"Correct, sir. If the woman on Titan is the same one, she is Halley Federova Trevanon,SparrowHawk 's copilot. That would make the man Larson Clarke Sands."

"Both cockpit crew?"

"Yes, sir. The cockpit was probably the escape module that wasn't seen."

"So theydid survive!"

"That explains Crawford's willingness to deal. He will make us pay a price for holding his daughter, but the payment will be in credits, not blood. If he thought we were responsible for her death, we would probably be looking at a Titanian strike against our home cities."

"Would he really destroy a city to avenge his daughter?"

"Do you know a father who would not?"

Dalishaar sighed. "We will concede this year's contest to the Titanians with as much grace as we can muster. Matters will be different come next year. By then we should be well on our way to our ultimate goal." The First Councilor glanced at the security readout on his desk. It declared all anti-eavesdroppingdevices to be functional and operating. "What of that other matter?"

"My agent reported that she has discovered where the Titanians are keeping the two special guests. She is ready to retrieve our lost property."

"Does she know the significance of the prize?"

"All she has been told is that the privateers made off with sensitive Alliance data."

"What if Titanian security has the record tile?"

Lamarque shrugged. "Then there is little we can do. It will be very expensive to break the codes. They may not be willing to spend the money. Even if they do manage to crack the tile, there is a good chance they won't understand the significance of what they have."

"We can't take the risk. We are in a very critical phase. If we speed up our preparations, we may tip the Militarists to our plans.It is absolutely vital that we retrieve that tile! "

"If the privateers still have it, our agent will get it away from them."

"Keep me informed," Dalishaar said in a note of dismissal.

Lamarque rose and left by the same door through which he had arrived. On the other end of the short hallway was a sealed exit leading to a side passageway. It allowed him to avoid the crush of people in the first councilor's public anteroom.

As he walked back to his own office, he chewed his lower lip. What he had not told Dalishaar was that a high priority message had arrived from their agent just before he had been summoned to eavesdrop on the meeting with the Fleet Admiral. The agent had failed in her first attempt to retrieve the record tile.

The first councilor's mood was such that Lamarque did not intend to deliver such news until he had something with which to offset it. Dalishaar had a reputation for shooting the messenger who brought bad news. Besides, he thought, their agent might be more successful next time.

Almy Breck stared at the computer printout in disbelief. The message that had gone into the machine had been an innocuous note from her mother who had written to say that she was extending her tour and would not be home until the seventeenth. The letter had gone on to recount several items of gossip about traveling companions Almy had never met. Naturally, the sheet that came out of the decoder said something quite different.

BEGIN MESSAGE:.

WE ARE MOST UNHAPPY WITH THE FAILURE OF YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT. IMPERATIVE.

THAT YOU OBTAIN RECORD TILE FROM LARSON SANDS BEFORE THE SEVENTEENTH.

TRY AGAIN AS SOON AS YOU ARE ABLE. REPEAT, IMPERATIVE!.

SIGNED P.L. LARMARQUEFOR THE FIRST COUNCILOR.

END MESSAGE.

"Who the hell does he think I am? James Bond?" she muttered as she destroyed the message.

Mostly, Almy Breck enjoyed her life. Her work as a communications technician in the Office of Trade allowed her to practice her real profession, that of intelligence agent for the Northern Alliance. She saw all but the most highly classified messages flowing between Titania and her far-flung trade offices.

Almy was also engaged to the youngest son of one of Titan's oldest families. Benito Mayerling was a spoiled young man and someone Almy would not normally have looked twice at. However, his family's social standing provided a never-ending supply of party invitations. It was surprising how many government secrets could be overheard at cocktail parties. She had often pondered whether it had always been so.

In the four years since she had established her cover identity, Almy had never been asked to do anything more than report the occasional tidbit she picked up. That had changed with a flash priority message from Kelt Dalishaar himself. Dalishaar had ordered her to locate Larson Sands and relieve him of a record tile. When she had asked for more details, she'd received a tartly worded reply stating that she had no "need to know." She had composed a scathing response to the effect that one record tile looks pretty much like any other, but had not transmitted it. She had been in the business long enough to know when a field agent was handed the dirty end of a stick.

Finding Larson Sands had proved easier than expected. Her cook friend had reported seeing him at a private dinner at the factor's official residence. In going over her department files, she had discovered a message from Blaumgarten in the southern hemisphere. It was from the trade representative there, giving Arvin Taggart permission to use his apartment.

Since the apartment was only three corridors over from her own, Almy had acted on a hunch and taken to watching the public areas for some sign of the elusive privateer. She had spotted him with Kimber Crawford on the third day of her vigil. After that, she had taken to strolling down Sands's corridor on her way to and from work. She had gotten off duty the previous day and had taken her customary stroll. The lack of activity in the corridor had emboldened her to stop and knock on Sands's door. There had been no answer. She'd used some specialized equipment she had never expected to need to gain entry. Not knowing how long Sands would be gone, she had searched quickly and with no concern for destruction, and looking everywhere he could conceivably have hidden a record tile.

She had been getting very frustrated when a sound from the door alerted her that someone was attempting entry. She had picked up a vase and flattened herself against the wall. There had not been time to think. She'd smashed the vase over the head of a woman she'd never seen, then slipped out into the corridor and made her way to her own apartment.

It had been hours before she calmed down enough to write her report. She was furious about the risk she had been forced to take. She was still furious when the second message arrived and demanded that she try again.

Who the hell did they think she was...?

Chapter 17: Record Tile.

Kimber Crawford smiled as she gazed upon Lars's sleeping form. He was sprawled face down across her bed, snoring softly, with a sheet tangled around his hips and one leg. She let her eyes trace the pattern of muscles in his back and thought of how lucky she had been to meet this vital, vibrant man.

Kimber had always been leery of anyone who tried to get close to her, especially men. She had learned early that no matter how much they professed their love; it was influence with her father they coveted.

Larson Sands was different. She had realized how different when the privateers had debated putting her over the side to protect their identities. Lars had been her champion, opposing his own crew to save her life. Kimber had studied enough psychology to know that her feelings were partially rooted in that incident, a natural reaction toward a protector. Knowing their cause did not make her feelings any less real.

She climbed out of bed carefully so as not to wake Lars and slipped into a dressing gown. After brushing her hair a few strokes in front of the bedroom mirror, she padded barefoot to the kitchen. There she selected two breakfast packets, popped them into the oven, then dialed for coffee and orange juice. With the morning meal begun, she walked into the living room.

After leaving Lars's ransacked apartment, they had visited Halley Trevanon in the hospital. Lars had been even more quiet than usual during the ten-minute stroll. It was then that Kimber had realized the attack on Halley had disturbed him more than he was letting on.

Once at the hospital, they'd found her lying in bed in a hospital gown, engaged in animated conversation with a handsome young doctor. Except for a bruise on the right side of her face, Halley had seemed none the worse for wear. The two Saturnians talked for nearly fifteen minutes. As Arvin Taggart had told them, she had had no warning of the attack. All she could remember was using the combination that opened the door and catching a glimpse of the general destruction before someone had hit her from behind.

When Lars was sure that Halley was all right, he and Kimber had returned to her quarters. There they had dropped his meager possessions on the living room floor and raced one another to the bedroom.

They had made love with abandon until the early morning hours when they had finally fallen asleep in one each other's arms.

Lars's kit bag was where they had left it. Kimber picked it up and carried it into the bedroom to put the clothes away. When she opened the closure, she found that he had merely wadded up the outfits he had been given on his arrival and stuffed them inside the bag.

Kimber clucked quietly to herself as she extricated the wrinkled ball of clothing from the kit bag and separated it into individual items. She sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed as she worked. She stretched each piece of clothing to its full length, and then folded it neatly before laying it on its own pile.

She quickly had shipsuits on one pile, underwear on another, shirts on a third. When she finished with the clothes from the kit bag, she noticed the shipsuit Lars had worn the previous day flung carelessly over a chair.

By leaning forward, she managed to get one leg between two fingers without getting up. She pulled the suit toward her until she had enough of the tough cloth that she could gain a more substantial grip. She then pulled the shipsuit off the chair and toward her.

On impulse, she buried her nose in the fabric, breathing deeply of the odor of her man. Mildlyembarrassed by the atavistic action, she hurriedly glanced around at Lars. He was still sleeping, although he had rolled over from his stomach to his back, tangling himself even more deeply in the sheets in the process. A detached part of her mind noted the sudden warmth she had felt upon inhaling his fragrance.

Not for the first time she wondered if humanity's exile hadn't divorced people too far from the pleasurable stimuli with which Earth must have abounded.

Usually clothing could be worn for several days in the sterile environment of the Titania main dome. The shipsuit she held, however, had been soiled during their visit to the mine. Rather than folding it, Kimber decided that it should be cleaned. Humming quietly to herself, she opened the various closures and began extracting the things that a man carried with him.

In addition to several magnetic keys and some pocket change, she found his wallet. She opened it on impulse and discovered the universal credit card he had used on Saturn, along with several photographs.

One showed Lars and his brother. They were standing in what must have been a city diorama, arm in arm, smiling at the camera. Dane Sands had been a handsome man, she noted. No wonder Halley was so broken up by his death. Other pictures showed two people who must be Lars's parents. There were two photographs of women as well. Kimber felt a sudden tinge of jealousy, and ruthlessly pushed it back down. She resolved never to mention the matter to him. If he wanted to tell her about the photos, he would; if not, not.

She was about to close the wallet when a polychromatic flash caught her eye. She found that a fabric liner had worn through to show the corner of a glass rectangle. She reached in, extracted the record tile between thumb and forefinger, and held it up to the light. It flashed with the sparkle of a rainbow, indicating that the tile had something recorded in it. The label was unmarked and the tile was no different from millions of others. She wondered why Lars was carrying it around in his wallet.

She was about to put it back when Lars stirred behind her. She turned to watch him as he arched his back in a giant stretching motion and groaned his way awake.

"Hello, sleepyhead!"

It took him a moment to figure out where she was. Finally, he propped himself up on his elbows and gazed smilingly at her.

"Hello, yourself. What are you doing down there?"

"I'm unpacking your clothes."

"You don't have to do that."

"I want to. Besides, from the evidence, you must be the Saturnian system's worst packer."

"I was in a hurry."

"It would seem so." She held the record tile up where he could see it sparkle in the overhead light.

"What's this?"

He focused his eyes on it. "Oh, that. Just a souvenir I picked up in Kelt Dalishaar's office. Halley and I decided to give him something to worry about. We dumped his private computer and then left him a note telling him about it."

"And you've been carrying this around ever since?"

"Sure. It's a reminder of how I met you."Kimber blinked. Alarms were going off in her brain, yet, she could not quite figure out what they were telling her. Then everything clicked into place. "Couldthis be what our intruder was looking for?"

Sands sat bolt upright in bed, all thought of sleep forgotten. "It's a long shot, but you may be right."

"I think we should tell Arvin Taggart about this right away."

"Before breakfast?"

She smiled. "It can wait until after we've eaten."

Taggart held the record tile where Halley Trevanon could see it. "Captain Sands says that you were able to make a recording of Kelt Dalishaar's private files. Is that true?"

Halley stared at the tile for a few seconds before nodding. She had been awakened a few minutes earlier by a nurse who had announced three visitors. She had barely made herself presentable when Lars, Kimber, and Taggart had surrounded the foot of her bed.

"Tell me exactly what you did to get this recording," Taggart ordered.

Halley explained how they had forced Kelt Dalishaar to give them access to his personal workstation so she could monitor the raiders in Cloudcroft's landing bay. She recounted how she had searched the first coordinator's desk and how she had been surprised to find a high performance computer hidden in one of the pedestals.

"And you were able to obtain access to this machine?"

"Sure," she said. "I ran a directory check, found the command Dalishaar used to switch to the machine in his desk, and activated it."

"How did you know the access was to the machine in the desk? What convinced you that you weren't merely talking to a different part of the main city computer?"

Halley shrugged. "The operating system prompts were entirely different. Besides, the box in the desk had a maintenance interface on it. I noticed that one of the panel lights would illuminate each time I accessed it. I think it must have been indicating that the communications link with the city computer was off line."

"And what did you find in this computer?"

"Nothing," she replied. "It was security locked, of course. I couldn't get any farther than the first menu."

"What happened next?"

"Lars came back about that time and I showed him what I had found. We decided to give Dalishaar one more thing to worry about; I used the computer's housekeeping routines to copy everything in memory.

Then we left Dalishaar a note telling him about what we had done. As Lars said, one more small revenge for Dane!"

Taggart shook his head. "That is what I don't understand. You claim this was Dalishaar's personal machine; yet, you were able to copy its memory. Any tyro in security knows not to allow housekeeping routines access to that sort of information without a password. My God, that's been standard procedure for centuries!""I wouldn't know about that," Halley said. "I do know that I checked the file statistics on my copy and they were identical to those displayed with the main directory."

"Then someone in the Alliance was unforgivably sloppy in setting up that machine!"

Kimber smiled, as though something funny had just occurred to her. "Maybe Dalishaar did it himself."

"Why would he do that, Miss Crawford?"

"Because he didn't want anyone else to know about that computer. Maybe the information is so sensitive that he could not trust the usual techs to maintain it. That would explain his making such an elementary mistake."