As it happened, she had a very a good idea why Fitzhugh had done it. But Sanjay Devi always played her cards close to her chest.

Apparently, Talbot Cartup found himself in bitter and complete agreement with her. And found her suggestion remarkably attractive.

After she put the telephone down, Sanjay sat for a long time looking at the odd-shaped dagger. At last she sighed.

That hurt, as usual. Deep breaths always did, but there was nothing that could be done about it other than to take painkillers. And she couldn't afford to take those. She needed her mind sharp for the time she had left.

Finally, the pain eased. She muttered "by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," and reached for the telephone again. But this time she clipped a little piece of solid-state circuitry onto it. It was a relic of old Earth, a piece of technology this colony could not dream of mastering for another two centuries. The scrambler-recorder was singularly useful to a conspirator.

"Major General Needford, please."

The JAG switchboard system was slow. But she got hold of Needford eventually.

He listened to her in silence. He was unnerving in that way, as well as in others. John Needford had a mind like a razor, and Devi knew that he was neck deep in the "young Turks" in the Army. He asked incisive questions-as always.

She was surprised to find that his special investigator had encountered Fitzhugh before… but she shouldn't have been. Their paths had been bound to cross, given the nature of the men.

When the conspirator put the phone down, she muttered "eye of newt" with some satisfaction. None of the other three calls would be as stressful as the one to the man she privately called "the Spanish Inquisition." It was almost a pity his ancestry was Liberian instead of Iberian.