“That’s because of the good father in you,” she told him gently, and smiled. “Tell you what. I’ll have a talk with her tonight after supper, if you’d like. I know Rachel well enough to know she’s been keeping an eye on what’s happening politically in the Star Kingdom, whether she’ll admit it to you and her mothers or not. She has to realize political factors are driving your decisions right now in a lot of ways… some of which are going to impact on her personally. Still, she may take it better from me than from you if I point out how unpleasant it is being used as a soccer ball by a bunch of cretins like High Ridge, Solomon Hayes, and Regina Clausel and then explain as gently as possible why it simply may not be possible to send her to Saganami next year. After all, you’re her father, and there have to be some authority issues tied up in that for any teenager. I, on the other hand, am simply Aunt Honor, and if any glamour attaches to ‘Admiral Harrington,’ maybe I can put it to good use with her.”

Chapter Nineteen

“TAKE a look at this, Jordin.”

Jordin Kare looked up from his own terminal and pivoted his work station chair in Dr. Richard Wix’s direction. Wix was a strawberry blond, with a somewhat shaggy beard, a mustache several shades lighter than his hair, and quite a reputation as a hard-partying sort. Indeed, he rejoiced in the nickname “Tons of Joy Bear,” although Kare wasn’t quite sure where the “bear” part of it came in. On the other hand, when he wasn’t establishing himself as the very soul of conviviality, Dr. Wix was also an extremely competent astrophysicist. Perhaps even more important, he possessed that unique intuitive sense which spotted data correlations almost more by feel than by analysis.

“What is it?” Kare asked.

“Well,” Wix said with an air of calm, “I can’t be certain of course, but unless I’m sadly mistaken, that last data run from Admiral Haynesworth’s people just nailed down the entry vector.”

“What?!” Kare was out of his chair and standing at Wix’s shoulder, peering down at his display, without any conscious memory of having moved. “That’s preposterous! There’s no way! We don’t even have a definitive locus yet—how the hell could we have an entry vector?”

“Because God works in mysterious ways?” Wix suggested.

“Oh, very funny, TJ,” Kare half-snapped. He leaned closer to the display, then reached over Wix’s shoulder and punched a command of his own into the data terminal. The display considered his question for a moment, then obligingly reconfigured, and Kare muttered a half-audible oath his rabbi would not have approved of.

“See?” Wix asked with an ever so slight air of complacency.

“I do, indeed,” Kare said slowly, his eyes fixed on the display’s vector arrows and the sidebar of tabular numerical data. He shook his head, unable to look away from the ridiculous figures. “You do realize how astronomical—you should pardon the expression—the odds against this are, don’t you, TJ?”