Mausier paused to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead, then bent to his task once more. Adjusting the high intensity lamp to a different angle, he picked up the watchmaker's tool and made a minute change in setting in the field terminal in front of him.

Without removing his eyepiece, he set aside the tool, reached over to the keyboard at the end of his workbench and input the data. Finally he leaned back and heaved a sigh. Done. He flexed his hands to restore circulation as he surveyed his handiwork.

The field terminal was a work of art. It could easily pass for a cigarette case, as it was supposed to. But if you pressed in three corners simultaneously, the inner metal lining folded out to reveal its interior workings, stark but functional. Two wires on mini-retracting reels were concealed in the hinge and could be pulled out to connect the unit to any phone. On the side of the lid was a tiny viewscreen. On the other side of the unit was a small keyboard containing both numbers and letters for data input. There was also the thumblock. Once the connection was made, the agent pressed his left thumb onto the metal square which would scan his print for comparison to the one on record in the master file. It would also check his body temperature to see if he was alive and his pulse to see if he was in an agitated state. If any of the three checks didn't match, the unit would self-destruct. Nothing as spectacular as an explosion-merely a small thermal unit to fuse the circuitry.