THAT IS THE END OF ADESTIS FOR YOU. Lotos was sweating and shivering in the balcony seat, the harsh voice sounding in her ear. REMAIN SEATED AS A SPECTATOR IF YOU WISH, BUT YOUR FURTHER PARTICIPATION IS PROHIBITED.

She ripped off her headset and threw it aside, leaning over to stare down at the sandy arena below. The attack on the termite mound was continuing. With the conclusion of sensory contact, her own five-millimeter simulacrum had “died” down there. And just in time! Lotos was still in agony, still feeling the pressure on breaking ribs and cracking spine — still tasting blood in her mouth. Adestis did not let losers off easily. If she had failed to activate the Monitor switch, the chance of death from heart failure was better than one in four. In any case, the pain was real enough. It would go on for hours, even though she was out of the game. That realism was one perverse reason for the huge popularity of Adestis.

Lotos glanced around her. Over half the forty participants had already returned. They were all alive, and clutching eyes, heads, or ribs — the soldier termites had their preferred targets. The other twenty players still wore their headsets and were crouched blindly in their places.

There was a gasp from Dougal MacDougal’s cowled figure, three seats away on Lotos Sheldrake’s right. It was followed by a boil of activity near the bottom of the ten-foot mound, far below the spectators’ gallery. Either the intruders had managed to kill the queen and they were fighting their way out, or the number of defenders had been too much for them and the attack was being abandoned. Tiny human-shaped figures, less than a dozen of them, came racing out of one of the tunnels at the base of the mound and scattered across the sandy plain. They were far from safe. Dozens of maddened termite soldiers were after them, dashing in from all sides.

The projectile weapons fired continuously — and uselessly. In less than thirty seconds all the figures were buried under swarms of furious defenders. One by one, the players around Lotos shuddered back to their own body consciousness.

THE QUEEN STILL LIVES, said the harsh voice over the sound system. YOU ABE DEFEATED AND THE GAME IS OVER. THIS IS THE END OF ADESTIS FOR YOUR EXPEDITION.

Dougal MacDougal was slumped in his seat, groaning and clutching at his hips. A soldier must have taken him there and crushed his pelvis. After a few more seconds he sat up and stared around him. Unbelievably, he was grinning.

“Everybody got back?” he said. “Great. No casualties, and well be better prepared next time. We came so damned close. I’ll bet we were within twenty seconds of the queen when those soldier reinforcements arrived. Talk about damned bad luck!”

“Talk about what you like, Dougal,” said a small, plump man in the uniform of a civilian liner captain. He was whey-faced, leaning far forward and nursing his genitals. “You get off on this stuff, but I’ll tell you one thing. You’ll never talk me into another one. It hurts. Do you realize where that soldier got hold of me?”

“Come on, Danny.” MacDougal was still grinning madly. “You’ll feel fine in an hour or two. The game’s the thing! We’ll be ready to try again tomorrow.”

“Without me.”

“Without me, too,” chimed in a tall, dark-haired woman who was rubbing tenderly at her neck. “You’re crazy, Dougal. I know they tell you it will be full sensories, but I didn’t have any idea how full. I was grabbed so I couldn’t move my jaw — couldn’t work the switch until the last possible moment. I thought I was dead.”

Lotos wiped the sweat from her forehead. She combed her hair carefully, controlled her breathing, and quietly slipped away out of the rear of the spectators’ chamber. Her conversation with Dougal MacDougal was important, but it would have to wait. She had seen all of Adestis that she needed to, and more than she ever wanted to.

Lotos could have used half an hour to herself. She did not get it. When she arrived at her office Esro Mondrian was sitting in the visitors’ chair. He was staring at her Appointments calendar.

If you’re looking for your name, Esro, you won’t find it on that.” Lotos slipped into her own seat. “I thought you were out on Oberon.”

“I was.” He did not look up. “Is it the end of the universe, Lotos? It must be. I think you have three hairs out of place.”

She shook her head. “Adestis.”

“You played Adestis?” Now he was staring at her. “That amazes me. I must revise my opinion of you.”

“Cut it out, Esro. I didn’t do it for pleasure, and you know it.”

“It wasn’t pleasure?”

“It was disgusting, as you are well aware. I did it for information, and because I needed to catch the Ambassador for a private conversation — which I didn’t get. But I got something else.”

“About the game?”

“About the Ambassador.” She tapped a file on her desk. “I had a chance to check your suggestion.”

“You didn’t believe it before?’

“Let’s say, I believed it, but I had to check for myself. You are quite right. Dougal MacDougal is a latent masochist. Maybe not so latent, either. I saw him when Adestis was complete. We lost, but he was grinning all over his face when he must have been hurting like hell.”

“So you agree with me. It is terribly dangerous to have a masochist as humanity’s representative to the Stellar Group.”

“I agree. But you can’t change it — and neither can I. He’s too well established.”

“He has to be handled even more carefully than we thought. You are the only person who has that influence. You can persuade Dougal MacDougal to do anything you want.”

“Don’t try flattery, Esro. It doesn’t suit you. And I’m sure you didn’t come to talk about the Ambassador. What s the real agenda?”

“I came to give you some information.”

“You never gave away anything in your life.” Lotos did not say it as a criticism. It was a compliment. She was the daughter of a hard-rock miner herself, raised in the dust-tunnels of Iapetus, and every step out had been a fight. By the time she was ten years old she was as tough and sharp as a drill bit. Lotos had evaluated her only asset. When she was thirteen, the calculated optimum age, she had carefully traded youth and virginity (innocence she had never had) for an escape from Iapetus.

She was never going back to a life like that. Never, never, never. And somewhere in Esro Mondrian, behind the refined tastes and formal manners, she could sense the same early struggle and the same determination.

“You don’t mean give,” she went on. “You mean trade information.”

“Say it however you like.” Mondrian paused, to choose his words carefully. “I know something. You will know it also, in just twenty-four hours. It will arrive over the Mattin Link communication system, addressed to Ambassador MacDougal. I will be giving you — or if you prefer, trading you — one full day of knowledge. You and I, alone in the solar system, will have that knowledge.”

“And where did you get it?” The question was automatic, but Lotos certainly did not expect an answer and Mondrian showed no sign of offering one. She dialled for two cups of sugared tea. “All right. I’ll bite. What’s on the line — apart from the hook?”

“The rogue Morgan Construct has been tracked down. I can tell you its location.”

“Ahhh.” Lotos’s eyes were sparkling. “Damn it, I’ve had not even a hint of this.”

“I know. You are furious.”

“I have every right to be. I’m going to fire the Ambassador’s information officer.”

“That’s up to you. But you should not do it just for this. There is no way that she — or anyone else — could possibly have learned what I just told you. I assume you are recording?” Lotos nodded. “Personal system.”