I had the persistent feeling, listening to the conversations between the three of them, that I was constantly being carefully shut out of certain areas. It wasn't just that I'm a journalist, or that they had shady dealings with shadier characters. I had a real sense that there were things that Man Was Not Meant To Know at least, man outside their small group. It wasn't quite the same feeling I'd once had talking to a group of UFO enthusiasts, who were keen to impress upon me that they had secret knowledge that they couldn't risk sharing, and so constantly dropped hints and fragments of that arcane lore. It was more like the feeling I had during a conversation with two desperately shy gay friends who were out to each other, but not out to me, and were frantic not to let me know.

Bob quickly recovered his poise. 'We've got what you wanted right here,' he said, tapping the short cabinet with his foot. Peri looked nervous. Maybe Swan had been checking her blackmail photos or her Strawberry Shortcake collection.

'Pop it up on the table, there's a good chap,' said the Doctor.

Bob and Peri manhandled the cabinet onto his paper-strewn dining table while the Doctor took off his jacket. He extracted a small burglar's kit from the pocket and went to work on the cabinet's lock. A few more moments, and he quietly pulled the door open.

By now we were all standing around him, craning for a view. There was a thick envelope on the bottom sh.e.l.l; and on the top shelf, a bulky, colourful object. The Doctor reached inside and pulled it out.

It looked like a toy or a puzzle. It was all orange, purple and green plastic loops, forming a misshapen, hollow ball. The Doctor slipped his hand inside the s.p.a.ce, but it didn't fit well.

'What the heck is that thing?' asked Bob.

'This is an extraordinarily dangerous piece of technology,'

p.r.o.nounced the Doctor, turning it over in his hands.

'Fortunately, Sarah Swan has no way of discovering its secrets.'

While they were marvelling at this bit of nonsense, I reached into the cabinet and took out the fat envelope. It was packed with computer printouts and hand-written notes, an entire composition book full of what looked like phone numbers, net addresses, odd remarks like "Easy", "Back door"; and "Test???". Every page had an a.s.sortment of random words. I was looking at computer pa.s.swords, dozens of them.

'If Swan couldn't do anything with that gizmo,' said Bob, 'why'd she bother hanging onto it?'

'Hope springs eternal.' said the Doctor. He took a wad of tissue paper out of his pocket, and started carefully wrapping the thing. 'Which means she must have some idea of its significance.'

'So now we've got it I guess you hand it over to the, uh, people you're working with?' said Peri. The Doctor nodded.

'So we did it, she said. 'The good guys win again.'

'Alas,' said the Doctor. 'I'm afraid we're not quite finished yet.' Peri didn't look at all surprised. 'There's one more of these... components out there somewhere. Swan doesn't have it; nor does she know where it is. Her email is full of exchanges with other collectors, her efforts to track it down. It was one of those collectors who informed my contacts that she had this.' He picked up the wrapped puzzle and put it into a shopping bag. 'There. I've already arranged a meeting with them. But I don't think I'll deliver this just yet.'

'What's the plan, Doctor?' said Bob.

'I want a little time to examine our strange device. This is my chance to learn something about it for myself... although I won't be able to stall them for long.'

'We're coming along to that meeting!' insisted Peri.

'Right on,' said Bob.

'I've already explained,' said the Doctor. 'They won't risk contact with anyone besides myself.'

'We risked a lot to get that for you!' said Peri. 'While you sat wherever you were and twiddled k.n.o.bs, we were breaking the law!'

'Perpugilliam Smith,' he said severely 'you have done far more dangerous and far more dubious things in your time. But few that have benefited your little planet more.'

'That's right, man,'; said Bob. 'We're not scared.'

'Stop trying to protect us, Doctor,' Peri insisted. She planted her fists on her hips and looked up at his face. 'It's time you let us in on what's happening.'

It made me think of my pet, Stray Cat. She was in my lap once when another cat climbed onto the balcony. She hissed and spat and bristled and then she took a swipe at my face: she couldn't attack the enemy, so she attacked whoever was around instead.

The Doctor raised both hands, scowling. 'I knew this would happen if I showed my face.'

'Since when did you ever take a no from someone?' said Peri.

'True,' said Bob. 'If they want more help from us, they have to include us.'

'Don't go overboard, Bob,' said the Doctor. 'We are trying to save the world. All right, see what I can arrange.'

'h.e.l.lo, Mond,' said the voice on the other end of the phone.

'Guess who.'

'Aw s.h.i.t,' said Mondy. He glanced at the tape recorder set up next to the phone in his mother's bas.e.m.e.nt. The tape had automatically kicked in the moment it began to ring.

'Nice to hear your voice too,' said Swan.

'I thought you swore you would never so much as dial my mom's number.'

'I didn't dial her number,' said Swan, amused. 'Does she know you've got six other numbers forwarded to her phone?'

'You said you would never ha.s.sle my mom,' said Mondy.

'Why don't you run upstairs and see if I'm bothering your mom, said Swan sourly. 'Or maybe you'd like to shut up and find out why I called.'

'Oh my G.o.d. What? I guess you've already done about everything you can think of to me.'

'New technology is always comirtglikmg,' said Swan lightly.

Some buffer in Mondy's brain overflowed. 'All I ever did was get in an argument with you. That was two years ago. And it was your fault anyway for being such a b.i.t.c.h!'

'Whereas you're such a smooth diplomat.'

'Why can't you just drop it, Sarah? Why've you got to try and make my life a mess? How many other people are you s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up this way?'

He caught his breath, clutching the phone, waiting for her answer to come crackling through the silence. He half-expected to hear police sirens as she sicked yet another 911 call on him. He knew the answer, anyway: the technology is vulnerable, but human beings are the weakest links.

'That's not what this is about. I want a favour, Mond.'

He spluttered. 'You've got to be kidding.'

'If you give me what I want, I'll stop bugging you. Now and forever.'

Mondy was thunderstruck. 'You're full of it.'

'You know I keep my word,' she said. 'I never have bothered your mom, have I? Or your brother in Calvert County.'

'No,' he had to admit.

'Good. Then you know I mean it. No more trouble for you if you just do what I say.'

Mondy hesitated. Was this the real reason she had picked on him for so long because she knew one day she'd want to use his skills?

He smacked the listening end of the receiver against his forehead a couple of times. 'Ah, shoot,' he said at last. 'What do you want me to do?'

The Doctor's black suit turned out to be Peri's idea. 'You're not wandering around Washington in your circus outfit,' she had insisted. He'd made a lengthy speech about the historical variability of costumes and fashions, but Peri had put her foot down for once. 'Maybe in Berkeley or something,' she said.

'Not here.'

Peri told me she'd been wearing more and more garish clothes herself, not to compete with him, but to try to make him realise just how outlandish his own outfit was. It hadn't worked. He was too comfortable to care.

It took me a while to notice that, hidden by the dapper black trousers, he was wearing fluorescent orange socks.

The amazing thing is, not only did the Doctor's 'contacts' say yes, they even let me come along once I persuaded him and he persuaded them. I think the Doctor let me tag along for the same reason he let me sit in on his hacking session; he wanted me where he could see me, a controllable element.

As good as his word, the Doctor had Bob drive us to a small apartment in northwest DC, off Connecticut Avenue.

The rooms were furnished cla.s.sy, but anonymous, modem wood and plastic reflecting the taste of no-one in particular.

There were no books, no knick-knacks. The kitchen looked as though it was never used. It was another hotel room, not a home.

The man the Doctor wanted us to meet sat stiff-spined in an easy chair. He wore a black coat and hat, as though he was just about to go out. He had a blandly handsome face with a blandly pleasant expression. Behind him, there was a parrot in a cage, constantly chirping and clucking to itself. It was a weird breed: long stiff tail, oversized beak, eyes so small they were barely visible through the mix of lemon and lime feathers.

'Sit down,' murmured the Doctor. We arranged ourselves on a couple of pale sofas, and I flipped open my notebook.

'Allow me to introduce Mr Ghislain' The man's eyes moved back and forth over us a couple of times. 'With the invaluable help of my friends here, I'm very close to finding one of the missing components,' he said smoothly 'But they would like to know a bit more of the background to our job.'

He said, 'Allow me to tell you a story' He spoke precisely, almost in a monotone; his voice had a trace of accent which I couldn't place French? 'You may take or leave this story as you please.'

Once upon a time (Mr Ghislain told us) there was a s.p.a.ce vehicle. It was not made by human beings. In fact, it had been travelling for centuries by the time human beings discovered radio.

The s.p.a.cecraft was sent from a world circling Epsilon Eridani.4 The people of Eridani could not make ships that could travel faster than light. But they were patient, and had established colony worlds gradually and quietly over a huge volume of s.p.a.ce, communicating with one another with slow messages and slower parcels. This particular s.p.a.cecraft contained a supercomputer, broken into five components for storage in the slow packet, a gift to a fledgling colony circling Van Maanen's Star.

The s.p.a.cecraft's flight path took it through Earth's solar system, a slingshot around the sun that would boost its speed towards its destination. But the closer the ship came to Earth, the more saturated its systems became with radio transmissions. The Eridani had not antic.i.p.ated this; they expected a long, patient voyage through silence.

Bewildered by the flood of signals, the slow packet concluded that it must have already reached its destination, and landed its precious cargo on the planet Earth.

When the Eridani realised what had happened almost eleven years later they took the unusual and expensive step of chartering a faster-than-light ship from a neighbouring civilisation, and sent two agents to retrieve the package. But during those eleven years, their parcel had already been discovered by human beings. It had pa.s.sed through a succession of hands, the components becoming separated as owner after owner tried to discover their secrets.

The Eridani have managed to find three of the components in the three years they have been on Earth. But then one of them was killed by a human being they had employed to help 4 This is a real star, a cla.s.s K orange dwarf about eleven light years from Earth. The Doctor mentioned that scientists on Earth had scanned Epsilon Eridani for radio signals in 1960; they might have detected the Eridani if they had checked a wider band of wavelengths. He also suggested that the Eridani probably hadn't evolved on a planet circling that star (too young, at only a billion years of age), but had colonised a world there, one of their many waystations across our section of the galaxy. I have to give him credit for working out the back-story in detail.

them in the search. The human was also killed.

It was at this point that the Doctor stepped in with his offer to help find the final two components Human beings must not learn the secret of the Eridani supercomputer. The Doctor believes it would disrupt their society to gain this knowledge prematurely. The Eridani do not wish their primitive neighbours to become their technological rivals.

That is the whole of the story.

I hadn't stopped writing once while Mr Ghislain quietly related his tale, although I'd been tempted to flip the notebook shut and walk out. I wasn't interested in heading off into outer s.p.a.ce, but only in voyages into the inner s.p.a.ce of the world inside the computer. But if this was the way some of the hackers thought, I needed to know about it. Or was the ludicrous cover story a way of stopping the secret leaking out because if someone spilled the beans, no-one would believe them?

Everyone was looking at me to see how I would react.

'Whatever you say, folks,' I declared. 'I'm just along for the ride.'

Like the man said, you can take or leave this story as you please. My take on it? The 'Eridani' are code for the Russians.

The other aliens they're supposed to have borrowed a ship from? Maybe a submarine their agents. .h.i.tched a ride on. And the slow packet? That part's straight: the components of a new generation of supercomputer. They lost control of it on American soil, and now they want it back.

If you accept the Doctor's earlier claim that the US government doesn't know anything about it then the supercomputer's parts had got into the hands of private citizens. But lucky for the Ruskies, the parts had been split up.

Swan got one, realised how important it was, and had set out to search for the other pieces.

What did she hope to do with the machine? Patent it as her own work? Sell it to the highest bidder? Whatever her plans, you have to wonder if she realised just what fire she was playing with. Bob and Peri did her a favour by stealing that thing out from under her nose before the other side could find it.

Or before our side could find it. What if I'd guessed wrong, and the Eridani were Americans? What if I'd guessed right, and the Doctor was working for the Russians? Or even just the British? Bob and Peri were just following the Doctor's lead, but what was his angle?

Two.

When we got. back to Bob's house in the early evening, the first thing he did was go into the bedroom and emerge with a crowbar and a hex socket. 'Gotta check for wiretaps,' he muttered, giving me a look.

Peri picked up a phone and listened to the dial tone. 'It sounds normal to me,' she said.

'No clicks?' said Bob? 'No funny sounds at all?'

She listened for a few moments. 'No. Maybe I wouldn't know what to look for'