“How far back in time are we now?” the plant-creature asked, while examining the image of a spindly structure seeming without head, tail, or limbs.

“Three weeks. I went back further than that. There! There’s the one I was looking for!” One of Ortega’s six arms shot out and stabbed a button, freezing the picture. “That, my friend, is Nathan Brazil,” he said flatly.”

The Czillian stared. The figure on the screen was small and lithe, but it was by no means the sort of creature Grumma knew Brazil to be. A humanoid torso of deep blue ended in hairy, goatlike legs; the satyr’s face peered through dark-blue hair and a full beard: two small horns protruded atop the head.

“That is not a Type 41,” the Czillian noted. “That is a 341—an Agitar.”

Ortega chuckled. “No it’s not. Oh, true, it looks like one, but it’s supposed to. A fine make-up job, if I do say so, but Nate probably called in the best costumers in the business on it. The disguise is so perfect it’d fool the Agitarian ambassador here, I’m sure —provided Nate didn’t have to demonstrate his electric-shock ability. He counted on nothing but coming in, meeting with the duty officer, receiving the standard briefing, and then being shoved through the Well. Very clever. We’d never even notice. We get two or three of his type every century. Very clever. Insidious.”

“Then why are you so sure he isn’t just a 341 Entry?” the plant-creature persisted.

“He made a slip,” Ortega responded. “One lousy slip. A slip I would never catch until too late—that nobody would catch here in Zone. Deliberate, I think. At least there was no way around it. He didn’t know the language of the… Saugril, I think they call themselves out in the universe. That race and the Com never met, so he couldn’t know it.”

“You mean in the preliminary interview he spoke something else?” the Czillian pressed, amazed. “And that’s what gave him away? But, then, why wouldn’t it have betrayed him at the time?”