"Colonel," Beach said, glancing away from his console long enough to give Faraday an abbreviated wave.

Hesse shifted his pointing finger to a short woman who looked as if she might come up to Beach's shoulder if he was willing to slouch a little. "Jen McCollum is our biology and xenobiology expert.

Anything you want to know about Qanskan physiology, she can tell you."

"Or at least I can tell you what we know about Qanskan physiology," McCollum added over her shoulder. "There are a lot of blank spots that still need to be filled in."

"But you can extrapolate?" Faraday asked.

"You mean make stuff up on the fly?" McCollum asked blandly. "Sure. No problem."

Faraday smiled to himself. Young tech and science types, their heads still mostly in academia's clouds and thus mostly immune to Living Legend Syndrome. That would be nice for a change.

"That one's Tom Milligan," Hesse continued with the next in line, a man slightly shorter and less bulky than Beach, with stringy hair and a rather half-hearted goatee. "He'll be handling the sensors and the various deep-atmosphere probes we'll be using to keep track of him. He's also our resident expert in physics, should we need something esoteric from that field."

He gestured to the fourth tech. "And finally, this is Hans Sprenkle, our psychologist."

Faraday frowned. No one had said anything to him about a psychologist. "Is the Council expecting us to go crazy out here?"

"Past tense, with this group," Sprenkle said cheerfully. He was built to the same scale as the other two men, though with a neatly trimmed moustache instead of Milligan's goatee. "My humble opinion, of course."

"I didn't know shrinks' opinions were ever humble," Beach commented from the other end of the control semicircle.

"You haven't read any of the retractions in the professional journals," Sprenkle countered dryly. "It's amazing how low some people can grovel while still keeping their noses in the air."