Colonel General Mochida, Chief of State Security for the government of Chalidang, turned slowly in the water. His two huge yet oddly humanlike brown eyes protruded slightly from each side of his rigid-looking but surprisingly soft and pliant nautiluslike spiral shell. He looked at his subordinates. “Any luck yet on tracing the race?”

“No, sir. It almost has to be some northern race distorted somewhat in the southern biospheres. There are some races who can do that sort of thing among those in the South, but they don’t look like that, and a couple that come close to that appearance but have no abilities to hide or extrude. In fact, none are water breathers.”

“Idiot!” Mochida snapped. “The appearance was obviously distorted, probably by some sort of disrupter shield. As to the North—even if we assume that for some reason we don’t already know all of them as well as we know ourselves— at least in terms of the computer database, it’s never happened. No carbon-based life pattern has ever been recast here as a northerner. No, he is playing some sort of trick on us, and we will have to find out what he is doing and counter it quickly. I want him in pieces! Pieces! I don’t want any of the Empress’s old family or associates, let alone Her Majesty, losing any sleep over this, understand?”

The others waved their tentacles in a manner approximating a Chalidang nod, but it seemed perfunctory and Mochida felt it.

“Perhaps I do not make myself clear,” he added. “For every victim from this point on, one of you will die—a random choice. I want this bastard and I want him now!”

That put the fear of the gods into them! Not that they fully understood what fear was. Too many failures, and it would be Colonel General Mochida who would have to explain failure directly to the Empress.