"You’re certain they’re genuine?" he asked dubiously when he had recovered from the initial shock. "It couldn’t all be a sick joke by a freak somewhere?"

Caldwell shook his head. "We have enough data now to pinpoint the source interferometrically. It’s way out past Pluto, and UNSA does not have anything anywhere near it. Besides, we’ve checked every bit of traffic through all our hardware, and it’s clean. The signals are genuine."

Hunt raised his eyebrows and exhaled a long breath. Okay, so he’d been wrong on that one. He shifted his gaze from Caldwell to the notes and papers lying along the middle of the table in front of him, and frowned as another thought occurred to him. Like the original message from Farside, the reply from the Giants’ Star had been composed in the ancient Ganymean language and communications codes from the time of the Shapieron . After the ship’s departure, the reply had been translated by Don Maddson, head of the Linguistics section lower down in the building, who had made a study of Ganymean during the aliens’ stay. That had required considerable effort, short though the reply had been, and Hunt knew of no one else anywhere who could have handled the more recent signals that Caldwell was talking about. As a rule Hunt didn’t have much time for protocol and formality, but if Maddson was in on this, he sure-as-hell should have known about it too. "So who did the translating?" he asked suspiciously. "Linguistics?"

"There wasn’t any need," Lyn said simply. "The signals are coming through in standard datacomm codes. They’re in English."

Hunt slumped back in his chair and just stared. Ironically that said definitely that it was no hoax; who in their right mind would forge messages from aliens in English? And then it came to him. "Of course!" he exclaimed. "They must have intercepted the Shapieron somehow. Well, that’s good to-" He broke off in surprise as he saw Caldwell shaking his head.

"From the content of the dialogue over the last few weeks, we’re pretty certain that’s not the case," Caldwell said. He looked at Hunt gravely. "So if they haven’t talked to the Ganymeans who were here, and they know our communications codes and our language, what does that say to you?"

Hunt looked around and saw that the others were watching him expectantly. So he thought about it. And after a few seconds his eyes widened slowly, and his mouth fell open in undisguised disbelief. "Je-sus!" he breathed softly.

"That’s right," Norman Pacey said. "This whole planet must be under some kind of surveillance . . . and has been for a long time." For the moment Hunt was too flabbergasted to offer any reply. Little wonder the whole business had been hushed up.

"That supposition was backed up by the first of the new signals that came in at Bruno," Caldwell resumed. "It said in no uncertain terms that nothing whatsoever relating to the contact was to be communicated via lasers, comsats, datalinks, or any kind of electronic media. The scientists up at Bruno who received the message went along with that directive, and told me about it by sending a courier down from Luna. I passed the word up through Navcomms to UNSA Corporate in the same way and told the Bruno guys to carry on handling things locally until somebody got back to them."

What it means is that at least part of the surveillance is in the form of tapping into our communications network," Pacey said. "And whoever is sending the signals, and whoever is running the surveillance, are not the same. . . . ‘people,’ or whatever. And the ones who are talking to us don’t want the other ones knowing about it." Hunt nodded, having figured that much out already.

"I’ll let Karen take it from there," Caldwell said and nodded in her direction.

Karen Heller leaned forward to rest her arms lightly along the edge of the table. "The scientists at Bruno established fairly early on that they were indeed in contact with a Ganymean civilization descended from migrants from Minerva," she said, speaking in carefully modulated tones that rose and fell naturally and made listening easy. "They inhabit a planet called Thurien, in the planetary system of the Giants’ Star, or ‘Gistar,’ to use the contraction that seems to have been adopted. While this was going on, UNSA in Washington referred the matter to the UN." She paused to look over at Hunt, but he had no questions at that point. She went on, "A special working party reporting to the Secretary General was formed to debate the issue, and the ruling finally came out that a contact of this nature was first and foremost a political and diplomatic affair. A decision was made that further exchanges would be handled secretly by a small delegation of selected representatives of the permanent-member nations of the Security Council. To preserve secrecy, no outsiders would be informed or involved for the time being."

"I had to hold things right there when that ruling came down the line," Caldwell interjected, looking at Hunt. "That was why I couldn’t tell you about any of this before." Hunt nodded. Now that it had been explained, at least he felt a little better on that score.

He was still far from completely happy, however. It sounded as if there had been a typical bureaucratic overreaction to the whole thing. Playing safe was all very well up to a point, but surely this supersecrecy was taking things too far. The thought of the UN keeping everybody out of it apart from a handful of select individuals who had probably had few, if any, dealings with Ganymeans was infuriating.

"They didn’t want anybody else included?" he asked dubiously. "Not even a scientist or two-somebody who knows Ganymeans?"

"Especially not scientists," Caldwell said, but volunteered nothing further. The whole thing was beginning to sound nonsensical.

"As a permanent member of the Council, the U.S.A. was informed from high up in the UN and applied sufficient pressure to be represented on the delegation," Heller continued. "Norman and myself were assigned that duty, and for most of the time since then we’ve been at Giordano Bruno, participating in the exchange of signals that has been continuing with the Thuriens."

"You mean everything is being handled locally from there?" Hunt asked.

"Yes. The ban on communicating anything to do with it electronically is being strictly adhered to. The people up there who know what’s going on are all security-cleared and reliable."

"I see." Hunt sat back and braced his arms along the table in front of him. So far there was a mystery and some reason for being uncomfortable, but nothing that had been said so far explained what Heller and Pacey were doing in Houston. "So what’s been going on?" he asked. "What have you been talking to Thurien about?"

Heller motioned with her head to indicate a lockable document folder lying by her elbow. "Complete transcripts of everything received and sent are in there," she told him. "Gregg has a full set of copies, and since you’ll no doubt be involved from now on, you’ll be able to read them for yourself shortly. To sum up, the first messages from Thurien asked for information about the Shapieron -its condition, the well-being of its occupants, their experiences on Earth, and that kind of thing. Whoever was sending the messages seemed concerned . . . as if they considered us a threat to it for some reason." Heller paused, seeing the look of non-comprehension that was spreading across Hunt’s face.

"Are you saying they didn’t know about the ship before we beamed that first signal out from Farside?" he asked.

"So it would appear," Heller replied.

Hunt thought for a moment. "So again, whoever is handling the surveillance isn’t talking to whoever is sending these messages," he said.

"Exactly," Pacey agreed, nodding. "The ones handling the surveillance could hardly have not known about the Shapieron while it was here if they have any access to our communications network. There were enough headlines about it."