The trace was unmistakable.

Jube sat at his console as the readings crawled across his holocube, his hearts thundering away with fear and hope. He had spent most of his first four months on Earth in darkened movie theaters, sitting through the same films a dozen times, reinforcing his English and broadening his grasp of human cultural nuances as reflected in their fiction. He'd learned to love their movies, especially westerns, and his favorite part had always been when the cavalry came thundering over the hill, all its banners flying.

The Network flew no banners; still, Jube thought he could hear the faint sound of bugles and the pounding of hoofbeats in those spiderly twists of light within his holocube.

Tachyons! Bugles and tachyons!

His observation satellites had detected a wash of tachyons, and that could mean only one thing: a starship in nearEarth orbit. Deliverance was at hand.

Now the satellites swept the skies for the source. It was not the Swarm Mother, Jhubben knew that. The Mother crept between the stars at speeds slower than light; time was nothing to her. Only the civilized races used tachyon-drive starships.

If Ekkedme had gotten off a transmission before the singleship was smashed from the skies… if the Master Trader had decided to check on human progress earlier than planned… if the Mother had somehow been detected by some new technology undreamed of when Jhubben began his assignment on Earth… if, if, if… then it might well be the Opportunity up there, the Network returned to deliver this world, with only the means and price yet to be determined. It would not be easy even then, but of the ultimate result he had no doubt. Jube smiled as his satellites probed and his computers analyzed.

Then the holocube turned violet, and his smile died. He made a low gurgly sound deep in the back of his throat. The sophisticated sensors in his satellites stripped away the screens that cloaked the starship from human instrumentation and displayed its image within the ominous violet of the cube. It revolved slowly, etched in lines of red and white light like some terrible construct of fire and ice. The readouts flashed below the image: dimensions, tachyon output, course. But everything Jube needed to know was written on the lines of the ship: written in every twisted spire, proclaimed by every fanciful excrescence, trumpeted by every baroque whorl and projection, shouted in that panoply of unnecessary lights. It looked like the results of a high-speed collision between a Christmas ornament and a prickly pear. Only the Takisians had such rococo aesthetics.

Jube lurched to his feet. Takisians! Had Dr. Tachyon summoned them? He found that hard to believe, after all the years the doctor had spent in exile. What did it mean? Had Takis been monitoring Earth all this time, observing the wild card experiment even as the Network had? If so, why had Jhubben found no trace of them until now, and how had they managed to conceal themselves from Ekkedme? Would they destroy the Swarm Mother? Could they destroy the Mother? The Opportunity was roughly the size of Manhattan island, and carried tens of thousands of specialists representing countless species, cultures, castes, and vocations-merchants and pleasurers, scientists and priests, technicians, artists, warriors, envoys. The Takisian craft was a tiny thing; it couldn't possibly hold more than fifty sentients, perhaps only half that number. Unless Takisian military technology had progressed astronomically in the last forty years, what could that little thing hope to do, alone, against the devourer of worlds? And would the Takisians even care about the lives of their experimental animals?

As Jhubben stared at the outlines of the ship with mounting rage and confusion, his phone rang.

For an instant he thought insanely that somehow the Takisians had found him out, that they knew he was looking at them and had rung him up to castigate him. But that was ridiculous. He slammed a thumb into the console, and the holocube went dark as Jube thumped into the living room. He had to detour around the tortured geometries of the half-built tachyon transmitter that dominated the center of the room like isome massive piece of avant-garde sculpture. If the thing didn't work when he powered it up, Jube planned to title it 'Joker Lust' and sell it to some gallery in Soho. Even halfassembled, its angles were curiously deceptive, and he was always bumping into it. This time he dodged around it neatly and took the phone from Mickey's hand. "Hello," he said, trying to sound his normal jovial self.

"Juba], this is Chrysalis." It was her voice, but he had never heard her sound quite like this. She had never called him at home before, either.

"What's wrong?" he asked her. He'd asked her to procure another batch of microchips last week, and the edge in her voice made him afraid her agent had been apprehended.

"Jay Ackroyd just phoned. He hasn't been able to report until now. He found out a few things about the people who hired Darlingfoot."

"But that's good. Has he located the bowling ball?"

"No. And it's not as good as you think. I know this sounds insane, but Jay says these people were convinced that body was extraterrestrial in origin. It appears they hoped to use the corpse in some kind of disgusting ritual, to gain power over that alien monster out there."

"The Swarm Mother," Jube said in astonishment. "Yes," Chrysalis said crisply. "Jay says they're tied in somehow. He thinks they worship that thing. Look, we shouldn't be talking about this over the phone."

"Why not?" Jube asked.

"Because these people are dangerous," Chrysalis said. "Jay is coming to the Palace tonight to give me a full report. Be there. I'm folding my cards on this one, Jubal. You can deal with Jay directly from now on. But if you'd like, I'll ask Fortunato to drop by. I think he'd be interested in what Jay has turned up."

"Fortunato!" Jube was horrified. He knew Fortunato mostly by reputation. The tall pimp with the almond-shaped eyes and bulging forehead was a familiar sight at the Crystal Palace, but Jube had always made it a point to avoid him. Telepaths made him nervous. Dr. Tachyon never went into a mind without good reason, but Fortunato was another matter. Who knows how and why he might use his powers, or what he might do if he found out what Jube the Walrus really was?

"No," he said hurriedly, "no, absolutely not. This has nothing to do with Fortunato!"

"He knows more about these Masons than anyone else in the city," Chrysalis said. She sighed. "Well, you're paying for this funeral, so I suppose you get to pick the casket. I won't say a word. We'll talk after closing."

"After closing," Jube repeated. She hung up before he could think to ask her what she had meant about Masons. Jube knew about the Masons, of course. He'd done a study of human fraternal organizations a decade ago, comparing the Shriners, Knights of Columbus, Odd Fellows, and Freemasons with each other and with the bonding-brotherhoods of the Thdentien moons. Reginald was a Mason, Jube seemed to recall, and Denton had tried to join the Elks, but they'd turned him down because of his antlers. What did the Masons have to do with anything?

That day Jube was too uneasy to joke. Between Swarm Mothers, Takisian warships, and Masons, he hardly knew who to be afraid of. Even if the cavalry did come charging over the hill, Jube thought, would they be able to recognize the Indians? He glanced up at the sky and shook his head. When he locked up for the night he made his deliveries to the Funhouse and the Chaos Club, then decided to cut short his swing through Jokertown and head over to the Crystal Palace as soon as possible. But first he had to make one final stop, at the precinct house.