"No, damn it, no!" Layn yelled again, leaping belatedly forward to kneel down at the limp spine leopard's side... but this time Jin could hear a strange note of resignation in his voice. "Damn it all-"

The look on his face when he got to his feet effectively silenced any comments

Jin might have had. But Sun wasn't so reticent. "Is there a problem, sir?" he asked blandly. "You did want us to kill it, didn't you?"

Layn impaled him with a laser-strength glare. "You were merely supposed to get me clear of it," he bit out. "Not-" He took a deep breath. "For your information, trainee, you two idiots have just broken the central mobility transmain of an extremely expensive robot. I trust you're satisfied."

Sun's jaw fell, and Jin felt her eyes go wide as she looked down at the spine leopard. "I suppose that explains," she heard herself say, "why you didn't laser it."

Layn looked like he was ready to chew rocks. "Return to your quarters, all of you," he snarled. "Evening classes are as usual; you're free until then. Get out of my sight."

The tap on her door was gentle, almost diffident. "Yes?" Jin called, looking up from her reader.

"It's me, Mander Sun," a familiar voice answered. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," Jin called back, frowning as she keyed the door open.

He looked almost shy as he stepped hesitantly a couple of paces into the room.

"It occurred to me that someone ought to check up on that cut you got out there this afternoon," he said.

She looked down with a little surprise at the heal-quick bandage on her left hand. "Oh, no problem. The cut wasn't deep, just a little messy."

"Ah," he nodded. "Well, then... sorry to have bothered you..." He hesitated, looking a little lost.

Jin licked her lips. Say something! she told herself as her mind went perversely blank. "Uh-by the way," she managed as he started to turn back toward the door,

"do you think Layn's going to make trouble for us because of what we did to that robot?"

"He'd better not try," Sun said, turning back again. "If they're going to drop pop tests like that on us, they'd better not complain when we don't do what they expect." He hesitated just a fraction. "That was, uh... a pretty good trick you came up with out there, incidentally. The thing with the gluevine."

She shrugged. "Wasn't all that original, really," she admitted. "My grandfather did something similar once against a berserk gantua. And as long as we're handing out compliments, you were pretty fast on the uptake yourself."

"I didn't have much choice," he said wryly. "It didn't look at the time like you were going to have a chance to explain it to anyone."

"Stupid robot," she muttered, shaking her head. "Almost a shame we didn't figure that part out. Layn would probably have had a stroke if one of us had gone up and petted the thing."

Sun grinned. "I think he came close enough to a stroke as it was." His grin changed into a tight, almost embarrassed smile. "You know, Moreau-Jin... I have to admit that I didn't think much at the beginning of having you in the squad.

Not for the tradition reasons Layn trotted out, but because none of the women

I've ever known has had the kind of-oh, I don't know; the killer instinct, I guess, that a warrior has to have."

Jin shrugged, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "You might be surprised," she said. "Besides, a lot of what Cobras do these days is more like patrol officer work than full-fledged war, certainly in the more settled areas of the Worlds."

"Hold it right there," Sun growled in mock annoyance, holding his hands up palm-outward. "I don't mind having you here, but I'm not getting drawn into any theoretical discussions on the merits of women in the Cobras, thank you. Not with a test on surveillance techniques breathing down our necks." He glanced at his watch. "Like in half an hour. Phrij-and I still need to study for it some more."

"Me, too," Jin licked her lips. "Thanks for coming by, Mander. I-uh-"

"Mandy," he said, pulling open the door. "That's what everyone else calls me.

See you in class."

"Right. Bye."

For a long minute after he was gone she stared at the closed door, not entirely sure whether or not to trust the warm glow beginning to form deep within her.

Could her long isolation from the group really be ending? As quickly and easily as that? Just because she'd unwittingly helped give their rough and demanding instructor something of a black eye?

Abruptly, she smiled. Of course it could. If there was one military tradition that superseded every other, it was the "us versus them" feeling of trainees toward everyone else... and especially toward instructors. In helping Sun ruin

Layn's robot spine leopard, she'd suddenly become one of the "us."

Or at least, she warned herself, I've got my foot in the door. But for now, at least, that was enough. The first barrier, her father had often reminded her, was always the hardest to break.

For just a moment she frowned as an odd thought flickered across her mind.

Surely Layn hadn't deliberately let her destroy that robot... had he? No-of course not. The very idea was absurd. He'd already said he didn't want her to succeed.

And speaking of succeeding... Turning back to her reader, she keyed for a fast scan of the lessons on surveillance methods. As Sun had pointed out, there was a test breathing down their necks.

The reminder clock on his desk pinged, and Corwin looked up at it with mild surprise. Somehow, while he hadn't been looking, the afternoon had disappeared.

It was four fifty, and in just forty minutes the celebration was scheduled to start over at Justin's house. The celebration for his daughter's graduation from the Cobra Academy.

For a moment Corwin gazed unseeingly at the clock, his mind jumping back almost thirty years to the similar celebration his parents had thrown for Justin himself. It had been a strained evening, with everyone trying to ignore the fact that the new Cobra and his twin brother would he heading off in a few days to the mysterious world of Qasama, possibly never to return.

And now it would be Jin who'd be going off in a week. To the same world. Under almost identical circumstances.

To try and fix the same problem.

Corwin could remember a time, far back in the dim haze of his youth, when it had seemed to him that if you fixed a problem right the first time it would stay fixed. When he believed there were problems that could be permanently fixed.

The memories made him feel very old.

"Corwin?"

With a jolt, he brought himself back to the real world. "Yes, Thena, what is it?"

"The governor-general's on the line. Says it's important."

Corwin flicked another glance at his clock. "He always does," he growled. "Oh, all right." He stabbed at the proper button, and Thena's image was replaced by

Chandler's. "Yes?"

Chandler's face looked like he'd been chewing on something not quite ripe. "I've got some bad news for you, Moreau," he said without preamble. "I have here on my desk a petition calling for your brother Justin to be confined until the matter of the Monse shooting can be definitively cleared up. It's been endorsed by seventy-one members of the Cobra Worlds Council."

Corwin felt his face go rigid. Seventy-one members was something like sixty percent-an utterly incredible number. "That's ridiculous," he said. "The whole thing-"

"The whole thing," Chandler cut him off grimly, "has been pulling for more net space than any seven-week-old issue has any right to be getting. In case you haven't noticed, the public rumblings over the whole mess never completely vanished; and in the past week or so they've started getting louder again."