Alessandra frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The Starflyer!” Mellanie hissed. “I’m going to track it down.”

“Oh, that nonsense.” Alessandra put her hand on her brow theatrically. “You’re wrong. I had it checked out for you. Cox Educational is completely legit, and still going strong. I think Bunny actually talked to one of the trustees, Ms. Daltra. She assured us their funding is all aboveboard, the accounts are filed with the charity commissioners every eighteen months, as required. Take a look at them if you want.”

“What!” Mellanie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“You were wrong, darling. No big deal. We all make mistakes on the way up. If you want my advice, you should stop screwing Dudley Bose, he’s got a lot of psychological problems. Re-lifers generally do. They get over them eventually.”

“No.” Mellanie shook her head. “No, that’s wrong. Dudley only…”

She trailed off as the real shock hit her, strong enough to raise the goosebumps all along her arms. She gave Alessandra an incredulous stare. It was all she could do not to back away from the woman. “I don’t understand.”

“You made a mistake,” Alessandra told her. Her smile became humorless. “Another one. And I’m not really into this ‘three strikes and you’re out’ crap that the judiciary practices. Frankly, the show’s only keeping you on now because of your report from Randtown. That showed promise. But face facts, darling, you’re not an investigator. God, you’re too dumb even to get to college; everybody goes to college and gets a degree these days. So let’s focus on what you are good at, shaking that shapely little ass of yours at the men I tell you to. Clear?”

Mellanie bowed her head, and even managed a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Yes.”

“Good girl.” Alessandra put her hands on either side of Mellanie’s head, and kissed her crown, as if performing a blessing. “Now why don’t you go and put something nice on for Robin. You know, he asked for you specially. I think he was impressed by Randtown as well. You’re a celebrity now, darling.”

“All right.” Mellanie left the living room, careful to close the door behind her as she went out into the penthouse’s main hallway. “Are their any special safeguards on the front door?” she asked the SI.

“Just the standard security systems and alarms.”

“Great.” She almost bolted to the tall double doors. They opened for her, and she looked wildly around the marbled vestibule outside. There were only three other doors to the remaining penthouses, two lifts, and the stairwell. Her e-butler interfaced with the skyscraper’s management array, and told her the lifts were on their way up. She was too worried that Alessandra would follow her out to wait for them, so she went straight to the stairwell and ran downward. “Get a lift to stop for me on the sixty-second floor,” she told the SI.

It was waiting for her when she burst out of the stairwell. She hopped in, and the doors closed. “Lobby,” she told the SI. “There will be people there, I should be safe.”

“What is the problem, Mellanie?”

She pressed her head against the cool metal walls of the lift, waiting for her racing heart to slow. “I never told Alessandra the name of the charity.”

“It would not be hard for her to discover it.”

“Run a check on it for me again, please.”

“The public records have been amended since last week.”

“Goddamn!” She glanced up, as if expecting Alessandra to be ripping her way through the top of the lift like some psycho in a bad TSIdrama.

“They now show the Cox Educational has been in continual operation since its formation, and is still making donations to various science departments,” the SI said.

“But that’s all forgeries, you know that.”

“We do, but the official records are complete.”

“How did they do that?”

“It is not impossible to subvert public records, especially in the finance sector. Although the effort involved is considerable.”

“She tipped them off,” Mellanie said out loud. “Alessandra told them I was on to them. Onto it, the Starflyer. It had to be her. There’s no one else. It’s her. Oh, God.” Her legs were trembling the way they had when she was facing the soldier motiles in Randtown.

“That is a strong accusation,” the SI said.

“Are you testing me? If Alessandra had run a genuine check, she would have found what I told her. The Starflyer would never have had time to cover its alien ass; a fraud this elaborate would take time. It had to have been given a direct warning so that the cover-up would be in place in case I survived and started yelling allegations. The only person I told was Alessandra. It is her! She’s working for it, isn’t she? Alessandra is one of the people Johansson warns us about, like the President.”

“We don’t know for certain. However, given the sequence of events, it is highly likely.”

The lift doors opened. Mellanie peered out into the lobby. There didn’t seem to be anybody waiting for her. She hurried over to the main entrance, where there were some taxis waiting. “I’ve got to get back to Dudley,” she said.

“An excellent notion. Then what?”

“Tell Paula Myo what I’ve discovered. Do you know where she is?”

“Yes.”

…

Kazimir stood close to the end of platform 34 in Rio’s planetary station, with people swarming around him as they waited for the next train. The trans-Earth loop trains had carried on running almost continually during the invasion crisis—though even that service had stopped when Nigel Sheldon diverted the lunar power to Wessex. But they were up and running again within hours, unlike CST passenger trains to other planets.

Kazimir had been reassured by the way Earth’s infrastructure underwent only the minimum of disruption. What outraged him was the population’s attitude. The residents of Santa Monica seemed more upset by the temporary power loss than they did that twenty-three planets had been lost to alien monsters. And the Mayor certainly hadn’t allocated any civic buildings to the refugees riding around the Intersolar train network looking for accommodation, unlike civic and regional leaders on the other worlds. Earthlings appeared to regard the invasion as just another news event that happened to someone else a long way off. He wasn’t sure if that was ignorance or arrogance. Whatever, it was certainly a chilling example of how different their shared mindset was to his own.

The last few days had seen at least a degree of awareness creeping in. Kazimir had hung around the waterfront in Santa Monica, watching the news in bars, or accessing in his little hotel room while he waited for things to calm down so he could resume his mission. Local media shows reflected a lot of anxiety that a second wave of planets would suffer invasion, a progression that would one day lead to Earth itself being on the front line.

So far there had been no sign of any alien activity anywhere other than on the original invaded worlds. Now the evacuation of civilian populations was effectively complete, available data was in short supply as the Primes continued their inexorable advance. The navy was maintaining small fighting forces on Anshun, Balkash, and Martaban; aerobots and professional combat-wetwired troops conducted a guerrilla harassment campaign against the new installations the aliens were constructing. Everyone knew it was a token gesture. The buildup of Prime forces was increasing at a disturbing rate as they managed to open gateways on the planetary surfaces. Admiral Kime was expected to order a withdrawal soon, and the final wormholes would be shut down. Analysts on most of the news shows were predicting that the deserted capital cities would then be destroyed by fusion bombs.

The navy’s remaining scoutships had returned, and were now performing regular flyby patrols of the invaded worlds, supplementing the degraded detector network. So far, the aliens hadn’t opened any new wormholes to replace those destroyed by the Desperado’s last flight. Some of the technical experts and tacticians on the news shows were hinting that the remaining starships might well be automated, for use in similar relativistic assaults on other Prime wormholes. The navy had publicly refused to comment on the possibility. Commentators were saying that as the biospheres of the invaded worlds were so badly damaged, the Commonwealth had effectively written them off. It wasn’t worth sacrificing their last starships to destroy something humanity would never regain. They were being held in reserve in case of any new assault.