He carefully pulled out the flexipad they’d given him and pressed a fingertip to the envelope that had appeared on screen.

“I’ve gotta go, Julia,” he said, after reading the message. “The boss wants to see me.”

“Don’t be a stranger,” she called out to him as he left.

Black had grown accustomed to the quality coffee on the Clinton. It was a rude shock, then, having to force down Ray Spruance’s green, unpleasant brew again.

They sat in an office a short walk from the docks where the surviving destroyers had tied up, and a few minutes ride from the hospital where the less serious casualties had been taken. They couldn’t see Kolhammer’s task force. It had dropped anchor on the other side of Ford Island, where it kept watch over the skies out to a distance of eight hundred miles. The British ship Trident remained on station near Midway, watching for surface threats.

Spruance sipped at his coffee as though it tasted just fine.

“It’s a bad business, this killing, Dan. Kolhammer is going to go nuts when he finds out.”

Black stared out the window. Three nurses walked by, one of them with her arm in a sling.

“They haven’t told him yet, sir?”

“Haven’t been able to raise him. Their communications aren’t so good without those space satellites they’ve got, or rather, haven’t. They’re trying to get him, but we’re not sending anything about them by radio or cablegram for the moment. It’s all hand-to-hand courier, for security.”

“Were they an item?” he asked.

“The Jap and Anderson? They tell me not. It looks like a pretty vicious murder. There’s some, uh, sexual matters associated with it. But more in the line of, you know, rape.”

The word hung between them for an eternity. This was going to make things even more difficult.

“Has word gotten around yet?” asked Black.

“There’s been no official statement,” Spruance said. “Won’t be for a while. Officially, they’re not even here yet. But I’d say everyone in that task force of theirs will know by the end of the day. And everyone will have an opinion about the likely culprits, too.”

“One of ours, you mean.”

“It’s human nature to blame the other guy,” Spruance suggested.

Black forced down a last mouthful of cold, foul-tasting coffee. He wondered whether Julia had heard of the deaths yet. As soon as she did, he guessed that she’d be straining at the leash to get off the ship and do some digging herself.

Spruance obviously found the topic of the murders upsetting and certainly distasteful. He put them aside by pushing himself up out of his squeaky swivel chair and pacing over to the window. Hot sunshine fell on him through the glass. In his white uniform it made him quite uncomfortable to look at.