“Sorry, Franny.” Malcolm hid a reflexive wince. Like Barney Isvarian, she was an ex-Marine, but the NPA wasn’t real big on punctilious formality, and Truman was a career cop who’d transferred in from the San Giorgio City Police on Manticore. She’d given up on trying to turn him into anything resembling a soldier. There was no point in it. For that matter, she told herself firmly, there was probably no reason. The NPA wasn’t the Corps, but while its members might seem casual to an outsider, they kept their heads when someone dropped them in the pot.

“I forgot my thermos,” Truman went on. He scooped up the insulated container and hopped back up onto the raised firing step. Malcolm heard the thermos open and the gurgle as he poured coffee at his station and shook her head with a slight grin. No, this definitely wasn’t the Corps.

“Coming up on the three hundred-klick mark, Franny,” her pilot murmured, and Malcolm nodded. They’d flown a standard sweep pattern since leaving the Delta, and that had slowed their rate of advance to little more than seventy-five kilometers per hour. It made her feel as if they were barely poking along, especially in light of the urgency Isvarian had stressed in his briefing, but at least they were nearing the limit of their best estimate of how far the dead nomad could have come. And, she thought, she could say with certainty that there hadn’t been any large numbers of rifle-armed Medusans in the area they’d swept. No one could hide that many iron rifle barrels or warm bodies from her sensors, and—

“What’s that?” Sergeant Hayabashi’s voice broke into her thoughts, and Malcolm raised her head. The sergeant was frowning down at his own instrumentation, and Malcolm felt her lips purse as she saw the bright blip shining from Hayabashi’s screen.

“It’s a power source,” she said unnecessarily. “Could be an aircar’s electrical system, or it might be a small generator.”

“Well whichever it is, it shouldn’t be here, should it?” Hayabashi asked, and Malcolm shook her head.

“Nope. But let’s not jump to any conclusions, Sergeant,” she said in her most judicious voice. “We’re supposed to be looking for hopped-up natives. This could be someone grounded with a mechanical failure.”

“Yeah, and I could be my own maiden aunt, Ma’am,” Hayabashi replied, and Malcolm grinned at the sergeant’s sour tone. “Anyway, it—”

The sergeant broke off as the blip vanished. He tapped keys, then frowned at the lieutenant. “Something cut off the scan, Ma’am,” he reported.

“I saw.” Malcolm adjusted her own systems. “We’ve lost the LOS. Maybe a ridge line cut it off—or it could be hidden behind something and we just happened to get a peek.”

“Hidden?” Hayabashi gave her a sharp glance, and she shrugged.

“I didn’t say I thought it was innocent, Sergeant. I only said it could be.” Malcolm turned to her pilot. “Bring us back in a circle, Jeff. And drop us to a hundred meters or so. I want a visual on this thing if we can spot it.”