"Who?"

Maslovic frowned and turned back to the screen. "Let's see if we can find out. What's that down at the base of the atrium, Broz? I thought I saw it as we were descending until we got sidetracked on the pictures."

The ferret's cameras turned back and then down. "Looks like the top of some kind of statue," she said. "Pretty big, too. Comes up not quite to the second floor itself. Must be real impressive when you come through the door."

"Get around and down a bit. I want to see as much of it as we can without actually touching anything on the ground floor for now."

"Can do. Now zoom out and-what the…?"

The position of the ferret allowed them to see the head and a bit of the neck of the statue, and it was not exactly as expected.

It was the devil, all right, complete with horns, pointed ears, and goatee, but it was one happy devil, with a grin from ear to ear and the happiest overall expression ever seen on a human or humanoid face. And on top of his head, balanced on one of the horns, was an outrageous top hat tilted to one side.

"He looks rather chipper," Captain Murphy commented. "I wonder if he'll break into 'Melancholy Baby'?"

As Ferret One made its way back up to the second floor and began, along with its companion, a survey of that level, Broz said, "They're not serious, are they?"

"Very serious," Maslovic shot back. "That statue's a thumb in the eye to all the religious types who might get in for some reason or another. These aren't people who are comedians, Corporal, they're people who are supremely confident."

"So far, all they look like are a study in the rich and lazy," Broz responded.

"Well, now that we've met Saint Phineas of Barnum himself, maybe we'll be able to see a bit of what they're up to," Murphy said hopefully. "But the greatest show off Earth won't be here, it's gonna be on them three worlds in the pictures. Too bad we ain't yet found a map to the places."

Maslovic thought about that. "We'd run the legend on the Three Kings when we went to identify and quantify those stones," he told the captain. "Now it seems that we have a more basic link. Not that those places looked like paradises. In fact, they don't look all that different than other worlds in these areas. Interesting, though, if they're true pictures of the real thing."

"That garden one looked pretty good," Murphy noted. "I could see meself lyin' there while voluptuous nymphs peeled me grapes."

Maslovic nodded. "And if I had to pick the one I'd least trust, it would be that one. Compared to the other two it's like sweets to a baby. It's the one we're supposed to look at. The hot, stormy, volcanic one, though, looks too unstable for any kind of base for any sort of advanced civilization. It must have a function, because if those three are real, then they were either built or terraformed, designed that way, but staying alive and staying healthy would be a full-time challenge there. No, if I were hiding out and running things, I'd go where nobody was likely to pick. I'd go to the smaller, dark, barren one. Not on the surface-that's the blanket you hide under. Underneath. Under the ground." He looked over at Murphy. "Those aren't mystical or nostalgic pictures, they're guides. And if I knew where they were, I'd use them to take me right to the enemy."

"You seem pretty sure they're an enemy."

"They aren't acting like anything else. We're cut off from our mother world and more than half of all that's human, and if you aim at the area where they were that we can no longer reach, you find the place boiling, almost a hell of gamma ray eruptions strong enough to sterilize the whole sector. They don't tell you that because if they did the combination of panic and despair would be incalculable. We've seen such things happen before, but never this close, never even in this galaxy. Until now, there was no reason to think that it wasn't natural, some kind of thing that just happens in the physics of the cosmos. Now, though, we have a question. So far, all the major emissions have been away from us; it's barely been a ripple here. But if they were to go off in this direction, or almost anywhere in this sector, all of us, and everything we've ever known, everything that is left of the human race, would be gone forever. All life gone, a sterilized museum."

"You really want to fill a man with cheer," the captain commented. "And you think all this is a part of that?"

"We don't know. It doesn't seem likely that we encounter this kind of nasty business wielding this kind of power and have it not connect." The sergeant turned back to the controls. "Full second-floor sweep done?"

"Yes, sir," Broz responded. "Large formal dining room, a number of meeting rooms, library, formal study, that sort of thing, as well as one heavily sealed security zone right in the center behind the atrium stair. House maintenance has started, so we'll have to watch it. Lots of robotic cleaning and polishing, but if they happen to detect the ferrets, then they'll bring security on full."

He nodded. "All right, then, we'll ease down to the ground floor. Watch the floors and lower halves of the walls, though. Keep to the inside walls. This will be where maximum security would be deployed."

"I'm well aware of that, sir," Broz responded. "I know my job." Even as the ferrets descended on either side of the giant statue, though, the controller looked at the monitors and the instruments and suddenly had a sharp intake of breath, freezing both ferrets.

"Corridors in back of the security column aft of the statue," Broz noted. "Both sides are protected with pretty strong force fields powered from within the security unit and separate from the house power. These are full fields, backed up with lasers and ray sweepers. They sure don't want anybody or anything going back there."

"Think we can get in there?"

"I'm running the checks now. The security room's out of the question. Sealed right, best I've ever seen, and in a vacuum as well. That woman and her company know the business. No way to tell if it runs over all the way to the back of the house through the ceiling. Not without ripping up the ceiling from the top, which is more than these ferrets can do. Under is even less likely. Under that fake polished-wood veneer is an energized plasma running through layers of weapons-grade material."

"How does the air get in and out?" Maslovic asked.

"It appears common air molecules pass without hindrance in and out and through the force field. Interesting effect, too. Note that thin line of material on the floor there? That's dust and pollen, possibly a few insects. The air that gets through is purified as it goes."

"Messy. How do they clean it, I wonder?" the captain mused.

"Eh?" All three of the military team there turned and looked at him in puzzlement for a moment.

"Fancy pants like these, they sure as hell won't let some nice, thin lines of dirt show up so clearly just beyond the entrance. What would Lord and Lady Triplefarts think when they came for tea? You see what I mean?"

"No," they all answered at once.

"You just don't have no experience with these kinds of folk. That floor, and that line of crud, has just got to be the most cleaned up and maintained little place in the whole damned house. And if it even cleans the dust and pollen in the air, then it's got to happen just about all the time, not just when the house is bein' treated, y'see. I'll bet you that the two lines are vacuumed and polished every couple of hours. No longer, surely."

"So it's blown and vacuumed. So what?"

"No, no. Can't be. That just winds up with a lot of it goin' back and forth into the air. We'd have dust all over, and we can't have that. It'd show on the white gloves. And there's no border or seam, so the thing has to be close vacuumed or washed and then repolished, and I mean repolished directly under the beam. Are you gettin' it now?"