Josh shook his head. Crazy, crazy. The Venerans were scien-tists. If there was a cardinal sin among scientists, it was the fal-sification of data.

If you got caught, it meant scandal, possible lawsuits, and the complete ruination of a career.

But if you didn't... Josh found he did not want to think about it. Anger darkened his mind. Vee'd done it. She'd stolen the day. Now, instead of wonder and excitement, he was filled up with suspicion and fear.

Josh slapped the case lid down. He stowed it away auto-matically, out of the habit of living and working in confined spaces. Then he shuffled sideways into the kitchen. No one else was there. He heard the sonic shower going. He heard voices from both sides and up front. He thought about coffee, but instead he opened the fridge and rummaged through the scarab's small stock of beer, pulled himself out a bottle, and twisted the top off.

"Everything all right, Josh?"

Josh turned. Adrian stood there, a suit glove in his hand.

"Yes and no." He sat at the table. Adrian put the glove on the table and reached into one of the overhead bins. "What's the matter with that?""Microfracture in one of the seals. Nothing big." He pulled down a tool kit and a plastic pack containing the silicon rings that helped seal the gloves to the joints in the suit cuffs.

Josh watched him work for a while; then he looked around carefully and said in a whisper. "Adrian, what do you think of our tourists?"

Adrian shrugged. "They're tourists," he murmured. Adrian had lots of practice at not being overheard. "They're looking for something profound or amazing to send back to Mother Earth. Saw it on Mars all the time.

Idiots racing down Olympus Mons in go-carts and writing articles about what a deeply ex-panding experience it was." He frowned at the flawed seal for a moment. "Terry Wray's pretty cute though."

Josh chuckled. "If you like media bland."

"But it's such a cute kind of bland." Adrian inspected his work. "That'll do. I'm going to check the fit."

Adrian left him there and Josh sat alone listening to the com-ings and goings of the others. The air smelled of soap, sweat, minerals, and vaguely of sulfur. Josh glanced at the hatch to the couch compartment. What was she doing in there? Who was she telling her theory to? Her manager back on Earth? Julia or Troy, or one of the other team members?

Terry Wray and her camera?

Josh felt the blood rush from his face. If Vee told her ideas to anybody, anybody, there would be an outcry like nothing that had been heard yet.

The Venerans, all of them, would stand accused of fraud. The U.N. would move in for real, work on the Discovery would be wrenched away, money would dry up, and Venera would fold, and work would stop because there would be no place to do the work from.

Stop it, Josh. What's a little more controversy?

Or are you starting to believe her? Are you starting to agree there's not one thing in the entire Discovery that could definitely not have been made by a human with the time and re-sources?

Josh swallowed hard. Feeling detached from himself, he got up and walked to the couch compartment and opened the hatch. The lights weredown. Julia snored gently in her couch, one arm flung out into the aisle.

Josh stepped around her.

Vee still sat up on her couch with her briefcase open on her knees. She glanced up briefly at him and then seemingly dis-missed what she saw.

Her hands never stopped moving across the command board.

"Don't," whispered Josh. "Don't go public with this."

"Why not?" she asked mildly.

"Because you'll ruin them. The Venerans."

"They deserve to be ruined." Bitterness swallowed all pre-tense of disinterest.

"All of them?" Josh leaned as close as he could. She had to hear him. He had to make her hear. "Everybody who lives in Venera deserves to be ruined? That's what'll happen."

Vee's hands stilled. "It's a fake, Josh. What do you want me to do?

Perpetuate a fraud because the Venerans have been liv-ing beyond their means?"

Julia snorted and rolled over. Josh bit his tongue and waited until she subsided. "You don't give a shit about anybody but yourself, do you? You just want to show them all up. Noted artiste uncovers fraud where scientists fail. Click here to read."

Her face had gone perfectly smooth and expressionless. "Of course.

What else would it be? It couldn't possibly be I believe what I'm saying or that I might be right."

Josh clamped his jaw shut around what he'd been about to say. Julia rolled again with a rustle of cloth and a sighing of breath. Josh glared at Vee as if he could make her see reason by sheer force of will. She just sat placidly, her face immobile, her eyes unimpressed.

Josh felt his teeth grind together. She'd do it. She'd ruin everything.

Everything.

But what if she's right?"What if I promised to go out now and mail Michael Lum? Tell him your suspicions, have him double-check to make sure all the funding's on the up and up. Would that satisfy you?"

Vee's gaze searched his face, considering. "It would be a start," she said at last.

Score one. "Would it at least keep you from telling Stykos and Wray about all this?" he pressed.

There was a long pause, and then Vee nodded.

"Okay, then." Josh unbent himself as far as the room al-lowed.

"Josh?" Vee's whisper stopped him.

"What?"

Her face was lost in shadow, so he could not make out her expression, but he heard the weight of her words. The anger, the flippancy had left, and all that remained was honest feel-ing-tired and a little worried. "I am not doing this to show anyone up. I am not doing this because I'm angry at Helen Failia. The Discovery has been falsified and whoever did it de-serves whatever they get."

"We'll see."

He left her there and returned to the analysis nook, shaken and confused. She couldn't be right. But what if she was? Surely somebody had already investigated everything to make sure all was in order. But what if they hadn't?

His stomach tightened. It's happening already. The idea's taking hold.

Nothing to do but clear it out, one way or the other.

Josh got his case down from its bin and brought it back to the analysis table, setting it down next to his half-finished beer. He jacked the case in, turned it on, took another swallow of beer, swore to himself, or maybe at himself, and started typing.

Chapter Eight

Michael rubbed the heels of both palms into his eyes. When he lowered them, he blinked hard and read Josh Kenyon's note again.

Dear Michael, Sorry I can't do a v-mail, but this has got to be kept quiet. I spent the day working with Dr. Hatch, and she spent the day getting convinced that the Discovery is a fake.

I want to laugh at the idea, but I can't. She's making some good points, especially about the fact that there is nothing down here a human couldn't have made, given resources and time. There's also the fact that some facets of this laser we're studying don't make sense.

I know I'm not a Veneran, and I'd never tell you your job, but can you let me know you've checked everything out? The money's good, the logs are good, and so on? If I don't get something to tell Dr. Hatch, she might just go straight to the media drones.

Thanks, Josh Michael could picture Josh in the scarab, hunched over his case, swearing as he typed, not wanting to believe, but not being able to dismiss a reasonable premise without checking it out.

A hazard of the scientific mind.

And the security mind.

Had they checked for the possibility of fraud? Of course they had checked. That was the first thing they did after the gov-erning board had come back up from the Discovery while the implications still made them all dizzy. Helen had run the money down. Ben had done the personnel logs.

Michael had checked their checking, and everything looked fine. In the meantime, Helen had sent their best people down to the Dis-covery to start cataloging and looking for any sign of human intervention.They'd turned up nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

Only then had Helen called the U.N.

So what was Veronica Hatch seeing? What possibility had they left open? Or was she just playing for the cameras? She might be the type. She certainly acted like the type.

It didn't make any difference, though. If this went into the stream, the accusations were going to fly, and everything Venera did regarding the Discovery would be called into question.

Michael stared out at the world beyond his desk. Adminis-tration was Venera's brain, even if the Throne Room was its heart. Unlike most of the workspace on the base, administra-tion was not divided up into individual offices and laboratories. Each department had an open work section with desks scat-tered around it.

The arrangement made this one of the noisiest levels on Venera, second only to the education level. The idea was to keep everybody out in the open, so the left hand always knew what the right hand was doing. It met with limited success, but by now everyone was so used to it, no one really worked to change it.

As always, the place was a hive. A noisy hive of a thousand competing conversations, some with coworkers, some with residents or visitors who had complaints. His people wore no uniform, but they all had a white-and-gold badge pinned to their shirts to identify themselves.

He had forty people working for him right now, counting the U.N.'s contribution of Bowerman and Cleary. Since it was the day shift, about half of the security personnel were at their desks, dealing with complaints or paperwork or helping Venerans fill out forms for passports, marriage licenses, or taxes.

Only a handful of those people knew exactly how close they'd come to losing their home.

Or how close they still are, Michael chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. If the validity of the Discovery is called into ques-tion, the money flood is going to dry up, and we'll be right back where we started.Enough. The accusation had been made. The only question left was what to do about it.

First thing, revisit the evidence. Make sure the investigation was as complete as he thought it was four months ago. Second, check out Dr.

Hatch. If she was doing this to call attention to herself, maybe she'd done similar things in the past. It might help to have that to hold up to her, or to anyone else who came calling.

Of course there was somebody on the base who knew all about Dr.

Hatch. Michael pictured Philip Bowerman-a big man, serious, but with a sense of humor that ran just below the professional surface. From the beginning Bowerman and Cleary had been polite, circumspect, and very aware that they were unwelcome. Michael, in return, had made sure his people were polite, circumspect, and very aware that Bowerman and Cleary were just doing their job.

Still, the idea of going to the yewners with this made his stomach curdle.

And not because you're worried you might have let some-thing slide past that they'll catch. Oh, no.

Michael straightened up. "Desk. Contact Philip Bowerman." Bowerman was wired for sound, as were most U.N. security people. He and Cleary had given Michael their contact codes within minutes of his meeting them.

"Bowerman," the man's voice came back. "How can I help you, Dr.

Lum?"

"I've got one or two questions about the U.N. team to ask you."

"Okay," said Bowerman without hesitation. "I'm in the Mall, but I'll be right up."

"No, that's okay. I'll come down."

Eleven years as head of security had given Michael a refined appreciation of how Venera's rumor mill worked. There would actually be less talk if Michael "ran into" Bowerman at the Mall than if he sat closeted with the man at his desk behind sound dampeners. Lack of talk wassomething much to be desired right now, especially with Stykos and his camera band roaming the halls.

"Desk," said Michael as he stood. "Display Absence Message 1. Record and store all incoming messages, or if the situation is an emergency, route to my personal phone."

"Will comply," said the desk. Its screen displayed the words AT LUNCH, LEAVE A MESSAGE.

Michael tucked his phone spot into his ear and threaded his way between the desks, heading for the stairs.

Michael walked down past the farms, past the gallery level with its harvester and processing plants, its winery, brewery, bakery, and butchery, past the research level, and past two of the residential levels with their concentric rings of brightly painted doors, and past the educational level where the irre-pressible sound of children's voices rang off the walls. Below the educational level waited the Mall.

From the beginning, Venera had been designed to support whole families. Helen had wanted people to be able to make a long-term commitment to their work. The open Mall with its shops, trough gardens, food stalls, and cafelike seating clusters was one of the features that made the base livable for years at a time.

The Mall was about half full. An undercurrent of voices thrummed through the air, along with scents of cooking food, coffee, and fresh greenery. Meteorologists clustered around a table screen, probably getting readings of a storm from the sampling equipment Venera carried in its underbelly. Off-shift techs and engineers played cards, typed letters, ate sand-wiches, or sipped coffee. Graduate students took advice and instructions from senior researchers, and senior researchers tossed ideas back and forth between each other. A pod of sci-ence feeders held a whispered argument among themselves. If the gestures were anything to go by, it was getting pretty heated. Families, knots of friends, and loners drifted in and out of the shops or stood in line at the food booths. Around the edges of the hall, a couple of maintenancers spritzed the minia-ture trees and dusted off the grow-lights. A cluster of children played with puzzle bricks at their parents' feet. If anyone's gaze landed on him, they waved or nodded and he returned their greetings reflexively. Michael no longer knew the names of everyone on Venera, but he knew most of thefaces, and he couldn't bring himself to think of anyone aboard the base as a stranger.

This was his world. It was not the only one he had ever known, but it was the only one that had ever truly known him.

Spotting Bowerman took only a quick scan of the room. The man stood out in his subdued blue-and-white tunic. Venerans went in for bright colors.

Bowerman had picked a table near the far edge of the Mall under a pair of potted orange trees. He spotted Michael before Michael was halfway across the floor and lifted a hand.

"Please, sit down." Bowerman gestured toward the empty chair as Michael reached him. "Mind if I go ahead?" he nodded at his lunch-soup, fresh bread, a cup of rich chai, spiced In-dian tea that Margot at Salon Blu imported.

"Please. I'm actually going to meet my wife for lunch right after this."

"You two have kids?" asked Bowerman, breaking apart his small loaf of sourdough bread and spreading it thickly with butter.

"Two boys," said Michael, going with the conversation and not bothering to mention that Bowerman surely knew this from reading Michael's files. "You?"

Bowerman shook his head. "Not yet." He bit into the bread, chewed, and swallowed. "This is good. I didn't expect such good food, or so much space." He gestured with the bread. "I've only been to Small Step on Luna, and on Mars once. I got used to the idea that colonies are cramped."

Michael noticed Bowerman did not say where he'd been on Mars. "Our one real luxury," he said, repeating the Stock phrase.

"So." Bowerman put the bread down and picked up his soup spoon.

"How can I help you?"