Anton grimaced again. He hadn't attended the last meeting of the group. ("The group" was the only name they had. In that, at least, showing more of a sense for security that they did in other ways.) The decision to put Pritchard in charge of the device must have been made there.

There wasn't anything wrong with David Pritchard, exactly. But Victor and Anton both sensed that the youngster had a level of quiet yet corrosive fury that might lead him off a cliff, in the right circumstances.

But . . .

There really wasn't anything they do about it. It wasn't as if he and Victor had any real control of the group. Even its nominal leader, Carl Hansen, was no more than a first among equals.

"We'll just have to live with it. To be honest, Victor, I'm more worried at the moment about your situation with Inez Cloutier. Realistically, how much longer can you stall her?" He squinted a little. "You have, I trust, given up any idea of accepting employment?"

Victor sighed. "Yes, yes, yes. The voice of caution has prevailed. Although I hate to think what I'll be passing up."

For a moment, his expression had a trace of wistful sorrow. The sort of expression with which a normal and reasonable young man half-regrets his decision not to pursue a possible romantic involvement. On Victor Cachat's face, the expression signified his regret at not undertaking the harrowing risk of accepting employment with a rogue ex-StateSec military force, being dispatched to places unknown and with no way to get free that either he or Anton could figure out.

"You'd have to crazy to even think about it," said Yana. "And keep in mind that assessment is coming from a former Scrag."

Victor smiled. Then, ran fingers through his hair again. "We've got a bit of luck, there. Cloutier got called off-planet yesterday. At a guess, she's got to go consult with whoever is running this operation. I'm almost certain now that that's Adrian Luff, by the way."

Anton nodded. He and Victor had tentatively come to that conclusion a few days earlier, based on what Victor had been able to find out in the course of his negotiations with Cloutier.

Adrian Luff . . .

That was mostly bad news, according to Victor. Zilwicki really had no opinion of his own. He'd recognized the name from his days working for Manticoran naval intelligence, but that was about it.

Cachat knew more about him, as you'd expect, although he'd never actually met the man. According to Victor, Luff wasn't an especially brutal or harsh man, certainly not by StateSec standards. His advancement in State Security had been due primarily to his naval skills. He'd scarcely been what a professional Manticoran naval officer would have thought of as a peerless fleet commander, but at least he'd had a far better idea than most of his SS fellows about which end of the tube the missile came out of. And while no StateSec officer assigned to ride herd on the People's Navy was likely to be a total novice where brutality and discipline interdicted, Luff had understood that breaking a man's spirit wasn't the best way to produce a warrior when you needed one.

That might speak well of the man, but Anton would have been a lot happier if this rogue StateSec military force—which was a very powerful one; he and Victor had been able to learn that much for sure and certain—had as its commander someone like Emile Tresca. Tresca, at one time the commandant of StateSec's prison planet, had been notorious for his viciousness and sadism. On the other hand, nobody in their right mind would have put him in charge of a frigate, much less an entire fleet.

"When will she be back?"

Victor shrugged. "No way to know for sure, but I get the distinct feeling it won't be very soon. If I'm right and she was summoned to meet with Luff, this is just one more little indication that wherever Luff's assembling that fleet of his, it's not that close to Mesa."

"But probably quite close to Torch," Anton said grimly. "Victor . . . I have to raise this again. I think we need to consider whether we should leave now, and bring the news of this threat back to Torch. You know and I know that Luff's planning to ignore the Eridani Edict."

"That's not actually certain yet," Victor said mildly. "I get the sense that Luff's resistant to the idea. But . . . yes, it's clear enough from the sort of questions Cloutier asked me. Part of the reason they're being so cautious about hiring people for any sort of high-level positions, it seems pretty obvious, is because Luff and his people think there's a good chance they'll be galactic pariahs before too long."

He got up and began walking about, just to stretch a little. The kitchen in the modest—again, to use a euphemism—apartment was too small to be able to walk more than three paces. Still, they'd been sitting for hours. Anton was tempted to get up himself and join him—except there wouldn't be room. The kitchen was excessively narrow as well as small.

"I've thought about it, Anton. But I still think it'd be a mistake—and, yes, I know I'll be cursing myself for the rest of my life if we get back and find that Torch is a cinder because everyone was caught by surprise. But, first, I don't think they will be. There's simply no way for an operation of this size to be mounted without tripping some alarm wires somewhere. You have just as high an opinion of Rozsak's chief of intelligence as I do. I don't think there's much chance that Jiri Watanapongse hasn't figured out what's happening yet. Neither do you."

He paused in his pacing. "And that's really all that's involved, isn't it? Just bringing a warning? It's not as if either you or I would be any help on Torch, even if we got back in time to meet the attack. That'll be a naval brawl, pure and simple. And if neither Maya nor Erewhon comes to Torch's aid"—here, his expression got very bleak—"then about all that'll be left to do is wreak whatever vengeance we can."

He started pacing again. "On the other hand, if we stay here, we have a real chance of making a lot of progress on any number of fronts. Just for starters . . ."

Anton glanced at the clock on the wall. They'd been at it for almost three hours, and it was now clear they wouldn't be ending any time soon.

"Sit down, Victor," he said. "Give someone else a chance to stretch a little."

"Yeah," said Yana. "Me first."

Chapter Forty-Six

September, 1921

"Sit down, Lajos," Jack McBryde invited. "Take a load off. How does a cup of coffee sound?"

"Coffee sounds good," Lajos Irvine replied. He smiled as he said it, yet there was a slight—very slight, perhaps, but undeniable—edge to his response, and McBryde reminded himself not to grimace.

Irvine wore the traditional gray smock of a general laborer genetic slave. The smock's shoulder carried the stylized image of a cargo shuttle, which marked its wearer as a ground crewman at the Green Pines shuttle port, and the three chevrons above the shuttle marked him as a senior supervisor—in effect, a trustee. Irvine had the heavyset, muscular build to go with that smock, and if he'd cared to open his mouth and display it, his tongue carried the barcode of a slave, as well. In fact, physically, he was a slave—or, at least, clearly the product of a slave-bred genotype. Except, of course, for the fact that unlike real genetic slaves, he had the enhanced lifespan of a gamma line.

It was a fact which the Alignment's star lines seldom discussed, even among themselves, that genetically, they were much more closely related to Manpower's slaves than they were to the vast majority of humanity. For centuries, the slave lines had been the laboratories of the Long-Range Planning Board—the place where newly designed traits could be field-tested, tried out, and then either culled or incorporated into those same star lines and conserved. The LRPB had been careful to work from far behind the scenes, even (or, perhaps, especially) within the Manpower hierarchy, but it's access to Manpower's breeding programs had always been a major factor in its successes.