxicon produces 
people three times faster than the entire fleet could haul them away.” 

Alex could see he’d lost that argument. “You’re also opposed to reconstructing 
personalities.” 

“Yes.” 

“But that’s what you did for a living. For almost eight years. And not just for 
criminals.” 

“I believed in it at first.”He stopped, as if to think what he wanted to say.“Alex, 
some of my patients were so fearful of the world around them that they couldn’t get 
through their lives.” 

“Fearful of the world around them? What does that mean?” 

“It means they were afraid they’d fail. Or be rejected. They thought they might 
simply be inadequate. Drugs could be made to work for some. But there were others 
whose psyches were too delicate, and some, too twisted.” 

“Suicides waiting to happen?” 

“Or criminal or other types of antisocial behavior.”His eyes closed, and for a 
moment he said nothing more. Finally, he looked up.“I wanted to give them decent 
lives. I wanted to take away the fear, to give them reason to respect themselves. I 
wanted them to be proud of who they were. So I changed them. Made them better.” 

“Except—” 

“Except that I came to realize that the person who emerged from the treatment 
was not the person who came to me for help. The old memories were gone. The 
former life was gone. The person behind the eyes was a stranger. I could have given 
my patients new names, and they would not have known the difference.” 

“But if these people were miserable—” 

“I did not have license to impose a death sentence!”His voice shook.“But that 
was what I did. In more than a hundred cases. And that doesn’t count the assorted 
killers, kidnappers, thieves, and thugs I was called on to treat.” He delivered the final 
word with venom.“There has to be a way to untangle even the most diseased psyche. 
To keep the essence of the individual while softening the more abrasive qualities.” 

“But you never found it.” 

“No.” 

“Why did you make the flight on thePolaris ?” 

His mood changed.“How could I not? Who’d want to miss a show like that? 
Moreover, if you want the truth, I was pleased to be associated with Mendoza and 
White and Urquhart and the others.” 

The records showed that Boland had kept his avatar current. The last update had 
been from Indigo, just before thePolaris left on the final leg of the mission. So I felt 


free to ask how things had gone up to that point. 

He smiled.“On the first leg of the flight, we were like kids.” 

“You mentioned kidnapping a moment ago. Did you and your colleagues plan to 
kidnap Tom Dunninger?” 

“Ridiculous.” 

“Had he planned such a thing, would Dr. Boland have informed you?” 

“No,”he said.“It would have been imprudent.” 

We left Sacracour, as we came, in the dark. It would be another nine hours before 
Gobulus rose, and eleven or twelve before the sun showed up. We were loaded with 
local treats, more desserts than I should have been eating. We were still getting snow 
and strong winds. The local authorities put out a traffic advisory, suggesting everyone 
stay put, but we didn’t want to miss the ride up to the orbiter, or we’d be stuck 
another thirty hours. So we left the hotel on schedule. The flight was uneventful, and 
we caught the shuttle with time to spare. 

It was a fifty-minute run up to the orbital dock, where we got our departure time 
(which would be four hours later), boarded theBelle-Marie, unloaded the bags, 
showered, and went back to the concourse for dinner. 

We ate too much and finished off with a couple of drinks. By then it was almost 
time to go. We returned to the ship, and I went onto the bridge to do my preflight. I 
can’t tell you that I actually saw a problem, but Belle seemed to be slow posting the 
status for some of the systems. I wasn’t sure whether it was my imagination at work. 
But I asked her if anything was wrong. 

“No, Chase,”she said.“Everything’s fine.” 

Well, okay. The numbers all checked out, and I informed operations that we 
were ready to leave. “At your discretion,” as the line goes. 

They told me to stand by. There’d been a delay of some sort getting a freighter 
loaded.“You’ll be a few minutes late,” they said. 

I went back and talked to Alex. I don’t remember what about. He was distracted, 
and I knew he was thinking about Shawn Walker and thePeronovski. We waited a 
half hour before Ops cleared us for departure. 

“Lock down, Alex,” I told him. Moments later the green light came on, signaling 
he was secure. “Okay, Belle,” I said. “Let’s head out.” 

I always enjoy casting off the umbilicals and getting under way. Don’t ask me why. 
It’s not as if I’m anxious to get to the next port, but I like the feeling of leaving things 
behind. First it’s the station, then the blue globe of the world itself starts getting 
smaller. And eventually even the sun winks out. I tied the engines into the quantum 
generator so it would begin charging. We’d need nine hours to store sufficient energy 
to make the jump to Rimway. 


Quantum technology had taken the tedium out of long-range flight. But it had 
also eliminated most of the romance. It was all very simple now. And almost too 
quick. You wanted to go from Rimway to East Boston, you ate a couple of meals, 
watched a VR, maybe napped a bit, and when the lamps came on indicating the 
system was sufficiently charged, you pressed a button. And there you were. You 
needed a few days after you got to the target system to make your approach. But 
basically, it was an eyeblink. The range was limited only by the strength of the charge 
you could pack into the system. 

People had once complained that the Armstrong engines, with their ability to 
tunnel through linear space, had resulted in our losing track of how truly big the 
Orion Arm was. And how far from home the Veiled Lady really was. Now, you were 
in and out. Virtually teleported, with no sense of having gone anywhere. Distance, 
range, deep space, the light-year, had all gone away. And as it always seems to be 
with progress, you pay a price. The price might be in reduced safety, or in social 
dislocations, or, as was the case with the quantum drive, in losing touch with reality. 

I turned the conn over to Belle and wandered back into the common room with 
Alex. That’s a joke, really. Belle did pretty much everything in flight. I was there in 
case of emergency. 

I wasn’t looking forward to going home. It had been nice to be away from 
Rimway and feel safe again. Given my way, I’d have opted for an old-fashioned long 
flight this time. I felt secure inside the metal cocoon. I’d even have considered staying 
on at Sacracour, despite the blizzards and the quakes and the yohos. At least you 
could see the yohos coming. 

Alex settled in for the evening, reading more about Madeleine English. “She left 
no avatar,” he said, tapping the display. “She was an ordinary pilot with an adequate 
work record.” 

“Adequateis about the best you can do,” I told him. “It means you always got 
where you were going with a minimum of fuss, and you never lost either people or 
cargo.” 

She’d been running missions for Survey six years by then. Her biographers— 
there were four—noted that she’d had several lovers, including the best-selling 
novelist Bruno Shaefer. She’d been born in Kakatar and shown an early interest in 
spacecraft. Her father was quoted as saying somewhere that it was her love for the 
superluminals, and the intervention of Garth Urquhart, that saved her. “Otherwise,” 
he commented, apparently not entirely kidding, “it would have been, for her, a life of 
crime.” 

She’d piloted the T17 Nighthawk against the Mutes and qualified for 
superluminals at twenty-three. That wasn’t the record for youngest certification, but it 
was close. 

There were pictures of her in uniform, in evening gowns, in workout gear. 
(She’d apparently been a fitness nut.) There were pictures of her at the beach, at 
various monuments, at Niagara Falls, at Grand London Square, at the Tower of 
Inkata, at the Great Wall. Here she was in cap and gown. There, in the cockpit of her 
T17. She stood with various groups of her passengers after she’d joined Survey. 
There were pictures of her with Urquhart, with Bruno Shaefer beside a publicity still 


for one of Shaefer’s books, and with Jess Taliaferro at a banquet somewhere. 

She’d never married. 

Usually, when people talked about thePolaris, they talked about the Six, 
Dunninger and Mendoza, Urquhart, Boland, White, and Klassner. But I suspected, 
when they thought about it, they fixated on Maddy. Of them all, she was the one who 
came away seeming unfulfilled. 

“What do you think about her?” Alex asked. 

That was easy. “She was okay. Apparently Survey thought so, too. They trusted 
her with six of the most celebrated people in the Confederacy.” 

Alex was looking at the picture of her in uniform. Blonde hair cut short, startling 
blue eyes, lots of intensity. “She took out a Mute destroyer,” I said. “Riding a 
fighter.” 

“I know.” Alex shook his head. “I don’t think I’d want to fool around with her.” 

“Depends what you mean.” 

He sighed. “Women are all alike,” he said. “You think we’re all obsessed.” 

“Who? Me?” We were still almost eight hours from jump. And we were figuring 
four and a half days from home. We sat and talked for a bit, then I decided I’d had 
enough for the day. I took the reader to bed, but I was asleep fifteen minutes after I 
crawled in. 

I’m not sure what woke me. Usually, if there’s any kind of problem, Belle won’t 
hesitate to let me know. The result is that the pilot of a superluminal can sleep 
soundly, secure in the knowledge that the helmsman will not doze on duty. But Belle 
hadn’t spoken; nevertheless, I lay staring up at the overhead, listening to the silence, 
knowing something had happened. 

Then I became aware of the engines. They were becoming audible. And 
changing tone. The way they did when running through the last moments before 
making a jump. 

AIs do not make jumps on their own. I twisted my head and looked at the time. 
We were back on ship time, which was Andiquar time. It was a quarter to four in the 
afternoon, but the middle of the night to me. And two hours before we were 
scheduled to transit. 

“Belle,” I said, “what’s going on?” 

“I don’t know, Chase.”She appeared at the foot of my bed. In herBelle-Marie 
work uniform. 

“Belay the jump.” 

“I don’t seem to have control over the displacement unit.”She meant the 
quantum engines, which were continuing to rev up. We hadn’t had time to take on 
enough of a charge to get to Rimway, but that wouldn’t prevent us from leaving the 


immediate area and goingsomewhere. It just limited the options. 
“Try again, Belle. Belay the jump.” 

“I’m sorry, but I’m unable to do so, Chase.” 

I was out of the sack by then, charging into the passageway. I banged on Alex’s 
door and barged into his compartment. It took a moment to get him awake. 

“Jump coming,” I said. “Heads up.” 

“What?” He rolled over and tried to look at the time. “Why the short warning? 
Isn’t it too early?” 

You could feel the pressure building in the bulkheads. “Get hold of something!” 
I told him. Then the lights dimmed. Quantum jumps are accompanied by a sense of 
sudden acceleration, only a few seconds long, but enough to do some serious damage 
if you’re caught unawares. I heard Alex yelp, while I was thrown back against a 
cabinet. I saw stars and felt the customary tingling that accompanies passage between 
distant points. 

The lights came back up, full. 

Alex had been tossed out of bed. He got to his feet with a surge of intemperate 

remarks and demanded to know what we were doing. 

“I don’t know yet,” I told him. “You okay?” 

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “The bone’ll set in a few days.” 

I scrambled onto the bridge. “What happened, Belle?” 

“I’m not sure, Chase,”she said.“The clock seemed to be running fast.” 

“And you weren’t aware of it?” 

“I don’t monitor the timers, Chase. There’s never been a need to.” 

Alex appeared at the hatch. 

“Okay, Belle,” I said. “I want to know precisely what’s going on. And while 
you’re trying to figure it out, let’s open up and see where we are.” 

Somewhere, thrusters fired. The ship moved. Began to rotate. I grabbed hold of 
the side of my chair. Alex was thrown off-balance, staggered across the bridge, and 
finally went down in a heap. “Belle,” I said, “whatare you doing?” 

There were more bursts. The prow was rising, and we were swinging toward 

starboard. 

“Belle?” 

“I don’t know,”the AI said.“This is really quite extraordinary.” 

Alex got to the right-hand seat and belted in. He threw a desperate look at me. 


“Belle,” I said, “open up. Let’s get a look at the neighborhood.” 

Still nothing. 

“Okay, how about the monitors then?” I was striving to keep my voice level. 

Don’t alarm the passengers. Never sound as if you’ve lost control of events. “Let’s 
see what the telescopes have.” 

The screens remained blank. 

“Belle. Give us the feed from the scopes.” I dropped into my chair and belted 
down. 

“There’s a break in the alignment, Chase.”Her voice was flat. Detached.“I can’t 
get a picture.” 

“Where?” 

“Main relay.” 

“Damn you, Belle,” I said, “what’s Walt Chambers’s real name?” Walt 
Chambers was a client we’d carried a couple of years earlier while he was researching 
ruins on Baklava. He’d been with a group of academics, and his name was Harbach 
Edward Chambers. But he didn’t likeHarbach. He looked a lot like Walter Strong, the 
old horn player. He’d claimed the nameWalt during adolescence, and it stuck. He’d 
traveled with us, and Belle knew him. 

“Searching,”she said. 

“Search, hell.” I opened the data flow panel. System status seemed normal. 
“Belle,” I said, “take yourself off-line.” 

The main engines fired a short burst, then shut down. There followed a series of 
volleys from the attitude thrusters. Up, down, port, and back to center. We were 
aligning ourselves on a new course. 

“I’m sorry, Chase. I don’t seem to be able to do that.” 

“Hey,” said Alex, “what’s going on?” 

“I’m working on it.” The port thrusters fired. “She’s changing our heading.” 

“Why?” 

“Damn it, Alex, how do I know?” 

I was suddenly aware I was floating. My hair drifted up, and I was rising against 

the seat belts. The ship’s rotational motion stopped, and the main engines came back 
on. We began to accelerate. At maximum thrust. 

“Gravity’s off,” Alex said. “You okay?” 

“I’m fine.” I tried to take Belle off-line, but nothing happened. 

“You’re giving us a hell of a ride, Chase.” 


“It’s not me.” The engines shut down again and the gee forces went away. The 
ship became dead quiet, and a series of status lamps began to blink. “Son of a bitch,” I 
said. “I don’t believe it.” 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Belle’s dumping our fuel.” 

“My God,” he said. “All of it?” 

I tried again to wrestle control away from her. The fuel status lamp went to 

amber, then to red, then to bright scarlet. 

I released my harness and got over to the maintenance panel. 

“What are you going to do?” Alex demanded. 

“For a start, we’re going to disable her.” I opened the panel. 

“I’m sorry, Chase,”said Belle.“Nothing personal.” 

Yeah. Right. It didn’t evensound like Belle anymore. And what chilled me most 

was that I detected a sense of genuine regret. I twisted the handle, punched her 
buttons, and her lights went out. “Good-bye,” I said. 

“She gone?” 

“Yes.” 

“What happened to her?” Alex asked. “Are we okay?” 

“It wasn’t Belle,” I said. “Hang on, I’m going to restore gravity.” 

“Good,” said Alex. “If you could make it quick—” 

“I’m working as fast as I can.” Artificial gravity is normally controlled by the 
AI. To reset it, I had to switch over to manual, and punch in more numbers. Our 
weight flowed back. 

Alex sat quietly, looking stunned. “What’s our situation?” he asked, finally. 

“Can’t be good. We’re adrift in a hot area.” 

“Hot?” 

“There’s a lot of radiation out there. Let’s get a look.” Despite Belle’s claims, 
the telescopes worked fine. They aren’t designed to be operated manually, though. I 
had to turn each on individually, then aim it. There were six of them, so it took a 
while. I routed the feed into the displays. One by one, the pictures came on. 

TheBelle-Marie was in the middle of a light show. 

Two bright blue lights slashed across the monitors. It was a saber dance, and the 
sabers were long, twisted beams of light. “What the hell is it?” asked Alex. 


It was the sort of effect an ancient lighthouse might have caused had the lamp 
been bouncing around inside and spinning wildly. 
The lamp itself appeared to be a blue star. 
Alex was watching me, reading my face. “So what is it?” 
“Ramses.” 
“The pulsar?” 

“Yes. Has to be.” I was pressing my earphones, listening to it. I put it on the 
speaker, and the bridge filled with a sound like waves of ice and sleet rattling against 
the hull. 

“Doesn’t sound good,” he said. 

“We’re headed directly into the lights.” 

“What happens when we get there?” 

“We’ll fry. If we’re still alive at that point. Radiation’s already going up.” 

He didn’t take that real well. There was some profanity, which was rare for him. 

And then he told me in a cool level voice that we needed to do something. 

I was in a state of near shock myself. “I don’t believe this,” I said. “Leave the 
damned ship under the supervision of nitwits, and this is what happens.” Someone 
had re-programmed or replaced Belle. Probably the latter. 

His eyes were wide, and there was something accusing in that stare. How could 
you let this happen? 

We were getting more warning lights. External radiation levels were increasing. 
I was checking time in flight, the range from Sacracour to Ramses, the status the 
quantum engines would have attained before transition. Itwas Ramses. No doubt. A 
collapsed star. Or maybe the burned-out remains of a supernova. I wasn’t really up on 
my celestial physics. In any case, I knew it was a beast we wanted to stay well away 
from. 

The beams flicked past, moving so quickly they constituted a blur. I froze one of 

them. “It’s mostly a slug of gamma rays and photons.” 

“Can we get clear?” 

It was a cosmic meat slicer, and we were headed into it with no power and no 

way to change course. “We have no engines,” I said. 

“How long?” 

“Seven hours. Give or take.” 

“What about the jump engines? Can’t we jump out of here?” 

“They’re useless without the mains.” I switched on the hyperlight transmitter. 


“Arapol, this is theBelle-Marie. Code White. We are adrift near Ramses. Heavy 
radiation. Request immediate assistance. I say again: Code White.” I added our 
coordinates, set the message to repeat, and began transmitting. 

Help wasn’t going to arrive in time. So I began working on the assumption we’d have 
to save ourselves. To that end, I pulled up everything we had on pulsars in general 
and Ramses in particular. I’d never really had any cause to concern myself with 
pulsars. The only bit of information I thought I needed was pretty basic: Stay away 
from them. “It has an extremely strong magnetic field,” I told Alex. “It says here that 
it bounces around a lot, the magnetic field, sometimes close to light speed. It interacts 
with the magnetic poles, and that’s what generates what you’re looking at.” 

“The lights?” 

“Yep. They’recones. ” We still had the frozen image on one of the screens. 
“There are two of them. Ramses is a neutron star. It spins pretty fast, and the cones 
rotate with it.” 

“Must bedamned fast. They’re a blur.” 

“It rotates once in about three-quarters of a second.” 

“You mean the starspins on its axis at that rate?” 

“Yes.” 

“How the hell’s that possible?” 

“It’s small, Alex. Like the one that hit Delta Kay. It’s only a few kilometers 
across.” 

“And it spins like a banshee.” 

“You got it. This is a slow one. Some of them do several hundred revolutions per 
second.” The two shafts of blue light both originated on the neutron star. Their 
narrow ends pointed toward the pulsar. 

I’ve discovered since then that, like any superdense star, a pulsar has trouble 
supporting its own weight. It keeps squeezing down until it achieves some sort of 
stability. And the more it squeezes, the faster it spins. The point is that as the pulsar 
gets smaller, its magnetic field becomes more compressed. Stronger. It becomes a 
dynamo. 

“Sons of bitches,” said Alex. “I hope we can get our hands on the people who 
did this.” 

“Consider yourself lucky the quantum drive isn’t too precise. Or they’d have 
shipped us right into the thing. As it is, at least we got some breathing space.” 

We were 60 million klicks from the pulsar. The cones at that range were almost 
6 million kilometers in diameter. And they were directly in front of us, dancing all 
over the sky. 

Hull temperature was up, but within levels of tolerance. Internal power was 


okay. Attitude thrusters had fuel left. The AI was dead. We had some computer power 
available, off-line from the AI. 

So how do you change the course of a starship when you can’t run the engines? 

“Maybe,” suggested Alex, “we could start heaving furniture out the airlock.” 

TWeNTY 

We imagine that we have some control over events. 

But in fact we are all adrift in currents and eddies that 

sweep us about, carrying some downstream to sunlit 

banks, and others onto the rocks. 

—Tulisofala,Mountain Passes 
(Translated by Leisha Tanner) 

By any reasonable definition of a star, Ramses was dead. Collapsed. Crushed by its 
own weight. Its nuclear fires were long since burned out. But its magnetic field had 
intensified. It was a trillion times stronger than Rimway’s. Or Earth’s. It was 
throwing out vast torrents of charged particles. 

Most of the particles escaped along magnetic field lines. They came off the 
surface in opposite directions from the north and south magnetic poles. Which meant 
there were two streams, accounting for the two light cones. They were necessarily 
narrow at the source, but they got wider as they moved out into space. It was those 
streams, more or less anchored on a wildly rotating body, that produced the 
lighthouse effect. But Ramses was a lighthouse spinning so swiftly and so wildly that 
even the beams of light got confused. 

“That’s why the cones are twisted at intervals,” I told Alex. “Ramses spins like a 
maniac, and the light cones are millions of kilometers long. But the particles can only 
travel at light speed, so they become spirals.” I’d been punching data into the 
processing unit and was starting to get results. “Okay,” I said, “we’re not in orbit. But 
we’re going to go right through the circus.” 

The link dinged. Transmission from Arapol. It was a bit like awaiting sentence. 

I activated it. A short dumpy man appeared up front. “Belle-Marie,this is Arapol. 
Emergency unit Torontois on the way. Forward situation and location to us for relay 
to rescue vessel. Radio transmissions are negative your area. Too much interference 
from Ramses. ETA Torontonine hours from time of transmission this message. Do not 
go near the pulsar. I say again, do not approach the pulsar. ” 

“Nine hours,” said Alex. “Call him back. Tell him that’s not good enough.” 

“Alex,” I said, “they could get here during the next ten minutes, and they 
wouldn’t be able to find us in time.” With radio transmissions wiped out by the 
pulsar, it could takeweeks. 

I wasn’t feeling very well. “Me neither,” said Alex. “You don’t think any of that 


radiation’s getting in, do you?” 

I’d been watching the numbers. Radiation levels outside were still rising, would 
continue to rise as long as we kept getting nearer the pulsar. But they weren’t yet 
close to being a problem. “No,” I said, “we’re fine.” But my head was starting to spin, 
and my stomach was sliding toward throw-up mode. 

“Good.” He looked terrible. “Back in a minute.” He released himself from his 

harness and pulled himself out of the chair. 

I watched him stagger toward the hatch. “Be careful.” 

He left without answering. 

The washroom door closed. A few minutes later, when he came back, he still 

looked pale. “I wonder,” he said, “if they did something to life support, too?” 

I ran an environment check. “I don’t see anything,” I said. 

“I’m glad to hear it. But something’s wrong.” 

I saw nothing on the status boards. No evidence of a radiation leak. The ship was 

holding steady. What was making us sick? 

“Alex,” I said, “I’m going to shut everything down for a minute.” He nodded, 
and I killed the power. The lights went off. And the fans. And gravity. Backup lamps 

blinked on. We drifted silently through the night. 

And there it was. “Feel it?” I asked. 

“Something,” he said. 

It had a rhythm. Like a tide rolling in and out. 

“Are we tumbling?” 

“No. It’s more like a pulse. A heartbeat.” 

I wished I knew more about pulsars. We’d done a segment on them at school, but 
I never expected to go anywhere near one. Nobodyever goes near one. My kabba cup 
was a small metal container with a straw. I removed the cup from its holder and 
released it. 

In the zero-gee environment, it floated away, drifting toward the open hatchway. 
It disappeared out into the common room. I repeated the experiment with a metal clip. 
It also went out through the hatch. 

“What are you doing?” asked Alex. 

“Just a moment.” I tried a handkerchief. Held it out. Let it go. It went nowhere. 
Just floated there at arm’s length. So we had two metal objects that had gone aft, and 

a handkerchief that simply stayed adrift. 

“Which tells us what?” asked Alex. 

I brought the systems back up, turned the lights on, but left the gravity off. “The 


magnetics are screwed up.” I got grip shoes out for both of us so we could get around. 
Then I gave myself a crash course on pulsars. 

After an hour or so, and several trips to the washroom to throw up, I thought I 
knew what was happening. The axis of the magnetic field was well off the spin axis 
of the pulsar. More than thirty degrees. The plane of our vector almost aligned with 
the spin axis. So the magnetic field, as far as we were concerned, was off center. 
Ramses was also oscillating, and it was strong. The magnetic forces were rocking the 
ship. 

Alex made an animal sound. “I’m not following.” 

“We’re getting eddy currents in the hull. They keep changing our orientation. 
We have too much movement in too many directions.” 

“Well, whatever. Can we do anything about it?” 

“No. But the good news is that it’s slowing us down.” The hull was warm. “It’s 
heating up,” I said. 

“Praise be!” Alex looked delighted. “We get a break! Enough that theToronto 
will be here before we go into the soup?” 

“No. Unfortunately not. But it’s going to give us”—I tapped a key and studied 
the result—“another two hours.” 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that helps. It’s just two extra hours to be sick.” 
Then he brightened. “Wait a minute. How about the shuttle? It’s got a full tank. Why 
don’t we use it to clear out? Leave the ship?” 

I’d already considered it and discarded the idea. “Its hull is too thin. If we go out 
in that, we’d be fried in about two minutes.” 

“Then how about transferring its fuel? To the mains? Can we do that?” 

“Different kind of fuel. And not enough to do any good anyhow.” 

“So what do we have left, Chase?” he asked. 

“Actually, the shuttle might come in handy. It uses a superconductor system 
during launch. And we’ve got some spare wire for it in cargo.” 

“How does that help us?” 

“Superconductors, at least some of them, don’t like external magnetic fields. It’s 
the way glide trains work. You turn it on, and it automatically removes itself from a 
region of high field strength to low field strength. It’s called the Meissner Effect.” 

“So we are going to—” 

“—Do a little electrical work.” 

We had about sixty meters of superconducting wire in storage. We brought it out and 
cut it in half. We took one segment to cargo, which was located beneath the bridge, to 
the point farthest forward in the ship. We fastened it to the leading bulkhead with 


magnetic staples. “In a spiral,” I told him, adding, “I think.” 

“You’re not sure, Chase?” 

“Of course I’m not sure. I’ve never done anything like this before.” 

“Okay.” 

“If you want to take over—” 

“No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t criticizing. Listen, get us clear of this, and you get a 

bonus.” 

“Thank you.” 

“You canname the bonus.” 

We took the rest of the wire back into the engine room, at the aft end of the ship, 

and put it up the same way, on the rearmost bulkhead. “Now,” I said, “we need 
current, the more the better. And a sink.” 

He frowned. “A washbasin?” 

“No. A place to put the electricity after it runs through the coils.” 

He stood there, looking puzzled. 

The gravity control was our best bet. Artificial gravity requires substantial 
power, and the system has robust cells, which would be sufficient to absorb the dump. 

“Why do we need to drain the power?” he asked. 

“Because superconductors are a bit different from ordinary circuits. It’s easy to 
get the current going, but to shut it down, we need a place that can drain it off.” 

“Okay,” he said. “I’m glad one of us knows this stuff.” 

“Alex,” I said, “this is all theory to me. I may be missing something. But it has a 
decent chance to work.” 

Over his shoulder I could see one of the monitors. The light cones flickered 
across the screen. They were velvet blue. Lovely. Almost enticing. 

The quantum drive uses a slide control device to monitor and regulate the power feed. 
After we had the coil in place, I removed it, and collected the backup unit from 
storage. I wired each spiral into one of the slide controls and connected the controls to 
the AG generator. “Center position,” I told Alex, “is neutral. No power. Up, the 
current runs clockwise; down is counterclockwise. When it’s powered up, it should 
make the ship a large magnet, with north at the bow and south at the tail. Or vice 
versa.” 

“Or vice versa? You don’t know?” 

It was as if by explaining it, I gained real control over events. Describe the 
procedure, and it has to be so. “We need to align our north to the pulsar’s south. And 


our south to its north. If we can do that, the magnetic field will push us clear.” 

“Good. That seems simple enough.” 

“Okay. Hang on.” We belted down, and I put the pulsar on the navigation screen. 

“First step: Line up.” 

I used the alignment thrusters to turnBelle around. Get us angled parallel with 
the north–south axis of the pulsar. Tail up, nose down. When I had it as close as I 

could get it, I prepared to initiate step two. 

“What’s step two?” he asked. 

“Activate.” 

I pushed the sliders up. Current flowed into the system. The ship lurched. 

I was thrown sharply against the harness. Then shaken. Up and down, back and 
forth. Lots of stops and jolts. It was like being on one of those three-dimensional 
bumper rides in an amusement park, where the bumper car takes you ahead and bangs 
to a stop and takes you ahead again and bangs to another stop. Except this was serious 
stuff. We were tossed every which way, jerked back, forth, and sideways, thrown 
relentlessly against the harnesses. “No!” I screamed. 

Alex was telling me to shut it down. It felt as ifBelle was coming apart. I 
switched off the power, and it stopped. 

“What happened?” he asked. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Maybe the current needs to go the other way.” 

We tried it, with a similar result. 

I went back to my data. Eventually I figured out what had happened. “The 
magnetic axis at Ramses is thirty degrees off the spin axis,” I told Alex. “I should 
have realized that would blow the program.” 

“Why?” 

“When we turned on the power, the ship aligned with the magnetic field, which 
it was supposed to do. But because it’s thirty degrees off center, the magnetic field 
kept changing as the pulsar spun. Every three-quarters of a second. That was what 

banged us around. 

“Can we fix it?” Alex asked hopefully. “Try it again?” 

“I have no idea how to compensate.” 

“So,” he said, “what now?” 

We were down to about five hours. 

On theBelle-Marie, the shuttle was launched from the starboard side, and the main 


airlock was to port. That suggested another possibility. 

I reactivated the gravity. I also killed the monitors so we didn’t have to watch the 
two sabers getting brighter and bigger. 

The bulkheads were continuing to heat up, and the eddy forces were becoming 
more pronounced. On the bridge, we developed a dragforward. But if we went back 
to the washroom, which was located at the rear of the living quarters, the effect went 
in the opposite direction: Metal objects were pulled farther aft. 

A buzzer sounded. I shut it off. “Yellow alert,” I explained. “Radiation.” 

Alex nodded, but said nothing. Occasionally I caught him watching me, waiting 
for me to come up with something. And I sat there while forces that felt like tides 
dragged and pushed. I tried to put it out of my mind, to concentrate on what we 
needed to do. The critical point was that magnetic fieldsdo push against one another. 

Finally, I thought I had worked out another approach. 

“I hope it’s better than last time,” Alex said. He must have seen that the 
comment was irritating because he immediately apologized. 

“It’s okay,” I said. “The first thing we need is some wire.” 

“We’ve got plenty of it stapled to the bulkheads. Fore and aft.” 

“It’ll be too much trouble to get down. We have some on spools in storage. 
Those will be easier to work with.” I released my harness, got cautiously to my feet, 
and went out into the common room. 

This time Alex didn’t ask for an explanation. We went down to cargo and 
collected four spools of assorted sizes of cable, each sixty meters long. I set one aside. 
We unrolled the other three and connected the strands to make a single piece. At one 
end I stripped off a few centimeters of insulation and attached it to one of the 
handgrips on the hull of the shuttle, metal to metal. 

Then I walked it back and taped about ninety meters of it to the back of the 
shuttle. That left enough to go up to the bridge and still have some slack. The shuttle 
was going to go out the door, and when it did I wanted to arrange things so the tape 
would come loose and the wire unravel. Preferably without fouling. 

Simple enough. 

Alex collected the fourth spool. I took the remaining eighty meters, and we 
started topside. I was paying the cable out as we went. But I found myself staring at 
the airlock that separated the launch bay from the rest of the ship. It would have to be 
closed before I could launch the shuttle. How was I going to get my wire through a 
sealed airlock? 

I stood there wishing I knew more about electrical circuits. 

Okay. All I really had to do was get the charge through. 

First I needed an anchor in the shuttle bay, something stout enough to pull the 
wire free of the tape on the back of the shuttle when it launched, and which could 


withstand a good yank if need be. There were some storage cabinets along the 
bulkhead, supported by metal mounts. They looked rugged enough to do the job, so I 
picked one and secured the cable to it, leaving enough to pass through the airlock and 
reach the bridge. 

That wouldn’t be possible, of course, because I had to close the hatch. So I led 
the wire from the cabinet mount over to the airlock, just enough to connect the two, 
cut off the excess, and taped the piece from the cabinet onto the hatch. Metal to metal, 
again. We went through the airlock, gently closed the hatch, and taped the remaining 
piece to it, once again ensuring a metal contact. 

The remaining cable was just long enough to reach the bridge. I’d intended to tie 
it into the AG generator, but we didn’t need the same level of power this time. The 
hypercomm transmitter was sitting there, doing nothing. I connected the line to its 
power cell. Which meant we had connected a power source with the shuttle. This was 
the long wire. 

We unrolled the final spool. The short wire. I linked it also to the transmitter’s 
power cell, and we walked it out to the main airlock, which opened off the common 
room. We did much the same thing we’d done with the hatch on the lower deck. I cut 
the cable and connected it to the inner door. Then I unwound the rest of it from the 
spool—there was maybe forty meters left—coiled it on the deck inside the airlock, 
stripped the insulation from the end, and connected it to the inside of the door. 

“We need to put the rest of the wire outside,” I said. 

Alex looked from the coil to the outer hatch to me. “We’ll need a volunteer,” he 
said. 

“No. Not like that. We’ll blow it out.” 

“Can we open the outer door without depressurizing the lock?” 

“Normally, no. But I can override.” We left the lock and closed the hatch. 
“Ready to go,” I told him. 

“I hope.” 

“I’ll need you to turn on the juice, Alex.” 

“Okay.” 

He had to sit down on the deck to get access to the power unit. I showed him 
what to push. Showed him which lamps would come on when we established the 
circuit. 

“All right,” he said. “I got it.” 

“What we want to do,” I told him, “is to open the outer door of the main airlock 
and simultaneously launch the shuttle. The shuttle goes out one side; the air pressure 
in the lock blows the cable out the other.” 

“I’m ready.” We looked at one another for a long moment. “Just in case,” he 
said, “I’m glad you’ve been part of my life.” 


It was the only time I’ve known him to say something like that. My eyes got 
damp, and I told him I thought we had a good chance. What Ireally thought, I was 
trying not to think about. “Okay,” I said, “starting depressurization in the shuttle 
compartment.” 

“Chase, do you think it matters whether I turn on the power now? Or should we 
wait until everything’s outside?” 

“Probably doesn’t matter. But let’s play it safe and wait.” 

“Okay.” 

“Overriding main airlock restraint. Got a green light.” 

“Good.” 

“I’m going to bleed a little air out of it.” 

“If you think. But make sure there’s enough left to expel the wire.” 

I took the pressure down to about seventy percent, warned Alex that I was about 
to shut off the gravity again, and did so. It would help ensure that the coil in the 
airlock got blown clear. When the launch bay showed green—vacuum—I opened the 
launch doors, activated the telescopes, and eased the shuttle out of the ship. Then I 
opened the main airlock. Moments later, the port-side monitor showed the cable 
drifting away. 

“Looks good so far,” said Alex. 

I’d instructed the shuttle’s onboard AI what she was to do. She took the shuttle 
out slowly while we watched on the monitor. The cable broke clear of the tape and 
began to pay out. 

I gave it a couple of minutes. Then I told Alex to hit the juice. 

The outside flux sent charged particles into the shuttle and the cable that was attached 
to its rear. The shuttle strained toward the pulsar and the cable straightened. The 
charge came toward the ship along the wire and passed through the open airlock. It 
circled the cabinet mount and penetrated the hatch on the lower deck. The wire on our 
side of the hatch picked it up and relayed it to the hypercomm power cell, from which 
it switched over to the short wire, passed through the main deck hatch, and out the 
main airlock. A luminous blue arc leaped from the shuttle to the tip of the short wire, 
connecting them. “What do you think?” asked Alex. 

“Circuit is complete,” I said, trying to keep the sheer joy out of my voice. “I 
think we have a magnetic field.” 

We got tossed around again, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as the previous time. 

Within moments, I felt a gentle shove upward and to starboard. “We’re getting a 
course change, Alex.” 

“Yes!” he said. “You’re right. No question.” His face broke into a huge smile. 


“You’re a genius.” 

“Magnetic fields don’t like each other,” I said. “The big one is getting rid of the 
little one. Had to happen.” 

“Of course.” 

“I never doubted it would work.” 

The push was steady. Up and out. And accelerating. We were riding the wave, 
baby. Moving at a goofy angle, but who cared as long as it was away from the sabers? 

TheToronto needed only five days to find us. It didn’t matter to us. All we cared 
about was that we knew they were coming. 

It was a party cruise. The ship was filled with the cast and director of the 
musicalCobalt Blue, which had been a huge hit everywhere on Grand Salinas and 
points west and was currently headed for Rimway. Unfortunately, they did not have 
fuel available for our thrusters, so we had to go on with them. 

The passengers were always looking for reasons to celebrate, and we ranked 
high. They provided food and alcohol, and we got to see Jenna Carthage, the show’s 
star, performing “Hearts At Sea.” It’s been a lot of years, but “Hearts At Sea,” which 
is the second act showstopper, remains a standard. And Alex occasionally refers to it 
as “our song.” 

I should mention that I caught the eye of Renaldo Cabrieri. Alex didn’t care for 
him, but I liked the guy, and it didn’t hurt my self-confidence to have one of the 
biggest romantic stars in the Confederacy following me around. He was a bit over the 
top, but he was a charmer nevertheless. He made sure I always had a drink in my 
hand. He leered at me, purred in my direction, smiled in the most delightful manner, 
and just generally misbehaved. At one point, Alex told me it was embarrassing. Me, I 
thought I was entitled. 

First, a dictator. Now a certified heartthrob. I wondered what, or who, was next. 

TWeNTY-ONe 

Most of us deny the existence of ghosts. There is no 
spectre abroad in the night, we say. No phantom, no 
presence lingering over the dying fire, no banshee 
loose in moonlit trees. No spirit eyes peer at us from 
the dark windows of abandoned houses. But we’re 
wrong. It’s all true. And even though we understand 
that they are the creations of the mind, they are no less 
real. 

—Ferris Grammery 

Famous Ghosts of Dellaconda 

We never found Belle. Presumably, after she was taken from the ship, she was 


discarded. 

The AI that had been inserted in her place turned out to be a standard model, a 
bit more advanced than Belle. But someone had made a few adjustments. Had 
prepped it to take us out sight-seeing to Ramses. “Could you have done it?” Alex 
asked me. 

No. I wasn’t that good. But I don’t pay much attention to the inner workings of 
AIs. I knew a few people who could make those sorts of changes. “It’s not that hard,” 
I said. 

Fenn heard about what had happened, and an escort was waiting for us when 
theToronto pulled into Skydeck. They stayed with us until we reached the country 
house. Fenn arrived moments after we did. “You can’t stay here any longer,” he said. 
“We’ll have to arrange something elsewhere. These people, whoever they are, seem 
to be determined.” 

It was good enough for me. But Alex said it was okay, no need to make a big 
deal of it. He wasn’t fooling anybody, of course. He was scared, too. But he didn’t 
like showing it, so he continued to tell Fenn not to bother until he thought Fenn was 
going to back off. Then he caved. For my sake. By early evening, we’d been moved 
to an inauspicious little two-story town house in Limoges, a medium-sized city two 
hundred kilometers southwest of Andiquar. There would be security bots constantly 
in the area, he assured us. We were given fresh identities. “You’ll be safe,” he said. 
“They won’t be able to find you. But be careful anyway. Assume nothing.” 

So we shut down Rainbow temporarily. “Going on vacation,” we informed our 
clients. Fenn didn’t even want us to do that. Just slip away in the night, he said. But 
we couldn’t walk off and leave everybody hanging. There were projects under way, 
commitments had been made, and there’d be people who’d contact us and expect a 
response. 

We left the country house and began a careful existence of locked doors and 
staying away from windows. 

At the end of the second week, Autoreach, a salvage company, announced it was 
ready to go out and get theBelle-Marie. Alex stayed home while I went along. When 
we got to the ship, I installed a fresh AI, an upgrade, in fact, and I fed it a code to 
ensure that if anyone got to it again I’d know before leaving port. 

It felt good to bring the ship back. I arranged extra security for it, and returned to 
our new home on a blustery winter evening. Alex was sitting quietly in the living 
room behind his reader and a pile of books. An image of thePolaris floated over the 
sofa. He looked up when I came in and told me he was glad to see me. “Did you by 
any chance,” he asked, “see thePolaris while you were on Skydeck? It’s here for a 
few days.” 

He meant theClermo, of course. “No,” I said. “I wasn’t aware it was scheduled 
in.” 

“I don’t know how you feel about going back up there,” he said, “but I think it’s 
time we did the tour.” 


“We’re going to look at theClermo ?” 

“We should have done it two months ago.” 

“Why?” 

“Everson and his people never found what they were looking for.” 

“So—?” 

“That means it might still be on the ship.” 

I called Evergreen, gave them a set of false names different from the ones Fenn had 
bestowed on us. I was taking no chances. For this trip, we would be Marjorie and 
Clyde Kimball. I especially liked that because Alex has a thing about names. There 
are certain ones, he maintains, that you just can’t take seriously.Herman. Chesley. 
Francis. Frank is okay. So I knew what he’d think ofClyde. 

“We’re doing a book on thePolaris incident,” I explained, “and we’d like very 
much to tour theClermo. ” 

My contact was a quiet, intense young woman, dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. 
Professional smile. It put a fair amount of distance between us. “I’m sorry, ma’am. 
TheClermoisn’t fitted out for tours. ” Whatever that meant. 

“We’re embarking on this project,” I told her, “under the auspices of Alex 
Benedict.” That was taking a chance, but it seemed necessary. I waited for a sign of 
recognition. “I suspect your employers would want you to agree.” That was a leap, 
but Alex was pretty well known. 

“I’m sorry. Who is he again?” 

“Alex Benedict.” When she went blank, I added, “The Christopher Sim scholar.” 

“Oh.ThatAlex Benedict.” She didn’t have a clue.“Can you hold, please, Ms. 
Kimball? Let me check with my supervisor.” 

The supervisor didn’t know either. It took a couple more calls before I finally got 
through to an executive secretary who said yes, of course, they’d be delighted to have 
a representative of Mr. Benedict tour theClermo, except that she didn’t know when 
the ship would be available. 

We went back and forth for the next couple of days before we finally got an 
invitation, primarily, I suspect, because I’d become a nuisance. 

Evergreen’s Skydeck office was located on the ‘Z’ level, at the bottom of the pile and 
well out of everyone’s way. 

The Foundation had purchased thePolaris in 1368, three years after Delta 
Karpis. They renamed it and had been using it since to transport company executives, 
politicians, prospective customers, and assorted other special guests. 

We got our first sight of it from one of the lower-level viewports. It was smaller 
than I’d expected, but I should have realized that it wouldn’t be very big. It was a 


passenger transport vehicle, with a carrying capacity for the captain plus seven. Not 
much more than a yacht. 

It had a retro look, with a rounded prow, flared tubes, and a wide body. Had it 
not been for its history, I suspected theClermo would have been retired. But it 
provided a substantial degree of cachet for Evergreen. It was easy to imagine the 
Foundation’s executives pointing out to their VIP passengers the very workspace 
Tom Dunninger had used while history was overtaking the ship. Ah, yes, if the 
bulkheads could only talk. 

The retro look added to the charm. But the forest of scanners, sensors, and 
antennas that had covered the hull in its Survey days was gone. Only a couple of 
dishes were visible now, rotating slowly, and a few telescopes. 

The hull, once gray, was now sea green. The tubes were gold, and there was a 
white sunburst on the bow. The imprint of theDEPARTMENT OF PLANETARY SURVEY AND 
ASTRONOMICAL RESEARCH no longer circled the airlock. ThePolaris seal, the arrowhead 
and star, had been removed from the forward hull, which now readEVERGREEN , in 
white letters stylized as leafy branches entangled with vines. The Foundation’s tree 
symbol lay just aft of the main airlock. The only thing that remained from the original 
designators was the manufacturer’s number, barely visible on the tail. 

We were met by a middle-aged, thin, officious man wearing a gray company 
shirt with the tree logo sewn across the breast pocket. He looked up from a monitor as 
we strolled into the Evergreen offices. “Ah,” he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Kimball?” His 
name was Emory Bonner. He introduced himself as the assistant manager of Skydeck 
operations. He’d done his homework and mentioned his admiration for Alex 
Benedict’s efforts in what he referred to as “the Christopher Sim business.” 
“Magnificent,” he said. 

Alex, wearing a false beard and shameless to the last, commented that Benedict 
was indeed an outstanding investigator, and that it was a privilege to be assisting him 
in this project. 

Bonner said hello to me but never really took his attention from Alex. “May I 
ask precisely what your interest is in theClermo, Mr. Kimball?” 

Alex went off on a long thing about antiquities, and the value of theClermo as an 
artifact. “I sometimes wonder,” he concluded, “whether the executives at Evergreen 
are aware of the potential market for this ship.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Bonner. “We are quite aware. We’ve taken very good care of 
theClermo. ” 

“Yet,” said Alex, pushing his point, “you’ve kept it in operation. That does 
nothing for its long-term value.” 

“We’ve found it quite useful, Mr. Kimball. You’d be surprised the effect it has 
on our VIP guests.” 

“I’m sure. In any case, we’ll be writing about a number of artifacts that are 
currently grossly undervalued. Every one of them, Mr. Bonner, will appreciate 
considerably after publication.” He smiled at the little man. “If you’d like to make a 
killing, you might try to buy it from the Foundation. It would make an excellent 


investment.” 

“Yes, I’ll talk to them today and make the down payment tomorrow.” Turning 
serious: “When do you anticipate publication?” 

“In a few months.” 

“I wish you all the best with it.” He took a moment to notice me, and asked 
whether I was also working on the project. 

“Yes,” I said. 

“Very good.” He’d fulfilled his obligation to basic decency. “Well, I know 
you’re busy, so maybe we should go take a look.” 

He led the way outside. We walked back down the tunnel by which we’d come 
and stopped before a closed entry tube. He told the door to open, we passed through 
and strolled down onto the docks. He paused to talk to a technician, giving him 
instructions that sounded as if they were being delivered to impress us. A few 
moments later we followed him through another tube and emerged beside theClermo 
’s airlock. 

Beside thePolaris. 

It looked ordinary enough. I’m not sure what I was expecting, a sense of history, 
maybe. Or the chill that had come when we’d stood at the crime scene on the Night 
Angel. Whatever had happened that day at Delta Karpis, had happened right there, on 
the other side of the hatch. Yet I felt no rush of emotion. I kept thinking that I was 
really looking, not at the inexplicable, but at an object used in an elaborate illusion. 

It was open. Bonner and Alex stood aside, allowing me the honor of entering 
first. 

The lights were on. I went in, into the common room, which was twice the size 
ofBelle ’s. There were three small tables and eight chairs arranged around the 
bulkheads. Bonner began immediately jabbering about something. Fuel efficiency or 
some such thing. ThePolaris had been luxurious, in the way that Survey thought of 
the term. But its present condition went well beyond that. The relatively utilitarian 
furniture that you saw in the simulations had been replaced. The chairs were selbic, 
which looked and felt like soft black leather. The bulkheads, originally white, were 
dark-stained. Thick green carpets covered the decks. Plaques featuring Evergreen 
executives posing with presidents, councillors, and senators adorned the bulkheads. (I 
suspected the plaques were taken down and replaced regularly, a custom set installed 
for each voyage, depending on who happened to be on board.) 

The square worktable and displays were gone, and the common room now 
resembled the setting for an after-dinner club. Hatches were open the length of the 
ship, so we could see into the bridge and, in the opposite direction, the private cabins 
and workout area. Only the engineering compartment was closed. 

There were four cabins on each side. Bonner opened one for our inspection. The 
appointments were right out of the Hotel Magnifico. Brass fittings, a fold-out bed that 
looked extraordinarily comfortable, another selbic chair (smaller, because of space 


limitations, than the ones in the common room, but lavish nonetheless), and a desk, 
with a comm link hookup. 

The workout area would have accommodated two or even three people. You 
could run or cycle to your heart’s content through any kind of VR countryside, or lift 
weights, or whatever you liked. Maximum use of minimum area. It would have been 
nice to have something like that on theBelle-Marie. 

“Evergreen has taken good care of thePolaris, ” Alex said, as we turned and 
walked back toward the bridge. 

Bonner beamed. “Yes, we have. TheClermo has been maintained at the highest 
level. We’ve spared no effort, Mr. Kimball. None. I expect we’ll see many more 
years’ service from her.” 

Good luck to him on that score. The ship had to be pretty much at the end of her 
life expectancy, with only a year or so left before her operational credentials would 
expire. 

We went up onto the bridge. It’s amazing how much difference the brass makes. 
Although I knewBelle was state-of-the-art, theClermo just looked as if it could get 
you where you wanted to go safer and faster. Its Armstrong engines had, of course, 
been replaced by quantum technology. Itfelt snug and agreeable. I’d have liked a 
chance to take her out and tool around a bit. 

There couldn’t have been much resemblance to the bridge Maddy English had 
known. Most of the gear had been updated, and the paneled bulkheads would never 
have found their way onto a Survey ship. Nevertheless, this was the space she’d 
occupied. It was the place from which the last transmission had been sent. 

“Departure imminent.Polarisout.” 

She’d been right about that. 

“Notice the calibrated grips,” Bonner was saying. “And the softened hues of the 
monitors. In addition—” He seemed unaware of why the ship was interesting. 

Maddy had been preparing to enter Armstrong space, so the six passengers 
would have been belted down, probably in the common room, possibly in their 
quarters. “If you were the pilot of this ship,” Alex asked me when we had a moment, 
“would it make a difference to you?” 

“No. Irrelevant. Whatever they like, as long as the restraints are in place.” 

“Anything else you’d like to see?” asked Bonner, who was watching me as if he 
thought I might try to make off with something. 

“Yes,” said Alex, “I wonder if we could take a look belowdecks.” 

“Certainly.” He led the way down the gravity tube, and we wandered through the 
storage area. The lander bay was located immediately below the bridge. Bonner 
opened the hatch to the smaller vehicle, and we looked in. The lander was a Zebra, 
top of the line. “New,” I said. 


“Yes. We’ve replaced it several times. Most recently just last year.” 

“Where’s the original?” Alex asked. “From thePolaris? ” 

He smiled. “It’s on display at Sabatini.” Foundation headquarters. 

I caught Alex’s eyes as we stood beside the lander. Had he seen what he was 

looking for? 
He signaledno. Eitherno he hadn’t, orno, don’t say anything. 

We strolled out through the airlock. A lone technician was doing something to one of 
the fuel tanks, and Bonner peeled off to talk to him. When he was out of earshot, Alex 
asked how difficult it would be for a passenger to seize control of a ship. “I’m talking 
about getting the AI to take direction,” he said. 

That was simple enough. “All you’d have to do, Alex, is to get logged on to the 
AI response list. But the captain would have to do it.” 

“But Belle will take direction from me.” 

“You own the ship.” 

Bonner caught up with us and asked whether we’d found everything we needed. 

“Oh, yes,” said Alex. “It was an exquisite experience.” 

“I’m pleased to hear it.” 

“One more question, if you don’t mind, Emory.” Alex was in his charm mode. 
“When Evergreen first acquired theClermo, do you know whether anything left by the 
original Survey passengers was found on board? Anypersonal items?” 

Well, that one floored him, and he didn’t mind letting us see it. “That’s sixty 
years ago, Mr. Kimball. Before my time.” 

Right. Nothing that had happened before this guy was born could be of any 
consequence. “I understand that,” Alex said. “But artifacts from an historic ship are 
valuable.” 

“I was under the impression,” he said, “that Survey scoured the ship when it 
originally came back.” 

“Nevertheless, they might have overlooked something. If they did, it would be 
worthwhile to know about it, and I suspect somebody at Evergreen would have been 
smart enough to hang on to it.” 

“I assume you’re right, Mr. Kimball. But I just have no way of knowing.” 

“Whowould know?” 

He led the way into an exit tube. “Somebody at the Sabatini office might be able 

to help.” 
“Thanks,” Alex said. “One final thing.” He showed him a picture of Teri Barber. 


“Have you ever seen this woman?” 

He squinted at it and arranged to look unimpressed. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I 
don’t know her. Should I?” 

We caught the ground-side transport and transferred to a flight to Sabatini. Alex sat 
staring out at the clouds. We’d been in the air only a half hour when the pilot warned 
us of turbulence ahead. Within minutes we sailed into heavy weather and started to 
sway. Alex made a comment about the storm, how it looked pretty dark out there. I 
said yes it did and asked whether he still thought Walker was involved. 

“No question about it.” 

“How could that be? We know they couldn’t have taken Maddy and the 
passengers aboard thePeronovski. Are you suggesting Alvarez lied?” 

“No. Alvarez appeared before the Trendel Commission. He tested out, so we 
know he kept nothing back. But they never checked Walker. No reason to.” 

“But they couldn’t smuggle seven people onto Alvarez’s ship and maintain them 

without his knowing.” 

“That’s the way it looks.” 

“It’s impossible.” I took a deep breath as raindrops began to splatter against the 
windows. “Not only couldn’t it be done without the captain’s knowledge, it couldn’t 
be done at all. We’ve been over this. There’s no way thePeronovski could have 
supported nine people.” 

He took a deep breath, sighed, but said nothing. 

“There might be another possibility,” I said. 

“Go ahead.” 

“We’ve been assuming the conspirators were a majority. Pretty much everybody 

except Dunninger.” 

“Yes.” 

“We’ve also been assuming there was a kidnapping. But I can tell you how 

things could have happened.” 

“Go ahead.” 

“Somebody, one or two, take over the ship. They have six days before 

thePeronovski will arrive. So they go elsewhere in the system.” 

“I’m with you so far.” 

“It’s not a kidnapping, Alex. Theykill everybody. Get rid of the bodies. Then go 
to wherever thePeronovski found them. With Walker’s help they get aboard without 
being seen by Alvarez. And all Alvarez finds is an empty ship.” 


“Good,” Alex said. “That seems to account for everything.” 

I felt pretty good. “Thank you,” I said. 

He was smiling, too. “Why?” he asked. 

“You mean, what was the motive?” 

“Yes.” 

“The same thing we’ve been talking about. To prevent Dunninger from 
completing his work.” 

“You think any of these people were capable of murder?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“I like your solution,” said Alex, “but I just don’t believe it happened that way. 
It’s too bloody-handed. And I can’t imagine Boland or White or any of them 
consenting to commit murder. For any reason.” 

“What about Maddy? She was fairly ruthless.” 

“Maddy had no motive.” 

“Maybe she was bought.” 

“To murder six people? And to disappear herself? I don’t think so.” He took a 
deep breath. “But you agree that there could have been an extra passenger or two on 
board thePeronovski without the captain’s being aware of it?” 

Yes. They could have used the belowdecks compartments. Walker would have 
had to get extra supplies on board. Extra water. But if he had done that, it could have 
been managed. The captain has no reason to go prowling around in storage. “I don’t 
see why not,” I said. 

Alex closed his eyes and appeared to go to sleep. We left the storm behind, and 
the sun reappeared. Two hours later we crossed the Korali Mountains and began our 
approach to Sabatini. A cloud of vehicles floated through the sky. 

Evergreen’s headquarters was located among rolling hills, on the southern gulf. I’d 
called ahead and established that, yes, they did have a display room that held exhibits 
and artifacts from their two-century-long history, that it included thePolaris shuttle 
and a few other items that had been found on the ship, and yes, they would provide a 
tour. 

Our guide was Cory Chalaba, a middle-aged, steely-eyed woman who felt 
strongly about endangered reefs in the Minoan Sea, overflowing population on half a 
dozen Confederate worlds, and the recklessness, as she put it, with which people 
introduced secondary biosystems onto living planets. We sat drinking coffee and 
munching donuts for about twenty minutes in her office, talking about Evergreen’s 
role in what she referred to as the human adventure. “Because that’s what it is. 
There’s no plan, there are no stated objectives, no thought for the future. All anyone 


cares about is profit. And power. And that means development.” 

“What about Survey?” I asked. “They must make an effective partner for 
Evergreen. At least you’re not in it alone.” 

“Survey’s worst of all.” She was heating up. “They want to find out how a given 
biosystem develops, how it got to be what it is. And then record its characteristics. 
Once they’ve done that, they don’t give a damn what happens to it.” It was easy to 
imagine her in the protest line outside Dunninger’s lab at Epstein. 

The Foundation’s display was both more and less than I’d expected. It consisted 
primarily of clothing worn by Evergreen collaborators during historic events, 
instruments used by them, notebooks, pictures, VR records. There were rocks from 
Grimaldo, where a small band of Evergreen’s people had died trying to protect that 
world’s giant lizards from hunters who had flocked to it with a vast array of high-tech 
cannons. Several of the species, according to an accompanying placard, were now 
extinct. They had the shoulder patch from Sharoun Kapata’s blouse, dating from the 
Mineral Wars on Dellaconda. Replicas of boats and ships were mounted along the 
walls, along with their histories.Transported the Ann Kornichov team to the Gables, 
1325. And,Rammed and sunk by net-draggers in the skies of Peleus, 1407. 

ThePolaris shuttle was there, occupying an alcove. It still looked serviceable. 
The public wasn’t permitted inside, but we could get up close enough to see 
everything. Carrying capacity was four. The harness arrangement was different from 
anything you’d see in a modern vehicle. Heavier, and more intrusive. Cabin design 
felt old-fashioned, but you’d expect that. Standard set of controls. Standard guidance 
system. A basic thruster package that could have come right offBelle ’s shuttle. Two 
storage cabinets behind the backseat, filled with spare parts. And a cargo 
compartment in the rear, accessible through a separate hatch. The shuttle retained 
thePolaris and Survey markings. 

The rest of thePolaris display was inconsequential, and was stored in two glass 
cases. 

One held a shirt. “Urquhart’s,” Chalaba said. She consulted a notebook. “It was 
found in the foldaway bed.” 

“The Survey people must have missed it,” said Alex. 

“Apparently.” 

There were also a pen, a remote, a book, and a makeup kit. “The makeup kit, of 
course, belonged to one of the women. We’re not sure which. The pen, we don’t 
know. It was found in its holder on the bridge.” 

“You’ve done the archeologically correct thing,” Alex said. “Recording the 
locations of the finds.” 

“As if it matters. But yes, our people did a decent job.” She went back to her 
notes. “The remote is an electronic key of some sort. It was found in the cargo locker 
of the lander. We don’t know who that belonged to, either.” 

“An electronic key?” Alex peered down at it. It was about the size of a candy 
bar, with five buttons, one red, four blue, and a display. Each button was marked with 


a symbol: 


“What’s it operate?” asked Alex. 

Back to the notes. “It doesn’t say. I doubt anybody knows.” 

It was hard to imagine why anyone would need a key on thePolaris. Aboard a 

ship, everything operates off the AI. Or by simple voice command. Or by pushing a 
button. 

“What do you think?” Alex asked me. “Would they need it maybe for the 
lander?” 

“I can’t imagine why,” I said. “No, there’d be no point.” 

A remote. In an age when most devices were voice-activated, there’s not much 
use for it. Kids use them for games. They operate flying models. They open hotel 
room doors. They can be used to adjust water temperature in pools. 

What else? 

Alex shook his head. “Anybody have any idea what the symbols mean?” 

“The bottom one looks like a negative,” said Chalaba. “Maybe somebody just 

brought it from home,” she said. “Forgot they had it.” 

It looked very much like a standard hotel key. Five buttons:up anddown for the 
elevators,lock andunlock for the apartment, and a transaction button. That would be 
the red one. The rectangle represented a press pad. 

The book wasWilderness of Stars, by Emanuel Placido. It had been a big hit with 
the environmental people in the last century. “It belonged to White,” Chalaba said. 
“We have a virtual copy available if you’d like to see it.” 

Alex caught my eyes.Maybe she wrote something in it. Maybe it’s what they’ve 
been looking for. “Cory,” he said, “since we’re in here, I assume the exhibit area is 
open to the general public.” 

She nodded. “Yes. But we don’t advertise it, so I doubt many people know it’s 

here.” 

He showed her the picture of Barber. 

“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen her.” 

He gave it to her, along with his code. “It will get you to our office,” he said. 

“We’d be grateful if you’d keep an eye open. If she shows up, please give us a call.” 

She looked at us suspiciously. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “If you’re reluctant to callus, let the Andiquar police 


know. You’ll want to talk to Inspector Redfield.” 

“All right. You mind telling me what it’s about?” 

“One other thing,” he said, bypassing the question. “I’d like very much to buy a 

copy of the key.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Kimball, but that’s really not feasible.” 

“It’s important,” he said. “And I’d be grateful.” He produced his link, typed in a 

figure, and showed it to her. “Would this cover it?” 

Her eyebrows went up. “Yes,” she said, drawing the word out. “If it means that 
much, I suppose we can manage it.” 

“Thank you,” said Alex. “Please be sure it’s a working duplicate.” 

“What are you going to do with it?” 

“I think it’s what Barber and Kiernan were looking for.” 

“Really. Why?” 

“Because it’s the one object that has no possible use on thePolaris. ” 

“I’m not sure I follow.” 

“Ask yourself what it was doing in the shuttle’s cargo compartment.” He looked 

around to be sure we were alone. “Chase, I know how it was done.” 

We were walking across a white stone bridge that separated the Foundation 
grounds from the landing pad. He stopped and gripped the white handrail and leaned 
out over a brook as if he were really interested in seeing whether it contained fish. He 
could be infuriating sometimes. I waited for the explanation, which did not come. 

“How?” I said at last. 

“You suggested the ship went elsewhere in the system.” 

“Yes.” 

“Why notoutside the system? They had six days before thePeronovski would 

arrive.” 

“It’s possible. Sure.” 

“Everybody assumed the ship went adrift right after the last message. But that’s 
not what happened. It jumped out of the system. Took the passengers somewhere. To 
a drop-off point. Then they unloaded everyone. The place, wherever it was, had living 
accommodations. That’s where the key came from.” 

“There’s no place like that near Delta Kay.” 

“You sure? We’re talking three days available for travel, one way. How far was 
that in 1365?” 


“Sixty light-years.” 

“That’s a pretty big area. Even out there.” He dropped a pebble into the water. 
“The key, in effect, is a hotel key. Whoever had it unloaded his passengers, got a 

good night’s sleep, and in the morning he started back in thePolaris to Delta Kay.” 

“—Where the ship was found by thePeronovski —” 

“Yes.” 

“And, with Walker’s help, he was able to slip aboard and hide below. Until they 

returned to port.” 

“Very good, Chase.” 

“You really think that’s what happened?” 

“Except one thing.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Change the pronoun.She slipped aboard.” 

“Maddy?” 

“I don’t think there’s any question. She’s the one in the ideal position to pull it 
off, provided she had help from other passengers. And she was a pilot. The 
conspirators had arranged in advance to make another ship available for her at Indigo. 
When she got back, she collected it and went out to recover them.” 

“I’ll be damned.” 

“All the objects that were looked at by our burglars belonged to Maddy. Nobody 

else.” 

“But Alvarez should have seen her when he searched thePolaris. ” 

“She hid in the shuttle cargo compartment. That’s when she lost the key.” 

“They had no reason to open the cargo compartment.” 

“Right. And when the search was over, Alvarez and Walker went back to 

thePeronovski. That night, Alvarez goes to sleep—” 

“—And Walker brings her aboard.” 

“He stashed her in one of the compartments belowdecks.Voilà, the alien wind 

has swept them all away.” 

“Incredible,” I said. “That simple.” 

Alex shrugged modestly. 

“They did all this just to head off Dunninger’s research?” 

“They saw it as life and death for millions of people. And they were all 


idealists.” 

“Fanatics.” 

“One man’s idealist is another’s lunatic.” 

“But why is anyone worried about it now? Is someone still in power from those 

years?” 
His eyes were troubled. “No. I’ve checked. Everyone who could have been 

involved, either at Survey, or in the political world, is dead or retired.” 

“Then who’s behind the attacks on us?” 

“I have an idea, but let’s put that aside for now.” 

“Okay. So where’d thePolaris take them?” 

“That’s what we have to find out.” 

We stayed in Sabatini and returned to Limoges the next day by train. Alex liked 
trains, and he also thought it might be smart to change our travel plans. Just in case. 

We rode a taxi to the station and arrived just as the Tragonia Flyer was pulling 
in. We got into our compartment, and Alex lapsed into silence. The train made a 
second stop in Sabatini, then began its long trek across the Koralis. 

We were still in mountain country when the service bot brought lunch. And 
wine. Alex gazed moodily through the window at the passing landscape. 

I thought about Maddy while I ate. I liked her, identified with her, and I hated to 
think she’d been part of a conspiracy to put Dunninger out of action. 

“First thing we need to do,” I told Alex, “is to go back and look at the shipping 
schedules again. We’d assumed that any black ship would have to go all the way out 
to Delta Kay. But this changes things. We need to check, to see whether anyone was 
in a position to get close enough to manage a rendezvous.” 

“I’ve already looked,” he said. “It was one of the first things I did.” 

“So you’re telling me nobody would have been able to do that either?” 

“That’s correct. Nobody was unaccounted for. Nobody, other than 
thePeronovski, was anywhere near the target space. And not for weeks afterward. 
Which means Maddy didn’t immediately go back to pick them up. But that’s just 
smart planning.” 

He finished his meal and pushed it aside. 

“You know,” I said, “I think I prefer the alien juggernaut theory.” 

“Yeah. I feel that way, too.” 

“I have a question.” 


“Go ahead.” 

“What was the last-minute emergency that kept Taliaferro off the flight?” 

“Chase, I don’t think Taliaferro ever intended to go. I think everybody on board 
that ship was part of the conspiracy to shut down Dunninger. Taliaferro got 
volunteers, people who were willing to give up their everyday lives to stop something 
they thought would be a major calamity. But there was a limited number he dared ask. 
Not enough to fill the ship. Taliaferro couldn’t go himself, because they needed him 
to direct things from Survey. They were going to need money, for example, and 
eventually a base. So Taliaferro set up Morton College. But there were a lot of people 
who wanted to make thePolaris flight, so they had to be able to claim it was filled.” 

We passed through a small town, lots of lights, someone on a runabout. 
Otherwise, the streets were empty. 

TWeNTY-TWO 

“Do not underestimate the woman. Provoke her, anger 

her, infuriate her, and in her hands every object, every 

knife, every pot, every pebble, can become lethal.” 

—Jeremy Riggs,Last Man Out 

The train ride required a bit more than fourteen hours. We slept most of the way and 
got into Limoges an hour or two before midnight. Once off the train, we hurried 
through the terminal like a couple of fugitives, watching everybody and wondering 
when someone would throw a bomb. But we got back to the town house without 
incident. 

Neither of us was ready to call it a night. Alex poured two glasses of Vintage 17, 
made a sandwich, and sat down in an armchair in a manner that suggested big things 
were about to happen. 

I’ve forgotten the AI’s name at the town house, but he directed it to provide a 
display with Delta Karpis at the center. “Make a sphere around it, with a sixty-lightyear 
radius.” Sixty light-years, of course, was the maximum range thePolaris could 
have traveled in the three days it had available. “How many habitable worlds are 
there?” 

“One moment, please.” 

Alex was in excellent spirits. He looked across at me and grinned. “We’ve got 
them,” he said. His sandwich showed up, and he picked it up without looking at it, 
took a bite, chewed and swallowed, and washed it down with his wine. 

I was feeling less jovial. Alex says I worry too much. “I hate to point this out,” I 
told him, “but I think we’ve done enough. Why don’t we walk away from this? Give 
everything to Fenn and let him deal with it? Before more bad things happen?” 

He shook his head. It’s a hard life when one is surrounded by such imbecility. 


“Chase,” he said, “don’t you think I’d love to? But they’re going to keep coming after 
us. And there’s no way we can stop that until we stopthem. Fenn’s not going to run 
out to Delta Kay and look around.” His voice softened. “Anyhow, don’t you want to 
be there when we confront these people?” 

“Probably not,” I said. 

“Three,”said the AI.“There are three habitable worlds.” 

“Three? Is that all?” 

“It’s a sterile area. Most of the stars in the region are young.” 

“Delta Karpis wasn’t young.” 

“Delta Karpis was an exception. And there is also an outstation.” 

“Where?” 

“Meriwether. It’s actually a bit farther than the parameters you set. It’s sixty-
seven light-years out.” 

“Where is it? Show me.” 

A swirl of stars appeared in the middle of the room. A prominent yellow one 
began blinking.“Delta Kay,” said the AI. An arrow appeared above a side table, 
pointing toward the back porch.“That way to Indigo.” Then we got another blinker, 
this one red, over a love seat.“The Meriwether outstation.” 

Alex looked pleased. Only four possibilities. “Chase,” he said, “we’ve caught a 
break.” And, to the AI: “Tell me about them.” 

“The worlds first. Terranova has a small settlement.”Its image formed in the 
middle of the room.“It’s the home of the Mangles.” 

“What’s a Mangle?” I asked. 

“They’re a back-to-nature group who like isolation. They ascribe, more or less, 
to the philosophy of Rikard Mangle, who thought that people should get their hands 
dirty, build their own homes, and grow their own food. To do less, he maintained, is 
to fall short of knowing what it truly means to be human. Or something like that. 
Aside from an occasional hermit, they’ve been the sole inhabitants on Terranova for 
two centuries. They claim to be the most remote human outpost.” 

“Are they?” I asked. 

“Depends where you put the center of the Confederacy, ma’am.” 

“And they’re still functioning?” said Alex. 

“Oh, yes. They’re still there. But they don’t have much contact with the outside 
world. A little trading. And every once in a while somebody escapes.” 

“That’s a gag, right?” I said. 

“Not at all. Their children don’t always want to stay. Some, when they can, clear 


out.” 

“The brighter ones.” 

“I’m not equipped to make that judgment.” 

Alex wore a wry smile. “These Mangles,” he said, “would they be likely to let an 
outside group move in?” 

“Judging by their history, as well as their code of regulations, I’d say not. 
Unless you adopted their political philosophy.” 

Well, I thought, that part of it doesn’t matter. A planet’s a big place. ThePolaris 
had a lander. The Mangles sound fairly primitive, so the lander could have gotten to 
the surface unseen easily enough. “How many Mangles are there?” 

“Fewer than sixty thousand, Chase. Terranova is the only Confederate world 
that shows a consistent decrease in population.” 

“Okay,” said Alex. “Tell us about the other two.” 

“Markop III. And Serendipity. Neither has been settled. Gravity approximates 
one point four at Markop. It’s uncomfortable under the best of circumstances. 
Serendipity’s air is thin, and the surface is hot to intolerable. Any human settlements 
would have to be placed near the poles.” 

“But the air is breathable.” 

“Oh, yes. It’s not a place you’d want to go if you like comfort. But you could 
certainly put a group of people there and, assuming you provided food and shelter, 
you could have every hope they’d survive.” 

“What about the outstation? Meriwether?” 

“It services a bare handful of missions each year. It’s probably the oldest of the 
operational stations. Completely automated.” 

“Could I use it without leaving a record?” 

“I don’t know. That information is not available.” 

That was my area of expertise. “The answer’s no, Alex. The station AI logs 
everything. Any attempt to juggle the log, to gundeck it in any way, is considered a 
criminal offense. And it gets reported.” 

“No way it could be done?” 

“I don’t think so. At the first sign of tampering, the AI would send out an alarm.” 

“Okay. I think we better have a look at it anyhow.” 

“Could we wait until morning?” 

He laughed. “Yes, I suspect we can do that.” 

It was supposed to be a joke. “You do mean we’re leavingtomorrow? ” I’d been 


hoping for two or three days off. 

“Yes,” he said. “I think it’s prudent we end this thing as quickly as we can. We’ll 
be targets until we do.” Did I want more wine? I declined, and he refilled his glass. 
“Now, can we trustBelle ’s new AI?” 

“Yes,” I said. “We have a security system that will alert us if anyone so much as 
looks twice at the ship.” Nevertheless, I took an early transport up to Skydeck and 
spent the morning going over her, just to be on the safe side. I’d had enough surprises. 

The Meriwether platform is located in solar orbit around Meriwether A, which is the 
largest component of a triple star system. The other two suns, however, are so dim 
and so far away, they’re not distinguishable from distant stars. The station is, of 
course, an excavated asteroid. As we approached, lights came on, and a cheerful radio 
voice welcomed us. 

With the advent of the quantum drive, the outstations had all become essentially 
obsolete. A few were kept in operation to assist ultralong missions; but there weren’t 
many, and they were being maintained at a limited level. “Belle says Meriwether 
doesn’t get more than a half dozen missions a year,” I told Alex. 

“That can’t be enough to pay the upkeep,” he said. “I suspect they’ll be closing 
the place within a few years.” 

I put visuals on-screen. “It’s been here a long time.” 

“How oldis it?” 

“Seventeen hundred years. It goes back to Commonwealth days.” I was running 
data across the monitor. “Says here it was originally a naval base.” 

There’d been a period early in the history of the Commonwealth in which 
warfare had flared sporadically between Rimway and her nearest neighbors, Inikonda 
and Chao Ti. It had been a three-way conflict, never all-out, with occasional alliances 
between two of the warring parties against the third. 

The station continued transmitting.“ . . .to have you in the area. Please state 
your requirements.” The voice was male. Careful diction. Vague projection of 
superiority. Aristocratic. 

I submitted a list of needed supplies. Fuel. Water. We had plenty of food. 

“Very good,”said the station.“Follow the lights. You’ll be coming in through 
Bay Four.” 

“Thank you,” I said. 

“We’re pleased to help. Is there anything else?” 

Guide lamps came on around the curve of the rock. A portal was opening. Then 
more lights. 

I invited Alex to respond. He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I wonder if we could get 
some information about the history of the station.” 


“Of course. We have a fully automated gift shop with several applicable volumes 
and VRs.” 

“Excellent,” Alex said. “By the way, this is Chase Kolpath, and my name is Alex 
Benedict.” 

“I am pleased to meet you both.” 

“May I ask your name?” 

“George.” 

We docked. The portal closed, the bay pressurized, lights came on, doors opened, and 
robots began attaching fuel and water lines to the ship. We climbed out. I could see 
several other bays, all empty. It looked as if we were the only ones currently at the 
station. Ahead, deck lights came on and showed the way to an exit ramp. 

We turned into a brightly lighted carpeted sitting room. An avatar was waiting. 
He looked authoritative, official, competent.“Hello, Mr. Benedict,” he said 
cheerfully.“Ms. Kolpath. It’s good to see you. I am Captain Pinchot.” He was tall and 
trim, white-haired, with craggy features and a congenial smile. He wore a white 
uniform with an arm patch, epaulets, decorations, and a sash. The patch depicted a 
torch and a motto in unfamiliar characters. He smiled politely and steered us toward a 
group of three armchairs, centered around a dark-stained table. He waited until we 
were seated, then joined us.“We don’t get much company here anymore.” 

His feet didn’t quite touch the deck. The station AI needed adjustment. 

Panels opened in the table, and we were looking at two glasses of red wine and a 
bowl of assorted cheeses and fresh fruit.“Please, help yourselves.” 

“Thank you.” I picked up a slice of melon. It looked just off the farm, tasted that 
way as well, and I wondered how they managed it. 

“Your ship will be ready in one hour, ten minutes,”he said.“To get to the gift 
shop, simply go out the door, turn right, and follow the corridor. It’s about a three-
minute walk. Do you require any other assistance?” 

“No, thank you, Captain,” I said, trying the wine. 

“I regret I can’t join you.”The avatar graciously let me see that I’d gained an 
admirer. 

Alex crossed one leg over the other. “May I ask how old you are, Captain?” 

Pinchot was sitting ramrod straight.“The station has been here sixteen-hundred 
forty-one standard years.” 

“No. I meanyou, Captain. How long have you been the operating intelligence 
here?” 

The avatar tapped his index finger against his lips, apparently deep in thought.“I 
was installed in 1321 on your calendar.” A little more than a century ago.“I was an 


upgrade.” 

“Are you familiar with thePolaris incident? With the loss of that ship?” 

“You mean with the loss of the travelers aboard her?” 

“Yes. I see that you are.” 

“I’m familiar with the details.” 

“Captain, we’re trying to determine what might have happened.” 

“Excellent. I hope you succeed. It was, certainly, a puzzling incident.”He gazed 
around the room.“One of the search vessels stopped here shortly after it happened. 
I’m not sure what they expected to find.” 

Apparently, someone else had been thinking the way Alex had. 

“You know who the seven victims were?” Alex asked. “The ones who 
vanished?” 

“I know their names. And I knew one personally.” 

“Really,” I said. “Which one?” 

“Nancy White.” 

“You’re suggesting she visited here?” 

“Yes. Twice.” 

“Physically?” 

“Oh, yes. She sat right there where the young lady is.” 

“I see,” said Alex. “Did you by any chance see her againafter the incident?” 

“Afterthe incident? Oh, my, no.” 

“Did you have any visitors at all during the time period, say, three weeks on 

either side of the event?” 

“We had one ship during that span. Did you wish specifics?” 

“Yes, please.” 

We listened while Captain Pinchot gave us chapter and verse. The vessel had 
been returning from the Veiled Lady and docked seventeen days before thePolaris 
incident.“En route to Toxicon.” 

Alex looked thoughtful. “When was Nancy White here?” 

“In 1344. And again in 1362.” 

“Twice.” 


“Yes. She told me the first time that she would come back to see me again.” 

“She must have been quite young. The first time.” 

“She was about nineteen. Scarcely more than a child.”Something mournful had 

entered his aspect. 

“Tell us about it,” said Alex. 

“She and her father were passengers aboard theMilan,which was returning from 

a survey mission. The father was an astrophysicist.” 

Alex nodded. 

“He specialized in neutron star formation, although the mission was a routine 
survey effort.” 

“Just see what’s out there.” 

“Yes. There were six of them on board, not including the captain. Like 
thePolaris.They’d been out five months and had stretched their supplies until they 
were exhausted.” 

“So they stopped here before going on to Indigo,” I said. 

“Indigo was closed down at the time, Ms. Kolpath. Undergoing maintenance. 
This was all there was.” 

“What did you talk about?” I asked. “You and Nancy?” 

“Nothing of consequence. She was excited because she had never been off 
Rimway before, and her first flight had taken her so far.” 

“And she came back to see you years later. Why do you think she did that?” 

“Actually we maintained contact during the intervening years, and in fact right 
up until the time she boarded thePolaris.” 

“Really? She sent messages from Rimway?” 

“Oh, yes. Not often. But occasionally. We stayed in touch.”The avatar looked 
from Alex to me. He seemed lonely. 

“May I ask what you talked about?” 

“What she was doing with her life. Projects she was involved in. There were 
practical advantages for her. When her career as a popularizer of science began to 
take off, I served as a symbol for some of her presentations.” 

“A symbol?” 

“Yes. Sometimes she used me to represent an advanced life-form. Sometimes a 
competitor. Sometimes an indispensable friend. I served quite well. Would you care to 
watch one of the shows?” 


“Yes,” I said. “If you could make a copy available.” 
“We have several selections in the gift shop,”he said.“Priced quite reasonably.” 
It occurred to me that one of the books,Quantum Time, was dedicated to a 


Meriwether Pinchot. “That’s you, isn’t it?” 

“Yes.”There was no missing the note of pride in his voice. 

“Captain,” Alex said, “thePolaris passed close to this station during the final 

flight. She must have thought of you.” 

The avatar nodded.“Yes. In fact, I had two messages from her.” 

“I don’t suppose either of them shed light on what happened?” 

“Unfortunately not. The last time I heard from her was shortly after the event 
they went to observe. After the neutron star hit Delta Kay. She described it to me. 
Told me it was ‘compelling.’ That’s the word she used.Compelling.I would have 
thought witnessing the destruction of a sun called for a stronger reaction, but she was 
never much on hyperbole.” He looked momentarily wistful.“That was a good many 
hours before Madeleine English sent that last message.” 

“What else did she have to say?” 

“Nothing out of the ordinary. On the way out she’d told me how anxious she was 
to see the collision. To see the neutron star actually destroy Delta Karpis. She said 
she wished I could be there with her.” 

Alex looked at me. He was finished. “Captain,” I said, “thank you.” 

“It is my pleasure. I don’t often get to sit down with guests. People come so 
seldom, and they don’t have time to talk. Fill the tanks, recharge the generators, 
thank you and good-bye.” 

“Well, Captain,” I said. “I want you to know I’m pleased to have met you, and to 
have had a chance to spend a little time with you.” 

“Thank you, Ms. Kolpath.”He beamed. Even the uniform got brighter. 

It was good to be out of theBelle-Marie for a bit, and we decided to spend the night. 
There was a suite of rooms in an area the AI referred to as the Gallery. He showed us 
to them, chattering the whole way.“I have a wide choice of entertainment, if you like. 
Drama, athletic events, wild parties. Whatever you prefer. Or, we can simply sit and 
talk.” 

“Thanks, Captain,” I said. 

“The parties sound intriguing,” said Alex. 

“You may design whatever guests you wish. We also have an inventory of 
historic figures, if you’d like to participate in some stimulating conversations.” 

Tea with Julius Caesar. 


“The keys for your rooms are at the doors. Please be sure you return them 
before you leave.” 

The keys were remotes. Alex reached into a pocket, produced the one we’d 
found at Evergreen, and compared them. They didn’t look much alike. 

I collected mine, aimed it, and pressed theopen function. The door folded to one 
side, revealing a living room. Alex showed the duplicate to the avatar. “Captain,” he 
said, “sixty years ago, would this key have worked on this station?” 

The captain examined it and shook his head.“No,” he said.“Setting and design 
are quite different.” 

I stuck my head into my apartment. Lush curtains, polished furniture, chocolate 
on the coffee table. A large bed piled high with pillows. Private washroom and tub. 
Not bad. 

“If you elect to stay five days or more,”said the avatar,“the fifth night is free.” 

“It’s tempting,” said Alex, not meaning it. The weight of centuries and the sense 
of decline pressed on the place. Furthermore, Meriwether feltremote. OnBelle, we 
could be a couple hundred light-years from anybody else, but you didn’t notice it. In 
the outstation, though, you knew precisely where you were. The nearest person was 
one hell of a long way off, and you were conscious of every kilometer. Alex saw me 
grinning. “What?” he said. 

“I could use a good party.” 

Markop III was hardly worth a visit. But we went anyhow, because Alex insisted on 
being thorough. 

It was an attractive world, lots of blue water, fleecy white clouds, herds of big 
shaggy creatures that made great targets if you were into hunting. The weather 
through the temperate zones was almost balmy. 

If it was inviting, however, it was also potentially lethal. Unlike the vast majority 
of living worlds, its viruses and disease germs lovedHomo sapiens. So you couldn’t 
drop a group of people onto the surface and expect to retrieve them unless you took a 
lot of precautions. That fact certainly ruled out tourist spots, and with them, hotels. 

There was no talkative AI this time to tell us whether anything out of the 
ordinary had happened. Markop III had more land space than Rimway, 180 million 
square kilometers, much of it concealed by forest and jungle. 

There had been a settlement at one time. That was ancient history, in the 
extreme. Four thousand years ago. The records are sketchy on details, but the Bendi 
Imperium established a colony there, and it lasted about a century before the plagues 
began to get ahead of the medical people. They eventually gave up. 

We weren’t really equipped to do a major planetary scan. But we went into low 
orbit and took a long look. We spotted some ruins. A couple of long-dead cities, so 
thoroughly buried in jungle that no part of them was visible to the naked eye. In 
remote areas that might once have been farms, we saw walls and foundations. 


We spent three days in orbit. There was nothing that looked like a viable shelter. 

TWeNTY-THree 

There’ll always be a Rimway. 

—Heinz Boltmann 
(During an address to the Retired Officers’ 
Association, in the early days of the Confederacy, 
when survival seemed problematic.) 


Terranova, the new Earth, was well named. It orbited a nondescript orange star, it had 
a twenty-one-degree axial tilt, its gravity was a fraction of a percent below standard; it 
had an oversized airless moon, and there were a pair of continents that, seen from 
orbit, resembled Africa and the Americas. 

The most remarkable aspect of the planet was that terrestrial life-forms 
integrated easily with the biosystem. Tomatoes grew nicely. Cats chased the local 
equivalent of squirrels, and the temperate zones proved to be healthful places for 
human beings. 

But the critical piece of information for us was that the Mangles had a system of 
satellites in place, and it had been up and running over a century. Nobody came or 
went without their knowledge, and it didn’t take long to find out there had been no 
activity during the target time period. ThePolaris had not gone there. 

The only noteworthy event during our visit to Terranova occurred when a piece 
of rock got too close and had to be taken out by the Hazard Control System. The HCS 
consists of a black box mounted on the hull that detects and identifies incoming 
objects and coordinates the response, which is delivered by one or more of four 
particle-beam projectors. 

The rock at Terranova was strictly a one-beam operation. It was only the second 
time in my career that we actually used the device. 

Serendipity was the fourth world in the Gaspar system, and our last candidate. It was 
effectively a collage of desert broken by occasional patches of jungle near the poles. 
A few small seas were scattered across the surface, isolated from each other. The 
equatorial belt was boiling hot and bone-dry, its vegetation consisting mostly of 
purple scrub. Even the local wildlife avoided the area. 

Gaspar was a yellow-white class-F star. According to the data banks, the three 
inner worlds were all pretty thoroughly cooked. The sun was in an expansion cycle, 
getting hotter every year, and would soon burn off whatever life still clung to Gaspar 

IV. Serendipity.Soon seemed to be one of those cosmic terms, which really meant 
several hundred thousand years. 
The life-forms were big, primitive, hungry. Not dinosaurs, exactly. Not lizards at 
all. They were mostly oversized, warm-blooded, slow-moving behemoths. Their 
considerable bulk was favored by the low gravity, which was about three-quarters of 


a gee. 

The world was called Serendipity because everything had gone wrong on the 
discovery flight. The ship had been theKismet, a private vessel operated by fortune 
hunters functioning several decades before the Confederacy established guidelines for 
exploration. Like requiring a license before external life-forms could be introduced 
into a biosystem. 

A field team member was killed by one of the behemoths. Walked on, according 
to the most popular version of the story. Another had stepped in a hole and broken his 
leg. A marriage had disintegrated into a near-violent squabble. And the captain 
suffered a fatal heart attack the day after they arrived. In the midst of all that, 
theKismet ’s Armstrong engines died, so they had to be rescued. 

From orbit, we looked down at a surface that was dust brown and wrinkled, dried 
out, cracked, broken. Lots of places were emitting steam. Serendipity had the usual 
big moon that seems to be a requirement for large, land-based animals, and its skies 
were almost cloudless. It had a breathable atmosphere, and there were no pathogens 
known to be dangerous to humans. If you wanted to hide someone for a few weeks or 
months, this would be the perfect place. Except where would a hotel key fit in? 

“I was hoping we’d get lucky,” said Alex. 

“Doesn’t look like it. This place is primitive. Does anybody live here at all?” 

He grinned. “Would you?” 

“Not really.” 

“We’re here,” he said. “Might as well do the search. I’d guess we’re looking for 
a cluster of modules. Some sort of temporary shelter. Anything artificial.” He was 
visibly discouraged. 

I told Belle to run a planetwide scan. 

We passed over a miniscule sea and back over desert. The place was so desolate 
and forlorn that it had a kind of eerie beauty. When we crossed the terminator and 
slipped into the night, the ground occasionally glowed with ethereal fire. 

But there was nothing, no place, certainly no hotel, where anyone could have 
stashed visitors. 

After two days, Belle reported the scan complete.“Negative results,” she said.“I do 
not see anything artificial on the surface.” 

Alex grunted and closed his eyes. “No surprise.” 

“Time to go home,” I said. 

He took the key out of his pocket and stared at it.Up. Down. Lock. Unlock. 
Transfer funds. “Barber was willing to kill to keep its existence secret,” he said. 

Why? 


I looked down at the surface and thought how nothing would ever happen there. 
The oversized critters would continue to chase one another down while the climate 
kept getting hotter. By the time survival became impossible even for these hardy life-
forms, the human race would probably be gone, evolved into something else. It got 
me thinking about time, how it seems to move faster as you get older, how it runs at 
different rates in gravity fields or under acceleration. How we assume that the kind of 
world we live in is the status quo, the end point of history. There’ll always be a 
Rimway. 

“You know,” I said, “we may have made an assumption about the key.” 

An eyebrow went up. “Which is what?” 

“That it came from around 1365.” 

“Of course it did,” he said. “It was lying in the back of the shuttle.” 

“That doesn’t mean it belongs to that era.” I took the key from him and stared at 
it. “People have been barging around in the Veiled Lady for thousands of years.” 

“We’ve ruled out planetary surfaces and outstations,” Alex said. “And we’ve ruled 
out a rendezvous with another ship. What’s left?” 

Not much. “Somebody else’s outstation?” I suggested. 

He considered it. “Maybe. Maybe we’re looking for an artifact. Something left 
over that’s not in the record.” 

“It’s possible,” I said. “But it can’t be too old. If you’re going to use it to shelter 
people, even for a just a few days, it has to be capable of functioning.” 

“By which you mean it has to be able to hold a charge.” 

“Yes. That’s part of it.” 

“How old?” he asked. 

When did I become the professional on outstations? “I’m not an engineer, Alex. 
But I’d guess maybe two thousand years at the outside. Maybe not that long. Maybe 
not nearly that long.” 

We were moving back into daylight again, watching the sun climb above the arc 
of the planet. “Two thousand years,” he said. “That sounds like the Kang.” 

“It could be.” They’d been active in this region for a period of about twelve 
hundred years, beginning during the ninth millennium. After that they’d gone 
dormant. Only in the last century had the Kang begun showing some of their old 
vitality. “Belle,” I said, “has anyone other than ourselves and the Kang Republic been 
prominent in the exploration of the region that includes Delta Karpis? Out, say, to 
seventy light-years?” 

“The Alterians maintained a substantial presence, as did the Ioni.” 

“I’m talking about recent times. Within the last three millennia.” I realized what 


I’d said and must have grinned. 

“That’s good,” Alex said. “We’re thinking big.” 

“It appears,”Belle said,“that no one else has invested in the subject area. Other 
than the Commonwealth, of course.” The forerunner of the Confederacy. 

Alex poked a finger at the AI. “Belle,” he said, “what kind of character did the 
Kang use to represent their currency? During their period of ascendancy?” 

“There were many. Which currency, and during what era?” 

“Show us all of them.” 

The screen filled with symbols. Letters from various alphabets, ideographs, 
geometric figures. He looked at them, shook his head, and asked whether there were 
more. There were. 

It was in the second batch. The fifth symbol from the key. The rectangle. The 
press pad. “That looks like it,” he said. 

It was impossible to be certain, but it did seem to be the same character. And I 
thought, Finally! “Belle, please provide the position for any remnant outstation from 
the Kang era located within the subject area.” 

“Scanning, Chase.” 

Alex closed his eyes. 

“We lack data,”said Belle.“The locations of the Kang outstations were lost 
during the Pandemic revolutions. The stations themselves were long abandoned by 
the time the polity collapsed, and apparently no one cared enough to save the details. 
The locations of six are known, none of which is in the area of interest. But there were 
substantially more.” 

“But we don’t know where they were located.” 

“That is correct.” 

Serendipity is only twelve light-years from the place where the dwarf plowed into 
Delta Kay. Had Delta Kay still been a living star, it would have been at almost a right 
angle to the plane of the local solar system, bright and yellow in Serendipity’s 
northern skies. 

“Might as well go home,” said Alex. 

Belle stepped onto the bridge, blond and beautiful and wearing a workout suit. 
Her shirt saidANDIQUAR UNIVERSITY . This one, whose programing was virtually identical 
to the original’s, enjoyed making personal appearances. She shook her head, signaling 
that she wished she could help. 

It was out there somewhere, a forgotten station where thePolaris passengers had 
found refuge. But where? A sphere with a diameter of 120 light-years makes a pretty 
big search area. “Not so fast,” I said. “How did Maddy know it was there? If there is 


such a place, how’d they happen to find out about it?” 

“I have no idea,” said Alex. 

And I remembered Nancy White at the outstation, the fact of its existence borne 

away by the ages.“Given enough time,” she’d said,“it’s what happens to us all.” 

“I beg your pardon?” 

“Nancy White. She was especially interested in things that get abandoned. 

Worlds, cities, philosophies.Outstations. ” 

“She knew of one in this area?” 

“I don’t know. She does a show that includes a tour of one of them. Chai Ping, or 

Pong, or something like that.” I looked at Belle. 

“Checking,” Belle said. She leaned back against a bulkhead and let her gaze drop 
to the deck. 

Alex wandered over to the viewport and looked down into the darkness. “I can’t 

imagine,” he said, “that we ever thought they might have come here.” 

“Had to look, Alex. It was the only way to be sure.” 

Belle lifted her eyes.“I’ve reviewed the show in question. White locates Chai 

Pong at a point eleven hundred light-years from Delta Karpis.” 

Well out of range. 
Alex grumbled something I couldn’t make out. The air felt thick and heavy. 

“Maybe she found more than one.” 

“It’s possible,” I said. 

“If so, it might be in her work somewhere. In her commentaries, her essays, her 

notebooks. Maybe even in another of the shows.” 

“Starting a comprehensive review,”said Belle.“This will take a few minutes.” 

“Meantime,” said Alex, “there’s no point hanging around here.” 

“Let’s sit tight,” I said, “until we know which way we’ll be going.” 

Belle brightened and raised a fist in triumph.“It’s in her Daybook,”she said.“In a 
collection of ideas for essays and programs.” 

“What does it say?” asked Alex. 

“Are you familiar with Roman Hopkin?” 

“No.” 

“He’s a longtime friend of White’s. An historian who seems to have spent most 
of his time doing research for her. Anyhow, he discovered Chai Pong. In 1357.” 


TheDaybook appeared on-screen: 

3/11/1364 

Hopkin has found another. How many lost pieces of 
the Kang are out there? This one, he says, is near 
Baku Kon, in the dusty embrace, as he put it, of one of 
the gas giants in the system. (He always tends to 
overstate things.) He says it’s going down soon. Into 
the atmosphere. He thinks it’ll happen sometime during 
the next few centuries. It’s apparently been abandoned 
for two thousand years. He says it looks as if they 
cleared out in a hurry, and left everything. Ideal site for 
reclamation. It’s a microcosm of the Kang culture of the 
period. He’s going back in a month, and he promised I 
can go along. 

I read it several times. 

“Nancy White,”continued Belle,“is the only one of the Polarispassengers to do 
extensive off-world travel. She has, as you know, a reputation for a cosmic 
perspective. She is celebrated primarily because —” 

“Skip it, Belle. A Kang platform would have been a major discovery. Why didn’t 
we hear of it before?” 

“Hopkin was dead three months later.” 

“Another murder?” I asked. 

“It doesn’t seem so. He died trying to rescue a woman who was attempting to 
commit suicide from a skyway. She climbed over the railing. He tried to stop her, but 
she apparently put up a fight and took him with her.” 

“And Nancy White kept the second Kang discovery quiet,” I said. 

“Belle,” said Alex, “where’s Baku Kon?” 

A star map flashed onto one of the screens. Here was Delta Karpis. Andthere, at 
a range of forty-five light-years, a light blinked on and grew bright. “It would have 
been easy for them,” Alex said. 

Belle caught his eye.“Alex,” she said,“I have a transmission for you. From 
Jacob.” 

“From Jacob? Okay. Let’s see it.” 

She put it on-screen: 

Alex, I’ve received a message from one Cory Chalaba, 
who’s with the Evergreen Foundation. I take it you 
know her. She says the woman in the picture came by 
to look at the exhibit. She didn’t want to comment 
further except to ask me to relay the message and to 


get back to her. I assume you know what it means.” 

Teri Barber. 

Alex nodded. “She wants to know whether Barber might try to steal the artifact.” 

“What are you going to tell her?” I asked. 

“It should be safe enough. It’s been in that case for sixty years. Barber will 
realize that stealing it would only call attention to it. No, that’s not where the danger 
lies.” 

“You’re talking about Baku Kon?” 

“Yes, indeed. She’ll assume that we know. That we’ve figured it out.” 

“And she’ll be waiting for us when we get there.” 

He pushed back in his chair and folded his hands. “Wouldn’t you?” 

Baku Kon was a class-B blue-white star, surface temperature twenty-eight thousand 
degrees Kelvin. The catalog indicated it was relatively young, only 200 million years 
old. Like Sol, it had nine planets. And, as if it had been designed by a mathematician, 
the gas giants were the inner- and outermost, and the third, fourth, and fifth. 

The inner giant was in a marked elliptical orbit that would literally carry it 
through the sun’s atmosphere. The Kang weren’t going to put a station there. 

Generally, when you were deciding the location of an outstation, you would 
want to be close enough to the sun to be able to take advantage of the free energy it 
supplies, but you don’t want to have to put up a ton of shielding to protect yourself 
from radiation. 

“The third one,” I told Alex. 

Finding an outstation after it’s been shut down is not an afternoon at the beach. 
If it’s not lit up, if it’s not putting out a signal, you’ve no easy way to distinguish it 
from the thousands of other rocks that are usually orbiting a big world. So we had to 
start an elimination process. Pull in close to a candidate, look for antennas, dishes, 
collectors, whatever, cross it off the list, and move on to the next. You could be at it 
for a while. And we were. Days and nights began to run together. 

Life on board settled into a routine. Alex spent a lot of time reading White’s 
work, hoping to find something that Belle might have missed. “She tells stories here,” 
he said, “like being with her father on Rimway when she was a girl, and both moons 
lined up during a total solar eclipse. It happens at sporadic times, sometimes not for 
thousands of years. But this was 1338, and it was going to happen again just fourteen 
years later. They talked about where each of them would be when it did, and she said 
she wanted to be with him, made him promise. But he died two years early, and she 
describes watching the event alone, or at least watching it without him.” He nodded 
and took a sip from a coffee cup. 

“Hard to believe,” I said, “someone like that could be part of this.” 


“It would take somebody like that,” he said. 

We moved slowly through the field of orbiting rocks. They ranged in size from 
pebbles to moons twice the size of the big moon at home. The planets were recently 
formed, still in the process of clearing gas and assorted debris out of the 
neighborhood. Roman Hopkin had not been exaggerating when he described a dusty 
embrace. Belle did the examinations, of course, while we looked out the windows. 
She was far more efficient than we would have been, checking out whole clusters of 
the things simultaneously. Had it been necessary for Alex and me to do it, we’d still 
be there. 

It took just over a week. 

Belle woke me in the middle of the night to say she had a hit.“ Ninety-nine percent 
probability,” she added. It was a big, misshapen asteroid, craggy, broken, its surface 
covered with ridges and craters. Communication, sensing, and collection equipment 
bristled from its higher ground. It had at least six attitude thrusters. We could even see 
where a section had been cut away to provide easier ingress to docking bays. 

“Any sign of another ship?” I asked her. 

“Negative, Chase.”She didn’t add, didn’t need to, that this area would be easy to 
hide in. 

“Okay, Belle. I want you to position the ship one kilometer from the outstation. 
Match course and speed with it.” 

“Complying.” 

Outstations are designed so that arriving ships find the docks wide open. You 
just glide in, tie up, exit through a boarding tube, and you’re inside. That’s all there is 
to it. The way we did at Meriwether. 

But here we were looking at an asteroid that just hung there in the night. No 
doors had opened on our approach, no transmission informed us of the virtues of the 
Wong-Ti Restaurant, no lights came on. 

It appeared to be in tidal lock, always showing the same face to the big planet. 
The surface was a tangle of jagged rock and craters. I could see hatches scattered here 
and there. Most were designed to provide access to fields of sensors, antennas, 
telescopes, and/or collectors. That’s what you’d expect, of course. They were service 
hatches. I found what looked like a main access near the docking area. It would take 
us right into the concourse. 

We’d need extra air tanks. And a laser. In case the airlocks weren’t working. 

If Barber were there, she’d probably already been alerted that we’d arrived. So 
there was no reasonable chance of sneaking up on her at four in the morning. I 
decided to let Alex sleep, but I didn’t go back to my own cabin. If something 
happened, I wanted to be on the bridge. 

When Alex appeared a few hours later, his first question was whether I’d seen any 


sign of Barber. No, I said, everything’s quiet. 
“Good,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be okay.” 
I showed him the hatch I thought we should use. 
He frowned. “No.” 
“Why not? It’s ideal.” 
He indicated a service hatch buried among ridges in a remote antenna field. 

“Thatone,” he said. 
“Alex, that’s a long way from the docks. If we go in there, it’s going to be a 

major hike into the operating spaces.” 
“That’s exactly right.” 
“So why are we using it?” 
“Because if Barber’s here, she’ll think the same way you do. She’ll expect us to 

use the hatch by the docks.” 
He had a point. “Okay,” I said. “But that’s rough country. I’m not excited about 

taking the ship in close to those ridges.” 
“We’d have to jump, wouldn’t we?” 
“Yes, we would.” Maybe twenty meters or so. 
Unaccountably, he seemed to think that was good. “We’ll use the lander,” he 

said. “Or at least,I will.” 
“What do you mean? We’re both going over, right?” 
He delivered that familiar mischievous grin. 

TWeNTY-FOUr 

The power of illusion derives primarily from the fact that 
people are inclined to see what they expect to see. If an 
event is open to more than a single interpretation, be 
assured the audience will draw its conclusion ready-
made from its collective pocket. This is the simple truth 
at the heart of stage magic. And also of politics, 
religion, and ordinary human intercourse. 

—The Great Mannheim 

EXTRACTBELLE-MARIE /LANDER 


DAY 32 OF MISSION; 0717 HOURS 


LANDER:On my way, Chase. 
BELLE:Flight time will be four and a half minutes, Alex. 
LANDER:That checks with onboard data. 
BELLE:Be careful when you get out. Just step across to the airlock. You have the 


generator, right? 
LANDER:Yes, Chase, I have the generator. And the laser. 
BELLE:When you get inside, we’re going to lose radio contact. 

LANDER:I know. 

BELLE:That means you exercise extreme caution. 
LANDER:Chase, we’ve been over this. I’ll be careful. 
BELLE:Don’t forget you get back to the lander ninety minutes after arrival. If I don’t 


see you within that time, I’m coming over. 
LANDER:Have no fear, my pretty. I’ll come out and wave to you. 
BELLE:I don’t like this arrangement, Alex. 
LANDER:Just keep cool. Everything’s fine. Did you give the AI her directions? 
BELLE:Yes. Nobody’s going to get on board. If anyone tries, we’ll accelerate, and 

whoever’s out there will get tossed. 
LANDER:Very good. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but . . . 
BELLE: . . . Better safe than sorry.(Pause.) Target hatch is to starboard. 
LANDER:Pity we can’t open the access doors. Just takeBelle right in. 
BELLE:This place has had no power for centuries, Alex. 
LANDER:Okay. Coming up on it now. 
BELLE:Don’t forget the tether. 
LANDER:It’s not really a big deal. All I have to do is lean out the airlock and the 

hatch is right there. 
BELLE:Do me a favor and let’s do this the way we said we would. 
LANDER:You’ll make somebody a good aunt one day. 
BELLE:I already am somebody’s aunt. 
LANDER:I’m not surprised. 


BELLE:Alex, after you’re on the ground, Belle will pull the lander back a bit. 
LANDER:Okay. I’ve arrived. 

BELLE:Contact. 

LANDER:That’s what I said, Chase. Beginning depressurization. 
BELLE:I read you. Keep in mind there’ll be no artificial gravity on the rock. 


LANDER:I know. 

BELLE:And no maintenance for a long time. Watch what you grab hold of. 
LANDER:I always watch what I grab hold of. 
BELLE:Let’s try to stay serious, Alex. This thing has collectors, and it’s just barely 


possible it still has power somewhere. Stranger things have happened. 
LANDER:I hear you. 

BELLE:Anything metal is dangerous. 
LANDER:Stop worrying, Beautiful. You’re talking as if I’ve never done anything like 


this before. 
BELLE:It’s a dreary-looking place. 
LANDER:Hatch is open. I’m tethered and on my way. 
BELLE:You’ve got everything? 
LANDER:Would you please stop? 
BELLE:It’s the price you pay for leaving me behind. 
LANDER:I’m out of the lander. It’s a jump of about fifty centimeters. 

BELLE:Okay. 

LANDER:I think I can make it. 

BELLE:I hope so. 

LANDER:On the ground. Releasing tether. 
BELLE:Standing by to retract tether. 
LANDER:Approaching the entry hatch. 


BELLE:I can see you. 
LANDER:(Pause.)Chase, I’ve got the manual release. 
BELLE:Gently . . . It probably won’t work after all this time. 



LANDER:Wait one . . . No, I’m in business . . . It’s open. I’m in. 
BELLE:Very good, Alex. 
LANDER:I’m inside the airlock. Trying the inner hatch. 
BELLE:There may still be air pressure on the other side. 
LANDER:Apparently not. It’s opening up. 
BELLE:Keep in mind, you have a two-hour air supply. And I want to see you back at 


the airlock in ninety minutes. Okay? 
LANDER:I’m through. I’m in a tunnel, Chase. 
BELLE:Acknowledge my last. 

LANDER:What did you say? 

BELLE:Back in ninety minutes. 

LANDER:No problem. 

BELLE:Say it. I will be back within ninety minutes. 
LANDER:I will be back within ninety minutes. 
BELLE:What can you see? 

LANDER:Nothing but rock. 
BELLE:It figures. It’s a service hatch. Regular traffic would have been in and out 
through the docking areas. 
LANDER:The tunnel goes about twenty meters and then it curves. Can’t see what’s 

beyond. 
BELLE:Moving the lander. 
LANDER:Okay. I’ll see you in an hour and a half. 
BELLE:Alex, you’re starting to fade. 

TWeNTY-FiVe 

O Solitude! where are the charms 
That sages have seen in thy face? 


—William Cowper 

EXTRACT FROM ALEX BENEDICT’S 


JOURNALS 


I was, of course, in zero gravity, wearing grip shoes, but still half-adrift. I’ve never 
learned to walk properly with them. Experts say that a novice will be tempted to try to 
fly. In my case, at least, they’re wrong. I tend to be cautious. I don’t like being 
weightless, I get ill easily, and I always feel disoriented when it’s not entirely clear 
which way isdown. 

I came through the airlock wondering whether I’d find Teri Barber waiting for 
me with a bomb. But that was imagination run wild, and I knew it. Nevertheless, I 
breathed a sigh of relief when the inner hatch opened up, and I was looking down a 
long, empty corridor. 

I had a generator with me, so that, if the need arose, I could introduce some 
power into the place. I also had a black marker, to ensure I didn’t get lost, and a 
scrambler. I’ve never used one of the things, but I knew if Barber turned up, I’d have 
no trouble blasting away. 

The corridor was cut through rock. I turned on my wrist lamp and put it at its 
lowest setting, so it wasn’t much more than a soft glow. I kidded myself that I was less 
of a target that way. And I plunged ahead. Straight down the passageway for about 
twenty meters, then around a curve. Looking back on it now, I think continuing 
around that bend, convinced there was a psycho waiting for me somewhere in the 
place, was the gutsiest thing I’ve ever done. 

The walls were uniformly gray, flinty, reflective. Strips that had once provided 
lighting ran along the overhead and the tunnel floor. 

The tunnel curved and dipped and rose, so that you could seldom see more than 
twenty or thirty meters at a time. Ideal for an ambush. Don’t ask me why there were 
so many convolutions. It seemed to me that if you’re driving a passageway through 
rock, you go straight. But what do I know? 

It would have been nice to be able to hear. But, of course, someone could drop a 
ton of bricks in that vacuum, and you’d never know. I trailed one palm against the 
walls, on the theory that any movement in the tunnel might create a vibration that I 
could detect. But that was wishful thinking, and I knew it. 

I kept going. Past three or four doors that didn’t look promising so I didn’t try to 
open them. Past a couple of intersections, where, since the connecting tunnel seemed 
no more interesting than the one I was in, I stayed straight. Through two more 
hatches, both, I’m happy to report, open. 

Eventually the tunnel forked. I marked it and went right. 

I was beginning to relax a bit until I came around a curve, saw a light, and 
almost jumped out of the pressure suit. But it turned out to be a reflection. Off a sheet 
of metal. It turned out to be a door that had broken loose, probably from a cabinet. 

Another hatch lay ahead. That one was closed, and it didn’t respond when I tried 
to open it. Usually if that happens, it’s because there’s air pressure on the other side. 
In this case, itfeltas if the problem was simply a matter of age. I wrestled with it for a 


minute then finally cut my way through with the laser. 

The corridor continued on the other side. I passed a series of storage areas, 
filled with cabinets, cases, and crates. These were loaded with spare parts, bedding 
supplies, cable, hardware, electronic gear. When they left, the Kang had apparently 
not bothered to clear the station. It made me wonder whether the last ones out had 
realized nobody would be coming back. 

Some stuff was afloat. Benches, chairs, fastenings, rock-hard fabrics, 
accompanied by a fine mist of particles and gunk that might have been anything, the 
remnants of towels or clothing or filters or food. Everything had drifted against one 
wall, which must have marked the far side of the station’s orbit. 

I’d been in the passageway about three-quarters of an hour when I went through 
a final hatch and the stone walls ended. They were replaced by something that had 
been board or paneling at one time. It was rough, dry, hard, and all the color had 
drained from it. The floor was carpeted, but my grip shoes tore small pieces out of it. 
I approached a set of double doors, one of which was open. I passed through and was 
gratified to see that I’d arrived in the station proper. Doors, rather than hatches, 
began to appear. They were on both sides of the corridor. None was easy to open, but 
I forced my way past several of them. One room housed a workout area, with a 
treadmill, some bars, and a few other pieces of exercise gear. Another contained an 
empty pool, its diving board still in place. 

Two more rooms were filled with lockers and benches. Each had showers. 

I came to a staircase and drifted up to the next level, which opened out into a 
lobby. There was a long, curving counter on one side and a series of shops opposite. 
The shops were all empty shelves and tables. A wrench and a mallet were climbing 
one wall. They forget the tools and take the personal stuff. I’ve seen it before, and it’s 
as if people are being deliberately vindictive. Any of those shopkeepers could have 
achieved immortality by the simple expedient of leaving his name and his stock. 

Several passageways opened off the area. There were more shops and more 
doors. I wandered into an apartment. A worktable was anchored to the deck. Two 
chairs floated against a wall. And a cushion. Everything was stiff and dry. 

There were also shards of glass adrift. And an electronic instrument. A music 
player of some sort, I guessed. 

I went next door, where it was different. The furniture was bolted to the floor. 
Fabrics were old, but notancient.The room wasn’t exactly the Golambére, but it was 
livable. Had, in fact, been lived in within the recent past. A (relatively) modern chest 
of drawers stood in a corner. The only objects adrift were a coffee cup, a pen, and a 
doily. 

I walked over to the bureau and inspected it. There were four drawers, all empty. 
I cut it loose from its anchors and looked on the back. A plate saidMANUFACTURED BY 
CROSBY WORLDWIDE.In Standard characters. 

I opened my channel to Chase. “I don’t guess you can hear me, love,” I said, 
“but I think we found it. This is where they stayed.” 

I felt pretty good at that moment. End of the trail, at last. 


Chase, of course, didn’t respond. 

And now for the icing on the cake: All that remained was to hook up the 
generator, feed some power into the circuits, and watch my key work one of the locks. 

“You needn’t go any farther, Benedict.” The voice came out of my receiver, but I 
saw movement to my left in the doorway. “I really hoped you wouldn’t push so hard.” 
Another lamp blinked on. It blinded me, but I could see someone behind it. A woman. 

She was holding a military pistol, one of those things that blows large holes in 
walls. I’d gotten so caught up in the search that I’d put my scrambler into a pocket. 
Not that it would have made much difference against the cannon she was holding. 

“Turn off the lamp,” she said quietly. “That’s good. Now turn around slowly 
and don’t do anything that might surprise me. You understand what I’m saying?” She 
stood in the doorway, in a white pressure suit with a Confederacy patch on one 
shoulder, her face hidden by the helmet and the light. The weapon was in her left 

hand. 

“Yes,” I said. “I understand.” 

“Put your hands straight out where I can see them.” 

I complied. “How long have you been waiting here, Teri?” 

“Long enough.” 

I couldn’t get a good look at her. “Or should I sayAgnes?” 

I could hear her breathing over the radio link. “You have it all figured out, do 

you?” 
“No. I don’t. I don’t understand how Maddy English could resort to murder. You 

killed Taliaferro, didn’t you?” 

She didn’t answer. 

“He was going to talk to Chase. Warn her about you. Am I right?” 

“Yes.” 

“Was he going to tell her who he really was? Was he going to blow the whistle 

on the whole operation?” 

“He said no. He promised he wouldn’t do that. But I couldn’t trust him.” 

“Too much to lose.” 

“Yes. Everything to lose.” She edged into the room. “But there’s no way you can 

understand what I’m talking about.” 

“Try me.” 

“You know,Alex, I feel as if I’ve come to know you pretty well.” 


“You’re a mystery to me, Maddy.” 

“I guess.” She sounded wistful. “Listen, I had no wish to kill anyone.” 

“I know that. It’s why you warned Survey when you planted the bombs.” 

“Yes. That’s right. I tried to do the right thing. I wouldn’t have killed anybody if 

I could have avoided it. Especially not Jess. But too much was at stake.” 

“What was at stake, Maddy?” 

“You know what I am now.” 

“Yes. Forever twenty-five. Must be nice.” 

“It changes your perspective about a lot of things.” She said nothing for a long 

moment. Then: “Don’t misunderstand me, Alex. I won’t hesitate—” 

“Of course not. Still, it must have hurt when you pushed Tom Dunninger off the 
cliff at Wallaba Point.” 

“It wasn’t Tom Dunninger. It was Ed. Or maybe it wasn’t. I’m not sure anymore 

who it was.” 

“What happened?” 

“I didn’t push him.” 

“What happened, Maddy?” 

“IlovedEd. I would never have harmed him. Never.” 

“You loved him? Youbetrayedhim.” 

“You’re talking about Dunninger again. They were different people. At 

Walpurgis, when he was Eddie Crisp, I loved him. And before that, in Huntington, 
and before that, on Memory Isle. Appropriate spot, that was. Memory Isle.” 

“What happened to him?” I was thinking about Wallaba Point, but she 
answered a different question. 

“He wouldn’t give in. After they brought him here off thePolaris,to thisplace, he 
still wouldn’t give in.” 

“Wouldn’t agree to stop his work.” 

“It was too late by then anyway. He’d already done the final test. Taken the 
nanobots aboard.” 

“You mean injected into his own system?” 

“Yes. Of course. What else would I be talking about?” She used the weapon to 
wave me into the middle of the room. “They were here for almost four months. 
During that time they could see that he was getting progressively younger. When I got 
here, with theBabcock,to pick them up, I couldn’t believe what I saw.” 


“He was a young man.” 

“I wouldn’t go quite that far. But I’d never have recognized him.” 

“So Boland did a reconstruction job on him.” 

“Yes. Chek wiped his memories. Gave him a new personality. Eventually created 
a fresh identity and got him a job. We used to take turns watching him. To make sure 
he was okay.” 

“But you had to move him periodically. Right? Because he didn’t age.” 

“Yes. He didn’t understand that. He had false memories, implanted by Boland. 
But every eight years we had to do it again. Take his memories. Make him someone 
different.” 

“It must have been hard on him.” 

The light wavered. “We were killing him. Over and over. That’s what it is, when 
they do a wipe. Somebody else takes over your body. You’re gone.” 

“So you—” 

“He used to get flashbacks. He’d remember pieces of his former life. Sometimes 
as Tom Dunninger. Sometimes as one of theothers.By the time we were at Walpurgis, 
he was in his fourth incarnation. Flashbacks were coming more often, and I was 
trying to persuade Boland to take him in at Morton, put him with others who didn’t 
age and give him a permanent identity. But Dunninger kept reappearing. More and 
more often as time went by. Boland said no. He said a permanent identity would 
eventually restore him altogether.” 

“There was no satisfactory solution,” I said. 

“No.” 

“So you decided to push him off the summit at Wallaba Point.” 

“No. I told you I didn’t do that. I would never have done it. I loved him. 

“We used to go up there on summer evenings. We enjoyed the place. It made 
everything else seem unreal. Ed was good. And funny. And sometimes sad on 
occasions when he didn’t seem to know why. But he loved me. They were getting 
ready to move him again. Change his identity. People in Walpurgis were beginning to 
notice. Every time they did that, we had to start over. 

“Whenever Boland was done with him, he never remembered who I was. It was 
killing me, too. So I decided I was going to explain everything to him that night. Roll 
the dice. Persuade him to join us. Tell him the truth. And while I was doing it, up 
there on the brink—God, how could I have been so stupid?—Dunninger came back. 
Just like that, it was Dunninger looking at me out of Ed’s eyes, knowing who I was, 
knowing whohewas. And he hated me. Oh God, he hated me. 

“But he seemed to have forgotten where we were. He snarled at me and pushed 
me down. Then he turned to walk away and he tripped over something, a rock, a root, 
something.” Her voice caught. “He lost his balance.” Her voice shook and trailed 


off, and she stood a long time without moving. “I watched him flailing on the edge, 
watched him fall. And I never moved to help him.” 

“I’m sorry, Maddy.” 

“Yeah. I’m sorry, too. We’re all sorry.” 

I wondered whether tears were running down her cheeks. It sounded like it. 
Tears in a pressure suit are a major problem. 

“Once,” she said, “at Huntington, he met somebody else. And married her.” 

I watched her lower the pistol a few degrees, and I thought maybe it was over. 
That she’d seen what she had become, but when I took a step toward her, it came 
back up. I thought about trying to charge her, get to her while she was distracted, but 
the barrel never wavered. 

I asked what had happened to the other wife. 

“Jasmine. Who the hell would name their kidJasmine?” She was breathing 

heavily. “He didn’t like her anyhow. The marriage didn’t work.” 

“What happened?” 

“Chek came one night, and we just spirited him away. Jasmine never knew what 

happened. One day her husband was there, the next he was gone.” 

The muzzle looked very large. Keep her talking, I thought. “Why was he getting 
flashbacks? I thought personality change was permanent.” 

“It’s not supposed to happen. But Boland says, you put somebody under stress, 

and sometimes it does.” 

“Tell me about Shawn Walker.” 

“Walker was a son of a bitch.” 

“What did he do? Threaten to tell what he knew?” 

“He didn’t really understand what it was about, didn’t realize it was for him as 

well as for everybody else. All he saw was that he had a chance to make a killing. He 
knew we’d pay to keep him quiet. So he kept pushing. Pushed until we’d had enough.” 

“Did Taliaferro help with that?” 

“No.” All I could see was the pressure suit and the helmet. Her face was 
completely in shadow. “He didn’t have the stomach for it. Jess wanted him dead, just 
as I did, but he didn’t like the idea of having to do it.” 

“So you took care of it.” 

“Listen. I don’t need any moral lectures fromyou. You buy and sell the past. 
Make your money. You don’t care whether everything goes into private collections, 
whether people hoard it so they can sell it off down the line. All you care about is 
turning a profit. I did what had to be done. And I can tell you I’d have preferred to 


see you walk away from all this. But you just didn’t know when to let go.” 

I could feel the scrambler lying against my thigh. But it was down in a cargo 
pocket. It might as well have been in theBelle-Marie. “As soon as theSentineland the 
Rensilaerstarted back,” I said, “you sent your last message.” 

“Yes.” 

“And then you brought thePolarishere.” 

“Of course. We left in the late afternoon, ship’s time, and we were here early 
next morning. I even spent a couple of nights here before going back.” 

“Why’d you do it, Maddy?” 

“Why’d I do what?” 

“The wholePolaristhing. You were giving up who you were. Going into hiding 
for a lifetime. Was it that they promised to make you young again?” 

She kept the lamp pointed at my eyes. “I think it’s time to end this. It’s getting up 
to an hour and a half since you came down here, and your buddy will be getting 
antsy. I want to be out at the airlock when she shows up. To say hello.” 

“You were listening—” 

“Of course I was.” 

“So you’re going to have to kill two more people.” 

“As soon as she sticks her face in the hatch. I’ll make it quick. Like you. She 
won’t even know I’m there.” Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Good-bye, Alex,” 
she said. “Nothing personal.” 

TWeNTY-SiX 

Reach out, Herman. Touch the stars. But not with your 
mind. Anyone can do that. Touch them with your hand. 

—Silas Chom, 
speaking to Herman Armstrong, inThe Big 
Downtown, a drama celebrating the invention of 
the Armstrong Drive. 


“Chase, where are you?” 

“She can’t hear you down here, Alex.” 

It must have been a nervous moment for him, but I had her in my sights and 
could have taken her out at any time. She was standing in the doorway, half-in, half-
out, paying no attention anywhere except to Alex. Completely fooled by a scripted 
conversation. The plan, of course, was to let her talk as long as she wanted. But 
obviously not to let her shoot anybody. 


I suspected she would not give up meekly, and she had the pistol. If I told her to 
put it down, she could keep it trained on him, and we’d have a standoff. So I decided 
to go the safe route. Shoot first, talk to her later. 

I aimed and fired. Scramblers, of course, are not lethal. There are some people 
who say that’s their drawback. Maddy gasped, and her lights went out. The pistol 
drifted away from her, and she just hung there, locked to the deck by her grip shoes. 

Alex took a deep breath. “Chase,” he said, “where’ve you been?” 

“Been right here,” I said. “The whole time.” I pushed past the woman into the 

room. She swayed. 

“I was afraid maybe you got lost.” 

I took her pistol and put it in my belt. Then I slipped the scrambler into a pocket. 

“I was behind you the whole way, Big Guy.” 

“I’m glad.” 

I put my lamp up close to her helmet. “Is it really Maddy? How can it be?” I was 

looking at Teri Barber. 

“Yeah, it is.” 

“Incredible. I hope I look that good at a hundred.” 

“She’s not quite that old.” 

We stood quietly, trying to absorb the reality of the moment. “How did you 

know?” 

“I didn’t, for certain. But I couldn’t think of any scenario that would account for 
three women, Barber, Shanley, and Maddy, who looked so much alike. And the fact 
that Kiernan looked like Taliaferro, and Eddie Crisp resembled a young Dunninger. 

Even parents and their kids don’t look that much alike.” 

“They could have been clones.” 

“Not this bunch. Maddy, maybe. The others? There was no record of any clones. 
And anyhow, they were population-control types. Opposed on principle to cloning 
except in special cases.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t imagine any reason for them 
to do that.” 

“So you decided Dunninger had already achieved his breakthrough—” 

“—And that it did more than extend life. It restored damage caused by the 

ageing process. Yes.” 

“So they’re all alive? Except Dunninger?” 

“And Taliaferro. Yes, I think so.” 

“And they’re at Morton College,” I said. 


“Very good, Chase. I don’t know whether they actually spend time there or not. 
But I don’t think there’s any question that’s their base.” 

“Margolis? Is he one of them? He didn’t look like anybody.” 

“I don’t think so. I think he’s just hired help.” 

I was shining my light around the room. Taking my first good look at the place 
we’d been searching for. “Taliaferro,” I said. “What happened to him? I mean, why’d 
he disappear?” 

“He benefited from Dunninger’s discovery, like the rest of them. Except a couple 
of years passed before they administered it to him. I assume Mendoza was handling 
that.” 

“Why would they wait?” 

“Probably because they wanted to keep Taliaferro in charge at Survey. Once he 
became like them, his ageing process would go into reverse. He’d start getting 
younger every day.” 

It was hard to swallow. “Alex,” I said, “I always understood age reversal was 
impossible.” 

“That’s what the experts say. Obviously, Dunninger, and maybe Mendoza, 
figured out a way.” 

I tied the generator into one of the circuits and adjusted the voltage. Alex hit the 
switch, and the lights came on. He took the key out of his pocket and handed it to me. 
“Do the honors,” he said. 

We went into the corridor, picked a closed door at random, aimed the remote, 
and pressed the button. Nothing happened, and we moved to the next door. “It’s 
here somewhere,” said Alex. 

It was at the far end of the hall. I will never forget watching a guide light activate 
while the door tried to swing inward, but it wouldn’t because it was wedged tight so 
Alex gave it a kick. That broke it open and a table lamp came on. Maddy’s apartment. 
“Congratulations,” I said. 

“Yes.” He was wearing a large smile. “We do seem to have done it, don’t we?” 

“And the rest of them stayed in these other units,” I said. 

Alex nodded. “I wonder what the mood was like.” 

I could hear Maddy breathing over her open channel. “So what’s next?” I asked. 

“We take Maddy back and figure out what we’re going to do with her. And then 

we’ll have a conversation with Everson.” 

“You think he’ll agree to that?” 

“Oh, yes,” Alex said. “In fact, I’ll be surprised if he’s not in touch as soon as he 


hears we’re back.” 

“Do we need to do anything else here?” 

“No. I think we should be heading out.” 

I looked down the corridor. Some of the lights were on, lending an appearance 
that was less romantic than it had been, and more dilapidated. I wondered what it had 
been like in its glory days, when the place was alive and the Kang were on the 
premises. What would a functioning AI from that era be worth? Which called to mind 
Alex’s idea about tracking ancient radio signals. 

Ah, well. Let’s stay with the business at hand. 

I could no longer hear Maddy breathing. She’d turned off the link. I slipped 
away from Alex and retreated down the corridor to the room in which we’d left her. 

She was gone. 

I let Alex know and checked the lobby. There was no sign of her. 

“You’ve got her pistol?” asked Alex. 

“Yes.” 

“Then it doesn’t matter.” 

The scrambler should have put her down for thirty minutes or so. We’d been 
gone less than ten. “Maybe her body is more resistant than normal,” he said. 

Oh, damn. I should have realized. “It’s the pressure suit. It would have shielded 
her.” 

Alex made an irritated noise deep in his throat. “Well, we got what we came for. 
Let’s head out.” 

“And quickly,” I said. 

He picked up on my sense of urgency, asked no questions, and we hustled out of 
the lobby and back down the passageway. It was about three kilometers out to the 
airlock. That was not good news. I assumed that since we hadn’t seen Maddy’s ship, 
she’d been able to get the docking area working, and that was where she was moored. 
Docking areas are always close to the living spaces. She would get to her ship long 
before we could reach ours. It didn’t help that Alex wasn’t the quickest creature on 
two feet. 

“I’m going ahead,” I told him. “We need to secureBelle. ” I charged through the 
tunnel, wishing I’d kept in better shape. 

Noncombat vessels aren’t armed, in the normal sense of the word. But they do 
carry the HCS, with its particle beam deflectors. The system is activated 
automatically when a rock approaches on a threatening vector, as had happened to us 
at Terranova. But it had parameters, preventing it from firing at an approaching 
vessel. There was, however, nothing to stop Maddy from rewriting the parameters. 


She’d have to do that physically, have to poke the change in. That was a safety 
feature, to avoid inadvertent firing at the wrong target. But she’d only need a couple 
of minutes. Once she’d done that, she could blastBelle and leave us stranded. 

It’s hard to run in a pressure suit. In zero gee. In a tunnel. Every time the tunnel 
turned, I hoped maybe I’d see her ahead, but I knew that wasn’t likely. And sure 
enough the passageway stayed dark and empty. Finally, gasping for breath, I was 
tumbling through the airlock, and there was the lander, about fifty meters overhead, 
above a field of elevated power collectors. I opened a channel to Belle. 

“Hello, Chase,”she said. 

“Belle, are you okay?” 

“I’m fine, thank you. How areyoudoing?” 

“Never mind that. Do you see any other ship?” 

“Yes. There’s one approaching from the port quarter.” 

I looked and saw a cluster of lights above the horizon. Growing brighter. I’d 
been wrong. She hadn’t docked, but had succeeded in keeping her ship hidden among 
the orbiting debris. Now it was coming to pick her up. 

The AI in the lander had been namedGabe, after Alex’s uncle. “Gabe,” I said, “I 
need the lander. Bring it in close.” 

The station hatch was in a narrow gully, but the primary hazard to the spacecraft 
was the field of antennas surrounding it. Gabe eased the lander down among them. 

“Could you hustle it up a bit, please?” 

“The terrain in which you are located—” 

“—I know that, Gabe. But we don’t have time at the moment for safety first.” 

He made a noise that sounded like disapproval but brought the lander in quickly. 
I got in, and we made for the oncoming ship. 

The gas giant floated on the opposite side of the sky. It was sludge brown, with no 
features whatever except a disturbance of some sort in the northern hemisphere. 
Probably a storm. I could see several inner moons, all crescents. 

The planet and its satellites cast an eerie glow across the chopped surface of the 
asteroid. I saw Maddy, standing atop a ridge, watching her ship approach. I could 
make out Bollinger thrusters, and a boxy bridge. It was a Chesapeake, probably a 190. 
A yacht, really, a dual hull, reduced-mass luxury runabout designed exclusively to 
travel among ports. It wasn’t intended for use elsewhere. Which was why Maddy had 
to bring it in close to board: It had no lander. Her back was turned to me, and she was 
utterly exposed. Whatever she might have been sixty years ago, she was homicidal 
now. I’d left the lander’s hatch open, and I thought seriously about using her own 
pistol to take her out. To finish it. The scrambler wouldn’t be adequate at this range, 
and if I tried to move in close enough to use it, she’d spot me. And the truth was I 
didn’t know whether she had a second weapon available. I didn’t want to take any 


more risks. Or maybe I just wanted to kill her and be done with it. I don’t know. 

In any case I got as far as leaning out the hatch and drawing a bead on her. But I 
couldn’t bring myself to do it. I remembered lecturing Alex years before during the 
Sim business when he had a helpless Mute ship in his sights and was about to pull the 
trigger on them. 

So I let her be. Instead, I arced around and came in over the Chesapeake. The 
area where Maddy was waiting was well off to one side of a collector array. It was 
relatively flat, and there was room for the Chesapeake to descend. 

Its thrusters were firing, moving it in closer to Maddy, lining it up, and slowing 
it almost to a stop. The ship’s hatch began to open. 

At that moment she spotted me. But I wasn’t interested in her just then. I was 
looking for the HCS, specifically the controller, the black box, without which the 
particle beams were useless. I spotted it as the ship snuggled in beside her. It was red 
and white, located on the hull just forward of the bridge. 

Alex’s voice broke over the link:“Chase, where are you?” 

“Back in a minute,” I said. “Keep in mind she’s listening.” 

He spoke again, but this time not to me:“Maddy, give it up. Come back with us. 
You need help.” 

The Chesapeake drew abreast of Maddy, and she scrambled inside. But that was 
okay. I was within can’t-miss range. I leaned out the hatch, aimed at the black box, 
and pulled the trigger. “Bang,” I said. 

It was an easy shot. The weapon bucked, there was a satisfying flare, and the 
black box disappeared in a belch of smoke. 

The Chesapeake lifted into the night. 

I was wondering about the extent of the damage as I put about and started back 
to pick up Alex.“I saw what happened,” he said. Then he was talking to the 
Chesapeake:“Maddy, are you okay? Do you need help?” 

Thoughtful, considering that she’d tried to bushwhack us. 

She didn’t answer. “She might just want to get clear,” I told him. 

Then I got two voices at once: Gabe and Alex both yelled at me to look out. 

The Chesapeake was diving on me, trying to ram. I guessed that settled any 
questions about Maddy’s state of mind. I swerved to starboard. 

Even though the lander is far slower, it’s much more maneuverable than a ship, 
even a small one like the Chesapeake. She made a second pass before I got back to 
the airlock where Alex waited, but she never had a good shot at me. I took it down 
among the antennas, and she backed off. 

Alex looked dismayed as he climbed in. “So what do we do now?” he asked. 


“She’s not going to let us ride the lander out toBelle, ” I said. 

“So okay. We bring the ship here. In tight.” 

I opened a channel to Belle and got a surge of static. Switched off and tried 

again. “She’s jamming us,” I said. 

“Can she do that?” 

“She’s doing it.” 

We could see her, a group of five lights now, just off the rim of the gas giant. 

Waiting. 

“If she tries to ram us, isn’t she risking serious damage herself?” 

“Not if she does it right. It wouldn’t take a whole lot to punch a hole in the 

lander.” I glanced around the cabin. It looked suddenly fragile. 

I turned the engine off. 

Alex had removed his helmet. Now he reached for it and seemed to be 
considering putting it back on. “I have an idea,” he said. “The windows are polarized, 
so she won’t be able to see into the cabin. She won’t know what’s in here. We’ve got 
a whole station at our disposal. How about we make a bomb, put it on board the 
lander, and let her ramthat? ” 

“That’s a good idea. Great idea.” 

“Do you know how to make a bomb, Chase?” 

“No. I haven’t a clue. You?” 

“Not really.” 

He went back on the circuit, hoping to talk with her. I guess he thought he might 
be able to cut a deal of some sort. But all channels were blocked. “We’ll just have to 
make a run for it,” he said. “She wasn’t able to get you a few minutes ago so maybe 
we’ll be all right.” 

“I was close to the ground. Not an easy target. Trying to get up toBelle is a 
different game altogether. It’s strictly desperation.” The temptation to say the hell 
with it and make a sudden move was strong. But it would get us killed.Belle, like the 
Chesapeake, was only a set of lights. In her case, there were six. She was directly 
overhead. 

“Does Belle actually have instructions to take off if Maddy were to try to 
board?” 

“Oh, yes. I wasn’t leaving that to chance.” 

“Good.” For a long minute he was quiet. His eyes drifted to the air tanks. 
Between the air supply in the lander and the spare tanks, we were good for a few 
more hours. “Damn it,” he said. “Let’s try it. Maybe we’ll catch her in the 


washroom.” 

“No. We won’t make it that way.” 

“You have a better idea?” 

“Yes,” I said. “I think I do. I like your bomb idea.” 

“But we don’t know how to make one. For that matter, there might not even be 

materials on the platform.” 

“There’s another possibility.” 

“What?” 

“First thing we have to do is get the spare air tanks out. We’re going to need 

them.” 

“And then—?” 

“We arrange things so that Maddy runs into a brick.” 

We put our helmets back on, got out of the lander, and climbed down into the station 
airlock. 

We shut off our radios so we couldn’t be overheard. Alex touched his helmet 
against mine so he could speak to me. “She can see us,” he said. 

“Doesn’t make any difference. She’ll know we have to try for the ship. Sooner or 
later.” 

The laser that Alex had brought was a household unit, a little hand-held device 
for a guy working at home, rather than the industrial strength I would have liked to 
have. But it was functional, and if it was a trifle short on power, it should nevertheless 
be adequate. 

The airlock hatches and bulkheads looked like steel. Probably made from iron 
mined on the asteroid itself. They would have been ideal for our purpose, but the 
metal was resistant to the laser. We could have cut through the hinges and freed the 
two hatches, but they were too big to get into the lander. 

We’d have to load up with ordinary rock. 

Alex signaled: You cut, and I’ll haul. 

I shook my head no. We needed to keep an eye on Maddy, so she didn’t slip 
down and seize the lander while we were preoccupied. I indicated I’d do the first 
round of work, and he should go back and keep watch. 

The work was easy. Just cut a large slab of rock, then haul it out to the airlock. 
Even that part of things, in zero gee, was simple enough. After a half hour or so, we 
switched. 

I moved the lander directly over the airlock to block Maddy’s view of what we 
were doing. I measured the dimensions of the lander’s hatch. It was smaller than I’d 


remembered, about three-quarters my height. Width was shoulder to wrist. 

I ripped off one of the seat covers and moved the backs of the seats down. That 
would make it easier to load the cabin. The windows protected against outside glare, 
so Maddy wouldn’t be able to see who, or what, was in the cabin. 

I picked up one of the pieces of rock that I’d stowed just the other side of the 
airlock, put the seat cover over it as an extra precaution, floated it out to the lander, 
and loaded it into the cabin. Alex was bringing up more chunks, but I could see the 
doubtful expression on his face. He was wondering whether it would really work, 
because all the rock didn’t weigh anything. That was true. The weight was gone, but 
it retained its mass. It would resist getting shoved in a new direction. 

I started getting warning beeps from my suit’s life-support system. Time to 
switch to fresh air tanks. We had another two sets for each of us, four more hours 
apiece. And it occurred to me that we would have to be done and back insideBelle by 
then, since we were not going to have the lander at the end of the operation. At least 
not if everything went according to plan. 

We loaded the rock. The warning lamp on the laser began to blink, but we kept 
working until it gave out. The last piece was too big to fit into a cabin already filled, 
so we put it in the cargo hold. Acceleration was going to be pretty slow, but Maddy 
wouldn’t have a lot of time to think about it. 

When we were ready to launch, Alex made a show of opening the hatch and getting 
in. But we kept the lander airlock turned away from Maddy’s telescopes, so she had 
no way of knowing what was actually happening. To her it must have seemed we 
were just going to roll the dice. 

Alex slipped back out of the spacecraft, kept down as best he could, and went 
back into the tunnel. Then it was my turn. I stood at the lander’s hatch, my head 
sticking up so Maddy could see me. I ducked as I normally do and climbed aboard. 
Then it got complicated. I closed the hatch, pressurized the cabin, and, when I could 
take off my helmet to speak, I instructed Gabe to start the engine after I got out and 
rendezvoused withBelle. 

“Best approach comes if I leave in six minutes,”he said. 

“Okay. Do it.” It occurred to me that I should take out some insurance, so I gave 
Gabe a final instruction. Then I put my helmet back on and started depressurization. I 
also turned off the lander’s lights in what was supposed to look like part of an effort 
to sneak past Maddy’s watchful eye. 

My conscience, which I usually try to keep under control, reminded me I was 
abandoning Gabe. I know AIs are not sentient, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that. 
I whispered a goodbye that he couldn’t hear. 

When I was able to open up, I slipped out, closed the door, and joined Alex in 
the tunnel. 

A minute or two later, the lander lifted away. 

Alex touched his helmet to mine. “Good luck,” he said, keeping his voice low as 


if even there, inside the rock, with the radio links turned off, Maddy might hear us. 

The jamming stopped. She’d spotted the lander and figured she had us now. I 
half expected her to say something, some final expression of regret, or maybe a taunt. 
But there was nothing. 

Our pressure suits were white, so they didn’t provide much camouflage. 
Nevertheless, we had to know what was happening, so I edged out close to the airlock 
hatch and took a look. The lander was ascending slowly, trying to accelerate with its 
load of slabs. I hoped that Maddy was too emotionally played out to notice that it was 
struggling. But it was moving away from the surface, ascending to an uncertain 
rendezvous with theBelle-Marie. 

For a long minute I couldn’t find the Chesapeake. But then it passed across one 
of the moons. I was able to follow it, nothing more than a cluster of lights, moving 
through the night, curving in, descending, gliding across the barren moonscape. 

It was coming. 

Alex tugged at my leg. What was happening? We still couldn’t talk, especially at 
that moment. I tried to signal with my hands that she was on her way. Taking the bait. 

The Chesapeake came close enough that I could see her clearly, burnt orange in 
the ghastly light. The twin hulls looked like missiles riding slowly beneath the stars. 
Her attitude thrusters fired once, twice, lining her up, then she made a final 
adjustment and began to accelerate. 

Here we go, I thought. 

But no. She was slowing down again. 

Alex’s helmet touched mine. He was up beside me now. “She’s thinking it over,” 
he said. 

If she took too long, if the lander actually reachedBelle, we were dead. 

He was baring his teeth. “Look at her!” The Chesapeake was still tracking the 
lander, still closing, but still slowing down. “Maybe she’s figured it out.” 

“She’s wondering whether she can do it without sustaining major damage 
herself.” I opened my channel to the lander and spoke one word, trying to disguise my 
voice as something else.Anything else. “Blip,” I said. Then I shut it down again. 

Gabe, using my voice, said,“We’re right here, you dumb bitch. If you have the 
guts.” 

For several seconds the tableau remained virtually unchanged. The lander 
struggled to gain altitude. And then the Chesapeake fired its main engine and lurched 
ahead. 

Maddy knew that if she hit the lander too hard, there was a possibility of an 
explosion. Nevertheless she continued to accelerate, raced across a range of about six 
hundred meters, and blasted into the smaller vehicle, knocking it sideways. But the 
Chesapeake literally bounced off. The lander’s engines erupted in a fireball. 


The Chesapeake went spinning toward the east. 

We scrambled out onto the surface. Alex had hold of one of my arms, a death 
grip. “What do you think?” he asked. 

“Don’t know.” 

The starship gradually faded into the night. 

We waited. 

A star appeared where it had been. It expanded, burned brightly for a minute or 
so, faded, and vanished. 

TWeNTY-SeVeN 

We are all transients. None of us is any more than a 

visitor who has dropped by for coffee and a few 

minutes’ conversation. Then it’s out the door and don’t 

let the damp in. 

—Margo Chen,The Toxicon Chronicles 

I don’t know how Tab Everson arranged to be informed about us, but we were still 
fourteen hours out of Rimway when Belle reported we had a transmission from him. 
(We’d arrived back home well off target and had been inbound by then almost three 
days.) 

I took a longer look at him this time. Black beard, gray eyes, the mien of a young 
and gifted scholar. We were still too far out for a meaningful face-to-face, so all we 
had was a recording.“Alex,” he said,“I’m glad you got back safely. It’s important that 
we talk. I’ll be waiting at Skydeck. Please take no action until we’ve had a chance to 
discuss things. I beg you.” 

That wasn’t the kind of language a young man uses. “He knows the cat’s out of 
the bag,” said Alex. 

“You want me to contact Fenn? Have him arrange an escort for us?” 

He’d been reading. It was a novel, and I wondered how long it had been since I’d 
seen him read anything other thanPolaris -related stuff. “No,” he said. “I don’t think 
we need worry about our safety.” 

“Why do you think that?” 

“For one thing, he doesn’t know what kind of information we’ve already given 
Fenn.” 

I was trying to figure out who he was. Since Maddy had turned up looking 
twenty-five, I assumed Everson was also one of thePolaris passengers. But which? I 
tried to imagine what Everson would look like after another thirty or forty years. If he 


were aging normally. But none of the other passengers looked remotely like Tab 
Everson. Boland had been more handsome; Urquhart bigger with more presence; 
Mendoza was shorter and more intense. 

And that left only— 

“That’s right,” Alex said. “That’s exactly who he is.” He scribbled some notes 
onto a pad, studied them, changed his mind and struck something out, and finally 
looked satisfied. “Belle,” he said. “Reply for Everson.” 

“Ready.” 

“Mr. Everson, we’ll be weary on arrival and in no condition to carry on a 
discussion. I’ll be happy to talk with you. But not at Skydeck. I’d like you, and the 
others, to come by my office tomorrow, nine o’clock sharp. I don’t need to tell you 
that if you’re unresponsive, I’ll have to consider my options.” 

Despite my qualms, we abandoned our false identities and the town house and went 
directly to Andiquar. Alex was reassuring, but I thought we were putting ourselves at 
risk. He invited me to stay over at the country house, and I agreed and took one of the 
guest rooms. 

We had a leisurely breakfast in the morning. By eight o’clock, Alex had drifted 
into the back somewhere, and I was in the office, utterly unable to concentrate on 
anything. At nine, a skimmer appeared overhead, hovered for a few moments, and 
descended onto the pad. 

Four people got out. Everson, two other men, and a woman. 

Ordinarily I’d have gone to the door and met them at the front of the house, but 
in this case I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t shoot the first person they saw. I notified 
Alex. 

He was at the door talking to them when I arrived. All looked as if they were in 
their twenties. Everson was talking about “difficulties encountered throughout the 
entire process, absolutely unavoidable.” He wished things might have gone otherwise. 
Alex smiled coldly and turned to me. “Chase,” he said, “I’d like to introduce 
Professor Martin Klassner.” 

I’d known it was coming, of course, but still, seeing the reality was something of 
a shock. Old and dying in 1365, his brain damaged by Bentwood’s, this was the man 
they’d suspected might not survive the flight. He stood before me like a young lion, 
watching me curiously. He was taller than he’d seemed on thePolaris. 

I’d spent most of the last few weeks building resentment against the people 
who’d been trying to kill us. And most of the last few days, since seeing Maddy, 
trying to digest the reality of age reversal. And here they were. The legendary 
passengers of the lost flight. 

Nancy White was tall and elegant. Distant now, not at all like the figure who’d 
charmed everyone with her science chats. Her hair, which had been brown at the time 
of thePolaris, was blond. She was dressed casually, trying hard to look relaxed and 
confident. 


And Councillor Urquhart. Once one of the seven most powerful people on the 
planet. This version had red hair and was so young it was barely possible to see the 
great man concealed within the trim youth. I couldn’t believe it was actually him. He 
looked barely twenty. But the amiable expression belonged to the older man, the 
Defender of the Afflicted. He’d lost most of the bearing he’d possessed during his 
political years. Can’t really give the impression of wisdom andgravitas when you 
look just out of school. 

And Chek Boland. He could have been a leading man. His hair had gone from 
black to blond, but there was no mistaking the classic features and the dark eyes. 

Mendoza was missing. 

I pulled my attention back to Klassner. “Good morning, Professor,” I said, 
without offering my hand. 

He took a deep breath. “I think I understand how you feel. I’m sorry.” 

Itwas they. No question. In the prime of their lives, apparently. Young and 
strong, as people are before gravity sets in. 

Alex steered them into the living room, where we’d have more space. Please 
make yourselves comfortable. I’d left the door to the office open purposely. We’d 
moved the display case so that Maddy’s jacket was visible. Not prominently 
displayed, but set in a way that visitors could not miss it. Klassner saw it, nodded as if 
some great truth had just been revealed, and took a seat by the window. He checked 
his wrist, probably assuring himself that we weren’t running a recording system. It 
struck me that, in this most extraordinary of meetings, we nevertheless retained the 
usual social niceties. Could we get anyone something to drink? Did you have any 
problem finding us? You don’t look entirely comfortable; would you care for a 
cushion? (That last was directed at Klassner, who chuckled and allowed as how, yes, 
he was not entirely at ease, but the furniture had nothing to do with it.) 

They passed on the refreshments. Everyone got more or less comfortable, and 
there was some clearing of throats and a couple of comments about what a nice place 
the country house was. 

“I expected one more,” said Alex. 

“Before we get to that,” said Klassner, “I wanted to ask about Maddy.” 

Their eyes met. “She’s dead,” Alex said. 

“She attacked you at the Akila?” 

“The Kang outstation? Yes, she did.” 

“I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “We’re sorry she did that. We’re sorry she’s been 
lost. We’d have prevented it if we could. The attack.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“I spoke with her when she came to me. She told me you’d found the key. I 
thought we were still safe. That you wouldn’t put it all together.” He smiled. Wearily. 


Regretfully. “I underestimated you.” 
It was hard to get used to. Thiskid, with the demeanor, not merely of a mature 

adult, but of anaccomplished one. 

“Why didn’t you stop her?” 

“How would you suggest I might have done that? She was a free agent.” 

“You also stood by while she killed Taliaferro.” 

That brought guilty glances from everyone. “We didn’t expect her to do that,” 

said Urquhart. “She was more desperate than we realized.” 

“And you knew she was trying to killus. She made three attempts. While you 
people did nothing.” 

“No.” Klassner’s face clouded. The others shook their heads. “We didn’t know. 
She didn’t tell us what she was doing. We had no way. She and Jess, we thought, 
were simply trying to find the lost key. Jess was our contact at that time. He thought 
there was really no problem, that she might have left the key at the outstation, that 
even if it was found, no one would understand the significance anyhow. Not after all 
this time. But Maddy was worried, so he tried to help her.” 

Well, I’ll confess I was a bit intimidated in the presence of a former councillor. 
But I wasn’t just going to sit there like an old shoe. “Come on,” I said, “she killed 
Shawn Walker, too. What’s the big surprise?” 

“Yes,” said White. “We knew that. After the fact. We wouldn’t have condoned 
it.” 

“Good. I’m glad to hear you think that was maybe a bit extreme. But I assume 
you weren’t too unhappy when it happened.” 

“That’s hardly fair.” White turned large, intelligent eyes on me. “There’s more to 
this than you realize, Chase.” 

“We’re not talkingfair, ” I said. “We’re talking about what actually happened.” 

Alex caught me with a glance, and I read the message: Let him handle it. 

“What did you do,” he asked, “when you found out what she’d done to Walker?” 

“I treated her,” said Boland. 

“Not a mind wipe.” 

“No. I didn’t think it was necessary.” 

“The treatment didn’t work,” I said. 

“Maddy was under a lot of pressure,” he continued. “But I thought she’d be 

okay.” 

“And you couldn’t very well turn her over to the authorities.” 

Klassner let his eyes slide shut. “No. We would have preferred to do that, but 


there was no way.” 

“And eventually she killed Taliaferro.” 

“That was a tragedy,” said Boland. “We didn’t think she was dangerous. Even 
afterward, we didn’t—Ididn’t, I’ll speak for myself here. Even after Jess died. I didn’t 
believe she’d killed him. She had no reason to.” 

“He was going to warn us,” said Alex. 

“Yes. But he hadn’t shared with us the information that she’d gone psychotic 
again. So we had no way of knowing what was happening. She told us Jess fell off the 
roof at the Archives because he was hurrying and was distracted.” 

“People have a habit of falling from things,” I said, “when Maddy’s in the 
neighborhood.” 

White’s eyes flashed. “I don’t believe she killed Tom. Thatwas an accident. She 
loved him. She’d have done anything for him.” 

“We didn’t know,” said Klassner, “that she’d gone after you. At the outstation. 
We were concerned she’d been emotionally affected by Jess’s death. When we went 
looking for her and couldn’t find her, we got worried. Then we found out 
thatMathilda was gone.” 

“Who’s Mathilda?” asked Alex. 

“Our ship. I assume you’ve seen it. It’s a Chesapeake.” 

“Itwas, ” I said, showing more satisfaction than was seemly, I guess. 

Urquhart was staring out at the woods. “I told you,” he said to Klassner, “it 
would be a mistake to come here.” He looked across at me. “We never condoned what 
Maddy did. We tried to stop her. We did everything we could. Why is that so hard to 
understand?” 

“No,” I said. “You never condoned it. But you knew. You knew, and you were 
secretly pleased to get Walker out of the way, without getting blood on your own 
hands. You probably knew Taliaferro was in danger. And if you didn’t know she was 
trying to kill us, you should have. You’re contemptible. All of you.” 

Urquhart’s jaw quivered. Klassner was nodding, yes, guilty as charged. White 
was looking at me, shaking her head, no, it’s wasn’t like that at all. 

“Professor,” Alex asked, “where is Mendoza?” 

Klassner was seated on the sofa, beside White. “Dead,” he said. “He’s been dead 
a long time.” 

“How’d he die?” 

“Not the way you think,” he said accusingly. “He died of heart failure. About 
nine years ago.” 

“Heart failure? Didn’t the process work on him?” 


“He never wanted it. Refused it.” He took a deep breath. 

“Why?” 

“He felt he’d betrayed Tom. He didn’t want to profit by it. Didn’t want to live 

with the knowledge of what he’d done.” 

“The rest of you seem to have adjusted pretty well.” 

Urquhart looked as if his patience was exhausted. “We don’t claim to be saints.” 

“Are there any others?” Alex asked. “Other than yourselves? Anyone else who 

knows about this? Any more immortals?” He let the word hang in air. 

“No,” said Klassner. “No one else knows the truth.” 

“And no one else has received the treatment?” 

“No. Warren was the only one who understood how to do it. And he swore, after 

us, no one else.” 

“Is the process on record somewhere? Do you know how it’s done?” 

“No. He destroyed everything.” 

Something on wings banged into a window and fluttered away. For a long time 

after that, no one spoke. 

“I suppose I should congratulate you,” Alex said, finally. 

The room remained quiet. 

“Why?” I asked. 

“They buried Dunninger’s work. Prevented its being used.” 

“They took it for themselves.” 

“No,” Boland said. His voice was simultaneously subdued and impassioned. 

“That was never our intention.” 

“It happened.” 

White held a hand up, fingers spread in defense. “It was too tempting,” she said. 

“To be young again. Forever. Who could resist that?” 

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” said Alex. “Nobody can say no. Other than, 
apparently, Mendoza.” 

I was getting annoyed. “You sound as if you think they did something 

admirable.” 

Alex took his time answering. “I’m not sure they didn’t.” 

“Oh, come on, Alex. They kidnapped Dunninger. They’re responsible, at least 

indirectly, for two murders.” I turned and looked at them. Klassner’s eyes never left 


me. Boland stared out the window, wishing he was somewhere else. White’s gaze had 
turned inward. Urquhart glowered, daring anyone to challenge him. “You’ve done all 
right for yourselves,” I continued, getting into a rhythm. “You grabbed the treatment 
that you denied everyone else. I’d say you haven’t done badly.” 

“Had we not intervened,” said Boland, “the population of Rimway would have 
doubled over the past sixty years. Earth would have over twenty billion people by 
now.” 

White got in: “Except that it wouldn’t. Earth doesn’t have the kind of resources 
to support a population anywhere close to that. So a lot of those people, millions of 
them, would have died. Of starvation. Or in wars over natural resources. Or disease. 
Governments would have collapsed. Most of the survivors would be living in 
misery.” 

“You don’tknow that,” I said. 

“Sure we do,” continued White, relentless. “The numbers tell the story. Food 
production, clean water, even living space. Energy. Medical care. It’s just not there 
for twenty-plus billion people. The same as it wouldn’t be for us if we had twice the 
population. Take the trouble to inform yourself, Chase.” 

“Damn you,” I said, “you’re taking millions of lives into your hands. What gave 
you the right to make that sort of decision?” 

“Nobody else was in a position to,” said Klassner. “Either we took it into our 
own hands, or it went by default in Dunninger’s direction.” 

“You couldn’t dissuade him?” said Alex. 

Klassner’s eyes closed. “No. ‘They’ll find a way.’ That was his mantra. ‘Give 
them the gift, and they’ll find a way.’ ” 

“There are other worlds,” I said. “Help was there if someone was willing to ask.” 

Urquhart snorted. “It would have been the same everywhere,” he said, in a rich 
baritone. “The tidal wave would fill all ports. It would have introduced such suffering 
and catastrophe as the human race has never seen.” 

Upstairs, as if right on schedule with all the talk about doom, a clock struck. 
Nine-thirty. 

I heard shouts outside. Kids playing. “Where did the money come from?” asked 
Alex. “It took considerable resources to pull this off.” 

Urquhart replied: “The Council has a number of discretionary funds. They can 
be accessed if the need is sufficiently great.” 

“So some of the councillors knew about this.” 

“That doesn’t necessarily follow. But yes, it was known on the Council. 
Although not by everyone.” 

“They thought you were doing the right thing.” 


“Mr. Benedict, they werehorrified by the possibility that this would get out.” 

“And they didn’t ask to share the secret?” 

“They didn’t know Dunninger had gotten as far as he had. And they certainly 
weren’t aware that the project would also produce a rejuvenation capability. We 
didn’t disabuse them.” 

“What kind of life span are you looking at?” I asked. “Is it indefinite?” 

“No,” said Boland. “We have parts, stem cells, nerve cells, with which the 
nanobots have limited capability.” 

“Barring accidents,” said Klassner, “Warren thought we’d live about nine 
hundred years.” 

“Our lives,” said White, “are not what they might appear to you. We had to 
abandon everything we cared about, including our families. Today, we can make no 
long-term commitments with anyone. We can establish no permanent relationship, 
take no mate, have no child. Do you understand what I’m saying?” 

Klassner folded his hands and pressed his lips against them, like a man in prayer. 
He confronted Alex. “Look, none of this matters at the moment. If you go to the 
authorities with this story, you’ll succeed in punishing us. But it will be the story of 
the age. And all the researchers will need is a blood sample from any of us, and 
they’ll be able to work out the secret. So the question now is, what do you and your 
associate plan to do?” 

What, indeed? 

It had been growing dark outside. Gathering clouds. Four lamps began to glow, 
one at either end of the sofa, one in a corner of the room, one on a table beside 
Urquhart. 

Klassner cleared his throat. Young or not, this was a man accustomed to having 
people pay attention when he spoke. “We were gratified that you did not immediately 
blow the whistle. That tells us you understand the consequences of a rash decision.” 

“It would do nothing for your reputation either, Professor.” 

“My reputation does not matter. We risked everything to make this work.” 

I sat staring at Maddy’s jacket. I thought about how sweet life was, how good 
young men and jelly donuts and ocean sunsets and night music and all-night parties 
are. What would happen to the way we live if the secret got out? 

Throughout the conversation I’d been trying to think of a compromise, a way to 
seize permanent youth and simultaneously persuade people to stop having children. 

It wouldn’t happen. 

“You don’t have to worry,” Alex said. “We’ll keep your secret.” 

You could hear everyone exhale. And I have to confess that at that moment I had 


no idea what the right course of action might be. But I was annoyed, at Alex, at 
Klassner, at all of them. They were starting to get up. Smiles were breaking out. “One 
second,” I said, and when I had their attention: “Alex doesn’t speak for me.” 

TWeNTY-eiGHT 

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, 
So do our minutes hasten to their end. 

—William Shakespeare 

I’d been sitting there wondering how Dunninger’s gift had changed them. 
Perspective. Empathy. A sense of proportion. What’s it like not to have to worry 
about getting old? To see other people as creatures of a day? 

It had begun to snow. Big wet flakes. No wind was blowing, and they were 
coming straight down. I wished for a blizzard big enough to bury the problem. 

All eyes were on me, and Klassner, his voice calm and reasonable, apologized 
that I had been overlooked. “Surely, Chase, you can see the wisdom of letting this go 
no farther.” 

It was hard to believe I was speaking to Martin Klassner, the cosmological giant 
of the previous century, reinvigorated, somehow returned to life and sitting in our 
living room. Not only because the event seemed biologically unlikely, but also 
because it was hard to believe such a man could have known about Maddy and not 
found a way to heal her. Or at least render her harmless. 

“I’m not sure I do,” I said. “You of all people,Martin, know what it is to be old. 
To watch the years pile up, and feel the first pains in joints and ligaments. To watch 
the outside world grow dim. You have it in your power to step in, to prevent people 
from being betrayed by their own bodies. And you’ve done nothing. For sixty years, 
you’ve not lifted a finger.” 

He started to speak, but I cut him off. “I know the arguments. I know what 
overpopulation means. If I didn’t realize it earlier, I certainly came to understand it 
these last few weeks. So we have an ethical dilemma. 

“You’ve withheld Tom Dunninger’s gift. No, don’t say anything for a moment. 
You and your friends would be in a far stronger position to bring up ethics had you 
not grabbed the opportunity for yourselves.” 

“That’s no reason,” rumbled Urquhart, “to compromise everything we’ve 
accomplished. Simply because we couldn’t resist the temptation. Our failure makes 
the point.” 

“You’re right. The issues are too serious for that. Alex has said he’ll keep your 
secret. But I won’t. I see no compelling reason to protect you.” 

“Then,” said Klassner, “you doom everybody.” 


“You have a tendency to overstate things, Martin. You’re in a position to stop 
the ageing process. Or not. Either way, as you would have it, people will die. In large 
numbers. 

“But if we make the treatment available,maybe we’ll learn to live with it. We 
survived the ice ages. And the Black Plague. And God knows how many wars. And 
thousands of years of political stupidity. We even picked a fight with the only other 
intelligent species we found. If we survived all that, we can survive this.” 

“You don’t know that’s so,” said White. “This is different.” 

“It’salways different. You know what’s wrong with you? The four of you? You 
give up too easily. You decide there’s a problem, and you think we have to arrange 
things so we don’t have to deal with it.” I looked over at Alex, whose face revealed 
nothing. “I say we put the Dunninger formula on the table where everybody can see 
it. And then we talk about it. Like adults.” 

“No,” said White. Her eyes radiated a hunted look. “You really don’t 
understand.” 

“No, I don’t. I can’t understand your giving in without a fight. I don’t want to 
live the rest of my life watching people die, knowing I had the means to save them.” 

Lines showed up around Boland’s eyes and mouth. He literally looked in pain. 

“I’ll go this far for you: We’ll be in touch with you within the next few days. 
We’ll arrange to have one of you donate a blood sample. We’ll get it analyzed and let 
the chips fall. I’ll say nothing about where I got it. And I’ll say nothing about you or 
thePolaris. You can keep your reputations intact, and you can go on living happily for 
the next thousand years or so. 

“Although I should tell you that if you’re as virtuous as you like to think, as I’d 
like to believe, you’ll reveal yourselves, admit to what you’ve done, and argue your 
case in the public forum.” 

It wasn’t what they were expecting. Alex frowned and shrugged. I hope you know 
what you’re doing. 

Well, it was, as they say, the old conversation stopper. One by one they got to 
their feet. Klassner hoped that after I had a chance to think things over, I’d reconsider. 
White took my hand, pressed it, and bit her lip. She was close to tears. 

Urquhart asked me not to do anything irrevocable until I’d had a chance to sleep 
on it. “When it starts,” Boland said, “when governments become oppressive about 
containing the birth rate, when we run out of places to live, when the first famines hit, 
it’s going to beyour fault.” 

They filed out, each of them sending silent signals to Alex, pleading with him, or 
directing him, to use his influence to get me to make sense. I watched them walk 
through the intensifying snow down to the pad and climb on board their skimmer. 
They didn’t look back. The doors swung shut, and the aircraft lifted into the sky and 
disappeared quickly into the storm. 


Alex asked me if I was okay. 

Actually, I wasn’t. I’d just made what might have been the biggest decision in 
human history, and I most definitely was not okay. 

“Nevertheless,” he said, “it was the right thing to do. We’ve no need of secret 

cabals.” 

“You voted with them,” I said. 

We were standing out on the deck, watching the snow splat against the windows. 
He put his palm against the glass, feeling the cold. “I know,” he said. “It was the 
easiest way out. The least painful. But you’re right. This needs to be in the open.” He 
kissed me. “I suspect, though, that we’re going to find it’s a mixed gift.” 

“Because we get too many people.” 

“That, too.” He lowered himself into one of the chairs and put his feet up. “We 
might discover that when life goes on indefinitely, it’s not quite—” He struggled for 

the word. “—Quite as fulfilling. As valuable.” 

Well, I thought that was nonsense, and I said so. 

He laughed. “You’re a sweetheart, Chase.” 

“Yeah. I know.” 

“How about we go out and get something to eat?” 

The storm was intensifying. We could no longer see the line of trees at the edge 

of the property. “Are you serious?” I said. “You want to go out inthis? ” 

“Why not?” 

“No,” I said. “Let’s eat here. It’s safer.” 

We had just finished when Jacob interrupted.“There is a news report that may be of 
interest,” he said.“Something exploded out over the ocean a few minutes ago. They 
don’t know what it is yet.” 

God help me, I knew right away. So did Alex. “How far out, Jacob?” he asked. 

“Fifty kilometers. Over the trench.”A deep part of the ocean.“The way they’re 
describing it, it must have been a pretty big blast.” 

Damn. 

“They’re saying no survivors.” 

ePiLOG 


True to the end. 

Whatever they used as an explosive device, it was pretty thorough. All the 
authorities ever found was a charred piece of one of the antigrav pods. 

The interest in thePolaris generated by the anniversary events and the attack at 
Survey had subsided. Everything went back to normal. 

We passed messages to several microbiologists that we had reason to believe that 
Dunninger had been on the right track. They assured us they’d look into it. 

Morton College is still in operation. The Lockhart Foundation, which specializes 
in education for genius-level types, has taken it over. 

I’ve always thought of that morning as if two separate conversations took place, one 
between Alex and the men, the other between Nancy White and me. 

She looked young and vibrant and, in some ways, more than human. Ordifferent 
from human. Maybe knowing you won’t grow old, at least for a very long time, does 
that for you, adds a certain sense of who and what you are, that you’ve stepped 
outside the ordinary run of mankind, and indeed of the natural world. Maybe at that 
point you become almost a neutral observer, sympathetic to humanity in the way that 
one might be sympathetic to a lost kitten, but nevertheless possessing the sure and 
certain knowledge that you aredifferent in kind, and not simply in degree. 

When the people you meet in daily life becometemporary, transient, their 
significance must necessarily lessen. Jiggle the equipment in Shawn Walker’s 
skimmer so that he goes into orbit, and what is lost? Only a few decades. In the short 
term, he was dead anyhow. Is that how it is? 

I’ve thought of it often, sitting on the big porch at the end of the day, before 
setting out for home. Nancy White was trying to tell me something that morning, 
something more than simply that she’d had to jettison everyone andeverything she 
knew and start life over. I think she was trying to underscore what Alex said later, 
that the treatment would have been, at best, a mixed gift. That she had become 
something else. 

Metahuman. The next stage. Whatever. Maybe it was the original Nancy White, 
locked up somewhere inside, trying to connect with me. 

You know about the cemetery at the edge of the woods. You can’t get a good look at 
it unless you go up to the fourth floor. But there has never been a day, since the visit 
from Klassner and the others, that I haven’t thought about it. When I come in each 
morning, dropping down past the trees, my eyes are drawn to it, to its pale white 
markers, and its stone figures. Last stop. Terminal City. I’m a little more conscious of 
it than I used to be. 

It reminds me every day of Klassner’s rejoinder when I told them I wasn’t going 
to sit on everything for them.Then you doom everybody. Over the top, I’d thought. 
People never really talk like that. And I’d assumed he meant Alex and me as well as 
the four of them, and the entire human race. But I don’t think that was it at all. We 
were in the office, and he was talking about the device they’d planted in the skimmer, 


that they planned to use if the meeting didn’t go well. 
It hadn’t gone well. 
“But I think we’ve answered one question,” said Alex. 
“And what’s that?” 
“Maddywas an aberration. The mere fact of having your life prolonged doesn’t 

cause you to become something other than human.” 
“—Because the more sensible thing for them to do would have been to blowus 

up—” 
“Absolutely. Instead they found an elegant solution to their problem.” 
“Elegant?You call committing suicide elegant?” 
He was grinning. Big, wide, ear-to-ear. “Are you sure they died?” 
“Alex,” I said, “thathad to be their skimmer. They never got back to Morton, and 

nobody else is missing.” 
He nodded at Maddy’s jacket. “Chase, don’t forget—these are the same people 
who disappeared out of the Polaris. ”