3 x T

"Don't be silly," Stavros started to say. He stopped. Knowing something important could be dangerous; New Thessaly's politics had proved that more than once. He touched her hand. "I'm not sorry you saw it."

"Good."

"Unfortunate the professor had to go downstairs at such an inopportune time," Paulina Koch remarked.

"Yes, very," Hova

"No danger of any of that being traced to us?"

Hova

"All right. That suffices, I suppose; you've already told me more than I ought to know."

"I apologize for the need," Hova

If Stavros hadn't taken off his headphones to change disks on the music player, he never would have heard the knock on the door. He rushed to open it, expecting Andrea. She had been over once to see the Survey Service report on Bilbeis IV and again the next day just to talk. Stavros hoped for something more.

"Hello!" he said enthusiastically?too enthusiastically, for standing in the hallway was not Andrea but a middle-aged oriental man whose face was vaguely familiar. Stavros's tongue stumbled over itself. "Er?yes?"

"I'm Van Shui Pong," the man said, "from Hyperion Newsnet." He dug out a holo ID, but Stavros did not need it. He had seen the other man now and then on the screen.

He stepped aside. "Come in, Mr. Pong. What could Hyperion Newsnet possibly want with me?" If anyone is less newsworthy than an anthropology grad student, he thought, whoever it is probably hasn't been born yet.

"It's Mr. Van," the newsman said with the air of someone who had said it a great many times. He had a round, good-natured face, but his eyes were disconcertingly keen when he turned them on Stavros. "You were one of Professor Isaac Fogelman's students, weren't you?"

The polite smile vanished from Stavros's face. "Yes. What of it?" Fogelman's murder hadn't even made the news.

"Very possibly, nothing," Van admitted. "There was something in the constabulary report strange enough to make me do a little checking on my own, though."

"What's that?" Stavros recovered his ma

"Thank you. As I say, it may well be nothing. Still, I find it strange that a burglar would take the time to dump an entire computer memory. Suppressing the internal surveillance program is normal, but this went far beyond that. There's no doubt it was done deliberately; all of Fogelman's data cards were blanked, too." The newsman rose in sudden concern. "Are you all right, Mr. Monemvasios?"

"Yes," Stavros said, but the word rang hollow in his own ears. He sat down himself, heavily. For the first time in his life, he knew what fear felt like.

Van saw his agitation. "You know something of this, or can guess?" he asked eagerly.

Stavros hesitated. Andrea's warning abruptly seemed much better advice than when she'd given it. Telling Van about the data card leaning against his computer could land him in genuine trouble that keeping quiet would avoid. But if Fogelman had been killed to make sure the report on Bilbeis IV never surfaced, then staying silent would only let the killers, whoever they were, get what they wanted. But, Stavros thought hopefully, most likely there was no co

Stavros got up. "You'd better see this and tell me what you think." Van followed him to the computer console. He put in the data card. The screen lit. No going back now, he thought. He did not feel the way he imagined investigators were supposed to feel. He just felt nervous.

Van Shui Pong went through the abstract of the report and got a couple of chapters into the body before he hit the pause button. When he looked over to Stavros, all the good humor had fallen from his features. "I take it you believe this document to be genuine," he said at last.

"Of course it's genuine," Stavros said indignantly. "I told you, Professor Fogelman gave it to me. His fingerprints must still be on the data card, if you doubt that."

"Not what I meant." Van held up a hand. "I am no anthropologist. Is this an authentic Survey Service document? The Service is an influential arm of the Federacy, and not forgiving to anyone with the gall to call it to account. I'd hate to have my career blighted for no good reason."

"Here?look at these, then." Stavros secured the data card with the Bilbeis IV report and took out a couple of others.

Van went through them as carefully as he had the first one, perhaps more so. "If it is a forgery, it's masterfully done," he conceded. "All right, I'm willing to spend the money to check one step further. To spend the newsnet's money, anyway?I'll have to go back to my office to use the accessor there. Do you want to come along?"

Nothing could have held Stavros back. He grabbed a cap. "Let's go." Accessors to link in with computer systems planets away were uncommon and exorbitantly expensive. Of course the university had one, and the local government, and Fogelman had doubtless used the anthro department budget, not his own, to get up-to-date data cards for his seminar. The newsnet setup might well be the only other one on Hyperion.

Stavros had never been to the newsnet office before. It reminded him of the way the university got the week before exams: both had the same air of intense concentration and near panic aimed at getting something important done on time.

"Better be good," somebody called as Van sat down in front of the accessor, "or they'll make you pay for it out of your own pocket."

"Fu

Despite the caveat, he did not take long to make the co

survey service report?bilbeis iv?federacy standard year 1186 appeared at the top of the screen.

Stavros paid no attention to the text below. "That's not right! That's the old report?the one that tells how what's-his-name got this whole mess started."

Van typed, more recent reports?

no more recent reports. The reply was immediate and uncompromising. Van looked at Stavros, who wanted to hide under his chair. He wondered where Fogelman had come by the data card, if not from the Survey Service. He could not imagine the professor manufacturing such a document or how he would go about it even if he wanted to. The video perfectly matched the first report's pictures and supported the text it accompanied.

"It's crazy," Stavros said. Van Shui Pong did not answer. Grasping at straws, the grad student suggested, "Ask when the next report from Bilbeis IV is due. The place must be up for resurvey?fifteen hundred years is the standard interval for pretechnological worlds."

Shrugging, Van typed in the question. next report expected with return of survey ship j?ng ho, was the response. Van shrugged again. "Your data card has that much right, at any rate."