"Max, you want to go to the Farside digs or not?"
"When it's convenient."
"Are you really a spy, Commander?"
"I guess you could put it that way, Greta. How about after work, Max?"
"You sure you won't be busy?"
Perchevski closed his eyes, took a long, deep breath, released it. Be patient, he told himself.
"What's your real name?" Greta asked. Mouse watched, his expression unreadable.
"Honey, sometimes I'm not sure myself. Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. If you need to get in touch, just call the number I gave you. If I can't get back to you, one of my friends will."
"But... "
"Forget it. Subject closed. Max, are you going to the digs or not?"
"You don't have to get snappy, Walter. Yes. I'm coming. What about you, Mouse?"
"Me?"
"Yes. You want to see that new chamber? They think it might shed some light on the Sangaree. There're some primitive murals that might be of human origin. On a Noah's ark theme, with spaceships. Or aren't you the culture type?"
"Sure. Why not?" He looked at Perchevski as if in appeal.
"I don't know, Mouse. Maybe it's the change." Why was Mouse attaching himself? Because of the Sangaree remark? Or because the Old Man wanted somebody to keep an eye on him? After what had happened on The Broken Wings, Beckhart would be wondering about him.
The girls slept during the tube trip. Perchevski and Mouse played chess on Mouse's pocket set. Prodded by Max, Mouse related several anecdotes about Perchevski while saying nothing about himself. Perchevski let him set the limits.
Max did not seem the least interested in his former partner.
Both men loosened up on sips from a flask Max dug out of her jumpsuit. "Emergency rations," she claimed.
"Good thinking," Perchevski told her.
"What is this? A class reunion?" she demanded toward trip's end.
Mouse and Perchevski had begun playing remember when. They were reliving the Great Sunjammer Race of '29, in which they had crewed a ship and had beaten the best starwind yachtsmen in Confederation. That fluke victory was one of the brightest of Perchevski's memories.
He and Mouse had been a team then, almost friends, and for a few days afterward they had been closer than ever before or since.
"Those were the days," Mouse said, ignoring Max. "Wish we could be kids forever. Think we could do it again?"
"Getting too old."
"Nah. I think I'll check it out. Just for the hell of it. Want to try it? If I can find a ship?"
Perchevski laughed. "Better find the time off, first. We're almost there." The capsule had begun decelerating. "I'll wake the girls."
They reached the digs an hour later.
The one-time alien base was being unearthed, studied, and explored at a snail's pace. The xenoarchaeologists had been working for decades, and might be at it for centuries. They sifted every grain of lunar dust, and preserved it. They did not want to miss a thing, even through ignorance.
Thus far the base had revealed more about humanity's past than it had about its builders.
The scientists had concluded that the station had served both scientific and military purposes, and had been occupied continuously for at least ten millennia. It seemed to have been abandoned approximately eleven centuries before its discovery, just as Mankind teetered on the brink of its first tentative step into space.
Perchevski and his companions began with the museum of recovered artifacts, most of which were everyday items comparable to human combs, tableware, worn-out socks, pill bottles, broken furniture, and the like. The aliens had taken their fancy hardware with them.
"Ooh!" Greta said as they approached a group of wax figurines. "They were ugly."
"Notice anything about them, Greta?" Perchevski asked.
"Besides ugly?"
"Yes. Look at how they're dressed. Think. All the legends about little people. Gnomes, dwarves, elves, leprechauns... The kobolds, where you come from." The largest alien figurine stood just a meter tall.
"Yeah. You're right. You know there're still people that believe in them? One time, I guess I was ten, we went on a field trip to the Black Forest. There was this old caretaker, a kind of forest ranger, who told us all these stories about the kobolds in the woods."
Max interjected, "I think it's more interesting that they resemble the spacemen of the UFO era."
Everyone looked at her. "Oh, it's not my idea. I just liked it. It was on the educational channel one time. In the old days people used to see what they called flying saucers. Sometimes they claimed that space people talked to them. They described them like this. But nobody ever believed them."
"Where are they now?" Leslie asked.
"Nobody knows," Perchevski replied. "They just disappeared. Nobody's found any other traces of them, either. Ulant got into space before we did, and they never ran into them."
"What if they're still watching?" Mouse asked.
Perchevski gave him a funny look.
"Spooky idea, isn't it? Let's look at that new chamber. Max says they found some stuff there that isn't just cafeteria or rec room equipment."
Maybe not. Perchevski could not guess what it might have been. The chamber was large and well-preserved, with most of its furnishings intact and in place. "Parallel function ought to result in parallel structure," he said. "Meaning you ought to be able to figure what this stuff is." All he recognized were the faded mural walls, which looked somewhat Minoan. He would have bet his fortune they had been done by human artists. Those he could see seemed to tell some sort of quest story.
"It's a solarium," Greta said. "Without sun."
"A hydroponics farm?"
"No. That's not right. Hydroponics is different."
"What?"
"What I mean is, it's almost like the Desert House at the State Botanical Gardens in Berlin. See how the beds are laid out? And those racks up there would hold the lights that make plants think they're getting sunshine."
Mouse laughed. "By Jove, I think the lady has something." He indicated a small sign which proposed a similar hypothesis. It also suggested that the painters of the murals might have been humans who had become proto-Sangaree.
Mouse suddenly gasped and seized his left hand in his right.
Perchevski nearly screamed at the sharp agony surrounding his call ring.
"What's the matter?" Max and Greta demanded.
"Oh, hell," Perchevski intoned. "Here we go again."
"Let up, you bastards," Mouse snarled. "We got the message. We're coming, for Christ's sake. Business, Max. We've been called in. And I mean in a hurry. Thomas?"
"I'll kill him. Just when... Max... I'm sorry."
"What's going on?" she asked again.
"We have to report in. Right now. Could you take the girls back to barracks?"
"Business?" She sounded excited.
"Yeah. The bastards. Mouse, they said no more team jobs."
Mouse shrugged.
"I'll get them home," Max promised.
Perchevski kissed her, turned to Greta. "I've got to run out on you, Honey. I'm sorry. I really am."
"Thomas, come on. The Old Man means it."
"Wait a minute, damn it! I don't know how long I'll be gone, Greta. If you need something, call my number. Or get ahold of Max. Okay, Max?"
"Sure." Max did not sound enthusiastic.
"Thomas!"
He waved a hand, kissed Max again, then Greta, and trotted off after Mouse. Greta called a sad, "Good-bye, Commander."
He was angry. He was ready to skin Beckhart with a butter knife.
The chance never came. He and Mouse were seized by Mission Prep the instant they hit Bureau territory.
The training was intense and merciless, and the explanations impossibly far between. It went on around the clock, waking and sleeping, and after a few weeks Perchevski was so tired and disoriented that he was no longer sure who he was. Tiny, unextinguishable sparks of anger were all that kept him going.