Galway glanced through the gate into the 'port. "Basically, I'm here to offer some advice." He turned back to face the blackcollar. "As a diversion and a lure, the riot you started was brilliant. But don't overdo it."

"What do you mean?" Lathe asked evenly.

"I mean you've got the population at flash point. Everyone in Capstone knows what's happening by now. They're looking at the trouble a few hundred teen-agers are giving us and probably wondering what an uprising by the whole population would do."

"What would it do?"

"Destroy Plinry," Galway said, and Lathe was struck by the intensity in the prefect's voice. "The Ryqril section of the Hub can't be taken—I'm sure you know that. Even if a revolt succeeded in boxing them in, it would last only until the next Ryqril courier showed up. A week after that the Corsairs would come." Galway waved toward the south, where the lights of Capstone were visible. "We haven't even recovered from the last war. How much punitive action do you think we could take?"

"Not much," Lathe admitted. "So what do you want from me?"

"I'd like you to stop the revolt. I'd settle for slowing it down, since you probably aren't interested in stopping it. We can negotiate a deal, if necessary, but bear in mind the kinds of concessions I can make are limited."

Lathe remained silent for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "No negotiations needed, Galway. We're not out to liberate Plinry—not this time, anyway. Our people will be going underground for a while, but if you don't push them or retaliate against Capstone's people they won't give you any more trouble."

Galway's eyes burned into his. "Your word?"

"I'll give the orders. That's all I can guarantee."

A slight twitch which might have been a smile. "All right. I'll try to keep my people in check, as well. Otherwise, there might not be a world here when you come back." Once more his eyes flicked toward the landing field and the dark ships there. "I'd give my last dose of Idunine to know what you're up to."

"You'll find out some day."

"I'm sure I will," Galway said dryly. Turning, he returned to his car and drove off.

From his vantage point near the lumpy freighter, Caine watched Galway drive away, his mind a tangle of conflicting thoughts. The meeting had been peaceful, even friendly, and the two men had talked for a long time. Why? More importantly, why had Lathe made so sure that there weren't any witnesses to the conversation?

He shook his head, feeling a little silly. Suspicions like that were highly unfair—the meeting had probably been a perfectly aboveboard parley. Still.... Caine became aware of the cassette reader in his hand and, almost unconsciously, gripped it a little tighter. Practically since his arrival the blackcollars had been calling the shots, and even now he was being treated rather like a piece of valuable cargo. But when the final crunch came, it would be Allen Caine who held the ace. And it wasn't a card he would give away lightly... nor to just anyone.

Lathe was coming toward the freighter now. Shifting the reader to his other hand, Caine headed for the ship's cargo hatch. Perhaps the blackcollars would let him help with the loading.

CHAPTER 9

The freighter's navigational computer put the distance to Argent as six parsecs. A Corsair would make the trip in three days; Caine's old passenger liner could have done it in seven. The freighter, designed for fuel efficiency rather than speed, took almost twelve.

There were twelve exceptionally busy days, however. While most of the eleven blackcollars aboard worked at organizing the equipment they'd brought along, Lathe detailed Skyler and Novak to give Caine a condensed version of blackcollar training. It was an intensive course, straining Caine's mnemonic and fighting skills to the limit. He learned the blackcollar combat codes, both tingler and hand signal forms; was given new unarmed fighting techniques and drilled in their use; and acquired at least a modest proficiency with nunchaku, slingshot, and shuriken. In between lessons he spent his time getting to know his fellow travelers... and asking carefully worded questions.

"Oh, yeah, me and Tardy go back to before the war. He knew every still on Plinry, and we used to steal the whiskey from 'em and use it as a primer in our bombs. Lathe? No, I didn't meet him till after the amnesty...."

"...Seems to me Lathe and Dodds had adjacent units—somewhere in the New Karachi area, I think. I didn't know either of them until I started coming to the lodge get-togethers...."

"...Dodds was always a quiet sort; never worked out with us at the lodge. I hear a nerve gas attack laid him out during the war and sort of scrambled his fighting reflexes. Smart guy, though, and he and Lathe get along pretty well. Sure, I've known Lathe a long time—we were standing in line together for the collie interrogation...."

And so it went, until Caine was forced to the inescapable conclusion that no one aboard had ever heard of Lathe or Dodds until after the war.

The revelation wasn't all that remarkable, of course. Plinry had started with three hundred blackcollars—twenty-five of the standard twelve-man guerrilla teams—and with only thirty-one left it was reasonable that several of them would be the sole survivors of their units. Still, combined with Lathe's steadfast refusal to discuss Dodds's special mission, this new bit of information made Caine uneasy.

Three days out from Argent, when he finally finished decoding the Plinry record, he put the eight critical numbers—six spatial, two temporal—into a special mental file. Six hours of self-hypnosis later, it was ringed by a series of psycho-mental blocks that no drug or neurotrace could break before killing him.

No one—neither Lathe nor anyone else—would get those numbers until Caine was good and ready to give them up.

Argent was a bright speck with a clearly discernible disk when the freighter reentered normal space. Chelsey Jensen, at the helm, set the computer to working out an approach curve, and then punched for a schematic of the system. "That one's Argent," he told Caine, tapping the second planet. "Third or fourth most Earthlike world in the TDE and a real goldmine of minerals. The place was filthy rich before the war."

"Hmm." The schematic showed twelve more planets plus a strangely shaped haze. "What's that?" Caine asked, pointing to the latter.

"It's an asteroid belt, called the Diamond Ring for obvious reasons."

"What makes it bunch like that instead of distributing itself more evenly?"

"No idea. Made mining a lot easier, though, with so much of the stuff concentrated in one place. Ten to one it's where your Novas are hidden, too."

"Maybe. A good place to run guerrilla raids from, too."

In his mind's eye Caine could see tiny fighters appearing from nowhere to strike at the Ryqril forces—

"Not really. Asteroid belts aren't that dense; even the Diamond there is mostly empty space, and a ship moving with any decent drive trail would be trivial to track You'd do better hiding in a swamp or forest down on Argent."

The heroic vision vanished. "Oh. Is that what we're going to do, then?"

"Yes and no," a new voice said, and Caine turned as Lathe came up the tight spiral staircase. "We'll hide someplace like that for a day or so until we can contact the local underground."

Caine blinked. "You've been in touch with Argent's underground?"

Lathe gave him an odd look. "Of course not. We've been isolated on Plinry; you know that."

"But you just said—" Caine snapped his fingers. "Oh, of course. Dodds. He's already here, isn't he?"

"Caine, you have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions." Lathe turned to Jensen. "Situation?"