His answer surprised her. She hadn't thought him even that deep. "My people had a similar experience with the Japanese so I can sympathize. Still, what were you going to do?" she asked him. "Be a new hero of your people? Rush in, blow open the iron gates, find them and steal them back?"

He seemed to sag a bit, and sighed. "Somethin' like that, I guess. Or maybe not. I dunno, really, what I was thinkin' of doin', or what I might be able to do. But I had to see if there weren't somethin', y'see. And," he added, needling a bit, "it didn't look like there was anybody else that cared."

"We've been here ever since they were brought in," the lieutenant told him. "That's why we couldn't stay with you. That way, we were an obvious and public danger to whoever went to so much trouble to get them."

"You saw who took 'em, then?"

She nodded. "We know a fair amount at this point, although not nearly enough. We didn't have to put a one-on-one tail on them, you see. There was enough chemical tracer in the bath wash in the courier ship that I could probably eventually trace them down within a couple of parsecs of this planet if need be."

Murphy glanced back up the street towards the compound. "So what do they look like, these devil folks?"

"Ordinary. I don't think they're behind this at all. Just tools, like the girls and many others. Rich folks playing at being naughty. Their kind's always been with us. Some can be quite dangerous, fanatics who have become lost in their own fantasy world, but they can be dealt with. Oddly, they are usually intellectuals with good contacts and influence. We would rather not have to harm them if we can avoid it, but they must be dealt with."

"You're sure the girls are still in there?"

She nodded. "As of now, yes. But people and vehicles come and go around here, and we sincerely doubt if this is their final destination. They're going to want those babies born outside the city, outside of authorities and monitors and records. We're scouting the place now as minutely as possible to see if there is a good, easy way in. The problem is, the girls are only a part of our problem. We need to know who is behind all this. We need to know just precisely what this is really all about."

"Hmph! Well, I wish I was, but I ain't much of a burglar. Not at my age," the old captain told her.

"That's all right," she responded almost instantly. "We are."

The next big shock Murphy got was the discovery that there were eight commandos in the team, not just the two. The other six apparently spent the trip in a lower compartment of the courier in some sort of quick-acting suspended animation. The girls, and the powers they had thanks to the gems, apparently never sensed their presence for just that reason. When the enemy's got hold of your computer, it seems, don't tell your computer anything you don't want everyone to know.

Of the group-four men, four women-only a five-person team were the kind of commandos, all marines, who went in and engaged in the action; the other three were naval technicians who backed them up and oversaw an arsenal of high-tech spy devices and systems. Although Chung was the nominal officer in charge, she was Navy; the man in operational charge was Maslovic, or, as the others chuckled, whatever he was calling himself that mission. They generally referred to him as "Sarge" or sometimes "Chief," but he clearly outranked the only identified commissioned officer in the group. Murphy suspected that not even these men and women who trained and worked with him regularly knew who he really was or what true rank he might hold, but he took his orders from Intelligence and possibly reported directly to the cybernetic Admiralty. To Maslovic, it didn't matter, either. Only missions mattered.

They were set up in an upstairs apartment a block down and on the opposite side of the street from the Order of Saint Phineas. It was as close as they could get and have a back entrance that couldn't be observed from the street and which therefore allowed for unhindered comings and goings by the team. The owners of the place were away on business; they were not expected back for more than a month, which was weeks longer than the Navy would need the place. All wore stock nondescript clothing and hairpieces when going in or out and drew no particular attention from the other neighbors. People in the neighborhood tended not to socialize with one another and to keep their lives pretty much to themselves.

Maslovic stood in back of a small bank of monitors the techs had set up in the back room. He nodded at Murphy and pointed.

"Well, can't say I'm glad to see you on this, since you're not part of the team, but since you're here you might as well get comfortable and watch the show."

Murphy pretended to be hurt. "And here I thought you was just pinin' for me company."

"I had enough of that on the courier. Seriously, Captain, everybody here has worked and trained with everybody else so long that we almost know what the other is thinking. That's why things generally go right when they send us in and why we don't suffer many losses. I'd feel the same way if you were Lieutenant Commander Mohr or even higher up. We need you to keep out of the way no matter what happens. You can watch, but it's not your show. Understand?"

Murphy nodded.

"We've hesitated up to now to send some ferrets in there because we don't know what their alarm systems are like. It's entirely possible we could tip the whole show by doing it, but I don't see any other way. We're going to send two in late tonight and see what we can see anyway, but we'll have a small team ready to go in if things go bad. You've already had a run-in with our Sunday suits, as we call them. Turns you into the spirit in a hurry. If I don't move, that thing'll make me look just like whatever I'm against. We've got the same kind of AI camouflage on the ferrets, small as they are. They're quiet, fast, and efficient, but the fact is that ferrets still make noise and they still put out electrical fields. There's no such thing as a perfect ferret any more than there's a perfect disguise for anybody, but we are damned close. Morrie? You got them tuned up?"

A small tech with a round face and hawk nose looked up from his data screens and nodded. "Any time you need 'em, Chief."

"Well, then, as soon as we're sure they've settled down, we'll go. I don't like the fact that there's a landing pad out front of the grounds there. They could go any time." He looked eager for action. "Now we'll give them a little taste of their saint right back at 'em."

Murphy grinned. "And it's sure that you know who that patron of this world and that society really is?"

"Not particularly. Nobody in the small databank we have with us, anyway."

Murphy's grin widened. "Phineas T. Barnum. 'There's a sucker born every minute,' he once is said to have proclaimed. The trick is to know which is the sucker and which is the Barnum."

"But this whole world's named Barnum!"

"Exactly. He also ran the biggest and greatest circus in the world. And when he quit being a showman and a con man, he became a politician. Got elected, too. Con men and circus men and politicians. All one and the same."

"And you're sure that's the Barnum of this world? And the saint this society says?" Maslovic wasn't convinced.

"Oh, yes. It's even in the bloody information line in the phone directory. I think the old boy would have loved this place, and the idea that it was named for him. He'd like these ferrets, too. All the more because they're such clever machines."

"Chief, I think we got a problem," the tech at the control screens said without taking any eyes off the displays.

Maslovic turned quickly. "What?"