"So the goddamn ITAA is out to fuck us raw! Damn you, I protest, I protest vehemently."

"So you do," Chang murmured.

"The entire Police Department of this city protests. I will have to take it up with higher authorities."

"You do that, Chief, but in the meantime just leave my Shark alone, all right?"

Chang cut out. The Shark hammered on toward the northern coast.

The mass panic was evident as they approached the city. All the roads into the spaceport complex were choked with traffic. People on foot formed long lines in the spaceport itself.

They went on to the heart of the city and landed on the consulate's roofpad.

The Shark was not the usual thing to land there; next to the little civilian aircraft parked nearby it looked like a dragonfly at a butterfly convention.

The flap over the imposition of Directive 115 had made conditions especially dangerous for all ITAA personnel. The consulate was surrounded by security screens. There had been half a dozen outrages already, including a massive car bomb that had stripped the surrounding towers and apartment buildings of their glass. The ITAA building had all its windows in a bulletproof clear ceram, but the rest of the neighborhood looked as if it bad been shelled.

Caroline was hurried downstairs for the psych interrogation and mindprobe.

Chang, meanwhile, went to a room converted into a search control center on the twelfth floor. Out the window loomed the pinnacles of the harbor district. Inside, at work, were Jean Povet, with Feng and Paltz of the consulate staff.

Cbangsha Feng was the first to open his mouth. "We have a problem. The CKPD wants Reese for questioning in a murder investigation."

"Thank you, Feng, but I spoke to Chief Pradesh already. He knows he can't have her."

Jean Povet handed her a memo. "Commodore Benx says he can't give you those shuttle slots."

"Oh, great, here we go with Benx again. Call Central right away, we don't have time to go through Heidheim again. We need Tohoto himself."

"Right away."

Helmudt Paltz, meanwhile, had a rundown on the current situation. Chang flipped through it quickly.

"Panic, basically," she said after a moment. "Sheer, raging panic."

"I'm afraid so, Colonel."

"And still no sight of the damn thing," she grumbled.

"Well, sir, there have been thousands of reported sightings, some of them multiple sightings," Changsha said.

"A man in Sud-Trias said he saw an entire alien fleet landing on the coast," Helmudt Paltz added.

"And somebody in Luc blew up an apartment building because he was convinced he saw the alien living there. I think there have been more reports on this creature in the past twenty-four hours than there have been killings in the last year," Povet said.

"So we're swamped."

"The native psyche here runs close to rabid paranoia anyway. This thing has driven them into a mass madness. I shudder to think at the final casualty toll," Changsha said.

Chang shuddered, too. What if she'd been wrong? What if somehow they had all been wrong and this wasn't really a Directive 115 situation?

Unimaginable error. She would sink like a rock to the bottom of the ocean. They would send her to perpetual solitary confinement for the rest of her life.

It was better not to think about it, but it was getting harder not to with every hour that passed without some further sighting of the alien.

"I'll have Scopus Central for you on hold in about half a minute, Colonel," Povet said.

"All right, it's time to talk to Benx again."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

BENX TOOK A LONG TIME TO PICK UP ON THE PRIORITY LINE. Panic had sent a tidal wave of people into the spaceport. His temper had long since disintegrated.

While she waited, Luisa downed another square of anciophen with a can of cherry soda. Ancilophen certainly helped take the edge off these situations. Without it Chang couldn't have stayed awake for the last forty-eight hours and she certainly couldn't have talked to Commodore Benx for more than a few minutes before killing him.

"Yes, Colonel?" Benx's eyes were wide with suppressed rage, dislike, even hatred for her.

"What is this I'm being told about my shuttle fights?" she said.

"What shuttle flights? I never agreed to give over any slots here to Ground Command."

"You were ordered to put aside those slots; the order came from Scopus Central. Now, please comply with your orders and let us get on with it."

Benx shook his head, then fixed her with an intense glare.

"Colonel, may I say something, may I say that I don't think you know what the hell you're doing."

"Commodore, why ask for permission if you then go right ahead and talk anyway?"

"Do you realize the number of casualties this nonsense has caused?" Benx was trembling.

"There have been a lot of casualties," she agreed. Anciophen was great, no doubt about it.

"And all caused by you, Colonel. You are responsible, you are solely to blame for hundreds of deaths and this raging, freaking panic that is making life impossible around here!"

"Commodore, this is all under Directive 115, you understand that, I don't have a choice. If I'm wrong, then yes, my ass is done for, I'll get life without parole. Does that help you? It will be all my fault."

"Bah, we'll all be dragged down. I have spoken several times to Admiral Heldheim and he is not entirely convinced that you haven't just dreamed this whole thing up as a ploy to get rapid advancement."

"What? You think I would do this to myself to earn a promotion? How crazy are you? This is going to end my career either way. You think I wanted this!"

Benx's jaw tightened, his posture stiffened. Chang could imagine him springing at the screen like an attack dog for a few moments; then he seemed to get a grip on himself.

"I don't know what your reasons are, Colonel, but I refuse to be associated with this. I will not accept orders from someone I deem to be insane."

Chang nodded to Jean Povet, who cut through to Sector General Tohoto.

"Commodore, I have Sector General Tohoto on line, Deep Link. Tell him why I can't have the shuttle flights."

Benx blanched visibly.

"Commodore Benx I believe it is," a new voice said. "This is Tohoto, what is the problem?"

"No problem," Benx said.

"Then why this call, you know how much it costs to use deep link like this?"

"I didn't place the call, uh, Sector General."

"I know that, Commodore, I know why Colonel Chang placed the call. You refused her request for shuttle slots. You forced her to call on higher authority again. You know this means great expense.

Besides which I am very busy; this emergency is placing a huge strain on our resources."

Benx licked his lips nervously.

"Sir, Admiral Heidheim is, uh, concerned about the correctness of the colonel's, uh, reading of the situation."

"Thank you, Commodore, I will immediately take this up with the admiral. He must be made to understand that the Fleet Command has to be subordinate in this situation, and l am sure he will realize that all good officers know when to simply obey orders no matter what they think of them. This is a Directive 115 situation, and I am ordering you directly, from Cluster Command, to actively assist Colonel Chang. Is that understood?"

Benx looked sick.

"Yes, sir, Sector General Tohoto. But I request the privilege of being allowed to lodge a formal complaint. I think this thing was called too hastily and I wish to be absolved from any responsibility for the outcome."

There was an ominous silence; then Tohoto grunted. "Your complaint is noted and entered in Cluster Command log. Now get on with your job."

Tohoto was gone.

"Now, Commodore, I want those slots, please. I want to be lifting off within an hour."

Benx looked as if he were ready to kill.

"You're crazy," he muttered. "You're going to spend the rest of your life on some frozen rock."

"Please keep your opinions to yourself," she growled back, "until there's a court-martial."

"Oh, there will be, you better believe it."

"We'll see when the time comes."

"You'll better pray that that damned creature shows itself again."

She let Benx cut out. It was unfortunate but true: they had better find some further trace of the damn creature or she was really done for.

Something had gotten loose up on Karvur Farm, and Luisa had Reese and the results of her mindprobe to back up the directive.

There was also the physical evidence from the farm.

But the fact that no one had seen the thing in three days and nights did not jibe with the ground rules of Directive 115. The alien lifeform was known to be terrifyingly single-minded and swift to act. It would attack at once and keep attacking until it had rendered the human population helpless, at which point it would kill or transform all of it.

That had been the pattern on Saskatch, and also in the one known, previous event of this kind, the destruction of the laowon world Lashtri III, in an earlier era.

And now three days had gone by with no further trace of it. Might it be dead?

But ITAA warships were already in system, dropping down the gravity well to planetary-exercise orbits. Admiral Heidheim would be taking command in a matter of hours; it was almost out of Chang's hands for good. And if the damned creature had disappeared for good, too, then not only was her career over but it was possible she'd wind up doing time in prison alongside Caroline Reese.

Luisa shook these thoughts aside. She buzzed Povet in.

"What's next?" she said.

"You need to thumbprint the extradition order on Reese. It's on-screen whenever you want it."

"Fine, then let's get out of here and get back to Air&Space for that shuttle."

"The Shark is warming up."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

AS FAR AS RHEM KERWILLIG WAS CONCERNED THE GREAT PULSE of life had gone from newly hopeful to stark, satanically horrifying. No hell of the Elders' imagination could have matched this situation for horror.

The day before had begun with Reena's plan and a new future for him. At last he had a direction. And he was ready to shake the dust of Wexel and travel enormous distances.

Today he was a naked, bruised victim herded into a rough-hewn cage and guarded by the thing that held the shotgun.

The thing-he barely dared to look at it, it was so horrible.

Here was a human face, drawn tight over an inhuman skull and jaws. A beard of green, glistening polyps hung below the chin, and orange flowerlike things wobbled in front of its eye sockets. It was like a demon from some old-time Patash-Do voodoo cult brought to life.

There had only been two of the things at first, that much had been revealed later. But at the time when they first struck the caves there had seemed to be more, many more. It was just that they moved so damned fast!

What made it all worse was that they'd known there was someone out there. Someone who had escaped the ATV in the ambush. There'd been a trail of blood, a lot of blood, from the ATV through the scrub and up the hillside, but they had missed the fugitives somehow and been unable to locate them before dark.

They'd consoled themselves with the thought that the fugitives would not get far in the dark and that they'd find them the next day and kill them. How could anyone bleeding so badly travel more than a few miles at most?

Then at night, after they'd filled their bellies with plantain porridge and the meat of a wild donkey, the things had attacked.

There was no warning from either lookout. Either they hadn't seen anything or they'd been killed themselves.