Before she went to bed she checked her LIN/C. According to its memory circuits, Sam Darcy was dead. Yet she remembered him being alive only a few weeks ago, when she had watched him give a holo-vid address beamed to Earth from Luna City-a speech condemning lunar independence. Obviously at that time there had been no censoring of news from Luna City. At least, as she remembered it. But her LIN/C had not recorded a holo-vid broadcast originating from Luna City in quite some time.

She checked, as well, what information her LIN/C contained concerning the solar power satellite. Its memory contained no reference to the satellite's destruction. In her own memory, however, the satellite had been destroyed three months ago.

The nightmare came, as it had nearly every sleep period for the past ten years, sharp and clear, as if played directly into her mind through her LIN/C.

Heat. The stifling rage of fire in a confined space. Smoke. And the choking fumes of burning insulation.

She approached the air-tight door to Engineering Department's crew's quarters and brought the back of her hand to within a few inches of its polished metal surface. It radiated sufficient heat to instantly blister her flesh.

Searching by feel, she groped for the dogging wrench she knew should be in its rack beside the door. Twice her hand came off the bulkhead minus skin before she found it. She put it to one of the dogs and strained. The dog moved grudgingly, but finally gave.

Another dog…Another…Six in all. All tight due to metal expanding in the tremendous heat.

Finally, after what seemed a lifetime, they were all loose. Using the dogging wrench, she pushed the door inward.

Flames leaped out at her, singeing her hair and blistering the flesh on her face and the backs of her hands. Through the wall of fire she saw others, men and women, rushing toward the open hatch, then forced back by the heat and flames.

They were members of her crew. And they were trapped in there.

Movement to her right, beyond the wall of flames in a dark corner of the compartment, caught her attention. She turned toward the movement.

Then nothing…

Susan woke in the middle of the night, screaming, the charred and twisted bodies of nearly three hundred dead hanging before her eyes. The nightmare had been particularly bad this time. And, as always, it had been incomplete.

Had she jumped through that wall of flame in an attempt to save those others? That was the scenario which had emerged during her court-martial, but she could not be sure. She simply couldn't remember. For all she knew, she might have turned and ran. The last thing she remembered was turning toward sudden movement in a corner of the compartment. Then nothing.

And she couldn't use her LIN/C to verify the occurrence. For some reason, the device had not recorded any events her conscious mind had not registered. The technicians couldn't explain it, but there was simply no record.

She spent most of the following two days in Darcy's apartment, studying the chips Karl had supplied, familiarizing herself with the LIN/C reports of four of the best operatives the Survey Service had ever produced. In spite of their impressive abilities, they had not succeeded in apprehending Hyatt's impostor, and all four had died.

Several hours both days were spent leaning on the catwalk railing overlooking hangar four, gazing down at the small spacecraft huddled in one corner under brilliant overhead lights. The technicians no longer crawled over its outer hull. Now, the hatch stood open and an occasional white-clad tech entered, laden with instruments, only to emerge empty handed minutes or even hours later.

As she watched, she had to continually remind herself that the ship was being readied for her. After ten years, she would again pilot a ship. That ship was not a massive Fleet cruiser, or even a destroyer, but it was hers, and it would again take her beyond Luna's orbit.

Late the second day, she received a call from Clayton. "You're hard to reach," he said as his image materialized on the flat screen in front of her. Behind him she recognized the wall of a pay phone booth.

"There's good reason." She told him about her ransacked apartment.

"Then they were searching for something," he said.

"So it appears. I think it might be the pendant."

Clayton nodded. "I have to talk to you. Meet me in your quarters in half an hour." He clicked off without another word.

Clayton sat in the jumbled chaos of Susan's apartment as she entered, his huge frame nearly overflowing the room's only chair. But he no longer looked sloppy-fat, simply large. And he no longer wore the soiled and tattered jumpsuit she had last seen him in. Instead, he was dressed in the powder blue of the Survey Service, silver captain's stripes sewn on his sleeves. The beard, too, was gone.

"This is quite a mess," he said, looking around the trashed room. "I can see why you moved."

Susan almost smiled, but stopped herself. She went to the bunk and sat on its edge. "You've been on the Survey Service compound. What did you learn?"

"It was difficult, but I gained access to Survey's computer. I now have Hyatt's personal access code. And I know your assignment-the mission out to the Crab Nebula."

The Crab Nebula! Susan thought. So that's where she would be going. But it was also where the proprietor of the curio shop back on Fleet Base had said the pendant had originated. Could it be a coincidence? She doubted it.

At any rate, it seemed Clayton was unaware she did not know what her assignment would entail. Should she admit her ignorance to him? Should she tell him Hyatt was giving her information only a little at a time?

No. It was probably best he did not know how little she knew.

"Is that how you got Darcy's unlisted number," she asked, "from the Survey Service computer?"

"That's right."

"Are you going to try to stop my mission?"

"I hope that won't become necessary. But I will if I have to."

"I understand. But you must know how important this assignment is to me."

Clayton nodded. "When are you scheduled to leave?"

She would have to admit her ignorance on this point. "I don't know yet," she said. "If it wasn't in Survey's computer-"

"Maybe Hyatt hasn't decided yet," Clayton finished for her. "When will you be ready to leave?"

"That's hard to say. Hyatt's techs aren't finished with the ship yet, and he won't let me onboard until they are."

"You'll be on your own then, you know. I can no longer protect you after you leave Luna."

"You won't be out there with me?" Susan joked.

"We tried to get someone on your crew, but the ship's a single-seater."

"You're serious. You really think I'll still be in danger after I leave Luna-alone in deep space."

Clayton nodded. "Think about it. Whoever is after you is determined. They've already tried twice, and did this." He motioned around the cluttered room with a sweep of his arm. "Is there any reason to think they'll quit now?"

"No, I guess not."

"Who recommended you for this assignment?" Clayton asked.

"Admiral Renford."

He was silent for a few seconds. Finally he said, "We've uncovered evidence that points to the Admiral as being behind these attempts on your life."

Susan remained silent for a few seconds, her mind numbed with the shock of what she had just heard. Finally she said, "You can't seriously think Admiral Renford is behind this. You can't think he's trying to kill me."