Stillman sighed. "Look. I'll admit there may be some problems with Jonny's readjustment to civilian life. Frankly, I would have been happier if he'd stayed in the service. But he didn't. Like it or not, Jonny's home, and we can either accept it calmly or run around screaming doom. He risked his life out there; the least we can do is to give him a chance to forget the war and vanish back into the general population."

"Yeah. Maybe." Fraser shook his head slowly. "It's not going to be an easy road, though. Look, as long as I'm here, maybe you and I could draft some sort of announcement about this to the press. Try to get a jump on the rumors."

"Good idea. Hey, cheer up, Sut—soldiers have been coming home ever since mankind started having wars. We should be getting the hang of this by now."

"Yeah," Fraser growled. "Except that this is the first time since swords went out of fashion that soldiers have gotten to take their weapons home with them."

Stillman shrugged helplessly. "It's out of our hands. Come on: let's get to work."

Jonny pulled up in front of the Moreau home and turned off the car engine with a sigh of relief. The roads between Horizon City and Cedar Lake were rougher than he remembered them, and more than once he'd wished he had spent the extra money to rent a hover, even though the weekly rate was almost double that for wheeled vehicles. But he'd made it, with a minimum of kidney damage, and that was what mattered.

He stepped out of the car and retrieved his bags from the trunk, and as he set them down on the street a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned and looked five centimeters up into his father's smiling face. "Welcome home Son," Pearce Moreau said.

"Hi, Dader," Jonny said, face breaking into a huge grin as he grasped the other's outstretched hand. "How've you been?"

Pearce's answer was interrupted by a crash and shriek from the front door of the house. Jonny turned to see ten-year-old Gwen tearing across the lawn toward him, yelling like a banshee with a winning lottery ticket. Dropping into a crouch facing her, he opened his arms wide; and as she flung herself at him, he grabbed her around the waist, straightened up, and threw her a half meter into the air above him. Her shrill laughter almost masked Pearce's sharp intake of breath. Catching his sister easily, Jonny lowered her back to the ground. "Boy, you've sure grown," he told her. "Pretty soon you'll be too big to toss around."

"Good," she panted. "Then you can teach me how to arm wrestle. C'mon and see my room, huh, Jonny?"

"I'll be along in a little bit," he told her. "I want to say hello to Momer first. She in the kitchen?"

"Yes," Pearce said. "Why don't you go on ahead, Gwen. I'd like to talk to Jonny for a moment."

"Okay," she chirped. Squeezing Jonny's hand, she scampered back toward the house.

"She's got her room papered with articles and pictures from the past three years," Pearce explained as he and Jonny collected Jonny's luggage. "Everything she could get hard copies of that had anything to do with the Cobras."

"You disapprove?"

"Of what—that she idolizes you? Good heavens, no. Why?"

"You seem a bit nervous."

"Oh. I guess I was a little startled when you tossed Gwen in the air a minute ago."

"I've been using the servos for quite a while now," Jonny pointed out mildly as they headed toward the house. "I really do know how to use my strength safely."

"I know, I know. Hell, I used exoskeleton gear myself in the Minthistin War, you know, when I was your age. But it was pretty bulky, and you couldn't ever forget you were wearing it. I guess... well, I suppose I was worried that you'd forget yourself."

Jonny shrugged. "Actually, I'm probably in better control than you ever were, since I don't have to have two sets of responses—with power amp and without. The servos and ceramic laminae are going to be with me the rest of my life, and I've long since gotten used to them."

Pearce nodded. "Okay." He paused, then continued, "Look, Jonny, as long as we're on the subject... the Army's letter to us said that 'most' of your Cobra gear would be removed before you came home. What did they—I mean, what do you still have?"

Jonny sighed. "I wish they'd just come out and listed the stuff instead of being coy like that. It makes it sound like I'm still a walking tank. The truth is that, aside from the skeletal laminae and servos, all I have is the nanocomputer—which hasn't got much to do now except run the servos—and two small lasers in my little fingers, which they couldn't remove without amputation. And the servo power supply, of course. Everything else—the arcthrower capacitors, the antiarmor laser, and the sonic weapons—are gone." So was the self-destruct, but that subject was best left alone.

"Okay," Pearce said. "Sorry to bring it up, but your mother and I were a little nervous."

"That's all right."

They were at the house now. Entering, they went to the bedroom Jame had had to himself for the last three years. "Where's Jame, by the way?" Jonny asked as he piled his bags by his old bed.

"Out at New Persius picking up a spare laser tube for the bodywork welder down at the shop. We've only got one working at the moment and can't risk it going out on us. Parts have been nearly impossible to get lately—a side effect of war, you know." He snapped his fingers. "Say, those little lasers you have—can you weld with them?"

"I can spot-weld, yes. They were designed to work on metals, as a matter of fact."

"Great. Maybe you could give us a hand until we can get parts for the other lasers. How about it?"

Jonny hesitated. "Uh... frankly, Dader, I'd rather not. I don't... well, the lasers remind me too much of... other things."

"I don't understand," Pearce said, a frown beginning to crease his forehead. "Are you ashamed of what you did?"

"No, of course not. I mean, I knew pretty much what I was getting into when I joined the Cobras, and looking back I think I did as good a job as I could have. It's just... this war was different from yours, Dader. A lot different. I was in danger—and was putting other people in danger—the whole time I was on Adirondack. If you'd ever had to fight the Minthisti face-to-face or had to help bury the bodies of uninvolved civilians caught in the fighting—" he forced his throat muscles to relax—"you'd understand why I'd like to try and forget all of it. At least for a while."

Pearce remained silent for a moment. Then he laid a hand on his son's shoulder. "You're right, Jonny; fighting a war from a star ship was a lot different. I'm not sure I can understand what you went through, but I'll do my best. Okay?"

"Yah, Dader. Thanks."

"Sure. Come on, let's go see your mother. Then you can go take a look at Gwen's room."

Dinner that night was a festive occasion. Irena Moreau had cooked her son's favorite meal—center-fired wild balis—and the conversation was light and frequently punctuated by laughter. The warmth and love seemed to Jonny to fill the room, surrounding the five of them with an invisible defense perimeter. For the first time since leaving Asgard he felt truly safe, and tensions he'd forgotten he even had began to drain slowly from his muscles.

It took most of the meal for the others to bring Jonny up to date on the doings of Cedar Lake's people, so it wasn't until Irena brought out the cahve that conversation turned to Jonny's plans.

"I'm not really sure," Jonny confessed, holding his mug of cahve with both hands, letting the heat soak into his palms. "I suppose I could go back to school and finally pick up that computer tech certificate. But that would take another year, and I'm not crazy about being a student again. Not now, anyway."

Across the table Jame sipped cautiously at his mug. "If you went to work, what sort of job would you like?" he asked.