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yards or so behind the car. The driver picked up the headband carrying his stem mike. "Okay, okay.
Hold your fire. You've got us cold. What do you want?"
"Very sensible," a voice agreed over the speaker. "You've got two good friends of ours in there. Get
them into breather sets and jackets, and send them out. Then, if you behave yourselves, as far as we're
concerned, the other three of you can be on your way. You've got three minutes. Fair enough?"
Leppo turned in his seat and looked back disbelievingly at the jaunty, red-suited figure that had come
out from the APC and seemed to be doing the talking. He'd recognized that voice the moment it started
speaking. And the face behind the visor still brown, but familiar enough by now confirmed it.
It was the Knight!
* * *
The APC rose slowly until the slack was almost gone from the line connecting it to the trailer frame
blocking the road. "Slow . . ." Major Everit gauged the distance from a screen showing the vertical view
below. "Hold it there," he instructed the pilot beside him. "Now, slow again . . ."
"Taking weight," the pilot confirmed. "Okay, I've got it. . . . It's good."
"Fine. Get rid of it."
The APC lifted the frame clear, hovered for a moment, and then moved slowly forward to release the
suspended load over the downward slope below the road. The car with the three guards inside waited
warily; then, when nothing further happened, it began edging forward. Mahom watched it through a
window as the APC resumed its ascent.
"I'm not so sure we should be letting them go like that," he muttered to Kieran, sitting across from him
behind the flight deck. "The first thing they're gonna do is call ahead with the bad news." Kieran hadn't
ordered the vehicle's phone or the guards' personal phones to be disabled to buy extra time. Deliberately
leaving people out on the Martian surface without communications just wasn't done.
"They'd just have been in the way here," Kieran answered. "And the Stony Flats celestial choir is no
doubt tracking them. If the car had stayed there much longer, they'd know something was wrong,
anyway."
Next to the pilot, Major Everit was looking perturbed. "Two troop carriers and a gunship rigged for
ground suppression," he said, turning to Kieran. "We don't have the firepower to take on something like
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that. We were commissioned as a light defense force."
"It's bluff," Kieran assured him. "They want me and a couple of other people they think are down there.
They won't just come roaring in with guns blazing."
"So what do you need us for? If you're not there, they'll go away again."
"A show of force on the ground so those goons don't take it into their heads to start slapping any
scientists around."
Everit still didn't seem happy. "I don't like asking my men to face odds like that. If we had firepower to
offset that gunship . . ."
"There's theGuardian Angel ," Leppo said from the seat behind, where he and Casey were listening.
"What's theGuardian Angel ?" Everit asked.
Kieran turned his head abruptly, wondering why he hadn't thought of it. "Sol and Casey's flymo," he said
to Everit.
"Flymo?" The major started to scoff, but Leppo defended their creation indignantly.
"More than a just flymo, Major. Man, it's got lock-on autocannon, rear-firing laser or radar homing
missiles, target acquisition and incoming tracking radar . . ."
"Not fully tested ye " Casey started to blurt, but Leppo kicked his foot beneath the seat.
"Mil D-spec countermeasures package . . ."
"Where is this machine?" Everit asked.
"Right under the roof at the Cherbourg skylock," Leppo said. "We could be there in minutes."
"Fight bluff with counterbluff," Kieran said. "Put there by Providence. You said that was what you
needed. Okay, let's go for it. You can drop us off at Cherbourg and then carry straight on to Tharsis.
We'll follow as soon as we get theAngel airborne."
Everit was looking dazed. "You'll get used to it," Mahom told him, grinning. "Things kind of happen
when the Knight's around."
"Alter course for Cherbourg," Everit told the pilot resignedly.
The pilot entered a code into the navcomp, which flashed a request to Cherbourg Local Area Traffic
Control for an inbound slot in the skylock schedule. A few seconds later the associated comscreen
responded:CONFIRMED AND HOLDING. ESTIMATED COMPLETION 6 MINUTES .
* * *
Consternation had broken out in the partitioned office at the rear of the warehouse at Stony Flats, where
Lee Mullen and the Firm's local team had been updating the two expediters who just arrived via Phobos
to take charge. A call had come in reporting that Leppo and his partner had been hijacked en route by an
unidentified military unit that came down out of the sky. The guy who seemed to be in charge of the grab
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wore a red suit and had a brown face. There was even a picture that one of the guards had managed to
snap with his phone as the rescuers and their two charges were embarking.
The mention of a brown face triggered Mr. Black's recollection of the brief encounter in the hotel
elevator. "Let me see him," he demanded. An enlarged version of the face in the helmet appeared on one
of the screens. Black studied it intently. "Lighten it a bit," he said to the graphics tech who was with the
group. "Make the color normal. . . . Now take the gray out of the hair."
"How do you want it?"
"Dark . . . No, say, maybe more brown." Mr. Black watched the transformation. The result was still a
little on the old side, but he no longer had any doubts. "That's him!" he pronounced. "It's the guy who was
at the Zodiac Bank with his twin brother." He pointed at Sarda, who was standing with Balmer. "The one
who said he was the lawyer."
Sarda stepped forward for a closer look. "He's right. That's who stopped me on the street when I was
on my way there. He's the guy with the dog!"
"I saw him at the Oasis," Black told everyone. "Iknew I'd seen him somewhere."
"He met Leppo there," Mullen said. "Dressed up like a genie. Looks like he came back into town for the
wedding party."
Balmer looked at the two arrivals from Phobos. They were both tanned, unsmiling, athletically built, and
expensively dressed in dark suits with white shirts. The syndicate upper hierarchy was picky about
appearances conforming to position. Only the topmost levels sported lighter shades, some individuality in
adornment and style, and an allowance of color. "Well, that's over with now," he said. "They'll be going
back to Tharsis.That's where Elaine and the other Sarda will be too . . .and the key to finding your
quarter-billion dollars."
The two expediters conferred briefly, then spoke to the leader of the backup force. "Board your men
and let's get out there," the one who was in charge said.
* * *
Meanwhile, in the upper atmosphere, the vessel from Asgard began its braking maneuver to descend
from orbit. It was of a fast, robust design capable of landing on the Martian surface, making it
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