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can be allowed two Temporal Service personnel, whom you can choose yourself—from the Special Operations Section, if you like.”
    “Hmmm . . .” Yes, Jason thought darkly, altogether too accommodating. Still . . . “I’ll want Mondrago. And Pauline Da Cunha is back by now, isn’t she?”
    “She is indeed. Excellent choices; you can have both of them.”
    “Well . . . All right. I’ll do it.”
    “Splendid! Oh . . . by the way, Jason, there’s just one small matter I neglected to mention.”
    All at once, Jason’s suspicions came roaring back in full force. “Yes?”
    “As you know, certain members of the governing council have expressed concern over the latitude the Special Operations Section has, of necessity, been granted—some of the departures from the Authority’s traditional guidelines and procedures. Councilor Kung in particular—”
    “Get to the point, Kyle!”
    “Ahem! Well, the long and short of it is this. In order to obtain authorization for this expedition, I had to make one concession. Councilor Kung insisted that your group include a representative of the Authority, to exercise oversight and, ah, advise the mission leader on observance of, shall we say, the proprieties.”
    In short, a political commissar, thought Jason grimly, recalling the term from his experiences in the twentieth century. “And who might this individual be?”
    “As it happens, he is here now.” Rutherford touched a button on his desk. A side door opened and Jason looked up as the new arrival entered.
    No , he thought, from the depths of a desolation too abysmal for mere despair. No. This can’t be happening. Please, God, tell me this isn’t happening.
    “Hello, Commander Thanou,” said Irving Nesbit, his rabbitlike face looking rather like he was anticipating a carrot. “We meet again!”

CHAPTER FOUR

    Alexandre Mondrago stared at Jason aghast. “This is a joke, right?”
    “No,” Jason sighed. “Jokes are supposed to be funny.”
    They sat at a table in the station’s rather nicely appointed lounge, which Jason had decided was the best place to break the news to the two Service people. He took another pull on his Scotch, sans his usual soda. It occurred to him that he ought to start getting used to rum. Mondrago, who was already doing so with enthusiasm, gulped some of his Appleton’s and continued to stare. Pauline Da Cunha simply stared, visibly fuming. The intriguing mention of the possible spaceship wreck had been just barely enough to overcome her initial resentment at being tapped for this mission so soon after returning from the Confederate States of America’s final cataclysm. And now this.
    Chantal Frey hunched over and gazed miserably into her Chablis. “I swear I had nothing to do with it!”
    “Of course you didn’t. It’s just council politics.”
    “How could you let them get away with it?” Mondrago demanded. “You could have protested, explained to them that—”
    “Don’t you think I did? I argued myself purple in the face. I told Rutherford that Nesbit isn’t up to it. But, believe it or not, he’s met all the health and fitness requirements, and passed the course in low-tech survival.” Privately, Jason wondered if Kung’s heavy finger might have tilted the scales of the test-scoring process just a bit despite the Authority’s vaunted incorruptibility, but he saw no purpose to be served by sharing his suspicions with the others. “He was motivated, you see. It seems he has delusions of being a swashbuckling adventurer.”
    Mondrago and Da Cunha groaned loudly enough to draw glances from the other tables. Jason decided he’d better try to put the best possible face on things. “Hey, he probably won’t be too much more useless than some of the academics we’ve had to deal with.”
    “Like me,” Chantal put in ruefully.
    “But,” said Da Cunha with disagreeable realism, “in their case there’s never been any question about who was in charge. The mission