He lowered the comm, his eyes on the enhanced strike-force picture. A few seconds later the ghost flicked into sight, its hands gesticulating, its tongue flicking in and out of its insubstantial mouth. On the other picture Holloway could see the Zhirrzh soldier responding, his tongue doing some serious flicking of its own. One of the other Zhirrzh had rolled groggily to his knees, and the first Zhirrzh broke off the conversation to lean over for a quick consultation. The kneeling Zhirrzh's tongue flicked, and the first straightened again for more discussion with the ghost. He leaned over for another dialogue with the other Zhirrzh, then stood upright again.

"I wonder why the Elder doesn't just move in between the two of them," Takara said.

"He can't," Holloway said. "Check out the geometry: the walls of the entryway are blocking a straight-line path between that point and the nearest white pyramid. Elder's can't go through metal, remember?"

The ghost flicked its tongue and vanished; and as it did so, there was another crackle of background static from Aircar One's external mike. "Why do you want their equipment?"

Holloway grimaced as he clicked on his comm again. He didn't give a damn about the soldiers' equipment, actually—the Peacekeepers had already collected enough alien stuff to keep the ordnance techs busy for months. All he wanted was to make sure none of the Zhirrzh carted away something that might turn out to be that elusive CIRCE component. But he could hardly tell the Zhirrzh commander that. "I want to make sure they have no weapons they can harm my troops with as they leave," he said instead. "Do you agree?"

He clicked off the comm. "Maybe you should point out that we can turn the whole bunch of them into Elders if he refuses," Takara suggested.

"I'm sure that's already occurred to him," Holloway said. "Anyway, I'd just as soon he not know that we know anything about that."

The ghostly Elder messenger had reappeared beside the entryway now and was holding another conversation with the standing Zhirrzh soldier. A fairly animated conversation, from the looks of it.

And understandably so. This was the critical moment, Holloway knew: the point at which the alien commander had to choose between his soldiers' lives and whatever passed for pride or command authority in Zhirrzh psychology. If he decided to slug it out rather than buckle to enemy demands, the first Holloway would know about it would be those laser weapons swinging up to target his men....

And then the standing Zhirrzh leaned over one final time, lowering his laser weapon to the entryway floor.

There was another crackle from the speaker. "I agree," the mechanical voice said.

Holloway took a deep breath and clicked the comm on again. "All right, Erikson, pull on back," he ordered. "Again, nice and easy. Duggen, have you been listening?"

"Yes, sir," Duggen answered. "I don't trust them, Colonel."

"I don't necessarily trust them, either," Holloway said.

"Stay sharp, and make damn sure none of them is carrying anything before you let them go. Watch for attempts to palm anything, odd bumps in their clothing—you know the drill."

"Understood, Colonel."

"I hope you're doing the right thing, Cass," Takara said as four Peacekeepers moved into the picture from off camera and headed purposefully toward the Zhirrzh. "We're outnumbered enough down here as it is. I don't much like the idea of letting seven of their soldiers go back home. Especially when we still don't know what they've done to Janovetz."

"I'm betting he's still alive," Holloway said. "They didn't let him land in their camp just to kill him. Not unless he attacked them first."

And yet, it suddenly occurred to him, perhaps Janovetz had done precisely that. The recorder and transmitter they'd attached to Janovetz's cheek dumped its reports via a pulsed, multi-high-frequency radio signal. Would the Zhirrzh have interpreted that as an Elderdeath attack? Probably. Would they have then killed Janovetz in perceived self-defense? Probably.

"Keep on top of this, Fuji," Holloway said, moving away from the monitor. "Vanbrugh and Hodgson should have their Corvine on the ground by now. I want to go check out the damage."

"Yes, sir."

Holloway threw one last look at the Zhirrzh soldiers divesting themselves of equipment under the watchful eyes of the Peacekeepers. Proud warriors—Conquerors—yet submitting to this indignity with only minor argument.

He wasn't yet ready to take everything Melinda's ghost friend, Prr't-zevisti, said at face value. But it was clear that there was more to all this than met the eye. And much more that needed to be learned.

"So that's that," Klnn-vavgi said as the last of the Elders vanished from the command/monitor room, heading out to quietly oversee the operation to the north. "We lose a mobile ground defense station, get eight warriors raised to Eldership—and then we just give up and let them have their underground structure back."

"I don't see a lot of practical alternatives," Thrr-mezaz growled, his tail spinning with frustration. Outmaneuvered, outgunned, and utterly dazzled by those unbelievable Copperhead warriors, the operation had been a fiasco. To have his warriors captured, disarmed, and sent back was just the crowning flick of the tongue to the whole thing.

"I don't see any, either," Klnn-vavgi said. "But not everyone will let it go at that. And I'm sure there'll be some who'll say you gave in just to keep Klnn-dawan-a from being raised to Eldership."

"And when they say that, you can tell them Eldership wasn't one of the options," Thrr-mezaz retorted, his tail twitching. "If I'd refused their commander's offer, the Human-Conquerors would have cut down Klnn-dawan-a and the warriors right where they stood. And inside all that metal, they would have been dead. Not raised to Eldership. Dead."

Klnn-vavgi's tongue flicked involuntarily. "Yes. Well... yes."

"Besides, the operation wasn't a complete waste," Thrr-mezaz went on. "The warriors got into the structure and had some time to look around. Maybe Klnn-dawan-a was able to figure out what the place is used for."

"Maybe," Klnn-vavgi said doubtfully.

Thrr-mezaz looked at the row of monitors, and at the Elders popping in and out with continuous reports about the disarming. They were proud and savage warriors, these Human-Conquerors. And yet they'd just passed up a chance to slaughter a group of their enemies.

Just as, six fullarcs ago, they'd let Thrr-mezaz himself and his two climbing companions leave the area of the Human-Conqueror stronghold.

Thrr-gilag had suggested to him that there were some intriguing inconsistencies in Human-Conqueror aggressiveness—inconsistencies that might be biochemically based. Thrr-mezaz wasn't yet ready to accept any such theory, at least not without some tangible proof. But it was becoming increasingly clear to him that there was more to these Human-Conquerors than what was on the surface.