Abruptly, the lights flickered. Quickly, guiltily, I brought my attention back to the displays, but it was all right—the breakout had come off textbook-clean.

"We're here," Fromm reported from the helm. "Ready to set orbit." "Put us at about two hundred for now," Kittredge told him. "Waskin, you want to try and contact this friend of yours and find out about this opaline?"

"Yes, ma'am," he nodded, swiveling around to the comm board.

"Was there anything else?" Kittredge asked, looking up at me.

I shook my head. "I just wanted to make sure we knew one way or another about the rocks before anyone got too comfortable here."

She smiled lopsidedly. "I doubt you have to wor—"

"Holy Mother!"

I snapped my head around to look at Waskin, nearly losing my hold in the process. He was staring at the main display. As I shifted my eyes that direction, I felt a similar expletive welling up like verbal fire in my throat.

We'd come within view of the mission's base camp... or rather, within view of the blackened crater where the base camp was supposed to be.

"Oh, my God," Kittredge gasped as the scanners panned over the whole nauseating mess. "What happened?"

"No idea," I said grimly, "but we'd better find out." My long-ago years in the Services came flooding back, the old pages of emergency procedures flipping up in front of my mind's eye. "Waskin, get back on the scanners. Do a quick full-pattern run-through for anything out of the ordinary, then go back to infrared for a grid survivor search."

"Yes, sir." There was no cockiness now; he was good and thoroughly scared.

With an effort, he got his face jammed into the display hood, his hand visibly trembling as he fumbled with the selector knob. "Yes, sir. Okay. IR... those fires have been out a minimum of... eighteen hours, the computer says. Could be more." His thin face—what I could see of it, anyway—was a rather pasty white, and I hoped hard that he wouldn't pass out. Time could be crucial, and I didn't want to have to man the scanners myself until we could get another expert up here. "Shortwave... nothing in particular. No broadcasts on any frequency.