Nonetheless, Dorcas' gaze left the table and went off down the well of stars. Alpha Centauri B, dazzling bright, had drifted from it. She had a clear view toward the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. In yonder direction lay Beta Hydri, and around it swung Silvereyes, the most remote colony that humankind had yet planted. Beyond Silvereyes-But glory filled vision. Laurinda's sun was a dim red dwarf, invisible to her. Strange thought, that such a thing might be a key to mysteries.

Anger awoke. “Maybe we won't need your father's money,” Dorcas said. “Maybe the prospect will make that slime-bugger see reason.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Tregennis, shocked.

“Markham.” Dorcas grinned. “Sorry. You haven't been toe-to-toe with him, over and over, the way Bob and I have. Never mind. Don't let him or a quantum-beaded kzin spoil our evening. Let's enjoy. We're going!”

The office of Ulf Reichstein Markham was as austere as the man himself. Apart from a couple of chairs, a reference shelf, and a desk with little upon it except the usual electronics, its largeness held mostly empty space. Personal items amounted to a pair of framed documents and a pair of pictures. On the left hung his certificate of appointment to the Interworld Space Commission and a photograph of his wife with their eight-year-old son. On the right were his citation for extraordinary heroism during the war and a portrait painting of his mother. Both women showed the pure bloodlines of Wunderland aristocracy, the older one also in her expression; the younger looked subdued.

Markham strove to maintain the same physical appearance. His father had been a Belter of means, whom his mother married after the family got in trouble with the kzinti during the occupation and fled to the Swarm. At age 50 he stood a slender, swordblade-straight 195 centimeters. Stiff gray-blond hair grew over a narrow skull, above pale eyes, long nose, outthrust chin that sported the asymmetric beard, a point on the right side. Gray and closefitting, his garb suggested a military uniform. “I trust you have recovered from your experience, Captain Saxtorph,” he said in his clipped manner.