“You wouldn’t believe it?! How d’you think I feel about it?”

“There’s that,” Sean agreed, smiling at last. “There’s that.”

Colin felt himself relax as he saw that slow smile. It was the way his big brother had always smiled when things got a bit tight, and he felt his lips twitch as he remembered the time Sean had pulled a trio of much older boys off of him. Colin had, perhaps, been unwise to challenge their adolescent cruelty so openly, but he and Sean had ended up thrashing all three of them. Throughout his boyhood, Colin had looked for that smile when he was in trouble, knowing things couldn’t be all that bad with Sean there to bail him out.

“Well,” Sean said finally, setting down his empty mug, “you always were a scrapper. If this Dahak of yours had to pick somebody, he made a good choice.”

“Right. Sure,” Colin snorted.

“No, I mean it.” Sean doodled on the tabletop with a fingertip. “Look at you. How many people would still be rational—well, as rational as you’ve ever been—after what you’ve been through?”

“Spare my blushes,” Colin growled, and Sean laughed. Then he sobered.

“All right,” he said more seriously. “I’m glad you’re still alive—” their eyes met, warm with an affection they had seldom had to express “—but I don’t imagine you dropped by just to let me know.”

“You’re right,” Colin said. He propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “I need help, and you’re the one person I can trust.”

“I can see that, Colin, and I’ll do whatever I can—you know that—but I’m a ranger, not an astronaut. How can I help you find this link of yours?”

“I don’t know that you can,” Colin admitted, “but there are drawbacks to being dead. All of my ID is useless, my accounts are locked—I couldn’t even check into a motel without using bogus identification. In fact—”

“Wait a minute,” Sean interrupted. “I can see where you’d need a base of operations, but couldn’t this Dahak just whip up any documentation you need?”

“Sure, but it wouldn’t help for what I really need to do. Normally, Dahak can get in and out of any Terran computer like a thief, Sean, but he’s cut all his com links now that I’m down here. They’re all stealthed, but we can’t risk anything that might tip off the mutineers now. Besides, he can’t do much with human minds, and you recognized me as soon as you got the sleep out of your eyes—do you think the security people at Shepherd wouldn’t?”

“That’s what you get for being a glamour-ass astronaut. Or not resorting to a little plastic surgery.” Sean studied his brother thoughtfully. “Would’ve been a wonderful chance to improve—extensively—on nature, too.”

“Very funny. Unfortunately, neither Dahak nor I considered it before he tinkered with my gizzards. Even if we had used cosmetic surgery, the last thing I need is to try waltzing my biotechnics past Shepherd’s security!”

“What big teeth you have,” Sean murmured with a grin.

“Ha, ha,” Colin said blightingly. Then his face turned more serious. “Wait till you hear what I need before you get too smartass, Sean.”

Sean MacIntyre sat back at the sudden somberness of Colin’s voice. His brother’s eyes were as serious as his voice, filled with a determination Sean had never seen in them, and he realized that Colin had changed more than simply physically. There was a new edge to him, a … ruthlessness. The gung-ho jet-jockey hot-dog Sean had loved for so many years had found a cause.

No, that wasn’t fair; Colin had always had a cause, but it had been a searching, questing cause. One that burned to push back boundaries, to go further and faster than anyone yet had, yet held a formlessness, a willingness to go wherever the wind blew and open whatever frontier offered. This one was concentrated and intense, almost desperate, waking a focused determination to use the tremendous strength Sean had always known lay fallow within him. For all his achievements, his brother had never truly been challenged. Not like this. Colin had become a driven man, and Sean wondered if, in the process, he might not have found the purpose for which he had been born…

“All right,” he said softly. “Tell me.”

“I wish I didn’t have to ask this of you,” Colin said, anxiety tightening his voice, “but I do. Have you collected my effects from Shepherd yet?”

Sean was taken briefly aback by the apparent change of subject, then shook his head. “NASA sent me a box of your stuff, but I didn’t collect anything.”

“Then I want you to,” Colin said, withdrawing a pen from his shirt pocket. “There’re some personal files in my office computer in White Tower—I doubt anyone even bothered to check them, but we can arrange for you to ‘find’ a note about them among my papers and Major Simmons will let you through to White for Chris Yamaguchi to pull them for you.”

“Well, sure,” Sean said. “But why do you need them?”

“I don’t. What I need is to get you inside White Tower with this.” He extended the pen. Sean took it with a baffled air, and Colin smiled unhappily.

“That’s not exactly what it looks like, Sean. You can write with it, but it’s actually a relay for my own sensors. With that in your pocket, I can carry out a full spectrum scan of your surroundings. And if you take the L Block elevators, you’ll pass right through Geo Sciences on your way upstairs.”

“Oh ho!” Sean said softly. “In other words, it’ll get you in by proxy?”

“Exactly. If Dahak is right—and he usually is—somebody in Geo Sciences is in cahoots with the mutineers. We think they’re all Terra-born, but whoever it is may have a few items of Imperial technology in or near his work area.”

“How likely is that?”

“I wish I knew,” Colin admitted. “Still, if I were a mutineer, I’d be mighty tempted to give my buddies a leg up if they need it. There’re a lot of fairly small gadgets that could help enormously-test gear, micro-tools, mini-computers, maybe even a com link to check in if they hit a glitch.”

“Com link?”

“The Imperium hasn’t used radio in a long, long time. Give your boy a fold-space link, and you’ve got totally secure communications, unless somebody physically overhears a conversation, of course.”

“I can see that, but do you really think they’re going to leave stuff like that just lying around?”

“Why not? Oh, they’ll try to keep anything really bizarre under wraps—I mean, the place is crawling with scientists—but who’s going to suspect? Nobody on the planet knows any more about what’s really going on than I did before Dahak grabbed me, right?”

“There’s that,” Sean agreed slowly. “And this gizmo—” he waved the “pen” gently “—will let you pick up on anything like that?”

“Right. Unfortunately—” Colin met his brother’s eyes levelly “—it could also be picked up on. It doesn’t use radio either, Sean, and I’ll be using active sensors. If you pass too close to anyone with the right detection rig, you’ll stand out like a Christmas tree in June. And if you do…”

“I see,” Sean said softly. He pursed his lips and drew the relay slowly through his fingers, then smiled that same slow smile and slid it neatly into his shirt pocket. “In that case, you’d better jot down that ‘note’ of yours in case Major Simmons wants to see it, hadn’t you?”

The sentries carried slung assault rifles, and artfully camouflaged auto-cannon covered Sean’s old Caddy as he braked gently at the security barricade’s concrete dragon’s teeth. The last major attack by the Black Mecca splinter faction of the old Islamic Jihad had been over a year ago, but it had killed over three hundred people and inflicted a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of damage on ConEurope’s Werner von Braun Space Control.

The First World had grown unhappily accustomed to terrorism, both domestic and foreign. Most of the world—including the vast majority of Islam—might condemn them, but Dark Age mentalities could do terrible amounts of damage with modern technology. As Black Mecca had proven when it used a man—portable SAM to knock down a fully—loaded ConEuropean Valkyrie just short of the runway … onto a pad twelve minutes from launch with a Perseus heavy-lifter. Terrorism continued to flow in erratic cycles, but it seemed to be back on the upsurge after a two-year hiatus, and the aerospace industry had apparently become Black Mecca’s prime target this time around. No one knew exactly why—unless it was the way aerospace epitomized the collective “Great Satan’s” wicked, evil, liberalizing, humanizing technology—but Shepherd Center was taking no chances.