“What we’re trying to decide now is what Colonel Rigney knows about this,” Coloma said. “He’s the one we’ve been dealing with for this mission. It seems impossible to me he’s not behind this charade.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Wilson said. “The Colonial Defense Forces have a long history of inborn sneakiness. It’s one of the things that got us in trouble with the Earth in the first place. It’s entirely possible someone above Rigney is pulling a fast one on him, too.”

“But it still doesn’t make any sense,” Balla said. “No matter who has dropped fake Earth diplomats here, we’re still not going to be selling this ship to anyone on Earth. This charade doesn’t add up.”

“There’s something we’re not getting,” Wilson said. “We might not have all the information we need.”

“Tell me where we can get more information,” Coloma said. “I’m open to suggestion.”

Coloma’s PDA pinged. It was Basquez. “We have a problem,” he said.

“Is this another ‘I think we have a potential energy flow’ kind of problem?” Coloma asked.

“No, this is a ‘Holy shit, we’re all definitely going to die a horrible death in the cold endless dark of space’ kind of problem,” Basquez said.

“We’ll be right down,” Coloma said.

*   *   *

“Well, this is interesting,” Wilson said, looking at the pinprick-sized object at the end of his finger. He, Coloma, Balla and Basquez were in engineering, beside a chunk of conduit and a brace of instruments Basquez used to examine the conduit. Basquez had shooed away the rest of his crew, who were now hovering some distance away, trying to listen in.

“It’s a bomb, isn’t it,” Basquez said.

“Yeah, I think it is,” Wilson said.

“What sort of damage could a bomb that size do?” Coloma said. “I can barely even see it.”

“If there’s antimatter inside, it could do quite a lot,” Wilson said. “You don’t need a lot of that stuff to make a big mess.”

Coloma peered at the tiny thing again. “If it was antimatter, it would have annihilated itself already.”

“Not necessarily,” Wilson said, still gazing at the pinprick. “When I was working at CDF Research and Development, there was a team working on pellet shot–sized antimatter containment units. You generate a suspending energy field and wrap it in a compound that acts like a battery and powers the energy field inside. When the power runs out, the energy field collapses and the antimatter connects with the wrapping. Kablam.”

“They got it to work?” Basquez asked.