CHAPTER ELEVEN

Harry Cardip stared at me with his usual irritated scowl. He didn't have much to be irritated about; in fact, this was an occasion to celebrate. About fifty guests had met in the Seychelles Number 6 Lab to hoist a few glasses and toast our success. We'd pulled the P-657 out of the ground and had her off Ancho before the feds even knew what had happened. The rebels had suffered only moderate casualties. A staggering victory and cause enough for me to take a short hop off the wagon.

True, the two alien ships had escaped -- but that was nothing. The galaxy was safe from a madman.

No mistaking it, though; Cardip was not pleased. He just sat at the lab console in front of a monitor and gave me the fish eye. He hadn't even touched the drink we left there for him.

"Do you honestly think that you deserve to be privvy to every facet of the agency's operations?" he asked crankily.

"I only wanted to know -- "

"You wanted to know whether you're running this revolution. Well, you're not. I am!"

"I think his feelings are hurt, Harry," said Lourdes.

I ignored her. "I am aware that I am not in command here," I said, unruffled. "Still, if facts are kept from me -- "

"If facts are kept from you, we can get something done!" snapped the director. "What the blazes is it to you if we didn't include you in planning the actual assault on the battleship? Hell, we had to wait for you to find it before we could plan anything. And why should you know the exact extent of our stealth technology?"

"To answer your first question: I would have been saved several years of worry-induced aging had I known the Agency stood in readiness to support me. I would also have proceeded with greater alacrity and -- "

"Baloney! You would have bullheaded your way across Ancho stomping your feet and singing the Saints are Coming."

"He would have?" asked Lourdes. Even she was siding with me on this one.

I gave Cardip a long sideways glower.

"I don't know," admitted Cardip. "I do know that whatever it is that makes you fall in the sewer and come up with diamonds is something I am simply not going to interfer with. You were born lucky, and I intend to take advantage of it."

Now, I was beginning to steam. "Perhaps, Harry, just once you could give me credit where credit is due." I told him. "You might consider the very real possibility that it is what I have up here -- " I tapped my forehead " -- and not blind chance that has once again put the revolution back on its feet."

"All right, all right," the director conceded. "I'll admit that your hunches may have some cerebral merit. And I suppose you could call it at worse serendipidous insight that led you to see where Seek might be hiding. But look at the situation I was in. I knew you were onto something. I also knew that I had only two tools at my disposal: secret stealth technology and your -- " I thought he would choke on the words " -- your... unusual abilities."

"Thank you," I said. "And with respect to the stealth, it is not my argument that I should have known every detail. I think, however, that just a little hint if nothing more was in order."

"Would you have liked it better if Seek had had just a little hint? We could never have sneaked up on the ship if he had known. Well, I didn't tell him, and he outranked you!"

"Seek didn't pay for it!" I yelled. I pointed at him. "I've heard the scuttlebut about how you finance things. Armarment and stealth purchases have been financed exclusively from my bank account. What's worse, you've been feeding me some line about punching the Seychelles into ultra and making random turns to escape detection. I've actually told people that I believed this. You're not only ruining my reputation but my military education."

"You want an education on evasive maneuvers? Look at this screen."

I looked and saw that what rocketed out of the shuttle bays were craft the likes of which no one had seen. They were perhaps no faster than the agency ships, although there was no way to be sure of that. The quality that distinquished them from both federal and rebel vessels was simply defensive maneuver. They came out of the holds pinwheeling, gyrating, and turning at right angles and indeed reversing upon themselves as a ship might do were its controls set on random and its throttle at full. But no ship I had ever heard of could turn back on itself without losing velocity. And Cardip explained that the movement was hardly random.

"I've run an exhaustive analysis of their actions from our gunsight videos. The alien craft were reacting instantaneously to any move we made. How they could do any of this is impossible to know. Of these aliens we know absolutely nothing." He pointed at the screen. "Take a look. See? The two ships have met in the center of the screen. Now, they are moving wildly but in unison. Now, they're disappearing. There!"

"What?"

"I've played it over and over again. I can't tell. Neither can the computers."

"Can't tell what?"

Cardip paused and looked up. "I saw a shimmer. Some other lights. A lot of other lights."

"Lighten up, Harry. You can sort it out later. "Isn't it enough for now that we don't have to worry about George Seek anymore?"

Lourdes said: "George Seek never stood a chance against the aliens. He was never our real problem."

"I'm not so sure about that," I responded. "Oh, I think they controlled him zombie-like in the end. The little interview with me was for the aliens' benefit; they were trying to find out more about us, about our reactions to things in general. Maybe how to scare us. But Seek had already allied himself with them against us."

Lourdes frowned. "Then, you don't know. You haven't made the connection. You of all people."

"What connection?"

"I said that he never had a chance against them. He was powerless to resist them. He met them somehow -- somewhere. It was only by the most ridiculous coincidence that they encountered the person most vulnerable to them."

"Vulnerable? Why was Seek especially vulnerable?"

"You saw them. What do you think?"

"Sweetie pies with built-in switchblades."

"And wings, white wings."

"So?"

"Angels," Lourdes explained.

Cardip interrupted her irritably.

"Forget Seek! We have other work to consider!"

"Work?" I mouthed the word with distain. I punched Cardip in the shoulder. "Drink up, Chief. I've already planned what to do with the P-657, if that's what's bothering you. We pack her with explosives and blow her up on prime time TV. The galaxy made safer -- and all in the name of the Antigovernmental Agency of Sovereign Worlds!"

Cardip just turned back to the screen and stared at the flickering white lights against a backdrop of brightly shining stars. "I wouldn't blow up the ship right away," he said.