The Big Picture

"Of course," Harking said. "I go on duty in an hour, but we can talk while I take my photos if that's okay with you. Just come up whenever you're ready."

"I'll be there," she said.

"Good." Harking started to the door—

"Just one more thing," she said.

He turned back, mentally bracing himself. "Yes?"

Her face was very still. "Abe Ferrier wasn't just your friend, was he? He was something more."

Harking took a deep breath. "He was my cousin," he told her. Was, the word echoed through his mind. Was. "The only family I had left."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left.

The motorized telescope mounts on the far side of the door could be heard humming softly as Harking sent the lens pointing toward the next spot on the grid. "So he had had some commando training, at least?" Isis asked.

"Some," Harking said, watching his screen. The view flashed through a variety of different colors as the telescope tracked across contrasting strips of farmland, then slowed and settled in on the east end of a reasonably large village twenty kilometers south of the fortress. The village seemed to be home to most of the landscape and maintenance slaves for the southern part of the Sjo

Had he ever made it? If so, Harking and the other photographers had never spotted him. Certainly they hadn't seen any mirror flashes or semaphore or colored signal flags.

Or maybe he was indeed there, but was just being cautious, After all, as Isis had pointed out, the Sjo

A trio of Skyhawks flew across the edge of the image, underlining his thought as they passed with lazy alertness low over the village rooftops. Ground-hugging Skyhawk activity had definitely shown an uptick during the year since Abe had gone in. Were they still looking for the infiltrator?

Or had they already found and executed him, and all these surveillance flights were merely to make sure the upstart humans didn't try it again?

"Did you know that grommets in cheese sauce make a great appetizer?"

Harking blinked up at Isis. "What?"

"Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention," she said blandly. Then she sobered. "I'm distracting you, aren't I? I'm sorry."

"That's okay," Harking assured her. "I'm just ... I was thinking about Abe."

"I understand." Isis shut off her recorder. "You know, I've never seen Minkta during the daytime. Even my ship came in from the darkside."

"That's standard procedure," Harking said. "Sjo

" 'Fond' and 'hope' being the operative words," Isis agreed. "But I'd still like to see it."

Harking gestured to his monitor. "Have a look."

"I was thinking more of the overall grand vista," she said, gesturing toward the room housing the telescopes. "The big picture, as it were. May I?"

Harking hesitated, then nodded. "I suppose," he told her. "Just don't touch anything."

"I won't." Crossing the room, she opened the door and stepped gingerly through.

Harking sighed as the door closed behind her. Graceful exit or not, it was pretty obvious that the only reason she'd left was to give him a chance to pull himself back together. There was certainly nothing exciting she'd be able to see from this distance that she hadn't seen a hundred times before on a hundred other blue-green worlds. Come on, Harking, get on the program here, he ordered himself viciously. If he could just push his feelings aside long enough to get this interview over with, he could then get Laura Isis off his back and off the station-

Across the room, the door opened abruptly. "Can you zoom out?" Isis demanded as she hurried into the room.

Harking felt himself tense. Isis had left the room calm and soothing and professional; now, abruptly, the air around her seemed to be hissing with static electricity. "What?" he asked.

"Can you zoom these things out?" she repeated, jerking a thumb back at the telescopes. "And can you clear away cloud interference?"

"Yes, to both," Harking said cautiously.

"Do it," Isis ordered, breathing hard, her eyes flashing with something he couldn't identify as she stepped to his side. "The area to the southeast of the fortress."

Harking frowned. "Why?"

"I saw something," she said "Or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me." She gestured at his panel. "Just do it."

Abe? But how could she possibly have seen a single man from this height? "And you said to zoom out?"

Her lips compressed. "Definitely zoom out."

Silently, Harking reset the coordinates and keyed for the zoom-out. Isis was standing very close to him, her right arm almost touching his shoulder. He could hear her carefully controlled breathing, the nervous tension beneath the control, and wondered just what in the hell was going on. The telescope settled on the designated area, and with a series of clicks began to zoom out from its close-range setting... .

And suddenly, he saw it.

He dived for the controls, freezing the image. "Oh, my God," he breathed.

For a long moment neither of them spoke. Then, beside him, he felt Isis stir. "The big picture," she murmured. "We've thought about it, talked about it, even argued about it. We've just never bothered to look at it."

"No," Harking said, thinking of all the photos he'd taken over the past few months as he gazed at the monitor. All those close-in, tight-range photos ... "But then, neither have the Sjo

"Yes," Isis said. "And Abe Ferrier fooled us all."

Harking nodded, gazing at the monitor. The varying colors of the fields, planted apparently randomly with their different crops, formed a subtle pattern, with no sharp or obvious lines for a passing Skyhawk to note with interest or suspicion.

But from Defender Fifty-five, and the ability to take in a hundred thousand square kilometers at a glance, the human eye had no difficulty filling in the disguising gaps and reading the message Abe and the Minkter farmers had so painstakingly prepared for them:

204° 55'52" W

38° 40'42"

"You know where that is?" Isis asked quietly.

"About thirty kilometers north of the fortress," Harking said. "Rocky area. Even if we'd been able to get instruments close enough through all the Shadow, we'd have had a hard time spotting it."

Taking a deep breath, he keyed the intercom. "Commander Chakhaza, this is Harking in Number One Photo," he said. "You need to get up here right away."

He smiled tightly at Isis. "And," he added, "you might want to wake up the missile crews."