"Yes, sir."

With a grimace, Lleshi keyed for a copy of the Lorelei data pulse. To be trapped out here for four months, only marginally in touch with what was going on with his task force, was going to be an unpleasant exercise in patience. But for the moment, at least, he possessed information that no one else in the Pax had. Plus five days to decide how much of that information would go out with the kick pod.

Settling himself in his seat in the ship's slowly returning gravity, he began to read.

The timer pinged quietly, and Kosta looked up from his reading. The twelve hours Lleshi had insisted on were up, and a careful look at the displays showed no Empyreal ships within inner scan range.

It was time to go.

Unhinging the control cover, he turned and then pressed a button; and with an awful racket of explosive springs he was shoved back into his seat as his tiny ship was thrown forward through a tunnel that magically appeared in the rock-textured surface of the cocoon. He held his breath, waiting tensely for the inevitable enemy fighter ship that must surely have been skulking behind an asteroid waiting for him.

But nothing. Not as the tiny ship oriented itself; not as it began its preprogrammed flight inward toward the Empyreal world of Lorelei; not even as Kosta breathed a sigh of relief and dared to relax.

The gambit had worked, and he was on his way. Heading to Lorelei, and a rendezvous with a little automated spy system the Pax had managed to set up before their last talks with the Empyreal leaders broke off some months back.

And after that it would be on to Seraph. To Seraph, and Angelmass.

Staring out his viewport at the distant crescent of Lorelei, Kosta felt his stomach tighten. I won't fail, he'd told Lleshi confidently. But now, far from the bright lights and purposeful men and women of the Komitadji, the words echoed through his memory like so much empty bravado. He was alone now, in hostile territory, facing an enemy possibly more alien now than it was human.

A little trip to heaven, Lleshi's last words echoed through his mind. It had been something of a running gag, that, during Kosta's training: the fact that the breakaway colonists who'd founded the Empyrean a hundred eighty years ago had chosen an ancient term for the highest reaches of heaven.

Question was, had the choice of that name indeed been purely coincidental? Or had it been an indication, even way back then, of the angels' subtle influence on people's minds?

There were all sorts of questions like that hanging over this mission. Questions currently without answers. Questions he, Kosta, was supposed to find answers for. Overwhelming, deep, impossible questions...

And then, as the enormity of the whole thing once again threatened to drown him, the image of Telthorst's face floated up into his mind. That face, and all that contempt...

"Forget it," he said aloud to the memory, the sound of the words echoed oddly by the displays curving around in front of him. If Telthorst expected Kosta to land on his face just to accommodate the Adjutor's preconceived notions, he could forget it.

The pep talk helped a little. A flashing light on his console reminded him that the cocoon's escape tunnel was still on standby; keying in the proper commands, he watched as the false asteroid sealed itself up again and then went inert. Briefly, he hoped inert meant exactly what it said, then put it out of his mind. Surely the masterminds behind this mission had understood that if the Empyreals came across a ship berth disguised as an asteroid it would be a dead giveaway that the Pax had slipped in a spy.

And with that chore out of the way, the ship was back on automatic, where it would remain until they reached Lorelei. Keying one of the displays for a continual status report on his course, Kosta returned to his reading. The data pack Lleshi had sent down to him was far more extensive than he'd expected, and it was going to be a bit of a push to get it all read in the five days before planetfall.

But he would manage it. If for no better reason than that Telthorst probably didn't think he could.

The cocoon remained inert for six hours more, until Kosta's ship had passed beyond any theoretical possibility of detecting a change in its status. Six hours of totally wasted time; but the vast network of computers and sensors and fabricators built deep inside the rock was patient, and its designers had considered it absolutely imperative that Kosta believe he had left nothing behind him but an empty shell.

Quietly, stealthily, the network activated itself and began to look around. Even without its inertial memory to guide it, the sensors would have had no difficulty locating the center of the net fields which had caught the Komitadji.

The hive of Empyreal ships buzzing around the area would have been all the indication it needed.

Quietly, stealthily, the sensors reached out, delicately probing and studying. It would take time—considerable time—for it to achieve its programmed goal.

But the network was patient.

"Your attention, please," the cool, middle-class voice came over the spaceport softspeaker system.

"The twelfth and final shuttle for the spaceliner Xirrus has now arrived at Gate Sixteen. All remaining passengers should come to the check-in counter at this time for pre-flight confirmation and boarding. Repeating: your attention, please—"

Seated at the far end of the waiting lounge, half hidden behind a large decorative vase, the girl hunched a little deeper into a contour chair that felt too large for her and watched as the last group of passengers gathered their things and walked over to join the line at the check-in counter. She brushed the freshly blonded hair carefully away from her face, feeling a familiar tightness squeezing her throat. In a minute she would have to get up and join them. And if Trilling Vail was watching from hiding, like she was...

She took a deep breath, an acid tightness swirling in her stomach. It was the same feeling she always got when she was getting ready to score a track and suddenly had the impression that the targ was onto her. The horrible demand of a crucial decision: whether to keep going, and hope her twitches were wrong, or to pop the cord, lose all the prep time, and look for a targ who would more easily part with his spare cash.

Should she pop the cord on this whole crazy idea? It still wasn't too late to do that, she knew. She could get up right now and walk out of the spaceport and try to bury herself somewhere on Uhuru instead of going off to a whole new world.

Only she couldn't. Trilling had friends everywhere on Uhuru. Sooner or later, he'd catch up with her.

On Lorelei... well, at least she'd have a head start.

Maybe. Reaching into her pocket, feeling the same tingling in her fingertips that she always got when handling merchandise that had cost her blood and sweat to get hold of, she slid out the precious piece of threaded plastic. Chandris Lalasha, the name at the top said, and for probably the hundredth time she wished she had had the time and money to have a new ID made up. She hadn't used the Lalasha surname since she was thirteen, a year before she met and moved in with Trilling.

But if he got into the spaceline data listings the Chandris part would be a dead giveaway.

She snorted to herself. If he got in, hell. When he got in. Trilling was the one who'd taught her how to crack into fancy computer systems. Her only chance was that he wouldn't expect her to do something this crazy, or at least that he wouldn't think she could get enough money together this quickly to spring for a spaceliner ticket.

But, then, who knew how Trilling's mind worked these days?

Unconsciously, Chandris tightened her grip on the plastic card. She'd heard a kosh brag once about how he'd killed someone with a spaceliner ticket. She wondered if any of that story had been true.