The Cassrian and the other two Holot went out into the common office and appropriated desks in the back among the potted plants someone had brought from home.

Krinata stared at the ornately bordered, illuminated, un-forgeable Imperial Order. By her oath and her family's oath. she was called to serve her Emperor. She was to complete the debriefing in routine fashion, not indicating to the Dushau that the guards were there, for any emotional disturbance might obscure the data even further than the deaths had already. The Empire needed this planet desperately. The guards were there to prevent interference with her work today. She would be justly rewarded.

She sat with her fists clenched in her lap, her jaw bunching, emotions raging back and forth. She had to breathe evenly to regain calm. But this was her department. This intrusion implied a distrust of her professionalism. A cold thought wriggled up to consciousness. Or is it me he doesn't trust–because I stood with them yesterday?

Maybe it was her department—or the Dushau—who weren't trusted? Had word of the Dushau withdrawal already reached Rantan? She hadn't turned on the news this morning, and there was no time now.

Oh, let this be over soon! But something told her it wouldn't be. Soon the damage the imperial decrees had done would be unforgivable. It could only damage the Allegiancy.

She had to warn Jindigar. Deep intimate details were sometimes revealed during debriefing. Yet she'd been specifically ordered not to alert the Dushau to the spies. Jindigar was doing all this from loyalty to his Emperor. How could she do less? Yet, she felt like a betrayer. On the other hand, there was no way to get word to him without the spies noticing. They were on her data boards out there!

While she dithered, feeling helpless and trapped in her own office and hating herself for it, Tully, her department's Sentient, came on the screen—a delightfully muscular young human with a frontier planet accent. "The Kamminth Outreach, Formulator and Protector have arrived."

Jindigar entered as the door opened quietly. He was flanked by Seum and Dinai. all dressed formally. Sure enough, Imp was atop Jindigar's head. He set the piol down, providing it with a plastic toy fish to play with and asked, waving at the full outer office, "All of that in our honor?"

"We thought we'd be able to finish today. Besides, I think they're all dying of curiosity. Kamminth's tale is all over the division. Right now, I expect they're gossiping about your arrival." Her cheer sounded strained, and her eyes kept straying to the doors on either side of the room.

Jindigar nodded. "Perhaps we can yet retrieve enough detail to publish a full and attractive prospectus."

Krinata rose, gesturing to the couches arrayed in the other end of the office behind a filigreed screen.

They entered the debriefing area, stripping off turban and outer robe with businesslike precision. As she powered up the equipment arrayed around her control chair, Jindigar installed Dinai and Seum on an adjacent lounge and made himself at home on the debriefing couch. He hesitated, frowning at her as if he sensed something amiss. "What's bothering you, Krinata?"

"Uh... nothing," she lied, hating herself for being weak. Nothing's going to happen. It's better he doesn't know. She could see through the brittle cheer of his facade to the bottomless ache of loss that was gnawing at his vitals. And he was nursing that ache, not attempting to surmount it, because its ceasing would wall him away from the data the Emperor wanted. "Let's get on with this," pled Krinata as much for herself as for them.

As if stung, Jindigar turned to his zunre, gathered them with eye contact and then joined hands with them. "We can't balance anymore, but we will access what mutual contact is left to us. Forgive, please, any clumsy lapses."

It wasn't in anything he said, but she got the sudden impression that this was very dangerous for them. Arlai hadn't warned her about that. But she flung herself into her control chair, forcing all worries from her mind. If they could give so much to the Empire surely the least she could do was support them. She snapped on the cone of green light which signified the detector beams were focused on the debriefing lounge.

Jindigar took his place under that cone as he had hundreds of times before. The other two Dushau settled for the long session, hands joined in some sort of formal configuration. Krinata gave herself with long discipline to the frame of mind of a prospective colonist.

She summoned enthusiasm, curiosity, and determination to make a shrewd choice among the new homes available. The machines responded to her brainwaves, the lights flickering in their proper patterns. In the outer office, she knew from years of work there herself, screens echoed hers, and others drew data forth for comparison. Tully stood by with his semi-sentients ready to integrate the data.

"All right, take me to Margo," said Krinata, "and show me what makes it such a great planet to live on."

The scientific data already flowed across her screens, streams of numbers, equations, parameters and analyses, life-typings and ranges. But how many prospective colonists could take those numbers and create the awesome three-dimensional image that formed in the green haze before Krinata's chair.

A sneer cliff of red marble rose to a magenta and silver sky. A frothy white waterfall crashed downward, spuming outward on both sides. Enormous winged creatures, blue and turquoise, floated in the updrafts beside the cliff, diving and calling musically to one another, occasionally snapping up some water creature that had been swept over the fall and was tumbling downward through the air.

It was thrilling, breathtaking, beautiful enough to make her cry with yearning to go there. Suddenly r the rare magic happened. Once in ten debriefings, her imagination transported her into a waking dream, fully fleshed out and dimensionally real, as if her brain centers were directly stimulated. She became one of the Oliat officers walking the surface of the new planet, breathing its scents, testing its air on her skin, knowing it intimately with both mind and body. The fine line between intellectual imagination and living dream could not be crossed purposively. When it came, she had to relax and let it happen.

Sleep-deprived, emotionally exhausted, she needed to dream. This precious experience had never happened with Jindigar before, and somewhere within was the shrill panic that she'd never have this chance again. She grabbed for it avidly, and found it easy to float away to Margo.

The scene panned around and she saw the foothills rippling away into a plain covered with blue and mint green forest, dotted with lakes. They moved through the air until she could see the edge of the forest, and then an infinite rolling plain with tall waving grasses, grazing herds, streams and lakes. A long-tailed, streamlined silver bird dove into one of the mirror-bright lakes and came up with a big, fat wriggling creature. The bird perched on a boulder and feasted undisturbed. Part of her could become that bird.

Krinata asked aloud, "What eats the fisher-bird?"

Her skeptical curiosity, trained to parallel that of prospective settlers, was her most valuable contribution. Simple holographs could show what the exploring or developing teams wanted customers to see. She had to use the creativity of the Oliat to present the world as it really was.

As they watched, a sinuous pouncing creature stalked the feasting bird. Figures for its height and weight, its poisonous claws, and the size of its ripping teeth—as well as the fact that it would gladly attack mammals—flowed unseen across Krinata's screen. It was Clorinda's job to synthesize that data with the Oliat's created visions.