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“Yes. And a few stochastic gravitational fluctuations no doubt cause a little bit of scatter at the end. Indeed when that happens, those pebbles must usually miss entirely.”

“But some just barely miss.”

“Exactly. Like these little pits we see. Caused perhaps by a spaceship that changed flight plans, or the like. So maybe one or two percent of the pebbles experience a clinamen of this sort, or so Passepartout guesses.”

Now the wrench in her gut was getting severe. “So someone is doing this on purpose.” She waved at the abandoned terrarium.

“That’s right. And also, a qube has to be involved.”

“Shit.” She put an arm across her stomach. “But how… how could someone…”

The inspector put a little hand to her arm. Ygassdril floated under them, cold and dead. A gray potato. “Let’s get back to the Justice.”

B ack inside the Interplan hopper, after they had eaten a meal, Swan stayed up late in the galley, and again the inspector did too.

Swan, who had not been able to stop thinking about the day’s revelations, said, “So, all this means that whoever-”

Genette raised both hands and stopped her. “Qubes off again, please.”

After they had both turned off the devices, she continued: “That means whoever did this could have done it years ago.”

“Or at least quite some time ago, yes. Some stretch of time.”

“And there wasn’t a single launch site.”

“No. But maybe there is still the launch mechanism. Their gun, or catapult, or whatever it was, would have to be a very precise instrument. A particularly fine bit of manufacturing. The tolerances Passepartout suggested were really quite fine, requiring molecular printers and so forth. We might be able to find the factory that made something so particular-we’re looking into that. And then, who might have ordered it.”

“What else?” Swan asked.

“We are looking for the program for the factory, and the design of the instrument. Its printing instructions. Also the orbital program needed to make the calculations. Qubes don’t make that kind of thing up without being asked to do it-or so we have been assuming until now. The qube that did it would have that action recorded in it, as I understand it. And so the program is likely to still exist somewhere. And there are still only a finite number of factories making qubes.”

“Couldn’t they have destroyed their qube when they were done using it?”

“Yes. But there’s no reason to assume they’re done.”

This was a chilling thought.

“We must look for the qube, the orbit program, the factory program, also the factory, and the launcher itself, and whatever the launch platform was.”

Swan frowned. “All those could be destroyed, or cleaned pretty clean.”

“It’s true. You see the nature of the problem very quickly. Even so, this investigation has to turn into a check of the records, a kind of bookkeepers’ search. As our work so often becomes.” Another ironic smile: “It is not often as dramatic as is sometimes portrayed.”

“That’s fine. But while you’re doing that, what else can we do? What can I do?”

“You can look at the other end of the problem. And I will join you in that.”

“The other end?”

“The motive.”

“But how would you determine that? And having done so, how would you locate it? Doing something like this is so sick that it makes me sick to think about it. It’s evil.”

“Evil!”

“Yes, evil!”

Genette shrugged. “Putting that aside, let us presume anyway that it is rare impulse. And so it may leave signs.”

“That someone hates Terminator? That someone is capable of killing worlds?”

“Yes. It’s not a common impulse. It may therefore stick out. And besides, it may be a political act, a kind of terrorism or war. It may be meant to convey some message, or force some action. So we can follow it that way.”

Swan felt her stomach clenching. “Damn. I mean-there’s never been a, a war in space. We’ve managed without them.”

“Until now.”

That gave her pause. For a generation at least there had been warnings from people all over the system that the conflicts between Earth and Mars could lead to war, or that Earth’s writhing problems were going to drag everyone down with them. Little wars and terrorist attacks and sabotages had never entirely disappeared on poor Earth, and Swan had sometimes thought that diplomats played on the notion that Earth’s discord might spread, in order to boost their own prestige, their own budgets. Diplomacy as necessary peacemaking in a system on the brink-it had been very convenient for them. But what if it turned out to be true?

She said, “I guess I thought spacers knew enough to avoid all that. That once we got out here we would do better. Be better.”

“Don’t be a fool,” the inspector said crisply.

Swan gritted her teeth. After an intense struggle for self-control she said, “But it could be some psychopath. Someone who has lost their mind and is killing just because they can.”

“There are those too,” Genette agreed. “And if one of them got hold of a qube-”

“But anyone can get a qube!”