Clarion

SILENCE DOMINATED THE FLIGHT BACK TO THE

hotel. Erick Frakes spoke only after the Aire Vega had touched down on the roof.

"Sabre's upset. He's been trying to get a lead on this place Clarion for three years. Now that he has one, he doesn't want to let it get away." Paul was still angry and didn't try to hide it.

"Sabre's a typical UNSA bureaucrat, and Security bureaucrats are the worst. He's shut up in his dark little world, too paranoid to be honest with people even* when he needs their help. As far as I'm concerned, he can go to hell."

"Yeah, well." Frakes rubbed the side of his nose and turned to look out through the front screen.

"It's important. If you hear anything, you ought to tell him. Otherwise things could get rough." Paul gave him a cold stare. "Is that a threat?" Frakes shrugged. "I don't make threats. Not my style." He pressed something on the roof console, and the Aire Vega's doors swung up. "But other people don't have that problem."

Like Lon Bekman, Paul thought as he climbed 39

_____ William Greenleaf 40

out to stand on the roof. He remembered Ogram's words: High Elder Brill has ten more like him. He turned back to Frakes. How much does he

really knowl "Sabre's got the idea Dorland came from this place Clarion. That's what the questioning was all about."

"Let's say he's got a strong suspicion about it."

"He never did say why Clarion is so important. I've never even heard of the place. It would help if we knew what he really wants."

"That should be obvious. He wants to find Clarion. He thinks Mr. Avery knows the planet's stream coordinates."

"He wants to ... find it?"

Frakes's eyes flicked to Dorland, then back to Paul. "Sabre's not a bad guy, but you're right about one thing. He's too hung up on secrecy." He got out of the flyer and came around to Paul's side. He glanced around the parking area, then leaned back against the craft with his arms folded across his broad chest. "Clarion was landed about two hundred years ago. Beautiful place from what I've heard—a clear ninety-nine."

"I'm going in," Dorland said abruptly, and turned to walk toward the building's entrance. Paul started to call after him, but Frakes was talking again.

"Five hundred colonists set out for the planet on the sector ship Vanguard. That was back in the early years, when everyone was bailing out of Terra. Clarion should have been a great world. But it got lost."

"Lost?"

"The planet. Vanguard, five hundred colonists—

the whole bunch."

A vague memory surfaced—a story Paul had

heard a long time ago. The early years, Frakes had called them, and Paul knew he meant the Expansion Era—the first century after the stream was