Something about it makes me feel profoundly uneasy, as if a black cat has walked half the length of my grave, paused furtively, taken a crap, and been about its business before anyone noticed.

"This is Airframe XR727. According to the official records it was scrapped in 1983. Unofficially . . . it ended up here, because of its history: it's a ringer, it was on the books with 23 squadron and 11 squadron, but they never saw it. It was working for you people. In the Squadron." I shiver. The hangar's weirdly, incongruously cold, given the bright summer afternoon outside. "It logged 280 hours on the other side, escorting the white elephants."

Angleton mentioned a white elephant, didn't he? I glance at the shadows under XR727's belly. The concrete is stained and greasy with fluid, whorls and lines and disconnected nodes that swim before my eyes. Clonk. The final domino slides into place.

"Jesus, Angleton," I mutter, and pull out my PDA. Tap-click-boing and I pull up the thaumograph utility running on the rather nonstandard card in its second expansion slot. I point it at the swirling directed graph that the phantom hydraulic leak has dribbled across the concrete apron and the display flashes amber.

I take a slow step back from the airframe, and motion Hastings over. "I don't want to alarm you," I murmur. "But did you know your airframe is hot?"

Hastings shakes his head sadly. "Figures." He shrugs. "Do you want to look at the cockpit instrumentation?"

I nod. "Just point me at it. Is it still where Marcia had her incident?"

"I haven't moved it." He gestures towards a canvas screen, surrounded by a circle of traffic cones with hazard tape strung between them. "Do you need any help?"

"I'm afraid I'm probably beyond help . . ." I advance on the traffic cones, PDA held in front of me. It begins to bleep and warble immediately. Edging sideways, I look round the canvas screen. There's a workbench bearing a stack of black metal boxes, wires dangling, needles and dials glowing eerie blue—blue? Glowing? I check my PDA and swear under my breath. If this was a radiation leak I'd be backing away and reaching for the lead-lined underwear right now: but it's not, it's just thaumic resonance, albeit at levels you don't usually see outside of a summoning grid—what the ignorant persist in calling a pentacle. "Scratch that. Do you have any conductive tape? A soldering iron? Some blue chalk?"

"You're going to exorcise it," states Hastings. "Right?"

"Right—"

"Got a field exorcism kit in the mess hut. Squadron issue, rev three, and I keep everything in date. Want me to fetch it?"

"I think that would be a very good idea," I say with feeling, thinking, Field exorcism kit? Squadron issue? "By the way, what was the Squadron's unit number?"

Hastings stares at me. "Triple-six. Didn't they tell you anything?"