"Can we get a look?" Kosta asked.

"I'm trying," Hanan said. "They're pretty far away and going the opposite direction. Let's see..."

And suddenly, on all the displays, there it was.

Ornina inhaled sharply, and Kosta found himself feeling a little sicker than he already was. The Hova's Skyarcher was a wreck: its shape noticeably warped, its vaunted Empyreal sandwich-metal hull blackened and pitted. "It must have really gone deep to have taken that much damage," he heard himself say.

"Yes," Hanan agreed. He sounded a little sick, too. "Far deeper than it should have. The radiation surge must have scrambled all the control settings before it..." He trailed off.

Before it killed them, Kosta finished the thought silently. With an effort, he tore his gaze from the wrecked ship.

To find Forsythe watching him.

Briefly, he held the High Senator's gaze before turning away, wondering dimly what was going on behind that stolid face. But he wasn't especially concerned about it. For the moment, all his thoughts were tied up in the implications of what had happened to that ship out there.

"Getting out of range," Hanan murmured.

Kosta turned back to the displays. The dead hulk and the sleek EmDef ships towing it were becoming hazy as they pushed the limits of the Gazelle's telescope and optical enhancement system.

"They taking it to the Institute?" he asked.

"Probably to a decon center first," Hanan told him. "It's got to be blazing with secondary radiation—you saw the length of cable the tow ship was using."

Forsythe shifted in his seat. "Mr. Daviee, you said you normally only get logjam problems when the hunterships get out of order," he said. "Do you ever get logjams otherwise?"

"What do you mean?" Hanan asked.

"For the Institute's self-focusing theory to be right, hunterships have to occasionally drop bits of mass into Angelmass," Forsythe said. "If they drop things there, it follows that they should also sometimes drop things during other parts of the trip, too."

"Which could show up as recalibration problems when catapulting," Hanan said, nodding slowly.

"Huh. I never thought of that. Jereko?"

"I don't know if anyone else has thought of it, either," Kosta said, glancing at Forsythe with newly heightened respect. In his admittedly limited experience, he'd never found government types to be exactly brimming with creative thought. Either Forsythe was an exception, or the Empyrean had found a way to attract a smarter class of people into public service than the Pax had.

Or else it had something to do with the fact that Empyreal politicians carried angels.

The others, he realized suddenly, were still waiting. "I don't know if the mathematics would work out, either," he added, forcing his mind back to the question. "It could be that the amount of mass necessary to start a self-focusing surge is still within catapult tolerances. Worth checking out, though."

"I've got a list here of all the catapult delays we've been involved in over the past year," Ornina spoke up.

"How do I get it?" Forsythe asked, fingers hovering over the control board in front of his seat.

"Allow me," Kosta said, unstrapping and stepping carefully in the low gravity to the High Senator's seat. He keyed for an echo of Ornina's screen, gave it a fast once-over. "I don't see anything obvious," he said.

"Me, neither," Hanan agreed. "Though that may not mean anything. One huntership for one year isn't much of a sample."

"Let's try anyway," Kosta suggested. "If you'll allow me, High Senator...?"

"Certainly." Forsythe swiveled the panel around to where Kosta could more easily operate it.

The Gazelle's computer library contained two different statistical packages. Kosta called them up for a quick look. "I don't think either of those can handle a sample this small," Hanan said, watching the echo of Kosta's work on his own display.

"No," Kosta agreed. "But I know of one that might be able to. Let's see if I can remember how it works."

It was a highly esoteric program he'd learned in his first year at the university, and he wound up with two false starts before he got it right. But finally it was ready. Feeding in Ornina's data, he set it running. "Interesting program," Forsythe said. "How long until it's done?"

"A couple of minutes," Kosta told him. "Speed is not its primary virtue." He let his eyes drift around the room, relaxing from the close-focus work of the display screen.

Chandris's seat was empty.

He glanced surreptitiously around the room, heart suddenly thudding in his ears. She was gone, all right. Sometime in the last few minutes, without anyone noticing, she'd just slipped away.

He opened his mouth to announce his discovery; bit down gently on his tongue instead. She'd probably just gone to find Ronyon, that was all. Or something equally innocent.

Except that Forsythe had already told her not to go after Ronyon. If she was up to something else...

The program beeped notice that it was done. Reaching to the board, Kosta keyed for the results.

He might as well not have bothered. "You're right," he said to Hanan as he dumped the screen. "One ship and one year just aren't enough."

"The catapult itself should have complete records, though," Ornina pointed out. "Perhaps you could ask them to send us a data copy, High Senator."

"I'm sure I could," Forsythe said. "However, as I told Mr. Daviee, I'm here on a strictly unofficial basis. I'd like to keep it that way."

"I see." Ornina looked at Hanan, and in her face Kosta could see that that bit of information had somehow missed getting passed to her. "I'm sorry. Ah—"

"The Institute should also have them," Kosta spoke up quickly. "When we get back I'll get Yaezon to look them up for me."

"There might be another way to get the information now, though," Hanan said, an odd tone to his voice as he tapped keys. "If they happen to have a new trainee or two on station at Control..."

He cleared his throat; and he was launching into a very official-sounding speech as Kosta quietly slipped out of the room.

He went first to Hanan's and Ornina's cabins, not from any real expectation of finding Chandris there but merely as a reasonable place to start his search. To his surprise, however, he heard the faint sound of running water as he approached. Someone inside Ornina's cabin was apparently taking a shower.

For a long moment he hesitated outside the door, a half dozen scenarios—some of them decidedly discomfiting—scrambling through his mind. But if Chandris was up to something underhanded, it was his duty to intervene. Bracing himself, he opened the door and went in.

No one was in the main living area, but there was a neat stack of clothes on the bed—Ronyon's, Kosta tentatively identified them. At the back of the room, through the open bathroom doorway, he could see back to the shower.

The shower door was only slightly translucent, but that was enough. The size and shape of the shadow showed that it was Ronyon in there. Alone.

Quickly, Kosta backed out into the corridor, cheeks hot with embarrassment and annoyance. The Chandris Effect, all right: give him half an hour with her and he'd make a fool of himself somehow.

But at least she wasn't pulling some scam on Ronyon.

So where was she?

He looked up and down the corridor, wondering if there was any point in continuing the search.

She'd probably left on some perfectly innocent ship's business, after all. For all he knew, Ornina or Hanan might even have openly sent her away while he was preoccupied with his statistics program.

Then, from down the corridor, he heard a faint grinding sound.

The sound came and went three more times before he located its source: the machine shop. Inside, hunched intently over a grinder, was Chandris.