Kemp pondered for a few seconds. “Something’s up. The smell of dead fish pervades this.” He switched the phone to his other ear. “I’m leaning toward the Ivan as a lab rat scenario, personally, despite the timing. I’m going to call Jennings, see what he has to add. It goes without saying that Moore’s credibility on this is zero. Jennings will likely start a war.”

Narang agreed that was a good idea, and hung up. Kemp pulled up Jennings’s number and dialed it.

Voice mail. Kemp sighed and left his name and number, along with a brief message.

He got up and headed to the kitchen. A freezer-full of frozen dinners didn’t make for the most inspiring of meals, but they were quick, and didn’t require much effort to prepare or clean up. Ideal bachelor food. Kemp stared at the stack of boxes, and wondered if his changed financial status was causing the solitary life to lose some of its shine.

He had just made a selection and stuck it in the microwave when the phone rang. He picked it up and checked the caller ID. Jennings.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Kemp, this is Andrew Jennings. I just had an interesting discussion with Admiral Moore…”

“So you know about Ivan, then. And this explains why Moore had his assistant phone Dr. Narang, anyway.”

“Perhaps more than you know, Doctor. I’m assuming you and Dr. Narang find the timing suspicious?”

Kemp snorted. “Beyond suspicious. There’s no reason for the nanites to suddenly have gone on the warpath. And we did, not to put too fine a point on it, predict that the Navy would do exactly this.”

“Of course, we don’t know the nanites’ plans or schedule. They might simply have hit a milestone in their timeline and activated a script. And just because we predicted the action, doesn’t preclude the possibility of it being legitimate.”

Kemp held the phone in front of him and glared at it. Putting it back to his ear, he said, “Captain, are you defending them? Is there something going on I should know about?”

“I suppose so. My conversation with the admiral spent very little time on the subject of Ivan’s purported death, concentrating rather on the question of why we moved Baby Rock and what it might mean for us.”

“What?” Kemp could feel the blood draining from his face.

“It would seem that we were insufficiently devious when dealing with Baby Rock. Admiral Moore appears to have figured it out, and presented his conclusions and the ramifications, framed in a narrative of mutually assured destruction.”

“Oh.” Not good.