With exaggerated determination, she shut off the replay, turned off her workstation, and got out of her chair. With resignation she said, "I need to get some sleep. Who am I trying to kid, anyway? I'm not getting anything done here."

"A wise decision, Sunshine." "When are you leaving for Earth?" "The day after tomorrow. Early."

"I'll be at the party," she said.

Whenever Colonel Knoedler needed to think real hard, he found it necessary to put himself in the proper mood, and this was most easily accomplished by reading the right book. Since most of the things his position demanded he think about involved strategy and tactics, the two books he most often turned to were Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War, a classic from the middle of the last century, and Potapov's Kasparov vs. the Computers: The Complete Games.

At the moment he was seated in his favorite reading chair, a leather recliner, sturdy, functional, in a style that would never be flashy but would never go out of fashion either. There was Tchaikovsky in the air. The worn, red covers of the Kahn book were between his fingers, but his eyes were not focused on the pages. The book had already done its work-the colonel was thinking. Hard.

The Phinon attack in the Oort cloud had come over two years ago, but the OEV 1 had actually gone out to them. Now in only the last few months the Phinons had come closer to home and struck three times: Slingshot, Glacierville, and a few days ago, Deepguard.

Deepguard. That one was extra troubling. How had the Phinons even found that base? It was a passive viewing and listening post from which the entire Solar System could be spied upon, and not an easy thing to detect. He'd seen a photo of the girl they'd rescued from there. Nikki Le. Very pretty oriental lady. Knoedler had always liked oriental women. She was on her way to Luna right now.

Too bad he'd always had so little time for women.

His train of thought was in danger of derailing into images of himself, Nikki, and white picket fences when he wrenched it back to the situation at hand.

Dykstra had dropped his bombshell today to the Joint Staff. He'd told them he knew how to build a reactionless sublight drive that would work inside the Hague Limit, and that the Phinons had never invented it themselves.

Oh really now?

Knoedler put down the Kahn book and picked up the chess one.

The colonel's rooms at the High Command were efficiently furnished; several chairs, a couch, bookshelves, a table at which to eat or work, the usual computer workstation. But there were few pictures and no plants, and not even a single one of the numerous plaques and awards he'd received in his career adorned his walls. The only genuine decorations he had were his chess sets. Three out of his collection of more than a hundred were on display: one of gold and silver on a shelf; one of precious stones on a side table; one of pewter spaceship pieces on a gaming table, the only one that he'd actually play games with. Dykstra had had a collection of chess sets, until the Belt blew up his house.

The Phinons had him in one hell of a chess match right now. The raids happening on the trans-Hague Limit assets were little pawn thrusts. The ships congregating out in deep space, leaving hyperspace but not reentering-that had to be where the real strategy was shaping up.

And Dykstra's going the Phinons one better? Was the old genius really that good, or were the Phinons employing a gambit?

It had taken Dykstra only two months to go from thinking FTL travel was impossible to duplicating the Phinon drive. Less than two months after that he'd come up with tremendous improvements.

Had the Phinons maybe wanted it to be this easy?

Although he'd cracked open the chess book, Knoedler had yet to read a line from it. The Tchaikovsky had ceased playing.

What kind of a chess game is this? They can see my pieces, but theirs are invisible. They can see my possible moves, but theirs I can't consider until after they've made them.

Colonel Knoedler was a marvelous chess player. Against weaker opponents, he'd readily exchange pieces, simplifying things until he could put together an elegant checkmate. The few times he played someone of equal caliber, or more likely, had gotten careless and fallen into a perilous situation, he'd play for complications, trusting that his wit and skill would ultimately carry him through if he just had time enough to pick away at his competition.

In this situation, I most definitely need to play for complications.

Dykstra had already argued to the staff that once the first FTL ship was ready, they should take it deep into the Oort cloud and gather information on the aliens. But would any information gathered be more valuable to the Patrol than the knowledge that humanity had developed its own FTL capability would be to the Phinons? And God forbid that Dykstra was right, and the Phinons did not know how to build sublight drives that worked within Hague Limits, and they captured our first ship and reverse engineered their way to that technology.

There would be another meeting with the staff tomorrow. Knoedler knew he would argue vociferously to keep the new ship close to home.

But something else was nagging him about that new drive Dykstra had invented. It could become a major piece in an earlier puzzle the colonel had been working on. But, oh, "our new buddies," the Belt, won't like this at all. Although the BDF and the System Patrol had agreed to a cease-fire while the Phinon problem was assessed, the Patrol had not revealed the existence of any of the new technology they'd already developed.

Knoedler put down the chess book finally and went to his bookshelf. He took an old Bible out and returned to his chair. He opened it to I Kings, then flipped pages backwards all the way into II Samuel before he found what he was looking for.

And then, several times, he read the story of David and Goliath.

Mare Tranquilitatis, the Sea of Tranquility, was perhaps the most appropriate place in the Solar System to put a cemetery. Here lay thousands upon thousands of men and women who'd died in space in the service of the System Patrol. Black crosses, stars of David, symbols from other faiths, and plain rectangular markers for those who'd had no religious convictions, spread out in perfect alignment all the way to the horizon no matter which way one looked from the landing field in the center of the cemetery. Among those buried here were genuine heroes of the 21st century, men and women whose names were household words, but their markers were no different from those of the lowly belowdecks cannon fodder that had met their ends in their bunks.

Which was why Sammi would have needed a map to find again the spot where Steve's marker was placed. There wasn't any body buried there in his case, of course-there hadn't been one to return to her.

She'd thought about what Dykstra had said to her the day before, and knew he was right-she was working much too hard, and she hadn't allowed herself a genuine catharsis since that night he'd shown up at her apartment to tell her what had really happened to Steve. So she'd taken this morning off to visit the cemetery, her only time back since she'd watched his marker being emplaced.

She was riding in a little open scooter that the cemetery provided for visitors to use among the markers. The repulsors on the scooters only allowed them to rise ten centimeters off the surface, and there was absolutely no way one could get them to kick up dust short of killing the power and letting them crash. Sammi was mildly surprised at how comfortable the scooters were even for a person in a spacesuit. And the scooter knew how to find section GL-8088.

There was almost no one out there this morning. Sammi had seen only two caretakers at the landing field and the man who'd given her the scooter. As she rode along, she'd seen only one other scooter along the way she had come, and another some ways ahead of her, so far away she could barely see the person standing next to the marker that the scooter had stopped beside.

I don't know why I came out here, Sammi suddenly thought. What do I think I'm going to find, anyway? Emotional release? I've done all my crying. Renewed conviction that working for the Patrol is the right thing to do? That would be nice. She looked over the acres and acres of markers. But I won't find that here, either.

Her scooter was getting closer and closer to the one she'd seen up ahead, and then she realized that it was grounded at Steve's marker. At first she thought maybe one of Steve's suicide orbiteer buddies had stopped to visit, but she didn't recognize the insignia on the suit.

The scooter stopped and she got off. The man noticed her, smiled at her through his faceplate, and she returned the smile.

"That smile," he said. "You're Sunshine. Steve's wife, I mean. My God, he wasn't lying about how you got that nickname."

"Yes. I'm Samantha MacTavish. I didn't get your name."

"Forgive me. I'm sorry. Been out in space too long," the man said. He was a mature-looking black man she could see from his face, but his posture revealed a man of strength and vigor. "My name is Roger Tykes. People call me 'Pops.' Steve called me 'Pops.' "

"I could have guessed," Sammi said. "He told me about you in his letters. He was in awe of you."

"Shucks," Pops said. "I've never done anything to match what your husband did. Hell, I'd be dead now if it wasn't for him. I figured I'd better pay my respects while I'm on Luna. I don't usually come to the inner system. Don't know when or if I'll be back."

Something doesn't seem right about Pops, Sammi thought. He was talking too much, which wasn't what she'd expected from Steve's description of the strong, taciturn, father figure that Pops had been to the men under his command. She looked at him more closely, and through the faceplate saw the streaks of tears on his cheeks that the proud commander had been unable to wipe away.

And Pops knew his secret was out. "All right, dammit. I admit it-I was crying. Practically like a baby before you got here. I owed him that. There aren't that many people I've met who deserve to have tears shed over them when they're gone, but, by God, he was one of them! Those alien bastards . . . those alien bastards . . ." Then he turned away from her and shut off his mike for a few moments.

Sammi stood there silently, taking in the cross marker, the harsh shadow it cast upon the surface, and the figure of the old soldier standing straight and silent nearby, paying his respects not just to a man, but to a kind of man.

And for the first time in months, she felt her emptiness filling up with something warm. She didn't want to analyze it-she just wanted to feel it.

Finally Pops turned again to face her. "I've got to be going, ma'am. I'm very pleased to have met you."

There was iron in his voice now.

"Me, too," Sammi said.

Bob met her at the door and led her in. The gravity in the room was set at half standard, just the way Dykstra liked it.

They were all there as promised. Over by the autochef, helping with the drinks, stood Dykstra and Rick Vander Kam. By himself, but savoring a hot chocolate flavored with just a splash of scotch, sat Hague. And by her left arm, close, but not too close, hovered the lieutenant.

He wasn't going to get anywhere with her, not tonight, probably not ever. She was sure of that. She did sneak a side glance at him, noting once again that he was gorgeous, with a solid body displaying the classic V from waist to shoulders, and his close-cropped curly gold hair. But the part of her heart that could love was still solidly surrounded with an ache that wouldn't go away, no matter how hard she worked, no matter how hard she tried to get on with her life.

She remembered the first time she'd come to Dykstra's apartment. Then, she'd been awed in the presence of the Genius of the Age, but only at first. His cool demeanor and friendly manner had set her at ease, and apart from his legend, he was, at core, a lovable old man.

She snapped back into the present when Dykstra came over.

"Sammi, I'm glad you came. Now our circle is complete," he said.

"But soon to be broken. Why didn't you tell me until yesterday that you're all going off and leaving me behind?" she asked.

"I'll still be around," Bob said. "Some of the time, anyway."

It wasn't much as parties go. There was an exchange of small talk, and Rick gave her a hug she didn't expect, but also didn't really mind. Even Hague joined in, though with all his usual surplus of "Oh, yeses." After ten minutes of this Dykstra had them all take a seat, and he started to tell them what this "party" was really all about.

He sat before them in his comfy chair. He held his walking stick in his right hand, almost like a scepter. But no, kingly images didn't fit Dykstra, Sammi thought. It was more like she and the others were sitting on one end of a log, and Dykstra was playing Socrates on the other.

"I'm going to tell you what the future holds," he said. "Or what it can hold. All of you are necessary to make it happen.

"Tomorrow, Dr. Hague, Dr. Vander Kam, and I are going to Earth, there to work at the Capitol Products spaceship yards. When we are finished there, we will have produced humanity's first faster-than-light spacecraft. But here's the thing-our first try is going to be superior to anything the Phinons have."

"That's news to me," Rick said. "What makes you think so?"

"Two engines, yes, two, so much better, so much," Hague piped up. "Reactionless sublight effects, too. Oh yes, oh yes."

Rick just smiled. "You guys have been holding out on me."

"I only figured it out a short time ago," Dykstra said. "And I wanted to bounce the ideas off Dr. Hague, have him do his magic at calculations on the equations. What we figured out is that using two of the FTL engines, properly tuned to each other, allows a doubling in the efficiency of making the transition to hyperspace. Why this should be the case is obvious when you understand the physics. Why the Phinons never seem to have figured it out is a mystery."

Sammi asked: "Does that mean our ship will be able to travel twice as fast as theirs do?"

"No. Hyperspace doesn't work that way. It means that it will only take us half as much energy to get into hyperspace. Two engines, or more properly, two drive elements, means half the energy consumption. And before you ask, no, it is not the case that three would be even better."

"No, no. Two is best, is just right. It has to be two, yes, it has to be two, oh yes. But, oh, the reactionless effect. Oh, yes!" Hague put in.

"That's the kicker," Dykstra continued. "If you use these two elements in normal space-inside or outside the Hague Limit, it doesn't matter-just the right way, you can get a direct conversion of mass into kinetic energy, and you get to choose your velocity vector. It's uncanny. But I haven't seen any evidence in the Phinon engine that they know anything about this effect."

At the mention of the Phinon engine, Hague gave a visible shudder. The savant was a whiz with human technology, had stored in his brain the entire contents of scores of parts and equipment catalogs, could repair and improve almost anything ever invented. As long as it was human. His revulsion for all things Phinon, the sense of innate wrongness about them, drove him into a frenzy whenever he was forced to be near any of the alien artifacts. But Dykstra had recast the alien technology in human terms, and with that Hague was perfectly content.

"So let me describe what's going to happen, maybe as soon as three months from now," Dykstra continued. "Our modified streakbomber is going to depart from Earth without even the hint of an exhaust jet, and speed on its way to the Capitol Products base outside the Hague Limit. From there, the ship and her crew will become the first from this race to vault into hyperspace. What happens after that is up to us, and by us I mean just we few in this room, and one other whom I won't name yet."

"You're making this mysterious, Chris," Bob said. "Just what is it you have in mind? What's supposed to happen is that once our ship gets outside the Hague Limit, it's to undergo a series of tests, and they'll probably take months. You don't like that, do you?"

"Not one bit," Dykstra confirmed. "By the time our ship first jumps into hyperspace, the last thing we'll need will be more tests on the craft. What we will need is information on the Phinons.

"And maybe a specimen or two. Preferably living, right Sammi?"

"So now I find out why I'm here," she said. "You want to go capture some aliens, and you don't think the Patrol is going to go about it fast enough, do you?"

"You told me earlier that you really need a living specimen to confirm the value of your work. Does it bother you that I also came to that conclusion some time ago?"

"No. It makes sense. But I wonder why the Patrol hasn't made it a priority. I mean, given that we're going to have a ship actually capable of going after the Phinons any time we want to, I'd have thought capturing specimens-or hostages, whatever-would be an obvious thing to do."

Dykstra sighed. "It is, but there are other considerations. Since Major Moore was sent back to Earth, I've essentially become the head of the alien technology and studies group. But I don't carry any exceptional clout in the rooms where strategy is discussed. And there are essentially two competing views about how to deal with the Phinon threat.

"My view is that, though we know very little about the aliens themselves-their motives, their plans, this ongoing question of their 'souls'-we do know enough about their technology to conclude that they are only a short distance ahead of us in some technical fields, and probably behind us in others. For instance, we've yet to find any evidence that they have nanotechnology or genano capabilities. If it is the case that they are as I've painted them, then our strategy is straightforward. We fight them ship-to-ship, bomb their bases, find out where they are and go after them, and design nasty weapons like Sammi's rust bugs."

"I thought that pretty much was the only view," Bob said. "What else are people thinking of doing-cease-fire talks?"

The group laughed, except for Hague, who had wandered back to the autochef and was getting himself another drink. Dykstra said, "The Patrol doesn't have any diplomats, so that suggestion hasn't come up.

But have you heard of a Colonel Knoedler, Bob?"

"Colonel Tommy? Sure. He pulled himself up through the ranks from enlisted man. They hold him out as a model for new recruits during boot camp. What's his view?"

Sammi watched the old genius as he stood up and began pacing before he answered. She got the impression that he found the opposing view not just wrong, but personally troubling as well. Nevertheless, he resumed the discussion.

"I don't want to unfairly characterize Knoedler's position," he began. "I've met the man. He does seem to merit the honor he's paid among the recruits. But his ideas are not particularly flattering to me, and the influence he wields in the strategy group is leading to delays and what I think is a foolish level of pseudo-caution that I feel could be dangerous to, well, humanity."

"As bad as that?" Rick asked, rhetorically.

"In a nutshell, the colonel thinks that we're the victims of an ingenious ruse on the part of the Phinons. He feels that this alien technology we acquired from their ship and their implements, and our subsequent mastery, has all come too easily. He thinks the Phinons wanted us to develop our own FTL technology, to the point where we become overly dependent upon it, and then perhaps they'll trot out some sort of super weapon that will, to use his words, 'take us out in one blow.' "

"Oh, right!" Bob hooted in derision. "Like you'd give aircraft technology to savages just so you could shoot them down later with surface-to-air missiles. If you have that kind of technology and they don't, then why bother?"

Dykstra smiled, obviously gratified by Bob's outburst. But he said, "It's not quite as simple as that. It is possible to conjure up a scenario that would work for them. Suppose they have a weapon that, say, causes spacecraft in hyperspace to disintegrate. And suppose the technology of that weapon is not readily derived from the FTL technology. We could then assemble an armada of FTL spacecraft and send it on its way, only to have the Phinons destroy it easily. Not only would we lose the fleet, but all of that time and effort and money that went into creating it."

"Do you think that's likely, Chris?" Samantha asked.

"No. For one thing, I wouldn't trust us not to figure out the secret of the other weapon and develop a counter. And there are other considerations . . ." he said, but he trailed off, and seemed to be thinking about something.

"I have a dispute with the idea that we acquired the technology too easily," Rick piped up. "He's selling you short, Chris. I was working on the Phinon stuff before we called you in. We were hopelessly befuddled. I know we wouldn't have figured out the mass conversion trick. And as for the theory of FTL travel . . . Well, I've read your reports, and I don't think I'll ever understand them. I know you taught Arie how to do the math, but I don't think he really understands the physical principles involved. And besides you two I doubt if there's anyone else in the whole Solar System who could begin to understand hyperphysics."

"Thank you, Rick," Dykstra said.

"I'm not saying it just to be nice. For Knoedler to be right, it would require the Phinons to know that we had a James Christian Dykstra on the scene to figure things out for us. I don't see how that's possible."

"There's something else though, isn't there, Chris?" Samantha asked. "You think you've figured out something about the Phinons that no one else has, and that's why you're willing to have us-what? Violate orders and steal the first FTL spaceship to do things your way."

They all looked at Dykstra then, even Hague, and waited.

"Yes," he said. "I have been pondering their technology, burying myself in it. I've tried to think like they think, tried to reconstruct the pathways by which they arrived at their level of physical understanding, because presumably they didn't have the technology fall into their laps like we did. I've marveled at their astuteness in some instances, and been dumbfounded at their blindness in others.

"I don't know for certain, but I'm fairly sure that I do know what they are. But I can't very well walk into the strategy room and explain to the generals that the Phinons have no souls and so Knoedler's concerns are simply anthropomorphic paranoia."

"No, I guess not," Sammi said ironically. "But are you going to explain it to us?"