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required.”
    “Not that we won’t use bio-monitoring as well, once we learn how he reacts.”
    “Agreed, Madame Coordinator.”
    “What are your immediate personnel requirements?”
    “We’ll need a linguist and a psychologist to study the alien. Also, an astrophysicist. We can get him from Magellan ’s crew.”
    “Why an astrophysicist?”
    “Because,” the director replied, “once he tells us where his star is located, we’ll need someone who can translate his coordinates into our own.”
    “And if he won’t tell us?”
    “Semantic analysis ought to help there, too. If we can get him talking about the sort of things he sees in the night sky of whatever planet he lives on, we may be able to triangulate the location of his home world.”
    Nadine Halstrom nodded. “All right, the alien is the first approach. What is the second?”
    “That one is a little more objective. Captain Landon wants to return to New Eden to salvage the alien hulk. We can learn a great deal about these people by studying their technology. Who knows, we might even come away with their star maps.”
    “I don’t like that approach, Anton. As of now, they do not know where we live. However they got there, New Eden has been visited by two alien starships. What is to stop it from being visited again while we are trying to salvage that ship? They could follow Magellan home this time.”
    “I believe the gain is worth the risk.”
    “We’ll see. Before I approve any such expedition, I’ll want to see a detailed operations plan that reduces our exposure to a minimum.”
    “Yes, Ma’am.”
    “In the meantime, you can busy yourself getting the PoleStar operation moving. I must emphasize, Mr.
    Director. I want this secret held very tight. No more are to learn of the alien than are absolutely necessary.”
    “I understand.”
    “I will also want someone there to look after things from a political perspective. Any objections to Dieter Pavel?”
    “None.”
    “Excellent. Whom will we get for our linguist? --”
    #
    Like the earliest space stations, Soyuz and the Space Station Freedom, Equatorial Station orbited low to keep beneath the Van Allen radiation belt. The relative lack of altitude contributed to a view that made the big triple-wheel a destination as well as a transfer point. The extra income from tourists nearly compensated for the cost of the additional reaction mass that had to be expended to counteract atmospheric drag.
    Like everyone else, Lisabeth Arden paused at the viewport in the non-rotating station hub as she exited the transfer tube. Arden was petite blonde with a permanent tan and green eyes. Beyond the armor glass, the Earth slid quickly beneath them, a vast blue circle too large to encompass in a single glance. The station was just passing over the eastern coast of Ecuador. The South Atlantic stretched clear to the limb of the planet, with the Ivory Coast of Africa still fifteen minutes away over the curving horizon. The usual bands of clouds were dominated by a large spiral formation that was the beginning of a tropical storm.
    Directly beneath them, the thin white contrails of aircraft marked the air route between Lima and Kinshasa.
    Lisa was a professor of linguistics at the Multiversity of London. She had arrived at her office half an hour late that morning, not having gotten to sleep until the early morning hours before dawn. The first thing she noticed when she powered up her work screen was a summons to the chancellor’s office. The muttered oath that accompanied the discovery was one that had come down unchanged from Anglo-Saxon times.
    As she hurried down the hall toward the lift, she ran over in her mind all of the possible infractions that might have earned her a visit to the chancellor’s office. There had been that expense report she had turned in for the seminar in Mombassa. Or possibly, she was over her budgeted allotment of time on the university’s library net. Still, neither matter should be