Rank-and-file ghost hunters were very big on tradition, right down to their wardrobes. They favored a lot of khaki and leather, probably because it went with the swagger. But those who made it to the top of the Guild preferred to dress like the CEOs they pretended to be. Today Fontana wore black, a lot of it. His black trousers, black shirt, black tie, and black jacket would have looked perfectly appropriate in her father's boardroom or any of her brothers' clubs. Each item screamed expensive fabric and brilliant tailoring; discreetly, of course.

The sartorial difference lay in the details. Unlike the silver or gold accessories that her male relatives favored, Fontana wore amber. Even the buttons of his shirt and his cuff links were set with amber. So was his belt buckle, the face of his watch, and, of course, the seal ring.

She was sure that every bit of the amber she could see was tuned. What's more, she suspected that he had amber elsewhere on his person, perhaps embedded in a shoe or on a key chain. Guild men carried backup amber in the same spirit that cops carried concealed guns. They knew that someday their lives might depend on the extra firepower.

But ghost hunters worked underground in the catacombs and the mysterious alien rain forest where the unpredictable currents of psi energy made high-tech weaponry and most machinery useless. Down below in the tunnels and in the jungle, survival depended on the ability to work tuned amber.

The paranormal ability to psychically resonate with amber and use it to focus the brain's natural energy had begun to appear among the colonists shortly after they had settled on Harmony. At first it had been viewed as a kind of biological quirk or curiosity. Scientists had concluded that something in the planet's environment stimulated the latent power in the human mind.