CHAPTER 5

Hints

For the second time that day, Cal regained consciousness. Instead of dusty ground beneath him, however, soft carpet cushioned his body. He shifted slightly to get more comfortable, and grimaced. He felt worse than the first time.

“Cal, are you okay?” It was Nikki’s voice.

What was Nikki doing here? He puzzled over the question for a brief moment before he found the answer. They had been talking, and she had told him Lynn was dead.

Still without being able to recall the actual event, he knew without doubt why Lynn was not at home. Nikki had spoken the truth. Cal felt sadder than he could ever remember feeling before.

“I’m okay,” he said at last, and opened his eyes.

Nikki, kneeling beside him, took a deep breath. “What’s going on? What happened to you?” She touched his cheek. Her gaze was softer than before.

Cal lay there weakly, and looked up at her. “I’m not the right person to ask. How did Lynn die?”

“You really don’t remember, do you?” Nikki wiped her eye.

“Please tell me.”

“She died down there, with all the others. On Earth. You remember that much?”

“I do—now. Why was she on Earth?”

“Cal, I don’t think it’s best for you to think about it now. You may be in this state because of your damned unreasonable guilt. I want to get you to the clinic.”

“I need to know. I have to know. Just tell me.”

Nikki leaned back. “She was there on a field trip.”

“At my suggestion?”

“We both agreed that it was good for her.”

“But I pressed for it, right?” Earth was his home, after all. He was sure that Nikki was a second-generation Daedalus resident.

“That doesn’t make it your fault.”

Cal struggled to rise. “Can you help me?”

“You stay put. You’ve done enough damage to your body already. It’s a wonder you’re not partially paralyzed from the impact.” Cal raised his eyebrows, and Nikki added, “I saw your back while you were out. What the hell have you been doing?” The tenderness that had been in evidence while Cal was recovering faded.

It was a little too late to try to conceal some of the day’s events. “I don’t know how I got the bruises. Evidently I spent part of my discretionary income last night at Forget-Me-Now.”

“Forget-Me-Now? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know yet. Can you help me up?”

“As long as you agree to let me get you into the clinic. Just for tests.”

Cal propped himself up on his elbows and grabbed a chair arm to pull on.

“Damn, you can be stubborn.” Once it was obvious that he wasn’t going to stay still, she helped him the rest of the way. “Why Forget-Me-Now?”

“My very question. I don’t have any idea why.” Cal stood shakily, partly supported by Nikki’s arm. “But I plan to find out. I think if I visit my office, maybe more will come back to me. Visual stimulants seem to work the best.”

“Cal, did you—did you remember me?” Nikki was breathless.

“Why do you ask?”

“Why do you answer questions with questions? I don’t know. You’re different somehow.”

“No, I didn’t really remember you,” he said candidly. “At least at first. I still don’t know you, but things are beginning to come back to me.”

“So all those words about needing me, wanting me to stay, they—”

“They came from the heart. That’s all I can say. Feelings seem to come back prior to the actual remembrances.” Cal saw the hurt in her eyes, and it tore at him. “I know it’s damn little comfort, but it’s the truth. And it’s all I can offer. I didn’t say those things to manipulate you. I said what I felt. It’s obvious that I haven’t done very much of that recently, or you might know what’s been going on, and maybe I wouldn’t have driven you away. But right now I’ve got to jog more memories loose—I’ve got to go to the office.”

“But I want you in the clinic. You’re under too much stress.”

“I’m sorry, Nikki. I just can’t. It’s another feeling, without any hard facts to back it up, but something’s wrong. More wrong than just my cracking under pressure and vacuuming my brains. I’ve got to find out what it is.”

Impulsively Cal kissed her and turned to go. From the open doorway, as he looked back, he saw Nikki standing motionless. Her expression was unreadable.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated softly. “I have no choice.”

The door closed quietly, and he stood in front of it for a moment, wondering if he really was doing the right thing. Would she be there when he came back? With his recent history, would he even be able to find his way back?

He was almost to the tubeway before he said, “Hello, Vincent.”

“Hello. Where are you going now?”

“To my office. Maybe I can learn more there.”

“Which office?”

“You mean there’s more than one?”

“Zacto. You’ve got one in Machu Picchu and one on the Vittoria.”

“Let’s try Machu Picchu first. I suppose the one on Vittoria is only temporary. I hadn’t made plans to leave on the Vittoria, had I?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

As Cal descended into the tubeway station, he noticed a child’s scrawl in chalk, saying, “Machu Picchu Choo Choo.” For an instant, he wondered if Lynn had written it. With an effort, he forced the image from his mind.

According to Vincent, his office address was not far from one of the tube stops. It was fairly easy to find. The building looked a lot like the hotel from the outside, except for the gold sign saying Computer Control Systems.

The receptionist’s desk in the lobby was vacant. Cal was surprised for a moment, but thought to look at Vincent’s screen. It was probably after quitting time, so most people would be gone by now. Next to a locked door leading to the office area, was a thumbprint square. Cal tried it.

With a sharp click, the door moved aside, revealing a long corridor lined with doors on both walls. Fortunately, the offices each had nametags adjacent to the doorways. Cal walked along the hall, looking at the tags on the right side more expectantly than at the ones on the left. Five doors down, he found his office, on the right side.

The room was utilitarian, but amply equipped. Two large screens occupied much of the wall space. Dominating the room was a massive desk with a tilted screen set in one surface. The window gave him the familiar view angled toward the far end of Daedalus’s cylinder.

Feeling like an intruder, Cal moved to the chair and sat. Flush with the front edge of the desk was a faint rectangle a different color from the desk itself. He pushed on it lightly, and it first moved in past the desk surface, then sprang back so he could grip it and pull it out, revealing a keyboard.

He pressed the white square with his thumb, and the tilted screen brightened. Shortly the image of Vittoria hung in the air above the desk screen. Cal’s peripheral vision picked up a flicker of motion, and he realized that most of the switches on his keyboard now had new legends. He pressed living area and looked back at the hologram.

The ship’s image was reminiscent of a shish kebab skewer with one large turnip and two smaller cylinders impaled. One cylinder was separated from the other bodies by the length of the skewer. A wide band around the turnip’s broadest contour turned orange to indicate the area designated for living space. So the Vittoria spun on the skewer much like Daedalus did. The sharp end pointed in the direction it would eventually travel.

The switch marked offices and labs lit up the saucer-shaped area that covered the blunt end of the body and stretched to the living area. Agriculture lit the final section.

Cal touched specific and office, and a new set of key top legends replaced the old ones.

“Vincent, what’s my office number on the Vittoria?”

“Fourteen twelve D.”

As soon as Cal entered the number, a blinking red light lit approximately midway between the living area and the center of the office space. Uneasiness grew within him as he looked at the glowing image of Vittoria. He felt even more uncomfortable than he had in the Forget-Me-Now parlor. Had he had some painful experiences there?

He tapped several more keys, and a recording began an overview of the Vittoria. Cal settled back into his chair and watched as it began a summary of Vittoria’s design, propulsion, life-support, control systems, shielding, navigation, backup systems, communications, agriculture, living conditions, and history.

The information all seemed new, but he found himself absorbing much of it more easily than he would have expected for a first-time exposure. It was, however, not as good as actually being there. He still felt drawn to the Vittoria. But first, there were things to be learned here.

Maybe his phone list would tell him if Domingo, the murdered man, was someone he talked to. A moment later, a column on the left showed full names and numbers that could have been personal ID numbers or phone numbers, or both. In the center were addresses. To the right were short forms of the names, which had to be what he normally used to initiate a call.

The list included Nikki, several names of people with addresses near his, and a few he supposed were business associates, including Russ Tolbor. Cal stared at the list, wondering who, if anyone, on the list he could trust as a confidant. It was only then that he realized that the one name he had been afraid to see, Gabriel Domingo, was not there.

At the bottom of the screen was a message that said More. He hit the button marked next page, but the only change was that the bottom line now said More (PW). A help menu confirmed that the rest of the list was protected by a password. But why?

Abruptly his meager confidence in his own innocence dissipated. Domingo could easily be on the concealed portion of the list. But why would he password-protect just someone’s name? Surely the mere fact of knowing someone would not be incriminating.

He tried a few obvious attempts at a password. It didn’t respond to Nikki, Cal, password, or any of several other possibilities.

“Vincent, do you know any of my passwords on this system?”

“Negatory, good buddy.”

“How do you expect to help me when you know so little?”

“Wait. Don’t tell me.”

“Thanks, Vincent. Go take a nap.”

Dead end. Unless he could remember more. Maybe his computer mailbox would yield a clue.

There were no incoming messages, but the last three messages he had sent were still stored in the computer. The first was a status report apparently sent to his boss. The destination field said Tom H, whose office was evidently just down the hall. The details meant little to Cal, but listed four final tests. Three were marked complete, leaving only a final communications test. At the end of an otherwise businesslike report, were the lines, “I left another cutting for you. Don’t mess this one up.”

Cal’s attention was momentarily diverted by the sound of snoring.

“Stop that, Vincent.”

The second note was puzzling. “21:00. Tinsdale.” The message destination said “Angel,” but there was no Angel on his phone list. The real name must be in the password-protected section. Twenty-one hundred had to be a time, but what did “Tinsdale” mean?

Perhaps he could be seeing another woman. Was that why Nikki had been feeling shut out? That would certainly do it. Maybe she was just too polite or afraid to mention it, or she had no idea. But no, he couldn’t accept it. The attraction he felt to Nikki was so strong, he could not believe he would do that to her, and no matter how much he had gone through in the last ten years, he couldn’t see himself changing that much.

“What’s ‘Tinsdale’?” he asked.

“A twenty-first-century social revolution moving force, a park on Vittoria, and a brand of life-support suits,” Vincent told him.

A park on Vittoria made the most sense. Was he to meet Angel at twenty-one hundred in Tinsdale Park? Tonight? Maybe it was last night. The message transmittal time was yesterday at 19:00. There could be an understanding that undated meeting times meant the current day, or prearranged meeting days might have been established. Then again, maybe his Tinsdale suit was due out of repairs at 21:00. But then “Angel” wouldn’t be significant. Angel’s Suit Repair sounded unlikely, and in any event wouldn’t need to be password-protected.

He gave up temporarily. The last message was to “Jam,” and said: “Hope to learn more about S & G tonight. Will report ASAP.” But if the first message was to his boss, who was this one to? “Jam” wasn’t on his phone list either. Some people had two bosses. But if he did, why would he be covertly communicating with one? Was he selling secrets? For all he knew, he had a lover and someone was blackmailing him. “S and G” meant nothing to him.

He cut off the speculations. He needed more hard information, and he would be better off going and getting it. Leaning forward in his chair, he pushed the off button and slid the keyboard back into the desk. He would have to move fast to get to Tinsdale Park by 21:00.

“Vincent, it’s time I went to the Vittoria. Can you point me in the right direction as we go?”

“Does Daedalus spin?”

As the tube sped up the hill, Cal brought Vincent up to date.

Gravity slowly departing was the obvious signal that they were nearing the endcap of Daedalus, but Cal also felt a lateral force push him against the seat back as the vehicle lost angular momentum. The tube slowed to a complete halt. Only the seat belt held Cal in place.

He floated into the tunnel, his hands on a grip, his feet ever so slightly drifting to rest against the floor. Through a window in the ceiling, he could see other spokes join a smaller disk at the center of Daedalus’s rotational axis. The wide tubeways narrowed to smaller tunnels like the one he was in. A ring connected the tubeways so passengers could move from one to another.

He had been mistakenly expecting all the tunnels to merge into one main one, but instead his tunnel just curved so that it was aligned with Daedalus’s axis, and the walls turned transparent. The junction between Daedalus and the adjacent industrial disk resembled a group of dozens of clear straws all parallel to one another, with one larger straw right in the center. A few people moved through the other tunnels.

Across the junction, the tunnel walls were opaque again, and the tunnel curved into a circular room with two low-gravity poles. Cal moved to the one labeled down and gently fell perhaps twenty meters, landing easily on the floor.

The floor was a strip about twenty meters wide, curving upward and out of sight on both ends. Elevators stood at intervals in the wall.

Cal bounced lightly as he entered the nearest elevator. His head bumped the padded ceiling just as the box began to drop to the outermost floor, because he forgot to use the handholds. He tried to think of what might have happened to Domingo at C5. He was tempted to go there, but the police might still be there.

The floor of the outermost level sloped upward much less noticeably. Immediately to his left, a sign said Shuttle and an arrow pointed to a circular opening in the floor. More signs were visible in the distance.

A ladder led downward through a heavy airlock door, and the passageway widened into an area large enough for maybe twenty people to stand comfortably.

Inside the shuttle there was little more than chairs and two large shuttered windows. At one end, a large Danger sign warned about an emergency exit. A flight suit locker stood next to the door. Cal sat. On the armrest were two switches. He set one to Vittoria, and the other to open shutters.

Cal shielded his eyes against the glare and sucked in his breath at the view. Daedalus’s outside cylinder wall extended overhead. The sun shone incredibly brightly below. Stretched away from Daedalus’s body were two enormous mirrors. He moved his head to see out the window at an angle, and Icarus sailed into view, moving rapidly in a giant arc, followed by the Earth. A moment later Vittoria came into view.

A flicker of motion caught his eye, and he turned to look out the window behind him. Fleeting images of antennae and awkward shapes whirled by the window far too fast for him to distinguish. He was looking at the disk next to the one he was on, but it took a moment more before he remembered that he was moving. The other disk was stationary, for zero-gravity work. Beyond the disk lay the enormous curved mirror that drove the power plant.

He turned back to the first window just in time to see night fall on Daedalus, at least on the inside. The mirrors were angling back toward the surface, and moments later they slowed gradually until they just melted into Daedalus’s hull.

“So Icarus gets to stay up later,” he said. Icarus still had its mirrors extended. Vincent’s screen said he had less than an hour to go. Would he reach Tinsdale Park on time?

“Icarus stays lit until midnight,” Vincent said. “Crops don’t have quite the same requirements.”

“So now what?”

“We should be leaving any time now.” Almost as Vincent quit speaking, there was a muted thud against the top of the shuttle. “We’re almost set. When we’re aimed exactly right, Daedalus will let go.”

Abruptly gravity vanished. At the same moment, Daedalus started to move above and behind Cal’s field of view. Icarus, Vittoria, and the Earth stopped in their apparent journey around Daedalus, and hung where they had been at release. Cal experienced a moment of dizziness, but it soon passed.

“How long does this take?” he asked, watching Vittoria grow slowly larger ahead.

“About ten minutes. Let’s just hope we’re exactly on track, so Vittoria’s magnet can catch us.”

“Are there many misses?” Cal wondered if he should have asked more questions before coming this far.

“Never has been one, but nobody’s perfect. My brother Harold on the other end is pretty sharp, though.”

“Your brother?”

“Figure of speech. The computer controlling the receiver.”

As they moved still closer to Vittoria, a soft, deep grinding noise began, and the capsule began to rotate slowly about its direction of travel.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Just routine. The shuttle can be caught in any orientation, but if it doesn’t rotate, you’ll be hanging by your belt when we stop. I can’t imagine that would be real pleasant.”

“I’m not complaining.”

Vittoria grew in size, now appearing in the upper corner of the opposite window. What was there about Vittoria that disturbed him so? An overhead thunk sounded against the hull, and gravity pushed Cal back into his chair. A second distant noise apparently signaled that mechanical attachment to Vittoriawas complete.

A near reversal of the procedure on Daedalus brought him to a low-gee passage into Vittoria.

Vittoria was as brightly lit as Daedalus had been, but the light came from a different source, a brilliantly lit tube along the rotation axis.

Being inside gave an impression more like clinging to the inside of a large ball than a cylinder. The scale was smaller than on Daedalus. Cal could make out large structures on the far side of Vittoria. On Daedalus, he had seen nothing more than blurred smears of colors.

The transportation system was also modest in comparison. Above-ground rail cars moved from one end of the zero-gee axis to the other.

Vincent told Cal which track would take him closest to Tinsdale Park, and Cal boarded a car after a short walk. The slow-moving car looked as if it could easily be converted from passenger use to freight by detaching the open-air rows of seats.

It was minutes after the possible appointment time when Cal stepped off the vehicle and surveyed the park, which wound its way between irregular peninsulas of single-story town houses.

He wasn’t alone in the park. Several other people relaxed on benches or rested in the grass, and he could see more in the distance. Was Angel here? Maybe he or she had left when Cal hadn’t been there on time? For all he knew, this wasn’t even the right day. He could have met Angel here yesterday.

“I don’t see anyone coming over to greet me,” he said, starting to walk with forced indifference through the grass.

“Maybe you don’t look friendly,” suggested Vincent.

“Maybe.” Cal stopped. “This park goes around the whole circumference of Vittoria?”

“No. It looks like it, but every half-kilometer or so the name changes. Ahead is Tandem Park. It’s a bit more comforting to people to meet at a place with a name than at sector five, quadrant sixty-two and all that ap-cray.”

“Are computers always right, Vincent?”

“Invariably. After a long study, one of my ancestors concluded that ashtrays cause cancer.”

Cal continued walking, still disconcerted at the even more pronounced curvature of the land as it rose gradually around him in all directions. No one he passed looked familiar. He didn’t glance back to see if anyone was observing him. If only he had a tiny bit of data about Angel. Height, hair color, sex, age—anything to narrow the field.

The equation had too many unknowns. Ahead he could see a sign identifying the park boundary, and still no one had approached him. He turned to retrace his steps, but then stopped. A medium-sized elm tree he had noticed earlier, now seemed distinctly familiar. He had definitely been here before.

Cal looked at it a moment longer, and said, “You ready for another short trip, Vincent?”

“You promise not to bang me into anything?”

“I think I can manage not to.”

“Okeydokey. Where to?”

“My office here.”

The building looked much like the one on Daedalus except there was no lawn in front, and this one seemed much busier. This lobby was occupied.

The receptionist said nothing, merely nodding as the door slid open. At least he belonged here. Cal thanked him and moved into the corridor beyond, conscious of an increased noise level from fragments of conversations in the row of offices.

Cal tried to walk quickly, so he could find his office without exposing his condition. His luck didn’t improve.

“Hey, Cal,” called a voice from a doorway he passed.

Cal was already past the opening, so he could at least read the occupant’s name tag without being conspicuous. Leroy Krantz, Communications Concepts.

“What can I do for you, Leroy?” Cal asked, facing a man he had no recollection of. For a moment, he wondered if “Mr. Krantz” was what he usually called the man. Leroy was maybe fifteen or twenty years older than Cal and had closely cropped gray hair. His eyebrows were so much darker than the rest of his hair, they almost looked dyed.

“We were supposed to meet this morning,” Leroy said. After Cal remained silent, Leroy added, “To go over the final comm control interface test.”

“Some, ah—problems on the home front came up. Can we reschedule it?” Maybe by then he would have more of an idea of what the other man was talking about. This must be the one remaining test from his note to Horvath.

“Tomorrow morning?” Leroy said.

The feeling lasted only an instant, but Cal was sure the other looked relieved. But why? “Tomorrow afternoon?” he offered. So soon.

“Review the results at thirteen hundred, here?”

Review the test results? He wouldn’t be able to make much sense of a few printouts. Maybe if he could get some visual cues, he would stand a better chance. “What about running through part of the test itself?” Cal asked.

“What? Oh, sure, sure. Whatever you want.”

“See you then.” Cal turned to leave.

“You okay?” Leroy asked.

“Fine. Why?”

“Nothing special. You just seem upset lately. You want to go out for a drink? Talk it over?”

Cal hesitated, wondering if he would learn more from Leroy if he opened up, or if he should keep to his plan and go to his office. Was Leroy honestly trying to help, or did he know more than he pretended and was just playing with Cal? Cal wavered for a moment, until the barest degree of unease seeped into him. “No,” he said. “But thanks anyway.”

“Maybe some other time.” Leroy smiled as Cal turned again to go. Was he smiling at Cal, or simply being friendly?

No one else called to Cal before he reached his office. The room was much like the one on Daedalus except for the view and a weak impression that many of the office furnishings were on wheels, ready to be removed when Vittoria was about to leave.

The desk itself, with the computer, could have been the same one as in his Daedalus office. Even the data stored in it was apparently identical. This time, however, inspired by Leroy, Cal called up his appointment log.

There it was: Leroy K, 09:00, today. Purpose: final acceptance test on control system interfaces to the communications system. Surely that wouldn’t just involve Cal and Leroy. But apparently it did.

No other appointments existed in the log, so there were no clues from that source. Cal got up and shut the door.

“Vincent, what do you know about Leroy?”

“He has an office near yours, he knows you, and he doesn’t miss appointments.”

“In other words, all you know is what we both just observed?”

“You right again, Lone Ranger.”

“I’ve got the law on my side.”

“Say again?”

“The law of averages. After the early part of today, it’s only natural that I get a few things right.” Cal sat up straight in his chair. “I’m not making enough progress here. Are there any other places I frequently go?”

“The command center. Where the bus driver is going to sit.”

“Where is it?”

“Ten minutes from here. It’s at the same latitude as this office.”

The command center was even busier than his office area had been. After passing another receptionist, he wandered in the interior corridors for a few minutes until finally he saw a sign saying Observation Area. Successive arrows led to a dimly lit room with one glass wall. Beyond the window, the scene below looked like a mission operations amphitheater he had once seen on Earth.

Three curved tiers of glass-enclosed cubicles contained the operations staff. Before them, on the opposite wall, was an enormous multisectioned display. One quarter of it currently showed a portion of the sky, with an image-enhanced magnification of Barnard’s Star and the surrounding area. The stars forming Ophiuchus were out of the field of view.

Text displays with interspersed graphs apparently summarized power levels, navigation status, and subsystem conditions. At the upper right, large orange letters said NOMINAL: 4D 9H 14M 47S. The seconds counted down. Cal’s sense of urgency strengthened.

From his job description in the computer, he knew he had a hand in the foundation of all this: the computer control system responsible for linking all the subsystems together.

In the most recent hours, his memory had been recalcitrant, offering little in the way of new insights. Maybe he had been hurrying so much that his subconscious refused to link to his conscious mind, or maybe being at the command center gave him enough new visual triggers to start his mind working harder again. Whatever the cause, he found that he was aware of more than a fresh visitor would be.

The time at the upper right of the screen was the remaining time until Vittoria departed. Less than five days. He hadn’t realized before that the time was so short. He felt uneasy about Vittoria leaving.

He scanned the windows opposite the wall screen. Even without the glowing letters, he knew that the center office on the second tier belonged to Russ Tolbor. Cal could detect no motion within the cubicle, but it was too dark to see if Tolbor was there, motionless, silently watching the screen, or—or watching Cal.

That’s absurd, Cal told himself. Paranoia was overpowering. Everyone he saw seemed to bother him.

As Cal stood, wondering what to do next, the contents of the screen disappeared, and a hologram larger than any he could remember materialized. It was the Vittoria, apparently color-coded to indicate how close she was to being ready for the journey. Almost the entire surface was green. Here and there, a few flakes showed yellow. A tiny handful of red regions blinked slowly. Vittoria was close.

Cal looked back at the center office. “What can you tell me about Russ Tolbor, Vincent?”

“Other than what was on this morning’s newscast?”

“Yes.”

“He volunteered for the job and met almost no opposition. He’s in the Daedalus Who’s Who. Forty-one, never been married. He’s been responsible for charitable programs, mostly connected with the church he favors, Presodists, but he’s also been involved with efforts to break down denominational barriers. His previous command experience includes a couple of Jupiter missions. His original technical field was the same as yours—computers—and he was responsible for several innovations before he moved into management.”

Cal stared at the hologram. Memories stirred and shifted. Instead of feeling at a total loss, as he had when he woke up, he was beginning to feel more like the information was almost within reach, if he only knew where to look. But the almost-at-the-tip feeling was just as frustrating.

“I don’t suppose you ever get tired, do you, Vincent?”

“Bored maybe. My first owner only wanted me to balance his financial log. But not tired.”

“That’s the truth?”

“No. You bought me new. But that’s dull.”

“Well, I’m getting tired, but certainly not bored. I wonder what Nikki’s doing right now.”

Cal left the observation booth and walked slowly through the corridors toward the exit. He was within sight of it when a side door opened, and he came face to face with Russ Tolbor.

“I thought you’d be here earlier,” Russ said. “We’ve finished most of the final checks.” He looked expectantly at Cal. In person, the commander looked darker, healthier than he had on screen. The several centimeters of height advantage he had on Cal made his oncoming baldness less noticeable than in the hologram and made his neatly trimmed beard more prominent. If the silver and gold finish on the man’s compband was any indication, he wore a wristcomp like Vincent.

“I ran into some problems early in the day,” Cal said. “I’m still trying to get caught up.”

“Nothing you can’t handle, though, right?”

“Right.” Cal held back, again experiencing the same uneasiness that he had felt during the day’s previous conversations. “You’re really looking forward to leaving all this?”

“Yes. God makes demands of us all, and we need to accept them in good grace. I’m actually looking forward to this. Life’s too complex on Daedalus.”

“God told you to go?”

Tolbor laughed. “No. It’s not like that. I’m surprised at you, Cal. God doesn’t move so directly. But in the course of my life, I’ve felt the nudges in the proper direction at a few important intersections.”

“Does that mean you were picked for the job because of your religious beliefs?”

“Hardly. Despite them is more like it. Religious freedom isn’t entirely dead, though. But you don’t look too well today. You’ve been pushing yourself pretty hard lately. Watch out for too much stress,” Russ said. The intensity apparent during the interview was still in his eyes. “You take care of yourself.”

“I’ll do my best.” Cal turned to leave.

It wasn’t until he entered the lobby that he realized that his breath came more heavily than normal, and he felt a slight chill. But was it because of the commander? Maybe Cal became nervous whenever he was in the presence of people in power. He had no way to tell for sure, but it seemed unlikely.

Could “Angel” be Russ? There was no guarantee that a password-protected ID couldn’t refer to someone Cal knew in public, someone with whom he had a different relationship in private.

But that could also be true of anyone on his list. Who else was a candidate? He could start down the list, talking to each person, working the word “angel” into the conversations. No.

He left the command building, aware again of fatigue. His eyes were dry, and his slight limp had returned. Maybe he should go home. Surely Nikki would be back by now. A talk with her and some rest might help.

Cal boarded an unoccupied rail car and started up the hill toward the low-gravity exit. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Vincent,” he said. “Is it possible for you to monitor the newscasts and tell me if anything about Gabriel Domingo comes on?”

“Easy. But you’re late. There’s already been more. I’ve been listening.”

Cal’s eyes were open again. “So tell me. And keep me up to date if you hear any more.”

“Your whim is my command. Just over a half hour ago, the news said that the police search of Domingo’s apartment turned up some interesting information. Domingo apparently had met several times with someone, maybe a doctor, at the Taber Clinic.”

“Taber Clinic. That sounds familiar.”

“I’m not wildly surprised. It’s where Nikki works.”