"Come on, Magda," Stavros protested. "Remember that hot streak I had a couple of nights ago?"

"Sure I do," she retorted. "Without it, you couldn't have afforded to get back to the Federacy. Weren't you bitching that I was going to end up owning your grandmother?"

"You'd be welcome to her; then you could put up with listening to how nothing that's happened to her in the last eighty-odd years has been her fault." Stavros set his jaw. "But you have to win her fair and square. I'm not going to let you cheat me out of her."

Magda started to laugh, then stopped. "Damn it, I'm not cheating." As absurd arguments have a way of doing, this one was turning serious. She took a deep breath. "You really think you're up on me?"

"Yes, I do. In fact, I'll put another fifty on it."

"You're on." Glaring at him, close to being really angry now, she kneaded the transceiver behind her right ear. "I'll show you," she muttered.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling the ship. You get in on this, too, so you can't say I'm diddling with the count. We'll listen to the tapes of our game sessions and figure out who owes whom what."

"That will take hours," he protested.

"Do you have any urgent appointments?" she asked, and he had to chuckle as he denied it. "All right, then." She waited and swore. "God, are they all asleep over there? Where is everybody?"

At that moment, she and Stavros heard a voice in their heads. "Richards here." Magda told the first officer what they wanted. "Can't do it," he said, "not right away, anyhow. Captain Hovannis is out of the ship."

"So?" Magda's voice was dangerously quiet.

"So no traffic from the ship to you people without his authorization. Standing orders. Sorry." He did not sound sorry. He sounded bored. Magda had not had much to do with him aboard the Hanno, but did not think he worried about standing orders, except with regard to how he was going to carry them out. Usually that was a good trait in a first officer. Now it was only frustrating.

"Get him on the comm circuit," Magda said.

"No, wait," Stavros broke in. "Where is he? What's he doing?"

"I don't know," Richards said. Plainly, he had never thought to wonder.

"We're just fooling around here," Magda said, "but what if somebody needed something really important? It's a silly order, Richards. Get me Hovannis and get him now; I'll tell him so myself."

"Very well." There was a pause before Richards came back on the circuit. For the first time, his voice held a trace of uncertainty. "He's not answering."

Magda rolled her eyes, a piece of dramatics unfortunately wasted because the first officer had no vision screen in front of him. "That's good. That's really good. In his absence you're in charge, right? Countermand that stupid piece of nonsense and give us what we need."

She was so intent on what was directly in front of her?and on proving herself right?that she did not worry about anything else. Stavros, more suspicious of Survey Service people generally and of Hovannis in particular, interrupted again. "You didn't answer me, Richards. Where is Hovannis? The flier must have a tracer on it, in case it crashes or something."

"It does," Richards admitted. He went off-circuit again. A couple of minutes later he said, "The machine is grounded a couple of kilometers outside Mawsil. Sorry I took so long; the tracer seems to be inactive, and I had to home on engine emissions. Otherwise, the flier is mechanically sound. Still no response from Captain Hovannis. Odd." From Richards, the word spoke volumes.

"What is he doing?" This time Stavros was talking to himself.

"Coming into Mawsil, sounds like," Magda said. "But why is he sneaking in instead of just coming ahead?" She suddenly cut Richards out of the conversation and gestured for Stavros to do the same. He cut off the first officer in midquestion, as puzzled as Richards was himself.

"What the?" Stavros began.

Magda's frantic gesture reduced him to silence again. She opened the outer door and nodded to the pair of guard-priests outside. "Would one of you please fetch me a slate and a lump of chalk?" The woman of the pair nodded back and ambled away; Sabium had made clear that her guests were to have any reasonable requests met. The little while the guard was gone seemed like forever to Magda.

She shut the door in the guards' bemused faces and scrawled a note to Stavros: Hovannis here for no good reason. Why else sneak?

"You're right! You have to be. He?"

Stavros shut up again; Magda was scribbling, Richards can still listen?everything gets recorded. Is he safe?

"I don't think it matters," Stavros said. "If Hovannis is coming here for reasons of his own, this will all be decided before Richards can raise him. And if what he's doing is against the rules, he won't call back to the Hanno to advertise it. Am I right?"

Magda hesitated, then conceded. "Seems reasonable."

"All right, then. The next thing we have to do is think, and think hard. Otherwise we'll go rushing off and maybe give him the opening he needs. My first guess would be that he's after us, or maybe after the whole group here, now that the rest of them know about Sabium, too. It would fit everything the murdering bastards who run the Service have done so far: Fogelman, and Andrea, and the Clark County, and your apartment complex, too."

Magda started to jump up, then stopped. "You're right and you're wrong at the same time. What does the Survey Service need most from Bilbeis IV?"

"A clean bill of health, and they're not likely to get one."

"Too bloody right they're not. But they won't get one from a dead crew of scientists, either. That would probably be one too many coincidences for anyone to swallow, don't you think? The Service can't afford more bad publicity; for once, they have an interest in keeping us healthy."

It was Stavros's turn to consider. "Well, maybe so," he said grudgingly. "All right, then, maybe Hovannis isn't coming here to slaughter us in our beds. He's not on his way to give us a great big kiss, either. He wouldn't have to skulk in to do that. What does that leave?"

"Nothing." Magda did not like the answer. Roupen Hovannis was not coming into Mawsil?or was inside by now, she thought uneasily?for any good purpose; Stavros was dead right there. But she was still sure Hovannis would not, could not, move on them. A decimated Hanno returning to Topanga would look even worse than a damning report. Magda balled her hands into fists. She felt as if her mind were running in a treadmill, a treadmill with no way off.

Then she saw there was one, after all. Stavros must have reached her conclusion at the very moment she did, for they both spoke the same word at the same time: "Sabium!"

They ran for the door together.

XII

Hovannis was sweating and swearing as he neared the city walls of Mawsi. He was also filthy; he had taken a couple of nasty falls walking in the darkness through fields and in a dirt roadway full of holes.

Though he did not realize it, he was lucky the town's gates were open. Most places locked themselves tight after nightfall. Had the eternal goddess not spent so much time in Mawsil, it would have done the same. But pilgrim traffic was beginning to shift away from the Holy City, and Mawsil had opened itself to accommodate the sudden?and profitable?influx.

All the same, the guard yawning in his sentry box cast a dubious eye on Hovannis as he trudged toward the town. "Why aren't you carrying a torch to light your way, fellow?" he called.

The true answer was that Hovannis had not thought of it; he had never had to worry about such things before. "It went out a ways back," he said lamely, adding, "When I fell in the last pothole."

The guard laughed. "A few potholes before that, by the look of you. What are you coming to Mawsil for?"