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dots to.”
    Annie took another bite from her salad.  “I think there is one more dot for your little puzzle.”
    “Yes.”
    Again she chewed her food.  “There is a third ship we are working on.  It’s small and has to be ready when the big two are launched.
    “A third, small ship?”
    “Yes, little, but not normally little.  It has three smaller reactors.  Normally, you try to fit the reactor to the ship.  Small ship, small reactor.  Big ship, bigger reactor.  If you get big enough, you add a second reactor.  That’s what is economical.  You don’t ever put three of the smallest size ones on one ship.”
    “Redundancy?” Taylor guessed.
    “That’s all I can figure out.  It’s also small, and not at all rigged for cargo.  In fact, it’s not  rigged for much of anything.  The programmer working on the Smart Metal configurations of the ship has gotten huge bonuses, but other than him showing off pictures of his new sports car, he’s not saying a word about his work.”
    “A small ship but with redundant power plants so that if one went down on a long voyage you’d still have the other two.  Is there anything else special about it?”
    “It’s getting the same sensor suite that the big ships are getting.  That includes a Mark XII rangefinder.”
    “How is that special?”
    “It’s just the best, most expensive rangefinder on the market, and Westinghouse charges an arm and a leg for them.”
    “Just a second,” Taylor said, and called up the entry on the Wasp .  “Yes, it got one of the first Mark XII rangefinders.  It was installed just before Kris Longknife found those two planets loaded with alien artifacts out past Chance.  There’s a tight control over who gets to go there and how they go.  Strange, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and no one’s beating a trail there,” Taylor mused.
    “Strange, that,” was all Annie said.
    “I take it that you know a lot more than I do.”
    “Very likely, but it doesn’t involve what that Longknife girl is up to lately, so let’s not go there.”
    “Are you putting big lasers on these ships so that they need the best rangefinder?”
    “That’s just it.  All three ships have no armament.  As I understand it, there won’t even be a gun locker, although with Smart Metal, you can change that real fast.”
    “Stranger and stranger,” Taylor said.  He glanced down at his notebook.  He’d totally forgotten to take notes.  He scrawled Mark XII and left it at that.
    “Well, I do have a date with my cat and some good TV tonight,” Annie said, applying a napkin to her mouth.  “It’s been a ball sharing my ignorance with you.  If you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods not knowing anything and wanting to know even less, look me up.  You have my number.”
    Taylor chuckled at her joke, and stood like a gentleman as she left.  He sat down and made some more notes.  He reviewed several of the pages in his two databases, then slowly ate his sandwich.  He obviously knew a lot of interesting stuff that related to each other in some rational way.
    The only problem was, he didn’t know enough about the entire puzzle to see how they fit together.
    Sandwich finished, he stood up, signaled a wandering trolley and bussed his own table.  As he did so, he noticed a man standing in the doorway of the restaurant, eyeing him.
    “Computer, who is that man?” Taylor whispered.
    “There is a 97.382 percent probability that he is Arlen Cob, a senior investigator with Nuu Security, assigned to Nuu High Wardhaven Station Docks.”
    When Taylor reached the door, Arlen was gone.  Midway to the space elevator station, and with no apparent tail, Taylor attached to the transient net and called Honovi, leaving a cryptic note that he hoped the busy young man would take for a request to meet with him again for some quality baby time.  He also found a even more cryptic note from the number that was not in use at this time.  A woman’s