The news that "creatures" were about in South Kara stirred panic to new heights and brought in dozens of "creature sightings.

That there was reason to be afraid was revealed at the Penskava farmstead, high in the hills above Basking Springs. There they'd found the corpses of a family, men, women, and children, slaughtered for their aircraft.

Those aircraft had been traced to a swamp near Doisy-Dyan, where they'd been abandoned.

Then there was the credit card. A peculiar trail indeed; first it surfaced in Basking Springs, which was a spa town in southernmost Kara State. It had bought food and fuel for someone. It was an "open card,"

tagged to the vehicle and not to a person. No thumbprint was required to charge with it.

They had eaten a lot of food at one sitting. Then they had driven to CK City.

There the card had been used at Cowdray University, in the library for the required ID check.

Because Cowdray University operated under its own policing authority, the usage had not surfaced on the CKCPD computers. Cowdray University was another of the so-called no "co-opos" currently in litigation with the ITAA.

In Basking Springs there was little to learn. No one remembered anything at all about the passengers of the Benuil ATV.

The Shark lifted away and headed north.

Chang had already arrested the top management of Epoxo Banco. They were facing charges under Directive 115, concerning their withholding of information relating to that credit card. All credit-card companies had been told to report anything under the name of Jaad Benuil, but Epoxo Banco was a "no coopo" corporation, currently in the toils of several lawsuits in ITAA Civil Court. They had decided to ignore the Directive 115 call they'd received.

Captain Blake at the Penskava farm gave Chang what details he and a team of investigators had gleaned from the remains. It seemed that everyone at the farm was accounted for: their bodies were all there, everyone had been killed. Nothing much had been damaged or even disturbed, except the gun cabinet.

Then Blake had lifted for orbit with his squad. Another squad was already dropping to replace them in Patash-Do.

Meanwhile they still had no idea where the people had been taken from to provide the raw material for those alien fighters that had run amok in Doisy-Dyan. It was known that that was the preferred mechanism for the creature's parasitism. There had been nine creatures killed. Some were so small and delicate in appearance that it had to be surmised that they had formerly been children.

Clearly the alien thing at the Karvur farm had been alone, although from interviews with the peasants there it was known that it had sought to convert at least one man before it was discovered and drove away.

It had then visited the Benuils' farm and taken the body of Beetris Benuil. She, at least, had not been found. It had driven their ATV across the mountains and down to the Penskava farm in the uplands above Basking Springs. There it had several companions, to tell by the tracks in the fields.

Then in Basking Springs it had used the credit card to buy fuel and food.

And then it had gone to the library, one thousand miles away. Chang's forehead furrowed. Information, it was after information.

Just then Povet cut in. "Colonel, that card usage in the library?"

"Yes?"

"It was for something called the Arntage Series, a complicated set of galactic star projections. Very detailed."

"Arntage? Now that presses a button somewhere. Strand, who was Arntage?"

"Rieben Arntage, the leading survivor of Saskatch. He was a wealthy star merchant. He financed for many years an intense search for the homestar of the alien lifeform."

"By all the-the damn thing is looking for the homeworid."

''Earth?"

"No, Jean, its homeworid."

"Oh, shit, sorry, sir. What if it finds it? Are there more of these things somewhere?"

"I hope not, I sincerely hope not."

Then Luisa was rooted to the spot by another idea.

"Obviously the alien is able to pass itself off as human somehow. It must be able to control someone without changing them outwardly that much."

"Oh, no-they can infiltrate us?"

"Call Tohoto, we have to tell Scopus Central."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

ADMIRAL HELDHEIM WAS A TALL, MASSIVELY BUILT MAN, A Stenhender from the Blue Planet. His face was normally pink, but in anger it turned red.

It was more red than pink when Captain Cachester finally walked into his stateroom aboard the Empress Wu. In fact, it was threatening to get very red indeed.

"Well, well, at last, Captain. I'm glad to see you finally." Cachester could hear the not-so-distant thunder in the admiral's voice.

"Believe me, Admiral, I came as soon as we could roll out a shuttle. Things are a complete mess down there."

There was a silence.

"Yes, so they seem to be. Well, there are questions to which I want answers, and they better be good answers."

"Well, of course, sir, anything I can help you with."

Heidheim's response was instant. "The account audit, what became of that?"

Even Stefan Cachester's head whined at that. After all they've been through in the past day or so, the admiral's first question was about the damn audit?

"Well, it's destroyed, for the present. They might restart it another day."

if they don't get Luisa Chang out of there, he thought, they probably would restart it.

Heldheim was smiling. "Your bomb idea, then, you pulled that off?"

Cachester nodded. Was this being taped? Was he being set up? Freezing hell but that showed you how you could not trust anybody in the ITAA. He thought he'd avoided ITAA court, too. It had been looking like he was going to make a clean getaway.

"Don't worry, you're not on video," Heidheim said, divining his subordinate's suspicions. "Quite natural to worry, I understand perfectly. We've all been worried about this thing. You know I always said this Wexel funding problem was going to hurt the Fleet, but they wouldn't listen to me. So we had to go by a roundabout way to achieve the ITAA's ends, right?"

Cachester felt a degree of relief. Certainly Heidheim was implicating himself, if this was being taped.

"Only way to keep Wexel even semiquiet is to buy off the chieftains. Otherwise they're all on the warpath. Then there's the crime people."

Heidheim had his crafty, conspiratorial smile on now. The pink was back, the veins were subsiding on his forehead.

"And of course we have to recycle a little of that money for the boys who make things run, don't we?"

Again Cachester nodded, ever so slightly. Heldheim was almost singing now.

"But we can't let the needs of the good boys who make everything run become too large. We can't have them breaking the bank account for those little luxuries in life. That causes problems the ITAA can't solve easily."

"I understand, of course, sir. However, I think the whole matter is moot if Colonel Chang is going to be removed from the post after the Directive 115 thing."

"She's gone, I won't let them put her back there."

"Then the audit's a dead issue, and my people will insure that even the remains from the bombing will be further degraded to the point where none of it is useful. They'll have to start all over again. I mean there'll be no accounts for the last five years."

"Start all over again, heh heh, I like that. Good work, Cachester, have to keep the dirtside guessing.

Damn them all! They don't have any idea how much it takes to keep all this going. The ITAA is the Fleet and they should damn well recognize that fact."

"Absolutely, sir. Couldn't agree more."

"This Chang was a ballbuster, I hear."

"Castrating bitch, sir, to be absolutely frank. A manhater if ever I saw one."

"Well, she says this thing is just about wrapped up. From what I've seen she had enough reason to call down the directive, but only just."

"I still find it hard to believe. I keep wondering if it was some bizarre hoax."

"A hoax? Are you crazy, there's something like five thousand dead as a result of this, maybe ten times that number in overall casualties. Cluster Center is in an uproar and I do believe we've even Deep Linked to Over-Cluster, If this is a hoax, then some hoaxers are going to pay with the rest of their lives."

"It's just so strange. I came up the well with the suspected perpetrator, this Professor Reese."

"Oh, yes? Interesting file her interrogation provided. Claims the thing was found by somebody called Karvur, a count in some feudalistic aristocracy down there."

"Wexel is like that, Admiral. It's a pretty feudal place."

"Anyway, it had been buried for a long time, eighty million years at least, perhaps much more."

Cachester wasn't interested much in old stuff.

"What'll happen to her?"

"The Reese woman? Oh, I would think she'll get sixty years, maybe get out in forty-five for good behavior."

"She'll be an old woman by then, no Extended Medical."

"You said it, no second and third centuries for her. Extreme poverty, too, in old age, probably dumped on some big ITAA taxpaying planet; Leshur or Danunox, for instance."

A whispery voice saturrated in the air behind Heldheim's right ear. "We have Captain Ton of the Shaka on line for you, Admiral."

"Thank you, McKay. Captain Ton, this is Heidheim."

"Captain Ton reporting, sir. We have orders from Scopus Central, Tohoto's thumbprint, to pick up the suspect, Caroline Reese."

"Of course, Captain, we've been expecting you. The prisoner will be waiting for your pinnace."

"Pinnace will be launched at once."

"Good, Heidheim out."

The admiral turned back to Cachester.

"Well, that's that, I expect she'll end up at Leshur. They're taking her to Central. She'll be tried at High Scopus."

Cachester shook his head as if to say what a shame it all had been.

"So it really was Directive 115. After all this time."

"The real thing. Have you seen the video from Doisy-Dyan?"

"On the shuttle out that's all we watched. Disgusting stuff."

"Indeed. However, it does seem to have eased a rather tight situation for us with this Colonel Chang."

They chuckled together. Cachester was wondering whether to take early retirement. He had enough credit now to finance a very enjoyable life for himself. Some world that had extensive beaches and coral reefs. There was no need to run risks like this anymore.

And besides, there had been that unforgettable moment of true terror, when he had actually confronted one of the things.

"You know, I saw one. I was just a few feet away. This was at the spaceport. I had been in the command tower trying to make sense out of the attack. You see, I was actually waiting in Departures for the next shuttle when the attack came. I headed up to the control tower and found total chaos there. I was going down to the ground floor again when I saw one."

Heldheim was curious. Cachester sounded like he was telling the truth.

"Saw one? What happened?"

"It missed me, it was chasing these other people and I don't think it even saw me. Just pure luck, I guess. When it was gone I ran the other way and got away."

"You didn't have your side arm with you then?"

"No weapons, I was off duty."

"A lucky escape," Heidheim murmured. "Indeed, indeed." The fools at Central were in for a disappointment; they wouldn't be dragging Heldheim down this time, oh, no.

"Everything will be buried under this Directive 115 stuff, and you blew up the evidence anyway, excellent. I want you to take some leave; you'll have to take it on board the Wu, I'm afraid, but after a couple of weeks to rest up we'll talk again. We need to see what your next posting should be, eh?"

"Yes indeed, Admiral, that sounds perfect."