Or so he thought. Still, there were ways. Like any safety-conscious administrator, Paulina Koch held a few tricks in reserve about which her subordinates knew nothing. Some, unfortunately, left traces behind?otherwise the Chairman would have been using them all along instead of having to wait until Hovannis was away from the scene.

Until she began her search project, she had had only an intellectual feel for the sheer size of the bureau she ran. Watching the computer spin its metaphorical wheels as it ground through enormous chaffheaps of data, though, gave her an emotional grasp as well, one she would just as soon not have had. Someone else might have given way to despair?what she was looking for might be anyplace.

Paulina Koch did not give way. In what free time she had from the day-to-day problems of running the Service, she refined a couple of search routines to make them harder to detect and, more important, faster.

Unlike Sabium, she knew she did not have all the time she needed.

Magda slammed her hand down on the table in disgust. "I don't know why I bother talking to you, Pierre," she snapped. "You're only using half the data we have, and the less important half, too."

Pierre Bochy gestured defensively. "You will forgive me, but I see no reason not to rely on language tapes, records of diet and dress, and the like. But I find a woman more than half as old as the Federacy much harder to take seriously."

"Survey Service hack," Stavros said, flipping his head back in a way that combined contempt and an effort to get a lock of hair away from his eyes.

Bochy rose, bowed with grace surprising in a man so portly, and stalked out of the small study compartment.

Magda sighed. "That's not going to help, Stavros." Ever since boarding the Hanno, she had worked to keep her temper under control. The Hanno was tense enough already. The Survey Service personnel looked on their counterparts from the Noninterference Foundation as a pack of meddling amateurs along only because of political pressure, while the Foundation contingent viewed the Survey Service team as, at best, hidebound button pushers and, at worst, wanton despoilers and murderers. No one seemed shy about saying so, either.

As Bilbeis IV neared, Magda found her good intentions fraying. Though she and Stavros were nominally part of the group from the Noninterference Foundation, they had few friends there. Most of the Foundation people were Purists, and mistrusted anyone who was not all for destroying the Survey Service. Magda's years with the Service only made her doubly suspicious to them.

Yet to the Survey Service staffers, she was a traitor for having gone over to the Foundation and, though no one would say so out loud, for airing dirty Service laundry in public. That bothered her less than she'd expected, and she took a long time to figure out why.

Stavros's rude crack summed it up as well as anything. The Survey Service people on the Hanno were… almost second-rate. If Magda had to guess, she would have said they were chosen much more for adherence to accepted views than for brilliance. Bochy was a case in point. He was competent enough, but his mind moved in preselected tracks.

Caught in her reverie, Magda did not notice the measuring stare Stavros sent toward her. Though they were allies in this, though she had given him no reason for it, he also worried about her coming from the Survey Service, worried that in the end her quarrel with the Service turned more on information suppressed than on lives suppressed.

He knew that was a paranoid thought; Magda had lost more people close to her than he had. But seeing the whole Service as an enemy, as he did, sometimes made him have trouble separating her from it. And thinking like a paranoid had kept him alive more than once lately.

Enough, he told himself firmly; he knew he was vaporing like a fool. Next he'd start hearing voices, and the ship's officers would fill him so full of happy pills he wouldn't care what day of the week it was, let alone anything else.

He touched Magda's arm, wanting to make amends the best way he knew how for thinking ill of her, even if she had no idea he'd done so. "Shall we go back to my cubicle?"

She glanced at the clock on the wall. "I'm supposed to be here another fifteen minutes, but why not?" she said sourly. "I don't know why they even bothered scheduling these briefing sessions in the first place."

"Well, thanks to their killing off everyone else who's ever been to Bilbeis IV, your opinions do have a certain value."

She laughed, but the mirth washed out before she was through. "You're getting as cynical as I am. Are you sure you want me to come along with you?"

"Yes." Stavros realized they were lovers more on account of the events that had thrown them together than for any more solid reason, but the pleasure and moments of forgetfulness they shared were no less desirable because of that.

"All right. Like I said, no one here pays any attention to me anyway. The Service people have their chunk that they can handle, and the Foundation people have theirs, and nobody wants to look any farther. Screw 'em all."

"No thank you," Stavros declared solemnly.

This time, Magda's laugh stayed happy. She took Stavros's hand and pulled him up from his seat. "Come on. Doesn't it make you feel like you're ditching a class?"

"I can't think of a better incentive," he said, smelling the clean fresh scent of Magda's hair. But though he bantered with her as they walked the Hanno's corridors, some of the happiness had leached from him. Once or twice, back on Hyperion, he had cut class to sport with Andrea… who would still be alive had he not gotten that copy of the report on Bilbeis IV and recognized it for what it was.

His mood darkened further when he and Magda turned a corner and almost ran into Roupen Hovannis. The captain of the Hanno scowled his dark-browed scowl at them, then pointedly checked his watch. "Why aren't you at your assigned station?" he growled at Magda. It was only the second or third time he had spoken to her since the flight began. Stavros, as usual, he ignored altogether.

That suited Stavros fine. He distrusted Hovannis on general principles as being a creature of Paulina Koch's. But even without connection to the Chairman, the captain would have frightened him. There was no give anywhere to Hovannis. He even walked with his hard, stocky body leaning slightly forward, as if to bull obstructions out of his path.

No attitude could have been better calculated to get Magda's back up. She retorted, "Anyone who wants me that badly can call me in my cubicle. Sitting in that study chamber wastes its space and my time."

"I'll log your disobedience," Hovannis said stonily.

"Go ahead. While you're at it, log that a grand total of three people showed up in the last week and that none of them had any idea what questions to ask."

Shaking his head, Hovannis stamped away. Magda glared at his broad back, then surprised Stavros by chuckling under her breath. He said, "As far as I can see, that one's about as funny as a funeral."

"Nowhere near. I was just thinking, good luck to anybody who tries to call me in my cubicle, seeing as I'll be in yours."

Suddenly that prospect looked very good to Stavros again. "Let's go, then."

Afterward, Magda said with malicious glee, "We'll be landing in a couple of days. Then all the people who stayed away will wish they hadn't."

The phone chimed. "Usually that happens in the middle of things." Stavros got out of bed to pick it up. He answered the call, then, abruptly quite serious, turned to Magda. "It's for you: the Foundation's comparative theologian. She was surprised when she got me?thought she was punching for your cubicle."