When she awoke again it was evening. She changed the polarization on the windows and found her room inundated with the golden light of the sunset. Before her was spread the downtown part of the city, a collection of small, uninspiring office structures. Farther away was the river and on the other side more buildings, mostly less than ten stories high.

She took a deep breath.

It was certainly an exotic setting for her. For her own personal drama to unfold. Or rather, to come to a close, she reminded herself.

How horrible it had become and how doomed she was. It was all so terribly premature.

Such a desperate ending for a life that had held great promise. She tried to avoid bitterness as her thoughts flew back through her life, but it was difficult.

From social high school in North Trios she'd gone on to university at Westholm in West Trios, and then to CKU two years later. That was where she'd met Brian Altrop, the man with whom she'd lived for four years.

They'd been good times; her career was progressing and the world had been a friendly, fun place. Or so it had seemed.

Then Brian broke up with her, to live with another woman, a younger, more vibrant woman.

Caroline's heart had been broken and she'd learned something hard about life at the same time. Life couldn't be trusted. Life outside the imagined safety of her hometown in North Trias, anyway. Life outside the circle of family and old friends.

And she had never trusted her heart to another man since, always keeping her occasional affairs to a light, uninvolved level that could cause no pain.

In the meantime her career had ground to a halt, blocked from above by Professor Gottschalk. For years she'd been pushing her head against a brick wall, with little result.

And still she'd been happy with this life. She relished the fact that she'd made it all the way to CK City, to the big time on planet Wexel. She loved the urban things, especially those of the university, the theaters, the shows, the art, and also the restaurants and the sophisticated pleasures of the downtown area.

And now, all that life was over.

Something very hard was breaking in her throat. She turned away from the window feeling mortally sorry for herself.

Without conscious thought she dressed and went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered an expensive dinner.

Hors d'ouevres of flash-fried shrimp and crab were followed by the house "Mique," a butter-rich pancake, over which was served a truffle sauce with a wonderfully creamy consistency.

She drank cold white wines, an incredibly expensive Chardonnay from Cowdray Estates' famous "Baby Vineyard" with a picture of the Cowdray sisters as year-old babies on the label.

The picture made her think of the Cow Bank, with a branch in every city on the planet. And from Cow Bank she thought of Cowdray itself, a state of more than three hundred thousand square miles, all owned and operated by the Cowdray family.

What must it be like to wield such power, she wondered. To control enormous wealth and be free of all the usual constraints on life. Why, if you were one of the Cowdray family you could do anything, or almost. Certainly Professor Gottschalk wouldn't get in your way!

Caroline drank her wine like a condemned woman.

For dessert she pigged out on a raspberries-in-chocolate concoction that in normal times she would never have dreamed of eating, except secretly and with extreme guilt. With it she sipped an aged grappa from Old Luc. It was a wonderful combination.

She sighed. Life was capable of such exquisiteness sometimes. She wanted to cry like a baby, and yet at the same time she felt a blissful sense of calm.

She paid and on her way out of the restaurant stopped for another grappa at the bar. It had a wonderful aroma, it was sinfully easy to drink. While she sipped she didn't think about anything much, simply reacting to the atmosphere in the bar and the view out the window.

Somehow she found herself back in her hotel room, and wondered about ordering up some more drinks from room service. She stared out at the balcony. If she wanted to she could drink enough so that when she jumped off it she'd never even feel the impact.

She'd seen that somewhere, in some video or other.

And she shuddered, appalled at the thought of dying in this rathole of a city.

The antique clock in the room chimed ten o'clock. She found herself staring at it. It was dark outside.

Time was wasting. And it... it lived!

And it was out there. She had to move, she had to do it now! She couldn't stay here! She had to get out!

A whole world lay in the balance if she was right.

She dragged herself down to the elevators and into the bar by the restaurant.

It was as if she were teetering on the edge of an unheated swimming pool. She had to get warm somehow. So she had another grappa.

Then at last she called her ATV and ordered it to drive over to the hotel and pick her up. It turned up largely unharmed from its sojourn in the streets, although the back panel now sported an odd grafilto in purple metal flake.

Once she was back in the car she felt a hardening of her purpose. Of course one whiff of her breath and the machine locked itself off from her. It would not let her drive manually, but once she'd clamped the seatbelt it agreed to take her to a clearly enunciated destination as long as that destination was on the navguide's computer memory.

Then the ATV rolled smoothly down the Medina and turned onto the bridge road.

As she went Caroline stared out at the bizarre billboards that lined the way. They were backlit at night, given a weird coloration in surround-glo. Huge skulls with bullet holes frowned down. Hands gripped guns. Baleful slogans and logos glowed.

Life in Doisy-Dyan was tinged in the colors of terror, like some bizarre, menacing dream.

The ATV rolled over the bridge and into the other side of the city. More buildings passed by, even less distinguished than those in the main city.

Now she passed down a long tree-lined avenue; ocher-tiled apartment buildings lined the way.

And then there were no buildings for a while, but many bright lights.

She glimpsed an aircraft passing low overhead. Big hangar-like structures loomed through the darkness, illuminated by their boundary lights.

A big sign with ITAA in large letters passed by.

Caroline felt poised to light or run, to scream or cry. The ATV rolled to a halt by the gate post.

She hesitated, shuddering, and then forced herself out of the car. She walked up to the only visible guard, a heavyset female corporal in a smartly creased tropics-wear uniform, and announced that she had some disturbing information that had to be passed on to someone in authority.

The female corporal looked tough. She sized Caroline up carefully.

"You're drunk, citizen. Your lights are out. You don't know what you're doing out here."

Caroline studied the woman vaguely.

"But this is vitally important news. Someone's got to act."

"Yeah, yeah, someone. But not us. Look, lady, if you're married go home and sleep it off. If you're not married, go home and sleep it off. You got that? Go home, get back in your car."

"No, I can't do that. You don't understand. I have to speak to someone in authority."

The tough corporal gave her a hard-eyed look. "If it's so damned important, you can tell me. Then we'll find someone for you to talk to. As it is I don't know whether we're dealing with a lost dog or a straying husband. I mean, are you sure this isn't a police matter?"

"S'not a police matter. It's about life and death, for everyone, for whole damned world."

The corporal's brow furrowed. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Caroline stared at the woman while a mounting desperation rose in her mind.

"You've got to listen to me. Listen carefully. There's a Saskatch monster on the loose."

The guard snorted, then looked carefully at the woman.

"Saskatch monster?"

"Really, I think so. Dangerous, very dangerous."

There was something weird here. The lady was drunk, but she had something in her voice that made Corporal Asario wonder. And it wasn't the usual kind of crank stuff, either.

What the hell was this woman talking about? Saskatch creature?

Was this Directive 115 stuff? Better kick it upstairs; they said better safe than sorry on Directive 115.

Asario pondered it for a few moments and then called up to the admin block. On night duty was Sergeant Voltsk, a stolid fellow in late middle age, along-term career NCO. Asario would let Voltsk bring his considerable experience to bear.

Besides, Asario owed the old bastard a few. Voltsk and she had never hit it off while working together.

Let Voltsk make a decision about this lady and her Directive 115 problem.

Asario waved Caroline through and detached Private Forsht to accompany her over to the admin block, where Sergeant Voltsk would be waiting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

JOHRS VOLTSK HAD QUITE A BEMUSING CONVERSATION WITH the intoxicated woman sent along from the front gate.

Voltsk was a career trooper coming close to his pension. He just wanted to make his days and get out of there in one piece.

The day before he'd been chewed out by Colonel Chang in person for filtering out too much stuff that was on its way to her desk.

The colonel didn't want to be cut off from the flow of events?

All right, this drunken lady with her monster story was all hers. Especially since it was late and the colonel would probably be trying to make up on the sleep she'd lost the previous night.

Colonel Chang was in her quarters when the call came through to her from Jean Povet. She was working with the Strand on paperwork when the Strand interrupted the flow of documents and displayed some video of a woman in a degree of disarray through intoxication. The woman was babbling something about alien lifeforms.

Luisa glanced at the video of the subject. The Strand's instant analysis showed a reasonable possibility that the woman was being truthful-that is, that she at least believed passionately in what she was saying. It was either that or a schizophrenic delirium.

"Saskatch alien?"

"Strand has the details on that if you want them."

"Thank you, Jean. I think you'd better send this Reese person down for a psych test. Then when she's sober we'll talk to her again, all right?"

"Yes, sir." Povet blipped out.

Chang was left with the words "Saskatch alien" on the screen.

"What do we have on that?" she murmured.

"Encyclopedia has several entries," the Strand said in its warm, masculine voice.

Compressing the tip of her tongue between her teeth, she ordered it to scroll them.

An image of an odd, lobsterlike creature appeared first. "SASKATCH BULMUNK," said the caption.

A brief description followed. Blankly she read the text. "Indigenous intelligent lifeform of planet Saskatch (4216A Duprove Catalog), Human Colony World in era following Starhammer War. Bulmunk are the rarest of the known intelligent lifeforms. The initial population was small, constricted by glacial conditions. The fact of their intelligence was a secret until the events that ended the human colony on Saskatch. Descended from the single survivor of the species, which was fertilized at the time of escape, a small population of bulmunk has established itself on planet Novosibirsk. The Novosibirsk Extrasensory Research Institute was set up to work with the bulmunk, which are the only known true telepathic intelligent lifeform in the galaxy."

More enormous lobsteroids were on screen.

Chang's brow furrowed.

"Wrong alien, I want the other one."

The screen changed at once. Images of the dead alien monstrosities that were taken from the Baada liner Gracelyn flashed up-things that looked like dirty gray snakes, or worms, except that each central tube was fringed with thin wiry tentacles.

"VANG OORMLIKOOWL (Omniparasitic Lifeform)," flashed the caption.

"Ancient lifeform specialized to parasitize other creatures.

Possesses hyperactive nervous system. Is able to reshape and re-form creatures that it parasitizes.

Such creatures have proved to be highly effective in military combat."

There was more, under the headings "Starhammer," "Lashtri III," and "Saskatch."

Chang remembered some of this material. Like all ITAA career staff, she had taken the "Saskatch"

course. This was Directive 115 stuff, and anything to do with Directive 115 was of primary importance.

It overrode all other considerations.

This lifeform had destroyed whole worlds. There had been an ancient war with the Starhammer builders.

Luisa Chang felt a shiver run right through her body.