Blair had been watching from the door to the bathroom. Now he jumped over. "What's wrong?" he said, a bit indignantly. "I did a complete photomosaic last time we were here. I was very thorough." He hooked his feet into the floor loops under the table.

"Yes, I know. But I have reason to think your photos have been tampered with."

Rue was surprised, but not as much as she might have expected. As Mike's words sank in, she realized she had been waiting ever since the sabotage for something to happen— for some sign that the uneasiness about this expedition she felt was well-founded. Well, here it was.

"Ah, do you have a holo card?" asked Mike. "I can show you."

"Just a sec." Blair raced away to get one. When he returned, Mike put his hand on the card and downloaded something through its galvanic interface.

Some pictures appeared in ghostly transparency above the table. Blair squinted at them. "Yeah, those are mine."

"Do you have original copies of this data?"

Blair made a sour face. "I didn't have enough storage units to leave backups here when we went to Chandaka. The originals of all our data ended up in Crisler's hands— as partial payment for our rescue."

Mike brought up an annotation layer and pointed at the circled stars. "What does this mean?"

Blair examined the photos for a few seconds, then blinked in surprise. "Holy tholin, you're right. Somebody's screwed with my data."

Mike showed the extent of the changes and showed that they were connected somehow to Linda Ophir. Blair, the reporter, was visibly impressed by his detective work. Rue was pretty impressed herself.

It didn't add up, though. "But why…" she began.

"Because there's something written on the missing part that we're not supposed to know."

"We can just look at it through the telescope," said Evan, who had come up behind them silently.

"I thought of that," said Mike. "The problem is that the Lasa habitat's north pole is pointing at us. The missing stuff is on the south pole. But, we're going out to explore the habitat tomorrow. I came here to ask you to bring some cameras that aren't connected into the expedition's inscape system. We should insist on doing a new photomosaic then."

Rue nodded. "But what are we looking for?"

"Not sure. More Lasa writing, maybe."

"But we can't read Lasa, can we? And anyway, if this stuff has been deliberately hidden, won't we give away that we know about it? That could be dangerous, depending on who did the hiding…" She didn't mention Crisler's name, but then, she didn't have to. "Remember, Dr. Bequith, the Envy may be my ship, but it could be taken away from me at any time."

"Maybe we can find a more subtle way of taking the pictures," aid Blair. "We could throw a little mirror past the habitat, and aim the camera at that."

"Anyway," said Mike, "You're right that we can't read Lasa writing— not with the resources we have here, anyway. So until we get back to civilization, whatever's written on the hidden part of the habitat will remain obscure. Whoever hid it in the first place will know that."

"Why can't we read it?" asked Rebecca.

"Our AIs aren't smart enough," he said. "We could figure out the writing in denotative terms, but that wouldn't get us anywhere."

Rue raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, denotative?"

"Surface meaning— dictionary meaning. The problem is, most meaning is carried through context and implication; it's connotative. In the case of the Lasa, the context is so alien that even when we translate the words and know what they mean, we, well, don't know what they mean." That was a pretty thick description and it must have shown on her face, because he immediately said, "Imagine an alien trying to figure out what a Haiku poem means.

"If we had a context-switching AI we might be able to do it, but the nearest one's on Mars as far as I know. So, no, we don't really know what the writing means. Even so, somebody's gone to great lengths to hide a piece of it. Since you did such a good job with your photomosaic," he said to Blair, "nobody planned to do another. There didn't seem to be a need."

Rue leaned back, examining the ceiling. She was relieved that her worries had finally taken on a tangible form. "You suspect Crisler, don't you?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Not necessarily. However much I detest the man…"

"It's more than that," she said. "I don't know why he's here. Do you?"

Mike looked puzzled. "Surely, if there's a multispecies civilization nearby…"

"Isn't the fastest way to find it through FTL?" She watched him intently through the diaphanous panes of holo light. "Don't you think he'd have a dozen ships scouring the nearby lit stars? What if one of them found the alien homeworld while he was stuck out here? It doesn't make sense. I'll bet he'd already completed a search of those stars before he even hired you guys."

"Meaning…"

"Meaning he already knows where the Envy came from, or he knows that it's not from any nearby sun; either way there's no threat of the rebels finding the homeworld first, is there?"

"That's right," said Evan. "Unless Linda Ophir told the rebels about the Envy."

"And they planted a spy on board," finished Rebecca.

Rue shrugged. "I bet she did and I bet there is one," she said. "But how does that connect with the faked photos? And it still doesn't explain to me why Crisler is here and not waiting in High Space for us to send him information about the homeworld by message laser."

Rebecca passed some bulbs of coffee around. "Thanks," said Mike. "I… Rue, you think the missing writing tells where the Envy came from?"

She nodded. "It might. In which case, Crisler already knows… but then why not go straight there?"

"Unless it was Linda who faked the photos? Or the rebel?"

"This is getting us nowhere," laughed Rebecca. "No, I don't think the missing writing is about the homeworld. But you guys are going to bust a blood vessel trying to figure what it is. Why not wait until tomorrow?"

"So true," Rue agreed with a laugh. "We're just getting ourselves worked up."

They drank their coffee and the discussion drifted from topic to topic, though it always returned to Crisler and the sabotage. Rue liked having someone outside her tiny crew to talk to— Michael Bequith wasn't so stuck up as the rest of the scientific team. She supposed he wasn't on the career treadmill like so many of his colleagues on the Banshee. At least, not on the same one.

That reminded her of something. "Oh!"

They looked at her.

"You told me to ask you about NeoShintoism sometime," she said to him. "So… I'm asking."

Mike didn't look happy at the question for some reason. Maybe he'd been getting a lot of the same inquiries lately. "NeoShinto is simply a system for summoning and contemplating kami," he said.

Well, that sure explained it. "Kami?" she pressed. "Who're they?"

"Spirits of a place," said Evan. "Right?"

Mike nodded.

"Oh." It sounded a bit cultish.

"There's nothing metaphysical about it," Mike said quickly. He described a truly frightening set of neural implants he'd gotten when younger; having some bizarre AI altering your consciousness went way beyond any of the control mods Jentry had tried. Rebecca listened with particular (doubtless clinical) interest.

"…So I can record the stimulation pattern for this vision and literally e-mail it into the galactic inscape network. You see, it's a technology, not a mythology. NeoShinto is a branch of Permanence, which is a nonmetaphysical religion, like Buddhism would be if it stayed purely methodological and didn't keep holding onto ideas like karma and reincarnation. Permanence is a scientifically developed meditation program that is tailored to the individual; if you follow it properly you're very likely to reach a state of mind that used to be called 'enlightenment. We try not to label that state because everyone has different interpretations of it until they experience it and after they experience it they generally laugh at the idea of describing it in words." Mike sounded positively stuffy when he talked about this; the thought made her smile.