"Thank you, Staff Sergeant. I'm sorry I bothered you. I laid down for a while, and I guess I'm still a bit disoriented."

"You're sure there's nothing else?"

For an instant she considered telling him about the second attack, but only for an instant.

"Nothing," she said.

"I'll call as soon as I have something," Evans said, then disappeared, his image instantly replaced by the holographic date-time display: OCT. 3, 2187- 0930.

Susan walked to the chair behind the desk and sat. Placing her elbows in the center of the desk, she rested her head in her hands, then closed her eyes.

What was going on? Had more than three hours actually elapsed since her first conversation with Evans, as she remembered, or had it been less than an hour, like Evans had said? Was it possible for something to affect every chronometric device on Fleet Base, mysteriously causing them to lose more than two hours?

She didn't know, but she doubted it. She couldn't imagine anything that would affect only the chronometers, leaving the base's other systems untouched. And Evans would have noticed if there had been something wrong with his date-time display. He would have said something.

Then what could have happened to those two missing hours? She remembered living them. Apparently Evans did not.

I should never have called him, she thought. Too much pointed to Base Security's involvement in the attacks. Even if Evans wasn't personally responsible, he could be used to get to her.

Besides, he really wouldn't be much help. No doubt he thought her insane. And perhaps, she thought, I am.

But now there was a way to find out. If the attack in the exchange area had actually happened. It would be recorded in her LIN/C, stored in the device's memory circuits.

She opened her eyes. Taking the LIN/C from its pouch, she placed it on the desk, then thumbed the memory tab. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the events she remembered happening in the exchange area less than half an hour ago.

Instantly she stood in the access corridor outside the curio shop. She walked to the main corridor and stepped out into the crowd. Again she saw the glint of light on metal, spotted the figure cloaked in shadows, felt panic scurry through her mind like a small, sharp-clawed rodent. And again she scanned the corridor for somewhere to hide.

Her ears popped, just as they had before. The man holding the blaster on her vanished, and the crowd thinned. The air was suddenly much cooler and fresher than it had been an instant before.

She felt the dizziness again, and the building headache. Then the snowflake pattern formed in her thoughts as she mouthed the monosyllabic mantra, and the headache and dizziness were gone.

The pendant burned between her breasts beneath her uniform…

With a thought, she stopped the flow of images and emotions. She took a deep breath, exhaled noisily, then opened her eyes. Again she sat at the desk in her quarters.

So, it had happened, just as she remembered. She had lived those missing hours. But why didn't they show on her wrist chronometer? Why hadn't the holo-phone's chronometric circuits registered them? And why weren't they lodged in Evans's memory?

Removing the pendant from the pouch she had put it in outside the curio shop, she held it up before her eyes. Egg-shaped. Pitted dull-gray metal. And now it was again cold to the touch.

Could it have somehow been responsible for what she had experienced in the corridor outside the curio shop? Was it at the heart of what was happening to her? Both her attackers had worn one like it. And the one she had been wearing had become hot when that last attacker disappeared.

She still didn't have any of the answers.

Who might have them? she wondered as she returned the pendant and her LIN/C to their pouches. Who could possibly help her?

Instantly she knew.

She stood and went to the holo-phone's lens cluster on the far side of the room. It activated with a date-time display: OCT. 3, 2187-0934.

"Personal call for Admiral James Renford," she said. After a few seconds Lieutenant Krueger appeared. It was a head shot, but behind him she saw a Rembrandt. He was in Renford's office.

"What can I do for you, Captain?" he asked.

"Is the Admiral in?"

"I'm afraid not. He left on the Earth-bound shuttle almost twenty minutes ago. I don't expect him back on Luna for several days."

"Thanks." She stepped out of the phone's sensor field. She didn't want to talk to Krueger.

Besides, she thought, perhaps Renford had done all he could by getting her off Fleet Base and out of sight.

The trip out from Fleet Base to Luna City took nearly five hours by floater.

Although she had slept little the night before-again the nightmare had come to haunt her dreams, rendering what little sleep she could wrestle from the night both unpleasant and unrestful-she dared not sleep onboard the floater. Filled to capacity with a complement of forty passengers, it could be a death trap; any of its passengers, or even a member of its three man crew, might be her next assailant.

Strapped securely into her acceleration webbing, she watched those around her without seeming to do so. Most were Fleet enlisted personnel on their way to a Luna City furlough, eager for the many entertainment possibilities that civilian outpost offered over the military base. Six were officers, either likewise headed for furlough or, like Susan herself, on orders to the Survey Service facility. Only three were civilians.

Two of those were that seedy breed of pioneer that made a rough life on any human frontier. It was these she watched most closely. Her next attacker, if he was onboard at all, would probably be one of them.

Did she really have anything to fear, she wondered, or was she simply being paranoid?

No, someone was out to get her-there was no doubt of that now. The first attempt had failed, so whoever wanted her dead had sent out another assassin. And somehow, miraculously, she had been saved from that killer as well. Whoever was behind those attacks would not give up until she was dead.

Or until she discovered who he was and stopped him.

After fifteen minutes, she realized the attacker would not give himself away. He would try nothing right now, but would wait until she was alone, with no witnesses and no one to interfere. Perhaps in her temporary quarters in Luna City.

She turned her attention to the cratered and dusted landscape of Mare Tranquillitatis displayed on the small viewscreen, marveling at its primeval beauty and serenity. The last time she had made this trip was nearly four years ago, yet the scene remained unchanged. Again, as she had that last time, she felt awe at the tremendous energy it must have taken to transform Luna's surface into this harsh yet beautiful landscape. Man's efforts, his pitiful scratchings at the lunar surface, seemed pathetically meager by comparison.

Less than an hour into the journey, the floater crossed the terminator, and instantly the landscape's brilliance became muted on Susan's screen. Yet there was still sufficient light to make out major features-a profusion of intensely bright stars shined out of the black sky, accompanied by a nearly full Earth of rich blues and browns, streaked with white layers of cloud.

The subdued illumination produced a tranquilizing effect, and soon she fought to stay awake.

Susan was again Executive Officer onboard the Federation Fleet cruiser Defiant as the ship stood on station outside Aldebaran system.