"Don't bother," Chandris said from his left.

—and even as he spun toward the voice a dazzling light flared to life in front of him.

He squeezed his eyes shut, automatically throwing his left arm up to protect his face from the glare.

"Chandris?" he called. "Come on, it's me. Jereko."

"I know," she said, her voice icy. "I was expecting you. I figured telling you about the Daviees's spare angel this afternoon would flush you out."

Kosta winced. He'd done it again. The great Pax spy, making a thorough mess of it.

And, naturally, making a mess of it because of Chandris. "I'm not here to steal the angel," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I just need to borrow it overnight to run some tests."

"What, the Institute's run out of angels?" she countered sarcastically.

"Theirs aren't any good for this," Kosta told her. "I need one that's spent a lot of time near Angelmass."

"They've all done that. That's where they come from, remember?"

"That's not what I mean," Kosta insisted. "Look, can't we sit down and talk about this?"

"Stay where you are," she said sharply. "I've got a cutting torch, and I'm not afraid to use it. You give me trouble and I'll slice you in half."

Kosta frowned at the shadow behind the light. "What in the world has gotten into you, Chandris?

Come on—you know me."

"Do I?" she demanded. "Or do I just know the role the Pax taught you to play for us?"

And there it was. The moment Kosta had been dreading ever since his ship and the cocoon had been blown out of the Komitadji's cargo hold into Empyreal space. "It's not a role," he said, a part of him marveling at his own unexpected calm. After all the worrying and nightmares, the actual event had become anticlimactic. "I really am a researcher. They just sort of maneuvered me into this job."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means they came by one day and hauled me out of school," Kosta told her. "Said they needed someone with my expertise to find out what the angels were and how they were affecting the people of the Empyrean. They said the angels were an alien invasion, and that if we didn't stop it both the Empyrean and the Pax would be taken over and destroyed. I guess they convinced me that I could keep that from happening." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Maybe I convinced myself."

"You still believe that?" Chandris asked. "The invasion part, I mean?"

"I don't know," Kosta admitted. "A week ago I would have said no. Now... I don't know." He gestured to the angel box beside him. "That's why I need to borrow the Daviees' angel."

"Is this test of yours important?"

"Very important. Possibly even critical."

"Then why don't you just shoot me and take it?"

Kosta felt his stomach curl up inside him. He'd completely forgotten about the shocker pressed against his right palm. "I didn't think you could see it from there," he said between suddenly stiff lips.

"I know what it looks like when someone's palming something," Chandris said. "You haven't answered my question."

Kosta swallowed, his heart suddenly pounding in his ears. She was right, he realized. At this range, with the shocker still set for wide field, a single shot would take out the light, the cutting torch, and Chandris herself.

A simple, casual tap on the firing stud, and he would be free. He could take the angel, run his tests, then escape back across the Empyrean to Lorelei. There he could hide; and when the Komitadji returned he would be able to face them all with the knowledge that he had succeeded beyond all their expectations. Even Telthorst would have to wipe that smirk off his face then.

He squinted past the light, to where Chandris waited silently with her torch. A torch she could have fired, but didn't... and belatedly it dawned on him that she was running a test of her own here. A test just as critical as the one he had planned for the Daviees' angel.

"I didn't come to the Empyrean to kill people, Chandris," he said quietly as he set the safety on the shocker. Dropping the weapon on the floor, he kicked it her direction. "I came here to help."

For another minute the room was quiet. Then, to Kosta's surprise, the light dazzling his eyes went out. "The light switch is beside the door," Chandris said.

Kosta found it and flicked it on. Behind the light stand she'd rigged up, Chandris was standing by the storage room wall. There was no sign of any cutting torch. "What's this test you want to run?" she asked.

Kosta glanced down. The shocker was still lying on the deck where he'd kicked it. "I want to measure the angel's mass," he said, looking up again. "I think it may help us figure out what's happening to Angelmass."

"You mean with these surges?"

"The surges, and a theoretically impossible shift in its gravitational field," Kosta said. "That's what I was talking to High Senator Forsythe about after we landed."

"You know what's going on?"

"I've got an idea," Kosta said grimly. "I hope I'm wrong."

For a long moment she studied him. Then, abruptly, she nodded. "All right. But you have to promise the angel won't be damaged."

"There's no danger of that," Kosta assured her. "None of the tests I want to run will hurt it."

"And I have to be with the angel at all times." Reaching down, Chandris picked up the shocker.

"Here—put this away somewhere," she said, tossing it to Kosta.

He almost fumbled it in his surprise. "Don't you want to keep it?" he asked. "I mean, as a guarantee of my good behavior?"

She snorted. "Good behavior be nurked. If you think I'm going to risk getting caught with a Pax weapon on me, you're crazy." She brushed past him. "Come on—the angel's in a carrying case in my room. You've got three hours to do your tests."

On the display screen Kosta's friend Gyasi straightened up from the big shiny box and busied himself for a moment with an inset keyboard. He watched it another moment, then turned and gave a thumbs-up signal to the monitor camera before walking out of its range. "Okay, he's got it running,"

Kosta said, half under his breath. "We'll know in a few minutes."

Chandris nodded, looking at the big box still centered on the screen, and the other equipment stacked on the table behind it. All that, just to measure the weight of a tiny little angel. "How much smaller than the other angels do you think it'll be?"

He sighed. "I don't know," he said. "According to everything we think we know about quantum theory it shouldn't have lost any mass. By definition, a quantum is as small as that particular package can be. Unless Dr. Qhahenlo's quantum bundle theory is right. But I've never really liked the mathematics she used to cook that one up."

"So who decided it had to be a quantum?"

"It's a subatomic particle with a mass in the quadrillions of AMUs," he said. "Nothing that big has any business being stable unless it simply can't break down into smaller pieces."

"So who decided it had to behave like everything else you've ever found?" she persisted. "And don't give me any of that 'if you were an expert you'd understand' crapsy."

"I wasn't going to," Kosta said. But he was staring hard at the display, his forehead furrowed with concentration. "I wish I knew, Chandris. But I don't. I'm not sure I know anything at all."

She thought about that, watching him out of the corner of her eye. "Your masters aren't going to be very happy with you, are they?" she commented at last.

He snorted in derision. But even as he did, the vague demons swirling across his face seemed to recede a little. "I'm beyond caring what they think of me," he said. "What gave me away, if you don't mind my asking?"

She snorted. "What didn't give you away? You might as well have hung a sign around your neck saying you didn't belong here. That background story you spun for Hanan and Ornina was part of it.