Catherine Radelin-Doyle stood there, her eyes round, her face pale.

“Yes, Cathy?”

“Sir, Mr. Ongola …”

“Either will do.” He mustered an encouraging smile. Considering the amount of trouble Cathy could get into, from stumbling into caves at an early age, to marrying the most feckless joat on the planet, he wondered at her shy demeanor. She was, poor child, just one of those people to whom events tended to occur with no connivance from themselves at all.

“Sir, I’ve found a cave.”

“Yes?” he encouraged when she hesitated. She was constantly finding caves.

“It wasn’t empty.”

Ongola sat up straight. “It had a lot of fuel sacks in it?” he asked. If Catherine had found it, would Avril? No, Avril did not have the same sort of luck Catherine had.

“However did you know, Mr. Ongola?” She looked faint with relief.

“Possibly because I know they’re there.”

“You do? They are? I mean, they weren’t put there by ‘them’?”

“No, by us.” He wanted to make as little fuss about Kenjo’s hoard as possible. He had been counting the dwindling numbers and wondering why Kenjo seemed so complacent after each trip. Ongola flicked a glance at the corner of the shadowed shelving where the guidance chips were hidden in the dark-foam case.

Catherine suddenly sank to the nearest chair. “Oh, sir, you don’t know what a fright it gave me. Thinking that someone else was here, because everyone knows there’s so little fuel left. And then to see …”

“But you saw nothing, Catherine,” Ongola told her crisply. “Nothing whatever. There’s no cave worth noticing down that particular crevasse and you won’t say a thing about it to anyone else. I will personally tell the admiral. But you will tell no one.”

“Oh no, sir.”

“This information cannot—I repeat, cannot—be divulged to any other person.”

“That’s right, Mr. Ongola.” She nodded solemnly several times. Then she smiled winsomely. “Shall I keep on looking?”

“Yes, I think you’d better. And find something!”

“Oh, but I have, Mr. Ongola, and Joel Lilienkamp says they’re going to be excellent storage space.” Her face clouded briefly. “But he didn’t say for what.”

“Go, Cathy, and find something … else.”

She left, and Ongola had barely returned to brooding over the first serious losses to their defense when Tarvi came storming up the stairs.

“It’s been staring us in the face, Zi,” he said, swinging his arms in one of his expansive gestures. His face was alight with enthusiasm, although his skin looked a bit gray from the excesses of the night before.

“What?” Ongola was in no mood for puzzles.

“Them! There!” Tarvi gestured extravagantly out the northern windows. “All the time.”

It was probably the headache, Ongola thought, but he had no idea what Tarvi was talking about.

“What do you mean?”