When I heard of the Ghosts' experiment I made a lot of noise. Eventually their Sink Ambassador agreed to meet me -- but they insisted the venue had to be the exposed surface of the Moon. Earth conditions wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference to a Silver Ghost, of course; it was all part of the Ghosts' endless diplomatic gavotte. As chief administrator of the Ghost liaison project, it was my precise job not to find such matters irritating.

I guess age -- and Eve's death -- were making it harder for me to stomach the pettiness of interspecies diplomacy.

Into Lethe with it.

I rode out on the Sahel Cable, then took a flitter to the Moon. We were to meet outside Copernicus Dome; I suited up and walked out briskly. If the Ambassador had been hoping that my sixty-five years would keep me at home it had another thing coming.

The Silver Ghosts' Ambassador to the Heat Sink floated a yard off the crisp Lunar regolith; the reflection of Earth was a distorted crescent sliding over its midriff.

We met without aides, as I'd requested, and spoke on a closed channel.

I came straight to the point. "Ambassador, I've asked to meet you because we suspect you are conducting unauthorized experiments on quagma material."

It bobbed up and down, a child's balloon incongruously dispatched to the airless Moon. "Jack, I would like to see evidence to support your allegation."

I was prepared for that. "I'll download the dossier to you. As soon as I'm satisfied you are being just as honest with me."

"Perhaps you are speculating. Perhaps this is a--" Pause. " -- a shot in the dark? You are trying to extract valuable information from me on the threat of evidence which does not exist."

I shook my head. "Ambassador, think it over. Your race and mine have contacts at many levels, right down to the one-man traders. Security measures between our species are as porous as human flesh." A charming Ghost simile.

"Perhaps." Its bobbing evolved into a complex shimmering. "Very well. Jack Raoul, we have grown to know each other, these past decades, and I am aware that you are an honest man... if not always an open one, despite your present posture as an injured party. Therefore I must accept that you have such evidence."

I felt a surge of satisfaction. "Then you are conducting a covert project."

"Covert, perhaps, but not intentionally so from our human partners."

"Oh, really?..." I let it pass. "Then from whom?"

"The Xeelee."

I studied the Ambassador with a sneaking admiration. "I'll be impressed if you manage to keep secrets from the Xeelee. How are you doing it?"

The Ghost began to roll gently. "All in good time, Jack Raoul. We cannot be sure of secure communications, even here."

"This conversation has served its purpose, then. Our staff can proceed with the details--"