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relax.”
    “She is responsible for the flowers?”
    “Oh it’s almost as big an obsession as her work, Commander.
Anything she can do by herself and avoid people I suppose. In all though, the
garden is very beautiful.” 
    “It is indeed.” I held out my palm, and Breath rose from her chair,
producing her own. “Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Evans.”
    “Please, call me Breth,” she said.
    “Breth,” I conceded. “We’re going to the lab to check Val’s
communications logs, and anything else we might find, then we’ll be leaving for
Harrakan.”
    Stinson stood as well. “Thank you for dinner, Miss Evans.”
    “Breth, please, and do contact me as soon as you find out anything.”
    “We will,” I promised.
    “Thank you, Commander. Lesa, please show them to the lab.”
    “Yes, mother.”
    *****
     “Marriage isn’t all that’s suffered,” Lesa said, walking across
the grass to the lab’s entrance. “People are killing themselves as well, Commander.”
    Unfortunately, she was right—suicide had been on the rise for the
past forty years. Some people simply had enough of life and didn’t want to live
forever; others adopted various religions, most offering different versions of
eternal life—but all of them universal in requiring a person to die first .
    “I know,” I replied. “I’ve had to investigate a few high profile
deaths to make sure they weren’t homicides.”
    “My aunt was working on an antigen to Permalife. Did you know
that?” she asked.
    “No. I didn’t. Why?”
    “She saw the suffering, Commander; she wanted to give people a
choice—the ability to start aging again if they wished. She was even trying to fix
the sterility.”
    “That is interesting. How far along was she?”
    “As far as I could tell, she was almost done—with the aging
problem anyway. The infertility issue was much more difficult to fix I
gathered.” Her face brightened. “Imagine it, Commander, death would give
meaning back to life; marriage, children, death, then eternal life—just
as god intended.”
    Her faith was almost palpable. “But my aunt isn’t religious; she doesn’t
care about any of that; she just wants to keep people from killing themselves,
to give them some control back over their lives.”
    We arrived at the entrance and Lesa pulled out an electronic key
to unlock the door. “No one would ever come in here without permission, but
Aunt Val is always worried about someone messing with her experiments.” The
door swung open and the three of us walked in, descending a set of stairs that
led to a wide open area stuffed with equipment.    
    The lab was exactly what I had envisioned; large electronic displays
with formulae and calculations I didn’t recognize, small machines for housing,
sifting, and manipulating biological samples, and unexpectedly, potted plants
interspersed throughout the space—each with its own makeshift light above it. 
    I found Val’s terminal, still unlocked just as described. I
downloaded everything into my pad while Stinson and Lesa looked around the room.
When the sync was complete, I promptly sent a copy off to Sector Security via
broadlink. Let some much smarter people than me analyze it , I thought. I
would look at it all en route to Harrakan, but there was certain to be things
in those files far beyond my understanding.
    “Find anything interesting?” I called out to Stinson.
    “Yes. But nothing useful,” he replied. “This is a veritable
factory.”
    “It is a factory, of sorts,” Lesa said. “Most production occurs at
Aunt Val’s outside laboratories, but she can batch manufacture things here as
well. Not at such a large scale of course.”
    “If there’s nothing else we can learn here, let’s get to the
hangar,” I said. “We will leave you to lock up, Lesa, I know the way…and thanks
for your help.”
    “You’re welcome, Commander, Captain.” She moved to the control panel
to shut off the lights as the two of us headed