My father has requested that I view and make records of your Cabinet of Curiosities whose fame has reached him in Xenos on Cinnabar.

  May I call on you at your convenience to carry out my father’s commission? I am travelling aboard the RCS Far Traveller and can be reached there by any means you choose.

  Harry Harper, Gentleman

  Someone came into the bridge while I was writing. I heard a low-voiced conversation but I didn’t look around until I’d completed the note. I don’t handwrite messages often enough to do it without concentration.

  Rick had entered and apparently relieved Lieutenant Dogan on watch. Dogan was heading for the hatch. Rick came over when he noticed me looking toward him. He glanced down at the letter and said, “What in heaven’s name are you doing, Harry?”

  I folded the note’s four corners together carefully. “Impressing a local nob with my high social status,” I said. “On behalf of my boss, who wants me to search his collection for artifacts of Archaic Spacefarers.”

  I’d seal the envelope in my cabin, since I had to go back to Level 3 to give it to Kent anyway. “Say…?” I said to Rick. “Who do I need to tell that if there’s a note or commo message for me from a local, especially if he’s named DaSerta, that it’s important? I need to see it ASAP.”

  “You tell the duty officer,” Rick said, “which is me at the moment. I’ll log it. This DaSerta?” he added. “Is he a relative of Romaine DaSerta, the Fleet officer?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “The DaSertas are an old family on Quan Loi which wasn’t a full member of the Alliance.”

  “We’ve got the RCN database even if we don’t have full missile magazines,” Rick said, walking over to the nearest console. I think it properly belonged to the navigator, but no one was at it. He brought it live, then turned with a broad smile and called, “Bingo! Full Commander Romaine DaSerta was indeed from Quan Loi. Say, you don’t suppose I could go along with you, could I? He was really hot stuff. They may have a display or the like if it’s the same family.”

  “I suspect I can arrange that,” I said. I’d carried up several sheets of stationery because I didn’t want any cross-outs on something like this. I took one of them—headed HARPER OF GREENSLADE—and carefully rewrote the request. This time I added an additional paragraph above my signature:

  As a personal favor, my friend and colleague Grenville of Hounslow is a student of naval matters. He hopes that if Romaine DaSerta was your relative, you will permit him to accompany me in hope of viewing memorabilia of Commander DaSerta.

  I folded it as I had the other. “I need to take this down and seal it,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll give it to Kent to take.” I frowned and added, “I hope that Doctor Veil will have DaSerta’s physical address.”

  “Harry, do you think it’ll work?” Rick said.

  I shrugged. “I hope so,” I said. “Doctor Veil will want to rethink her decision to hire me if it doesn’t.”

  “And Harry?” Rick added as I reached the hatch, holding the note in my left hand. “Who’s Grenville of Hounslow?”

  I turned with a broader smile than before and said, “A young Cinnabar gentleman, so far as somebody on this benighted world can tell. I hope that DaSerta can find data on the Harpers of Greenslade, but I doubt he has a complete listing of the families of the Republic available.”

  * * *

  The response come within three hours of Kent’s return to the bio lab, where Mahaffy was showing me the Far Traveller’s protocol for recording results of genetic sequencing. Doctor Veil had made it clear that she didn’t care whether or not I could do the work of a lab assistant, but I cared quite a lot.

  Somebody hammered on the corridor hatch. Before Mahaffy or I could get to the panel, it flew open to admit one of the watch from the entry hold. He held an envelope with a thick border of royal blue. “Lut’nant Harper?” the spacer said. “Got a message for you.”

  “Padko,” Mahaffy said in an angry tone. “Why the bloody hell didn’t you just call it up instead of banging like some bloody barbarian?”

  “Because the fellow who brung it’s waiting down in the hold for an answer,” said Padko—not a crewman I’d met before. “Which isn’t SOP, but Lut’nant Harper said that any message that comes for him”—he nodded toward me—“gets brought to him soonest or the captain hisself ’ll burn somebody a new one.”

  I suspected there was some matter of protocol involved that I knew nothing about. Goodness knows I’d seen it often enough with servants at Greenslade, which is one of the reasons I hadn’t made an effort to get a servant assigned to me when I joined the RCN. I’m sure that Uncle Tom could’ve said something to somebody. Regardless, my hopes for a life without precedence squabbles were falling short of perfect fulfillment.

  I slit the heavy paper of the envelope with my pocket knife. Like my note it had been sealed, though the seal was of bright blue polymer instead of the red wax I’d used.

  The card within was engraved with the legend:

  HEREDITARY CAPTAIN PORPHYRIO DASERTA

  My dear Lord Harper,

  You and your esteemed companion will be welcome at DaSerta House at any time after midday tomorrow.

  I am pleased to learn that Lord Grenville is interested in my uncle, Romaine DaSerta. The family collection does indeed include Commander DaSerta’s papers and various items from his distinguished service with the Fleet.

  DaSerta

  The document was so precisely hand printed that I suspected the job had been done by an amanuensis. Otherwise DaSerta himself had devoted himself to the activity with the wholehearted enthusiasm of my great cousin Emanuel, who had modeled castles with the corks of wine bottles.

  I used the ship’s intercom to route me to Lieutenant Grenville. “Rick,” I said, “we’re invited for noon tomorrow. We can have Kent drive us and my gear in the Bio Section truck.”

  I wondered if my search for Archaic artifacts would be as successful as Rick’s search for naval memorabilia.

  * * *

  The aircar was fifty feet up, approaching the location which should be DaSerta House. Rick had plotted the location by comparing land records with imagery which the Far Traveller had recorded—automatically—as she prepared to land in Helle Harbor. Rick figured that the perfectly square three-hectare compound surrounded by a stone wall was a solid identifier.

  Harry was opposite the driver with Rick in the center as before. Harry pointed and said, “Say, look at that double line of pink trees lining the drive from the gate. Those’re—”

  The communicator on the car’s fascia panel suddenly snarled, “Vehicle approaching DaSerta House, land at once or you will be shot down! There will be no second warning!”

  “What do I do?” Kent said, turning his head with a desperate expression.

  “Land!” Rick shouted, grabbing the nearer control wand and trying to swerve the aircar parallel to the front wall of the compound instead of overflying it. “Bloody hell, man. Don’t you see the turret on the roofline swiveling to track us!”

  Kent immediately cut the throttles and banked the car properly while reducing speed. He was a skilled driver, but he obviously didn’t have combat experience.

  Neither did Rick, but he had the common sense which the driver seemed to lack. There were ground vehicles on the street, but the graveled expanse was wide enough for Kent to make a U-turn at idle and bring the car to a gentle halt in front of the barred metal gate.

  “Would they really have done that?” Harry said. “Shot us down for encroaching on their air space?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Rick said. “We’re a long way from Xenos. I don’t want to bet my life on what some wog in the sticks is going to do to a trespasser. The automatic impeller in that turret could shoot holes in anything that didn’t have too much armor to fly.”

  Harry got out first and walked to the barred gate. He wore a dress suit of dark burgundy rather than an RCN uniform. Without having talked to him he could only guess at DaSerta’s feelings toward the Republic of Cinnabar, and dressing as a civilian gentleman was probably the better choice anyway.

  Rick followed a pace behind, wearing his second class uniform, his Grays, but without any insignia. He didn’t have a selection of civilian clothing aboard—he couldn’t have afforded them, and on most RCN postings (even to a battleship) a lieutenant would have nowhere to store them. This set of Grays were new and looked sharp, at least to Rick’s own eyes.

  He’d thought of wearing a suit of Harry’s. They were pretty much of a size, but Harry was just enough taller and longer-limbed that he’d look like a clown until they were taken in. Many spacers were able tailors, but Rick balked at first begging a suit and then making alterations.

  The two uniformed guards at the gate carried submachine guns. Rick thought they were Alliance standard, but the men kept their weapons politely slung behind their backs. Harry handed his calling card and DaSerta’s invitation through the gate; Rick had his RCN identification card ready in his hand, but the guards had already begun to pull open the gates.

  “DaSerta House welcomes you, gentlemen,” the older, balding guard said. “Transportation will arrive momentarily.”

  Harry put the invitation away in his embroidered sabertache. “My research requires considerable equipment,” he said. “May we carry it into the grounds in our vehicle?”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” the guard spokesman said. Their uniforms were dull orange with brown piping. “Neither the vehicle or the commoner driving are to be admitted without special orders. The truck coming should hold as much as you need, and if it doesn’t we’ll call a larger truck.”

  An open flatbed, more of a motorized cart than a truck, was trundling up the paved driveway. It wasn’t big, but it would certainly hold the imaging and testing apparatus which Harry had brought. The driver wore the same livery as the guards, but she wasn’t armed.

  Kent had opened the truck’s cargo space and the armored specimen case welded to the deck within. The box of the vehicle would easily hold a dozen people—the same frame was used as a military transport—but a separate four-by-six-foot container with interior padding and tie-downs was built in to keep small items from bouncing around in transit. Harry’s equipment was carried there.

  Kent brought the imaging apparatus to Harry in the gate, then went back to the aircar with Rick to get the remainder of the equipment, a densitometer and an array of probes. It all fit easily in the back of the flatbed and the driver provided a blanket from under her seat to cushion them.

  Kent returned to the aircar and the guards closed the gates; Rick and Harry took the leading pair of six seats in the center of the flatbed and the vehicle moved off, driving partly onto the lawn in its U-turn. Its best speed was a walking pace but there wasn’t far to go. On the porch of the three-story mansion stood a slim man in black dress clothes awaiting them.

  Harry looked at the trees—the trunks were dark green, but the foliage was a true pink, though the leaf veins were green. “Those are comfit trees from Wasatch,” Harry said. “Their candied fruit is supposed to be medicinal.”

  “Wasatch is a day’s sail from Quan Loi,” Rick said. “We were figuring to meet the Goliath there initially, but they decided that they couldn’t make it farther than Morroworld so we made the scheduled landing here instead. It’s a better base for soundings, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

  He chuckled and looked at Harry instead of the trees on his side of the vehicle. “Which left you to whatever transport Captain von Hase could come up with. Sorry about that, but there’s really worse than the Belleisle this far out from where anybody civilized wants to be.”

  There were birds in the high sky. Harry said, “Those all have four wings too and there’s about a dozen of them. It seems that it doesn’t matter much to Doctor Veil, but I am a biologist.”

  After a moment, he said, “Rick, Quan Loi is a long way from anything. Closer to Pleasaunce than it is to Cinnabar, but not at all close. How did somebody from here wind up at high rank in the Alliance navy?”

  “Well, not high rank,” Rick said. “Romaine DaSerta was a commander in his last battle. He wanted to be a naval officer and the Fleet was open to talented trainees from any bloody where. He had talent, all right, and if he hadn’t been from this benighted place he’d have gotten a lot higher than commander when he died.”

  “Fighting us?” Harry said, and raised an eyebrow.

  “No, fortunately,” Rick said. “Because he was very bloody good. This was long before the war between us and the Alliance broke out.”

  Rick paused to marshal his thoughts. He’d reexamined the Battle of Seringapatam on the ship’s database, but that wasn’t as detailed as the accounts he’d first read in his Tactics course at the Academy.

  “DaSerta had three escort vessels—they weren’t destroyers, more like corvettes but without the sparring for fast passage. He fought a squadron from Montaillu long enough for the convoy they were guarding to escape. The freighters didn’t have the crews to get under way quick enough to get away. The naval vessels could have, but they went for the raiders instead.”

  “And DaSerta was killed?” Harry said.

  “He put his ship alongside the heavy cruiser with the Montaillu admiral,” Rick said. “Pirate chief more like but the ship still mounted fifteen-centimeter guns. They shot DaSerta’s ship to doll rags, but he took down four antennas on the cruiser and she headed back to base as bloody quick as she could. Which wouldn’t have been very quick.”

  “I see that Commander DaSerta was very brave,” Harry said. “But he wasn’t alone on his ship, and the whole crew must’ve died with him.”

  Rick’s expression went blank as he looked at his companion. “Well, I suppose that’s true, but that’s the way things happen in wars. It’s just how it is.”

  Harry shrugged. “I suppose it is,” he said. “And that was thirty or forty years ago?”

  “More than fifty,” said Rick. “So yeah, there’s a good chance the personnel would’ve been dead by now regardless.”

  Harry nodded. “Common in many species,” he said. “Individuals sacrificing themselves for the good of the race. All that really matters is what best helps the genes survive.”

  They had arrived at the full-height porch of the mansion. The driver made a wide turn that brought Harry’s seat to within a pace of the entrance steps.

  Rick followed Harry out, muttering, “Time to greet our host.”

  Master DaSerta had a goatee and a thin moustache. From a distance he passed for forty, but close up he was at least twenty years older than that. He bowed as the two younger men reached the bottom of the steps, then straightened and said, “Lord Harper? I am Porphyrio DaSerta.”

  He extended his hand. Harry took it and said, “I’m Harry Harper, sir, and honored to meet you.” Turning to Rick he went on, “This is my friend and colleague Rick Grenville, sir.”

  “Honored, Grenville,” DaSerta said. “You are interested in Uncle Romaine?”

  Rick nodded. “Commander DaSerta is a hero whose exploits are taught even in the RCN Academy,” he said. “I was thrilled when Harper here told me that he would be meeting a relative of the man.”

  DaSerta smiled thinly, the first expression he had shown since they arrived. “I was only five when I last saw Uncle Romaine,” he said. “I thought of him only as father’s younger brother, the wild one of the family. I didn’t really appreciate the man he was until long after his death. There’s a room devoted to him, a small shrine if you please. You’re welcome to see it, Lord Grenville.”

  He turned. “But both of you, follow me now and I will show you treasures.”

  The doors whisked open behind him, pulled by a pair of servants in orange livery. Doors along the corridor beyond quivered closed. Rick had the impression of roaches scuttling away from a light, but it was probably children fleeing from strangers’ eyes.

  DaSerta opened the door to the first room to the right. A middle-aged man with a fringe of gray hair around a bald spot stood at the near end of a glass-topped display case. There were filing cabinets along the side walls and a full-sized console at the far end of the room.

  “Swanny here will help you with any questions, Lord Grenville,” DaSerta said. “I myself will guide Lord Harper through the main collection.”

  Harry and their host went off down the hall. Rick put himself in the attendant’s hands, figuring he’d learn the most by doing that while keeping out of Harry’s way. Harry, after all, was doing the real work of the mission at the moment.

  Most of the material in the filing cabinets was of no interest except possibly to a biographer of Commander DaSerta. His family had obsessively preserved his childhood schoolwork, not in the expectation he would become famous but because he was their son. Rick suspected that his mother might have been the same way if she’d had the resources to manage it.

  DaSerta’s tactical simulations from Officer’s Entry School on Euclid, copied to chip and probably found with his personal effects, were on the console. After six months at the Euclid feeder school, DaSerta was promoted to an Advanced Officer’s Course on Pleasaunce. His graduation certificate as leader of his class there was in the files also.

  From the beginning DaSerta’s battle planning had been aggressive, but it took on increasing sophistication while he was still at Euclid. Even at graduation, DaSerta’s simulations assumed that subordinate officers would obey his orders even when these put them into greater danger. It struck Rick that in reality this varied in direct relation to the quality of the navy involved. Even in the RCN at the height of the recent war, it hadn’t been a hundred percent.

  “Lord Grenville…?” Swanny said softly. Rick looked up from the simulation he’d been deep into, then followed the attendant’s eyes to the door where Harry stood with their host. Harry was holding his 3-D imaging apparatus, which meant he’d returned to the vehicle without Rick noticing as Harry went by his door.