"Bottom line: you can't do it from up here," Isis murmured, her face unreadable in the glow of the sunlight peeking around the edge of the planet. "And so Lieutenant Ferrier sold you on this plan of trying it from the surface."

And there it was, exactly as Harking had predicted. "It wasn't like that at all," he snapped back at her. "Abe had thought it through, all the way down to the last detail. It was a good plan, with a good chance of succeeding. And it beat the hell out of sitting up here watching the Sjonntae go about their daily routine and doing nothing about it."

He ran out of breath and stopped. "That's quite a speech," Isis commented. If she was offended, it didn't show in her voice. How long have you had it ready to go?"

Again Harking thought about being diplomatic. Again it didn't seem worth the trouble. "Since I heard you were coming here to investigate this," he told her candidly. "I knew you'd be all set to fork Abe onto the barbecue for this."

I'm not here to fork anyone onto anything," she said calmly. "But you have to face facts, the foremost being that the best minds in the Expansion have been wrestling with this problem tor over ten years. What made Lieutenant Ferrier think he could succeed where so many other similar ploys have failed?"

"Several reasons," Harking said. "The foremost being that Abe's family was part of the original contact team that spent five years negotiating deals between the Minkters and the Expansion. He speaks the language, looks enough like them to fit in, and has a lot of friends."

"I understand all that," Isis said. "But what did he expect to accomplish once he was down there? Any technology and weaponry he could bring would draw Shadow so quickly that he'd never get a chance to use it."

She gestured out toward the planet. "For that matter, how could he even get down there? A drop capsule would probably attract so much Shadow on its way in that he'd be dead before he hit the surface."