This is the city: New Avalon, Zeta Cygni.  The City in the
Sphere is home to twenty million sentient beings.  Most of them are
decent, law-abiding citizens.  New Avalon is a compassionate city, and
one that knows how to have fun.  People from almost all sentient
species can be found here, as well as mechanoids and engineered
lifeforms of many type.  For the most part, they get along peacefully,
even happily.
        As in any city with an open political spectrum, of course,
there are those with differing opinions.  Some prefer to associate
only with members of their own species.  Others would be more
comfortable if everyone did so.
        Some think it's their place in the cosmos to -make- everyone
do so.

                        MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2410
                               2:47 PM
                               SALUTOWN

        Morgan deKalb liked being assigned to Salutown.  She wasn't
Salusian herself - born and raised on New Detroit - but she liked
them.  Oh, sure, they had their crooks and lowlifes like any other
species, but by and large they were nice folks, and they kept a
pleasant and mostly peaceful district.  In the sphere of police work,
there was little to compare with walking the Arconian Square beat on a
spring afternoon, with the arcla trees in blossom and the coeds from
NAU breaking out their warm-weather gear.
        It was still a couple weeks shy of that halcyon time of year,
though, and deKalb, like all her fellow patrolmen based out of the
17th Precinct house on Crown Street, was feeling a little extra
tension this year.
        Salutown was a district that didn't see a lot of violent
crime, nowhere near the amount the cops in Hell's Kitchen or the
Docklands had to deal with.  So when the first dead body had turned up
in early January with its head all but smashed to pieces, it was safe
to say the cops of the 17th hadn't quite been expecting to find
anything like that.
        If the first one was an unwelcome surprise, the second two
weeks later was a downright nasty shock, and the third... 
        ... well, deKalb and her brother and sister officers were
feeling a bit on edge, especially because they knew something about
the crimes that hadn't been shared with the press.
        It was customary for details to be held back from the news
media in criminal investigations, even in free and open societies with
an unrestricted press.  For the most part, crime reporters themselves
recognized the necessity.  Holding back a detail or two gave the cops
something to validate intelligence against.  If someone said he had
information about a crime, and proved to know a detail that hadn't
been shared with the public, that helped to differentiate him from the
army of cranks that always plague the cops during any high-profile
investigation.
        Thus, it was generally unknown that the victims in these
cases, all four of them so far, had something in common besides living
in Salutown and being found with their heads violently disorganized.
        DeKalb turned the corner of the big brick apartment house at
the corner of Orimo and Metavis, automatically checking her watch as
she did so.  School had let out seven minutes before at the district
high school over on Berdana.
        At this time of day, it wasn't uncommon for her to encounter
kids making out in the alley behind the apartment house - even in the
winter, which said something for the motivational power of adolescent
lust - and she chuckled to herself at the thought as she neared the
building's back corner.  Telling a couple of red-faced kids to zip it
up and get on home beat rousting a belligerent drunk any day of the
week.
        She'd almost reached the corner of the building, amusing
herself by playing a what-will-I-find game in her mind, when the
pleasant afternoon was split by a shrill shriek of terror.
        Officer deKalb rounded the corner at a run, her hand on her
service blaster, to find exactly what every beat cop in her precinct
prayed daily wouldn't appear.

                               3:05 PM

        Gil Grissom ducked under the yellow tape with the unconscious
ease of someone who did it for a living, straightened, and crossed to
the tall, black-haired man in the dark blue trenchcoat who stood
talking to two uniformed cops.
        A middle-aged, greying but boyish man dressed in plain, dark
clothes, Grissom didn't look like the popular conception of a
crimefighter.  A person seeing him on the street would have taken him
for a librarian, maybe, or perhaps a high school chemistry teacher.
In truth, his job as night-shift supervisor of the International
Police Organization's crime lab meant he was a bit of both of those,
and quite a few other things besides.
        He was also a humanized Salusian, but that didn't make much
difference most of the time.
        Detective Inspector Dick Grayson of the New Avalon Police
finished consulting with the uniforms and turned to see Grissom
approaching.  The veteran cop looked past him to see if any of the
rest of his crew were along, but there was no one there, and no one
coming down the alley.
        "Afternoon, Dr. Grissom," he said.  "Flying solo today?"
        "The rest of my crew doesn't come on until 5:30, Richard,"
Grissom replied.  "Neither do I, for that matter.  Ordinarily,
Ecklie's shift would catch a call at 3 PM, but you asked specifically
for me.  Why?"
        Grissom's tone wasn't confrontational, nor was he complaining
about having to come into work early.  He was simply curious.  That
was one of the defining traits of the man, that curiosity.
        "See for yourself," Grayson said, gesturing behind him.
        Grissom cocked an eyebrow at him, then walked around him and
took a look.
        The body lay on the pavement at an angle to the back wall of
the apartment building, sprawled on its back with arms outflung.
There was a distinct scarlet arc slashed across the darker red of the
bricks making up that wall, roughly at the head level of a person
standing in the alley.
        Where the head of the person lying on the ground belonged,
there was... well, not much worth describing.
        "I know you don't like to make snap judgments, Gil," Grayson
said, "but I have to say, this looks familiar."
        Grissom nodded, got the camera out of his field kit, and
started taking pictures.
        "The force necessary to cause this kind of damage is
terrific," Grayson went on, crouching near but not touching the body.
"If it was done with a hand weapon, the perpetrator's strength must be
incredible.  Superhuman."
        "A lot of life forms are stronger than humans," Grissom
observed noncommittally.  "Who found her?"
        "Kid taking a shortcut home from school," Grayson said.
"DeKalb there," he added, nodding toward one of the uniformed cops
standing by the tape, "was on foot patrol in the area, heard the kid
scream, and came running.  She secured the scene immediately and
called in."
        Grissom nodded, still examining the body.  Then he paused,
noticing something.  Focusing his camera, he photographed the small
item where it was from several different angles, then carefully
reached with one gloved hand and pulled it gently out for a better
look at it.
        It was a small pasteboard card that had been trapped under the
victim's right hand.  Printed on it in black ink was a small quantity
of an angular script - not Standard, but a language almost as
well-known in many places, including anywhere called Salutown.
        "Cheltarese," Grayson said, bending nearer for a better look.
"Just like the others."
        Grissom picked up the card, turned it over, then slipped it
into a plastic envelope and looked at what was written on it again.
        "'Traitors die,'" he translated.  Then, meeting Grayson's
thoughtful eyes, he asked rhetorically, "Question is: Traitors to
what?"

      /*  The Who  "Who Are You"  _The Ultimate Collection_  */

                I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                 and
                         Avalon 17 Television
                               present

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                           CSI: NEW AVALON
                            Parallel Lines

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                             Chad Collier

                (c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                               4:54 PM
                  INTERNATIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS

        Chief Inspector Jim Brass of the New Avalon Police Department
was just climbing the marble steps to the front entrance of the
International Police Headquarters building on Allard Avenue, across
the street from the Entire State Building, when he heard the roar of a
very distinctive engine.
        Brass wasn't really a "car guy" as such, but he was a trained
observer who had a lot of experience with the sounds and sights of the
city, and this wasn't a kind of engine he heard often.  Its powerful,
full-throated note cut through the generic hum of the downtown
traffic, instantly commanding attention.  He paused on the steps and
turned, his eyes searching the visible streets.
        The car wasn't hard to spot, either.  Bright yellow, low and
sleek, it threaded through the boxy minivans and metrocars with quick,
precise movements, rounded the corner from Morgan Boulevard with just
a hint of a power slide, and halted at the foot of the steps with a
chirp of rubber on pavement.
        The right-hand door swung open and, to Brass's moderate
surprise, someone he knew emerged.  Catherine Willows climbed out
of the low-slung car and onto the sidewalk with a quick, effortless
grace that reminded him a bit of a cat.  It brought a little smile to
his weatherbeaten face.  He knew -he- sure as hell wouldn't look
smooth climbing out of a car that low.
        "Thanks for the lift, hotshot," a smiling Catherine said - or
at least that's what Brass thought she said - as she shut the door
behind her.
        "No problem, Cath," a man's voice replied from inside the
car.  It sounded a little odd to Brass - slightly metallic, as if the
speaker were talking through a commset.  "Pick you up at 4?"
        "Sounds good," she said.  She ran a hand through her blonde
hair - she'd been wearing it shortish lately, parted in the middle,
which Brass thought made her look a little too much of a tomboy, but
nobody ever asked his opinion of these things - and added, "I'll call
you if I get held up."
        "OK," the voice replied.  "Seeya 'round!"
        "Bye," said Catherine with a smile.  She thumped the car on
the roof in a way that Brass could only think of as affectionate,
turned, and trotted up the steps as the yellow car swung back out into
traffic.
        Brass automatically glanced away from the approaching
investigator to watch it go, scanning for a glimpse of the driver.  He
wasn't suspicious, or even particularly nosy - it was just that he was
a 30-year cop and that was the kind of thing 30-year cops did.
        There was no one driving the car.  Unless the other occupant
or occupants were hiding, Catherine had been the only person aboard.
That made the metallic timbre to the voice make sense, at least.
        "New boyfriend?" he asked as Catherine drew even with him on
the stairs.
        Catherine took off her sunglasses, tucked them by one earpiece
into the V-neck of her sweater, and grinned at him.
        "I never kiss and tell, Jim," she said, and Brass laughed as
they went into the building together.

                            IPO CRIME LAB
                             TENTH FLOOR

        "Good evening, my children," said Gil Grissom playfully as the
members of his graveyard shift gathered before his desk.  "Don't
crowd, now.  I've got a present for each of you."  He took an
assignment sheet from the small stack on his desk and handed it to
burly Nick Stokes.  "Nick, you get your very own dead body."
        Stokes beamed.  He hadn't been senior enough to take a solo DB
for all that long, and he still got a thrill every time Grissom handed
him one.
        Catherine leaned over and murmured to Warrick Brown, "(I hate
it when he's playful.)"
        "(I heard that,)" Warrick replied under his breath.  "(Makes
me nervous.)"
        "Warrick, you and I are working with Brass and Grayson,"
Grissom went on, handing a similar sheet to the dark-skinned,
deceptively sleepy-looking investigator.
        "The Salutown Slugger again?" Warrick inquired.
        "Too early to tell," Grissom said automatically.  Press
nicknames for criminals annoyed him, although he had to confess that
this particular one seemed apt, if macabre.  "Catherine, I need you
and Sara to - "
        He looked up from his perusal of the next slip as if suddenly
realizing something.  "Where's Sara?"
        "Here!" a breathless Sara Sidle exclaimed, almost bursting
through Grissom's office door.  "I'm right here.  Sorry.  I was, uh, I
was upstairs.  In the records office.  Doing research.  Lost track of
time," she panted.
        "Get anything interesting?" Warrick inquired with a very
slight smile.  Sara shot him a microsecond glare before returning her
earnest attention to Grissom.
        "Next time, just call," Grissom told her gently.  "No need to
run.  I need you and Catherine to investigate a mysterious occurrence
in the Badlands."
        "The Badlands?!" Catherine blurted.  "But nobody lives out
there!"
        Grissom gave her the little smirk that always made her want,
just a little, to smack him.
        "That's why it's a mystery," he said.  "Sgt. O'Riley will fly
you out.  It should only take a couple of hours."
        "A couple of HOURS?" said Sara, incredulous.
        Grissom arched an eyebrow at her.  "Why?  You have a lunch
date or something?"
        "What?  Uh, no!  No, nothing like that," she said hurriedly.
"I just - what can possibly be of any interest to us out there?"
        Grissom's little smirk widened into a proper smile.  The man
did enjoy his mysteries.
        "Two hours ago," he told her, "a Wedge Defense Force training
aircraft reported spotting the wreckage of an airship in the rockfield
southwest of Roswell Gap."

        "By a strange coincidence, one happens to be missing from New
Avalon," Sgt. Ray O'Riley of the IPO's Criminal Investigations
Division said.
        O'Riley - beefy, buzzcut, and dressed as always in a sport
coat that looked like he'd hunted some piece of out-of-date living
room furniture for its pelt - was at the controls of a Pelican
aerodyne dropship he'd borrowed from his old cohorts in the Tactical
Division for the trip.  The part of the pseudocontinent where their
mystery blimp wreck was located was too remote and hostile an
environment for them to drive.
        "Company called VenTek's missing a delivery blimp and its
pilot, Roy Jenson," O'Riley went on.  He flew a Pelican the same way
he drove a car - with his oversize frame sprawled casually in the
seat, one hand on the wheel (or, in this case, yoke), steering with a
couple of fingers and not really seeming to pay attention to where he
was going.  In a car, that made Catherine mildly nervous.  In the air,
it made her reconsider her standard pleased reaction to working with
him.  She tried to make herself pay attention as he continued.
        "We know Jenson refilled the snack machines on the 75th
floor of the Mutual Indemnity Tower at 11:15 this morning.  He didn't
make it to his next scheduled stop, the 30th through 45th floors of
the Lakeshore Hotel."
        "Why didn't Avalon ATC notice he was leaving the city?" Sara
inquired.
        "In-city traffic is monitored to make sure it doesn't jump
lanes or what have you, but once an aircraft leaves the city control
zone, it's not tracked," O'Riley told her.  "It's your own business
what you do out here.  Apparently Jenson left the CCZ by one of the
approved airship routes, so no flags went up."
        "Hum," said Sara, and the Salusian investigator lapsed into
one of her customary pensive silences.

                           718 BAKER STREET
                     CRESCENT HEIGHTS, NEW AVALON

        The engineering marvel that allowed the City in the Sphere to
have day and night worked its unseen magic into the coming afternoon,
working the shadows into long lines down this particular residential
street.  It was still quiet, the lull before the storm of friends and
neighbors making their way home from their daily routine.
        This suited Nick Stokes just fine.  Not just because the quiet
on a scene helped him concentrate (it did), but also because it kept
the number of onlookers down to a minimum.  From the report Grissom
had given him, this had all the earmarks of an accidental death - not
that he could say that in front of his inscrutable Salusian boss;
reading into the evidence was a big no-no in Gil Grissom's book.
        Of course they all still did it, they just learned to keep it
to themselves.
        It tempered his excitement of getting his own case, but being
simple and boring also meant he should be done with it soon.  And then
he could go back to to the big case Warrick and Gris were working on.
It all evened out.
        Nick stood near the body, keeping a little distance so as not
to disturb anything.  A large digital camera hung about his neck but
remained untouched.  He was taking in what he could with his own eyes
first.
        Human male, caucasian, about 5'10".  Casual dress.  Face up on
the west side of the house, about five feet from the wall.  Slight
bluish cast to the skin, but nothing severe enough to be noteworthy.
It had been raining the night before, a large thunderstorm had rolled
through.  It had dried partially since then, but Nick could see where
the sodden earth had given way when his victim had hit the ground.  He
looked up to the overhanging roof above the scene and contemplated it
for a moment, then started snapping pictures.
        That task completed, he was walking back around the front of
the house, his attention focused on the sloped roof, when a grey and
nondescript vehicle joined the two NAPD cruisers that were parked out
front.  The young CSI held back a chuckle for a moment as he imagined
'CAR' in big white letters on the door, and maybe a bar code.
        The generic nature of the car was balanced by the redheaded
woman in the sharp suit who swung out of it.  At the sight of Barbara
Gordon, the setting of Nick's face automatically slipped to Smile,
Disarmingly Boyish.
        "Someone must really like me upstairs today.  Not only do I
pull my own case, but I get the best backup.  Nice to see you,
Sgt. Gordon."
        Barbara smiled back, a little indulgently.  "Hello, Nick.
Sorry I'm late."
        Nick waved it off.  "Not a problem, this is pretty low-impact
so far.  You know, I always imagined you driving something more...
exciting," he added, angling his head toward her car.
        She grinned.  "It's free.  On duty, I'm not picky."
        Nick laughed.  "Gotcha.  I'm surprised to see you at a case
like this.  Special Crimes get boring?"
        Barbara chuckled.  "Dick asked me to pick this one up while he
and Brass work the Salutown serial.  Figures you and I can wrap this
up quick and go back to real police work."
        Nick put a little more juice back into his smile.  "I'll try
not to let you down."
        "So - what have you got?"
        Nick turned to the house and motioned to the roof with his
head.  "Right now?  Looks like our guy tried to mess with his HoloNet
connection during the storm last night."  He turned back with a half-
smile that held no humor.  "Not very smart in the best of conditions.
Something made him slip, fall, and roll off the roof by the side of
the house.  Just far enough to be out of plain sight, but the mailman
found him while cutting across yards on his route.  He's the one that
called it in."  Nick pointed to the blue-uniformed postal employee who
stood next to one of the police cruisers.
        "OK, sounds good.  I'll get a statement from him and then
knock on a few doors, see if the neighbors saw or heard anything.  Not
likely, given the storm, but worth a shot.  Coroner's about ten
minutes behind me, figure we can wrap up here in about an hour or so."
        "It's a plan.  Thanks again for helping us out, Barbara."
        "Don't mention it," she said over her shoulder as she walked
back to her car to get her notebook.  "All part of the service."

        Sara stayed quietly thoughtful throughout the rest of the trip
out to the wreck site.  Catherine didn't really mind that; she had
O'Riley to talk to, and though that was sometimes an adventure, it was
always at least interesting.
        She wondered, though, what was on her dark-haired colleague's
mind.  Sara wasn't a boisterous person by nature, but normally she'd
have had -something- to offer at some point during the two-hour
discussion.  Instead, she remained in her seat, arms folded across her
chest, frowning, her primary ears drooping slightly.  It was obvious
that something was bothering her besides having pulled this long, very
probably tedious mission.
        "Well, ladies, there it is," O'Riley announced as the Pelican
cleared a craggy rise and dropped down into the rock-strewn two-mile
gully south of the Roswell Gap.
        The wash was strewn with rocks big and small.  It was also
strewn with other items, most of which manifestly didn't belong
there.  Most obvious among them were the long, slack husk of a blimp's
gasbag and a battered object that was still clearly recognizable as
the vehicle's gondola.  The latter was near the top of a small ridge,
wedged between a pair of boulders the size of buses, at the end of an
intermittent line of scraped earth and cast-off bits of metal and
plastic.
        "Circle the site once, so we can get an overview; then put us
down near that big rock over there," Catherine told their pilot.
        "Which one?" O'Riley asked as he started to obey the first
instruction.
        "The one shaped like Brass's head," Catherine said, pointing.
        "Huh - oh, yeah," O'Riley said, nodding.
        "And use the taxi repulsors," Catherine added.
        "Why?" O'Riley asked, even as he switched them on and killed
the jet thrusters.  He knew perfectly well why, he just wanted to hear
Catherine explain it.
        "You blow away my crime scene, I break your face," Catherine
said with a crooked grin and a mock punch to the detective's shoulder.
        O'Riley grinned.  "You're the boss, ma'am," he said.
        The heat slapped them in the faces as they climbed down from
the Pelican's cabin.  Even in early March, it got hot out here in the
desert at this time of day.
        The afternoon sun was waning, though, and in a couple of hours
it would get cool - and dark, of course, but they could deal with that
when they got there.  In the meantime, they had work to do.
        Sara set her field kit on the Pelican's boarding step, popped
it open, and climbed into a paper coverall, then clipped her sidearm
holster to the loop provided on the coverall's hip before pulling on a
pair of gloves.  Then she put her hands on her hips and surveyed the
scene.
        Her face took on a look of mounting distaste, bordering on
distress, as she realized what most of the small debris strewn in the
crashed blimp's wake was.
        "Sara?" Catherine asked as she zipped up her own coverall.
"You OK?"
        "... snacks," Sara muttered, looking like she might throw up.
        "What?" Catherine said, confused.  Then she looked where Sara
was looking and saw that the rocky ground of the wash was littered
with snack foods - bagged potato chips, pork rinds, various snack
cakes, all baking in the desert sun.
        For a second, Catherine was still confused.  She knew Sara
made occasional attempts to give up eating meat, for muddled reasons
to do with some experiment she and Grissom had once conducted, but
never with any particular success.  Sometimes she got that look when
she was in the middle of one of those and encountered a co-worker
having a burger from MacCready's up in Crescent Heights - a
combination of self-conscious disgust and poorly-suppressed longing.
But there were no burgers out here in the desert, so, huh?
        Then she remembered Sara's nightmarish trip to Zardon, on
which the Salusian had spent four days surviving on nothing but the
fare available from the vending machines in the Mega-City One Hall of
Justice's records office.  Vending machine food wasn't particularly
good (or good for you) anywhere, but on Zardon, where the whole
concept of food was hopelessly skewed by any other people's standards,
it was positively abhorrent.
        Sara Sidle had been permanently scarred by the experience.
Since returning from Zardon, she had been known to go two floors out
of her way to avoid passing the Snacktron near the Psionics lab.
        Sara gazed at the scattered snacks for a moment more, then
shook her head and said, "These things are evil."
        "Yeah, well, if it helps, remember that they're evidence,"
said Catherine half-jokingly.
        "You know, that does help," Sara mused after a moment's
consideration.
        Catherine turned and surveyed the scene again.  Now that she
knew what they were, she was struck by the number and dispersal of the
winking little Mylar snack packets.
        "What the hell?  Was he keeping all of this in the gasbag?"
she wondered.  "It's like a Frito-Lay pinata."
        Sara suppressed a snort of laughter, then went back to her
field kit and got out the big digital camera.  "OK, where do we
start?"
        "Let's walk the perimeter and mark it."
        Sara nodded and got to work with the camera.

        Warrick Brown sat at his desk in the bullpen, where all the
non-supervisory night-shifters had their office space.  While he and
Grissom waited for Doc Robbins to call about their newest corpse, he
was going over the files for the four similar cases that had happened
so far this year.
        In cases like this - indeed, in any murder case - the victims
are themselves evidence, not only in the physical sense, but also in
terms of who they were and what they were doing, why they were where
they were.  It was this that Warrick was considering now.
        Four victims, all killed a few weeks apart.  Two women, two
men; three Salusian, one, a man, human.  A grocer, a schoolteacher, a
waiter, and a college student who worked part time as a parking
attendant.  As far as Dick Grayson had been able to find out, none of
them had known any of others, at least not beyond the casual know-
them-to-wave-to way that most people in New Avalon's neighborhoods
knew each other.
        All lived and died in Salutown, one of the city's least
violent districts.  All the Salusians were humanized.  All had been
walking in out-of-the-way but not particularly dubious places - taking
shortcuts through alleys, cutting across a loading dock, taking the
air on the roof of her apartment building.  All had been bludgeoned to
death with startling violence, their heads smashed like melons,
apparently by a single vicious blow from some heavy object.
        All had been found with a pasteboard card near the body, a
card on which someone had written "traitors die" in Cheltarese with a
black ballpoint pen.  Questioned Documents confirmed in each case that
the cards had been written by the same person.
        The press didn't know about the cards, but even without that
connecting factor, the gross (no pun intended) details of the crimes
were enough to make them assume the killings were related.  After the
third one, the Cornet-Scientifer had dubbed the unknown killer "the
Salutown Slugger" - a name apparently inspired by a street cop's
offhanded comment that one of the victims looked like he'd been hit
with a baseball bat.
        Warrick re-read the files again, looking for anything that
might help him get an idea of why these people in particular had been
chosen.  There was something there, something that tickled at the back
of his mind, but he couldn't put a conscious finger on it, and it was
beginning to bug him a great deal.
        He cleared his terminal display, ran a hand down his face, and
sighed.  He disliked serial cases.  Most cops and criminalists did.
There was always that unpleasant feeling that if you could just work
it a little harder, the next victim wouldn't have to die.
        The phone on his desk beeped, and then the voice of Dr. Al
Robbins, chief medical examiner for the IPO, spoke.
        "Warrick?  We're ready."
        "Be right there," Warrick said, and he got up and headed for
the elevator.

        After spending an hour defining the scene, Sara and Catherine
regrouped near the Pelican and decided to essay the gondola next.
        The structure was more or less intact, but crushed enough that
they weren't going to be able to get inside without heavier tools.
That was all right; this was just an overview.  Sara examined the
main door, looking for signs that the craft might have been
abandoned.  Indeed, it didn't appear that the door had been closed
when the blimp hit the ground.
        She was about to report this finding to Catherine when she
heard the blonde's voice from the front of the gondola.
        "Well, here's Mr. Jenson," Catherine called.  "Still at the
controls."
        Sara turned and stepped away from the gondola.  "Wha - ow!"
she said as her sidearm snagged on a mangled strut protruding from the
wreck.  The treated paper coverall tore, ripping off the holster loop,
and the holster fell to the ground.  With a sharp clatter, her sidearm
sprang free and tumbled a few yards down the rocky slope before
fetching up against one of the many big rocks dotting the area.
        "You OK?" Catherine called.
        "Yeah, I'm fine," Sara replied, irritated with herself.  She
picked up her holster, went down and retrieved her pistol, and was
looking at it critically as she rounded the front of the gondola to
find Catherine leaning through one of the now-absent side windows of
the cockpit.
        Catherine pulled herself back out of the window and said,
"What happened?  Drop your gun?"
        "Caught it on a piece of the wreck," Sara replied.  "Ripped
the loop off my coverall."  Sara turned the gun over and eyed its flat
side.  It had a few bright scars carved in its dark finish from its
roll down the hill.  Frowning, she ejected the magazine, looked it
over, put it back, pulled back the slide a little to check the
chambered round, rattled it a bit on its rails, and then shrugged.
"Seems OK."
        "Not much we can do about it now, either way," Catherine
said.  "Better draw a new one from QM when we get back, just in
case."
        Sara nodded, surveyed the torn holster loop for a second, then
stuck the gun in her hip pocket.
        "Not like I'm going to need it way the hell out here, anyway,"
she said.  "You found the pilot?"
        "Uh-huh," Catherine said, leaning back into the window.  Sara
stepped closer to the hull and looked.  A dark-haired figure was, as
Catherine had said, still strapped to the pilot's seat, slumped over
the steering yoke.
        "Controls are locked for cruise," Catherine noted, shining her
flashlight around the shadowy interior.  "Looks like he headed
southwest and just kept flying at a very slight down-angle until he
ran out of sky."
        "What could make a guy do that?" Sara wondered.  "Heart
attack?  Stroke?"
        "Yeah... a stroke," Catherine said thoughtfully, playing the
beam of her light on the back of the pilot's head.  "I'd say about the
nine-millimeter kind."
        "You're kidding," Sara said, leaning for a better look.  "I
found the main door open."
        "So somebody shot the pilot and then bailed out?" Catherine
wondered.
        "We have to get a better look inside," Sara said.
        "And you know what that means," Catherine said, a smile
stealing onto her face.  She turned and grinned at Sara.
        "We take the gondola back to the garage," Sara said with a
slow smile.
        Catherine nodded.  "You got it."
        "Awright," Sara said, and the two women exchanged a high-five.
There was little either enjoyed more than getting a vehicle back to
the shop and tearing it apart to find out what had happened inside.
You could put the music on and do your work in air-conditioned comfort
with a bathroom right handy.  It beat the hell out of crawling around
under a smashed Buick in a half-flooded roadside ditch during a heavy
rainstorm.
        The spark of good humor this realization produced in Sara
didn't last long, though.  As she and Catherine returned to working
the scene around the gondola, the Salusian investigator got quiet and
frowny again - not the mild frown of concentration that was her normal
expression, but a deeper, darker look that spoke of something more
than just the job at hand bothering her.
        "Hey," Catherine asked her after a protracted silence.
        "Yeah?" Sara replied.
        "You doing anything this weekend?"
        "Going to the lake," Sara replied abstractedly, most of her
attention occupied by the gondola's drag pattern.  "Why?"
        "Just curious," Catherine said companionably.  "I think it's
nice you're getting out more."
        O'Riley, no fool, saw where this conversation was headed and
prudently absented himself, heading over to give the Pelican a
once-over.
        "You sound like Warrick," Sara said.  Then she stopped
examining the track, straightened, and went on, "Look, I like you guys,
OK?  But I don't really appreciate having my private life poked into."
        "Who's poking?" Catherine asked.  "I asked, you answered me.
No big deal."
        "Like Warrick earlier," Sara went on, not paying any attention
to Catherine's protest.  "'Get anything interesting?'  He doesn't
believe I was in the records office."  She threw up her hands in
exasperation and added, "We're not even -dating- any more."
        "... You and Warrick?" Catherine asked, confused.
        "You know who I'm talking about.  Don't even start with me,"
Sara grumped.
        "Oh," said Catherine.  She knew she should probably tread
carefully here - or, more advisably still, just turn away from the
topic - but she couldn't stop herself from asking, "So you and the
Chief aren't seeing each other any more?"
        Sara scowled, clearly unwilling to go down this path, but
resigned to it if it would get the conversation over with.  "No," she
said, "we're not.  It didn't work out."
        "I -see-."  Catherine's face adopted an affectedly thoughtful
now-lemme-see-if-I've-got-this-straight expression.  "So... you're
just... having dinner with him three or four times a week.  And
watching movies over at his place on your day off.  Oh, and going to
the lake with him this weekend."
        Sara had seen Catherine use this routine on too many suspects
to buy it herself.  "Now you're poking," she said in a warning tone of
voice.
        Catherine sighed, abandoning the tactic, which she'd been
using more or less out of habit anyway.
        "You have to understand, Sara, I wouldn't -be here- if it
wasn't for him," she said.  Then, gesturing vaguely to their
surroundings, she went on, "OK, well, not -here- exactly, but doing
this job.  I'm just as worried about him."
        "What I -understand- is that I just told you I don't like
having my life pried into and you're still doing it," Sara snapped.
"Look, you want to know what's going on, ask him.  I mean, you
obviously don't believe me."
        "Sara - " Catherine said, trying to be conciliatory, but Sara
had her own ideas for defusing the situation before it got out of hand.
        "I'm going to shoot the gondola," she said, more or less
body-slamming the conversation back to a professional level.
        Catherine gave her a helplessly frustrated look for a second,
then bowed her head, admitting defeat.
        "... OK," she said.  "I'll, uh... measure the crash track."
        In silent agreement, the two women separated, going to either
end of the scar the gondola had left in the ground.

        Grissom, Warrick, and Al Robbins stood around one of the
autopsy tables in the ground-floor morgue.  This was a dark, open room
of stainless steel, chilled air, and pools of light that leaned toward
blue, especially when seen after the more natural lighting of the
upper floors.  A stainless steel counter ran the length of one wall,
festooned with microscopes, computer monitors, sinks, and various
medical and surgical equipment and supplies.  The opposite wall
contained a bank of what looked like three-foot-square freezer doors
of the same steel construction.
        The center of the room was occupied by two autopsy tables of
the same cold steel, recessed like giant pans with a drain at the
foot.  Mechanical arms containing lights and various implements,
cameras, and recording devices hung over each.  The dark textured
concrete floor with inset drains completed the warehouse-meets-science
aura of the place.
        The body on the table around which the three men stood was
covered decorously with a blue sheet, except for the head - what was
left of it.
        "Well, it's the same as the last time," Robbins said.  He was
a grizzled, bald, avuncular man just edging past middle age, a former
Wedge Defense Force naval surgeon and the best pathologist any of the
IPO's investigators had ever seen in action.
        "Cause of death was our old friend blunt force trauma, on a
scale I've rarely seen outside of industrial accidents," Robbins went
on.  "Death must have been all but instantaneous.  Other than
that... "  He shrugged.  "I'm still waiting for an ID.  Dental records
are all but useless, so we have to hope she's in COGENT or AFIS."
        "What species is she?" Grissom wondered.
        "Salusian, humanized.  I'm expecting a COGENT hit because of
that."
        Grissom nodded.  As a humanized Salusian himself, he knew that
the Salusian government recorded a complete geneprint for every
citizen who underwent the modification process before leaving the
homeworld.  Since the Royal Salusian Information Bureau's geneprint
banks were connected to the Co-Operative GENetic Tracking system, that
meant there was every chance their victim would turn up on a record
search, assuming she hadn't been illegally humanized.  Since
emigration to Zeta Cygni was not only legal but routine, there wasn't
any real reason to suspect that.
        "Anything else?"
        "One thing," Robbins said.  He pointed to the leading edge of
the principal remaining skull fragment.  "See those round cutouts?"
        Grissom and Warrick looked.  Indeed, the broken edge of the
bone had a series of semicircular marks, almost like little
crenelations, along it.
        Grissom looked up, meeting Robbins's eyes.  "The weapon was
studded," he said.
        Robbins nodded.  "Looks like it.  I found similar markings in
the other four cases, if you recall.  Looks like the papers might be
right."
        Grissom looked thoughtfully at the strange indentations for a
second, then said, "Thanks.  Let me know if anything else turns up,"
and left the morgue.
        "He knows something he's not saying," Robbins observed.
        "Film at 11," Warrick said sarcastically.  Then he blinked and
looked as if something had just struck him.
        Something had - the common thread he'd seen in the files on
the previous victims had just bubbled up into his conscious awareness.
        "Thanks, Doc," he said, and jogged after Grissom.
        "All part of the service," Robbins said equably as the second
investigator left his lair.
        Warrick caught up to Grissom in the hall.
        "Gris," he said.  "What?"
        Grissom glanced at him, then smiled slightly.
        "I don't like hunches," he said.  "Even when they're mine."
        "Yeah, well, that means you'll like mine even less.  I was
going over the files on the previous victims, and I noticed
something."
        Grissom stopped walking and turned to him, looking interested.
        "So far that's victimology, not a hunch," he said.  "Go on."
        "We have five victims, four Salusian, one human.  In the four
previous cases, each victim was dating somebody from the other
species.  One gets you ten we find out the same in this case when we
get an ID on the vic."
        Grissom raised an eyebrow.  "Traitors die," he said.
        Warrick nodded.  "I think we're looking at a series of racial
hate crimes."
        Grissom frowned, an expression at odds with his words: "Good
work, Warrick."
        Then he turned and walked off down the hall, not sharing
whatever was on his mind in return.

        The sun was setting behind the ridge to the west, bathing the
crash scene in orange light and the long, sharp shadows of rocks, when
Catherine suddenly realized that something wasn't right.
        She straightened up, feeling a mild crick in her back from
having bent down for so long, and did a slow, careful lookaround.
Sara was still up by the gondola; having finished photographing it,
she had her Alternate Light Source out now and was shining it through
the window holes, presumably looking for blood spatter on the
interior.  All the bags of snacks and bits of debris were still where
they'd landed, the flaccid gasbag was still draped over the boulders
to the south, the Pelican was still parked over by the big round
rock...
        "Hey Sara?" Catherine called.
        Sara straightened and turned.  "What?" she shouted back.
        "Where's O'Riley?" Catherine asked.
        Sara looked around.  She was too far away for Catherine to see
her face in this light, but her body language spelled surprise.
        "I thought he was with you!" Sara called after a moment.
        The funny, foreboding feeling that had roused her from her
reverie of evidence collecting spiked in Catherine's head.  Without
really knowing why, she threw herself forward and down.
        As she did so, she felt a jarring impact and an explosion of
pain in the back of her head.  She hit the ground more unconscious
than conscious, not completely out but certainly unable to do anything
for the moment.

   /*  Juno Reactor & Gocoo  "Teahouse"  _The Matrix Reloaded_  */

        Sara Sidle watched with some confusion as Catherine suddenly
dove for the ground, wondering what the hell she was doing.  Then
something behind the blonde criminalist -flickered-, like a
holographic communicator with a bad connection.  A humanoid shape,
almost but not quite visible, appeared behind Catherine - swinging
some kind of weapon - whatever it was hit her on the head and she went
the rest of the way down and stayed there - 
        Sara dropped her hand to where her holster should have been,
but found only the torn plasticized paper of the holster loop.
Cursing, she reached further, into that side pocket, and hauled her
sidearm out.  She let the ALS unit hang from its wrist strap while she
stripped the conformal plastic holster from her weapon with her free
hand.
        "International Police!" she cried.  "Stop where you are!"
        The flickering shape, almost impossible to see in the poor
light, bounded up the rocky slope toward her.  Some part of her mind
which remained detached and scientific even under the circumstances
informed her that her attacker was wearing thermoptic camouflage.
        Without thinking, she caught the ALS back up in her free hand
and aimed it along the side of her pistol, just like they'd taught her
to do with a taclight at the Academy.  The ultraviolet-rich blue beam
of light stabbed down the slope, but revealed nothing.  Sara's thumb
automatically rolled the little wheel at the end of the ALS unit,
shifting the wavelength of the beam as if she were scanning for
unknown trace evidence - 
        - and inside the specially treated goggles she wore, the beam
suddenly picked out the glowing outline of a man wielding what looked
like a baseball bat, running up the broken, rock-strewn slope toward
her with startling speed.
        Sara had been trained in the application of deadly force when
she became a criminalist, and again when she joined the International
Police.  She knew that this man had just clobbered, possibly killed,
her partner, and now he was headed for her just as fast as his legs
could carry him, his weapon still at the ready.  There was no doubt in
her mind that her life was in imminent danger.
        She'd always wondered, in an academic sort of way, what would
happen if she ever found herself in this position.  Once she'd tried
to ask Grissom about it, but he'd just given her a sad look and told
her no one ever really knew until the moment arrived.  Not long ago,
she'd had a gun in her face during an arrest gone bad, and been
absolutely convinced that she was about to die, but she hadn't had an
opportunity to draw, let alone fire, her weapon.
        Her attacker's thermoptic camo noticed that it had been
painted by a UV source and started to compensate, and his outline
began to vanish again.  He was getting closer, and she was about to
lose her shot.
        She took it.
        The first round went wide, the trigger pulled too forcefully -
an amateur's mistake.  She corrected, surprised at how cool she felt
now that the moment was here, and fired again at his rapidly-vanishing
center of mass.  That one was a hit, but she couldn't tell how bad.
His thermoptics coruscated, the imaging system confused by the hit.
He checked slightly, but he kept coming, drawing his weapon back to
strike.
        The protocol Sara had been taught said that you kept firing
until you ran out of ammo or your assailant hit the dirt and didn't
offer to get up.  Following her training, she recovered from the
recoil and pressed the trigger again.
        Nothing happened.

        Grissom was in Greg Sanders's lab, not for any really
practical purpose, but just to show some interest in an effort to buck
up the Dantrovian's flagging spirits a little.  Serial cases were
always hard on everyone, but Greg was taking this one especially hard
because of the importance his native culture placed on tolerance and
harmony.  By now everyone on the tenth floor had heard that Warrick's
victim study had given them a lead on a possible motive for the
crimes.  To Greg, murder was bad enough, but killing someone just for
the company he kept was worse than a crime, it was an abomination.
        Before Grissom could try to lift the tech's spirits, his pager
went off - but not with its usual assertive beep.  The tone it made
now was a strident howl, a sound that reached into the humanoid
unconscious and whispered "Danger!" on a level that couldn't be
ignored.
        Grissom snatched the device from his belt and watched with
mounting dismay as the message scrolled across the holographic
display:

    24100322 17:10:19  WPN39581 (SIDLE, S. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE

        He didn't even have time to react before the pager screamed
again and another message crowded onto the display:

    24100322 17:10:20  WPN39581 (SIDLE, S. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE

        Greg raised his eyebrows, unaware of the intelligence the
display was sending Grissom.
        "Never heard a pager do -that- before," he said.  "What's
going on?"
        Grissom didn't hear him; all the supervisor's attention was
focused on the gleaming green gem affixed to his wrist.

        Catherine Willows hauled herself up onto one elbow, fighting
down a powerful urge to vomit - mustn't soil the crime scene, some
part of her mind laughed irreverently - and looked up the slope.  She
couldn't see whatever had hit her, but there was a flicker of movement
heading upward, flitting from rock to rock.
        Thermoptic camouflage! she realized; her thoughts were
clearing faster than command of her body was returning.  She looked to
the top of the slope.  Sara was standing up there, her weapon drawn,
the black cylinder of an ALS held alongside it like a tactical
flashlight.
        Smart girl, Sara, thought Catherine as she struggled to pull
herself upright.  She couldn't see it because she wasn't wearing
filter goggles, but Catherine knew that the ALS would pick up the
attacker's thermoptics for a couple of seconds, before the image
processor could adapt - if Sara had it set to the right wavelength.
        Catherine got herself up to one knee and drew her own weapon.
She had no target, but -
        Sara fired once; clean miss, the bullet whanging musically off
a rock and sailing off into the gathering evening someplace.
        Her second shot was a hit, making the attacker's camo strobe
crazily.
        There was no third shot.  Catherine saw her squeeze the
trigger again, then look down at the gun, dismay written all over her
posture.  The guy was still charging, barely slowed by the single hit,
his flickering weapon cocking for a blow that could all but take
Sara's head off.
        Catherine didn't think about her training or her philosophy
toward deadly force.  There was no time.  She just opened fire.

   24100322 17:10:23  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:23  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:24  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:24  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:25  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:25  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:26  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE
   24100322 17:10:26  WPN24919 (WILLOWS, C. CSI3) WEAPON DISCHARGE

        Greg Sanders got his second big surprise of the night, after
the awful sound Grissom's pager made, when the shadow of the old GCMS
machine in the corner of his lab suddenly rippled and gave forth a
pair of -people-.  For a second he thought it was the damnedest
intrusion he'd ever seen, until he realized they were the Chief and
his creepy-cute friend in the blue cloak.  For a moment Greg couldn't
remember her name, only that he'd asked her out once and still felt a
vague chill when he thought about it.
        The pager screamed again and again - clearly something very
bad was unfolding out there somewhere.  Grissom stared at it for a
couple more seconds, then shoved it back in its holster and said, "Now
Catherine's opened fire."
        "Catherine's WHAT?!" Greg squeaked.  "What's going on?"
        Gryphon tabbed a control on his wrist computer.  "Tactical
Command, this is the Chief.  I'm on 10 and I want a tac team in
Transporter A by the time I get down there."
        The computer made a metallic click and replied in a tinny
voice, "Roger that, Chief."
        "Gris, you're with me," Gryphon said briskly.
        As the three - Gryphon, Grissom, and Raven - emerged from the
lab with Greg trotting after them, the commotion caught the attention
of the other members of Grissom's shift, who were in the Trace
Evidence lab.  They came out into the hall, wanting to know what was
happening; being ignored like Greg, they fell in behind with him.
        "What's going on, man?" Nick Stokes asked Greg.
        "Damned if I know," Greg replied.  "Gris's pager started
-wailing-, and then the Chief and his, uh, friend showed up, and Gris
said Catherine's shooting at someone."
        "She's what?" Warrick Brown demanded.
        "That's all I know!" Greg said.
        Not until the lot of them were crammed into the elevator and
on the way down to the transporter rooms in Subbasement D did Grissom
notice that the two criminalists and Greg had joined the train.
        "What are you guys doing?" he demanded.
        "We're coming with you," Nick replied, in the tone of a man
surprised to have been asked.
        Grissom shook his head.  "We are -criminalists-," he said.
"Not the cavalry."
        "You're going," Warrick pointed out.
        "I'm their supervisor.  I'm responsible," Grissom said grimly.
"You two stay here.  You too, Greg," he added with a sharp glance at
the tech.
        As one the three men shook their heads.
        "No way, sir," Greg replied flatly.
        Grissom looked moderately taken aback.  "Are you refusing a
direct order?" he asked - not indignantly, but more as if he found it
an interesting phenomenon.
        "Yes, sir," Nick said firmly.  Warrick and Greg nodded with
him.
        Grissom looked from one to the other as if considering whether
to lay into them.
        Then, despite the terrible stress and uncertainty he felt, he
smiled his disarming little neon-sign smile and said, "Well, then I
guess you'd better come along.  Warrick, look after Greg.  He's not
field-rated."
        Warrick grinned through his own tension.
        "Yes, sir," he said.

        They came out of the elevator and turned left into the
transporter room, to find an eight-man Tactical Division bluesuiter
squad already ranked and ready to go on the pad, their weapons at port
arms, their faces grim.
        "Do you have a transporter lock yet?" Gryphon asked the
curly-haired woman at the console.
        She shook her head.  "WDF Sensor Command has to re-task an
array to get us a hi-res scan of the target area.  Estimate 52 seconds
until we can energize."
        "Not soon enough," Gryphon said.  He turned to his cloaked
companion.  "Raven?"
        Raven nodded very slightly, her dark eyes glinting clear and
determined from the shadows of her hood.
        "yes," she said in a soft but unequivocal voice.
        In response, Gryphon rapped out a single word, like a gunshot:
        "Go!"
        Raven closed her eyes and made ancient shapes with her hands.
        "azarath.  metrion.  ZINTHOS!" she said.  With a suddenness
that made Greg Sanders gasp, the disk of shadow she cast on the floor
beneath her expanded and seemed to swallow her up.  In an instant, she
was gone as if she'd never been there.
        Once he took a second to recover from -that-, Greg turned to
Warrick, curiosity overwhelming shock.
        "(If we can lock onto where they are, why don't we just beam
them here?)" he asked, sotto voce.
        "(Transporting someone with an unstabilized injury can kill
them,)" Warrick murmured back.  "(We don't know if they're hurt.  So
we go to them.)"
        "(Oh,)" said Greg, nodding.  Then he settled in with the rest
of them to wait through the interminable minute.

        The task Gryphon had set for his apprentice was a difficult
one, even for a witch of her power and skill.  Teleportation was no
simple matter when you knew exactly where you were going.  Throw in a
long overland distance and an unfamiliar destination, and it got
harder.  Do it without a solid beacon at the other end and the
difficulty spiked again.
        A Lens made a very good teleport beacon; Raven had once homed
in on Gryphon's across several hundred light-years.  Even with the
Lens involved, though, that feat was only possible because of the
strange mystic resonance that linked her - deeply and specifically -
to him.  Here she had no such lever.
        She knew the people she was going out to help, but only
casually, and neither was a Lensman.  She had only fragmentary echoes
of their auras to go on, and most of that drawn indirectly, from the
impressions they left on the Chief.
        In short, it was a tough job.  Pulling it off required a
damned fine bit of spellcraft, if Raven said so herself - which of
course she didn't, for Raven never boasted of her skill, preferring to
let it speak for itself.  Alas, there was no one at her destination
who had the background to appreciate her achievement; but -she- could,
and for her, that was enough.
        Besides, she had a job to do.
        She emerged from the shadows to find herself standing on
sloping ground among scattered rocks in a fast-cooling desert
twilight.  To her left was the crumpled wreck of some kind of vehicle.
A woman stood next to it, holding a pistol in one hand and a
flashlight emitting a weird blue beam in the other.  To Raven's right
was another woman, this one just in the process of edging up the
slope, her weapon held at the ready in both hands.
        Sprawled on the ground a few feet short of the woman with the
flashlight was a humanoid form, indistinct in the gathering night,
with a gleaming pool of something dark and liquid slowly growing
underneath him.  The woman with the readied gun was holding it on this
form, clearly ready to resume hostilities if the need arose.
        Judging by the size of that blood pool and the distinctive
stillness of the body atop it, Raven didn't think that was likely.

        Catherine saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and
pivoted, ready to fire.  The figure who had suddenly appeared partway
up the slope held up both hands.
        "Easy," she said in a low, husky voice.  "It's me - Raven.
Gryphon sent me to help you."
        Catherine visibly (though not entirely) relaxed.  "-Raven-,
thank God," she said.
        "What happened here?" Raven asked.
        "I'm not sure," Catherine said.  "This guy, whoever he is,
came out of nowhere, clobbered me, and went for Sara.  She winged
him and I brought him down."
        "Are there more?" asked Raven, her eyes sweeping the scene.
        "We don't know," Sara said.
        "There was a CID detective with us," Catherine added, a note
of concern coming into her voice.  "He's missing."
        "Gryphon and a tac team are 45 seconds behind me," Raven told
them.  "Just stay sharp until they get here."
        Sara stood regarding her for a second, then asked, "How did
you -get- here?"
        "Magic," Raven replied, in the sort of tone a normal person
would use to say, "Hitched."
        Sara opened her mouth to make some response, closed it again
when she realized there wasn't really an adequate one, then felt silly
for not acknowledging the statement at all and settled for a slightly
hollow, "Oh."

        When the cavalry arrived, it was a bit of an anticlimax.  The
bluesuiters fanned out, careful to avoid the scene of the shooting
itself, and began establishing a secured perimeter.
        Gryphon got on the com back to Headquarters and had a support
team beamed out once the site was secure.  Within the hour, the crime
scene turned battlefield had become a crime scene again, this time one
with a high priority.
        Catherine sat on a metal supply crate, feeling fretful and
impotent, while Dr. David Phillips examined the wound on her head.
        "Nasty," he observed.  David was an assistant coroner, a
familiar sight at death scenes Catherine worked, but he was generally
not patching up his own co-workers.  Now he sounded like he was
examining the smashed-in head of a vic - which, Catherine noted with a
little shudder, was damn near what she and Sara had both ended up
becoming.
        If he noted the shudder, David was tactful enough not to say
so.  Instead, he deftly patched her up, applying some antiseptic gel
and synthetic skin to the cut the blow had left on her scalp, then
winding a gauze bandage around her head to hold the patch in place
until the synthskin had a chance to cure.
        Catherine sat quietly and let him work.  She only winced once,
when he first put on the antiseptic - it stung a bit, but mostly it
was the sudden cold that made her react.
        "Sorry," David said with an apologetic smile.  "I'm not used
to working on patients who -need- antiseptics."
        She smiled and told him that was all right.  He was a big,
bookish man who had a kind of nerdy charm; Catherine was fond of him
in an abstract, almost motherly kind of way.
        "So what's the word, David?" she asked.  "Am I going to live?"
        "Well," David said clinically, "there's no damage to your
skull, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows you.  And
I don't think there's anything wrong with what's inside either."  He
rummaged in his bag and handed her a paper packet with a couple of
pills in it.  "Take these, and if you start to feel dizzy or drowsy,
let me know immediately.  That skinpatch needs to cure, so keep the
bandage on and your head dry for at least four hours.  I think you're
going to be fine."
        Catherine tore open the packet, swallowed the gel-coated
tablets dry, and then gave David a look.
        "Did you just make a crack about my head?"
        David looked dignified.  "It was a compliment, Catherine," he
said.
        Catherine smiled.  "Oh.  Well.  That's different," she
replied.  Then, unable to resist the urge to tease him a little, she
added, "I thought you were into Sara."
        David automatically glanced across the floodlit operations
area to the spot where Sara was giving her report to Grissom.
        "Oh, well, he said, "I am, but... "  He made an indeterminate
gesture that summed up a variety of different things, then grinned
boyishly.  "You know."
        Catherine laughed, though it made her head throb a little.
        "David Phillips," she said.  "Who knew you were such a smooth
operator?"
        David chuckled and might have responded - he was in unusually
fine form tonight - but for the cry that came from one of the
bluesuiters searching the perimeter.
        "Sir!" the trooper cried.  "Chief!  I've found Sgt. O'Riley."
        David grabbed his bag and hustled; Catherine was right behind
him, followed by Gryphon, Grissom, and Sara.
        The big detective was sprawled behind another of the
innumerable rocks that were strewn around this area.  He was face-down
and stretched out, and for one awful second Catherine thought he was
dead.
        David knelt down, felt at O'Riley's fleshy throat for a
second, played a diagnostic sensor over him, and observed the
readings.  Then he straightened and said in a sharp, businesslike tone
that was startling coming from the normally shy, quiet coroner,
        "He's alive, and he'll stay that way if we get him to a proper
facility.  I'll stabilize him for transport.  Chief, I need you to set
us up a crossbeam straight to Boyce Memorial."
        Gryphon nodded.  "Done," he said, and got on the com to
arrange it.
        David set to work, taking various stabilizing devices out of
his bag and applying them to the injured detective.  That was only the
work of a few seconds; then he sat back on his haunches and looked up
at the small crowd watching him work.
        "OK, he's all set," he said.  "Catherine - remember what I
told you.  If you start to feel dizzy, drowsy, nauseous - tell the
Chief and he'll take care of you."  He turned his eyes to Gryphon.
"Right?"
        Gryphon grinned.  "You got it.  Ready for transport?"
        "Roger that."
        "Transport Control, this is the Chief.  Energize."
        The doctor and his patient glimmered and vanished.
        "(Wow,)" Catherine remarked to Sara out of the side of her
mouth.  "(I've never seen David do brisk before.)"
        "(Yeah,)" Sara replied, nodding.
        A few minutes later, another aircraft arrived from the
northeast.  It was an aerodyne of a smaller class than the Pelican
utility transport - an example of the type the general public called,
a trifle inaccurately, a "flying car".  As it set down outside the
perimeter, two bluesuiters moved to cover it, catching it in the beams
of their shoulder lamps.
        The vehicle was green and gold; as the passenger door swung
open, one of the bluesuiters' searchlights flashed from the reflective
gold star of the Avalon County Sheriff's Department.
        "County mounties?" Nick Stokes wondered from halfway across
the scene.  "What're they doing here?"
        "Their jurisdiction," Warrick pointed out with a shrug.
"Everything outside the city."
        "Yeah, but it's all over now," Nick said.  Then, as a man
climbed out of the aerodyne, the burly investigator's shoulders
slumped.  "Oh, man, it's Mobley."
        Warrick looked; sure enough, the man who had just emerged from
the passenger side of the county aero was the sheriff of Avalon County
himself, a balding, vaguely severe-looking man named Brian Mobley.
        Mobley was the closest thing Gil Grissom had to a nemesis,
day-shift CSI supervisor Conrad Ecklie notwithstanding.  The sheriff's
political ambitions didn't end at his current office, and though
Grissom knew that, he also didn't care, so it didn't influence the
speed or tractability with which he handled county cases.  He and
Mobley cordially despised each other, and all of Grissom's techs
dreaded running into the sheriff as a result.
        "Nice of him to show up now that nobody needs help," Warrick
grumbled, then bent to resume examining the trail of deeply indented
footprints leading roughly from Catherine's shell casings to Sara's.

        "Gil, I asked you to have your people investigate a possible
crime scene, not create a definite one," Mobley said as he picked his
way up the rocky slope.
        Grissom wasn't in the mood to fence with the sheriff.
        "My people were -attacked-, Brian," he said.  "They didn't
come out here looking for a fight, they came to investigate a blimp
crash."
        Mobley ignored Grissom, which was his usual tactic when he was
losing an argument based on logic or facts.  Instead he addressed
Catherine in a sharp, critical tone.
        "Well, Ms. Willows.  This is, what, your second kill in four
years?  That's quite a record for a criminalist.  I've been in law
enforcement proper for almost 30 years and I've never even fired at
anyone."  He smiled thinly.  "You must be very proud."
        Catherine gave him a look that didn't bother concealing her
disdain and said nothing.
        "Well, let's have a look at your latest victim, shall we?"
Mobley said.  He crossed to the body, hunkered down, and played a
flashlight over it.
        Then, rising and dusting the tails of his expensive overcoat,
he turned a grim face to Catherine.
        "Ms. Willows," he said, "would you care to explain to me how
even a woman of your obvious talent manages to shoot a man eight times
in the -back- in self-defense?"
        "How about when he's ten feet from killing my -partner-,
asshole?" Catherine shot back.  Fists balled, she took a half-step
toward Mobley, her normally lovely face hard with fury.  "Or is that
why you've never fired in 30 years, because you've never bothered to
back up anyone but yourself?"
        Gryphon seemed to appear out of nowhere as he interposed
himself, his hands on her shoulders, steering her away.
        "Whoa, Cath, whoa, time out," he said.  After he'd managed to
herd her out of earshot of the sheriff, he added in a low, confidential 
voice, "You can't kill Sheriff Mobley.  We need him for another week."
        The statement - one of his common figures of speech - had its
desired effect: It broke through her anger and even drew a small,
pained snort of laughter as she stopped trying to get past him.
        "I'm sorry," she said, raising her hands in a combination of
exasperation and surrender.  "I just - that smug son of a bitch!  He
comes out from behind his desk three times a year and he's giving me
shit for doing what I'm supposed to do?"
        Gryphon half-smiled.  "You did right," he said.  He led her
further away from the middle of the scene, out to the edge of the
lighted perimeter, and left Grissom to deal with the sheriff.  Once
they were more or less alone among the rocks, off in the quiet away
from the rumble of the Pelican's generator and the noises of the
ongoing scene survey, he asked her,
        "Are you OK?"
        Catherine sighed in exasperation.  She was rumpled, grubby,
and sweat-streaked; her normally neat blonde hair was in disarray,
mussed further by the bandage that encircled her head, and decorated
by a dark streak of dried blood.
        "No," she said, "I'm not OK.  I'm hungry, I'm jumpy, I'm
filthy, my head hurts, my hair's a mess, I've got -blood- in my -ear-,
I killed a man a couple hours ago, the sheriff's on my ass, and Sara's
pissed off at me.  None of that is OK!"
        By this time, Gryphon was holding the fingertips of one hand
to his bowed forehead, and for a second Catherine thought he'd been
struck by a headache, until she realized that he was giggling almost
uncontrollably.
        That just made her madder.  It really got her goat when men
found her anger entertaining, and she'd have thought if she knew
-anyone- she could count on not to pull out that kind of patronizing,
paternalistic horseshit, it'd be Gryphon, which made it still worse.
        "What the HELL is so funny?" she demanded.
        Gryphon raised blue eyes twinkling with merriment to her
wrathful gaze and said, "I was just remembering the last time I saw
you this riled up."
        Catherine gathered herself to rip into him for patronizing
her, but then her memory sparked and she realized what he must be
talking about.
        "Wait.  Was that when I rented a truck and dumped all of
Eddie's stuff in the lake?" she asked.
        "Yup," Gryphon replied, grinning.
/--
JULY 16, 2397
        "Well?  Are you just going to stand there grinning at me,
-First Lensman-, or are you going to help me -dump- this shit?"
--/
        Catherine stared him in the eye now, trying to remain
irritated, but with that memory running through her head, she couldn't
do it.  She snorted painfully, then gave up and let herself laugh,
holding herself up with her hands on his shoulders.
        "So, uh, anyway," Gryphon said after a moment's silence.
"Why is Sara pissed off at you?"
        Catherine sighed and started to run a hand through her tousled
hair before she remembered the bandage and stopped herself.
        "It's nothing," she said unconvincingly.  He gave her a
skeptical look; she smiled ruefully.  "No, listen, I need to talk to
her some more before I get into it with anyone else.  We'd sort of
left things hanging, and then all... this... happened."
        Gryphon nodded.  "OK," he said.  "Consider it dropped."
        "Thank you," said Catherine, looking relieved.

        Grissom called Catherine and Sara together as soon as he'd
finished explaining to Sheriff Mobley that no, in fact, calling the
sheriff an asshole wasn't against IPO policy, and as such no
disciplinary action would be taken against CSI3 Willows in that
regard.
        "I want you two to go back to town with the Chief," he told
them.  "You can't help process this scene anyway."
        "What do you want us to do?" Sara asked.  "Work the lab side
of your case?"
        Grissom shook his head.  "I don't want you to do anything.  Go
back to town and take the rest of the night off."
        Sara gave him an angrily incredulous look.
        "I don't believe this," she said.  "This is about me, isn't
it?  I thought it was when you sent us way the hell out here on this
-blimp crash-, and now I'm sure of it.  You don't want me working the
serial case because... why?  Because I'm Salusian?  I don't know if
you've noticed lately, but so are you!"
        "Sara, this isn't the time or place - " Grissom began, but
Sara had a full head of steam now, and she wasn't about to be put off.
        "I think it is!" she snapped.  "You sent me out here to get me
out of the way of your investigation, and you sent Catherine along to,
what, to baby-sit me?  This is -bullshit-, Gris.  I'm a grown woman
and a trained investigator.  I won't let my nationality interfere with
a case any more than you would!"
        "That's not what this is about, Sara," Grissom said in a
quiet, almost pleading tone.
        "Then what -is- it about?" she demanded, challenging him with
her tone and her eyes.  "You tell me what it -is- about."
        "I can't," he said, and when she opened her mouth to tell him
that wasn't NEAR good enough, he raised a hand and interjected, "Not
here and not right now.  Sara, you've had a bad experience and you're
still keyed up from it.  I want you to go back to New Avalon and relax
tonight.  We'll talk about this tomorrow.  I promise."
        Sara stared hard at him for a moment, clearly unwilling to
leave it at that; but what he'd said at the end seemed to sink in
after a moment.  Grissom didn't make promises lightly, and he didn't
go back on them once he'd made them.  He wasn't just brushing her off.
If he said they'd talk about it tomorrow, they would.
        She relented with a nod that fell just short of sullen.
        "There's another thing," Grissom said.  "This attack may have
been deliberate.  Until we know for sure what's going on, I don't want
you going anywhere by yourselves - especially not to your homes."
        Both women looked like they might object to that, but Grissom
held up his hands again.  "Please.  The Chief and I agree on this.
The department will get you a safe, comfortable place to stay tonight,
and tomorrow we'll see if we can get this mess sorted out.  It's
probably nothing, but it would make both of us feel better."  He gave
them his most disarming smile.  "Think of it as a little vacation.
After tonight, you've earned it."
        Catherine sighed - at least Lindsey was away at school, she
didn't have to worry about THAT - and pulled out her mobile phone.
        "Hey, it's me.  I'm not going to need that ride home tonight.
No, I'm OK, but - yeah - work stuff.  Call you tomorrow.  OK.  Bye."
        She snapped the phone shut, and as she was putting it back on
her belt she noticed Grissom giving her a faintly quizzical smile.
        "Don't even start with me, Gil," she said.
        "I didn't say anything," he said in a tone of mild protest.

        Catherine and Sara beamed back to Headquarters with Gryphon,
Raven, Grissom, and Greg, then went to the CSI locker room on the
tenth floor to shower and change.  Pulling off the shower cap she'd
had to wear to protect her curing skinpatch, Catherine surveyed
herself glumly in the mirror - her hair was still bloody and dirty,
and that American Revolution head-bandage hairstyle just didn't work
for her.
        Then she sighed resignedly, got dressed, and went to see what
sort of safehouse plan the powers that be had cooked up.

        Grissom returned to the crime scene without any of the people
he'd left with, but with someone Warrick and Nick were a little
surprised to see.  As chief medical examiner for the International
Police, Al Robbins didn't go into the field much anymore; but
since David had left the scene with O'Riley before he had a chance to
pronounce the victim dead, well, -someone- had to do it.
        Grissom pointed the doctor at the body.  Then, ignoring the
sheriff, his uniformed deputy, and the bluesuiters, he strode across
the lighted area and crouched down next to Warrick.
        "What've you got, Warrick?" he asked.
        "Well, I haven't quite finished," Warrick replied, "but so far
it plays just like Cath and Sara said.  Our guy nailed O'Riley behind
the Pelican, then cut behind that rock - " (he pointed) " - came out
from behind it, hit Cath, and then made straight for Sara up the
slope.  Sara fired twice.  Cath fired eight times."
        "This guy's got nine holes in him," Doc Robbins interjected
from the body's side.
        "Sara said she missed once," Nick told him.
        "It's important that you guys get everything," Grissom said.
"We can't have anyone saying we're covering for our own.  Sheriff
Mobley already tried to bully the Chief into giving this case to
Ecklie."
        Warrick snorted.  "Yeah, picture -that-," he said.
        "Don't worry, boss," Nick agreed, nodding.  "If anything out
here doesn't match up, we'll find it."
        Grissom gave a mildly distracted nod and went to take a look
at the body.
        "Your victim's a Salusian male, non-humanized, I'd say about
fifty," Robbins said.  "No big mystery about what killed him."
        "It's unusual for you to be so definite before the autopsy,
Albert," Grissom remarked with a raised eyebrow.
        Robbins chuckled.  "Don't worry, Gil.  I heard what you said
to your boys.  I won't cut any corners - but when I find a dead man
with eight bullets in his back and one in his chest, I tend to form a
suspicion that he probably wasn't strangled."
        Grissom half-smiled.  "We have to be sure," he said.
        "Oh, certainly.  And when I'm done, we will be.  Anyway, one
thing I -can- tell you is that he is absolutely, definitely, one
hundred percent dead, and that means if Nick's through taking his
picture, we can have my guys get him out of your way."
        The coroner straightened up with a grunt and paddled dust from
the knees of his pants.  Then he looked around the clearing with a
judicious expression.
        "Oof," he said.  "I don't get out of the basement enough these
days."
        "How are your legs?" Grissom asked.
        "Oh, fine, fine," Robbins replied.  "Just went in for my
50,000-mile service.  I've been thinking of trying out a set of the
new sport feet.  They've got retractable wheels, you know."
        Grissom nodded, but didn't respond.  Instead, he stood looking
thoughtfully at the body as two coroner's orderlies muscled it onto a
gurney.  Robbins watched along with him, then blinked in puzzlement at
the object that had been hidden under the dead man.
        "-What-," Robbins inquired rhetorically, "is -that-?"
        Nick crouched down and examined the object which had been
under the body.  "Looks like a baseball bat with an attitude problem,"
he opined.
        "It's called a cijowska.  It's an ancient Salusian weapon,"
Grissom said, a grim look on his face.
        Nick gave him a puzzled look.  Grissom sensed it, turned to
him, and gave him a wry little smile.
        "Didn't you ever see 'Cheltaria', Nick?" he asked.

        There was a part of the First Lensman which remained
perpetually 12 years old, and, as such, got a great thrill out of
doing things the way people did them in the movies.
        Thus, it was with a broad and boyish grin that he flung the
double doors wide and barged into the room beyond without breaking
stride, the tails of his trenchcoat flapping cinematically behind him.
        Catherine Willows knew him well enough to have an amused
little grin of her own as she followed him in.  Sara Sidle was too
preoccupied - she was busy gawping at the room.
        She'd been inside the Hotel Monolith before; one of her first
cases in New Avalon had been the death of a guest who, as it turned
out, had checked out from natural causes.  That had been in one of the
regular guest rooms, and it had impressed her - not particularly large
as hotel rooms went, but nicely appointed, beautifully decorated in
the hotel's signature Art Deco style, and almost fanatically clean.
(Hotel rooms were normally places whose hygiene inspired a combination
of black amusement and dread in criminalists.)
        She'd never seen -this- room, though, and between the view out
the wall of windows, the vastness of the black-silk-covered bed two
steps up on a dais in the corner, the richness of the carpet, and the
sheer -size- of the place, she had to just stop and take it in for a
minute.
        "Wow," she said.
        "They call this the Lensman Room," Gryphon told the two
investigators.  Then, looking a bit sheepish, he added, "Bit silly,
really, given that I live right here in town, but the management
insists on keeping it handy in case I need a place to crash."
        "You don't own the Monolith, do you?" Catherine asked.
        "No," Gryphon replied.  "If I did, this room would be a lot
smaller.  I always feel a bit ridiculous when I stay here," he said
with a chuckle.  "Anyway, I hope it suits you ladies for the evening.
I'm sorry about the inconvenience, and it's probably for nothing, but
until the investigation into tonight's incident is complete I'll feel
better knowing you're somewhere safe."
        "How safe is safe?" Catherine wondered.
        "Well," Gryphon said, "the Monolith's in-house security force
is very good for a hotel's, and I've reinforced them with some
bluesuiters for the evening; nobody's getting onto this floor without
a fight.  The building's shielding prevents anything really crazy,
like a missile attack from outside.  And if worst comes to worst,
Raven - " He inclined his head toward his cloaked apprentice, who
nodded from her place near the door.  " - will be right outside."
        "Well, ah... like you say, there's probably no need, but
thanks for thinking of us," Catherine said.  "Right?  Sara?"
        Sara turned from where she'd been gazing thoughtfully out the
window; it was clear from her expression that she had no idea what had
been said.
        "Uh... right!" she said.  "Sure."
        Gryphon smiled - just a little sadly, Catherine thought -
crossed to the Salusian investigator's side, leaned close to her, and
murmured something Catherine couldn't hear.  Sara said something back
in the same low tone.  Gryphon put his hand on her shoulder for a
second, hesitated, then turned and went to the door.
        "Good night, Sara, Catherine," he said.  "Call if you need
anything.  Everything's paid for."
        Catherine smiled.  "Thanks, Ben.  Good night."
        Gryphon looked from one criminalist to the other for a second,
smiled again, and left the room, preceded by Raven.
        When the door closed, Sara stood looking at it for a moment as
if still seeing the man who'd just left by it; then she blinked,
returning from wherever she'd gone, and turned to Catherine.
        For a second, Catherine thought Sara was about to resume their
hanging conversation.  She was mildly put off her stride by that,
since she'd been mentally preparing her side of it based on the
assumption that she'd have to be the one to bring it up again.
        But what Sara actually said was, "Are you hungry?"
        Catherine confined her amusement to an internal smile, anxious
not to have any misunderstanding.
        "Well, you heard the man," she replied.  "It's paid for."
        So saying, Catherine looked around for a moment with a
judicious expression - the kind of expression, Sara noticed with faint
amusement, she would have worn had she been sizing up a crime scene -
before going to the desk in the far corner and opening the wide
drawer.
        "Holy cow," she said, pulling out a thickish leather-bound
volume.  "Is this the room-service menu or the Gideon Codex?"  She
flipped the volume open, thumbed through its heavy faux-parchment
pages for a moment, then said, "Menu.  Know what you want?  I think
pretty much everything is in here."
        Sara considered for a microsecond and then said, "Belgad shyam
with extra klor."
        Catherine looked puzzled.  "I thought you were a vegetarian,"
she said.
        "I was," Sara replied casually.  "I was also blonde once.
Things change."
        "OK, just asking," Catherine said.  "... You were blonde
once?"
        "For a couple days.  High school experiment," Sara said,
shrugging.
        "Ah," said Catherine with an all-is-explained nod.  She
thumbed through the book, found the page she was looking for, and
said, "They have a belgad-and-chicken-shyam combo plate.  'Serves
four.'"
        "It's good cold," Sara observed in a speculative tone.
        Catherine glanced up from the book, caught her eye, and
smiled, then picked up the phone and started ordering more food than
an entire shift of criminalists could realistically expect to eat.
        While her blonde colleague took care of that, Sara wandered
aimlessly around the room for a minute, idly touching this and that,
as if trying to think what to do with herself.
        When Catherine got off the phone and turned to report that
their food would be up in half an hour, she was taken aback to find
Sara opening up her field kit on the coffee table.
        "Why did you bring your kit?" Catherine wondered.
        "Are you kidding?" Sara replied with a broad smile, broad
enough to show the little gap between her front teeth.  "It's got all
my favorite toys in it!  You know, when I got my first one of these,
back on Salusia?  I took it home with me that night and processed my
whole -house-.  Here - check this out."
        She picked her ALS out of the kit, put on her filter goggles,
climbed the two steps onto the bed dais, and whipped the coverlet off
the bed with a dramatic air.  Then she flipped the light source into
her hand, thumbed it on, tilted it to read the setting on the dial,
and gave a snort of laughter.
        "Well," she said.  "This is another one of those little
forensic facts I'll carry to my grave: Thermoptic camouflage membrane
fluoresces at the same wavelength as human seminal fluid."
        "... Really," Catherine observed with raised eyebrows.
        "Mm-hmm," Sara replied, turning the device so her blonde
colleague could read the dial.
        "That's... fascinating," Catherine said, in a tone of voice
that said she really thought it was, but found it a bit disturbing
that she did.
        "Anyway," Sara said, handing her a second filter visor.
"Take a look here."
        Catherine smiled indulgently.  She was glad to see that Sara
was bouncing back from the stress of the evening, but she didn't
really need to see -this- show again; it was one of the first really
jarring experiences of any criminalist's career, and she'd had hers a
long time ago.
        "I already know what nests of horrors hotel beds are, Sara,"
she said.  "You don't need to rub it - ... would you look at that!"
        "Isn't this amazing?" Sara said enthusiastically.  "I was here
last August for a suspicious-circs.  Couldn't believe my eyes.  I
thought my ALS was malfunctioning."
        "You've got to be kidding.  Let me see the setting you're
using."
        Sara gave her a smug little grin and showed her the dial
again.  "It's no trick.  There isn't a stain on these sheets."
        "That is incredible," Catherine mused, running a hand over the
sheet.  "You saw this in a regular guest room?  It's not just this
room?  Because I could almost see that here - this room practically
never gets used."
        "Nope.  All rooms."
        "How do they do it?"
        "No one knows.  Trade secret."  Sara handed her the ALS.
"Knock yourself out.  I'm off to print the bathroom."
        Catherine examined the bed for a moment more, then got a "wait
a second" look on her face and turned.
        "Why?" she asked.
        "Because it's fun!" Sara replied, and vanished into the
bathroom with her kit.

        Nick backed through one of the crash doors leading into the
IPO morgue.  The CSI carried two plastifoam cups, steam rising in the
conditioned air through the little holes in the covers, across the
room to the figure hunched over the desk at the far end of the room.
Both examination tables were occupied, the first one with the victim
from Nick's case.  A large 'Y' shape was cut into his chest and sewn
together with large yet even sutures.  (Nick could never shake the
immediate thoughts of Frankenstein when he saw a body like that.)
        The second table contained the just-delivered Salusian corpse.
Nick supposed that autopsy would be even easier than his had been,
given the circumstances.  But the why was less important than the who
in that case...
        "Oh, hey there, Nick.  That for me?"  Al Robbins motioned to
the cups Nick was carrying.
        "You bet, Doc.  From Greg's secret brewery in Chem.  Grissom
hates the stuff, so he has to hide his rig under the mass-spec."  Nick
handed one of the containers over.  Robbins cradled it almost
reverently as he took a sip, causing the criminalist to chuckle.
        "We're all having that kind of night, aren't we?" Nick asked.
        "You could say that," Robbins replied.  Enough time at the job
mixed with the right personality gave most coroners a singular, dark
wit.  Robbins had the personality in spades, combined with a favorite-
weird-uncle quality that only enhanced the effect.
        "Remind me never to get into a gunfight with Catherine," he
observed dryly, nodding at the dead Salusian.  "Eight shots, eight
hits, all within the 8-ring, all potentially fatal.  Any one of five
would have been sufficient to cause instant death.  It was over before
he hit the ground."
        Nick snorted and voiced his previous thought.  "No kidding.
That post ought to be even easier than my vic's was."  Robbins stopped
in mid-pull from his coffee and looked over the cup at Nick for a
moment.  Nick caught it, and the smile melted from his face.
        "What.  What's that look for?  That look always makes me
nervous, Doc."
        Robbins cleared his throat.  "Well, Nick... hell.  I should be
thanking you, really.  This is one of the most fascinating posts I've
ever run."
        The coroner walked over to the body in question and rezzed up
a free-floating holographic display.  "You've already met Mr. Jason
Walker of 718 Baker Street, Crescent Heights.  Caucasian male human,
thirty-six years old.  It certainly looked like a fall from a roof
could have killed him.  Broken neck at the fourth cervical vertebra,
broken back at the seventh thoracic vertebra - "
        "That neck injury could have been fatal," Nick interrupted.
He did not like where this was headed.
        "Certainly, if it had occurred before death.  Tissue damage in
the area of the break says the injury was post-mortem."
        "He was dead when he hit the ground?  What about his back?"
        "He was alive when that injury occurred.  I also should note
that he was in the early stages of a rare form of osteoporosis.  His
bones were slightly atrophied.  That probably played a part in his back
injury, but I'm not sure how yet, and... well.  Lets just say I haven't
put it together with the other evidence yet."
        Nick looked up.  "Other evidence?"
        Robbins tapped the "screen" with a fingertip, causing a series
of images to flicker in the air.  "When I turned him over, I found
this on his back."  Nick leaned in to look.
        "Is that a burn?"
        "It is.  Electrical burn, running down the top portion of his
back.  There are similar burns around his feet.  Big thunderstorm over
Crescent Heights last night... "
        Nick leaned back and nodded, smile slowly growing across his
face again.  "Lightning.  Certainly would explain why he fell,
wouldn't it.  Up on the roof in a thunderstorm?  What was this guy... 
think... ing."  Doc Robbins still had his blank I'm-not-done-yet
face on.  "No?"
        "Oh, indeed, he was most likely struck by lightning.  I can't
say exactly when, but the neck injury does fit in with a fall from
that height.  If the lightning caused him to fall, though, the events
would have been close enough together that the neck injury wouldn't
have been so clearly post-mortem."  Nick looked crestfallen again.
"Besides, I do have a definite cause of death that assures me the
lightning strike was post-mortem."
        Robbins walked over to the counter next to the table and
picked up a glass container.  He brought it back and handed it to
Nick.  It contained a small amount of frothy, pinkish tinged liquid.
Nick looked at it and looked back at the coroner.
        "This is... ?"
        "That is the contents of his lungs.  Approximately 300 ccs of
water.  Your vic drowned."
        Nick furrowed his brow in concentration.  "Well, big
rainstorm, if he was stuck on the roof with a busted back... I've seen
people drown in less.  Maybe he died up there from that and the
lightning blew him off... wait."  Robbins was grinning the humorless
grin of an impatient teacher.  "What's all that foam in the water?"
        "When a humanoid aspirates fresh water, like rainwater, the
water gets absorbed into the bloodstream in an effort to dilute the
blood's salt content," Robbins said.
        "Right, yeah.  Equilibrium," Nick said.
        Robbins nodded, satisfied that his pupil was keeping up with
him so far.  "The blood thins, red blood cells are destroyed - the
victim loses the ability to efficiently process oxygen, leading to
asphyxiation.
        "When someone aspirates -salt- water," Robbins went on, "water
in the bloodstream is pulled into the lungs for the exact same reason,
just in reverse.  The blood thickens, increasing the workload on the
heart.  The extra water being drawn into the lungs mixes with air
being drawn in - "
        " - creating a foam which also decreases the ability of the
lungs to take in air."  Nick nodded, getting the gist of what the
doctor was saying.  He stopped in mid-nod as the rest of its meaning
hit him.  "Wait.  Are you saying that - "
        "Your vic drowned in salt water, Nick.  Last time I checked,
that doesn't fall from the sky.  Not in Avalon County, anyway."
        "No."  Nick was dazed.  "No, it doesn't."
        Robbins gestured, dismissing the holodisplay.  "I'm still
waiting for the bloodwork and tox screen.  That might sort out a few
more details."
        The CSI shook his head and smiled.  "How does somebody break
his own back, drown in -salt water- in the middle of a -thunderstorm-,
then get on his own roof, get struck by lightning... "  At this point,
Nick had to laugh.  "... and then fall off?"
        Robbins, sympathetic but still smiling, picked up his coffee
again and took a sip.  "That's your job, Nick.  But make sure you tell
me when you find out.  This case might just get me published."

        Catherine automatically glanced at the clock when the knock at
the door came, which is how she knew twenty-four minutes had elapsed
since she'd called for room service.
        Even with all the security they had in place, she still felt
vaguely nervous about opening the door.  She wished Grissom hadn't
taken her sidearm away from her, even if she did recognize the need.
        She went to the security panel, switched it on, and saw in the
fisheye view of the hallway outside that Raven was still standing next
to the double doors.  The liveried guy with the cart of food seemed to
have passed her inspection, so Catherine opened the door.
        "Good evening, Catherine!" said the room-service waiter
brightly as he wheeled in the cart.  "And how are we this evening?"
        Catherine turned to give him a look and ask him if it was the
Monolith's policy for the waiters to be quite so familiar with the
guests, when she suddenly recognized him.
        "Greg!" she blurted, astonished.  "What are you doing here?!"
        "Delivering your dinner," Greg Sanders replied with a cheerful
grin.  "Tonight my name is... "  He glanced at the nametag attached to
his snow-white uniform jacket.  "... Billy del Toro."
        Catherine gave him a look that combined amusement and
skepticism.  "Uh-huh," she said.  "Well, you're certainly full of
bull.  I hope you didn't stuff that outfit's owner in a laundry basket
or something."
        Greg looked hurt.  "I am a man of peace and refinement,
Catherine," he said.  "Mr. del Toro is enjoying his night off at the
Cobalt Club, courtesy of the Avalon County Sheriff's Department."
        Skepticism trumped amusement in Catherine's look.  "You got
Mobley to pay off a hotel waiter?" she said.
        Greg grinned again.  "Gris is billing it to the department as
part of the investigation expenses for the blimp crash," he said.
        "-Grissom- put you up to this?" Catherine asked.  "I thought
he was trying to discourage your secret-agent fetish."
        "It's a special occasion," he said.  "You think he's willing
to let anyone we don't know in this room tonight?  He's nervous enough
about having Raven out there, and she's a -Lensman-."  He leaned
confidentally toward her and added with a smug nod, "I had to convince
him she's OK."
        Catherine arched an eyebrow, the skeptical look completely
overtaking her face now.  "-You- did," she said.
        "Uh-huh," said Greg, nodding.
        Catherine studied his face for a second, trying to figure out
if he was bullshitting her.  Greg was a good kid, but sometimes he had
a tendency to tell tales taller than a strict interpretation of
reality would allow - like the time he told Nick Stokes that he'd been
scuba diving on Earth's Great Barrier Reef, when it was widely known
that he'd never been to the Centaurus Sector, let alone Earth.
        He looked sincere this time, though - when Greg was giving you
a line of shit, you could usually tell it from his eyes - so rather
than just tell him she thought he was lying, she opted for the less
confrontational,
        "And you know Raven from where?"
        Greg shrugged nonchalantly.  "We hooked up at a goth club in
Claremont one time.  She likes my poetry."
        Catherine weighed that for a second and decided she'd buy it.
        "OK," she said, smiling.  "What've you got for us?"
        "Well," said Greg, rubbing his hands together and warming to
his role, "first we - hey, where's Sara?"
        Catherine gave him a you're-not-gonna-believe-this look and
said, "She's printing the bathroom."
        Greg raised his eyebrows.  "No kidding?"
        "No kidding."
        "Just for practice?"
        Catherine rolled her eyes.  "She says it's fun."
        Greg closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose.  "Ohhh,
that is inTOLerably sexy," he said.
        Catherine gave him a blank look.
        "What?" he asked, opening his eyes and seeing her staring at
him.  "I admire dedication.  Initiative.  The drive always to better
oneself."  He grinned, eyes twinkling.  "And that cute little space
between her teeth."
        Catherine shook her head with an indulgent smile.  "Greg," she
said, "you're wading in the deep end of the pool."
        "I know it," Greg replied beatifically.  "Can I help it if I
must constantly strive for excellence?" he asked rhetorically as he
crossed the entryway and passed through the open door of the bathroom.
        The bathroom was, as befit the rest of the suite, enormous.
Greg's apartment could have fit in it.  It was full of chrome, marble,
white porcelain, and more chrome.  In short, it was a fingerprinter's
paradise - and Sara Sidle was a fiend for fingerprints.
        For a second, the bathroom looked to Greg like a furious
paintball battle had been waged in it.  There were splotches of a
dozen bright colors splashed around it, here and there - on the
mirror, around the sink, all over the counter, on the floor, on the
toilet tank, spilling over the edges of the huge porcelain bathtub.
        Then he realized it wasn't paint, it was fingerprint powder.
        Sara was kneeling in the tub (which was big enough to
accommodate three or four of her, and wasn't -that- a mental image
worth savoring, Greg mused), happily dusting the fill spout with the
fluorescent blue powder that went under the brand name "Moon Dust".
Unnoticed, Greg grinned and slipped back out to borrow something he'd
seen Catherine holding.
        Sara was in the process of printing the temperature control
knob - always good prints to be had on the temperature control knob -
when the lights suddenly went out.
        She had just enough time to stand up, turn toward the door,
and utter a querulous noise before the room suddenly filled with an
eerie blue glow that made all of the splotches, streaks, and clouds of
the different fluorescent powders she'd used flash into brilliantly
colorful light.  Then the light started blinking on and off, to the
accompaniment of a meaty, thumpy beat, turning the bathroom into a
very bizarre impromptu nightclub.
        In such disorienting conditions, it took Sara a few seconds to
realize that, among the patches of color dancing around the room with
each flick of the light, there was a face that kept appearing and
disappearing near the light source - a face with eyes that caught the
bluish light and flared like beacons every time it flashed.
        That put it all together for her - she recognized the face,
and she only knew one person whose eyes did that when exposed to an
ALS.
        The situation was so incongruously weird, and she was so
punchy from stress backlash and emotional exhaustion, that she started
laughing uncontrollably.
        That was bad, since she was standing in a bathtub, which
although dry was still rather slippery.  Before she could fall, Greg
quit making the beatbox noise with his mouth, trotted across the room,
and interposed his shoulder under her balance-seeking hand.  Standing
in the tub, she was several inches taller than he was.
        "Greg!" she sputtered, still trying to get herself under
control.  "What the hell?"
        Greg grinned, his teeth flashing in the weirdly-lit darkness -
all the illumination in the room came from the glow of the ALS in his
hand, the powders, the reflection off his Dantrovian eyes, and the
bright glow of Sara's white shirt - and said, "I saw all the
fluorescent powder strewn around and I -had- to know what it'd look
like," he said.  "Besides, I figured you'd think it was funny."
        Sara's laughter wound down to a few fitful giggles, then
ceased with a sigh as she wiped at her face.
        "Hee hee hee... hah.  Yeah," she admitted, nodding.  Then she
stretched, trying to work the I've-been-looking-down-too-long crick
out of her shoulders.  Greg was still holding the ALS, its beam aimed
at the ceiling, and as she tilted her head back, Sara noticed
something odd.  Odder than herself and Greg standing around in a
darkened bathroom, surrounded by Day-Glo patterns.
        "Greg?" she said.  "Who puts their hand there?"
        Greg looked, and sure enough, brilliantly revealed by the
fluorescent red powder she'd applied to the ceiling, there was a
perfect humanoid handprint.  Right dead-center over the tub, a
-handprint-.
        "Not me, that's for sure," Greg said.  "Too many fingers, and
besides, I'd have to go get something to stand on."  He grinned again.
"Anyway, Dr. Science, your food's getting cold."
        "Well, go turn on the lights then, DJ DNA," she replied, "so
I can get out of this tub without breaking my neck."

        Catherine Willows stood in the "living room" part of the
massive studio suite, frowning quizzically at the bathroom door.  Greg
had closed it behind him after he'd come out, grinningly relieved her
of the ALS, and tiptoed back inside, and now Catherine was wondering
what the hell all the thumpy noises and laughing were about.
        A moment later the door opened and Greg and Sara came out,
looking deeply amused about something.  Sara had smudges of
various-colored fingerprint powders on her hands and face, and Greg
had a single smear of bright blue on his nose.
        "Moon Dust.  It's very you," Catherine observed dryly.  "I
believe you were about to show us what's for dinner?"
        Greg nodded.  "Indeed I was."  The lab tech smilingly returned
the ALS to its previous holder, who looked as if she didn't quite know
what to do with it before putting it down on an end table.
        Then he set about briskly removing plates of food from the
room-service cart and arranging them on the dining table over by the
windows.  He did this with the grace of experience, albeit somewhat
out-of-practice experience - he'd been a waiter for three summers in
college, and the skills, he noticed with a bit of perverse pride, were
still with him.
        Once everything was arranged, he started whipping the covers
from the various dishes, releasing clouds of flavorful steam and
revealing a quantity of food that could only be described as
immoderate.
        "Wow.  We are -never- going to eat all this," Sara observed,
suddenly serious.
        Greg grinned - he loved the way she could turn that off and on
like a switch - and said, "I'd be happy to help."
        "Don't you have a job to do?" Catherine wondered.
        "This -is- my job tonight."
        "Grissom shut down the chem lab so you could babysit us?  With
everybody Gryphon already got to watch this place?" Sara said.
        "He wanted someone from the lab over here.  Maybe he didn't
show it," Greg said, taking a page from Sara's book and becoming
serious in an instant, "but he's really upset about you guys getting
ambushed.  I think he blames himself."
        Catherine raised an eyebrow - Greg's little flashes of insight
never failed to intrigue her - but said nothing.
        "So," Greg said, returning to his cheery self, "you're stuck
with me, at least until you're done eating."
        "We're -still- never going to eat all this stuff," Sara said.
"Not unless we get some more... "
        Suddenly she turned and looked at the doors, a smile starting
to play at her lips again.
        "... help."

        The door opened a few inches, and Greg Sanders's voice said,
"Psst.  Raven.  Come help us eat."
        "No, thanks," Raven replied, maintaining her best I'm-on-duty
face.
        "C'mon.  We've got plenty," Greg's voice whispered.  "Cath and
Sara want you to join us."
        "Really," Raven said, "I'm fi - "
        Greg's hand shot through the gap in the doors, grabbed her
arm, and hauled her into the room.  Of course she let him do it - had
she wanted to prevent it, she could have done anything from slip out
of his grasp like smoke to dislocate his arm - but it was all part of
the game.  Object for form's sake, then go along - that was Raven's
usual strategy when it came to being invited into social situations.
Old habits... 

        Across the block at HQ, Nick Stokes wandered the halls on the
tenth floor, killing time with menial tasks while mulling over the
information Robbins had given him.  He had enough experience to work
this case by himself, but was still fresh enough to be knocked back a
little bit when a case went sideways like this.  Not thinking about it
for a time helped... most of the time.  What he really needed to do
was to find -
        "Whoa!  Hey, Nick."  Barbara Gordon stopped Nick from running
her over with an outstretched palm and a half-smile.  "You need a
hyperspace vector back to this system or what?"
        Nick registered nothing but surprise for a moment, then shook
his head.  "No - sorry, Barbara.  I was just about to go looking for
you, in fact."
        "Well, you found me."  The detective held out an accordion
folder of paperwork.  "Here's all the info from your vic's neighbors
and that postal employee - he was -no- help, let me tell you."
        "That's good, we're going to need that."  Nick scrunched his
face up sympathetically at her puzzled expression and caught her up on
what had been learned from the post-mortem.  She frowned when he was
done and started rifling through the paperwork in her hand.
        "Salt water?  Wait a second... "  She pulled one of the
interview sheets out and handed it to Nick, who scanned it over.
        "Vasseck Kelshar?  What about him?"
        "Check his species."
        Nick looked down the page.  "Selkath?  OK, so... he's a fish
guy."  Nick grinned.  Barbara rolled her eyes.
        "Selkath are from the planet Manaan.  It's an ocean world and,
yes, they are an aquatic species.  'Fish guy' isn't going to win you
any sensitivity points."  Nick chuckled.  "More importantly, while they
can go for extended periods of time just making sure they have a
little moisture for their skin, most of them can't stand to be away
from their native environment.  And if this guy," she thwapped the
sheet with a finger, "has a house here, he's probably got a pool.  And
if he has a pool... "
        " ...it's filled with salt water."  Nick finished, grinning.
"I knew there was a reason I liked you."  He looked at his wristwatch.
"It's not -too- too late.  Shall we pay Mr. Kelshar a visit?"
        "Only if you can stand riding in my boring car."

        Warrick came out from behind a boulder and went to Grissom's
side.  An observer familiar with his manner would have noted a slight
hint of urgency in the investigator's always-easy stride, but there
weren't any around, since Grissom wasn't looking at him but in a
general sort of way at the crime scene.
        The supervisor stirred from his reverie as Warrick neared
him.  "Yes?"
        "How's it going over here?"
        "Fine," Grissom said.  "I think we're about done here.  You?"
        "Got something over here I want you to see."
        Grissom followed him down the slope and off to one side, past
the rough line of rocks marking the edge of the wash and up over a
little ridge.
        On the back side of the ridge were some marks in the sandy
soil - scuffs, mostly, and a couple of pressed indentations with the
ridges of fabric still clearly visible in them.
        "Did you get photos?" Grissom asked.
        Warrick nodded.  "Everything's recorded, measured, the works."
        Grissom looked at the marks on the ground, then slowly,
carefully lowered himself.  His knees fit neatly into the two lower
indentations; then his elbows matched the upper ones.
        He was looking right at the blimp gondola, and had only to
turn his head a bit to the left to see the rock where Catherine had
been temporarily felled.  The range was too far for him to see either
clearly, but - 
        He got out his flashlight and trained it on the ridgetop in
front of him.  There was a small lateral indentation there, as of
something with a hard corner that had been rested against the ground.
        "Did you get this?" he asked Warrick.
        "Yup.  And I figure it the same way you do.  Someone was
kneeling here with a pair of electrobinoculars... enjoying the show."
        Grissom got up and dusted himself off.  "Maybe.  Or maybe he
was birdwatching last week."
        Warrick shook his head.  "The knee indentations were fresh.
You could see the wrinkles where his pants bunched up.  Wind would've
ruined that kind of detail in a day or so.  And there's something
else."  He dug in his pocket and handed Grissom a small paper evidence
envelope.  "I wouldn't normally have come this far out," Warrick said,
"but I was shining my light around the perimeter and something
flashed."  He smiled wryly.  "You don't find that many reflective
things in the desert."
        Grissom nodded.  "Good catch."  He tipped the envelope's
contents into his hand and looked at it.  It was a small piece of
metal.  He turned it over in his fingertips a couple of times,
examining it from different angles.  "Curved... chrome-plated, but
only on the inside surface... and corroded around the edge."  He
looked over the object at Warrick.  "Piece of an exhaust pipe?"
        "That's what it looks like to me," Warrick replied.  "I had a
dirt bike one time, the exhaust pipe was perforated.  It rusted out
between the holes on the underside of the pipe, and pieces like that
would fall off whenever I started the thing."
        Grissom shined his light around.  "No tire marks... "  Then he
bent closer to the dusty ground.  "... but this looks familiar."  He
turned to Warrick.  "Do you have your gravitometer?"
        Warrick went to his field kit, rummaged through it, and came
up with a small wand-shaped device with a cable on one end.  A little
more rummaging produced a tricorder, that multi-sensory device most
beloved of space explorers.  CSIs liked them too, though they often
had to use creative attachments like this one to get maximum value out
of them.
        The wand was a gravitometer, an attachment which would enable
the tricorder to better resolve local gravitic disturbances.  He
plugged it into the tricorder, set the device to AUX IN, switched on,
and aimed the wand in the direction of the marks Grissom had just
noticed on the ground.
        On the tricorder's little holographic display, a false-color
image of the area, not unlike that of a thermal imager, appeared - and
floating in the air above the ground was a ghostly green line,
feathery and indistinct.  It started out just above the marks Grissom
was pointing to, and then headed away northeast - to the horizon, or
at least the edge of the gravitometer's range.
        Grissom came up alongside Warrick and looked at the display.
        "Gravity trace," he said.  "Those marks are from a swoop's
parking skids."
        "And it's fresh," Warrick pointed out.  "This little meter
wouldn't be able to pick it up if it was more than, say, four hours
old."
        Grissom nodded, then turned to his younger associate with a
judicious look.  "Call it."
/--
        The figure knelt behind the ridge, elbows propped on the dirt,
binoculars in hand.  The sun was setting off to the right, casting
long shadows from the rocks strewn in the wash.
        He watched the two women in the white paper coveralls work.
When they reached maximum separation - the blonde all the way at the
bottom of the wash, the brunette up at the top poking in the windows
of the blimp gondola - his camouflaged colleague struck.  The blonde
went down with a disappointingly modest display of blood.  The
brunette did something with the flashlight-like thing she was holding,
then started shooting.
        The camouflaged attacker hesitated, his camo strobing, as the
brunette's second shot tagged him; then something went wrong with her
gun and he kept coming.
        Until the blonde - shit!  When had she gotten part-way upright
again? - cut him down in a hail of well-placed gunfire from behind.
He hit the dirt and skidded to a halt a few yards short of the
brunette's feet.
        The observer lowered his binoculars until the front edge of
their rectangular casing lightly touched the sand.  He remained where
he was, frozen, as the blonde edged her way up the slope toward the
dead attacker, her weapon still held at the ready.  He lowered a hand
to his own holstered sidearm - he could probably take them both out
from here, but - 
        - another person appeared down in the wash, midway between the
blonde and the brunette: an indistinct, shadowy figure in a blue
cloak.  She was almost invisible in the gathering evening, and she'd
appeared out of nowhere with a strange, twisting thickening of the
shadows.  That meant she was one of the IPO chief's special agents,
and that meant more wouldn't be far behind.
        No fool, the observer got to his feet, turned, climbed aboard
the waiting swoop, and beat it, leaving behind a flake from the rusty
exhaust pipe that was blown free when he started the turbine.
--/
        Grissom pursed his lips thoughtfully, looking at the ghostly
gravity trace on the display of Warrick's tricorder.
        "We're going to have to follow this trace," he said, "and do
it fast, before it fades."
        Warrick glanced up sharply from the display.  "It's a thousand
miles to New Avalon from here.  He can't have been going anywhere else."
        "Probably not, but we have to be sure," Grissom said.
        "Lot of ground to cover," Warrick pointed out.
        Grissom shrugged with a boyish grin.  "Somebody's got to fly
that Pelican home," he pointed out.
        Warrick watched his boss walk off toward the parked aerodyne,
then grabbed up his field kit and trotted after him.
        "Wait a minute, you know how to fly a Pelican?"

        "So," Nick said as they turned onto Baker Street and came to a
stop, "I thought Selkath were peaceful and detested physical violence."
        Barbara put the car in park and shut it off.  "Well, they are,
for the most part.  But that's the funny thing about broad statements.
There's always some joker that doesn't play by the rules."  Nick
laughed as they got out of the car and started up the walkway.
"Besides, you never heard of the Hrakert Rift incident?"
        "The Hrakert what?  I must have skipped that day in Galactic
History."
        Barbara shook her head.  "Never studied.  Ask Grissom
sometime, he knows everything."  Nick snorked and Barbara knocked on
the door, putting the brakes on any more conversation.  She looked to
Nick quickly.  "Let me do the talking.  I'll try to work it out so you
can get a sample from the pool, but it might take a few minutes.
Selkath are... interesting to deal with."
        The CSI nodded and put his 'game face' on.  It was standard
for the detective to take point in a situation like this anyway, but
it was nice to have a plan ahead of time.
        The door opened, revealing a humanoid shape in something that
looked to be a cross between a leather riding suit and one of the
vacuum getups Nick had seen on people floating around the hulls of
starships in spacedock, only without the helmet.  Probably a
light-duty encounter suit used to keep the bulk of the body happy
in what, to a Selkath, was an alien atmosphere.
        The head that topped the suit was the real difference,
however.  Long and squat with a smooth, plated top surface, the back
of which ended in a rounded horizontal cone shape.  The front was
blunted, carrying the mouth which was the full width of the skull, the
jaw running a quarter of the way back in and set with a row of wide,
flat teeth.  A single nostril was mounted above that, and a long,
fleshy cheek flap hung down either side of the jaw, reminding Nick of
the mouth flaps on a manta ray.  A large black eye was set in a bony
structure on each side of the head.
        The Selkath was a little shorter than the two humans who stood
before him, and the way that made him look up at them, head swinging
back and forth, gave Nick the momentary impression of a grumpy old man
about to tell him and Gordon to get the hell off his lawn.  Nick held
his expression despite himself.
        "Hello, Mr. Kelshar.  I'm sure you remember me from yesterday,
and this is Nick Stokes from the IPO crime lab."  Nick nodded, keeping
silent.  "I'm sorry to be a bother, but I was wondering if we could
come in and ask you a few more questions about the unfortunate death
of your neighbor."
        Kelshar fixed his (unblinking, Nick realized, forcing down an
small shudder) stare on Barbara and held it there just long enough to
be uncomfortable, then did the same to Nick.  Nick did his best to
keep his expression even, but even that got difficult after about 10
seconds or so.  Gordon seemed to know what she was doing, though, so
he fought the urge to say anything.
        Finally he looked back to Barbara, nodded his head down once,
and uttered a grudgingly aloof, "All right."
        With that, Kelshar turned back inside, leaving them standing
at the open door.  Barbara glanced over to Nick and let out a quiet
breath.  He shook his head a little and let her take the lead inside,
closing the door behind them.
        As they went into the house, the first thing that struck Nick
was how bare the place was.  There were basic furnishings and such,
the guy could cook a meal if he needed to, but that was about it.  It
reminded Nick of the model houses you saw in new housing developments
(of which New Avalon, being a very young city, had its share, though
this neighborhood wasn't one of them) - furnished but unlived-in.
        There were places for Kelshar and Barbara to sit, but not
Nick.  He didn't mind that much.  It gave him a reason to stand back
and look around a little.
        The criminalist half-listened to Gordon as she went through
what seemed like a rather complicated series of questions and answers.
It struck him as similar to some of the more formal Japanese
conversations he'd heard elsewhere - lots of honorifics and such -
only without the formality.  Kelshar seemed awfully curt, but he
wasn't kicking them out so Nick just assumed it was part of the show.
        Nick shifted position a little so he could see into the back
yard through the kitchen window.  He could see the edge of a swimming
pool, the water a deep blue-green that looked odd to Nick's eyes.  Not
the normal clear blue of a standard treated fresh-water pool.  He
grinned a little and turned back to the conversation.
        "... so it would be a great help if you could assist in
helping us discern the cause of this tragedy.  All we need is to look
around your back yard and patio for a little bit, take a sample from
your pool, and - "
        Kelshar's mood flickered from grumpy to outright angry.  "So
you think you can just come in here and tromp around looking for
whatever you like.  Typical rude primate!"
        Being the chivalrous sort, Nick took offense at someone
treating Barbara like that, and forgot the plan for a moment.  "Hey
now, there's no need to be like that, sir," he said.  "We're just
trying to do our jobs."
        The Selkath seemed to remember suddenly that there was another
lifeform in the room.  He turned to focus his indignation on Nick.
"Oh, -excuse- me.  On my planet we have no one whose job it is to
rummage through other people's living space!"
        Nick bristled.  "Look, buddy," he said, "maybe they don't have
murder investigations on your planet, but - "
        Nick was interrupted by Kelshar jumping to his feet and
emitting a rather unpleasant hiss.
        Barbara stood and turned to Nick, whispering, "(Nick.
Ixnay.)"  She turned back to Kelshar and turned on all the charm she
could muster (which was considerable).  "Please forgive my associate,
Mr. Kelshar, he is very passionate about his work."
        Kelshar turned back to Gordon, still perturbed.  "I do not
appreciate being accused in my own home.  I was not even here the
night that human died."
        "Well, also understand that any evidence we collect goes just
as far to clear you as accuse you.  We have to rule you out as a
suspect to be one hundred percent sure of who did indeed commit this
crime."
        The Selkath considered this, and then waved in Nick's general
direction.  "Fine.  Go do your work, but be quick about it."
        Nick set his jaw, swallowed any other remarks he might have
wanted to make, and left Barbara to smooth things over further.
        The CSI was kneeling next to his open kit at the side of the
pool when Barbara came out about ten minutes later.  As she
approached, he was carefully taking a sample of the pool water with
gloved hands and a sterile plastic container.  He sealed the little
cup, jotted some notes on the side of it, and looked up at the
detective.
        "I think you pissed him off, Nick," Barbara joked.  "I'm not
an accredited xenosociologist, but that was not a happy noise."
        "Sorry about that, Barbara,"  he apologized.  "Guy got to me."
        Barbara smiled.  "I figured it was better to jump in -before-
you called the guy 'fishstick' or something."
        "Hey, I'm not a racist.  I'm just anti-asshole."
        "I know.  So, find anything?"
        "Well, the walkthrough was a bust.  Rain washed away anything
outside like footprints.  No fingerprints on anything either.
Everything inside the pool enclosure here has been cleaned recently.
So all we've got is this pool water, which is definitely salt water,
but I'll need Greg to compare it to the sample from the vic's lungs to
see if it's a match.  Can we hold this guy?"
        Barbara thought that over.  "Well, this is probably the most
reasonable place for Walker to have died.  But... if that's all we've
got?  Kelshar's just barely cooperative now.  If we drag him to HQ and
then don't have enough to go with from there right away, he's going to
be a pain in the ass to deal with later."
        Nick nodded.  "Think he's a flight risk?"
        "Hell, anyone is under the right circumstances.  I don't think
we have to worry about that yet, but I'm going to have a cruiser on
this street for the next 24 hours just in case.  Even if he doesn't
try to take off, having somebody follow him around might tell us
something."
        "Cool."  Nick stowed his gear and snapped off his gloves.
"I'm done here.  Let's get this stuff back."

        The table in the Lensman Room carried nothing but the stripped
ruins of what had been a sumptuous meal when Greg Sanders sat back
from it and tossed a mint into his mouth.
        "The food's not half-bad here," he remarked.
        The meal had been a convivial enough occasion, under the
circumstances, but as it went on it had become more and more subdued,
with the food and the advancing lateness serving to quash Sara's
punchiness.  Greg was actually rather glad for that; the effect had
started to vaguely disturb him.  There'd been a strange, manic edge to
it.  The bathroom had been fun, but she hadn't come -down- from that
for an unhealthy length of time.
        Sensing that the mood in the room was changing, he got up and
dusted his hands theatrically.
        "Well, ladies," he said, "I've had a delightful time, but I
suppose I should probably go and do at least a -little- work tonight.
If you need anything, and everybody else who's above me on your list
is in the bathroom or something, you know my extension... "
        Catherine gave him a little smile and got up to see him out.
        "Thanks, Greg," she told him quietly at the door.  "If you
tell anyone I said it I'll deny it, but... I'm glad you came," she
said with a wry grin.
        Greg chuckled.  "G'night, Catherine.  Glad I could help."
        She patted him on the shoulder and shut the door.
        Greg stood in the hall for a moment with a pleased look on his
face, then looked around and noticed that Raven was standing next to
the door again.  He hadn't noticed her leave the table, but there she
was.  Seeing him look her way, she nodded once, her eyes grave and
unreadable in the shadow of her hood.
        He nodded back, took two steps toward the elevator, then
paused and turned back.
        "Say, uh... Raven," he said.  "Listen, I'm, uh, I'm off
Saturday... "
        Raven tilted her head slightly, giving him a look that said,
"Oh yes?"
        "And, uh, you want to go to Coffee Kingdom?"  Greg asked.
Then he smiled ingratiatingly and said, "It's open mic... "
        Raven gazed silently back at him for a moment, then said,
        "Sure."
        Greg shrugged.  "Oh, OK, well, if you change your mind -
wait.  Did you just say 'sure'?"
        "Yes."
        "As in, sure you'll go to CK with me Saturday?"
        "Yes."
        Greg raised his eyebrows.  "... Were you being sarcastic?"
        "Astonishingly enough," Raven replied dryly, "no."
        "Oh!  Well, uh, OK, cool!  Where do you want to meet?"
        "You know where Strangefate Books is?"
        The Dantrovian grinned.  "I can guess."
        Raven produced the faintest trace of a smile for that.
        "OK!  Well," Greg said.  "See you Saturday, then, at... 4ish?"
        "Sounds good."
        Greg made sure to restrain his whoop of triumph and victory
dance until he was safely in the elevator and at least two floors
down.

        Catherine shut the door behind Greg, turned around, and leaned
against it, surveying the room.  The events of the last few hours were
starting to blur surreally in her mind.  She was tired, hurt, frazzled, 
her nerve endings tingling while the rest of her felt hollow and weird.  
It wasn't a good time to be having a serious conversation.
        And so, of course, it was exactly the time when she most
needed to have one.
        Sara was standing at the window - well, inasmuch as the entire
north wall of the room was window.  She had one hand flat against the
transpex and was looking out through her reflection at the lights of
the city, stretching away to the glittering arc of Crescent Heights
with the black slash of the lakeshore to the right.  The Monolith had
the best sightlines in the city; every guidebook said so, and now
Catherine could see that it was true.
        She crossed the room to stand at the window herself, a
respectful distance away from Sara.  Her gaze swept over the near
city, moved along the radiating boulevards and out to the distant,
semi-orderly grid of the Heights, when something amusing occurred to
her.  Before she could stop herself, she'd said it out loud:
        "I can see my house from here."
        Sara snorted softly, a little smile stealing onto her face for
a millisecond.  The Salusian folded her arms and returned to grave
contemplation of the streets for a few minutes.
        Then,
        "Catherine?"
        "Mm?"
        "Can I ask you something?"
        "Sure."
        Sara turned to face Catherine, her expression unusually solemn
even for her.  "How long have you known... the Chief?"
        Catherine smiled slightly.  "Well, hm, let me see.  Twenty...
seven years?"  She raised an eyebrow at her own calculation.  "Can
that possibly be right?  I guess it is.  Why?"
        Sara turned away, walked around the table and back to the
living-room part of the studio suite, and sat down in one of the
armchairs, looking pensive.  Catherine followed, sat at the end of the
couch, and pulled her tired legs up under her, giving the Salusian
time to mull over whatever it was.
        Finally Sara asked, "Is the way he's acting lately... normal?"
        A-ha, thought Catherine; but she put the reaction aside and
considered the question on its merits.
        "Ah.  Hm," she said.  "Well, normal is kind of a relative
concept for a guy like Ben.  He's a man working through a lot of
grief - more grief than you or I have the perspective to really
appreciate.  So no, he's not entirely normal.  But that doesn't mean
he's not really feeling what he's feeling."
        Sara glanced sharply up - she hadn't been prepared for
Catherine to cut to the heart of the matter quite that quickly, though
in retrospect she should have been.  She squashed her instinctive
reaction, which was to get prickly again like she had in the desert
that afternoon.  The reaction was so ingrained, so reflexive, that she
had to consciously remind herself that she -wanted- to have this
conversation, wanted to get Catherine's perspective on what was
happening.
        She smiled wearily.  "That transparent, huh."
        Catherine shrugged.  "You get to be my age," she said, "you've
been by that bus stop a few times."  Then she sat back, regarded Sara
for a few seconds, and said, "Let me tell you a little story about Ben
Hutchins that might give all this some perspective.
        "When I first moved to this town, downtown was a skeleton,
half the roads weren't even -paved- yet, but there were already
three-quarters of a million people.  It was like a... a giant version
of a gold-rush town in a history vid.  I was 18, I'd never been away
from home before, I didn't know anybody - hell, I barely knew anyTHING.  
We both know too well what happens to girls like that in towns like
that."
        Sara nodded silently.  She'd seen the results way too often.
Everyone in urban police work had.
        Over the next few minutes, Catherine explained in broad
strokes how that unfortunate fate -hadn