He laughed snortingly, and the skimmer bobbed in time with his chuckles. Whisk, whisk, whisk, bushes brushing our underbelly. Oh-God, Oh-God, Oh-God, I thought.

"You’re driving is off tonight," Ramos observed.

"Gotta get me some gloves." He pulled both hands off the steering yoke and held them in front the dashboard’s heating vent. Ramos slapped his shoulder; Oh-God grumbled but took the wheel again.

"Anyway," Ramos said in a long-suffering voice, "I took over Chee’s spy network two years ago. Watchdogging planetary governments. I didn’t know the first thing about what I was doing, but Chee had acquired plenty of good deputies. They still run most of the show… which makes me feel guilty for letting them do all the work. I’ve stayed shackled to my desk for two full years, trying to learn how to be a backroom strategist; but it’s killing me." She ran a hand through her hair. "And it’s killing me to find I want to get out into unfamiliar territory again, poke my nose where it’s not wanted, feel that rush of adrenaline. I hated being an Explorer… and I hated how people saw it as an exciting profession when the whole point was to avoid the slightest hint of excitement." She sighed. Deeply. "But I miss it. I may be suicidally stupid, but I miss it."

She looked away from us all, off into the blackness of the night. "So here I am, doing the next best thing to Exploration. When I heard about your proctors getting murdered, I just blurted, I’ll investigate that myself… then barreled out of the office too fast for anyone to stop me. Which led to this mildly daring rescue, and putting my life in the hands of a Freep madman."

"Ahh, you love it, missy," Oh-God said affectionately. "And any idjit could see you weren’t suited to go planet-down on a desk. You’ve got Explorer deep in your blood."

"Not to mention written all over my face," Ramos muttered.

"So," Admiral Ramos said, turning brisk all of a sudden, "did the dipshits say how long they’d been on Demoth?"

"They told me…" My mouth still wasn’t going over all the hurdles. "They told me the local base commander had reported the Sperm-tube, and they were sent to check it out."

"That’s a possibility," Ramos agreed, "but who knows if they were telling the truth? Suppose they arrived earlier: before the assassinations."

"Suppose they did the assassinations themselves," Oh-God suggested. "They might have used Admiralty funds to buy robots and reprogram them… because those High Council pukes have some scheme going—"

"No," Ramos interrupted, "the High Council definitely can’t send a hit team to assassinate anyone. The League of Peoples has a flawless track record for preventing killers from traveling planet-to-planet. Flawless. The League never makes exceptions, and never makes mistakes. But if the High Council sent a team of not-quite-homicidal dipshits here on some mission and something unexpected drove them over the edge…"

She stopped and shook her head. "I don’t know. Dipshits are self-centered morons, but they’re trained to avoid murder. More than trained — they’re methodically indoctrinated. And what’s so important on Demoth that’s worth killing for?"

A peacock-colored tube, I thought, that saved my life and thumbed its nose at Admiralty physics. The dipshits had been willing to turn me into a vegetable, just to find out what I knew. How much more would they do?

But I didn’t say that out loud; I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, wondering if I was feeling brave enough to use my link-seed. Nope. "Which one of these dials is the radio?" I asked, pointing at the skimmer’s controls. "It’s time to call the cops."

The next few minutes got tricky. Protection Central wanted to know where I was, so they could send an escort to ferry me home. Oh-God, on the other hand, had no intention of giving the police a glimpse of his skimmer, considering how they might raise a stink over its "emergencies-only" customizations. In the end, the Explorers let me out at a park station in the Black Tickle Wilderness Preserve, where four bemused forest rangers said sure, they’d protect me till the cops arrived. Ramos promised to contact me soon, then flew off into the night. Twenty minutes later, a fleet of six police skimmers picked me up and proceeded to the house where I’d been held captive. I half expected the place to be empty, with all evidence of my presence cleaned up; but the Mouth and Muscle were exactly where we’d left them, still out cold. Even better, the detective team found recording equipment the dipshits had used to log my "interrogation"… good hard evidence that made the police captain’s eyes shine with harsh glee. His name was Basil Cheticamp, rail-thin with glassy cheeks of hypoglycemic pink, but he was a cop through and through.

"They think they can come in here…" Cheticamp muttered under his breath. "Those navy pricks think they can come to our planet…"

I loved the sound of that. Even if the Admiralty started throwing hush money around, they wouldn’t buy off Cheticamp.

Glad I wasn’t the only one.

It was dawn before we said good-bye to the house in the woods. Cheticamp didn’t want to split his forces by sending me home with one set of officers while leaving the rest to gather evidence. Ergo we all stayed together, me drinking tea in that gleamy-bright kitchen, till a second squad of detectives arrived to relieve the first. By then, I’d used the police communication system to call my family and tell them I was safe as a daisy, sound of life and limb…

…which I truly was, all things considered. The dizziness passed; the hangover headache thudded itself out; and by dawn, plain old fatigue had settled in comfortably, just a punchy up-all-night weariness that left me feeling nostalgic and companionable. Near 4 a.m., Captain Cheticamp felt himself honor-bound to bestow the Great Weighty Lecture about people who go walking alone, especially when they know they might be targets… but he was so sweet pleased with how everything worked out, he didn’t dig in the spurs too sharply.

Cheticamp said the police had been searching for me, almost from the moment I was kidnapped. The dipshits began jamming my link-seed even before they got my unconscious body into their skimmer; and the world-soul, none too happy with me vanishing from radio contact, triggered an alarm to Protection Central. Unlucky for me, the dipshits’ skimmer sported the best antidetection equipment available to the Outward Fleet, making it impossible to track by satellite or ground-based radar. Still, Cheticamp swore they’d had the situation well in hand — the Admiralty safe house was definitely within their search perimeter, so they would have found me if Admiral Ramos hadn’t got there first.

"You realize," he said, "you can’t trust this Ramos?"

"Why not?"

"Good cop, bad cop," he replied. "Classic technique. A pair of vicious fucks put the scare into you, then a knight in shining armor rides to the rescue. Makes you grateful. Puts you under an obligation. It could be part of a plan."

"A plan to do what?" I asked.

"Blessed if I know. But this Ramos is an admiral too, even if she claims her hands are clean."

I’m not witless — the same thought had already crossed my mind. Still, this kidnapping incident would lead to crippling-bad publicity for the High Council of Admirals; I found it hard to believe they’d expose themselves to that, just for Festina Ramos to win my confidence.

A nobody, our Faye. In the great schemes of admirals, I just wasn’t that important.