Marcan looked at the hologram that hovered above Castor's control systems. It was supposed to be a similitude of Polydeuces, the ship that was Castor's brother. At first glance it seemed very much like Castor, but after a short while he had started to recognise definite differences, the biggest one being that it was a lot smaller. Compared to Castor's 105 tonnes, Polydeuces was estimated to weigh 20 to 30 tonnes. Therefore, it was a light fighter, possibly even lighter than Marcan's old acquaintance Saker Mk III. Also, although it was also shaped like the letter C, the wings turned a little upward from the horizontal plane. The landing gear was a combined mechanism that allowed docking with Castor.

The image was only an approximation based on very fragmented data from Castor's memory and Christine Vera's few notes and it could very well be that the actual ship looked somewhat different. But it was enough to make the other ship recognisable if anyone happened to have seen it somewhere in the inhabited space. Marcan nodded happily, he added the hologram to the message that he had prepared on their way to Nakasoneport on Reorte 1. Then he pressed a button and the message was sent to the public message board in the system. After a few days it would be on every message board in the sector and word of mouth would spread the word even further even before they reached the next sector themselves. A five thousand credit reward would take care of that.

"Commander Rayger, there is an incoming call for you," Castor said suddenly.

"What?" Marcan said aloud. He had just brought Castor into the landing bay 4 of Nakasoneport and no one was supposed to know where he was. "Who is it?" he asked.

"The comm signal signature marks the caller as someone from the Federal Military, commander, and it originates from another ship located in bay 2," Castor replied.

Marcan frowned. What could the Federal Military want of him after he had turned his back on them? Curious, he asked Castor to open the communication line.

What appeared on the holoscreen then surprised him even more than the fact that it was a Federal Military connection. An athletic-looking woman with a sharp nose in her late thirties looked back at him and said, "Greetings, Major Rayger."

Astonished, Marcan forgot the formalities and gasped, "Sheila! What are you doing here?"

Sergeant Sheila Rasche smiled, an expression that made her nose seem sharper than it actually was. "I'm here to meet you, actually," she answered. "Can I come to your ship to discuss something?"

Marcan frowned, "Business?" He had noted the Federal Military uniform that she wore and knew that she was there on an assignment.

Sheila sounded apologetic when she answered, "That too."

"What kind of business?" Marcan asked.

"I'd rather not discuss it on an open channel," she answered.

"All right, come in here. You'll get a chance to see my new fancy ship as well!" Marcan said lightly.

The woman with short-cropped blond hair answered, "Yes, I have heard of it. I'll be there in ten. Sergeant Rasche out."

As the holo-image disappeared into thin air, Marcan leaned back in his pilot's seat and closed his eyes. He had not seen Sheila in almost six months and the last time they had seen they had both been more or less miserable. He had decided to leave the military while Sheila had just changed her mind from doing so. And the few weeks before that happened they had spent together, first chasing after Emic Troy and then travelling back home. During that time they had realised that they cared for each other and so the break-up had saddened them both.

"May I ask who this Sheila is, commander?" Castor asked suddenly. The AI showed a great deal of initiative for a simple AI.

"She served under me in the military," Marcan answered and smiled, fully aware of the double meaning of his words. She was one of the few women whom he had ever known that well and as such he would never forget her, or be able to say no to her. He wondered whether that was why the military had sent her after him now.

"You were close?" Castor probed.

Marcan chuckled, partly to cover the gloom that came over him. "Yes, we were close. She almost quit the army with me," he said, trying to keep his voice cheerful.

"Shall I extend the entrance ramp ready for her?" Castor asked.

Marcan smiled, "You can extend it twenty seconds before the time she said she would be here. You'll never meet anyone as punctual as her."

Castor kept quiet while Marcan stood up and walked back to the living quarters. He looked around in the small quarters that contained little more than a room with a bed and the usual bathroom fixture. He made the bed as quickly as he could and checked that the room was relatively clean. The small cleaning robots cleaned the room daily, so there should be nothing to complain about.

A full minute before Sheila arrived, he produced two Magalan Greens with the onboard drink dispenser. It was his favourite drink and he knew that Sheila liked it also. At least she had never complained about it before, but, of course, with women that rarely meant anything.

Then he heard the entrance ramp activating and he returned to the bridge to welcome the woman, leaving the drinks into the table in the bedroom. He straightened his pilot's jacket, which, being only a little over five months old, was still as good as new. Then Sheila walked up the ramp and appeared through the entrance hatch. She looked around curiously and entered the ship. When their eyes locked, Marcan felt suddenly very insecure about what he should do. Considering their history it might be appropriate to greet the woman with a hug, but that might appear as if he considered that the past six months had never existed and that they had never broken up. But a handshake felt too formal to him.

So, he stood still and watched Sheila as she walked through the short corridor to the bridge door where he was waiting. She looked at him hesitantly the same way as he looked at her. Marcan felt painful inside for not being able to take her in his arms and pretend that they had been together for all this time. She was close enough for him to do that. It was as if she was inviting him to do that, actually. But then he realised that she could be so close only because he was blocking the doorway and there was no way to get past him. Perhaps she just expected him to give her room and let her into the bridge.

At last, after a time that felt like hours to Marcan, but was actually only a few seconds, Sheila raised her right hand and took a hold of his upper left arm. Her touch was gentle and Marcan could not but raise his hand to her cheek, to touch the soft skin that he had once been allowed to caress with soft kisses. But now they were allowed just to look into each other's eyes and remember what they had once had. Then the moment was over and they both pulled back from one another.

Marcan waved his hand towards the interior of the bridge and said, "Come in Sheila. See how finely decorated this ship is."

Sheila walked in and looked around and he saw her eyes widen in surprise when she saw the reliefs and small statuettes, as well as the walls that where all imitated stone. "Wow! I read about this new ship of yours, but I never believed that it might be this magnificent," she praised.

"Thank you, Sergeant Rasche," Castor said then.

Sheila looked around in surprise, "What was that?"

Marcan smiled, "It is Castor, the AI, he is quite different from the military AIs."

"The AI as eccentric as the ship, eh?" Sheila said.

Marcan just smiled, since he knew that whatever he said, Castor would want to talk about it later. "Come, let's go into the living quarters where we can sit down properly," he said and guided Sheila through the next doorway into the room where the Magalan Greens waited for them.

Sheila smiled when she saw the waiting drinks, "You don't waste time, do you?"

Confused, Marcan asked, "What do you mean?" He was reaching for the glasses already.

Sheila looked at him as if he was a half-wit, "You take a girl into your bedroom and you already have drinks prepared! One cannot but question your motives!"

Marcan's grip on the glasses almost failed at that. "Oh, I didn't think! I'm sorry!"

Sheila laughed, "Don't worry fool. I'm just teasing you."

Marcan was embarrassed, but he managed not to start babbling incoherently. Females that made jokes always unsettled him, especially when they joked on his expense. One never knew what to expect from them. He wondered how he had managed to get on with Sheila for so long. Perhaps it had been the mission and his decision to leave the military that had taken his thoughts elsewhere.

He sat down on his bed, leaving ample room for Sheila in case she dared to join him. Then he looked at her seriously and asked, "What is the reason you are here? Did the military send you?"

She stepped to the bed and sat down as well. Then she took a sip of the drink and looked at him. "Yes, they did. They have a proposition for you," she said.

Marcan frowned, "A proposition? What kind of a proposition?"

"There was an incident that caused the destruction of one of our Skeet Cruisers. From the flight records we were able to find out that it was attacked by ships equipped with the cloaking devices," Sheila told him.

Marcan did not release his frown yet, "So?"

Sheila seemed nervous; "There were eight attackers, Marcan. They were all black and of unknown design."

"Eight?" Marcan mused aloud, "but there are only twenty or thirty remaining cloaking devices in all of human space! And they are all in the hands of the Federation and the Empire and neither has any reason to risk eight of them in the same place at the same time."

Sheila nodded, "Yes. That is the problem. The military fears that the Imperial scientist may have found a way to construct more of them, or else someone has found a new cache of them somewhere."

"But even if someone had done one of those things, why would they attack a single Skeet Cruiser?" Marcan asked.

Sheila shook her head; "I have no idea. That is what the military wants you to find out."

"Me? But this has nothing to do with me? I resigned from active duty long ago."

Sheila smiled faintly; "They don't think so. They are ready to consider the last six months a mere extended vacation if you are willing to come back."

Marcan shook his head, "No, I'm not coming back. I'm my own boss nowadays. Besides, I'm in a middle of something right now and it may well take a few months before I'm ready with it."

"Marcan," Sheila began, exasperated, "don't you know that none of us is ever completely free? Believe me when I say that the military has the means to persuade you to do this. They need someone outside their bureaucracy and you are the only one with an FMI training."

"That training is self-learned!" Marcan exclaimed, "And there is nothing that the military can do anymore to follow their orders!"

"Marcan, they know about Mr Jones," Sheila said softly.

Marcan's eyes bulged; he had been sure that no one had survived his attack alive. "But how?" he asked.

Sheila smiled, but it was not a happy smile, "Where do you think the money to hire you came from?"

Marcan realised that he was trapped. If the Federal Military were to hint the Empire who had killed their agent, there would be a fleet of assassins on his trail the very next day. He sighed and took another sip of his favourite drink. This time, it had only a little effect on his mood. "Tell me about the mission, Sheila," he said at last.

"The Skeet Cruiser, commanded by Captain Frank Jackson was on a routine mission in Sector 16,2 in the system of Tiessar when it was suddenly attacked and destroyed. Later investigation showed that also the few settlements in the sole habitable planet in that system, planet Judd, had been attacked as well and destroyed completely. Those living in the two other nearby planets had not seen anything and could not say what had happened," Sheila told.

"But it is a frontier world, and not under the Federation jurisdiction," Marcan wondered.

Sheila nodded, "Which is exactly why we need someone outside the military for the job. Your recent fame from your other exploits will confirm many that you have nothing to do with the military anymore."

"But not all," Marcan said gruffly, remembering Alana Vera's reaction.

Sheila shrugged, "Perhaps not all, but enough of them so that you can do your work."

"Where do I begin from?" Marcan asked.

Sheila dug into her pocket; "In this data card we have all the information that we have been able to dig out thus far. Tiessar is less than an appealing system and we cannot figure out why all the settlements there were destroyed, so you know about that as much as we do. But there are also the flight records of the Skeet Cruiser from their last few moments, where you can see what we know of the ships that attacked them, which is not much either. Other than that, I think that you should start towards that sector as soon as possible. It is probable that whoever did this did this for a reason and they will probably still be there, somewhere. You will also receive some FMI gear that may be of some help to you."

"That's it?" Marcan asked.

Sheila seemed apologetic, "Yes, I'm afraid so. Of course you cannot tell anyone that you work for the FMI."

"And no one will come to my rescue if I get in trouble, either?" Marcan asked, frowning again.

Sheila did not answer. She took another sip of the drink, which was no longer cold, and just looked at him. As Marcan looked back at her, he realised how much he had missed seeing her around. She had been one of the pilots in the squadron under his command and they had learned to trust one another, but it had been the Wolf Mk II –mission that had brought them together, and at the same time separated them.

"What do I get if I succeed?" he asked.

Sheila smiled, "The military will pay you according to what you find out."

Marcan nodded, the promise of pay was better than he had expected. They could just have blackmailed him to serve them, but, then again, perhaps blackmailing was more up the Empire's alley than the Federation's. He knew now that he would have to take the mission. There was no escape here. Therefore he pushed the mission aside from his thoughts for a moment and decided to enjoy Sheila's company while he had it.

Marcan smiled to the woman; "You still hold my former position in the military?"

Sheila nodded, "Yes, I'm still a fighter pilot, although I think that I will get reassigned after this mission."

"This mission?" Marcan asked.

"Yes," Sheila answered, "I am going to act as your liaison officer during this mission. Did you think that they would be letting you go all alone?"

Marcan grinned, "I think I did, but I'm glad I was wrong."

Sheila raised her eyebrows at that but did not say a word. She looked at him intently, though. Marcan drained his glass and put it on the table. Sheila did the same.

"Is there anyone in your life presently?" he asked her when they had sat down on the bed again.

Sheila shook her head, "No. Yours?"

Marcan shook his head as well. Then their eyes locked and they both fell silent. Then Marcan reached his hand and took a hold of Sheila's waist and she moved towards him until their noses touched. Marcan opened his lips and kissed the thin-lipped woman gently and she answered to the kiss.

"What kind of a ship are you travelling on?" Marcan asked Sheila later. They were sitting at a table in the local pilot's lounge and eating.

"Cobra Mk III," she answered between spoonfuls of some meaty reddish sauce named Angreho's Surprise. "It's a convenient ship when one doesn't want to attract too much attention," she added with a smile, alluding to Marcan's ship.

Marcan smiled as well, "Are you going to follow me to Tiessar?"

"Not as far as Tiessar, of course," Sheila replied. "And, in any case, you are not going directly there either."

"I'm not?"

"No. We are going to meet with a Mantis in the Aurce system. It's equipped with a Fighter Launch Device so that we can dock in it. The Mantis will get us to Tiessar, since the system is too far away from the civilised space and places where we can get military fuel. Your ship requires that doesn't it?" she explained.

"Yes," Marcan nodded. "Where will that Mantis go when we reach Tiessar?"

"It's going to scoop for fuel in the system and be ready to take us in if we get into trouble. I'll be visiting the system as a Federation representative to investigate the attacks while you'll be an interested private mercenary, looking if there is a chance for profit, if you need to explain your presence. To avoid suspicion we'll not meet each other physically while we are in the system."

Marcan stayed quiet for a while. He had had some time to think after their lovemaking and while he had made the required transactions to get his ship ready for the long trip. "What if this is a first contact –situation with a new space-faring species?" he asked.

Sheila shook her head, "That is probably not the case. Although the ships were of unknown design, they bore enough resemblance to other human craft to indicate that they were made by some company in human space. In fact, the ships seemed more like the general designs than your new ship does."

"That's true," Marcan replied. "Professor Bardoff and Christine Vera made a wonderful job with that ship, though, no matter how alien it looks."

Sheila smiled, "You should be careful that no one mistakes you for a first contact –situation when you visit these uncivilised frontier worlds."

"They get the same news as everyone else," Marcan said offhandedly. "They will have heard of the ship."

"Not everyone reads the news, Marcan," Sheila countered.

"True," Marcan nodded, "but even they will soon hear about it. Have you read the message board yet? I put on a wanted-message about Castor's sister ship and I promised to pay 5'000 for any information. There's a description of the other ship as well as a picture of mine so that people will know what kind of a ship they are looking for."

"There's another ship like Castor out there?" Sheila asked, somewhat surprised.

Marcan shook his head, "Not quite. It's a smaller craft, a fighter meant to link with Castor."

"Why are you looking for it?" she asked.

"The Bardoff's Trust Fund wants to find it so they paid me to do it," he replied.

"And that's the thing that you were supposed to do before I came in?" Sheila asked and when Marcan nodded, she continued, "I'll see what I can do to help. The military has ships in every corner of the human space, so someone ought to have seen something. I'll send a note on that in my next report."

"Thank you," Marcan said, "it would be nice not to be too hindered by this new mission."

A couple of weeks later from their own perspective, but due to the multitude of days skipped while in hyperspace, it was more like two and a half months in real time before they finally arrived in the Tiessar system. On his way to the Aurce system to meet up with the Mantis, Marcan and Sheila had had to stop for fuel in two systems, 82 Eridani and Pollux. The latter had been Marcan's idea since he had wanted to see the system named after Castor's brother. Even though the original Greek name was Polydeuces, the more popular name was Pollux, a later Roman variation.

The idea to visit the Pollux system had almost been a mistake, though. Unlike 82 Eridani where they had not met with any resistance at all, the Pollux system had been virtually infested with pirates. Upon entering the system, Marcan had seen Sheila's Cobra Mk III, the faster ship of the two to cross the hyperspace because of its lighter weight, already fighting the first group of pirates. He had hastened in to help her and together they had been able to drive the bloodthirsty pirates away. And before they had been able to dock at the local commercial trading station, they had had to fight through a veritable horde of pirate ships, many of them the larger Imperial ships and dangerously armed at that.

While fighting the pirates, Marcan had noticed clear progress in Sheila's piloting skills. He asked her about it and she told him that she had reached the rank Competent in the files of the Elite Federation. It was a big leap to be made in half a year and Marcan was curious where she had had the opportunity to battle that much, but he decided to ask her when they were able to meet physically again. The comm-channels were often too impersonal medium for his taste, especially with Sheila. While they were both docked onto the local station and waiting to be refuelled, he wondered whether he should buy a bottle of some good wine to share with the woman. The fact that they had both recently advanced in the Elite Federation records could be a good pretext for a private meeting.

The two last jumps to Aurce had been uneventful, and they could not very well had been anything else since they stayed in the midpoint system only long enough to prepare for another jump. And during the rest of the travel aboard the Mantis he had had the chance to celebrate their advance with a bottle of wine. Marcan and Sheila were growing closer again, but not as close as they had been before, when he had still been in the military. They both knew that their relationship could continue for only as long as their present mission took, so there was no future for them. Sheila had made it clear that she was not ready to leave the military yet.

A few more jumps and refuel stops the Mantis finally arrived to Tiessar, a system that lay a good 161,5 light years away from Reorte. Since they had been out of touch from the media and military for the last part of their journey, and the Mantis crew had not received any new information from the Tiessar system, Marcan and Sheila wondered what they would find there. All kinds of things could happen in such a long time. It was possible that also the other planets had been attacked and there would be no one to answer their questions.

Marcan had studied the data that Sheila had provided him and found out that there really was not much that the military knew. Even the images of the attacking craft had been of a rather poor quality since the ships had been black against the black velvet of the space. Still, he had to agree that the ships were of a design that resembled many of the earlier ship designs, such as the Adder and the Gecko and as such it was clearly designed by a human. Also the specifics of weaponry seemed to match as the pulse lasers had positively been identified as 5mw pulse lasers. It was the same laser model Marcan's Castor had installed, although his was slightly beefed up.

After he had read the data provided of the attackers, he had turned his attention to the specifics of the system itself. The star Tiessar was located close to a group of other stars systems, such as Ensoay, Befaqu and Andcean. They were all so close that the attackers could easily be hiding in any one of them if they were not found in Tiessar. The local star was a type K orange star, similar to Earth's, and had one garden world inside the life zone, it being the second planet from the star. It was a world named Judd and it was only a little over a third of Earth's mass, and due to its closeness to the sun – only 0.344 AUs – the average surface temperature was close to 46 degrees of centigrade. It was a bit hot for humans, but the local indigenous life seemed to thrive. The system data did not reveal more of the planet's ecosystem, but Marcan knew that he would soon see it for himself. None of the local planets had commercial spaceports and there were no big cities either, just some two small habitats on the first and the third planet, unless they had now also been destroyed.

As he was turning his attention back to his dinner, the intercom chimed and a firm male voice said, "Major Rayger and Sergeant Rasche, report to the launch deck immediately!"

Marcan ignored the announcer's haste and took the time to finish his dinner before he got up and left his room. He had been ready for the launch for some time already and actually wondered why the call had not come earlier. When he got to the corridor outside, he saw Sheila walking farther away. He called out to her.

Sheila turned around when she heard his voice. When he got nearer, she said, "I thought you had gone already."

"Had to finish my dinner first. Do you know how far into the system we are already?" Marcan asked.

Sheila shrugged, "I don't know. Probably near to Tiessar 8 by now." Tiessar 8 was a gas giant which was supposed to carry noticeable amounts of hydrogen that the Mantis was there to scoop up for their return flight. It was also still far away from the inner planets and there was no way anyone could detect their launch from the Mantis. That was important since they were supposed to have entered the system from different places and for different reasons. They had also agreed that Sheila would head for the Tiessar 1 while Marcan went to Tiessar 3 to throw off any remaining suspicions. What they would do in their respective destinations depended on what they found there upon arrival.

Colonel Freud was waiting for them when they arrived to the launch deck. He was a man only a couple of years older than Marcan's 32 years, but there was such stiffness and formality in his attitude that the latter had lost soon after his promotion to a corporal. The conclusion that Marcan reached from this was that the rank had gone into the older man's head. He watched with slight amusement as the colonel greeted them with his hands clasped behind his back and his posture and uniform otherwise perfect, down to his shining black boots that reached below his knees.

"Major Rayger, Sergeant Rasche," the Colonel Freud said, giving each of them a slight nod, "your ships are ready for launching. Castor is first in line."

"Thank you, sir," Marcan said. He would have loved to add something to tell the other man how ridiculous he seemed, but he could not do that because of his rank. And anyway, the over-eager officers rarely listened to such remarks no matter where they came from. "I take it that we are close to Tiessar 8?" he asked as an afterthought.

"Yes, Major," the other man said.

Marcan gave the colonel one last nod and proceeded towards his ship. He felt sorry for Sheila who was going to have to spend a few minutes with the colonel before her own ship was ready for launching. When he had entered his ship and walked into the bridge, he said, "Greetings Castor. How have you been?"

"Welcome, commander. I am fine, but I wish to ask you something," the ship AI answered with his strong voice.

Marcan sat down on the pilot's seat and prepared for launching. "What is it?" he asked.

"This mission troubles me, commander. I understand that there was nothing you could do to avoid this, but I don't like the delay in finding my brother," Castor answered, his voice growing strangely soft again. However, there was no danger of him getting completely incoherent anymore. Not since the repairs at the construction ship of the Vera Industries.

Marcan nodded as they lifted of from the pad and headed for the vast airlock. "I know, Castor. But our message is on the public boards and Sheila promised to try to get the military to help us as well. It may very well be that after this mission we'll have information about Polydeuces."

"Yes, commander," the AI said and Marcan could hear that he was not completely satisfied with the answer. He had to agree with the AI, though. It could very well be some time before they could head back to the more populated areas of space, especially if the military wanted him to get to the bottom of this strange mission. He turned the ship towards the inner system and locked the autopilot on Tiessar 3.

"Castor," Marcan called out then, "what kind of information do you have on this system?"

"Not much, commander. This is a system in the far reaches of the inhabited space, and even though Professor Bardoff was especially interested in this kind of worlds as a rule, there was not much data about it available. The few settlers in the three planets are hermits and others who prefer to stay far away from civilisation," Castor explained.

"Nothing special about the second planet, Judd?" Marcan asked.

"It has indigenous life but because of the high average temperature, it has not attracted any big groups of immigrants. Also, it is one of the systems that were under investigation when the charges were raised against some corporations for destroying indigenous life. It is not known whether something like that really happened here," Castor lectured, finding all the cross-references that he could find in his data banks.

"Any sentient life forms?" Marcan inquired.

"Not known, commander. It seems that the planet has never been thoroughly explored," Castor said.

Marcan nodded. With the fast development of technology and the spread of humanity had given natural scientist enough to work on for the next millennium. There were many worlds with indigenous life in the more populated areas and it was only natural that the lazy university types much rather chose to work close to the conveniences of civilisation. That left many half-explored or possibly even unexplored garden worlds to be exploited by traders looking for new trade articles and to people looking for a secluded place to live in. The latter seemed to be the case with Tiessar 2.

"How about Tiessar 3?" he asked then, turning his attention to the first planet he was supposed to visit.

"Tiessar 3, also known as Lopez's Hole, bears close similarity to both Tiessar 1 and 4. They are all rocky planets with thin atmospheres. There is one small tent-settlement on the planet and some hermits living around it in smaller habitats. No more than 100 people in all. They have no spaceports and only a few space-worthy ships," Castor told.

"How old are your files?" Marcan asked.

"I have taken the time to renew my knowledge from various databases since you brought me back to civilisation, commander, and thus this information is up to date," Castor revealed much to Marcan's surprise. He had not expected such independent thinking from the AI, not even an advanced one.

"Prepare to update it again," Marcan said ominously as he looked out into space. The ship was accelerating towards the third planet of the system and it would take them almost seven hours to reach it. It was plenty of time to get some sleep and plan ahead. He glanced at the scanner screen and saw that Sheila's Cobra Mk III was following his trajectory. Deciding that it might rouse suspicion if they travelled so close together, he took Castor on another flight vector, which would still take him close to Tiessar 3, but also much farther away from the Cobra that was travelling towards the first planet, presently located on the other side of the local sun.

Six hours and twenty eight minutes later, Marcan woke up from his soft bed and looked at the ceiling above. The bedside alarm chimed softly but otherwise it was the most peaceful awakening he had had in days. He did not bounce up from his bed directly after waking up, there were no involuntary nervous twitches and his back was okay, he did not even yearn to close his eyes again and get some more sleep. He woke up simply and peacefully by opening up his eyes and found them transfixed on the ceiling above. He did not know why the ceiling fascinated him so, but he felt unable to turn his eyes away from it for several minutes.

Then he started to realise what was so different from many other past nights, or sleep periods, as they were. He had not dreamed of anything. He was positive that there had been no dreams or a nightmare of Mr Jones's demise in there, nor the haunting corridors of Bardoff's Boa. The sleep had been truly peaceful this time.

He wondered why it had happened now and not before. He might have expected to have peaceful dreams after meeting with Sheila again, especially after their evenings together, but those nights had been like the ones before; filled with disturbing dreams, if not even nightmares. But now, when he was flying towards Tiessar 3 aboard Castor, he had suddenly had a completely peaceful sleep period. He frowned at the mystery and turned his eyes towards the bedside timepiece.

Then he jumped up and ran into the personal hygiene compartment. He was lucky that Professor Bardoff had been a man of means and had purchased a real water shower for Castor. He much preferred it to the various sand-washers, vibroshowers and micro-sound-wave cleansers that he had used in the past. After a quick shower and a vigorous rubbing given by the robotic arms, he stepped back into the main living quarters and dressed up. Then he hurried to the bridge and looked through the main window.

The ugly brown planet was getting bigger and Castor had prepared the ship for approach manoeuvres in his absence, heading for the part of the planet where the only habitats were located. That was the limit of the automatic pilot though, and the AI could not take the ship further.

"Good morning, commander," the AI said when he sat down on the pilot's seat.

"Morning, Castor. Do you have anything to report?" Marcan said.

"Yes, commander. There seems to be curiously low frequency of radio transmission on the planet, even considering the low number of people living there," Castor reported.

"Have you had any visuals yet?"

"No, commander, the atmosphere, although it is thin, makes it impossible from this range while the location is in the night side," Castor went on.

Marcan frowned. He had been afraid that all he would find was a destroyed habitat, but it seemed that there was something left after all. But from the lack of radio transmissions it seemed that something had happened here also, only not as devastating as on the garden world.

A few minutes later they entered the upper layers of the rocky planet's thin atmosphere. The slight tremble was barely recognisable on the bridge. Marcan took the ship in gently but as fast as he could. The mystery that the military had offered him to solve had started to intrigue him lately. It would be interesting to find out what party was showing such interest towards the remote system.

As they reached the altitude of three thousand metres, Marcan took the ship around and headed for the small human habitat that lay in the horizon and was presently hidden behind the dark layer of night.

"Castor, can you detect any transmissions now?" he asked when they were only four hundred kilometres from the target area.

"Yes, commander. There are several active distress beacons in the area, but only one live transmission," Castor said.

Marcan frowned. The distress beacons were a sure sign that the third planet had been attacked as well. Whoever was behind the attacks, was not satisfied with the destruction they had left behind on Judd. "Put the live transmission through, please," he said.

Castor obeyed and the communications screen on Marcan's right came to life. The signal was a weak one and there was lots of static, but he saw that the person on the other end was a man, probably in his early twenties, and his face was streaked with dirt and tears. "Please," the man said desperately, "is anyone alive out there? My father is badly hurt! Come to help us quickly! Anyone?"

Marcan watched the screen with horror. If this boy was the only one up to call help, what had happened to the others? He pressed the transmit button quickly and said, "This is Commander Rayger answering to the distress call."

He saw how the young man's face lit up with hope and doubt at the same time. The boy had brown hair and eyes, and his face was narrow. "Who is this?" the boy asked, "Where did you come from?"

It became clear to Marcan that the man on the other end could not see him. It was probably due to a broken monitor. "I'm Marcan Rayger aboard BD-753," he replied, "I arrived to the system a few days ago."

The suspicious look did not leave the young man's eyes, but his words expressed his relief, "Please come here as quickly as you can! My father needs medical help!"

"I'll be there soon," he said. Then he told Castor to lock the target to the source of the transmission and turned his ship to the new heading. It was only a marginal turn though, since they were still over two hundred kilometres from the habitats.

At the same moment that they arrived over the place where a small group of people had lived peacefully only some time ago, the sun climbed over the horizon and revealed the horror and destruction that had become that community's fate. The small tent that had once spread over several buildings was torn apart and the ground below was filled with burns that were clearly caused by laser fire. The mere destruction of the tent had probably killed everyone in the buildings below, but they had been decimated nevertheless. Most of the better-protected houses, that were built to hold in their own air and biosphere, which lay outside the tent, were also destroyed. All that was left were the distress beacons that were hopelessly short-ranged. But there was the one house that had evidently not been destroyed as thoroughly as the others were and that was where the distress call had originated from.

Marcan sped to that building and took his ship as close to the ground as he dared with the main thrusters before he turned the ship around and let the manoeuvring thrusters kill the excess velocity. The ship was only ten metres from the ground before he extended the vehicle's landing gear. A small thump later they were landed.

Marcan rose from his seat and hurried towards the entrance hatch. He opened the closet next to the hatch and took out the light protection suit with an air mask and air bottles. The screen beside the hatch told him that the atmosphere outside, in addition to being very thin, also consisted of such gases that could not support human life, or any other life that he was aware of. Then he took out a small box that contained some first aid equipment. It had been years since he had last had to give first aid to anyone, but the skills that the military had told him had not gone anywhere. He was confident that he could help the boy's father if there was still hope to save him.

He got into the suit and opened the inner door of the entrance hatch. He entered the airlock and closed the door behind himself. Then he pressed the button that opened the outer door and looked as it slid aside. The view that he was granted was in no way more beautiful than the one he had seen from the main window. The planet was as dull shade of brown as it could be, at least in the early morning sunshine. He wondered why the people had chosen to live there in the first place, instead of the second planet, which was probably a veritable paradise compared to this.

But he did not stand there just admiring the view. As soon as the entrance ramp had extended all the way to the ground, he started moving towards the survived building. He moved with the experience of several years, and military training, in a gravity that was only a fifth of the standard earth gravity, with low, efficient bounces towards his goal. When he got to the building's airlock, he punched at the door chime that would indicate the young man that he was outside.

Soon the door opened and he entered the small airlock. As the doors closed and opened, he looked around and recognised the signs of age. He estimated that the building was at least twenty years old. Then the inner door was open and he stepped inside to find the young man kneeling beside his father on the communal room floor. He saw immediately that there was not much that he could do. The middle-aged man was hardly breathing, and the bubbling of the blood in his lungs could be clearly heard. Still, Marcan hastened to join the boy beside his father and opened his first aid bag.

"What happened to him?" he asked as he picked out the equipment that he was going to need.

The boy watched at him with widened eyes. "He was visiting a neighbour when they came. He ran here without air-masks or anything when something hit him on the ground. I saw it and ran out to bring him in," the boy explained with a broken voice.

"How long ago?"

The boy looked at him stupidly. Then he turned to look at the old-fashioned clock on the wall and said; "I don't know exactly. It must be over three hours now." Then he turned to look at what Marcan was doing. "What's the matter with him?" he asked a moment later.

Marcan shook his head; "There's a lot of internal bleeding. Also, the air outside must have damaged his lungs because they are working only at half of their normal capacity. I'm afraid that I cannot really hope to help him with this equipment."

"What do you mean?"

Marcan looked away from the boy for a moment. He had seen death before and he had had to report the death of many young soldiers to their families, but it never got any easier. He looked back at the young man and looked at him seriously. "I'm sorry but there is nothing we can do to him. It's a matter of minutes before he's gone," he said, perhaps a little bit more harshly than he should have, but that was the way military had taught him.

The look in the boy's eyes changed from incomprehension to that of understanding and finally to grief and sorrow. He looked down at his father and put his hands at the older man's neck and forehead. The dying man raised his left hand and put it on the boy's forearm. He looked at his son and Marcan could almost see a slight smile on his lips. The man's breathing sounded painful, but somehow he managed to say to the boy, "Don't worry, my son... I'm going to meet your mother again and we'll wait for you."

Marcan glanced at the man when he heard the words. It appeared that the man and the boy belonged to some religious sect that believed in the afterlife. It was not something the military appreciated in their soldiers, because it might make the men less desperate in fighting for their own lives if they believed that they were going somewhere after they had died.

The boy's reaction was less analytical, though, and he threw himself at his father and hugged him tightly. "Please don't go father," he pleaded futilely, "Don't leave me alone!" then he burst into tears and kept hugging his father until it was all over.

Marcan had enough sense to let them have their last moment together and he moved into another part of the room to examine the computer terminal there. He did not see the letters on the holographic screen even though he appeared to be leafing through the local news. He had not seen his own father since his graduation from the Eta Cassiopeia military training centre. His assignment to the secret military base had taken care of that. And, somehow, he had not had time to visit Mars since he had left the service. He did not know why, but he had been afraid to see his parents after so many years of virtual silence. But now, especially since he did not believe in the afterlife, he felt that he should take the time to visit his family before it was too late.

Then he shook those thoughts out of his head and turned to look at the crying boy again. It was clear that the father had died, but the boy refused to believe it. Marcan walked over to his and laid his hand on the boy's shaking shoulder. "It's over," he said.

"No!" the boy said and shook his head violently. "No!"

"Boy, I know that it hurts to lose someone you love, but there is something more important that you have to do here," Marcan said.

The boy turned his reddened eyes to him, "What do you mean?"

Marcan Rayger, the major in-reserve of the Federal Military, looked at the boy the way he had looked at the many young men whom he had taught to be the best fighting pilot's the military had and said, "You have to bring those responsible to justice. You have to make sure that this will never happen again."

"But how? I'm just a linguistics student. There is no way I can make anyone pay for this!"

"By telling me what happened here, boy. By telling everyone what took place in this system," Marcan said seriously, and a little dramatically.

It was not easy to make the boy tell him what he wanted, though. Marcan had to help the boy, Luke Eyewalker, as his name was, to carry his father's body to his ship. The recycling unit of the small community had been destroyed and Luke wanted to bury him on the system's second planet, in a ground that would use the remaining energy of his father to make the plants flourish. On Lopez's Hole, the body would have been wasted because, even if it had been recycled, there was no one to make use of it anymore.

Luke was devastated when he saw the full destruction of his hometown, but it did not touch him as much as his father's death had. It was only when they were aboard Castor and after Marcan had taken them some to some distance from the planet and towards the still distant garden world, that Luke had composed himself enough to tell him what he knew of the attack to their small community.

"It was during the darkest hour of the night when we heard the alarm klaxons and I ran to the communications computer to find out what was happening. We didn't have any scanners, not even short ranged ones, only some cameras and I accessed one of those that was located close to the main tent to see what was going on. In the darkness I could still only some black ships attacking our settlement, their lasers firing. I yelled for my father but he was not there. I had forgotten that he had gone to visit out neighbour in the evening and it usually gets really late with them before he returns. It was then that I heard the loud crash outside and ran to the window to see my father in a heap on the path to our house," Luke Eyewalker said.

"What do you know of the craft that attacked you?" Marcan asked.

The boy shook his head, "Nothing. I suppose they are the same that attacked Judd a few months ago. We all thought that they had gone away after the murderous attack."

"You don't have any police here?"

"Yes, we had a small police force, " Luke said, "but they were stationed on Judd and were destroyed with the rest of the people there."

Marcan glanced at the boy who was sitting on the floor beside him, leaning back on the wall, "Is there some strive between the three planets here? Any reason for those living on Tiessar 1 to attack you?"

Luke shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know. I was never into politics anyway. I guess there were some differences of opinion, but I don't know what they were."

"What were you into then?" Marcan asked.

The boy gave a weak grin, revealing the line of big white teeth, "Literature, linguistics and all that. I can think of nothing better than Toulouse's Imagery of Tiliala."

Marcan frowned, "Is that some art book?"

"No, of course not," Luke exclaimed. "It's the best piece of modern poetry you can find! Listen to this: Ush, those white lanes of the sky; ush, those roads of pallid colours; They are a lie, nothing more; a lie to trap the weak of heart..."

The boy continued for a while, but Marcan listened to the poem only half-heartedly. The only reason he had asked the boy to tell him about his interests was that he had tried to turn Luke's mind off what had happened to his father. He was not in the least interested in the poetry that the boy started to recite. In fact, he had hard time to understand how anyone could find such a thing as interesting as the boy apparently did. Even though Castor had succeeded in making him to learn about the mythology and the ancient poetry, if only as far as to satisfy his curiosity about Professor Bardoff's infatuation, he held no further plans to explore the world of art. He knew himself to be a man of action, perhaps with a streak of explorer in him, but nothing more.

And there were more important things for him to consider than poetry. One of them was the long gap between the attacks on the two planets. In all sense Luke and his people should have been right in presuming that after a few months since the attack on Judd the mysterious ships would not return. There seemed to be no reason for them to return that long after the initial attack; it went against every rule of offensive that Marcan had been taught. Attacks were supposed to be swift and devastating, not two randomly timed attacks on two planets in the same system. Since it could not be that the attackers knew nothing of military offensives, given that their attacks on the two planets had been quite thorough and they had been able to destroy the military Skeet Cruiser quite easily, there had to be another reason for the seemingly idiotic timing of the assaults. Also, since the first attack had been targeted at the garden world, the reason should be connected with it.

Marcan pondered at these questions and when Luke had finished the recitation and he had commended him on his good reading, he asked, "Do you have any knowledge of what your people did and planned after the first attack on Judd?"

Luke shrugged his shoulders again, "As I said, I don't follow politics that much."

Marcan shook his head; "I don't mean political action. I mean did someone go to Judd to do something or were you planning to rebuild the settlements there or something along those lines?" He reasoned that if the goal of the first attack had been to eradicate the existing settlements in Judd, the reason for the second one might be to make sure that they were not rebuilt either. It could be that someone wanted the planet empty. Perhaps there was on Judd a deposit of some expensive mineral or metal that someone wanted to make profit of without a danger of struggle with the present population. It was the kind of thing that kept happening around the human space every single year.

"My father talked about something like that, but I don't think there was enough of us to re-settle Judd. Not unless they planned to relocate us all there," Luke mused.

"There were no preparations for such move, then?"

"No, I think I would have noticed that in the news even if I'm not that interested in the politics," Luke said with a weak grin.

"Some individual action then? Was there someone who frequently visited the colonies on Judd when they were still there? Someone who might have continued visiting that world even after the attacks?" Marcan tried.

"Of course there were some traders," Luke said. "We often got some animal meat from the second planet for food, and some crops that were hard to grow in our greenhouses. I think they continued to provide them even after the attack."

"Food?" Marcan exclaimed. That did not sound like a good reason for the attacks. After all, the garden world was big enough to provide food for any number of people. "Are you sure there is nothing else?" he confirmed.

Luke's expression indicated ignorance; "I have no idea. This is all I know."

Marcan nodded and grew silent. It appeared that he had to wait until they arrived to Judd to find out more about the situation. Perhaps he would bump into one of those merchants Luke had mentioned. After all, there must be traffic between the first and second planet in the same way that there had been between the second and the third. Unless the first planet had been attacked as well.

Suddenly he called for the ship AI, "Castor, please send a message to the first planet. Tell them what has happened here. And tell me if there is no answer." He knew that it could not take more than a few minutes for his message to reach the first planet and a few more for the answer to get back to him.

But by the time he had reached the garden world, there had been no answer from the first planet. He had even sent a second message to call for anyone who could answer, but there was no answer to that either. Luke told him that it might be because their equipment was broken, or because no one was monitoring the comm-systems, but Marcan feared that it might be more than that. He was worried for Sheila. She at least should have answered to his calls. Even if the rest of the people on Tiessar 1 did not have proper communication systems, Sheila's Cobra was equipped with the best there were. It was more than certain that Tiessar 1 had suffered an attack as well. The only question was whether there were any survivors.

They landed in the outskirts of one of the settlements on Tiessar 2, the garden world. According to Castor's data it was supposed to have been the biggest one and the most important. It was located on the seaside, close to a vast stretch of something akin to a rainforest and the average temperature out in the open was close to 50 degrees of the centigrade. According to Luke, it was just barely survivable for short periods of time, but Marcan doubted it. He had grown up on Mars, where the temperatures were quite low compared to some other systems, and since then he had never really had to work on planet surfaces. He wondered how hot it got closer to the equator of this planet.

"Didn't they use any kind of protective clothing?" he asked from the young man, simultaneously looking out through the main window. The air outside seemed to be near to the boiling point; the heat was actually visible to the eye as it distorted the view of the ruined buildings and the forest beyond.

"I think the hunters may have used something to protect themselves in the forest, but otherwise they rarely did," Luke said. He also seemed a little apprehensive of what he could see of the situation outside. He wanted to bury his father close to the destroyed settlement, but it seemed that it would be wiser to wait for the night. At present, the body was stored in the airlock, where it was preserved in cold vacuum.

Marcan shook his head at the thought of leaving his ship without protective suit but supposed that the locals must have got used to the hot weather. Now he also understood why the two other planets were inhabited as well. Some had wanted to live in cooler environment, even if it meant that they could not move outside freely. But it all mattered nothing now that all settlements at the three planets had apparently been destroyed with the settlers with them.

However, disgusted with the idea that he should keep the dead body of the boy's father in his ship any longer than necessary, Marcan walked to the airlock. In the cabin by the inner door there were several kinds of protective suits, ranging from complete clumsy spacesuits to simple extreme environment gear. There was also a limited selection of various kinds of tools, including some that were meant for digging. He chose the lightest suit that he could find that would protect him from the heat outside and pulled it on. He gave Luke another similar suit and then they both entered the airlock where Luke's father's remains were stored with two shovels. At the sight of his dead father, Luke fell silent again and his eyes grew teary.

"Luke, I think we should leave him in here until we have found a proper spot to bury him," Marcan said, his voice sounding so gentle that he was even himself surprised by it. It occurred to him that he was not such an expert at hiding his emotions as he had considered himself to be.

The boy nodded but said nothing. He knelt by his father for the time it took for the inner airlock door to close and the outer to open and brushed the stray hair from the dead man's face. Luke's face was away from Marcan so that he could not see his expression, but even without seeing it, Marcan knew that his father's passing devastated the boy. He held a hope that the burying of the body would bring a sense of closure to the boy, but he knew better. He had seen enough tragedies in his life to know that for most men the sense of closure did not come until those responsible had been found and punished. Or until the man had killed himself in some suicidal attempt to revenge the death of his family. Luke did not seem to be a kind of man who would search his own revenge, but he was certainly going to be unable to put this incident behind himself until the culprits had been found.

With such dark thoughts in his mind, Marcan walked away from the ship with Luke, towards the line of tall plants that could be called trees. They were more like gigantic bushes really, with tall lean branches reaching towards the sky lined with small leaves. In the low gravity, the plants grew even higher than on Mars, reaching up to forty or fifty metres above the ground. There were another kinds of plants as well, wide and low bushes that had broad leaves that stretched over the ground, blocking the light from any other kind of plants, and gathering rainwater that filled the wide bubbles that were located under the leaves close to the central portion. The leaves of those water-gatherers, though low when compared to the fifty metre trees, were two to three metres above the ground though and Marcan and Luke could have walked under them with no difficulties, if there were not for the varying and colourful undergrowth that blocked the entry into the forest. From his childhood on Mars, Marcan knew that the undergrowth would be more light deeper in the forest.

When they got near to the trees, they stopped and looked around. They had no idea what the locals had done with their dead, but it did not matter anymore. Luke looked around and pointed to one of the plants that Marcan had ranked as undergrowth. It was a tall flowery thing with a red bloom on the top of a lean green stem, which was at least two metres in height, and long narrow leaves growing from the point where the stem grew out of the ground.

"I want to bury my father near to that one," Luke announced.

Marcan looked at the plant suspiciously. It was a beautiful thing surely, but one had no way of knowing when even a beautiful thing could sting you with a deadly poison needle. "Do you know what plant that is?" he asked from Luke.

Luke nodded, "It's Judd's Red Jewel. I read about them once."

"Are they safe?" Marcan asked.

Luke looked at him stupidly and exclaimed, "It's a flower!"

Marcan shrugged, "I suppose so." Then he followed the eager boy towards the plant. They did not waste any time in examining and admiring the plant and started digging as soon as they reached it. Marcan had no idea how deep one was supposed to bury a dead body, but he supposed that it should be more than fifty centimetres. And soon, even though they were wearing the top-of-the-line protective suits, Marcan felt a trickle of sweat running down his back.

When the hole was two metres in length and over one metre in depth, Marcan put away his shovel and climbed up from the hole. "I think this is enough," he said and helped the boy out of the hole as well. Then they returned to the ship and took Luke's father's body from the airlock and started back towards the grave.

It was then that Marcan noticed something strange in the destroyed settlement a little way off on their left. After an attack everything should have been in shambles and thrown here and there around the streets, but this seemed not to be the case here. It seemed that some of the roads had been cleared of debris.

"Luke, have you any idea why anyone would want to explore these ruins?" he asked.

The young man looked at the ruins and then at him, "I can't think of any. Of course someone might have been here looking for valuables, but I don't know who would do such a thing."

"How about the bodies? Did anyone come here to bury them?" Marcan asked. That was the simplest explanation for the strange sight.

Suddenly the expression in Luke's eyes changed, "I had totally forgotten about that!"

"What is it?" Marcan asked. The boy seemed to be scared all of a sudden.

"Some men did come here after the first attack," Luke said. "They wanted to see if there were any survivors and to bury the dead. They found no one."

"No survivors at all?" Marcan mused and looked at the ruins again. In a place where the atmosphere was breathable, someone at least should have survived. Someone who had been in the woods during the attack, outside the attack zone.

"No," Luke shook his head; "They found no one at all. No survivors, no bodies, no anything."

Marcan frowned and felt cold shivers running down his spine. He looked around when a sudden sense of dread came over him. He was not a man to scare easily, but to have hundreds of bodies just disappear was more than even he could handle. Unless the occupants had been silently removed a priori to the attack, there was no way to explain the mystery. What reason could the attackers have had to take away the bodies after the attack? After all they had not done so on Tiessar 3 or they would have found Luke and his dying father before his arrival.

Then they reached the hole that they had dug under the strange and beautiful plant and lowered the body in it. Marcan was able to forget his dark speculations for the time that it took them to fill in the hole. Neither of them realised that the flower that they were working under had started drooping in their direction and the red bloom was above the grave when they fell silent beside their finished work.

When they were finished the sun had got low in the sky and they returned to the ship to put their shovels away. Marcan decided to take a tour in the ruins of the settlement and got back outside while Luke remained in the ship. The boy said that he needed some time alone and Marcan could understand it. He told Luke to stay on the bridge and monitor the comm channels in case he had to call back to the ship in an emergency or if someone else tried to contact them. He still held hope for Sheila's safe return and wished that it would be she who was going to try to call them if anyone was.

When he reached the streets that ran between the destroyed buildings, he looked around carefully and saw that even though the roads themselves were mostly cleared of debris, at least the ones leading to the centre of the city, the narrow streets were not, and neither were many of the building fronts. It became clear that the men who had come down to search for the bodies had not bothered to enter every single ruin of a house or a store. Still, Marcan doubted that they had been careless enough to miss a whole city's worth of bodies.

He followed the streets towards the centre of the city and kept looking around. Despite Luke's explanation that the streets could have been cleared by those who came to search for survivors and bury the dead, the streets seemed too clean to him. He found it unlikely that anyone would have cleared the roads that well if they were just searching for bodies. It seemed more likely that someone had wanted to move something in, or out of, the city, or else they had been looking for something very particular; smaller and less easy to detect than a dead human. It had been over four months since the attack and much work could have been done in that time. Perhaps the recent attacks on Tiessar 3 and possibly Tiessar 1 were just a late attempt to make sure that no one saw what was being done on the garden world.

It was soon after he reached the centre of the city that he realised something even stranger. There were some parks in the city that he had walked past, but it was only when he reached the central park that he saw that the parks had been cleared more carefully than the streets. There were empty holes where plants had been removed and black burn marks where others had been incinerated. At first he had though that stray laser shots had burned the plants, but when he had got closer it had become apparent that they had been purposefully burned in the months since the attack.

Marcan walked around in the park and tried to figure out if there was any reason why some of the plants had been removed and the others destroyed. There seemed not to be any connection between the burned plants as far as he could see. Some of them had been trees, or something very similar, and others normal plants, judging from their remains. But the untouched plants, of which there were still many remaining, were of all different kinds as well. There were small versions of the trees and the water-gatherers that he had seen at the forest's edge and some strange flowers as well. He shook his head as he tried to bring sense to what had happened on the planet.

He took a holographic camera from one of the pockets in the protective suit and walked around the park, recording the scene for further reference. A direct link to Castor transmitted the picture directly to the AI's much larger data banks. The AI noticed the sudden data flow and contacted Marcan's commlink.

"Commander, what is this picture you are sending me?" the AI said. His voice was strangely impoverished by the tiny speaker and he no longer sounded like the strong male half-god he did aboard the ship.

"It seems that someone has been here, destroying the parks after the attack," Marcan said.

"But why?" Castor asked.

"I have no idea, but it appears that someone wanted to do it so badly that they destroyed the entire human population for it," Marcan said. Then a thought hit him, "Castor, do you know anything about this planet's biology? Are there some valuable plants here?"

"I'm sorry, commander, but I do not posses such information. There was nothing about the local biology in the sources that I downloaded during our trip here," Castor said.

"Still, if some of the plants here are highly valuable, it might explain what's happened here," Marcan mused aloud.

"They would have to be extremely valuable for anyone to murder this many people for them, commander. It's unlikely that anything the nature produces could be that precious," Castor said through the commlink.

Again Marcan frowned at the AI's surprising capability of logical thinking. None of the AIs that he had encountered had been as clever as Castor. On the other hand, all the AIs he had met had been military models that were not allowed to build personalities. "You are right, Castor," Marcan said, "but sometimes the nature produces drugs that have superior applicability over the ones that are synthetically produced."

"Are you referring to medical drugs or narcotic ones?" Castor asked.

Marcan grimaced, "I doubt medical drugs could have caused such massacre."

"But, still, why kill everyone?" Castor asked. "If there are such plants on this planet, they surely exist outside the populated areas as well!"

"Unless the local scientist dabbled in genetic engineering and found out something about the local flora," Marcan said. "Perhaps they produced a superior form of some local plant."

As he spoke to the AI through the commlink and recorded the scene with the camera, Marcan walked around and kept an eye on the surrounding buildings and streets. It was only because of this careful, paranoid attitude that he suddenly saw movement in one of the streets leading away from the city centre.

He immediately turned the camera towards the moving figure and started running into that direction. The figure was someone else wearing a protective suit and walking towards the centre. As soon as Marcan reached the edge of the park the other person in the protective suit spotted him and turned around to run away from him.

Marcan picked up his pace and clicked on the commlink, "Castor, ask Luke to bring the ship on the eastern side of the city, fast!"

"I will tell him, commander," Castor said with his now feeble voice.

The protective suit that Marcan was wearing was great when one simply wanted to explore some hot or cold place, without too much exertion. But when he started running, the cooling systems proved too inefficient to cope with the sudden increase in temperature. And soon he started to sweat under the strain as he had when they had been digging the grave for Luke's father.

And soon after he started to sweat, Marcan realised that there was no way he was going to overtake the other person. If he had had the strength, he would have frowned at the way the other figure ran; for a small person, his leaps were longer and more powerful than Marcan's. It seemed that the other person had had a lot more experience in low-G planets than Marcan for him to be able to run that fast.

"Castor, are you coming?" Marcan shouted to the commlink.

"Commander, it seems that Luke has never piloted a spaceship before. I have to talk him through it," Castor answered.

Marcan cursed; he should have known that those literary types hardly knew a spaceship flight stick from their own. "Come as quickly as you can. I'm chasing someone through the streets," he informed the AI and Luke.

"Commander, I'm doing the best I can. It is unfortunate that the automatic pilot programs don't allow for atmospheric flight other than approach flights into a spaceport," Castor said.

Marcan ignored the remark and concentrated in running. He tried to work with the low G the way the fleeing person was, to increase the length of his leaps and to lean forwards to decrease his air resistance. But after a few leaps like that he found himself falling towards the hard street in horizontal position. There was only a moment of dread before he hit the ground. He had enough experience of falling, though, and he managed to roll when he hit the ground and thus avoid any serious injury. Still, when he managed to get up again, the fleeing person was gone and his right palm and wrist burned in pain. The protective suit had also ripped in various places and he started to feel the heat of the fifty degrees of centigrade on his body.

As he started to walk down the street and the heat started to burn his skin for real, Castor called him, "Commander, there is an incoming call for you."

Marcan raised the commlink to his mouth, surprised that it still worked. The camera had been smashed into small pieces. "From whom?" he asked.

"It's Sergeant Rasche," Castor informed.

"Put her through."

After a second, the sergeant's voice came through the commlink, "Marcan, where are you?"

Marcan smiled. It gladdened him to learn that Sheila was all right. "I'm on the surface of Tiessar 2. The settlements on Tiessar 3 were destroyed and there was only one survivor," he said.

He was surprised when Sheila's answer came after only a moment's delay. It had to mean that she was close to Judd as well. "Everything was destroyed on Tiessar 1 as well. I called to the Mantis to explore the ruins while I started this way. Have you found out anything?"

Marcan shook his head, although it was useless considering the non-visual connection, "Only a little. The survivor, a young boy named Luke, was not able to say anything, but I found something interesting in the local capitol."

"What is it?" Sheila asked.

Marcan explained what he had found out and that he had just moments earlier lost the view of a suspicious character. Then he asked where the sergeant was.

"I'm a little over 100 000 kilometres from the planet myself," she answered, and asked; "Can you give me the co-ordinates of the capitol?"

"Ask Castor to give them to you. I have ruined my protective suit and it's starting to get hot down here. Come in as quickly as you can, but don't take any risks," Marcan said and cut the connection before Sheila had time to answer. He knew that she would have denied that she ever took risks, but he knew better than that. The sergeant was a little too hotheaded when it came to fast flying and big laser guns.

But he was really getting hot and hurried along the street until he came to the perimeter and saw Castor wobbling towards him erratically. Marcan grimaced when he saw the badly flown ship and vowed that he would never let the kid fly again. Then he looked around the open area between the city and the forest. There was no sign of the stranger in protective suit anywhere.

But when Marcan was climbing the entrance ramp to the airlock, Castor called him again, "Commander, Sergeant Rasche needs to speak with you urgently."

Marcan groaned and opened the airlock door. He had hoped that he would have a moment to cool down before he had to do anything else. He got out of the ruined protective suit and hurried to the bridge. Luke was there sitting on the pilot's seat, but got up as soon as Marcan stepped through the doorway.

"That was wonderful," the young man exclaimed, "I have never flown before but it felt like I had been doing it for all my life! Can I do it again?"

Marcan smiled at the boy's enthusiasm. If there had not been the danger of Luke wrecking the ship, he might have given him the permission to fly again later. "Perhaps I can show you some simulators later," he promised. Then he sat down on the pilot's seat and looked at Sheila, whose face had just appeared on the communications screen.

"Marcan, why didn't you answer when I called?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry, I was just getting out of my suit. What is it, Sheila?" Marcan said.

The blond woman's sharp nose flared in excitement, when she said; "There's a ship getting up from the co-ordinates your AI gave me. My computer cannot identify it!"

Marcan sat up in his chair and looked at the scanner screen. There was nothing on it. "Where is that ship now?"

"It headed towards the sea in low altitude. I doubt your scanner can spot it from down there," Sheila answered.

"But you see it?" Marcan asked.

"Yes, but not yet on my scanner. But with my x4SUSAT –sights I can see a black spot against the blue sea. I think it is gaining altitude now," the sergeant said.

Marcan nodded, "Keep an eye on it. I'm going after it." He smiled as he remembered what he had just moments ago thought about Sheila and big laser guns and now he found out that she had a rapid fire military laser fitted to her ship. He had suspected it earlier, when they had fought their way to a spaceport on Pollux, but now he knew for sure. The devastating weapons were illegal outside the military and they were the only things Marcan missed about being in active duty. That was why he had been extra happy when Petr had increased the firing rate of his 5mw-pulse laser. It was the next best thing when one could not get the best weapons.

As he picked the ship up from the soft grass and started flying towards the sea, he saw black burn marks on the grass not far from their location. He turned the ship slightly and flew over the marks on the grass, slowing down. They were the lift-off burns of the fleeing ship.

"Castor, get a picture of those burn-marks and compare them with all the ships you have in your database. Tell me if there is a match," he said.

Only a second later, Castor answered; "There are is no match between those marks and any ship's thruster set-up." His voice had once again the strong, almost intimidating quality that the commlink had diminished

Marcan's eyes narrowed. That meant that the unknown ship was a completely new design and not just some alteration on an existing model. "Even near matches?" he confirmed.

"There is one close match," Castor said after a moment.

"What is it?" Marcan asked in a hurry.

"The burn marks bear resemblance to the thruster set-up of a ship that has been out of the market for some decades now, and the data I have of it is quite unreliable," Castor stalled, "But it was called the Mamba."

Marcan felt cold shivers running up and down his spine and he stared at the computer screens without seeing anything. They were still hovering above the burn marks and he let the ship drift closer to the ground. Without thinking of what he was doing, he then turned the bottom thrusters on full throttle, destroying the evidence of the near-Mamba's signature.

"Marcan! What are you stalling for?" Sheila screamed through the communications channel. "That ship is getting away as we speak!"

Marcan was still uneasy, but he responded to the angry voice and sped away from the ruined city towards the vast sea. "Where's the ship now?" he asked Sheila.

"Almost to 12 thousand metres," Sheila said, "and he has spotted my approach."

Marcan cursed and sped towards the space. If the ship attacked Sheila, it would be his fault since he had taken the time to destroy the evidence that he had been paid to find. But he could not have just left the proof of a ship resembling the Mamba for the military to find. Then the comm channel opened again.

"He has jumped from the system," Sheila said ruefully.

"You've got a hyperspace cloud analyser?" Marcan asked.

"Yes, I do and I'm getting the data as we speak," the woman said. Then after a short pause, she continued, "According to this, it jumped to the nearby system of Befaqu."

"We'll jump after it as soon as I get there," Marcan said.

But the expression on Sheila's face did not lighten up at that, "This also says that the ship was a 60 tonne craft. It's a lot smaller than either your or my ship, Marcan. You know that it means that the unknown ship will reach Befaqu a lot quicker than either of us. We have lost it."

Marcan sighed. He knew that Sheila was right. It was also likely that when they reached Befaqu they would find out that the unknown ship had never even arrived there. If the unknown pilots were worth their pay, they knew how to make the hyperspace drive misjump into a random direction. With this kind of a short jump it was even relatively safe to do that. But that did not mean that they should not at least try to go after the mysterious black ship.

As he flew towards the hyperspace cloud and Sheila, Marcan's thoughts returned to the day only a little over two months earlier when he had last heard someone talk about the Mambas. He wondered what the Vera Industries and their unknown clients knew about all that was happening in this far away system.