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It was very, very quiet in the corridor when the airseal doors had hissed shut. Had the last word really been what he'd wanted? And yet—he'd rather face Millisor, Rau, and Okita's ghost together than crawl back into his prison and apologize to Quinn.

Determination. Decision. Action. That was the way to solve problems. Not running away and hiding. He would seek out and confront Millisor face-to-face. He stomped off down the corridor.

By the time he reached the mallway exit from the hostel he was walking normally, and he had revised his plan to the more sane and sensible one of calling Millisor from the safe distance of a public comconsole. He could be tricky himself. He would not approach his own hostel. If necessary, he might even abandon his personal gear, and purchase a ticket off-Station—to Beta Colony?—at the last moment before boarding, thus escaping the whole crowd of insane secret agents. By the time he got back to Kline Station, they might even have chased each other off to some other part of the galaxy.

He removed himself a couple of levels from Quinn's hostel and found a comconsole booth.

"I wish to reach a transient, ghem-Colonel Luyst Millisor," he told the computer. He spelled the name out carefully. His voice, he noted with self-approval, scarcely quavered.

No such individual is registered at Kline Station, the holoscreen flashed back.

"Er . . . Has he checked out?" Gone, and Commander Quinn stringing him along all this time . . . ?

No such individual registered within the past 12-month cycle, the holoscreen murmured brightly.

"Um, um—how about a Captain Rau?"

No such individual . . .

"Setti?"

No such individual . . .

He stopped short of mentioning Okita, and stood blankly. Then it came to him; Millisor was the man's real name. But here on Kline Station he was doubtless using an assumed one, with forged identity cards to match. Ethan had not the first clue what the alias might be. Dead end.

At a loss, he wandered down the mall. He could, he supposed, just return to his room and let Millisor find him, but whether he'd get a chance to negotiate or even get a word out before being scragged by Okita's vengeful comrades was a very moot point.

The variegated passers-by scarcely ruffled his self absorption, but two approaching faces were extraordinary. A pair of plainly-dressed men of average height had brilliant designs painted upon their faces, completely masking their skin. Dark red was the base color of one, slashed with orange, black, white, and green in an intricate pattern, obviously meaningful. The other was chiefly brilliant blue, with yellow, white, and black swirls outlining and echoing eyes, nose, and mouth. They were deep in conversation with each other. Ethan stared covertly, fascinated and delighted.

It wasn't until they passed nearly shoulder to shoulder with him that Ethan's eye teased out the features beneath the markings. He suddenly realized that he did know what the face paint meant, from his recent reading. They were marks of rank for Cetagandan ghem-lords.

Captain Rau looked up at the same moment square into Ethan's face. Rau's mouth opened, his eyes widening in the blue mask, his hand reaching swiftly for a pouch on his belt. Ethan, after a second of confounded paralysis, ran.

There was a shout behind him. A God-the-Father nerve disruptor bolt crackled past his head. Ethan glanced back over his shoulder. Rau had only missed, it appeared, because Millisor had knocked the lethal weapon upward. They were yelling at each other even as they began pursuit. Ethan now remembered clearly just how terrifying the Cetagandans could be.

Ethan dove head-first into an Up lift tube and swam as frantically as any salmon through its languid field, hand over hand down the emergency grips. Jostled rising passengers swore at him in surprise.

He exited on another level, ran, took another lift, changed again, and again, with many a panicked backward glance. Here across a crowded shop, there through a deserted construction