During the flight, he noted some anomalous flickers on his long-range scans, but he found nothing, so he recalibrated the sensors.

As he orbited Vaconda, the continents looked pale and ghostly, covered with lichentree forests, tall spiky growths of lavender and white. According to legal Hansa paperwork, which had been grandfathered into Confederation rules, the forest watchstation on Vaconda belonged entirely to Zoe Alakis. He supposed that on other parts of the continent there could be outlaws or squatters. Nobody cared. The planet was basically uninhabited.

More than twenty years ago, he had incinerated a swath of forest, per Zoe's request. Together, they let the fires rage uncontrollably until nature itself shut down the blaze, but in only a few years, the fecund jungle had subsumed the area, erasing any remaining scar. Now there was no hint of the watchstation where Zoe and her father had made their home for so long.

Even without familiar landmarks, Tom Rom knew the exact location. In the years since, he had returned here often to retrieve prisdiamonds, and had deposited tremendous fortunes in numerous planetary banks in Zoe's name.

When she decided that her goal in life was to create a disease library and research installation, Tom Rom had set aside all the funds she could possibly need. Following in her father's footsteps, she offered to partner with other research teams, join her wealth to major facilities, but they took her investment, put her name on a new research wing, and then politely-then less politely-told her to go away and let "professionals" handle the important matters.

They viewed Zoe as a backward, socially maladjusted girl who had grown up on a wilderness planet, little different from a feral child. She was innocent of commercial and academic politics, accepted promises at their face value (Tom Rom was her only example of a man who was true to his word), and she did not fit in well among them. She funded huge projects that were swallowed up in bureaucracies and regulations, with results lost in delays or obscurity. Other people took the fruits of her teams' research and called it proprietary information that became lost in a deep gravity well of "development" and "profitability assessments." When she tried to take the discoveries she had funded, they shut her out, ousted her from their boards, but graciously kept her name on the research wing she had built.

Afterward, Zoe abandoned all thoughts of kindness and cooperation. She decided to do it herself, her own way, with all results under her control.

In preparing to build Pergamus on her own terms, she came to regret her impetuous decision to burn down the forest watchtower station along with all records and research her father had compiled during his years on Vaconda. When Zoe poured out her feelings of guilt over destroying her father's work, Tom Rom had stared at her, his expression flat. Finally, he admitted that out of a sense of obligation to Adam, he had backed up her father's data, preserving it despite her instructions. She had wept, then thrown her arms around him. Tom Rom could not recall ever having been so moved.

Zoe spared no expense in setting up her complete private facility on Pergamus-and even that depleted only a small fraction of her wealth. She wanted it, and Tom Rom made it happen. He arranged to build the domed research facilities and orbital research stations for her. Zoe tracked down the best scientists in a variety of fields-medicine, biochemistry, genetics-and sent Tom Rom to approach them discreetly.

Her first order of business, of course, had been to develop a cure for Heidegger's Syndrome. It felt like a twist of the knife when the cure did not even prove to be difficult, once researchers applied resources and time to the problem. If only someone had been able to do that for her father ...

While she lived, her work would be her own obsession, her own masterpiece. She agreed to share all her results after her eventual death, not because she was generous, but because she didn't care what happened afterward. She had no interest in fame, or history, or making any mark. She didn't have to explain her priorities to anyone.

Now, as Tom Rom descended through Vaconda's atmosphere, he caught a strange echo on his sensor map, but lost the flicker again when he reached the lichentree forests.

The thick spiky treetops did not mesh into a solid canopy, and the forest floor was too dense and cluttered for him to land his ship there. Rather, he dropped a pontoon tarpaulin that self-inflated and expanded, anchoring itself to the lichentrees. This gave his ship a tough temporary spot to land.

Settling down on the suspended tarpaulin, the craft swayed, then stabilized. He collected specimen cases and extraction tools, filled the fuel tank in his torch gun for clearing underbrush. Wearing a headlamp and two shoulder-mounted lamps to penetrate the murk, he strapped everything to his back, emerged from the hatch, and looked around the pale and silent forest. After activating the locator beacon on his ship, he strung his cables and rappelled down the hollow-sounding trunk of a lichentree all the way to the forest floor.

The lower levels were lit by ghostly sunlight filtered through a mist of fine spores. The ground was a chaos of deadfall. Large-eyed salamanders scuttled away, leaving faint trails of phosphorescent slime behind. Mushroom globules jittered and wobbled as if in secret laughter as Tom Rom crashed past.

The lichentree forest seemed to be closing in around him, but his locator gave him his bearings. Down here in the gloom, everything looked the same, but he knew where he was going.

He unshouldered his torch gun and began blasting. A large blue slime mold tried to slump away, shrugging and rolling at glacial speed. Tom Rom played bright flames over the area, igniting the lichentree deadfall and the squirming mosses. He continued to focus the torch, burning the vegetation, then burning the ash. The heat itself activated the prisdiamonds, which made them easier to find.

Putting on a breather mask and thick gloves, he cleared away the powdery residue to reveal sparkling clusters like geological ice crystals bursting out of the rocks. He struck them with a rock hammer, snapped off the valuable gems, and scooped up the glittery debris until he had filled his satchel.

The torch gun's fuel chamber was empty, and Tom Rom discarded it, not wanting to bother carrying it back up to the treetops. Tired and sweaty, he stripped off his heavy protective gear and dropped it on the ground so he could make good time back to the ship. He followed the signal from his locator.

When he reached the rope at the base of the tall lichentree, he could see the bright fabric of his pontoon tarpaulin high above and the shadow of his waiting ship. He secured his satchel of prisdiamonds, clipped onto the rope, and activated the climber, which scrolled him back up to the treetops.

Reaching the spore-hazed daylight above, he blinked in disoriented surprise. Another ship had landed adjacent to his own vessel. It was a battered, disreputable-looking craft without any markings. Tom Rom reached for his torch gun, but he had left it down on the forest floor.

Four men in ragged jumpsuits were waiting for him, two had Roamer clan markings that had been scuffed and covered. He did not recognize the men. He did recognize their type. They might well be Roamers but they were definitely outcasts, better labeled as pirates. The men crossed a metal gangplank from their own ship to his pontoon tarpaulin.

"See? Told you he'd come back," said a thin man with sideburns so long he clearly had poor judgment in shaving.

"And I told you it was better just to wait here than to go looking for him," said a second man.

All four withdrew hand jazers.

Tom Rom regarded them. "I think I saw you at Ulio. You must have gotten lost on your way here."

"No, we followed you just fine," said the man with the sideburns.

"I should be more careful, then."

The men chuckled and kept the weapons trained on him. "Yes, you probably should."

Tom Rom did not like to feel so helpless. He could fight, but he had no weapons. They would cut him down.

"Let's just see what he's got in that case," said the quietest man, who seemed to be the leader. He had a head of thick red hair combed back away from his forehead. He looked at Tom Rom. "We ransacked your ship, but didn't find much of value. So we figured there must be something more important here."

"Yeah," interjected the man with the sideburns. "Who ever goes to Vaconda?"

"Maybe you shouldn't have come here," Tom Rom said.

They relieved him of his case, and when they opened it to reveal the prisdiamonds, they nearly fell off the pontoon tarpaulin. "Prisdiamonds! Where the hell did he get those?"

"Obviously down there." The quiet leader pointed toward the forest floor.

"We could each buy two starships with this load," said Sideburns.

Probably three, Tom Rom thought, but he kept the comment to himself.

"This will be very satisfactory," said the leader. "Well worth the trip."

"We'll have to remember this place," said Sideburns. "We should just kill him now and get it over with." The other pirates muttered in halfhearted agreement.

Tom Rom looked at the quiet leader without blinking. "You've already proved yourselves to be thieves, but not all thieves are murderers."

The leader apparently wasn't. "Go inside his ship and wreck the control panels, smash the engine conduits. He won't be going anywhere."

"You mean you're just stranding him here?" said Sideburns, as if that were a more horrendous fate.

"I can survive," Tom Rom said in a quiet voice, stating a fact.

"Good enough, then," the leader said. He turned his comrades loose inside Tom Rom's ship, where they destroyed the systems. When they came out, their expressions were aglow with the satisfaction of vandalism.

The quiet leader held the satchel of prisdiamonds, pleased with the haul. "I assume there's more down there?"

Tom Rom didn't nod, but the answer was clear enough.

"We'll be back, maybe rescue you. If you survive that long."

"I'll survive," Tom Rom repeated.

Carrying the prisdiamonds, the four Roamer outcasts walked back across the makeshift gangplank and pulled it up before climbing aboard their battered vessel. Sideburns gave Tom Rom a taunting look before sealing the hatch.

He didn't wait for the pirates to leave before ducking into his own ship. With a fast glance, Tom Rom scanned the damage: a few smashed power blocks, a peeled-off circuit film, a navigator control overlay, cracked instrument plates, two shattered viewscreens. His engines were quite durable, and he doubted they had sustained serious damage. The men had no organized sabotage plan, simply let loose with random destruction. Good, that would be easier to fix.

As he heard the Roamer ship priming its engines to leave, Tom Rom opened a locker, rummaged around, and withdrew a boomerang limpet. He'd never had occasion to use one before, but he came prepared. It seemed simple enough.

He stepped back out onto the uncertain surface of the pontoon tarpaulin and watched the battered pirate ship lift off. It accelerated into the sky, curving south as it climbed above the tops of the lichentree forest.

Tom Rom gripped the curved handle of the boomerang limpet, bent over to coil his muscles, and hurled it up into the air. It spun with a soft whistling sound, gathering speed until its motivators fired up. The limpet's sensors cast a wide net, then the device altered its trajectory, accelerated, and rose up to strike the bottom hull of the pirate ship. It clamped on to the metal plates and started its timer.

Tom Rom had set the countdown for forty seconds, which should allow the ship to fly high enough and far enough away that he wouldn't be bombarded with debris.

He counted silently, then watched a blossom of flames and shrapnel expand outward as the boomerang limpet detonated. Wreckage rained down into the pale white treetops, far from his position.

Tom Rom went back inside his ship to start the repairs. He knew how to jury-rig most of the systems, and he had spare parts and replacement circuitry for the vital components. He was able to tap into the independent propulsion system linked to the quarantine chamber/lifepod, which would give him the boost he needed. He could implement the rest of the repairs once he got back to Pergamus. Despite the inconvenience, he never had any doubt that he would make it.

The repairs took him three days.

Before flying away from Vaconda again, though, he had to return to the forest floor, using his spare protective suit. After so much trouble, he wasn't about to leave without a load of prisdiamonds.

CHAPTER.

80.

AELIN.

Full of wonder, Aelin arrived with Iswander at the ekti-extraction yard that accompanied the moving bloater cluster, and the industrialist gave him a full tour of the operations. Aelin felt overwhelmed with the sights and experiences.

"You cannot reveal anything about our operations, green priest," Iswander cautioned him for the third time, "but it's important for you to understand the full scope of what we're doing here."

Aelin recognized that the man was showing a remarkable amount of trust in him. While he understood the necessity for keeping secrets from Iswander's competitors, he found it disorienting to withhold thoughts and impressions from the worldforest network, acting only as a passive observer. After growing up in the wide-open worldforest, he was not well practiced in keeping secrets, but he kept his word to Lee Iswander.

He knew his brother must be in a similar situation on the mysterious Onthos city. Shelud had delivered reports of the vanished aliens and the interesting discoveries aboard the derelict, which the worldforest had translated, but he had given no details about the location of the new clan Reeves home of Okiah.

Neither brother could share his wondrous and amazing secrets, but Aelin and Shelud could share their excitement, if nothing else. Though they had disagreed in philosophy, they both found themselves in similar situations. Aelin realized that they might be closer than he expected.

Out here at the extraction field, bloaters drifted along in empty space, with a clear trajectory toward the nearest star, which was only a brighter spot in the forest of twinkling stars. The bloater cluster had no obvious means of propulsion, but it was accelerating.

Aelin stared out at the mysterious nodules floating together. Even the verdani knew nothing about them; he had searched the entire worldforest database, while being careful not to reveal where he was or what he knew.

As he watched the drifting bloaters, Aelin could sense something there, a distant slumbering force, a brooding ... presence. No one believed those gas bags were actually alive, but they did not seem to be a mere natural phenomenon either. Iswander, who considered them nothing more than space plankton, had promised that as soon as his operations were stabilized and running smoothly, he would bring in scientific teams for a full analysis, but so far he concentrated on the extraction. There would be time enough for the rest later.

When returning from Theroc, Iswander brought in six more tanker ships, which he used to drain raw ekti-X from the bloaters. Alec Pannebaker spent much of his time hauling away the empty, deflated husks, towing them from the rest of the cluster so they wouldn't get in the way. Even after all the ambitious extraction efforts, many hundreds of bloaters remained, crowded close in a great drifting cloud.

After the phenomenal success of the first ekti-extraction operations, Lee Iswander established a pilot industrial station in a second bloater cluster that Elisa Enturi had located. More and more workers arrived weekly for their isolated job assignments. And they produced more and more stardrive fuel.

Aelin often remained with Lee Iswander in the admin module, trying to learn the operations. "If this cluster still has so much ekti, why was it necessary to set up a second harvesting field?"

Iswander was patient with him, explaining the business, as if Aelin were still that bright-eyed young acolyte with a broken leg. "A secondary source of ekti-X at a different part of the Spiral Arm eases our distribution bottleneck. And," he added with just a small smile, "when our delivery ships originate from two different points, it's more difficult to backtrack our source. That should let us keep our secrets longer."

Iswander stretched his arms. "I have to take advantage of this boom and bank my fortune while I can. It's such a simple operation, sometimes I think this is too good to be true. As soon as bloaters are discovered elsewhere-and somebody will stumble upon a cluster-then anyone can harvest ekti-X. So much for our edge on the market. If there's such a glut, our operations might not be worthwhile anymore." He paused. "I want to keep this secret long enough to rebuild my family name, and make a future for Arden."

As a green priest, Aelin had never bothered to consider those nuances before. He realized that Iswander had made the last comment for his son to hear, since Arden had appeared at the hatch of the admin module. The young man cast a frown toward the green priest. "Then today's lesson should be about the ekti business, not history and legends and culture-that's all Aelin wants to talk about."

Because he had few actual duties in the bloater refinery yard, Aelin also tutored Iswander's son. He was not trained as a teacher, nor had he planned a curriculum, but whenever he needed information for a lesson, he used his treeling to tap into the verdani mind.

Iswander chuckled. "That sounds exactly like my own complaints when I was your age! Trust me, son, it's important. You need a background and a perspective on where things come from."

"But those stories are so old they don't mean anything," Arden said.

Iswander shook his head and explained; Aelin couldn't have made the argument better. "It's the foundation of what we do-you need to understand that the whole basis of the ekti market is predicated on the Ildiran stardrive. Humans didn't invent it. Without the gift of the stardrive, we would still be crawling across the Spiral Arm in slow generation ships. And while the Hansa was expanding their colonies, the Roamer clans earned great power by taking over cloud-harvesting operations from the Ildirans, running their old skymines, and then building new ones of their own." He frowned at Arden. "It caused quite a bit of friction, and that's one reason that the Roamers were looked on with skepticism-or jealousy-by the rest of the Hansa. It's why we were made into scapegoats during the Elemental War."

The young man was not satisfied. "That still doesn't help."

Aelin added, "When you're a businessman, Arden, you'll be dealing with other people who have the same old scars, possibly the same prejudices. You have to understand those resentments if you're going to be a successful negotiator."

Iswander said, "You are a part of history right now, son. Our ekti-X will change civilization in the Spiral Arm. At some future date, there will be another young man complaining about why he has to take history lessons and learn about how Arden Iswander was part of the first bloater operations."

That seemed to convince the young man at last. Arden tugged the green priest's elbow. "Let's get on with it then. One hour, right?"

"Two hours," Aelin said.

The boy started to argue. Suddenly the green priest felt a violent shiver, as if static electricity had flickered through him. He turned to see a pattern of sparkles cascade through the bloaters. One nodule lit up, then another, and another. The flashes were not connected, but they did seem to be in sequence somehow, like a signal. Each impulse lasted only a fraction of a second.

The harvesting operations quickly went into shutdown and response mode. After only a few seconds, the flashes died away again, and the bloaters were dim and silent again, grayish green islands that floated nowhere.

Pannebaker sent a signal to the admin module. "A few disruptions, Chief, but no overloads. The extra shielding helped. We'll run diagnostics to determine any damage, but I think we're set."

Iswander let out a sigh. "Excellent." He turned to the green priest. "We have to be careful. The bloaters are volatile, potentially explosive, as my deputy discovered during her first encounter. We've instituted rather extreme safety measures, and there's a full evacuation protocol I can engage, in case of an emergency. But those flashes..."

The flash storms came at intermittent times, widely separated. Sometimes they were faint, while other times the dazzling surges damaged the electronics until Iswander's people had added extra shielding. This was the first such display Aelin had seen from so close. "I wonder what it means."

"Nothing to worry about. Just an interesting phenomenon. Now, shouldn't you get to your duties teaching my son?"

They went into an unoccupied boardroom, and Aelin set his potted treeling across from the boy, ready to tap into the worldforest. Using telink, he touched the verdani mind and accessed information and news, while Arden waited, fidgeting.

Within moments, he received a devastating report from the trees: Shelud and all the members of clan Reeves aboard their alien space city had been exposed to a mysterious plague.