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by my own superiors that your finding the black box is of equal or greater importance to me actually successfully concluding these negotiations with the Utche,” Abumwe said. “To that end I have detailed you an aide for the duration.” She nodded to Schmidt. “I don’t need him. He’s yours.”
    “Thank you,” Wilson said, and noted that he’d never seen Hart look more pained than just now, when he had been deemed inessential by his boss. “He’ll be useful.”
    “He’d better be,” Abumwe said. “Because, Lieutenant Wilson, the warning I gave to my staff goes double for you. If you fail, this mission fails, even if my half goes well. Which means I will have failed because of you. I may be low on the diplomatic totem pole, but I am sufficiently high enough on it that when I push you, you will die from the fall.” She looked over to Schmidt. “And he’ll kill you when he lands.”
    “Understood, ma’am,” Wilson said.
    “Good,” Abumwe said. “One more thing, Lieutenant. Try to find that black box before the Utche arrive. If someone’s trying to kill us all, I want to know about it before our negotiating partners show up.”
    “I’ll do my best,” Wilson said.
    “Your best got you stationed on the Clarke, ” Abumwe said. “Do better than that.”
    V.
    “Please stop that,” Wilson said to Schmidt, as they sat in the Clarke lounge, reviewing their project data.
    Schmidt looked up from his PDA. “I’m not doing anything,” he said.
    “You’re hyperventilating,” Wilson said. He had his eyes closed, the better to focus on the data his BrainPal was streaming at him.
    “I’m breathing completely normally,” Schmidt said.
    “You’ve been breathing like a labored elephant for the last several minutes,” Wilson said, still not opening his eyes. “Keep it up and you’re going to need a paper bag to breathe into.”
    “Yes, well,” Schmidt said. “ You get told you’re inessential by your boss and see how you feel.”
    “Her people skills aren’t the best,” Wilson agreed. “But you knew that. And as my assistant, I actually do need you to be helpful to me. So stop thinking about your boss and think more about our predicament.”
    “Sorry,” Schmidt said. “I’m also not entirely comfortable with this assistant thing.”
    “I promise not to ask you to get me coffee,” Wilson said. “Much.”
    “Thanks,” Schmidt said, wryly. Wilson grunted and went back to his data.
    “This black box,” Schmidt said a few minutes later.
    “What about it?” Wilson asked.
    “Are you going to be able to find it?” Schmidt asked.
    Wilson opened his eyes for this. “The answer to that depends on whether you want me to be optimistic or truthful,” he said.
    “Truthful, please,” Schmidt said.
    “Probably not,” Wilson said.
    “I lied,” Schmidt said. “I want the optimistic version.”
    “Too late,” Wilson said, and held out his hand as if he were cupping an imaginary ball. “Look, Hart. The ‘black box’ in question is a small, black sphere about the size of a grapefruit. The memory portion of the thing is about the size of a fingernail. The rest of it consists of the tracking beacon, an inertial field generator to keep the thing from floating down a gravity well, and a battery powering both of those two things.”
    “Okay,” Schmidt said. “So?”
    “So, one, the thing is intentionally small and black, so it will be difficult to find by anyone but the CDF,” Wilson said.
    “Right, but you’re not looking for it,” Schmidt said. “You’re going to be pinging it. When it gets the correct signal, it will respond.”
    “It will, if it has power,” Wilson said. “But it might not. We’re working on the assumption the Polk was attacked. If it was attacked, then there was probably a battle. If there was a battle, then the Polk probably got torn apart, with the pieces of it flying everywhere from the added energy of the explosions. It’s likely the black box probably