In their own bunker, four hours later, the exercise supervisor walked down the aisle between the sleeping slings of the victorious team, shaking hands and congratulating them warmly, and then handing out letters from home. All the men received letters, if only from party cell coordinators in some outlying village. The supervisor stopped by Mirsky's sling last.

"Only one letter for you, Comrade. . . Colonel," he said, handing Mirsky a thick and carefully sealed and taped envelope. Mirsky took the envelope and stared at it, then at the supervisor.

"Open it."

He carefully tore off the end and took out five folded sheets of paper, "A promotion," he said, unwilling to be very emotional about the whole thing.

"And your orders, Comrade," the supervisor said. "Gentlemen, are we interested in discovering where our new Colonel Pavel Mirsky is going?"

"Where?" several asked.

"Back to Earth," Mirsky said.

"Back to Earth!" the supervisor echoed. "This is, what—your fourth training tour on the Moon in two years? And now back to Earth."

The men watched him carefully, grinning.

"To the Indian Ocean," Mirsky said. "For final training as battalion commander."

"To the Indian Ocean!" the supervisor shouted, pointing one finger at the floor—symbolically indicating the Earth—and then raising both his hands, looking upward and nodding at the ceiling.

The men cheered and broke into applause.

"Now, you will have the stars you have always wanted, Colonel," the supervisor said, shaking his hand firmly.

Chapter Four

The rest of the fourth chamber slipped by the train windows quickly, a blur of hilly terrain, small lakes and outcroppings of what looked like granite.

"The line ends at the sixth chamber. We'll be met by Joseph Rimskaya and some of the Chinese team at the terminal annex."

"Rimskaya? I had a teacher with that name at UCLA."

"Rimskaya is why you're here. He recommended you."

"But he left the university to join the Bureau of Math and Statistics."

"And he met the Advisor while working in Washington," Lanier added.

Rimskaya had been her professor in a special math seminar. She hadn't liked him much; he was a tall, blocky man with a wiry red beard, loud and assertive, a political science professor and expert in statistics and information theory. A rigorous mathematician but not, in her opinion, in possession of the insight necessary for truly valuable research, Rimskaya had always seemed the perfect academician to her: rigid, demanding, an unimaginative taskmaster.

"Why is he here?"

"Because the Advisor finds him useful."

"His specialty was statistical theories of population behavior. He belongs in sociology."

"That's right," Lanier said.

"How—"

Lanier appeared irritated. "Think, Patricia. Where did the Stoners go? Why did they go there, how did they get there?"

"I don't know," she answered quietly.

"We don't know, either. Not yet. Rimskaya is head of the sociology group. They might be able to tell us."

"This is such an ass-backwards way of teaching."

"I'll be patient if you will," Lanier said.

Patricia was silent for a moment. "No guarantees," she said. "I wish you'd stop seeming so peeved at me when I just ask straightforward questions."