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A deliberately poorthe line of plan can coame

- Bickel quote, Shiprecords

OAKES PACED his cubby, fretting It had been several nightside hours since he had last tried to contact Lewis on their implanted communicators Lewis definitely was out of touch

Could it be so at the Redoubt?

Oakes doubted this The finest on Leas sparing nothing in the construction It would be impenetrable by any force known to Pandora or Shipme any force, excep

Oakes stopped his pacing, scanned the plasteel walls of his cubby

Would the Redoubt down on Pandora really insulate them froinning to relax hiue His room felt stuffy and isolated even froroundside Whoever it ould be taken care of in due course

Oakes let his body sag onto a couch and tried to forget the latest attack on him by the ship He closed his eyes and drifted in a half-drea

Not quite Not quite the beginning

He did not like to ads he did not remember Doubts intruded and the carrier wave of the pellet in his neck distracted hi off

Let Lewis try to contact inning - no There were things about his beginnings that the records did not show This ship with all the powers of a god would not or could not provide a coan Oakes And the Ceepee was supposed to have access to everything Everything!

Everything except that distant origin soone Earth

He knew he had been six when his first elled and stayed with hi fro Yes, it had been spring and he had been living in the power center, in Aegypt, in the beautiful city of Heliopolis From the Britone March to the Underlands of Ind, all was Graeco-Roman peace fed by the Nile’s bounty and enforced by the hired troopers of Aegypt Only in the outlands of Chin and the continents of East Chin far across the Nesian Sea were there open conflicts of nations Ye sprin and he had been living with his parents in Heliopolis Both of his parents were on assignment with the military This he knew froeneticists in the E for a project that was to take over young Morgan’s life co a trip to the stars This, too, he was told But that had been many years later, and too late for him to object

What he reine hiypt that he watched every week on the viewer The an’s quarters every afternoon Where he went, and why he went only one way, Morgan never knew

The fence around his parents’ quarters was her than the black man’s head It was a mesh of heavy steel curved outwards and down at the top Every afternoon Morgan watched the ine how the an did not ask his parents because he wanted to figure it out for hi at early his father said, "The sun’s going nova"