"You!" he sputtered, walking over to the sideburned malefactor. "You..."

The legionnaire looked up at him and said with a smile, "Howdy, can I he'p you with anything, son?"

"That's sir to you," screamed the lieutenant. "And you'll stand at attention when you speak to an officer. You're in deep trouble now, if you don't know it..."

The legionnaire closed his book and stood up, more or less at attention. For some reason, he looked taller than before-and a bit older. "Why, sir, I didn't think we was standin' on protocol quite so much in this outfit. Captain Jester never did get around to decidin' jes' what my rank oughta be. But seein' as how you're new, I'm happy to oblige. Now, jes' what can I do for you, today, Lieutenant?"

Snipe's jaw fell to his chest. The fellow was acting as if nothing at all had passed between them earlier, and yet it was no more than fifteen minutes since he'd last reprimanded him. The fellow must be mentally unsound; it wouldn't surprise him, having seen the kind of material this company was made up of. Perhaps he was even a multiple personality. How else to explain the complete change in his expression, even his voice and accent? In any other outfit, the fellow would doubtless have been discharged as unfit for military service.

Snipe was still trying to figure out what to say when another legionnaire strode up to them and said, "Excuse me, Rev, do you have a minute to talk?"

The man he'd caught reading turned to the newcomer and said, "Not right this second, son, the lieutenant has something he wants to talk about. But if you'll come back in maybe fifteen minutes, I'm sure I can spare the time."

The newcomer nodded, snapped off a very decent salute to Lieutenant Snipe, and turned to leave. The man who had been reading turned back to Snipe with an expectant smile. "Now, sir, what was it you wanted?"

But the lieutenant was speechless now. He rubbed his eyes and looked again at the man in front of him. The tag on his uniform said Reverend Jordan Ayres, and on his collar was some kind of badge Snipe did not recognize-an antique musical instrument, it appeared. But what gave Snipe pause was the fact that the man who'd just come up and saluted in perfect military form, said a few polite words, and turned to walk away wore the exact same face as the man now in front of him.

Snipe muttered something and walked away, shaking his head. Everybody in the company was starting to look the same to him. It must be the desert sun. Yes, that was it-the sun. He'd go back to his quarters, get a cool drink of water, and just lie down and rest a bit.

He managed to keep his composure reasonably well until he entered the MBC and found himself face-to-face with still another legionnaire, this one obviously female, with that same sneering face. That was when he lost it entirely.

Lieutenant Rembrandt was walking stiffly and a bit gingerly as she came into Comm Central. Her back injury was healing nicely, thanks to the pills she'd gotten from the autodoc, but even cutting-edge military medicine wasn't going to do much to speed up the process.

There was a vacant straight-backed chair behind the counter where Mother worked, and Rembrandt lowered herself into it with a sigh. Mother looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. In her quiet voice she said, "Still hurting, Remmie?" She could sometimes speak to another woman without the incapacitating shyness of her face-to-face interactions with male humans.

"Yeah," admitted Rembrandt. "Best prognosis is that I'll be close to a hundred percent by the middle of next week. Right about now, it feels as if I'm somewhere under fifteen percent."

"A bad back's tough," said Mother, nodding. "My dad hurt his when I was a little girl, and he was never the same after that. Hope you don't have that to look forward to.

"Thanks, so do I," said Rembrandt. "I might have been better off just to let Louie run me down on that glideboard. He couldn't have done much more damage than I did trying to dodge him."

"Yeah, that's how it is sometimes," said Mother. Her eyes kept shifting back and forth from Rembrandt to the readouts on her comm equipment. "But if he'd hit you, you both might be hurt."

"That's what I tell myself," said Rembrandt. "Anyhow, I'm getting along, and I guess I'm getting better." She paused a moment and asked, "Any luck with that message I asked you to send?"

"Answer came through just before you got here," said Mother. "I didn't print it out because you said it was confidential. Printouts can get read by the wrong people. Not much to report, anyhow. They acknowledged receipt, and said they'd see if anybody was available. No promises."

"You'd think they'd show more interest," said Rembrandt. "This company's been one of the hottest stories in the Alliance ever since the captain came on board."

"Sure, and that with a buck fifty will get you a one-minute local public comm call anywhere in the galaxy," said Mother. "Those people have attention spans in the nanosecond range, unless it's something they can use against you."

"Still, you'd think they'd be interested in what's happening to the company," said Rembrandt, her brows crinkling. "They wouldn't have to make any particular effort to get somebody here. Why, we're only a couple of days' sublight travel from Lorelei-"

"Couple of days probably seems like forever to them," said Mother, shrugging. "Don't get your hopes too high, Remmie. I know you're looking for some way to fight back against the brass hats, and I'm all for it. The captain would be fighting them, if he were himself. I keep hoping he'll snap out of it-"

"So do I, Mother," said Rembrandt. "Until then, we've got to try to guess what he'd be doing, and do the same ourselves. I just wish we were getting better results."

"You want results?" Mother scoffed. "Girl, those pills the autodoc gave you must be making you giddy. This is the Legion. They don't believe in results; they just say they do." She chuckled, but her face was serious.

"Except for Captain Jester," said Rembrandt, lifting her chin. "He not only believes in results, he gets them."

"I know what you mean," said Mother. "I just worry whether his luck's run out at last. I hope not, but I'm afraid to hope for too much."

"The captain wouldn't want us to give up," said Rembrandt. "He'd want us to start figuring out a way around the system, and that's what I'm doing."

"I know," said Mother. "More power to you, because I don't want to think about what happens if the brass hats win this one."

"Neither do I," said Rembrandt. "I'm doing what I can to keep the bastards from winning."

"And if it's not enough?"

Rembrandt stood up, wincing. She looked down at Mother and said in a resigned voice, "I don't know. I don't have much else to throw into the fight."

Mother sighed. "Well, let's just hope it's enough, then." Rembrandt just nodded and made her way slowly out of Comm Central. Mother watched her leave, then shook her head sadly and turned back to her comet screen.