Angelmass

"That's just about it," Podolak commented, pausing beside the last door—this one, unlike the others, a heavy-looking sliding type. "What do you think?"

"I'm impressed," Kosta answered, and meant it. "Not just by the facilities, either." He nodded back down the hallway. "These people are more like an incoming batch of grad students than any visiting scientists I've ever known."

"There's a wonderful camaraderie here," Podolak agreed. "Part of that is the people themselves, of course. Not surprisingly, angel research tends to attract the highly idealistic. And of course, there's the angel effect itself."

"Of course," Kosta repeated, his lips suddenly gone stiff. The angel effect. A dangerous, alien influence... and here he was, as near the dead-crack-center of that influence as he could possibly be.

They'd talked a great deal, back on Scintara, of how the angels were sapping the will and altering the minds of the Empyrean's leaders. Somehow, no one had ever gotten around to answering the question of how Kosta was supposed to avoid that influence himself.

Podolak had turned to the door, pressing her right palm against the red-rimmed touch plate set into its center. "You'll need to go downstairs later and get your print entered into the computer," she told him. The touch plate rim changed to green, and with a puff of released air pressure the door slid open. "Until then, you'll have to get your officemate or someone else to let you in."

"What's in here?" Kosta asked, though the tightness in his stomach told him he probably already knew.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Your angel, of course. Come; let me show you."

She stepped inside. Taking a deep breath, Kosta followed.

The furnishings were similar to those of the other labs Podolak had shown him, though the room itself was much larger than any of them had been. The arrangement of the equipment, however, was strikingly different. Instead of being set out in standard rows, the worktables and stations here were arrayed in concentric circles around a chest-high cylindrical pillar rising up from the floor in the center of the room. A handful of people were scattered around the lab, hunched over notebooks or computers or complex-looking electronic breadboards.

"Doesn't look like anyone's in the middle of anything delicate," Podolak said quietly, glancing around. "Come on."

She led the way to the central pillar, and as they approached Kosta could see what appeared to be a small crystalline dome set in the center of its flat upper surface. Stepping up to it, Podolak turned; and with an expression that was chillingly reminiscent of a proud mother showing off her child, she gestured to the little crystalline dome. "There it is."

It was rather unspectacular, really: a barely visible speck, even with the magnification given it by its encasing dome. "So that's an angel," Kosta heard himself say.

"That's an angel," Podolak confirmed. "And if you're like every other visitor who comes through the Institute, you're probably wondering if you can touch it. Feel free."

Not an order... but Kosta could feel the official weight behind the suggestion. She wanted him to reach out to it; to move into range of whatever this alien influence was...

"But you don't have to if you don't want to," Podolak added softly. "It's not a requirement."

Kosta gritted his teeth, cold hard reality forcing its way through his hesitation. More than likely, he would be spending his next few months literally surrounded by these things... and there would be no better time than right now to try and detect their influence. Bracing himself, trying to watch every facet of his mind at once, he reached his hand gingerly toward the crystalline dome and touched it.

Nothing. No wrenching of emotions, major or minor. No sense of alien thought or presence or influence. No overwhelming urge to confess that he was a spy.

Nothing at all.

He drew his hand back and let it drop to his side, feeling a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. Beside him, Podolak nodded. "Yes, that's the usual reaction. The angel effect isn't nearly as dramatic as most people think."

He looked her straight in the eye. "Is that what this object lesson was for? To eliminate any residual nervousness?"

A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. "As a matter of fact, yes, that's one of the reasons we try to bring newcomers into contact with an angel as soon as possible. We don't want to be too obvious about it, of course—people don't like to admit to fears they intellectually believe are unreasonable. That's why we like to include it in the general orientation. You understand psychology."

"A little. Mostly, I understand nervousness."

"But there are a few who do sense something right away," Podolak went on, her forehead wrinkling slightly. "Did you feel anything? Anything at all?"

Kosta reached out and touched the crystalline dome again, then took his hand away. Nothing. "No," he told her. "Nothing at all."

"Yes," she murmured. "Well... as I said, that is the usual reaction."

"Sorry to disappoint you." Kosta looked at the crystalline dome. "Question, though: which is the real angel? The subnuclear particle in the center that everyone calls the angel, or the particle plus the shell of positively charged ions it surrounds itself with?"

He watched Podolak's face, holding his breath. One of his instructors had suggested that question as a way to quickly establish himself as a visionary, independent thinker, the sort who might be able to get away with ignoring facts about the angels that every genuine Empyreal would already know. But if the question, instead of sounding original, merely came across as sounding stupid...

"An interesting question," Podolak said, her expression thoughtful. "The quick and obvious answer is that it's just the central particle; but quick and obvious doesn't necessarily equal correct. Offhand, I can't remember if anyone's ever tried to study the significance of the outer ion shell before. Beyond the simple physical explanation that a particle with a negative charge in the quadrillions has no choice but to pull a lot of positive ions over to it, of course. Might well be worth taking a look at."

She cocked her head slightly. "You interested in volunteering?"

Carefully, Kosta exhaled. "I'd like to do a database search, anyway," he told her. "If it turns out no one else has done any work that direction, I might like to give it a shot."

"Sounds good," Podolak nodded. "Let's go back to your office and I'll give you a list of the database access codes."

CHAPTER 8

The man was young and thin and rather sloppy looking, his clothes smelling of oil, his lower lip twisted in a permanent smirk. But there was nothing lazy or fu

"And what about when you have to do some emergency maintenance?" Chandris countered, fighting to keep her voice calm and reasonable. "Not here, but while you're out in space. Who runs the ship while you and Rafe are busy fixing it?"

The smirk seemed to get bigger. "You, I suppose?"

"Why not?" Chandris demanded. "I'm an expert navigator and pilot, and I also know my way around an engine room. I could fly this thing out to Angelmass and back by myself if I had to."

"No, you couldn't," the man shook his head. "Want to know why?" He leaned forward, to smirk directly in her face. "Because you aren't ever go

With a snort, he straightened up again and reached down for the box he'd been carrying. "So get lost, huh? We're busy."

Turning, he headed back toward the mass of metal that towered over him, all but filling the large open-air service yard. Chandris watched him go, hoping desperately that, even now, he might reconsider.