"Very much my own assessment, Roupen." Hovannis glanced at Paulina Koch with surprised admiration; she might have been talking about the pricing policy for oxygen tanks. "What response do you recommend we make, then?" she asked.

His grin was frightening. "I wish the damned ship had crashed before that crew of traitors ever got the chance to file their report."

"That, unfortunately, is not relevant at this point in time."

"I suppose not," Hovannis said regretfully.

"Still," the Chairman said, "I do not relish the prospect of standing up before the Assembly and telling them of the blunder we have found."

"David Ware got his a long time ago."

"Too long ago, I fear, for it to matter. We are the ones available now to be punished for his mistake."

Hovannis grunted. "The report ought to disappear from the files."

"I thought of that also. I concluded it would yield us no lasting benefit. Eventually the crew of the J?ng Ho will simply refile: probably when they notice no outcry has erupted from the report."

"But then we'll be ready for them." Once Hovannis had an idea, he ran with it. "If they start raising a stink, they'll do it through channels at first. Computer foulup explains anything once, especially since odds are those bastards don't even realize the mess they've landed us in. Hell, they may even be naive enough to believe the file got erased by accident twice. Any which way, we'll have bought ourselves some time."

"Maybe even enough to see us through this session of the Assembly," Paulina Koch mused. "Maybe. And an old scandal, even if unearthed, will not do us nearly so much damage next time as a fresh one now." She took her time to think it over and then slowly nodded. "Very well, Roupen. The critical issue, you understand, is to make certain the deletion is either invisible or, if by some mischance it should be noticed, cannot be traced to your intervention."

Hovannis nodded. "Depend on it. I'll handle the erasure myself." His smile did not touch his eyes. "After all, we don't need more people thinking about Bilbeis IV than are already."

"No."

"May I use your terminal?" The question was only formal.

"No," Paulina Koch said again. Hovannis stopped in surprise, his stubby-fingered hands poised over the keyboard. She went on. "Please note, Roupen, I have not told you what to do, and I can truthfully state that under oath. Nor do I care to see you do anything."

The External Affairs Director's eyes lit in anger, but it faded as he thought things through. He gave a grudging nod. "Sensible, from your seat."

"Indeed."

"All right." Hovannis wet his lips. Paulina Koch was one of the few people who made him nervous, and not because she outranked him. He had to work to bring out his next words: "Remember, though, PK, if the wave rolls over me, I won't be the last one to drown."

"Who said anything of waves? All we aim to do is keep the water calm and quiet. Thank you for coming up, Roupen. Now I hope you will excuse me; I have other business to attend to."

Paulina Koch watched him go. Her brows drew together very slightly. A capable man, yes, and one who could prove dangerous?no one had had the nerve to warn her that way in a long time. But their interests here ran in the same direction. And the dismissal she'd given him would keep him in his place a while.

She set the matter of Bilbeis IV aside and turned to the printouts still cluttering her desk. She could not ignore all of them because of a single problem elsewhere; that would have been bad management. She had kept the Survey Service running smoothly for nineteen years; she wanted to keep her seat at least that much longer.

Hovannis's abrupt return startled her. "Yes?" she said coldly. What was he doing back here?

"It's gone from our files."

"I assumed so. I did not need to hear that, nor want to. If you are seeking to implicate me in what you have done, you may have succeeded, but I assure you that you will not enjoy your success much."

"I'm not stupid enough to think I would, PK."

"Well, then? I assume this visit does have some reason?"

Hovannis started to sink into a chair, hesitated, waited for the Chairman's nod, then finished sitting. "You know that survey ships' reports, like most other government reports, go into open access."

"How could I not know that? It helps the Purists meddle." Paulina Koch had been maneuvering behind the scenes for years to get Survey Service records shifted to restricted access. The Purists were only part of her political consideration. Too many things happened on primitive planets that the public could not be expected to understand. Bilbeis IV was a perfect example. The Chairman nodded slowly, as if to herself. "You are, I presume, about to tell me seventeen people on thirteen different planets have already made copies of the report. If so, we are finished, and nothing to be done about it."

"If that were so, I'd still be downstairs, working on my vita so I could start looking for another job." That was candid enough to surprise a smile out of Paulina Koch. Hovannis noted it with some relief; it would soften the bad news. "One copy was accessed, less than half an hour before I dumped the file."

"Tell me the rest."

"Accessor is Isaac Fogelman, home planet Hyperion."

"Have you checked on him? I've heard the name, I think."

"Not yet. You needed to know ASAP."

"Mmp." The grunt told Hovannis he was forgiven. "Let's see what the data store tells us about him," Paulina Koch said. "No, don't leave, Roupen; seeing who uses Survey Service information will not incriminate me unduly." She punched buttons and grunted again. "University of Hyperion, anthropology department."

"Bad," the External Affairs Director said. People who chose teaching over fieldwork had no real notion of what conditions were like away from their keyboards and terminals. Most of them were Purists, and most of the ones who weren't were sympathizers.

Studying the readout, he saw Fogelman was like the rest. Several of his publications criticized Survey Service field technique, though he himself had stayed on Hyperion the last fifteen years. He was also a member of the Noninterference Foundation, a private watchdog group that monitored the Service. If he wasn't an out-and-out Purist, he came too close for comfort. "Bad," Hovannis repeated.

"Yes," the Chairman said. "When he makes his dramatic revelation, he will have the credentials to be taken seriously."

"If his copy of the text was to vanish also?"

"No," Paulina Koch said. Then she reconsidered. With the Service on the line, what did one meddling professor matter? "Well, perhaps?if he never has the chance to accuse us of anything. In this area, any publicity is bad publicity: the less anyone outside the Service thinks of Bilbeis IV, the better."

Hovannis agreed with her completely. "I've done some checking. The Service has contacts with a discreet individual on Hyperion, one who, by luck, operates out of New Westwood, the university town."

"Yes, that is fortunate," the Chairman agreed.

Hovannis waited for a more definite order, then realized he would not get one. "It will be attended to," he said. Bureaucratic language sometimes had its advantages; he could truthfully deny under oath that he had ever said he would do anything.

The discreet individual had already made electronic hash of all the data cards in Fogelman's study. Trashing the professor's entire data storage system was about the craziest commission he'd ever had, but he got paid for results, not questions. Very well paid in this case, certainly enough to keep him incurious.

The screen of Fogelman's terminal came on, filling the study with pale gray light. The discreet individual got to work again. Fogelman's security precautions were more than sufficient to keep amateurs from getting into his files, but the discreet individual was no amateur. Besides, he had been briefed about likely keywords and traps, which made the job go faster than it would have otherwise.