"Why not me?"

"But you've never done any, um, field work, dear."

"Which doesn't mean I can't handle it. Besides, we ought to keep the command loop on this one as secure as possible, and every young man should start at the bottom. It helps him appreciate the big picture when he finally winds up at the top. Not-" he smiled again "-that I have any desire to wind up at the top for many more years, Mother."

"Wisdom beyond your years," she murmured. "Very well, it's your project. But before you take any steps, be sure you research the situation thoroughly. This sort of thing is seldom as simple as it looks at first glance, and I don't want my only son to suffer any unpleasant surprises."

"Of course not, Mother. I'll just pop out to Ursula and spend a few weeks nosing around Sector Central. I'm sure I can find some generous soul with the access to provide the information we need. Who knows? I may even find the ideal people for that messy little job we discussed."

6

One week after his arrival on Santa Cruz, Paul Merrit sat back in the comfortable crash couch and rubbed his chin with something very like awe. The screen before him glowed with a complicated schematic any Bolo tech would have given ten years of his life to study, and its design was over fifty years old. Fifty years! Incredible. Working all by herself, with only the resources of a single automated maintenance depot-admittedly a superbly equipped one, but still only a single depot-Marina Stavrakas had developed Nike's brain box design into one that made the newest Mark XXV's look clumsy and slow.

He tilted the couch back and crossed his legs. More screens and displays glowed around him, filling Nike's fighting compartment with a dim, shifting luminescence. There were more of them than there would have been in a more modern-well, recent-Bolo.