“Yes, Professor?” She spoke without looking at the screen.

“Darya?” a faint voice queried. “Is that you?”

Darya gasped and stared at the terminal, but all it offered was the white-noise display of a sound-only link.

“Hans? Hans Rebka? Where are you? Are you on Miranda?”

“Not any more.” The tone was faint and distorted, but even so the bitterness could be heard in it. “There was no point in staying. The Council wouldn’t even listen. I’m at the final Bose Network node before Sentinel Gate. I can’t talk now. Expect me on Sentinel Gate in half a day.”

The space-thinned voice faded and the connection was abruptly broken. Darya walked forward to the easy chair in front of the terminal and collapsed into it. She sat staring at nothing.

The Council did not believe them. Incredible. That meant that it had rejected the sworn statements of one of its own Council members; and of the embodied computer, E.C. Tally, who did not know how to lie; and of Hans Rebka, recognized as one of the most experienced and canny troubleshooters in the whole spiral arm.

Darya roused herself. She ought to call Professor Merada and tell him that many of the references that she wanted to cite had been dismissed by the highest authority in the spiral arm. What the Council did not accept, no one else would consider reliable. But she did not move. The Council rejection was certainly bad news, since it meant that nothing that she, or anyone else in their party, said about the events of the past year would have credibility.

But what the rejection implied was far worse, the worst news of all: Zardalu were at large in the spiral arm — and no one in authority believed it.

Chapter Two

“Allow me to introduce Captain Hans Rebka.”