Neutrino... there's a residual decay spectrum, but it's the wrong one for their type of power plant. Tachyon... uh-oh."

"What?" Kittredge snapped.

Waskin visibly swallowed. "It reads... it reads an awful lot like the pattern you get from full-spectrum explosives."

Fromm caught it before the rest of us did. "Explosives, plural?" he asked.

"How many are we talking about?"

"Lots," Waskin said. "At least thirty separate blasts. Maybe more."

Fromm swore under his breath. "Damn. They must have had a stockpile that blew."

"No," I said, and even to me my voice sounded harsh. "You don't store full-specs that close to each other. Someone came in and bombed the hell out of them.

Deliberately."

There was a long moment of silence. "The opaline," Kittredge said at last.

"Someone wanted the opaline."

For lousy pieces of rock...? I forced my brain to unfreeze from that thought.

Messenia had been militarily oriented.... "Waskin, cancel the grid search for a

second and get back on the comm board," I told him. "Broadcast our ship ID on the emergency beacon frequency and then listen."

Kittredge looked up at me. "Travis, no one could have survived a bombing like that—"

"No one there, no," I cut her off. "But there would have been at least a few men out beyond the horizon from the base—that's standard procedure."

"Yeah, but the radiation would have got 'em," Waskin muttered.

"Just do it," I snapped.

"I'd better get the captain up here," Kittredge said, reaching for the intercom.

"Better get a boat ready to fly, too," I told her. My eyes returned to the main display, where the base was starting to drift behind us. "With the doc and a couple others with strong stomachs aboard. If there are any survivors, they'll need help fast."