"I was thinking maybe Jorgen."

Morwin nodded and drew on his pipe, his thumb covering the insignia on its side. Jorgen the giant Rigellian and Michael of Honsi had been crewmates during the war. Fifteen years earlier he would have shot either one of them on sight. Now he trusted them at his back with guns. Now he ate, drank, joked with them, sold his works to their fellows. The DYNAB insignia, Fourth Stellar Fleet, seemed to throb beneath his thumb. He was squeezing it tightly, feeling ashamed that he sought to conceal it from the Honsian but unable to uncover it. If we had won it would have been the other way around, he told himself, and nobody would have blamed Michael if he wore that damned big battle ring of his backward or on a chain around his neck, out of sight. A man has to make his life where he finds things best. If I had stayed in the DYNAB, I would still be juggling electrons--in some damned laboratory--on starvation wages.

"How much longer've you got till retirement?" he asked.

"Around three years. Still a lot of looking forward left."

Michael leaned back then, and with his right hand withdrew a news printout from his tunic.

"Looks as if a certain friend of yours plans never to retire."

Morwin took the paper, ran his eyes along the columns.

"What are you referring to?" he asked, for the sake of form.

"Second column. About halfway down."

"'Explosion on Blanchen'? That one?"

"Yes."

He read the report slowly. Then, "I'm afraid I don't understand," he said, while a certain thing like pride occurred within him. He kept it there, inside.

"Your old fleet commander, Malacar Miles. Who else?"

"'Six men dead, nine injured ... Eight units destroyed, twenty-six damaged,'" he read. "'No clues have been found but the Service is working on ...' --If no clues have been found, what makes you suspect the Commander?"

"The contents of the warehouses."