"There's rumor that Hyatt is making another bid for independence. I want to know how close he is to achieving it."

Susan nodded. Every few years the Survey Service director went through a short period of giving rousing speeches on the holo-vid, and pumping great sums of personal money into the small but always existent Luna City independence movement. It would last a few months, generating considerable excitement in the press concerning the possibility of an independent Luna, then die down until the next time.

Personally, Susan liked the idea of an independent Luna; she thouoht it inevitable. But she worked for Fleet, and officially Fleet did not like the idea.

"How long will I be on loan to the Service?" she asked.

"It's an open-ended assignment."

She was silent for a few seconds. Finally she asked, "And what's this test you told Hyatt I passed? I haven't been tested."

"You wouldn't have noticed. If you had, it would have altered the results. It was simply a number of small, insignificant obstacles placed in your way over the past few weeks, to see how you would react."

She tried to think what those obstacles might have been. "I can't recall anything."

"They were everyday-seeming occurrences. But I assure you, they were all carefully engineered."

"What were you testing for?"

"I don't know. I simply set up the circumstances according to Hyatt's instructions, then reported the results to him. All highly mechanical."

She sat numb, not speaking, wondering how anyone could perform a satisfactory test when he did not know what he was testing for. And, still more incredible, how Renford could possibly recommend her for an assignment he knew absolutely nothing about.

Susan arrived back in her quarters shortly after ten hundred hours and called out as she entered. The Base Security investigation team might still be about, and she wasn't entirely sure she could trust them.

They weren't in the bedroom. She checked the bathroom. The only evidence of the morning's violence was several shattered tiles at eye level.

Returning to the bedroom, she stood for a few seconds before the holo- phone's clustered lens array, just outside the sensor field. She wanted to step into the field, activating the device, and call Evans.

She almost did just that, but at the last instant changed her mind. Evans wouldn't have anything yet; he'd barely had enough time to begin his investigation. Besides, he had promised he would call if he uncovered anything.

If he investigated her story at all.

Meanwhile, shouldn't she begin packing?

No. The floater to Luna City wouldn't leave Fleet Base until zero-six-hundred hours tomorrow morning. She would get up early, perhaps four or four-thirty, and pack then. That should give her plenty of time.

Then what should she be doing? She knew she'd have to remain in her quarters if she wanted to receive Evans' call.

Stepping to the desk, she sat and opened its drawer. She pulled out her chip carrying case-six inches by three inches by one half inch thick-and placed it on the desk top. Thumbing the case open, she scanned the neat array of a dozen garnet chips filed inside. Each chip measured less than half an inch on the side and a thirty-second inch thick, and each represented an entire book. Printed across their surfaces in nearly microscopic script were the names of the books they contained.

Most held history texts, a passion Susan had inherited from her father. Some contained biographies, while others were Fleet technical manuals. Only two chips were programmed with fiction.

She took her LIN/C from the pouch at her waist and positioned it in the center of the desk beside the carrying case, then removed a chip from the case. It was a fiction she had started on the shuttle up from Earth. She placed it atop the appropriate contact spot on the LIN/C and felt it adhere.

Instantly images formed in her mind, sharp and clear, picking up precisely where they had left off on the shuttle. Again she sat in a one-man fighter, bucking turbulence as she dove into a planet's atmosphere. Behind her, a fighter of alien construction pursued.

With those images came other elements: she smelled the acrid scent of scorched air in her cockpit, heard the metal of her ship creak and moan, felt a trickle of sweat crawl itching down her back within her life-support suit. She could actually taste her own fear.

And finally, another's thoughts blossomed in her mind. Suddenly, she was the protagonist of the story, living manufactured experiences, feeling artificial emotions, thinking synthetic thoughts.

This was a piece of fiction that should have grabbed her totally, holding her interest to the very end. It was a LIN/C adaptation of the twelfth book in a series written by a long-dead twentieth century author, a series that was quickly becoming her all-time favorite. There was plenty of action and adventure, and the main character was certainly someone with whom she could identify: a female captain in a Federation Fleet not unlike the one in which Susan herself served. The only difference was that intelligent races other than humankind were members of the fictitious Federation, while in reality humanity had not yet encountered another intelligence.

But today the fiction could not hold her attention. There was simply too much on her mind. Within a few seconds her concentration slipped, and the images, sensory impressions, and emotions ceased.

She removed the chip from her LIN/C and put it back in its case. After slipping the card back into its pouch, she returned the case to the desk drawer, then stood and stepped to the phone's lens cluster. She began pacing nervously, just beyond the activating field.

Again she toyed with the thought of calling Base Security, and again decided against it. It was ridiculous. Evans would call as soon as he had something, just as he had promised.

Who was she trying to kid? Evans would never call. He didn't consider her story worth investigating.

This waiting was getting to her. There was so much nervous energy bottled up inside her it felt as if at any moment she would explode. She had to be doing something-anything.

She shuffled to the door. It irised open and she stepped through.

Besides, she thought as she started down the corridor, they-whoever they were-might try again. They had already shown they could enter her rooms at will. If she stayed in her quarters, she would only make it easier for them. At least in a crowd she would stand a chance.

Unlike Luna City, Fleet Base possessed little in the way of organized entertainment, and the exchange stores provided one of the community's few social outlets. The stores were always open, and because there was neither day nor night and work continued in shifts around the clock, they were always well patronized. There were, however, three peak periods within each twenty-four hours when the crowd was nearly intolerable.

Susan arrived almost an hour before one of those peak periods. It wasn't quite eleven hundred hours, yet the crowd was larger than she had anticipated, making browsing in the stores anything but enjoyable. And, although fighting the crowd was preferable to sitting alone in her rooms, waiting for a call she was certain would never come, after being jostled in several of the more popular shops-not really seeing the merchandise, but merely struggling through-then gulping down a hurried lunch at a stand-up deli while watching the crowd swell, she was more than ready to return to her quarters.

On her way back through the crowded exchange area, a sign above a door off the main corridor caught her attention. It was the only old-style, painted sign in sight; all others were holographic, flashing their messages in garishly colored three-dimensional block letters. This sign was two dimensional, yet physically present, peeling and faded with age. In nearly unreadable red script it proclaimed: EDDIE'S OUT-SYSTEM CURIOS.