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Man and thranx relaxed visibly. Tse-Mallory extended a gnarled hand palm upward across the counter. “That's good. I'll take it now, thanks.”

A bewildered expression came over the clerk's countenance. “You can't. That is, I mean—his friend has already picked it up. Quite a while ago, in fact.”

The tension among the pair of unusual visitors that the clerk had sensed a moment ago abruptly returned in full. “If you wouldn't mind,” the thranx enunciated in perfect, almost colloquial terranglo, “it's very important that you describe this ‘friend’ to us.”

“Everything you can remember about him.” The human's stare was so forceful that the clerk found himself awed—and a little frightened.

“Certainly—sure,” he stammered. “First of all, it was not a ‘he’ ….”

Flinx pushed the skimmer to its legal limits. Every additional minute it took him to cover the distance between the city and the coordinates he had been given was another moment that Clarity remained in the unpredictable, unpleasant hands of the fanatics of the Order of Null. While from the time of their first encounter long ago they had struck him as a group that tortured only for a purpose, he had no intention of relying on that initial impression. At the same time he had to take care not to draw the attention of the city authorities who regulated travel in Sphene's vicinity. The consequent enforced delay was agony.

Pip was all over him as well as the interior of the skimmer. Restless and edgy, she would dash from him to one part or another of the craft's transparent canopy and back again, searching for the source of her master's continuing distress. He tried to settle her down, with only limited success. Permanently joined to him empathetically, he could not calm her if he could not calm himself. And no matter how hard he tried, he could not do that.

The other airborne travelers he shot past might be ignoring his high-speed, somewhat erratic flight. Or they might be raging at him. With the rented skimmer's internal communications deliberately disconnected to comply with the instructions he had been given, he had no way of knowing. Nor could anyone contact him via the personal communit he wore on his left wrist. Also in accordance with the Order's commands, he had disabled all of its functions, including the integrated emergency locator beacon. He did not even reach out with his Talent to the passengers of the increasingly infrequent transports he passed.

Having programmed the coordinates into the skimmer and instructed it to take the fastest point-to-point possible, he raced across lake and river, greenbelt preserve and densely wooded low hills. The craft did not begin to slow until he unexpectedly found himself cruising within the boundaries of one of the capital city's most upscale precincts. Expensive custom villas dotted thickly vegetated hillsides above a gently meandering river whose banks had been channeled, landscaped, and decorated to resemble Earth's fabled Arno.

Descending, the skimmer settled gently to ground on autopilot, touching down on the oval landing pad that fronted one such residence. The structure's two-story portico was an incongruous, slightly absurd, but perfectly rendered reconstruction of the Nymphaeum at Sagalassos, complete to trickling fountains. There was nothing of the ancient Roman about the skimmer's acknowledgment of arrival and touchdown, however. And the generously proportioned middle-aged human who waited to greet him was not clad in a toga. Flinx recognized the man immediately: it was the representative of the Order with whom he had spoken earlier.

As soon as the engine shut down Flinx exited the skimmer and strode over to confront him. He paid no attention to the pistol the man was pointing at him. Exiting from the building's main entrance, several other armed men and women came forward to join them. Much as he wanted to lash out, to flay them with his Talent, to try to sow fear and terror among them, he held back. He dared not act precipitously, especially if they really did have some notion of what he was