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were crossed behind his back as though he were At Ease before a superior officer.
    “Captain,” Adele said. She nodded to the door.
    Daniel, smiling faintly, entered the offices of Bernard Sattler and Company. Rank didn’t have to be formal to be real, and he had no doubt as to who was in charge here. It wasn’t him.
    A clerk looked up from her console on the other side of a wide wooden counter. Another female clerk was talking with animation to a pair of warehousemen wearing leather bandoliers from which tools hung. From the door to the left came the sound of a heavy load clattering along an overhead track.
    “I’m Captain Leary,” Daniel said, pitching his voice to be brusque but short of threatening. “I’m here to speak with the honorary consul on RCN business, and I’m in a hurry.”
    All four employees were now looking at him—and not at Adele, as he had intended. The clerk at the console flicked a glance at the frosted glass panel in the wall but returned to Daniel and said, “Ah—may I tell him your business? He’s pretty busy and I—”
    “I am an RCN officer on a Cinnabar possession,” Daniel said, speaking a hair louder but not shouting yet. “I have RCN business with a resident alien here, and I’m about to stop asking politely.”
    The clerk’s jaw dropped, giving her the expression of a gaffed fish. The workmen turned and strode into the warehouse area without looking back. The clerk at the counter started toward the glass door, but it opened before she’d taken a full stride.
    The burly man who strode out was beardless and nearly bald, but his full moustache met fluffy sideburns. He made a quick bow toward Daniel and said, “Sir, will you come through please? I am Bernard Sattler, and I am at your service.”
    The clerks got in each others way as they hopped to lift the gate in the counter. Daniel nodded to them as he stepped through; Adele followed, as silent as a shadow.
    Sattler waited to close the office door behind them, then seated himself behind a desk of gray metal with an engine-turned surface. He smiled wryly at Daniel and said, “They’re really good girls, you know; my nieces, both of them. But they were born on Kronstadt, and they don’t appreciate the subtleties of my being a naturalized citizen who was born on Bryce.”
    “No harm done,” said Daniel. He appreciated the delicacy with which the merchant had claimed to be a Cinnabar citizen, not a resident alien. They both knew that it was a distinction without a difference when dealing with an RCN officer on a Cinnabar regional capital.
    The office was windowless, but large holographic cityscapes gave depth to three walls. The shelves on all sides contained a mixture of hardware and paper—loose, in binders, and as books. Some of the hardware could be samples of warehouse stock, but the lengths of worn chain and greasy pulleys might better be on a scrap pile.
    Daniel grinned. The room reminded him of the days he had spent as a child in his Uncle Stacy’s office at Bergen and Associates’ Shipyard. Commander Stacy Bergen had been the finest astrogator in the RCN, then or now. Daniel’s high reputation for slipping through the Matrix in the swiftest and most efficient fashion rested on the training he had received from his uncle before he even dreamed of joining the RCN.
    Sattler opened a drawer. Without looking down, he said to Daniel, “If I didn’t think it would insult you, Captain, I would offer you a drink.”
    Daniel didn’t move, didn’t even breathe out for a moment. Then he let a slow smile expand across his face.
    “I’ve drunk some of the worst rotgut ever brewed in a barracks,” he said. “I don’t guess anything you’ve got in that drawer has the chops to insult me .”
    Sattler laughed from deep in his chest and up out a fat, double-tapered bottle covered by an upturned glass. He set the glass on the desktop, then paused with the bottle lifted. Nodding toward Adele, he said, “Will your