As the centuries passed, most of the galaxy had forgotten or at least half-forgotten that the people who founded Manpower, Inc. had been Beowulfan renegades. But Beowulf had never forgotten.

"What in the name of God was he thinking?" Arai murmured.

Marti Garner chuckled. "Which God are we talking about this week, Hugh? If it's one of the more archaic Judeo-Christian-Islamic varieties you seem to have developed a completely incomprehensible interest in lately, then . . ."

She paused and looked to the team member to her left for assistance. "What's your opinion, Haruka? I'm figuring the Old Testament maniac—excuse me, that's 'Maniac' with a capital 'm'—would have commanded poor old Michael Parmley to build the screwball station to demonstrate his obedience."

Haruka Takano—he'd have been described as the unit's intelligence officer in another armed force—opened his eyes and gazed placidly at the immense and bizarre amusement park that was continuing to swell in the screen.

"How am I supposed to know?" he complained. "I'm of Japanese ancestry, if you remember."

Garner and Arai gave him looks which might charitably have been described as skeptical. That was perhaps not surprising, given Takano's blue eyes, very dark skin, features which seemed more south Asian than anything else—and the complete absence of even a trace of an epicanthic fold.

"Spiritual ancestry, I'm referring to," Takano clarified. "I'm a lifelong and devout adherent to the Beowulfan branch of ancient Shinto."

The gazes of his companions remained skeptical.

"It's a small creed," he admitted.

"Membership of one?" That came from Marti Garner.

"Well, yes. But the point is, I have no idea what some deranged deity from the Levant might have said or done." He raised himself from his slouch to peer more closely at the screen. "I mean . . . look at the bloody thing. What is it? Six kilometers in diameter? Seven?"

The fourth person on the ship's command deck spoke up. " 'Diameter's a meaningless term. That structure doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to a sphere. Or any rational geometry."

Stephanie Henson, like Hugh Arai, was on her feet rather than sprawled in a chair. She pointed an accusing finger at the object they were all studying on the screen. "That crazed construction doesn't resemble anything outside of an hallucination."

"Not true, actually," said Takano. "When he built the station, over half a century ago, Parmley was guided by some ancient designs. Places back on pre-diaspora Terra named Disneyland and Coney Island. There's nothing left of them materially except archaeological traces, but a number of images survive. I spent a little time studying them."

The station now filled most of the screen. The unit's intelligence specialist rose to his feet and began pointing to various portions of the structure.

"That thing that seems to loop and wind all over is called a 'roller coaster.' Of course, like every part of the station that isn't contained inside the pressure hull, it's been adapted for vacuum conditions. And, at least if I'm interpreting the few accounts of the station I could track down correctly, they incorporated a number of micro-gravity features as well."

He pointed to the one and only part of the huge structure that had a simple geometric shape. "That's called a 'ferris wheel.' Don't ask me what the term 'ferris' refers to, because I have no idea."

"But . . . what does it do?" asked Henson, frowning. "Is it some sort of propulsion mechanism?"

"It doesn't exactly do anything. People climb into those pressurized cabs you can see and the wheel starts—that much of the name makes sense, at least—wheeling them through space. I guess the point is to give people the best view possible of the surroundings. Which, you have to admit, are rather spectacular, in orbit around Ameta and with Yamato's Nebula so close."

"And what's that?" asked Garner, pointing to yet another portion of the station they were approaching.

Takano made a face. "It's a grotesquely enlarged and extravagant, absurd and preposterous—the terms 'insensate' and 'ludicrous' spring to mind also—version of a structure that was part of ancient Disneyland. The structure was a very fanciful rendition of a primitive fortified dwelling called a 'castle.' It went by the name of 'Fantasyland.' " He pointed to a spire of some sort rising from the station. "That's called a 'turret.' In theory, it's a defensive emplacement."

The com beeped, announcing an incoming message. Arai made his own grimace, and straightened up from the chair.

"Speak of the proverbial devil," he said. "Wait . . . let's say seven seconds, Marti, and then answer the call."

"Why seven?" she complained. "Why not five, or ten?"

Arai clucked his tongue. "Five is too few, ten is too many—for a slovenly crew engaged in a risky enterprise."

"That took just about seven seconds," Takano said admiringly.

But Garner was already starting to speak. She didn't bother making any shushing gestures, though. Despite its battered and antiquated appearance, the equipment on the Ouroboros' command deckwas like the rest of the ship—the product of up-to-date Beowulfan technology, beneath the unprepossessing exterior. No one on the other end of the com system would hear or see anything except Marti Garner's face and voice.

Her response to the signal would, needless to say, have appalled any proper military unit.

"Yeah. Ouroboros here."

A man's face appeared on the com screen. "Identify yourselves and—"

"Oh, cut the bullshit. Check your records. You know perfectly well who we are."

The man on the other end muttered something that was probably a curse. Then he said: "Hold on. We'll get back to you."

The screen went blank. Presumably, he was consulting whoever was in charge. In point of fact, there would be no records of the Ouroboros on Parmley Station—for the good and simple reason that the ship had never come here before. But Arai's team had gauged that the erratic and unstable manner in which the slavers who used the station kept it staffed, insofar as you could use that term at all, meant that the absence of records would just be attributed by the current overseers of the operations there as the product of sloppiness on the part of their predecessors.

Parmley Station was a transshipment point of convenience for freelance slavers, not one of the depot ports Manpower itself maintained on a regular basis. That corporation, as powerful and wealthy as it might be, was still a commercial entity, not a star nation. Manpower directly managed the core portions of its operations, but its activities were much too far flung—not simply throughout the immense reaches of the Verge but even through large parts of the Shell—for it to personally supervise all of them. So, just as it often farmed out paramilitary operations to mercenaries, Manpower also farmed out many of the fringe aspects of the slave trade to independent contractors.

A few of the larger independent slavers maintained their own regular transshipment stations, here and there. But most of them relied on an ever-shifting and informal network of ports and depots.

Those weren't very hard to find. Anywhere in the Verge, at least. The accounts of human expansion into the galaxy related in history books made the phenomenon appear far neater and more organized than it really had been. For each formally-recorded colonizing expedition and settlement—such as the very well documented and exhaustively studied one that had created the Star Kingdom of Manticore—there had been at least a dozen smaller expeditions that were recorded poorly if at all. Even in the era of modern electronic communication and data storage, it was still true that most of human history was only recorded verbally—and, as it always had, the knowledge faded away quickly, with the passage of two or three generations. That was still true today, even with the advent of prolong, although the generations themselves might be getting a little longer.