Whoever it was would pay for that.

"Where have you been?"

"Sorry, Doc. I had some errands to run." Clark had come back through the S&T office. "Here."

"What's this?" Ryan took the bottle. It was an expensive container of Chivas Regal in a ceramic bottle. The sort you couldn't see through.

"That's our transceiver. They made up four of them. Nice job, isn't it? Here's the pickup." Clark handed over a green stick, almost the thickness of a cocktail straw, but not quite. "It'll look like a plastic doodad to hold the flowers in place. We decided to use three of them. The technics say they can multiplex the outbound transmissions, and for some reason or other they can crunch the computer time down to one-to-one. They also say that if we had another few months to play with the comm links, we could almost real-time the whole thing."

"What we have is enough," Jack said. Here and now 'almost' was better than perfect too late. "I've funded enough research projects."

"I agree. What about the test flights?"

"Tomorrow, ten o'clock."

"Super." Clark stood. "Hey, Doc, how about you call it a day? You look wasted."

"I think you're right. Give me another hour, and I'm out of here."

"Fair enough."

Russell met them at Atlanta. They'd come across through Mexico City, thence through Miami, where the customs people were very interested in drugs, but not particularly interested in Greek businessmen who opened their bags without being asked. Russell, who was now Robert Friend of Roggen, Colorado - with the driver's license to prove it - shook hands with both of them and helped to collect their baggage.

"Weapons?" Qati asked.

"Not here, man. I have everything you need at home."

"Any problems?"

"Not one." Russell was silent for a moment. "Maybe there is one."

"What?" Ghosn asked with concealed alarm. Being on foreign soil always made him nervous, and this was his first trip to America.

"Cold as hell where we're going, guys. You might want to get some decent coats."

"That can wait," the Commander decided. He was feeling very bad now. The latest batch of chemotherapy had denied him food for nearly two days, and as much as he craved nourishment, his stomach rebelled at the mere sight of it in one of the airport fast-food stands. "What about our flight?"

"Hour and a half. How about you get some sweaters, okay? Follow me. I'm not foolin' about the weather. It's like zero where we're going."

"Zero? That is not so-" Ghosn stopped. "You mean, below zero, centigrade?"

Russell stopped for a second. "Oh. Yeah, that's right. Zero here means something different. Zero's cold, guys, okay?"

"As you say," Qati agreed. Half an hour later they had thick woolen sweaters to go under their thin raincoats. The mostly empty Delta flight to Denver left on time. Three hours later, they walked off their last jetway for a while. Ghosn had never seen so much snow in his life.