s then."

"Did you reset the trap switch at the house entry?"

Halder slowed the cab, turning it into one of the cross-city traffic
lines above Draise. "No," he said. "Knocking out a few more Federation
agents wouldn't give us any advantage. It'll be eight or nine hours
before Atteo will be able to talk; and, with any luck at all, we'll be
clear of the planet by that time."

The dark woman who was Kilby and a controlled devil's swarm of microlife
looked over at him and asked in Kilby's voice, "Halder, do you think we
should still go on trying to find the others now?"

"Of course. Why stop?"

Kilby hesitated, said, "It took you three months to find me. Four months
later, we located Rane Rellis ... and Santin, at almost the same time.
Since then we've drawn one blank after another. A year and a half gone,
and a year and a half left."

She paused, and Halder said nothing, knowing she was fighting to keep
her voice steady. After a few seconds, Kilby went on. "Almost twelve
hundred still to find, scattered over a thousand worlds. Most of them
probably in hiding, as we were. And with the Federation on our trail ...
even if we get away this time, what chance is there now of contacting
the whole group before time runs out?"

Halder said patiently, "It's not an impossibility. We've been forced to
spend most of the past year and a half gathering information, studying
the intricate functioning of this gigantic civilization--so many things
that our mentors on Kalechi either weren't aware of or chose not to tell
us. And we haven't done too badly, Kilby. We're prepared now to conduct
the search for the group in a methodical manner. Nineteen hours in
space, and we'll be on another world, under cover again, with new
identities. Why shouldn't we continue with the plan until ..."

Kilby interrupted without change of expression. "Until we hear some day
that billions of human beings are dying on the Federation's worlds?"

Halder kept his eyes fixed on the traffic pattern ahead. "It won't come
to that," he said.

"Won't it? How can you be sure?" Kilby asked tonelessly.

"Well," Halder asked, "what else can we do? You aren't suggesting that
we give ourselves up--"

"I've thought of it."

"And be picked apart mentally and physically in the Federation's
laboratories?" Halder shook his head. "In their eyes we'd be Kalechi's
creatures ... monsters. Even if we turn ourselves in, they'll think it's
some trick, that we'd realized we