“I’m sure we can bring this all together before that happens. Have you talked to Myo recently?”

“No. I don’t have any information I can use to bargain with; apart from Morty, and that’s got to be illegal. I’ve been busy trying to trace the lawyers, and doing gigs for Michelangelo. Speaking of which, do you have any inside knowledge about the rich building their lifeboats, especially the Sheldons?”

“Only the rumors in the unisphere. They say the cheapest ticket will cost you a billion Earth dollars. You thinking of leaving us, Mellanie?”

A billion dollars? Christ, does Paul Cramley really think I’m worth that much? The idea was extraordinarily flattering. “Not yet,” she said. “I still want to help.”

“We appreciate it. Three more Starflyer agents you should be aware of: Isabella Halgarth, and her parents Victor and Bernadette. If you see any of them coming, duck.”

“Thanks. How do you know?”

“Bradley has been looking into the shotgun which claimed Doi was a Starflyer agent. It wasn’t one of ours. Isabella helped put it together. She’s now dropped out of sight, which is a sure sign she’s going to become more active. We’ve established small teams to observe her parents; if they spot anything that’ll help with your problems I’ll let you know immediately.”

“I appreciate that. I get…I feel lonely a lot of the time.”

“I probably understand that more than most. I’ve been living this paranoid nonlife for decades now.”

“How do you cope?”

“Not very well, I suppose; that’s the easy answer. I used to believe in what I was doing, I had a real crusade going for my ideals. These days, events have just swept me along. I’m like you, Mellanie, I’m waiting for it all to resolve. If it’s any comfort, I don’t think it will take much longer now.”

“I hope you’re right. Good night, Adam.”

“It’s almost dawn for me. Which is a shame, the night here is quite beautiful.”

Mellanie signed off with a light touch of regret. She wondered where he was that was so beautiful. Talking to Adam always made her feel less isolated. They’d never met, and probably never would, but discussing the business helped her confidence no end. He was a professional, doing what he did out of commitment and belief; he approved of her efforts, offering snippets of advice. It added up to a weird kind of friendship, but in a bizarre way she trusted him a lot more than anyone else in her life right now.

Up ahead the gaudy multicolored illuminations of the Santa Monica pier stretched out over the water as the sky darkened behind it. She gave the fun-fair rides a brief longing glance before turning around and wandering back over the sands. Dudley would start getting agitated if she was away for much longer.

Venice Beach was where LA’s offworld contract workers lived and hung out. Even though it didn’t have the wealth prevalent in the rest of Los Angeles, it was safe, providing she kept to the public spaces. Some of the clubs along the beachfront were coming alive now that the sun had fallen behind the ocean, music and holographic projections seeping out from their doorways. One little part of her mind wished she was coming home to someone like Adam Elvin. Not that she needed a man, any man. But Adam would be a lot less hard work than Dudley with his insecurities and paranoia and jealousies. Adam, she imagined, would be a lot calmer and reassuring; someone she could talk to about all her problems with the Starflyer and worrying about being exposed. He’d have answers and solutions, strategies for coping.

Dudley was sitting on the stone steps outside their apartment building. He smiled as he caught sight of her, and hurried over. “I’ve been doing some research,” he said eagerly.

“That’s good,” Mellanie replied automatically. The swirling projectors issuing out of the stores’ logo holograms sent worms of pink and amber light wriggling over his face. She frowned. “Dudley, is that a new OCtattoo?”

He grinned and stroked his ear. “Yeah. One of the parlors down by the beach etched it in for me.”

She stroked the red and gold swirls with her fingers, her inserts and programs examining the organic circuitry. The OCtattoo was a very cheap sense booster with added TSI functions, expanding his cybersphere interface with a whole range of customization software. There were no buried assets or encrypted code in the management routines. His skin was already turning red around the elaborate spirals, an infection that was the sure sign of an unprofessional application.

“Was it a verified brand? Did you see the license before it was applied?”

“Mellanie! You’re my girl, not my mother. I’ve had enough OCtattoos in my time to know what I’m doing.”

“Okay.” She headed up the stairs. “What have you been researching?”

“Spaceships.” He smiled with all the pride of a schoolkid about to hand in homework that was guaranteed to get an A-grade.

“What kind?” she asked.

He opened the apartment door and gestured her inside, but not before making a furtive glance along the empty landing. “Augusta has several orbital factories for electronics and exotic micro-gee materials. They have spaceplanes and more importantly: inter-orbit tugs.”

“Yes?”

“I looked up the specs and did some calculations. It felt good using my astronomy background for something practical. If we hired one of the inter-orbit tugs, and filled the reaction mass tanks, and carried no cargo except ourselves, it could take us to the Regulus system’s outer gas giant.”

“And why would we want to go there?” she asked. The couple next door was shouting at each other again. Thankfully, it was silent upstairs.

“That has to be where Ozzie Isaac’s asteroid habitat is,” Dudley said. “An asteroid that size is extremely unusual. Trust me, it is far more likely to be a small moon.”

She almost launched into her usual chastisement, but leaving him alone to work on some new obsession would actually reduce the amount of time she spent worrying about what he was up to. So instead she said: “I don’t know…” her voice cautious.

“I’m convinced it’s in the Regulus system. That would provide easy access to Augusta, which is where the construction systems must have come from. Everyone automatically assumes that CST and Augusta belongs solely to the Sheldon Dynasty; they forget that Isaacs was a cofounder, he has an equal share.”

“I suppose so. But I doubt we can afford to hire a spaceship. I don’t have that kind of money.”

“The Michelangelo show would pay. Once we reach the habitat, we can gain access to Isaac’s wormhole. We can take Morton and the motile off Elan.”

Which is what this is really all about, Mellanie knew. Ever since Dudley had heard about the strange alien motile he had been consumed with meeting it. She was thankful he despised the navy and completely distrusted Admiral Kime, otherwise he would have gone straight to them asking for the motile to be recovered. “It would have to be a really good proposal for them to come up with that kind of money,” she said. “You’d have to be very sure of the spaceship performance.”

“I am. We can do it.” Dudley stroked his ear. “A few more upgrades like this, some memory skill implants, and I’ll be able to pilot us myself.”

“All right. If you collect some figures, very detailed figures, Dudley, I’ll think about it.”

“Yes!” He punched one hand into the palm of the other, smiling broadly.

“I’ll get onto it right away.”

Mellanie slipped the T-shirt dress straps off her shoulders, and let the garment slide down onto the ancient floorboards. “I didn’t know Ozzie owned half of CST.”

“Oh, yes.” Dudley was staring at her as if he’d never seen her body before.

“They started the company together. Sheldon was always the director, the commercial half of the partnership. So he’s the one the public and the media always see making statements. It’s an association thing.”