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"I'm dead serious. Ask to speak with Captain Arata. Tell him Commander Quinn sent you. He won't laugh."

"But Elli—"

"Do it now! I have to go. I'll check back with you as soon as I can."

The girl's image dissolved in sparkling snow. Invective hissed under Quinn's breath.

"What's going on?" asked Cee, emerging from the bathroom fastening the wrists of his green coveralls.

"I think Millisor has picked up Teki for questioning," said Quinn. "In which case my cover has just gone up in smoke. Damn it! There was no logical reason for Millisor to do that! Is he thinking with his gonads now? That's not like him."

"The logic of desperation, maybe," said Cee. "He was very upset by the disappearance of Okita. Even more upset by Dr. Urquhart's reappearance. He, um—had some very strange theories about Dr. Urquhart."

"On the basis of which," said Ethan, "you went to a great deal of trouble to find me. I'm sorry I'm not the super-agent you were expecting."

Cee gave him a rather odd look. "Don't be."

"I meant to push Millisor off-balance." Quinn bit through a fingernail with an audible snap. "But not that far off. I gave them no reason to take Teki. Or I wouldn't have, if he'd done what I told him and turned around immediately—I knew better than to involve a non-professional. Why didn't I listen to myself? Poor Teki won't know what hit him."

"You didn't have any such scruples about involving me," remarked Ethan, miffed.

"You were involved already. And besides, I didn't use to baby-sit you when you were a toddler. And besides . . ." she paused, shooting him a look strangely akin to the one Cee had just given him, "you underestimate yourself," she finished.

"Where are you going?" asked Ethan in alarm as she stalked toward the door.

"I'm going to—" she began determinedly. Her hand, reaching for the door control, hesitated and fell back. "I'm going to think this through."

She turned and began to pace. "Why are they holding him so long?" she asked. Ethan was not quite sure if the question was addressed to him, Cee, or the air. "They could've drained him of everything he knew in fifteen minutes. Let him wake up on a tube car thinking he'd dozed off on the way home, and no one the wiser, not even me."

"They found out everything I knew in fifteen minutes," Ethan pointed out, "but that didn't stop them."

"Yes, but their suspicions were aroused, sorry, you were quite right, by finding my bug on you. I deliberately put nothing on Teki so that couldn't happen again. Besides, they can check Teki in Kline Station records back to his conception. You were a man without a past, or at least with an inaccessible one, leaving lots of room for paranoid fantasies to grow."

"As a result of which it took them seven hours to convince themselves they were right the first time," said Ethan.

Cee spoke. "And since Okita's disappearance they think you are an agent who successfully resisted seven hours of interrogation. They may be even less willing to take 'I don't know' for an answer now."

"In that case," said Quinn grimly, "the sooner I get Teki out of there the better."

"Excuse me," said Ethan, "but out of where?"

"Odds are, Millisor's quarters. Where you were questioned. Their quiet room, the one I've never been able to bug." She ran her hands through her hair wildly. "How the hell am I going to do this? A frontal assault on a defended cube in the middle of a pack of innocent civilians in the delicate mechanical environment of a space station . . . ? Doesn't sound too efficient."

"How did you rescue Dr. Urquhart?" asked Cee.

"I waited—patiently—for him to come out. I waited a long time for the best opportunity."

"Quite a long time, yes," Ethan agreed cordially. They exchanged tight smiles.

She paced back and forth like a frenzied tigress. "I'm being stampeded. I know I am. I can feel it. Millisor is reaching out for me through Teki. And Millisor's a man with no inhibitions about applying leverage. Q.E.D.—Quinn Eats Dirt. Gods. Don't panic, Quinn. What would Admiral Naismith