"And you don't think you're in denial, just a little bit, putting yourself out as a miner, when most of your working life has been spent in uniform?"

"Tell me, are all the dames from your time so damn thinky and sure of themselves?"

"Dan Black," she smiled, all slow and warm, "the dames from my time, they'd eat you up."

He wasn't sure why, but he liked the sound of that.

Before he could enjoy the idea any more, a beep sounded from within his shirt pocket.

"You've got mail, future boy," Duffy smiled.

He carefully pulled out the flexipad they'd given him and pressed a fingertip to the envelope that had appeared on screen.

"I've gotta go, Julia," he said, after reading the message. "The boss wants to see me."

"Don't be a stranger," she called out to him as he left.

Black had grown accustomed to the quality coffee on the Clinton. It was a rude shock, then, having to force down Ray Spruance's green, unpleasant brew again.

They sat in an office a short walk from the docks where the surviving destroyers had tied up, and a few minutes ride from the hospital where the less serious casualties had been taken. They couldn't see Kolhammer's task force. It had dropped anchor on the other side of Ford Island, where it kept watch over the skies out to a distance of eight hundred miles. The British ship Trident remained on station near Midway, watching for surface threats.

Spruance sipped at his coffee as though it tasted just fine.

"It's a bad business, this killing, Dan. Kolhammer is going to go nuts when he finds out."

Black stared out the window. Three nurses walked by, one of them with her arm in a sling.

"They haven't told him yet, sir?"

"Haven't been able to raise him. Their communications aren't so good without those space satellites they've got, or rather, haven't. They're trying to get him, but we're not sending anything about them by radio or cablegram for the moment. It's all hand-to-hand courier, for security."

"Were they an item?" he asked.

"The Jap and Anderson? They tell me not. It looks like a pretty vicious murder. There's some, uh, sexual matters associated with it. But more in the line of, you know, rape."

The word hung between them for an eternity. This was going to make things even more difficult.

"Has word gotten around yet?" asked Black.

"There's been no official statement," Spruance said. "Won't be for a while. Officially, they're not even here yet. But I'd say everyone in that task force of theirs will know by the end of the day. And everyone will have an opinion about the likely culprits, too."

"One of ours, you mean."

"It's human nature to blame the other guy," Spruance suggested.

Black forced down a last mouthful of cold, foul-tasting coffee. He wondered whether Julia had heard of the deaths yet. As soon as she did, he guessed that she'd be straining at the leash to get off the ship and do some digging herself.

Spruance obviously found the topic of the murders upsetting and certainly distasteful. He put them aside by pushing himself up out of his squeaky swivel chair and pacing over to the window. Hot sunshine fell on him through the glass. In his white uniform it made him quite uncomfortable to look at.

"So what do you think, Dan?" he asked. "Do you think it's going to work out between us all?"

Black mulled it over.

"They're not like us, sir, but they're okay. I guess they're what we become."

"And you're comfortable with that?" asked Spruance.

"Not entirely. I've learned a lot about them that scares me, frankly. But on the whole, they mean well."

"They killed a lot of our men, Dan."

"They saved a lot, too. And don't forget we killed our fair share of them in return. Far as I can tell, they're not holding that against us."

A look of fleeting irritation passed across the admiral's face. "They wouldn't want to go comparing scars," was all he said in reply.

Neither man said anything for a while. Black was stilling pondering Spruance's question. Like Curtis, he'd been told to stay on the Clinton, to get acquainted with their procedures and technology. Like Curtis, he spent a lot of time reading. He wasn't a great reader and it frustrated him, but the guided tours he'd taken hadn't gone well. His guides assumed a level of knowledge about their ship and its technology that he just didn't possess.

"And this woman you've met?" said Spruance, breaking into his thoughts.

"Julia Duffy."

"She's a reporter, am I correct?"

"For the New York Times. I believe she wants to keep working for them," said Black, who had little doubt she'd get what she wanted.

"I'd like you to spend some more time with her while she's here, Dan. Get her reading on Kolhammer's people. She was writing about them. She must have her own opinions."

"She certainly does," he agreed. "As a matter of fact, she's kind of ticked off at Kolhammer. I think she blames him for bringing her here. I think she'd much rather be home."

"Wouldn't we all. You got on well with her then?"

"I like her, sir. Quite a bit."

Spruance started to say something, then he seemed to think the better of it. "That's good. Spend as much time as you want with her over the next week or so. I'd like to get an independent opinion about what might happen if these characters are forced to stay. They certainly don't seem very hopeful of getting back."

Dan Black shifted uncomfortably on his hard wooden chair. He'd already grown used to the vacu-molded seating on the Clinton. If he understood Spruance right, he was being asked to snoop on a girl he might have some feelings for. It didn't sit well, and he saw no alternative but to say so.

The admiral must have read his expression.

"Oh, I don't want you to betray any confidences, Commander," he said. "Frankly, you're not nearly pretty enough to play Mata Hari. I think we just need to know what sort of people we're dealing with. How they're likely to react to these killings, for instance. If you feel uncomfortable with that, why don't you invite her to dinner with the both of us? You can tell her up front that I want to pick her brain."

Black's mood lightened considerably at that. "She has a friend, another reporter, sir. She's a loudmouth, too. I think we should take both of them along."

Spruance seemed alarmed by the prospect of anything that might look like a double date. "My wife would kill me!" he objected.

"Then we could invite Ensign Curtis along. I think he has eyes for Ms. Natoli."

"Mzz?" said Spruance.

"Oh, believe me, sir," Black sighed. "You're going to hear all about it."

The room felt like a museum piece, or perhaps a bedroom display in a department store that hadn't seen a paying customer in eighty years. Kolhammer's nose wrinkled at the smell of stale cigarette smoke. It was everywhere, blending with the body odor of a thousand previous guests, and the diffuse reek of old socks, sour perfume, and greasy, broiled meat. He found it hard to believe that the past stank so badly. It was a sick joke, really. He'd never thought he could be nostalgic for blank glass towers and thousands of miles of ribboning freeway. But he was.

Gazing out of the window, across Wilshire Boulevard to a diner shaped like a derby hat, and beyond that to blocks of low-rise, brown brick art deco apartments and office buildings, Phillip Kolhammer felt his mind drifting again toward disintegration.

He'd arrived before dawn in a DeSoto, been driven into the basement parking area, and shepherded up to his room by a Secret Service agent. The drive in had been like a carnival ride at first. The DeSoto was the real thing, a great cavernous chunk of heavy metal with leather seats that looked like they could have been taken right out of the hotel lobby. But he quickly tired of his fellow passengers, who smoked the entire time, and of the steel springs that dug into his back. Not to mention the lack of anything he'd recognize as a decent suspension system.