Megan's gaze wandered briefly down to the bay. The sunlight was fading, and white patches of sea smoke had begun rising from the water as dusk's cold breezes slipped over its warmer surface. The birds had returned with the eagle's departure, bearing out Ricci's prediction. She could see rafts of ducks near the shoreline almost straight below, and further off, gulls descending through the mist to alight on shoals exposed by the receding tide. Broad-chested and gray-patched, they seemed instantly to enter a state of repose, puffing out their feathers against the dropping temperature.

Suddenly it seemed very late in the day.

"We should talk about why Pete and I came to see you," she said. "You still haven't given us your feelings about it."

Ricci looked at her. "Now that you mention it, why did the two of you come?"

Megan blinked.

"You don't know," she said. It was a statement rather than a question.

He shook his head.

She turned to Nimec. "You didn't tell him?"

Nimec shook his head. "I thought we'd wait until we got here," he said without explanation. "Discuss it face-to-face."

She rubbed her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger, shook her head a little, and sighed resignedly.

"We'd better go inside after all," she said. "Seems this is going to take longer than I expected."

A little past five-thirty in the afternoon P.D.T., two urgent calls were placed from the Brazilian space station facility to UpLink's corporate headquarters in San Jose.

The first was to Roger Gordian.

Standing near his office window, looking out at the rain that had just started pouring down on Rosita Avenue, Gordian was about to leave for the day when his desk phone chirruped. He stared at it a moment, tempted to let it remain on the hook, one arm halfway inside his trench coat. Whoever it was could leave a message.

Chree-eep!

Ignore it, he urged himself. Ashley. Dinner. Home.

The phone rang a third time. On the fourth, the caller would be automatically transferred to Gordian's voice mail.

Shrugging out of his coat, he frowned in acquiescence and grabbed the receiver.

"Yes?" he said.

The man at the other end identified himself as Mason Cody from the Sword operational center, Mato Grasso do Sul. His voice seemed to come out of an odd, tunneling silence that put Gordian in mind of what it was like holding a conch shell up against his ear--listening to the ocean, they'd called it when he was young.

He sat behind his desk, realizing immediately that he was on a secure digital line. And that the call was therefore anything but routine.

"Sir, there's been an incident," Cody said in a tone that made his back stiffen.

Gordian listened quietly as the violent events at the ISS compound were outlined for him in a rapid but collected manner, his hand tensing around the receiver at the news of injuries and fatalities.