"They found me," Tic said, voice soft. "Deep in a highland jungle, far into the Thin Interior, and they still found me."

"Well, good," Ramos replied. "One of our success stories."

She hadn’t caught the gray bitters in Tic’s voice.

A crowd came onto the guest home’s veranda to watch the probes take off. Most were Oolom. The few Homo saps among them wore staff uniforms — cooks and cleaners and concierges with time on their hands. Ramos made sure the spectators kept back as the probes extended metal armatures and pushed themselves up to the vertical.

"Are they going to blast off?" shouted a voice from the veranda — an Oolom boy, maybe eight years old, bouncing with so much excitement his mother asked a nearby human to hold the kid down.

"Not quite," Ramos called back.

The boy must have had visions of rockets exploding from the ground in a flurry of fire and steam. Reality didn’t make so much fuss: in unison, the probes sprouted bouquets of spherical black balloons… three at their nose cones, three more round their midsections, and a final three at their bases. The balloons inflated fast, each swelling out more than two meters in diameter. For a moment the morning fell silent; then a cough sounded inside each balloon, and their rubbery surfaces went rigid — truly rigid, like hard plastic shells.

I had time to think, What the hell? before the explanation came to me. (From the world-soul? Some half-buried memory? Who knows?) The cough was a hardening enzyme getting slap-sprayed against each balloon’s interior. Causing a chemical reaction. Making the balloons’ springy plastic stiffen as solid as steel. Then, with a fierce hiss, the probes began to pump air out of the tough balloon shells.

Vacuum has no weight — lighter than helium and hydrogen. And the balloon shells were now strong enough to resist the inward crunch of atmospheric pressure.

Fair gracefully the probes rose, weightless as smoke. The wind caught them, and they drifted toward the trees… each missile still plumb-vertical, ready for action. Floating. Climbing. When they reached a preprogrammed height, some reversal agent got squirted inside the balloon shells, turning them back to rubber again; but by then the probes were far away, more than a hundred meters above the scrubby tundra forest. All we saw was the vac-filled balloons suddenly collapse under outside air pressure. At the same instant, each probe’s engines kicked in, finally gouting out those flames the boy wanted to see. I heard him shout, "Yes!" as the missiles soared upward, north/southeast/southwest, separating to begin their scan of the region.

"A splendid show," Tic said. "Now how long do we wait?"

Ramos shrugged. "We might luck onto something in thirty seconds. Or never. Nothing works one hundred percent… especially when we’re looking for an archaeological dig that might not exist. The probes have six hours of fuel; they should find something if it’s there to find." She shivered. "Now let’s get out of this cold, okay? My cheeks are rosy enough as it is."

The three of us ate breakfast together, Ramos and I making small talk while Tic sat silently… communing with the cutlery for all I know. As for the admiral and me — bright women, brilliant conversationalists — we talked about the weather. I waxed poetic about snow-covered tundra, while Ramos preached the glory of temperatures so sweltering your armpits melted. (She was born on the colony planet Agua, in a region as hot as Demoth’s tropics. "But," said Ramos, "our farm was two-thirds of the way to the south pole. On Agua, even I would roast near the equator.")

Eventually, talk turned to the business at hand: Maya, killer robots, and such. I’d given Ramos a precis on the phone, but now she wanted the whole story. Even with Cheticamp’s warning not to trust an admiral, I saw no reason to hide anything. Vigil training: tell the public everything, unless there’s strong reason not to. (You can imagine how warmsome that endears us to politicians.)

"So," Ramos said at the end of things, "killer androids." She sat back in her chair, her expression going dark. "If the probes find Maya’s hypothetical dig, do you think there’ll be robots there?"

"The police believe Maya had no connection with the killers," I replied. "Me, I’m not so sure."

"Hmmm." Ramos drummed her ringers on the table. "My training didn’t deal with androids. When a society is advanced enough to build robots, the Admiralty claims there’s no need to send Explorers for first contact. Just ship in diplomats right away." She rolled her eyes. "Let’s not discuss what a pathetic first impression that makes, introducing ourselves to aliens with dipshits rather than Explorers. But getting back to the point… I’m not qualified to go on a robot hunt."

"You don’t have to go," I said. "Tic and I have ScrambleTacs to bodyguard us. We’ll be fine."

"But I want to go with you," Ramos growled. Her voice sounded angry. "I don’t have a thing to contribute, but I desperately want to go." She shook her head. "What kind of irresponsible idiot am I turning into? Eager to waltz into danger when I’m not even helpful." Her face puckered sour, and she fingered her shirtsleeve disdainfully. "Maybe it’s the admiral’s uniform. Something in the gray dye is rotting my brain."

"You can come or not, whatever you like," I told her. "Where’s the problem?"

"The problem is in my head," she replied. "Look, Faye, people shouldn’t want to walk into unnecessary danger. Especially people who know what danger is. Especially people who serve no useful purpose on the mission. Do you know what I think of thrill seekers? Going someplace you don’t belong, just for a cheap adrenaline high? That’s evil; I honestly believe it’s evil. Decadent. Trying to titillate yourself into some semblance of feeling because you’re numb to the real thing. And me with an important job that the Admiralty would sabotage if I got myself killed."

"Ah," Tic said. "So you’ve become inexpendable."

Ramos whipped around to look at him, her mouth falling open as if she’d been slapped. Tic returned her stare with his face composed, eyes hidden behind those blasted goggles. "What did you say?" Festina demanded. (In that moment, she was Festina — not Lieutenant Admiral Ramos or any other trained-in mask, but her own surprised self.)

"You heard me," Tic answered calmly. "Do you really think your organization will fall apart without you? Admiral Chee died, and the world went on. His work went on too. If something happened to you…" He spread his hands in a bland gesture. "On and on and on."

"What do you know about Chee?" Ramos asked. Getting herself under control, back to Ramos the Efficient/Effective.

"Chee scrutinized planetary governments. Including Demoth’s. Our paths crossed." Tic smiled. "But that’s not the point. The point is you think you ought to be a particular kind of person — sitting at the center of the web, coordinating others but never venturing forth yourself — when all the time, you long to get out into the field."

"It’s just a juvenile whim," Ramos said. "It’ll pass."

Tic shrugged. "Perhaps. If it is a juvenile whim. But what if it’s the voice of your soul? Or destiny?"

Ramos made a face. "I don’t believe in destiny. And I’m not so sure about souls either. Do you give in to every little urge?"

"I try, I certainly try. The trick is distinguishing your own urges from things people say you should want."

"No one tells me what I should do," Ramos said sharply. "Not anymore. I’m talking about what I know is right. And I know it’s not right for me to play starry-eyed adventurer just because I’m starved for excitement. I haven’t been trained to confront androids—"

"Quick," Tic interrupted, "you’re faced with a killer android. What pops into your mind? The very first thing."