Free A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt Page B

sponder?"
    "How long would it take to get an answer?"
    "If he replies right away, about ten days. The problem is that his code shows inactive on the last four readouts. He doesn't seem to be answering his mail."
    "Book passage," I said, reluctantly. "It's probably just as well to go in person anyhow."
    "Very good. I'll try to let him know you're coming."
    "No," I said. "Let's keep it a surprise."
    Page 31

    V.
    One gazes through the walls of Pellinor into the great, curious eyes of the sea beasts, and wonders who indeed is peering out, and who peering in—?
    —Tiel Chadwick, Memoirs
    THE WORLD AND the city are both named Pellinor, after the ship captain who first descended onto the few square kilometers of earth that were once the only place in all that global ocean where a man could set foot. But to anyone who has since stood beneath the invisible walls that now hold back the sea, who has looked up at the shadowy forms gliding through bright green water, the name by which the place is commonly known is far more appropriate.
    Fishbowl.
    A world. A sickle-shaped spate of land hewed from the sea. A state of mind. The inhabitants are fond of saying that no place in or beyond the Confederacy induces a sense of mortality quite like Fishbowl.
    Barely half the size of Rimway, the planet is nevertheless massive: its gravity is .92 standard.
    It orbits the ancient class G sun Gideon, which in turn moves in a centuries-long swing around Heli, a dazzling white giant. Both suns have planetary systems, not unusual in binaries when considerable distances separate the main components. But this binary is unique in a substantial way: it was once the home of an intelligent species. Hell's fourth planet is Belarius, which houses fifty-thousand-year-old ruins, and was—until the coming of the Ashiyyur—humanity's only evidence that anything else had ever gazed at the stars.
    Belarius is an incredibly savage place, a world of lush jungles, stifling humidity, corrosive atmospheric gases, strong gravity, highly evolved predators, and unpredictable magnetic storms which raise hell with equipment. It is not the sort of place to take your family.
    Fishbowl was the only easily habitable world in either system, and consequently it assumed from the beginning a strategic place in Survey thinking. When Harry Pellinor discovered it three centuries ago, he dismissed it as essentially worthless. But he had not yet found Belarius: that celebrated disaster still awaited him. And it was that latter revelation that assured Fishbowl its historic role as administrative headquarters, supply depot, and R&R retreat for the various missions trying to pry loose its secrets.
    Today, of course, investigation of Belarius had long since been given up. But Fishbowl is still prominent in Survey administration, serving as a regional headquarters. A prosperous resort area, it boasts a major university, several interworld industries, and the foremost oceanographic research center in the Confederacy. At the time of my visit, it was home to slightly more than a million people.
    One of them was Hugh Scott.
    Harry Pellinor's statue stands atop the central spire of the Executive Cluster. It is just high enough to get him above sea level. Local tradition had it that there had been extreme reluctance to honor a man whom the outside world associated primarily with disaster and precipitous retreat, the man whose crew had, by and large, been eaten.
    It wasn't, people thought, the proper sort of image they wanted to project.
    I suppose not. But the city had prospered anyway.
    It was filled with well-heeled tourists, wealthy retirees, and assorted technocrats, the latter employed mostly by the tach communications industry, which was then still in its infancy.
    The downside port of entry is located on a floating platform, from which one can get over-water tubular transportation into midtown Pellinor. Or, if the weather is good, one can walk across any of several float bridges. My first