He'd asked his uncle Andrew about it, once, after the first time he'd heard Ganny use the expression. Artlett's explanation was that the expression dated from the days—way before the Diaspora—when the human race was still confined to one planet and mired in superstition. Dollars were maleficent spirits notorious for sapping the moral fiber of those foolish enough to traffic with them. The number sixty-four thousand had magical importance since it was eight squared—eight no doubt being a magical number in its own right—and then multiplied by a thousand, which, given the antediluvian origins of the decimal system, was surely a number freighted with mystic importance.

It was a theory. An attractive one, even. But Brice was skeptical. His uncle Andrew had about as many theories as Ganny had old saws, and plenty of them were just as silly.

Still . . .

"I'm not so sure, Ganny," Brice said. "There's something . . ."

"Yes?"

"I don't know. I've never actually seen Ballroom assassins at work, but—"

"Damn few people have, youngster," said Ganny. "At least, not ones who survived the experience."

Brice winced. Ganny sometimes also had the habit of rubbing salt into wounds. Did she really need to say that, to someone who was sharing an air duct with possible Ballroom maniacs?

"Yeah, well. Ganny, these people just seem too . . . I dunno. They seem more like a military unit, to me."

Alsobrook spoke up again. "Ganny, that just doesn't make sense. Who'd be sending a military unit to Parmley Station?"

"I have no idea, Michael," replied Ganny. "But don't be so quick to dismiss the opinion of somebody who's actually seen the people we're talking about. Which, being blunt about it, you haven't."

Now, Ed spoke up again. "Ganny, they're getting real close to the command center. The people from the Ouroboros, I mean."

Brice tried to figure out which of the adjacent ducts Ed had to be in, to have seen that. Probably . . .

What difference did it make? Brice had come to the same conclusion, anyway. Staying ahead of the two Ouroboros crewmen who'd come into the air duct, he was now himself positioned almost over the slavers' command center.

What to do? He was certain that all hell was about to break loose, and was torn between two powerful impulses. The first was simple survival instinct, which was shrieking at him to get out of the area now. The other was an equally powerful urge to observe what was about to happen.

After a mental struggle that lasted not more than five seconds, curiosity triumphed. With Brice, it usually did.

The question now became: From what vantage point could he watch the upcoming events without exposing himself too much?

There was really only one answer, which was the small maintenance compartment located in one corner of the command center. As was frequently the case with such maintenance stations, it was built directly into the air duct network.

There was a risk involved, though. Unlike the air ducts, that compartment was designed to be easily accessible. It wouldn't take more than a few seconds for anyone in the command center who was seized by the urge to open the access panel and climb in. There'd be no need for a hoist, either, or even a stepladder. The maintenance compartment wasn't elevated more than a meter from the deck of the command center.

So be it. Hopefully, in the event that happened, Brice would manage to scramble back into the air ducts in time.

When he got there, he was disgruntled to see that Ed had gotten there ahead of him. And disgruntled again, not more than thirty seconds later, when James piled in too.

Disgruntled, but not surprised. For Hartman and Lewis, as for Brice himself, the survival instinct was usually trumped by curiosity. Uncle Andrew said that was because they were teenagers and so part of their brains hadn't fully developed yet. Specifically, that part of the prefrontal cortex that gauged risks.

It was a theory. Plausible and attractive, like most of his uncle's theories—but, also like most of them, probably flawed. The flaw in this case was the theorist himself—Andrew Artlett, who was of an age where his prefrontal cortex should certainly have been fully developed but who was notorious for taking crazier risks than anybody.

With three of them in there, the compartment was packed tight. And their ability to observe what was happening in the command center was going to be impaired by all three of them having to squeeze next to the entrance panel. Fortunately, the panel was more sophisticated than a simple mechanical one. Instead of narrow open air slits, it had a much larger vision screen. And the screen's electrical shield, designed to keep insects from wandering into delicate equipment, also blurred anyone's ability to look into the maintenance compartment from the command center.

Unless, of course, they turned off the shield so they could look inside for a quick inspection of the compartment without having to open the panel. That was part of the design, too—and the screen could be turned off with a flick of a finger.

So be it. Life was never perfect. Which was no doubt the reason that evolution, in its cunning, had seen to it that the prefrontal cortex of adolescents was not fully developed. If you looked at it the right way, that was simply a necessary adaptation to the invariant cruddiness of existence.

Across the large command center and off to the side, Brice saw the entry hatch begin to open.

James hissed softly. "Showtime."

Chapter Eleven

Hugh Arai had seen no reason to dilly-dally about the business. They had to move quickly, in fact, or the simple and crude event-loop they'd reconfigured the camera and sensors to show would alert the slavers very soon, unless they were completely inattentive. So the BSC team went into the command center firing. Quite literally—Marti Garner, in the lead because she was the best marksman, had already shot two of the slavers in the center before she finished passing through the entrance.

Bryan Knight, coming right behind her, tossed flashbang grenades into the two corners of the large compartment that weren't in clear line of sight. Marti opened her eyes once the blast and flash were over, and quickly scoured the visible areas looking for opponents.

There was one woman behind a desk, looking very confused. She'd have been close enough to one of the grenades to be affected by it. Garner disintegrated her head—spectacularly—with a tightly focused burst of flechettes.

Hugh Arai was the third member of the team coming into the compartment. He was carrying a highly modified version of a tri-barrel pulser. The weapon was as close to a pistol version of a tri-barrel as Beowulf's military engineers had been able to design. It was a specialty gun, almost literally hand-made. Only someone of Hugh Arai's mass and strength could hope to use it effectively—or safely, for those accompanying him—and its ability to shred bulkheads might have caused some to look upon it askance in what amounted to a boarding action. The BSC was a great believer in providing for all contingencies, however. It was always possible that even slavers might have armored skinsuits available, after all, and despite its drawbacks, the weapon provided the unit with a scaled-down approximation of the sort of heavy weapons that a regular Marine unit would have carried.

Arai took position in the center of the compartment, while Garner and Mattes and Knight quickly inspected every area where someone might have been able to hide. But the place was empty now, except for the three corpses.

While they went about that business, Stephanie Henson sat down in front of the command center's operations console and began bringing up the relevant schematics and diagrams. She was swift and expert at the work, and within thirty seconds, she'd found what they needed. Less than a minute later, she'd bypassed the security locks and keyed in the instructions.