The navy must have changed a lot in the twenty years I’d been out of touch. An admiral who’d been an Explorer — pretty amazing. But when I studied Festina’s face for a moment, that big purple blotch sure made her look like an Explorer.

"Yes, Edward," Festina said, "once upon a time, I was a full-fledged ECM." (ECM means Expendable Crew Member… what Explorers call themselves.) "But I’ll tell you my life story later," she went on. "Right now, we have more pressing business. If we find that recruiter’s Bumbler, its memory may contain useful evidence."

She struck off forward, tracing the recruiter’s path as he’d run from the militia. Soon she called for Kaisho to take the lead; a Balrog’s spooky senses were better than human eyes following a track in the dark. That didn’t sit well with Zeeleepull — he couldn’t stand waiting for the wheelchair’s snail-slow progress, so he put his nose to the ground, caught the scent, and barged his way forward as fast as he could sniff. You’d think the trail would be hard for him to make out, considering how a horde of warriors had trampled over the original scent… but Zeeleepull never seemed to hesitate. Of course, he’d gone this way before: only half an hour ago, when the militia followed the same spoor through the trees.

Mr. Clear Chest must have had a rough time of it, racing on the slant of a hillside through the deep night dark… trying not to trip over logs or get tangled in patches of brush. Of course, this forest was alien, not like the nice Terran woodlands on my father’s estate; but the undergrowth here knew all the Earth tricks, with bristles and prickers and nettly bits to jab you as you dashed by.

It also had those puffbally things I’d felt popping under my feet ever since I came into these woods. Festina said they were insect eggs and got a crinkly fond look in her eyes; she even scraped up a few and put them in a test-tubey thing she had in her pocket. Me, I just saw those eggs as slimy gunk that made it easy to fall if you didn’t watch your step. That recruiter must have got whipped and ripped by branches pretty thoroughly on his run… till finally he hit a major hitch. "Bandolier," Festina said, crouching to peer at something in the mud: a big leather sash with all kinds of clips, the sort of thing you sling from your shoulder and hang doodads on. It was tangled into a shrub with thorns the size of knitting needles, nasty sharp things that stuck out in all directions. Mr. Clear Chest must have brushed too close to the plant and got himself snagged; in the dark, with all those thorns, he wouldn’t have a chance of getting the sash unstuck without gouging up his hands. Especially not with a horde of musk-crazed warriors on his heels. All he could do was unbuckle the strap and abandon his gear.

Which may have given us all kinds of good evidence, like stuff from the Bumbler’s memory… except that right after Mr. Clear Chest ditched his equipment, it got trampled to topsoil by two dozen stampeding Mandasars.

The shrub with the thorns was crushed into the dirt. So was the Bumbler — nothing but scrap metal now, hammered as flat as a waffle. Now, the only data you could read on it was a whopping bunch of dents from warrior feet.

Festina kept poking at the ground, prying up the squashed remains of everything from the recruiter’s bandolier. A lot of it looked like navy equipment — not just the Bumbler, but a service communicator, a deluxe multitool, and even a universal map. (The map was a flexible vidscreen that could fold down to palm-size or out to a meter square. Its memory didn’t really have charts of the whole universe, but it could display top-sheets for every planet known to the Outward Fleet.)

The map and everything else was smashed and dirty… not even good for fingerprints, though the admiral did her best not to smear the surfaces more than they were already. I knelt beside her for a closer look at the wrecked equipment. The plastic case of the multitool had split open, showing its broken insides, all folded neatly in place: a jackknife, some scissors, a whisk brush, several electronic skeleton keys…

Those keys sparked a memory. "That tool," I said to the admiral. "It’s the kind used by Security Corps." All the Security officers who guarded Dad and Samantha had carried little gizmos like this one.

Festina grabbed a pair of nearby twigs and used them like chopsticks to pick up the tool. When she brought the casing close to the glow of Kaisho’s legs, we could see the plastic was olive green — the color of navy Security. "A Security Corps tool," Festina murmured, "but an Explorer’s Bumbler. And universal maps are only carried by the Diplomacy Corps."

"They’re all navy issue," Kaisho agreed. "Can you see any serial numbers?"

The admiral used her chopsticks to flip through the debris. Despite dents and damage, it wasn’t hard to find ID codes notched into every piece of equipment. The navy was always real thorough about labeling fleet property. "You’ve got your communicator?" Festina asked Kaisho.

"Of course."

"Then call Starbase Iris and check the ordnance database. I’ll give you my own access codes. Find out who’s registered as the owner of this stuff."

Kaisho’s legs flared a little brighter. "Is that an order, dear admiral?" she asked, all innocence.

Festina rolled her eyes. "I know — the Balrog doesn’t take orders from lesser species. Consider it a humble request."

"We love to serve," Kaisho said with a smile.

Kaisho got to work, whispering into her communicator: reading off serial numbers, issuing search instructions to the computers on Starbase Iris. Meanwhile, the rest of us prowled around, looking for anything else that might be in the neighborhood. Zeeleepull snuffled in the mud; Festina tracked forward a bit, still following the recruiter’s path through the woods; and since I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I tagged along behind her.

When she saw I was following, she waited for me to join her… and even smiled a bit as I came up. I couldn’t remember an admiral ever smiling at me — laughing, yes, but not smiling. When I was young, Dad mostly kept me out of sight when other admirals came to call… but if someone stayed for several days, I couldn’t be hidden forever. My father had this trick of staging "family" breakfasts, as if he and Sam and I ate together every morning; he thought it would make a good impression on visitors. When my sister and I were old enough not to give away the game, he even put a photo of our "late mother" above the dining table.

I don’t know who the woman in the picture was — someone blond and pretty. Our real mother had been a paid surrogate, chosen for her healthy medical profile and ability to keep a secret. Dad never took a photo of her.

So I’d met a fair number of admirals at those contrived little meals: men and women, humans and Divians, but all of them with the same sort of look in their eyes. Staring at me when no one else was watching, as if I were a mystery they were keen to figure out. Exactly how stupid was I? Was it a miracle I could even handle a knife and fork, or had Dad exaggerated how dumb I was? Could I be some kind of secret weapon — that Dad wanted them to think I was a total idiot, when really it was part of some devious plan?

The admirals I’d met were very keen on devious plans. But Festina Ramos was different. A real smile for me. Not a grin, like someone amused at the way I got tongue-tied in front of strangers, or a leer, like those women on Willow who offered to show me the service tunnels. Just a smile, a nice smile.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, as we walked side by side through the woods.

"I’m all right," I said.

"No aftereffects from the venom?"

"Not that I can tell."