"Not a lot is known about that," Jissek replied. "He seemed to come out of nowhere, very suddenly."

"When would this have been?"

"Again, around three years ago. It was before the Champion incident, but not very long before it… Six months, maybe." Jissek hesitated, then added, "If you want my opinion, I think Zargon might not be from Lambia at all. I think he could be a Cerian."

That came as a surprise. "Why would you think that?" Hunt asked.

"He appeared on Freskel-Gar's staff with a group of followers who were very secretive. I don't know even today how many of them there were. But they brought new weapons technologies with them, and set up a program that involved all kinds of advanced scientific knowledge." Jissek made a gesture that asked what else could be made of it. "You see my point? It sounds as if it could have been Cerian armaments specialists from some other part of Minerva, who defected en masse. Just my theory."

"If they were Cerians, why would Cerios need to mount an espionage operation to find out what they were doing?" Hunt asked, smiling faintly.

Jissek had to think about it for a moment. "Maybe they were trying to get it back-if Zargon brought the whole program with him. It would explain all the secrecy, anyway." Hunt nodded that the answer was good enough.

Showm came back in. "Getting back to King Perasmon, you said he was killed. When was this?"

"Three years ago."

"Around the same time, then?"

"I suppose so."

"Had General Zargon actually appeared on Freskel-Gar's staff by this time? Was he around when it happened?"

"I'm… not sure."

"So how did it happen?"

"There was a time when many people thought the problems between us and the Cerians could be solved. I'm not sure of the details… Something about the differences between us not being so important after all. I don't think anyone wanted the war. In those days such things were difficult to imagine-the kind of thing you saw in horror movies. So there were hopes everywhere that it could be avoided. The Cerian president-his name was Harzin-came to Melthis to meet the king personally…" Melthis was the Lambian capital city.

"Perasmon?"

"Yes. And they made a big speech together saying they had come to an understanding, and from then on all of Minerva would work together. They would keep their system and we could stay with ours. It seemed like a nightmare that had ended." Jissek paused, poured a glass of water from a jug on the table, and took a sip.

"And?" Showm said.

"Afterward they were supposed to fly from Melthis to Cerios for Perasmon to visit there. But their plane was shot down."

Showm had to cover her eyes for a moment, even though she had been hearing a lot of this kind of thing by now. "Who did this?" she asked.

"Cerians. A rogue unit within their military establishment. You see, it was this obsession of theirs with self-seeking and private interests again-instead of thinking of common goals. The state of armed tension gave them a lot of power. They weren't prepared to give it up."

"And after that?" Hunt queried, although it wasn't difficult to guess.

"Oh, there could be no more compromising after that. Freskel-Gar became king. He turned out to be the strong leader that we needed, who wasn't deceived the way Perasmon had been. The Cerians had been arming all along. It was probably Zargon who saved us. Without the defenses he's built up over the last three years, it's practically certain that Lambia would have been invaded by now."

The pieces fitted. Broghuilio and his Jevlenese had arrived when Cerios and Lambia were on the verge of settling differences that had been building up over many years, but which as yet had resulted in no more than skirmishes. But the two leaders who had brought about the reconciliation were assassinated before it had taken any effect. The Cerians had a different version that put the blame on a Lambian plot engineered by Freskel-Gar. The timing invited the suspicion that Broghuilio might have been involved too, but that couldn't be concluded for sure. Whatever the true explanation, Freskel-Gar, the hardliner waiting in the wings, had seized his opportunity, and with Broghuilio either already on the scene or appearing soon afterward, the road toward intransigence, escalation, and eventual all-out war was set. At some point that still lay in the future, Freskel-Gar would reap as he had sown, when Broghuilio-Zargon judged the time right to get rid of him.

This information at last provided a clear pointer to where in time the mission should be aimed. Around three years previously, Minerva had been ready to take a completely different course. The markers to look for were that Freskel-Gar was still a prince in Lambia, and Perasmon and Harzin were still alive. But it also needed to be before the Jevlenese arrived, to enable Harzin and Perasmon to make suitable preparations for dealing with them. But precisely when the Jevlenese had arrived was not known, and further questioning was unlikely to establish it, since the installation of Broghuilio and his entourage had been carried out in secrecy. The secrecy surrounding their presence and origins also meant that simply failing to find any sign of their ships couldn't be taken as indicative of anything-there was no sign of them now, but the Jevlenese were surely here.

The final marker to look for would be the absence of a response from the Shapieron's daughter probe that had followed the Jevlenese ships through the spacetime tunnel. ZORAC had signaled it on every reconnaissance visit and found it functioning, and it was there now, functioning normally, on this visit. When they reached a point upstream in time where no response could be evoked, it would mean that the probe wasn't there yet, and so the Jevlenese couldn't have arrived yet either.

Chien thought that the optimum psychological moment for the Shapieron to make its arrival would be as close as possible to the joint announcement of the new understanding by Perasmon and Harzin from the Lambian capital, Melthis, when the whole of Minerva would be optimistic and hopeful. Showm agreed, and the proposal was drawn up for Calazar to approve formally.

There was still the other side of the bargain to be fulfilled. After some clothes had been found for him from the Terran stores, Jissek was taken to the Shapieron's Command Deck to meet the other members of the mission. There, as he had promised, Hunt explained as fully as was pertinent the strange story of where the ship was from and why it had come back to Minerva. After the events since his rescue, however, it seemed that Jissek was capable of believing just about anything, and he accepted the account phlegmatically, though not pretending to comprehend all of it. The ship's doctor then called to break the news that Jissek's companion, Thorke, had died as feared.

Frenua Showm looked at the young officer with obvious concern and compassion. "Before very much longer, your world will end horribly and violently. We know that. It cannot be changed. But for you, it doesn't have to be that way. You can come back with us, to a world of peace and wonders that you are unable to imagine, with the rest of a life to look forward to, and a future."

Jissek stared back at a screen where one of the views of Thurien that they had shown him was still displaying. Smiling distantly in a resigned way, he told about his wife, their new son, and the parents who worried about him. "If such things are to pass, they will need me there all the more," he replied. "I thank you, but that is where I must be."

Hunt and Showm went with him in the transit tube to the stern docking bay where the probe was waiting. It would take him to a cove along the coast, near to a Lambian naval base. Jissek waved a farewell from inside as the doors closed. A minute later, they watched on a docking bay monitor as the probe exited from the ship and shrank away into the starfield. Frenua Showm's face was making strange twitching movements. It was the first time, Hunt realized, that he had seen a Ganymean cry.