“We’ve been exposed to it before, ma’am,” said Lynn.

He gave Belew a yeah, you were just joking, weren’t you? look and pried his eyes off him. “It’s called knowing your enemy.”

“I thought your Mr. Bennett said drug use was intrinsically wrong.”

Gary Hamilton paused with his pipe to his lips and his disposable lighter poised over the bowl. “It’s different for us.

“She’s as likely to be talking about your coffee as his hash, Saxon. She doesn’t approve of caffeine either. She’s a very natural kind of lady, our Ms. Carlysle.”

“You seem to know a great deal about me, Mr. Belew.”

“I read Aces magazine, like anybody.”

“We were just wondering why Meadows hasn’t turned up in the smoking cafйs when you decided to grace us with your presence,” Saxon said.

“It was sheer luck that he’s been spotted twice,” Helen said.

Lynn Saxon frowned. “Don’t use that word, babe. It’s not luck. It’s professionalism. An Interpol stringer made him here initially – that was luck. We picked him up yesterday, just out cruising the streets. That was skill. The first team is very definitely on the job.”

Our sources say he hasn’t been anywhere,” Hamilton said, letting out a mouthful of smoke and coughing. “Nobody knows him at the clubs. Not Paradiso or the Melkweg or even the Hard Rock Cafй.”

“He’s had some pretty rough times,” Belew said, “or at least he did before he dropped out of sight for a year or two.

Maybe he’s just into being a homebody these days.”

Saxon laughed. “No way. These old hippies were definitely herd beasts. We got it all down to a science, Belew.

We got profiles of every major kind of dealer and user in existence in our computers, plus we got a whole database on Meadows all by his lonesome. Printout looks like the Manhattan phone book. No. I tell you, Amsterdam is the last great preserve of old hippie burnouts on Earth, and Mark Meadows has got to be out rubbing elbows with them. We just haven’t worked out where.”

“I’m glad you set me straight on that, Agent Saxon.” Belew grinned boyishly and smoothed back the waxed wings of his own impressive mustache. “Well, it’s a good thing our Dr. Meadows is on the distinctive side in appearance. Maybe third time really is the charm.”

He signaled for the waiter to come over. “I’ll take some of your best Lebanese – the real stuff, not what you palm off on the tourists. And please, spare me the lecture about operating a motor vehicle.”

When he came back to himself, Mark drew a deep breath and shuddered. His heart still thudded with terror, and it was more than just a carryover from having been the manic-depressive Cosmic Traveler. They had tracked him to his flat. It had just taken them a little extra time.

For some reason his memories of what the Traveler did during his hour of drug-induced life weren’t as clear as those he brought back from some of his other personas. It was just as well; he didn’t especially like the Traveler, and didn’t trust him at all. Traveler was selfish and totally unscrupulous and wouldn’t hesitate to abuse his ace powers if the opportunity arose. The fact that he possessed no offensive abilities whatsoever restricted his scope somewhat, but he was resourceful.

Bully and lecher though he was, however, Cosmic Traveler was a coward. A complete coward; it was the one reliable thing about him. He was endlessly ugly when he perceived himself as holding the whip hand, but a whiff of threat and he was gone with the wind.

By the smell of the air – grease and dust overlying open water – and the way the sound of his breathing resounded in the darkness, Mark decided Traveler had picked an IJ-front warehouse to go to ground in. Absence of lights or voices or subtler sensory clues indicated there was no one here. A certain stagnant quality to the air, a sense of intruding, gave Mark the sensation no one had come here for a while.

It didn’t surprise him. You could trust the Traveler to find a secure hiding place, even if that was all you could trust him for.

He felt with his hands. Cement floor, brick cool to the touch at his back. Slowly he stood up.

Squat masses surrounded him. By thin greenish light drooling in a nearby window he made out dormant machinery, angles rounded by tarps. Keeping his palms pressed to the brick, sliding his feet along the floor to lessen the risk of tripping over something and breaking his neck, he sidled toward the window.

Small rustlings receded from him. He smiled despite the adrenaline that still rang in his veins like a gong. The Traveler had been so obsessed with avoiding human contact that he’d forgotten to fear rats.

The window was so grimy that all he could see were big dim, gauzy balloons of light, as if he’d forgotten his glasses. He rubbed at the cool glass with the heel of his hand. For a moment all he did was redistribute grease. Then a patch cleared enough so that he could see a blue light blinking mournfully at the top of a giant crane out across the IJ, and a gibbous moon hanging like an autumn apple in the west.

He jerked back. Hey, now, it’s nothing to be afraid of he told himself. It’s only the nighttime sky.

It was like when he was a kid and he sometimes got scared to look outside at night for fear he’d see a UFO. What with his dad a big-time test pilot and all and the Air Force insisting that UFOs didn’t exist (except for the one Dr. Tachyon arrived in), it just wouldn’t do for him to see a UFO. Also, he was afraid of UFOs.

Except he had no fear of UFOs anymore. His best friend owned a UFO – a whole fleet of UFOs, now. He’d arrived back on Earth on a UFO. Besides, if he did have something to fear, this wasn’t the right sky.

But something inside him whispered, death. Death waits among the stars. It came from far deeper than the voices of his friends.

Just to be sure, he turned away from the window and slid down to the cold, hard cement floor. With his knees beneath his chin and his hands wrapped in the hem of his sweater, he settled in to wait out the stars.

Wherever the space between his eyes was, that’s where he went.

Chapter Four

“I’m sorry,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head slowly as if to emphasize the gravity of his regret. All around him clocks looked on with idiot faces, ticking and electronic hum combining into cicada susurration. “I cannot give you job. No papers.”

“Well, thanks anyway, man.”

“You want a job?” The stall-keeper was a whole foot shorter than Mark, and his head looked disconcertingly like one of the cantaloupes he had piled in mathematical ranks in the bins, fringed with longish gray hair. “Very difficult these days. Perhaps I can find you something. You can pay?”

Reflexively Mark felt the pockets of his stained and slept in khaki pants. There was the reassuring weight of a Takisian gold piece, the crinkle and tinkle of some guilders’ change.

I thought the point of getting a job was to make money, he thought. Besides, the man’s manner sang of illegality like fingernails down a blackboard. Mark thought the last thing he needed now was more trouble.

Nodding politely, he turned and walked out of the open-air stand.

“Out! Go away! You police, you provocateur!”

The tiny Moluccan restaurant’s tiny Moluccan owner waved stick arms at Mark while aproned kids, probably his, scurried for cover with practiced familiarity.

Recoiling, Mark held up his hands in front of his face. “Wait, man, I’m not from the police. All I want is a job.”

“Ha! Job. Job! I spit.” He spat. “Job!”

He got up in Mark’s face, or at least his sternum. “You American, huh? You no European?” He wound his hands furiously in the towel at his waist as if trying to choke it.