“Ay gar!”

Lunzie felt foolish, repeating it, but could think of nothing else to say. Why was Sassinak going anywhere with Aygar? Unless she . . . but Lunzie did not believe that for a moment. Sassinak had never, for one moment, thought of anything but her ship first and Fleet second. She would not take off on a recreational jaunt with Aygar when Tanegli’s trial was coming up.

“According to the ranking officer aboard the Zaid-Dayan, Arly ...” He paused to see if she knew the name. She nodded. “Commander Sassinak sent you to Diplo to some source you knew about, to get information on Diplo’s connection to the Iretan mess. Is that right?”

“Yes, it is.”

Quickly, Lunzie outlined Sassinak’s thoughts, and her decision to offer to go to Diplo.

“I was best suited, in many ways ...”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, not after your experience with the heavyworlders on Ireta,” said Coromell. “The last person who should have had to go . .

“But I’m glad I did.”

She stopped, wondering if she should tell him everything, and filled in with a brief account of her retraining on Liaka and the early part of the expedition.

“I presume, then, that you do have the information you sought?” When she didn’t answer at once, he cocked his head and grinned, “Or did they catch you snooping and send you home in a coldsleep pod just to frustrate us?”

“I ... I’m not sure.”

He waited, quiet but curious, in just the attitude of the experienced interrogator who knows the suspect will incriminate herself, given enough rope. She did not want to explain Zebara to a Fleet admiral, especially not this Fleet admiral, but there was no other way. How best to do it? She remembered Sassinak,

chewing out one of the junior officers who had tried to conceal a mistake . . . “When all else fails, Mister, tell Ae truth.” She didn’t think she’d made that big a mistake, but she’d still better tell the truth, and all of tt-

It took longer than she expected. Although Coromell didn’t ask questions until she finished, she could tell by his expression when she’d lost him and needed to back-back and explain. And her leftover indignation at Bias, plus a natural reluctance to go into her emotional ties to Zebara, kept her ranting at the team leader’s prudery far too long. At last she came to an end, trailing off with, “. . . and then I felt terribly sleepy in that stuffy car and, when I woke up, I was here.”

A long pause, during which Lunzie endured the gaze of his brilliant blue eyes. Age had not fogged them at all. She felt they were seeing things she had not said. She had not said anything about the opera Bitter Destinies except that Zebara had taken her to an opera. He sighed, at last, the first thing he’d done that sounded old.

“So. And did Zebara give you the information he promised? Or will you go to Tanegli’s trial with your testimony alone?”

“He hadn’t when I left his home,” Lunzie said. “He paid I was to get it by messenger. And then ... it was oyer.”

9s, “But he had you put in coldsleep, and safely aboard a transport that brought you here in a cargo of muskie-

cWOol carpets. And I hear that was quite a scene, when Customs found a metallic return on the scan and un-rolled the whole mess of them. Your little pod came rolling out like . . . Who was that Old Earth queen? Guinevere or Catherine or Cleopatra . . . someone like that. Rolled in a carpet to present herself to a long

,|fee*d fallen in love with. Anyway. So you don’t know, you, whether he passed that information with you or

?«»   *

r

Lunzie shook her head.  “I’ve looked through my and found nothing. Surely your people looked,

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