"We'll have to agree on an amount. I warn you, they won't be easily satisfied."

"As I told you, my father will be generous. What else?"

"There's the problem of your celebrity. Word is bound to get back to Cloudcroft if anyone recognizes you."

She nodded. "And it won't take long to track down the ship I arrived on. I'll have to disguise my appearance, at least until a Titanian spacecraft can pick me up."

He nodded. "Some place other than Glasgow. I doubt the laird will want to draw attention to himself by hosting one of your father's ships."

"Then it's agreed? I will masquerade as a member of your crew until you can arrange to send me home. I would not worry too much about the Alliance tracking you down. As soon as my father learns that I'm safe, they will have far bigger things to worry about."

Sands held out a hand and helped her to her feet. "That was the general idea in bringing you along."

Kelt Dalishaar stalked into the main briefing center of Alliance Naval Headquarters and moved to take his seat in front of the assembled members of the high command. Grand Admiral Jerzy Samorset's resplendent blue-and-white uniform appeared slept in. The rest of the admirals and captains did not look much better.

Serves them right, Dalishaar thought as he sat down at the antique table.

"Well?" he demanded. "How did it happen?"

"Captain Berghoff!" Samorset growled.

The designated officer stood up and strode to the lectern. Behind it was an oversize holocube.

"First Councilor. The raiders came in on flight wings and landed atop the gas bag."

"Why didn't we detect them en route?"

"Conditions for detection are particularly bad this near the cyclone, sir. The wings and harnesses weretreated with radar absorbent coating and the lack of motive power minimized their infrared emissions.

Their ship hid in the northern cloud wall, effectively shielding it from our sensors."

"Are you telling me, Captain, that theyglided here from the cloud wall? "

"It would appear that they did, First Councilor."

"Impossible. No one would dare cross so much open sky on flight wings. Have you checked the ships in the vicinity?"

"Yes, Councilor," the grand admiral said from his seat. "We have arrested the crews of every ship that passed within glide range of Cloudcroft last night and are interrogating them vigorously."

Dalishaar stood and began to pace. "What you are telling me, gentlemen, is that we have a blind spot."

"No longer," Captain Berghoff replied. "We installed several long range instruments atop the gas bag and took steps to increase our perimeter patrols yesterday."

"In other words, you are doing what you should have donebefore the raid!"

"Uh, yes, sir."

"What efforts are you making to identify the culprits? You people certainly had enough time to get a close look at their ship."

"I'm afraid that won't be of much help," the captain behind the lectern responded.

"Oh? Why not?"

"The air samples we took show a high degree of outgassing from an ammonia soluble coating. The ship's outer markings were no more than a few days old. Obviously, they intend to eliminate the fake paint scheme before they put into their next port of call."

"And the airships?"

"We might have better luck with them. They are too big to completely paint over. We have high-resolution holoscans of each and may be able to match them with records of known vessels. If not, we can at least come up with a series of characteristics for our agents to be on the lookout for."

"That, at least, shows some promise."

"There is also the matter of the Titanian woman," Grand Admiral Samorset said. "They may have made a mistake in taking her. Our agents need only watch for her and notify us when she reappears."

"You are being remarkably profligate withmy agents, Admiral. Do you have any idea how overworked our espionage service is already? Now you'll have them checking every port and hotel on Saturn."

"It would have been better if we'd stopped them, First Councilor, but I fail to see how else we can proceed."

"Since you bring it up, Admiral," Dalishaar said in a deceptively soft voice, "let us move on to that particularly shameful part of this episode. How, in the name of all that is holy, did three lumbering airships and a pirate air shark escape your squadrons?"

Samorset squirmed visibly in his chair. "I may have erred when I ordered our forces to concentrate onthe main privateer vessel, First Councilor. I figured that we could always overtake the freighters once we'd dealt with their leader."

"How is it that your people bungled the intercept then?"

"I have no excuse, sir. The commander of our blocking force made a tactical misjudgment when he allowed himself to be drawn down to the same altitude. He has been disciplined."

"I wish I could be as philosophical as you are about this. These raiders have made fools of us, gentlemen, and I will not rest until I have made object lessons of them!"

Dalishaar glared at the military men, careful not to let his hands begin trembling again. He did not tell them that the stakes were far higher than they realized. It had taken several hours to find the note the pirates had left in his desk drawer. It would not do to reveal that his personal data files had been compromised.

That would lead to questions about what secrets he kept in those files, questions Dalishaar could not afford to answer. He was not about to admit that he might well have lost the most important secret on Saturn.

Chapter 10: Glasgow-in-the-Clouds.

"Captain to Halley Trevanon's cabin,"the voice announced over the intercom.

Larson Sands glanced up at the sound. He was in his own cabin going over the list of plunder. It was an impressive list. Just considering the items inSparrowHawk 's holds, he calculated the proceeds from the raid would allow every crewmember to live comfortably for life. When their share of everything aboard Micah Bolin's airships was counted, they were all rich beyond imagining, even figuring in the fraction of true value their plunder would bring on the black market. Indeed, they would all be so wealthy that they would have to be careful not to attract unwanted attention. When the call came over the intercom, Sands keyed to have the list of booty printed as he answered, "On my way!"

He shut down his workscreen and slid his cabin door into its recess. Around him were the deep-throated thrum ofSparrowHawk 's engines and the constant sound of hydrogen-helium sweeping past the fuselage. Halley's cabin was two doors aft on the port side. He knocked and waited for the muffled command to enter.

As he opened the door, he found his copilot putting the final touches on Kimber Crawford's new hairstyle. Halley stepped back and said, "Well, what do you think?"

Kimber pirouetted before him with elbows held close to her sides lest she brush Halley's bookshelf. She was a transformed woman. Where before her hair had been long and black, now it was short and red.

Her green eyes had been turned blue and her cheekbones seemed higher.

Sands had seen pictures of redheads on Earth. They had been covered with uneven splotches where the sun had tanned their skins. People on Saturn lived too far from Sol and too deep in the atmosphere to develop freckles. Kimber now possessed the peaches-and-cream complexion that went with being a "carrot top."

There were other, less obvious changes. Halley had somehow made her seem harder. She was no longer the daughter of the most powerful man on Titan. She could easily have been from the laborer class. Her costume accentuated her coarseness. She wore a garish shipsuit with a copper belt wide enough to beconsidered vulgar. Finally, her regal bearing had been subtly altered. She slouched. Here was a woman who could not possibly have been a student at the expensive finishing schools Kimber Crawford had attended.

Sands whistled. "I don't believe it."

"Captain Sands, may I introduce Miss Karen Colin, your newest crew member."

"Miss Colin," Sands said as he bowed to kiss Kimber's hand.

"How do, Captain." Even her voice had changed. It now had a reedier, more nasal quality. "Do I pass inspection?"

"With full honors!"

"Do you really think she'll fool them, Lars?" Halley asked. Despite her misgivings about Kimber, she was proud of her handiwork.

"Even people who know her would have trouble recognizing her in that outfit."

"Thank you, kind sir," Kimber/Karen replied, curtsying as she did so. The movement was choppy, as though she had copied it from a holovid. "I just hope my father recognizes me when I call him to tell him I'm safe."

Sands chewed his lower lip for a moment. "I've been thinking about that. I'm afraid we'll have to delay that call."

"Why?"

"I've got to find out where I stand with the Laird of Glasgow. If he's my employer, he may have something to say about when and where we arrange a pickup."

"Is there any doubt that we're working for Glasgow?" Halley asked.

Sands shrugged. "Bolin merely told us to meet him there. He didn't say a word about the Scots being our clients. If theyare not our clients, then we have to be especially careful about arranging a pickup. It is certain a Titanian freighter cannot call openly. A simple information search would alert Cloudcroft to its presence the moment it arrived."

"Why can't we call my father right now, before we get to Glasgow?"

Sands shook his head. "Any message we send through the planetary comm net will haveSparrowHawk 's identification code imbedded in it. If the Alliance were to intercept it, they'd know who we are as soon as they called up the transmission header."

Kimber sighed. "Then I'll wait until we get to Glasgow and you arrange things with the laird. Maybe I could drop father a simple unsigned note telling him that I'm safe."

"We'll see."

The three cloud cities of the Glasgow Cluster hovered in the eye of a small cyclone at the southern edge of the North Equatorial Belt. The Scots-descended inhabitants preferred the isolation of their cyclone to the crowded cloud canyons of the main planetary flyways. Like their forebears, they had a reputation forbeing both fiercely proud and possessing an independence that bordered on the fanatic.

The Glasgow cyclone was imbedded in a region where the interface between belt and zone turned turbulent. Upstream of the transition point, the cloud wall had the appearance of having been smoothed by a giant trowel. Downstream, the wall was a jumble of clouds, clear air canyons, and giant cumulus formations adrift like icebergs in the flyway.

It was a beautiful day asSparrowHawk followed the north equatorial belt to where a canyon branched away to the south and disappeared around a gentle curve. Sands sent his ship into the canyon, whose apparent narrowness proved an illusion. As he flew, he let his eyes drink in the grandeur of the cloudscape around him. The fact that Saturn's beauty was largely the product of a psycho-physiological quirk of the human eye did nothing to diminish his enjoyment.

At Saturn's distance from Sol, sunlight is only about one percent as intense as on Earth. Even so, human beings are far from blind on the planet. The human eye adapts readily over a very wide range of light levels. In fact, the brightest moonlight on Earth was only about one-millionth as strong as the illumination at high noon. If one believes the old books, people could see reasonably well under a full moon, although only in black-and-white.

There are two different receptors in the eye that react to light. The more sensitive of these are the rods, which provide a monochromatic view of the world at very low light levels. When subjected to bright light, the eye switches from the rods to the less sensitive cones. Since cones react to the red, green, and blue wavelengths, people see in color during the daylight hours.

The two sets of receptors perform different jobs. It is therefore not surprising that they are most sensitive to light at two slightly different wavelengths. There is a level of illumination, known as the Mesozoic range, where both rods and cones are active simultaneously. When this happens, the eye undergoes an apparent color shift. Reds become dark or black, and blues become much more intense.

The low light level at Saturn's distance from the sun, plus the filtering effect of the high atmospheric haze, conspired to create this effect. The level of illumination in the deep clear air canyons was almost precisely in the middle of the Mesozoic range. The result was a world of muted reds and vivid blues, a color combination that most human beings found soothing.

A river of clear hydrogen-helium spewing into the Glasgow cyclone had carved the canyon SparrowHawk followed. It was the path the three Glasgow cities had taken to establish themselves in the eye of the thousand-year-old storm. It was also the only authorized entryway for ships having business there. Anyone who attempted to approach through the cloud wall would quickly find himself under attack by the Glasgow guard force.

Sands had heard stories about the efficiency of the Scots' detector systems. He was not surprised, therefore, when they were hailed a full two hundred kilometers short of their destination.

"Who are you?" came the curt question broadcast over a tight beam from the cloud cover somewhere ahead.

"SparrowHawk. We are a privateer out of Port Gregson, bound for the southern hemisphere. Our portside reactor ingested something solid around Second Midnight yesterday and we need to put in for repairs."

"Armament?" the voice snapped.

"We have the usual antiship missiles and close in lasers.""Stand by,SparrowHawk . I'll check with my superiors and get back with you."

There was a five-minute delay while the controller consulted higher authority. While they waited, Halley said, "They're making it look good, aren't they? He sounds like he isn't expecting us."

Sands shrugged. "He probably isn't. They would be stupid to tell their low level functionaries about the raid."

The controller came back on the air. "The landing fee will be a hundred credits per ton and you'll have to pay for any repairs in advance."

"That is acceptable."

"Very well. Standard approach under city control with full verification of weapons lock engaged."

"Will do."

"Report the outer marker,SparrowHawk . Welcome to Glasgow."

"What did he mean, 'weapons lock engaged?'" Kimber asked. Once again, she was seated in the jumpseat between the two pilots.

"It's a standard precaution," Halley replied, pointing to a large red lever on the instrument console. "That is our master arm switch. Once we throw it to the disarm position, there is no way for our computer to fire the weapons. The city computer will verify the disarm when we turn control over to it. If anything is amiss, or if we make even the slightest untoward move, they will vaporize us with a city laser."

"Is it safe to put ourselves so completely in their hands? If I had contracted to raid the Alliance, I might want to make sure the raiders couldn't talk about it later."

"They'll have plenty of opportunities to kill us once we're aboard Glasgow-Prime," Sands replied. "Why destroy all that valuable cargo in our holds?"

"All the more reason you shouldn't trust them."

He shrugged. "What choice have we? They have had our fate in their hands since the moment we boarded Cloudcroft. How difficult would it be for the Laird of Glasgow to pick up a phone and tell Kelt Dalishaar where to find us?"

"He'd be implicating himself."