“Don’t you think it’s about time you told me the whole story about why you’re here?”

She said it like she thought there was so much more than what he’d already told her. Tagen directed his gaze to the tee-vee screen, sighed, and shut it off. He stood up to face her and she promptly (but not unexpectedly) backed up a step.

“I am a police,” he said. He paused. “A police officer. I am…investigating the disappearance of a criminal who has escaped us. He may have come to Earth.”

“What did he do?” Daria asked. “I mean, ‘criminal’ covers a lot.”

This was dangerous ground to be traveling with such an unstable opponent. It was all too easy to imagine that Daria could think him capable of the same evils as E’Var. If he did not go carefully, he would undo much of the tentative connection he had forged with her. And if he said nothing at all, he would shatter it.

It would have to be the truth, but he would be vigilant about the quantities in which he offered it. “He has killed many people,” he said. “Your kind and mine.”

It was an answer she had clearly anticipated, but having her suspicions confirmed did not silence her. She came into the room and sat beside him on the sofa, clasping her hands too tightly and staring at the dark face of the tee-vee. “Why did he come to Earth this time?” she asked. “Is it just because of…because he thinks your army won’t follow him here, or is there another reason?”

“There is,” he said slowly. But he did not want to tell her. That look was in her eyes already, the look of one who expects the worst and has never been disappointed. He wondered again what could have happened to her to make her believe so fervently in the evils of others.

For now, he said, “E’Var comes to Earth to hunt your kind.”

“To—?” She stared at him and shook her head. “Why?”

“He takes something from those he kills,” Tagen told her. “And sells it to other criminals.”

She said nothing, but she had heard him well enough. Her face was pale. The decorations on her left cheek stood out like fine filaments of circuitry.

“We have been pursuing the ship E’Var and his…his…” He gave her a helpless glance. “Those who pilot and work on a ship.”

“His crew.” She looked away, rubbing at her arm as if she were cold. “You’d know that if you watched more Star Trek and less Law & Order.”

“Crew. Thank you.” Tagen ignored the comment on his tee-vee preferences. “The ship belonged to Uraktus E’Var, his…father, you would say, and perhaps the most notorious of all criminals of his kind. Our forces had pursued him…ha, nearly all my life. And at last, he was found.”

“You caught him,” Daria guessed.

“We killed him.”

Her features sobered alarmingly.

He shook his head in answer to the question unfolding in her eyes. “If it was vengeance he wanted, he would have gone to Jota to hunt,” he told her, and she frowned, considering that. “E’Var’s ship was taken and all his crew captured. Only Kanetus E’Var escaped us.”

“And he came here, of all places.”

“As you say, he no doubt believed no one would follow.”

“And as you say, he can hunt here.” She raised her head and looked at him sharply. “How much are his…his trophies…worth? Enough to buy a new ship, maybe?”

“Such is our fear,” he admitted, impressed no small amount that she had so rapidly come to that conclusion.

“But you don’t know for absolute sure he’s here,” she pressed.

“Little in life is an absolute surety,” he retaliated. “That is why police are employed to investigate the uncertain.”

She smiled with half her mouth. “Touché, spaceman.”

He raised his iced drink to her, supremely pleased with himself. Scoring a point off Daria Cleavon was like getting one off Kolya Pahnee. Tagen could count the number of times that had happened on his hands, and still have fingers to spare.

“But you’ve got me wondering now,” she said, and Tagen braced himself as for physical attack. “E’Var’s been here more often than any of your police have. Do you suppose he might be better equipped than you?”

“No. He escaped from one of our own ships. He could have had access to none of his equipment.”

“Um. I hate to have to burst your happy superior-Jotan-army bubble, but I think maybe you should consider the possibility that he only escaped because he had help aboard your own ship.”

Tagen glowered into his cup. The thought had occurred to him. Frequently. Hearing it now from Daria’s mouth only made it sound more plausible.

“So I’ll ask again,” she continued. “Do you suppose he might be better equipped?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well.” She tipped her head back and considered the corner of the ceiling. “Could he have some device that would tell him if someone followed him here? Maybe the reason you haven’t bumped into him is because he’s deliberately avoiding you.”

Tagen drew back and stared at her. He found himself wondering if such devices even existed. Some cold part of his brain reflected that it would be easy enough to hide a tracer beacon in all the orbiting junk around Earth, one very capable of sending an alert to an individual on the surface if another ship passed close enough to trigger it.

“Give me another example,” he said warily.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She thought about it, one of her bare feet patting at the floor in eerie mirror of a takking talon. “I guess all he’d really need is something that could detect your funny little computer.”

“Detect it how?” he asked, baffled.

“Well, I’m assuming it’s not running on Duracells and fairy kisses,” she said archly. “So it’s a safe bet your batteries are different from anything on Earth. Are they emitting anything?”

“I…” He closed his mouth and merely looked at her. He had no idea.

“I don’t even mean radioactivity or anything like that,” she went on, waving a hand dismissively. “Probably even your fancy alien Geiger counters would still have to get right up close to something before it could pick emissions up. I was thinking more like transmissions. You know, something he could hack into if he had a similar computer.”

“I do not know,” Tagen said, frowning at her. “I only know that I could not.”

“Then he probably can’t either,” she said, looking away. “It was just a thought.”

A damned good thought. Gods, little wonder humans had come so far so fast, if this was the way their minds worked.

As if he didn’t have enough to worry about. This was going to keep him up all night.

“What of Earth’s devices? Earth’s resources?” He reached out to touch her knee and she sprang up as though he’d burned her, but quickly mastered herself and pretended merely to be pacing around the room. He noted she put the low table between them. As benignly as possible, he said, “Do you know of anything you can access to aid my search?”

He watched her closely while she thought, saw her consider and disregard any number of possibilities. At last, she shook her head.

“Watch tee-vee, I suppose,” she said. “See-en-en, as opposed to tee-en-tee. See if anyone out there has seen some psycho stalking people in the woods. Or…” Her jaw worked a moment and she stared out the window at the forest. “Or worse.”

Very tactfully, Tagen said, “I do not think E’Var will allow people to see him.”

“I know he can’t just cut his way through a Wal-Mart,” she said. “But he’s got to carry his trophies around with him until he leaves. So someone is bound to notice him.”

“You underestimate him, forgive me, badly.”

“Well, how many people do you think he’s going to attack before he decides he’s done?” she asked. “How many trophies does he usually take before he fills up?”

Tagen thought of the Yevoa Null, the size of its holding pens and of the chemist’s bay full of Vahst. He thought of the preserves on Jota’s moon, of hundreds upon hundreds of humans recovered with E’Var’s name stamped on their hobbles or collars.