"You'll have to settle for an angled view," Uncle Virge said as the image shifted direction a little. "We're heading for the Ponocce Regional Spaceport, at the southern edge of Ponocce City and about three miles from the Chookoock estate itself. Given our current vector, it would look suspicious for us to fly directly over them."

"Just do the best you can," Jack said.

"Right," Uncle Virge said. "Anyway, that's it coming up on the left, pressed right up against the eastern edge of the city. That white line there—see it?

That's the estate's outer wall."

Stretching out his long neck, Draycos studied the image scrolling slowly across the display. The estate was a huge one, covering nearly as much territory as the city alongside it. The ribbon of white that Uncle Virge had identified as the outer wall snaked across the landscape, disappearing here and there behind low hills or tall bushes until it finally vanished completely behind the trees of a

thick forest. Along with the forest, the estate also included neat rectangles of cropland, areas of bushy undergrowth, a rock quarry, several ponds, and a small river.

The wall itself was deceptively plain and simple-looking, with no signs of guard towers or patrolling aircraft. It was almost as if it was there just for show.

Draycos didn't believe it for a minute. Neither, obviously, did Jack. "So what's the story on that wall?" the boy asked.

"Some kind of hardened ceramic, looks like," Uncle Virge said. "Shape-wise, it seems to be a sort of X cross section. That means you have an overhang to deal with no matter which side you start climbing from."

"That ought to discourage casual visitors," Jack commented. "What about non-casual ones?"

"Not sure," Uncle Virge grunted. "It looks like there may be a set of lasers running along the groove at the top, nestled down into the center of the X

and aiming upward. There may be some flame jets mixed in, too."