Let me go see if there's a radiation detector setup free."

"Don't bother," Kosta said. "This isn't any spontaneous breakdown. The damage has already been done."

"Yes," Chandris murmured, a sudden ache in her heart as she stared at the numbers. She'd tried so hard to convince herself that the angel's presence hadn't been what had kept Hanan and Ornina working so peaceably together all these years. Apparently, that had been nothing but wishful puffthink.

"Chandris?"

She started out of her thoughts. Kosta was frowning at her. "What?" she said, turning her face away from him.

"It's not the Daviees who did this to it," he said quietly.

Did I say it was? the defensive retort bubbled automatically up into her throat. To her vague surprise, it stayed there. "Then who did?" she asked instead. "You? Me?"

"No," Kosta said. "Angelmass."

She turned back, half expecting to see something on his face that would show he was making some stupid joke. But his expression was deadly serious. "What do you mean, Angelmass? What does Angelmass have to do with it?"

"It's the source of the angels," Kosta said. "Hawking radiation, remember? A particle-antiparticle pair are created at the event horizon. One falls in, the other escapes outward."

"But there aren't any anti-angels," Gyasi objected.

"Yes, there are," Kosta said. His voice was firm, and just as serious as his expression. "We just haven't found them yet. But they're there."

He waved toward the display. "That alone proves it, as far as I'm concerned. Dr. Qhahenlo's theory allows for both quantum bundles and field effects, remember? Angelmass has a huge field—the corrosion of the Daviees' angel shows that much. If that field isn't being generated by an equally huge mass of anti-angels inside the black hole, where's it coming from?"

"Maybe from the Daviees?" Gyasi suggested. "I don't know these people. Maybe they're—" He waved a hand helplessly.

"What, evil incarnate?" Kosta scoffed. "Come on, Yaezon. Anyway, there's an easy way to check.

Remember that mass murderer you've got on the grounds with the angel in his cell? When was the last time that angel was checked?"

Gyasi made a face. "It's checked every six weeks," he conceded. "You're right; if there'd been any change the whole Institute would have heard about it. But if there are anti-angels, why hasn't anyone ever seen them?"

"I don't know for sure," Kosta admitted. "But try this. An angel has a huge negative charge, which means that as soon as it's created it starts pulling positively charged particles to it."

"Which is what creates the matter shell," Chandris put in.

"Right," Kosta nodded. "And the most common positive particles out there are the protons and helium nuclei from the solar wind, plus heavier particles from Angelmass itself."

Gyasi muttered something startled sounding. "Of course. Of course."

"Of course what?" Chandris demanded, looking back and forth between them.

"Anti-angels would be positively charged," Gyasi told her, his voice the sour tone of someone who's just failed a child's brain-tweaker. "That means they would be pulling mostly electrons. And electrons, being a lot lighter than protons, will get yanked in to it that much faster."

"Which means an anti-angel could go neutral so fast that your average huntership would never even see it," Kosta concluded.

"So simple." Gyasi shook his head. "You said you had a theory about Angelmass. Did it have something to do with possible structure?"

"I don't know," Kosta said. "Maybe."

"Well, spit it out," Chandris said.

Kosta braced himself. "What would you say," he said, "if I told you I think Angelmass has become sentient?"

For a long minute the only sound in the room was the humming of the computer cooling fans. "I'd probably say you'd been working too hard," Gyasi said at last. "Jereko, it's a black hole. A fruitcake would have more chance of spontaneously developing sentience than it would."

"Would it?" Kosta countered. "You're forgetting Che and his nine angels."

"Easy," Gyasi warned, jerking his head urgently toward Chandris. "We're keeping that quiet, remember?"

"Keeping what quiet?" Chandris asked.

"Che Kruyrov found that a cubic array of nine angels mimics a Lantryllyn logic circuit," Kosta told her. "That was a system that people once thought could form the basis for a fully sentient computer."

Chandris blinked. "So now your quanta of good have become quanta of sentience?"

"We don't know what it means," Gyasi said, looking pained. "But I'm sure it doesn't mean you can make a jump from a single Lantryllyn circuit straight to a sentient black hole."

"It attacks hunterships," Kosta said flatly. "It's done it twice, firing dead-on at moving targets."

"Maybe more than twice," Chandris said, staring at the white line as the image on the screen continued its slow rotation. "You said there were other radiation surges before the one that hit the Hova's Skyarcher. Were they all pointed at hunterships?"

"I don't know," Kosta said grimly. "We'll have to check on that. And it's had to alter its internal structure and even its gravitational field to do so."

"A black hole hasn't got an internal structure," Gyasi snapped.

"Then it's altered its event-horizon environment," Kosta said. "I don't know what the hell it's doing, or how it's doing it. But you can't deny it is doing something."

Gyasi snorted. "Next you're going to try to tell me this has some bearing on the increase in angel production you calculated."

"As a matter or fact, I'm sure it does," Kosta said. "Hawking radiation is caused by strong tidal forces at the event horizon. A side effect of Angelmass's gravitational and radiation surges could well be an increase in the number of angels it turns out."

Gyasi exhaled loudly, looking back at the display showing the rotating vector field. Kosta stirred, as if preparing to speak; Chandris touched his arm warningly, and he subsided.

"So what do we do?" Gyasi asked at last. "We put something like this on the net and we're going to have a lot of scared people out there."

"Agreed," Kosta said. "I was thinking of telling Director Podolak and a couple of others. Dr.

Qhahenlo, certainly, and probably Che and Dr. Frashni, too."

"What are you going to use for data?" Chandris asked.

Kosta frowned at her. "What do you mean? The angel, of course."

"The Daviees' angel?" she asked pointedly. "The one it's illegal for them to have?"

"Yes, the—" Kosta broke off. "Illegal?"

"I looked it up earlier, while I was waiting for you to show," Chandris told him. "Angel hunters are required by law to turn in any angel they find."

Gyasi waved a hand impatiently. "Sure, but in this case—"

"No," Chandris said flatly.

"She's right," Kosta seconded. "They've got enough trouble right now, with Hanan in the hospital and a half-wrecked ship." He looked at Chandris. "Anyway, I promised we'd put the angel back when we were done testing it."

"Then what do we do?" Gyasi asked.

"We dig up some independent data," Kosta said. "Let's start by seeing if we can find evidence of antiangels."

He reached for the terminal; checked the motion with a muttered curse. "Yaezon, if you would?" he said. "Check for me when the last time was anyone went out looking for one."

"We've done a complete bio-chemical analysis on Mr. Ronyon," the white-jacketed doctor said, punching keys on the nurses' station computer. "There are still remnants of the stress-created chemicals, but we can't find anything that might have triggered the stress itself. We're still waiting on the results of the neural scan, but I'm not expecting to find anything." He paused, just noticeably.

"Aside from the obvious malfunctions in a brain like his, of course."