“Find out where the hell he is, what he’s doing!”

Both suns had been in the sky when the shuttle brought her down. Maximum flare security had been in force. She had been hustled out of the landing complex and into a servo which deposited her at the tunnel. The Colony personnel were quick and harried today—rumors of perimeter difficulties with Pandora’s many demons.

Legata shuddered. Any thought of the predatory creatures which roamed the landscape beyond Colony’s barriers filled her with apprehension.

Murdoch himself met her in the brightly lighted and bustling area where the last lock sealed off the entrance within the lab. He was a blocky man, light complexion and blue eyes, with cropped brown hair. His fingers were short and stubby, the nails well trimmed. He always appeared recently scrubbed.

“What is it this time?” he demanded.

She liked the energy focus in his question. It said: We’re busy here. What does Oakes want now?

Very well, she could match that mood. “Where’s Lewis?”

Murdoch glanced around to see who might overhear them. Seeing no workers nearby, he said: “Redoubt.”

“Why doesn’t he answer our calls?”

“Don’t know.”

“What was his last message?”

“Emergency code. Hold all transports. No craft permitted to land at Redoubt. Wait for clearance signal.”

Legata absorbed this. Emergency. What was happening across the waters at the Redoubt?

“Why wasn’t Doctor Oakes informed?”

“The code signal called for complete security.”

She understood this. No transmissions from Colony to Ship could carry a message involving that restriction. But that was two full Pandoran diurns ago. She sensed another restriction in the last message from the Redoubt, a private Lewis restriction to his own minions. It would be pointless to explore such a conjecture, but she felt its presence.

“Have you sent an overflight?”

“No.”

So that was restricted, too. Bad . . . very bad. Well, then, she had to get on to the rest of her assignment.

“I’m here to inspect the lab.”

“I know.”

Murdoch had been studying this woman while they talked. The orders transmitted from The Boss were clear. She was to go into everything except the Scream Room. That would come later for her . . . as it came for everyone here. She was a pretty thing: a pocket Venus with a doll face and green eyes. She had a good brain, too, by all accounts.

“If you know, let’s get going,” she said.

“This way.”

He led her down a passage between banked vats of primary clonewombs into the Micro-micro Processing section.

At first, Legata’s interest was intellectual—she knew this and it comforted her. Murdoch even took her hand at one point, leading her past rows of special-application clonewombs. He was so intent in his rhapsody on equipment and techniques that she did not mind his touch. It was, after all, clinical. Or unintentional. Whichever, Murdoch’s touch was not born out of affection; this she knew.

But he knew Lab One as few others could, even perhaps as well as Lewis, and she had never been told to go deep into it before.