Kuhl saw the choices before him, and again took the one that was unfortunate but unavoidable.

"Mi mano, su vida, mi mano ... "

Antonio's voice fading until it was barely a shiver on his lips, Ricci finally kicked free of his still-clinging fingers, sprang to his feet, and looked down the corridor.

All down its length, it was empty.

He rushed straight ahead toward the loading bay, plunged from the darkness of the hall out into the lesser darkness of the night.

The man with whom he'd been struggling was nowhere to be seen.

Gone.

And though Ricci would search for him for the next hour, and immediately order a cordon placed around the space center's grounds, Kuhl would remain gone.

He had, however, left his backpack behind.

Epilogue

Epilogue

VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 30, 2001

A SECURE CONFERENCE ROOM, UPLINK INTERNATIONAL corporate headquarters, San Jose, California.

"We've landed on our feet," Gordian said, "but let's not kid ourselves into thinking we're on anything close to solid ground."

At the table with him, Megan Breen and Tom Ricci were sober.

"Our mole's still in his burrow," Megan said. "We know now that he was familiar with the layouts of the Brazilian compound, the Cosmodrome, and presumably the KSC's vehicle assembly building. That he not only revealed detailed information about the design of the ISS service module, but also where to plant the HMP device so it would be hidden from sight and able to feed off the solar sails."

"Takes real access, and a lot of technical expertise," Ricci said. "Same for whoever did the dirty work on Orion."

"How about the one you got the device away from?" Gordian asked. "Any leads on him?"

Ricci shook his head. In the grounds search that had followed the man's escape from the cargo-processing facility, his teams had found two murdered VKS guards, one garroted to death, the other with a broken neck. Ricci figured their quarry had killed them both and taken off in their missing patrol vehicle.

"Rollie holds firm that he wasn't the guiding force behind the strikes," Megan said.

Gordian looked at her. "Reasons?"

She shrugged. "He calls it a gut feeling."

"That it?"

She nodded.

"Sometimes," Ricci said, "following your gut's the best thing you can do."

Gordian expelled a long breath.

"The longer I think about all this, the more unanswered questions arise," he said. "A primary one being what the HMP generator's target was going to be once it was placed in orbit."

They all sat very still in the room's electronic envelope of silence.

"Small steps," Ricci said after a while, his voice so quiet it seemed he'd been talking to himself.

Then he noticed Gordian had turned to face him.