For the first time his expression twitched. "Really," he said. "What sort of deal?"

"You give me money; I give you information," Chandris said. "Information a businessman like yourself would find exceedingly useful."

He pursed his lips. "What exactly does this information concern?"

"It concerns Angelmass," she said. "That's all I can say for now."

"Really," he commented, leaning back and crossing his legs. "You surprise me, Chandris. A good business strategist never gives away anything for free."

"Perhaps I'm not a good strategist, then," Chandris said evenly.

Toomes smiled. "Having had you run me around the track a few times, I hardly think that likely."

Chandris inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment of the point. "In that case, I'll concede it would have been obvious anyway once you heard your side of the bargain."

"That sounds more like it," he agreed. "Go on."

"I fly with a huntership that's been badly damaged," she told him. "I need it repaired."

Toomes's smile abruptly hardened. "The Gazelle?"

"That's the one."

He was frowning openly at her now, and behind his eyes she could see the news stories of the incident replaying themselves. The damage to the Gazelle, the damage to Hanan—

And High Senator Arkin Forsythe standing with reluctant prominence amid the chaos.

"Well," he said at last. "Interesting, indeed. But I thought Gabriel handled huntership repairs."

"Gabriel works at bureaucratic speeds," Chandris said. "We need it fixed now."

"We?"

Chandris hesitated a fraction of a second. But Toomes wasn't going to give her what they needed without something more. "I'm working with a researcher at the Angelmass Studies Institute," she said. "His name's Jereko Kosta."

"Kosta," Toomes repeated, studying her carefully. "I'll be checking with him, of course."

Chandris gestured toward his desk. "Call him now, if you'd like. I'll wait."

For a half dozen seconds she was afraid he was going to take her up on the offer. No problem; except that if he called out of the fog like this, Kosta the naive spy was likely to tell him everything they knew or suspected about Angelmass. That would be a lot of something for nothing, and Toomes could well decide it was all he needed.

Too late, now, she wished she'd told Kosta what she was planning and prepped him a little. But he'd been so sure she was going to pull something illegal that she'd figured he deserved to stew in his own juices a little.

But Toomes merely shrugged. "Later will do," he said. "Bottom line: how much are these repairs going to cost?"

Chandris braced herself. The estimate from the service crew foreman had come in from Ornina just as Chandris arrived at the Stardust building. This was not going to be pretty. "A hundred eighty thousand ruya."

Toomes's eyebrows went up again, but at least he didn't laugh out loud. "That's a lot of money," he said. "What makes you think this information will be anywhere near that valuable?"

"It's worth considerably more than that," Chandris said. "I'm not exaggerating when I say that this has the potential to drastically affect the entire economy of Seraph system. Possibly the entire Empyrean."

"Really," Toomes said. "Something of such devastating import, and you're proposing we keep it to ourselves?"

"Of course not," Chandris said. "We couldn't bury this even if we wanted to. And we don't. All I'm proposing is that you get the report a day before anyone else does."

"Inside information," he said. "What you're suggesting skates very close to the edge of illegal activity."

"You're supplying a service to us," Chandris pointed out. "That makes you something of a partner. It seems to me you're entitled to have our data as soon as we collect it."

"And of course, everyone else would have to wait until we could draft a proper news release," he said. "Naturally, the wording on such things is very important. I'm guessing it could take as long as three days to get it done properly."

Chandris felt her heartbeat speed up. Toomes was going for it. He was bargaining with her, angling for more time to work whatever business or stock manipulation he might want to do with his inside information. "I don't know," she said, putting reluctance into her voice. "Kosta's writing skills are pretty good. I don't think it would take us more than a day."

"This isn't something you want to rush into," Toomes warned. "If you're right, this news will be a major topic of conversation across the entire Empyrean. The release itself could conceivably be quoted verbatim in history texts for generations to come. The wording will be incredibly important.

It has to take three days."

"You're right about the historical significance, of course," Chandris conceded. "But even so, I can't see it taking more than two days at the absolute most."

For a long moment he gazed at her. "All right," he said at last. "Two days." He lifted a finger.

"Plus."

She frowned. There was an unpleasant glint in his eye. "Plus what?"

"I'll have a credit chit here for you at five-thirty tomorrow afternoon," Toomes said. "One hundred eighty thousand ruya. At that time—" He lifted his eyebrows. "You and I are going to do it."

Chandris felt her blood freeze. "It?"

"That's right," Toomes said. "You see, for all the time we spent together on the Xirrus, I somehow can't remember us actually doing anything personal together. It makes me wonder if we ever really did."

"You drank an awful lot on that trip," Chandris said between stiff lips. Oh, no. No. Not this.

"Yes, I did," he said. "I can't help wondering why."

"I wasn't ordering your drinks for you."

"No," he said. "But perhaps there was subtle encouragement." He waved a hand. "It doesn't matter.

The point is, whatever did or didn't happen on the Xirrus, it's going to happen tomorrow afternoon."

He stood up. "The office staff leaves promptly at five," he said. "Be here at five-thirty if you want your money."

Chandris stood up, too. "I'll be here," she said, gazing at his face. It hadn't been a predator's smile she'd seen when she came in, she realized now. It had been the smile of injured pride seeing a chance to balance the books. "Goodbye, Amberson."

Stardust Metals' main clerical area was three floors below the executive floor, a warren of small offices and large, desk-filled spaces. It was crawling with busy people and filled with the kind of controlled chaos that seemed to go with every bureaucratic operation Chandris had ever seen.

In the midst of all that activity, it was inevitable that someone would leave a hand computer lying around unattended somewhere.

She found one in two minutes flat and retired to the privacy of the women's restroom with her prize.

On the Xirrus, she'd had to fry her borrowed computer's ID register to keep it from spotting unauthorized usage. Here, she didn't need to be nearly that fancy. All she wanted this time was a few cozy minutes with Stardust's central computer.

The security protection on this system, she quickly discovered, was far looser than she'd had to cut through on the Xirrus. And for good reason: the particular hand computer she'd scored could only access the most basic of Stardust's housekeeping programs.

But that was all right. Basic housekeeping was exactly what she wanted. A simple work order, logged in for a specific time, and she was done. Poking around the menus, she spotted an unexpected bonus among the more routine areas and logged that in, too. Another brief dip into the clerical chaos to return the computer, and she was finished.

She waited until she was back on the lobby floor and had some quiet space around her before she called Ornina. "It's set," she told the older woman. "I'll have the money tomorrow afternoon."