One in particular seemed to be paying her a great deal of attention. He tried to look as if he was not watching, quickly averting his gaze whenever she glanced in his direction. But to her trained eye it was all too obvious-he was watching.

He was a foul looking character. About five ten in height, he was at least a hundred pounds overweight. He wore a scraggly growth of beard, and his jumpsuit was soiled and worn. But what struck her most were his eyes. They were sharp and clear, almost calculating. Certainly not what one would expect in a ne'er-do- well of his apparent ilk.

What could she do? Should she ask one of the other passengers for help, or go straight to the Luna City police?

Neither course of action felt right. The other passengers would only think her a silly paranoid woman, and the police could do nothing until he had committed a crime. By then it might be too late.

Suddenly she realized what she had been thinking. With all her experience in security matters, and her extensive training in hand-to-hand combat, she should be able to take care of the assailant herself, no matter who he might be. It was the strange disappearances of the first two attackers that had so unnerved her.

She unstrapped and stood, then shuffled to the hatch behind a group of loud enlisted men and women. She could almost feel the civilian's gaze on her back. She wanted to turn and face him, to look him in the eyes and confront him, but she couldn't. Her best weapon was surprise. She had to keep him thinking she was not yet aware he was watching.

The hatch irised open and the passengers began filing out.

Susan's eyes were assaulted by brilliant light from beyond the hatch, and her sense of smell was assailed by an exotic mixture of odors. The smells of several different kinds of smoked drugs filled the air, as did the hint of a variety of alcoholic beverages and coffee. The noise level was nearly deafening: mumbles and shouts and laughing and backslapping, a multitude of languages and dialects mingling to make it almost impossible to identify any one.

She reached the hatch, stepped through, and the assault on her senses tripled in intensity. She was literally knocked back into the floater's passenger cabin by its force. It took nearly a quarter minute for her to regain her composure. When she finally did, she realized the passengers behind her had pushed past.

Stepping out into the corridor, she scanned it for the fat, bearded man. He was gone. The other two civilians were just disappearing around a bend in the corridor to her left, and the fat man was not with them.

She had lost him. Now he could be anywhere, waiting beyond any turn, crouching in any shadow.

Cursing under her breath, she turned and headed for the luggage claim area. She had handled it poorly-like a rank amateur. She should have followed him, turning hunter into hunted.

But it was too late. All she could do now was collect her luggage, then head for the Survey Service compound on the far side of Luna City.

Less than half an hour after the floater docked, Susan checked in at the Survey Service duty desk and was assigned a small transient apartment outside the compound. The apartment's furniture was worn and the small desk was fashioned of metal rather than wood, but the quarters were more than adequate.

As she entered, the phone chimed and a soft electronic voice spoke: "Two script messages for Captain Susan Tanner. Two script messages for Captain Susan Tann…"

"Display them," she said, putting her luggage down and turning toward where the lens cluster should have been. It was then she noticed that the screen was two-dimensional. The device was not a holo-phone.

Instantly, the first message appeared, glowing phosphor letters on the flat screen.

TO: SUSAN TANNER, CAPTAIN, FEDERATION FLEET

TEXT: WELCOME BACK TO LUNA CITY, SUSAN. I'M TAKING YOU TO DINNER TONIGHT, THEN TO THE BALLET, AND I WON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. I'LL PICK YOU UP AT 1830.

It would be good to see Bill again. She hadn't seen him since her last visit to Luna City, nearly four years ago. They had met more than twenty years before, when both Bill and his two-year-older brother, Sam, had been in Susan's class at the Fleet Academy. Both men had resigned their commissions after the mandatory six year commitment, and had spent almost eight years as freelance miners in the asteroids. For the past six years both had been pursuing careers in Luna City politics.

But there was something wrong with that message-a glaring error in the From line. Sam Darcy, Bill's older brother, was mayor of Luna City. Bill was a city councilman.

The other message was from Fredrik Hyatt's office. Its text line read simply: REPORT TO CONFERENCE ROOM A-12 AT 1400 FOR BRIEFING. A map of the Survey Service facility accompanied it, the route from Susan's apartment to the conference room traced in flashing phosphor.

Susan checked her wrist chronometer. It read 1337. She memorized the route, then quickly unpacked and left the apartment. On her way out she checked the door's spore-lock. It seemed to be working.

Although Luna City was completely civilian owned and operated, it was in many ways quite similar to Fleet Base-particularly the Survey Service facility responsible for the city's existence. The arid harshness of the lunar environment dictated a necessary compactness and leanness in both cases. From air and food to bedding and books, nothing was wasted.

Even the conference room to which Susan's briefing had been assigned did double duty as an after-hours recreation room specializing in cards, dominoes, and board games. So said the hand-painted sign beside the door. A Survey Service corporal stood on the other side of the door, a blaster rifle held diagonally across his body.

Susan stepped to the door as she pulled her LIN/C from its pouch. She placed the card into the appropriate slot beside the corporal's position, and the door irised open. The corporal nodded her through.

Her breath caught in her lungs. On the other side of a gray metal conference table, dressed in Survey Service blue, sat Karl Alterman.

Her gaze slid away from him, but not before she noticed he had changed very little since Aldebaran. As always, he was her physical match-tall and muscular- but now there was a little less set to his jaw, a bit more weight on his frame, a touch more gray in his hair. Still, he looked good, and Susan felt the animal maleness that had attracted her so many years ago.

Finally she worked up sufficient nerve to look into his light blue eyes. Nothing. She had hoped to see the love they had shared ten years ago, but it wasn't there.

For an instant, she thought she saw another image superimposed over Karl's. His body appeared disfigured, his uniform burnt and blackened, the skin beneath charred in spots to the bone. His face, too, was disfigured, bloated in some places and scorched to the skull in others. His eyes were gone, the sockets dark, wet pits.

The snowflake pattern filled her mind, driving the nightmare image from her thoughts. Involuntarily, she began mumbling the mantra.

"Are you all right?" Karl asked, snapping Susan's thoughts back to reality.

"I'm fine," she said, realizing that, in fact, she was fine. But what had that been? Why had she seen that horrible apparition?

Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the room. The door irised closed behind her as Karl motioned her to a chair across the table from him, and she sat.