"I'll tell her. I should think she would've included you anyway. Who else has spent a lifetime thinking about aliens?" He wondered if it had come out sarcastically; he hadn't intended it to.

Rick searched his face intently for a moment, then sat back. "Thanks."

Julia Evans Access Request, Victor's processor node told him.

Expedite Channel.

Hello, Victor, how's it going? Julia asked.

Surprisingly well. The astronomy department won't be asking you to their Christmas party, their schedules have been shot to pieces; but the radio signal data is beginning to come in. Rick and his team are preparing to shove it through some kind of specialist analysis program. The optical review is going to take longer, couple of days, Rick says.

OK, fine, first the good news. Royan's Kiley probe is back, and it brought some microbes.

How did you find that out?

Your idea. There was a personality package waiting in bay F37's memory core.

One of Royan's?

Yes.

What did he say?

That he was going to modify the microbes into something useful. A more advanced form of bio ware. And that he wasn't totally confident about the outcome, which is why he left the package, so that if anything goes wrong we'll be able to understand the problem.

There are more packages?

Yes, but he didn't say where. Have you tracked down that spaceplane crew?

No, I've been organizing security for the SETI office, but I'll get on to it. Did Royan say if there was a starship orbiting Jupiter?

No, but the Kiley's sensors probably wouldn't have seen it anyway, they were attuned to the micro, not the macro. My NN cores are reviewing the star tracker memories. I don't hold out much hope.

This isn't making a lot of sense yet. At what point did Royan make contact with the starship aliens?

No idea, but we might find out soon. I've located Jason Whitehurst, and he's agreed to meet Greg and Suzi. Get this, they can put in a bid for Charlotte Fielder.

A bid?

Yes. Jason was preparing to sell her to the highest bidder. Fortunately the auction hasn't started.

Ye gods. Anything else?

Leol Reiger is being paid by Clifford Jepson. And I think there's a connection between the alien and atomic structuring. It's too much of a coincidence having them both turn up at the same time, virtually the same day.

I can buy that. So we're in a race?

Beginning to look that way.

OK, Julia, I'll find that spaceplane crew, and your NN cores can access every memox core they ever plugged into.

Right. Let me know when you've got them.

Straight away, count on it.

I always do, Victor.

Cancel Channel to Julia Evans.

Rick was crumpling up his Ruddles can, head cocked to one side, giving Victor a shrewd stare.

Victor got up and went to stand by the window, looking down on Building One's assembly hall. "Which is bay F37?" he asked.

The can landed in the bin. "That one." Rick pointed.

"Fine. Do you know the members of the assembly crew that put Kiley together?"

"Some of them, yes."

"You'd better introduce me, then."

The manager of assembly bay F37 was William Terrell, who told them it was the Newton's Apple which had boosted Kiley into orbit. Victor accessed the Institute's 'ware, and tracked the spaceplane down to Spaceplane Preparation Building Two where it was being readied for flight.

He and Rick took a personnel cart over to the big hangar-like structure. Flight bay twelve, where the Newton's Apple was being prepped, was a large white-walled chamber with overhead hoists and five large empty cargo pod cradles in the centre.

Newton's Apple was a Clarke-class spaceplane, a swept-wing delta planform with a span of fifty metres, sixty metres long. The fuselage was a lo-friction pearl-white metalloceramic, gleaming brightly under the big biolum panels in the ceiling. Maintenance crews in blue overalls were checking round the undercarriage bogies. Red power cables as thick as Victor's arm were plugged into hatches in the underbelly, charging up the giga-conductor cells. The rear clamshell doors were already shut, its cargo pods loaded.

The flight cabin was small, with room for five people. They found the captain, Irving Diwan, at the pilot's console running through preflight checks.

People always gave Victor a fast distrustful glance when they were introduced to him. It was one of those things—royalty got bows, channel stars got asked for autographs, lovers got kissed, security men got nervous assessments. He had learnt to accept it, part of the routine.

It didn't happen with Irving Diwan. The captain had purple-black skin, a shaved scalp with a single dreadlock on top, worn in a flat spiral; when he stood up he was fifteen centimetres taller than Victor, putting his eyes level with Rick's. He grinned with delight when Victor showed him his card.

"Head of security? What have we been caught doing, sympathizing with Welsh separatists?"

Meg Knowles, the payload officer, gave him a sharp accusatory stare. He shrugged back.

"I'm here to ask about the Kiley probe," Victor said. "Do You remember it? I need to know if it was recovered by the Newton's Apple."

"Sure," Meg Knowles said. She was sitting at the horseshoe-shaped payload monitoring console behind the pilot's seat. "I remember the Kiley recovery, it was in early April. I had to snag it with the arm. I'd never seen space hardware in such a state before. Its particle-protection foam had taken a real pounding in Jupiter's ring."

"What about unloading it?" Victor asked. "Can you remember which flight bay you used?"

"There are only five equipped to handle space probes. I think we used number seventeen," she said.

"Great." Open Channel to Julia Evans. "How about after that? Do you know where the Kiley was taken?"

Meg Knowles paused, staring off into space.

NN Core One On Line. Sorry, Victor, my flesh and blood self is dealing with Michael Harcourt right now. I can interrupt if it's important.

No, don't bother. This is more relevant to you in any case. I've learned that Kiley was recovered this April by a Clarke-class spaceplane called Newton's Apple, they unloaded it in flight bay seventeen.

Fine work, Victor, I'll plug into the spaceplane and the flight bay's 'ware, see if there's another of Royan's personality packages waiting.

Right, and I'll see if I can find out what happened to it after it was unloaded. Cancel Channel to Julia Evans.

"Hey," Irving Diwan protested. The payload monitoring console had activated itself, data was flowing through its four cubes so fast it was an unreadable blur. "What the hell?"

"Leave it," Victor ordered as Irving Diwan reached for the console's keyboard.

"But the flight 'ware doesn't respond to my node orders. It's malfunctioning."

"No, it isn't. Leave it."

The pilot exchanged a glance with Meg Knowles who had steeled her expression into tight-lipped pique.

"Did you do that?" Rick asked; he sounded more amused than anything.

"Sort of." Victor turned back to Meg Knowles. "The unloading?"

"Yeah, right. I have to stick around, you know. Not like these glam pilot jockeys. While a payload is on board, I'm responsible for it. That means I'm here for loading and unloading. I was interested in Kiley, the first sample from a gas giant. So I was surprised by the way it got played down, no channel news teams, no Institute planetologists. You'd think there'd be somebody. But there's just Royan and the regular flight bay crew. I stuck with Kiley until it was in the payload facility room. They drained out the reaction mass and discharged the giga-conductor cells; then it was put into an ordinary commercial container and driven off."

The data in the console's cubes froze, Victor saw a dark green sphere suspended inside one of them, a honeycomb tracery of minute folds furrowing its surface. It winked out. The console shut down. Irving Diwan swore softly, and shook his head.