"Joy, you stay on the ship," Hannibal ordered as they completed the landing at the power plant. "Once we've checked the place out we'll give you the all clear. Keep her ticking over, just in case we need a quick take off."

"Right, Colonel."

Although sensors detected no sign of another ship close by, Hannibal wanted to secure the power plant before he allowed Joy to start her repair work. The radiation limited the sensor range and a ship could lurk just out of that range and be here in minutes.

The three men left the flight deck and made for the airlock. The power plant didn't have an underground landing pad for a ship the size of the Chicago, so they had landed by an entrance hatch and an automated tube snaked out to attach itself to the side of the ship, covering the ship's airlock door.

The team moved down the walkway cautiously. The skin of the tube was altogether too thin, in Face's opinion. He knew force fields shielded it too, but with the damage to the equipment how did any of them know for sure the force field generators hadn't been smashed?

Hannibal tapped in a code Joy had given them when they reached the door at the end of the tube. The door didn't budge. Hannibal moved back and looked at Face, who stepped up at once, already removing a couple of probes from his pocket. He flipped the cover off the locking mechanism and smiled. A Bowman 961-47. Easy. He could bypass one of these in his sleep. Someone had messed with it, to stop the code working, but a bypass here, a rerouting there...

"Try it now."

Hannibal did and the door slid open. He grinned at Face and nodded.

"Face, my boy, you're worth your weight in gold."

"No," Face said. "I'm worth BA's weight in gold."

"Even when I'm wearing my gold," BA put in and Face basked in the rare praise as they stepped into the airlock and the exterior door started to close behind them.

"You're absolutely certain life support is on?" Hannibal asked BA.

"That's what our sensors show, man."

"Think that means they're still in there?" Face asked. Since the plant was unmanned, it usually had no heat light and air. But as they approached it, the scanners had shown that the life support had been engaged several hours ago and left running.

"Soon find out," Hannibal said. He pressed a button to open the interior door and stepped back from it. Gripping their rifles, they all waited for the interior door to open. When it did, they found a stairway leading down into the plant, lit only by dim red emergency lights.

"Night vision glasses till we get the lights on," Hannibal said, and they all donned the goggles. "You both sure you know your routes?" Face and BA nodded. They'd learnt the layout of the plant by heart on the way. "Rendezvous in the operations room in thirty minutes." Hannibal tapped his earpiece radio. "Joy, we're inside. Stand by until you hear from us."

"Roger, Colonel." Joy's voice sounded in their ears. "Good luck."

"Okay," Hannibal said to the other two. "Move out."

They set off into the darkness.

-o-O-o-

Murdock had begun to wonder if he'd been played for a sucker, when he reached the coordinates for Seth Calvin's underground home. The ground beneath him appeared to be bare rock with no sign of an entrance. He'd also expected a mass of antenna and detectors, after what Joy had told him about Calvin's scanning equipment. But he saw no sign of anything like that either.

Nevertheless, his scans showed some pretty serious power sources below him, so he knew there had to be something down there. He opened a channel and started hailing on the frequency Joy had told him to use. After a few moments, his instruments told him his transmission had been received, although no answer came through.

"Mr Calvin?" Murdock said into the mic. "I know you're monitoring this. I'm HM Murdock. You don't know me, but I've come to ask for your help on behalf of Galileo City and the rest of Ganymede."

No answer. Murdock went on.

"Joy Frost told us you have powerful scanning equipment here and can track the movements of ships. All I'm asking for is any data you have recorded about those movements."

He waited again and still nothing. The transmission was definitely still being monitored though. He tried again.

"I know that you know about the trouble that's been going on. The man causing all the trouble is a notorious war criminal. Wouldn't you like to help bring him to justice?"

At last, an answer came through, a man's voice.

"Go away."

Murdock grinned. Okay, 'go away' wasn't good, but it was still a conversation. Once you got them talking you had 'em, Face always said. Of course, he had been talking about women at the time.

"Mr Calvin, I'm not asking you to do this out of the goodness of your heart. Think of your own interests. Kyle has been attacking your neighbours. What will you do if he comes after you?"

Murdock didn't even get a repeat of 'go away'. Just more silence. Oh well, he thought, time for the big guns.

"I'm sending a video transmission, Mr Calvin, please watch it." He looked into the camera and grinned. "Hi. Now, um, assuming the sight of my devastating good looks hasn't induced you to change your mind already, let me just offer a little incentive."

He reached over, picked up a thin package from his console, and held it up in view of the camera.

"Joy said you've not had any of this in months. At least I think this is what she was talking about." He grinned and waved the packet. "It's the hard stuff, Mr Calvin. Belgian. Ninety five percent cocoa." Murdock sniffed the packet and said "Mmmm oh yeah!" though in truth it was too well sealed for him to smell the ridiculously expensive chocolate inside.

Silence came back and he had almost reached the point of giving up and going away as requested, when the voice came though again.

"Landing pad is to starboard."

Murdock checked out the starboard visual scan, just in time to see what appeared to be another bit featureless rocky ground shimmer and vanish, revealing a landing pad. When he touched down it began to sink into the ground at once. Doors closed above him and Murdock guessed the holographic ground had already reappeared. Nice little set up for a man who liked to be alone. The scanner array must be camouflaged the same way.

Long way down, he thought, as he did his post flight check and got ready to leave the small ship. When the elevator finally stopped his instruments showed they had sunk almost a half a kilometre under the surface. No question, this was the home of a man who valued his privacy.

And who apparently valued really good dark chocolate, so Murdock stepped out of the shuttle with the chocolate bar in one hand and a friendly smile on his face, and no illusions about which had got him inside.

-o-O-o-

"No." Russ folded his arms and stuck his chin out. "I won't do it."

Ted and Amy looked at each other. Ted had just asked Russ to attempt to boost a signal through to the Chicago. However, the boy wasn't being cooperative.

"Frosty didn't do anything. She wouldn't. I don't have to help you. I'm going home." He turned and stamped out of the sheriff's office.

Ted sighed, shook his head and started working on his computer terminal.

"Probably wouldn't have worked anyway, especially if they're still in transit. I'll try to connect to the plant via the hard line. They may already have arrived."

Amy watched him working at the computer for a moment, and then glanced down at her notebook, at the scrawled words there.

Access to workshop? The question has an easy answer. Anybody. The sign on the door had said it all. Please Walk In. That door was normally unlocked. Anyone could have gone in there.

Technical skills? Well Joy had those, but Russ probably had too. But he'd reported the transmission. Amy sucked on the end of her pen. Of course, if it had already served its purpose, then reporting it set Joy up and made him appear innocent.

She shook her head. No, that didn't make sense. Why report it at all in that case? If it had served its purpose and nobody else had detected it, then just shut it off and nobody would ever know it had been sent. Anyway, he's just a kid, how could be be involved with Kyle?

She tapped her pen a couple of times then wrote down, Father. Russ Lambert could be acting under orders from his father. But could he really pull off acting so convincingly? His anger at the sheriff, his defence of Joy, appeared sincere, his loyalty to her very apparent.

Amy looked at the words Technical skills? again and knew that it had the same answer as Access to workshop? Anyone might have the skills, but could have kept them secret. Alternatively, they could just have very clear instructions.

So it could still be anyone. However, Joy appeared the most likely suspect on this evidence, and though Amy liked the woman, if she was the traitor then right now she could be a danger to the team. In which case Amy was all for clapping her in irons now and apologising later if they were wrong.

"Damn."

She looked up, at Ted's frowning face.

"What's wrong?" Amy had a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer. She came over and stood beside him. The computer screen displayed a message and Amy stared at it in dismay.

'Unable to connect. Target unreachable.'

"The hard line has been cut," Ted said. "There's no way to contact Colonel Smith."

-o-O-o-

A blast door opened to let Murdock out of the shuttle bay. He walked through into a short hallway with metal deck plating for the floor, but with bare rock as walls and ceiling.

Another door waited at the end and as he approached, it rolled aside with a rumble that suggesting it was also blast proof.

Seth Calvin, a tall and lean man in his late fifties, perhaps early sixties, stood in the doorway. His clothes were spattered with blue paint. Murdock even saw a few specks of it in his hair, which was still mostly black, despite his age.

"Hi," Murdock said, waving. Calvin didn't answer, just watched him with narrowed eyes. Murdock had almost reached him when a small dark shape ran out of the door and up to Murdock, who looked down startled as a black cat began to investigate his shoes. Then he smiled and bent to tickle the cat behind the ears.

"Hey, kitty, you're a pretty kitty aren't you?" He cooed. Briefly, he considered picking the cat up, but decided against it, still cautious of the man that stood waiting for him, one hand raised and resting on the top of the door frame.

"Nice cat," Murdock said, as the cat walked beside him, tail up straight like an antenna.

"Her name is Duchess."

Murdock grinned as he walked up to Calvin and offered his hand. "Good name. Pleased to meet you, Mr Calvin."

After a moment of scrutiny, from uncomfortably sharp grey eyes, Calvin took his hand off the doorframe and shook Murdock's hand quickly. The cat slalomed around the two men's legs, mewing loudly, obviously appreciating visitors more than her master.

"Come inside." Calvin turned away from the door and led Murdock into a large room, again with rock walls. Room seemed an odd word for it, Murdock thought. More like a cave, if luxuriously furnished and decorated for a cave. Though metal underneath, the floor was covered in rugs. In the centre of the room, a large leather couch held a couple of richly embroidered throws and big plump cushions. A marble-topped table stood in front of it, filled with books, papers, and pencils and a couple of empty coffee cups.

The rock walls had hangings and pictures decorating them. Murdock recognised most of the pictures as reproductions of famous paintings, but saw no sign of Calvin's own work. A couple of doors suggested more rooms though and Murdock hoped he might have the chance to nose around.

He turned from studying the space as Calvin cleared his throat.

"Oh, um, here's your chocolate." Murdock handed it over. "Enjoy."

Calvin hesitated a second then took it from Murdock and dropped it onto the table.

"Thank you."

His tone was abrupt, clearly no longer used to the social niceties. Murdock wished that wasn't the case, when he rested a hand on the soft leather of the couch, and couldn't resist caressing it. He would really love an invitation to sit on that couch. Hours in the pilot's chair had left his spine a mass of kinks.

Duchess jumped up onto the arm of the couch beside Murdock and shoved her head under his hand. Absently he scratched her head and she purred.

"You sure live well here, Mr Calvin. I sort of expected something a bit more, I don't know, ascetic."

"I'm not a hermit, Mr Murdock." Calvin frowned at the purring cat, then walked over and picked her up, making Murdock back off a couple of steps. "Kindly tell me exactly what you need."

"Right," Murdock glanced at his watch and found only bare wrist. Either he'd left the watch back on the shuttle, or Face had stolen it for practice. He looked around for a clock and couldn't see one.

"Can I just ask you what time it is?" Murdock asked. He wanted to know exactly how long he spent here, so he could make Hannibal pay for every awkward minute of it afterwards.

"I have no idea." Calvin shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"You don't have a clock?"

"What for? Earth time doesn't mean anything here."

"So how do you know when it's time for dinner?"

"I get hungry."

"And you know it's time to go to bed when you get tired." Murdock grinned. "Interesting. I'll have to try doing that for a while sometime... someday... whenever." Living without time. No wonder the guy had gone a bit odd, Murdock thought. "Okay then." He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. "Let's get down to business."

-o-O-o-

Face moved through a corridor of the power plant, pressed against the wall. Up ahead of him in the dimness he could see someone, standing at a junction. The someone held a communicator and spoke into it, Face still too far away to make out words.

The corridor beyond the junction was lit and Face had to take off his night vision goggles to look in that direction. The man with the communicator wasn't wearing night vision goggles, so if he turned from the light and looked into the dark corridor it would be a while before his eyes adjusted to let him see Face sneaking up on him.

As he got closer, Face could make out the man's words. Orders. Now he could see him clearly, see his face in profile.

Kyle.

Face forced his breathing to stay even, but his heart started to race and he couldn't do anything about that. Grab Kyle and it's over. Not just this situation, but all of it, the grudge over a decade old could be resolved at last.

For a moment, he had to fight the urge to just raise his rifle and fire. That would resolve their old grudge for sure. Nevertheless, he resisted the temptation. He'd said back at that council meeting that the team, unlike Kyle, didn't kill innocent people, but that was only part of the truth. The team didn't kill people. Period.

That could sometimes be a very annoying rule.

Close enough now, Face thought. Close enough. Kyle held a pistol, loosely in one hand, holding the communicator in the other. Face made a plan. He worked out the exact move he would use and he picked his time, listening for Kyle to finish a conversation and sign off. No point in warning one of the others of trouble by cutting him off in the middle of a call.

"Out."

Face took the cue and sprang, from a position only a couple of metres away. The communicator fell to smash on the floor, as Face shoved Kyle face first into the wall, leaning his whole weight into keeping him pinned. He grabbed the pistol from Kyle's hand and tossed it away, then jabbed his own into Kyle's side.

"Don't move," Face ordered. "I will shoot you. Believe me." Kyle apparently did. He placed his hands flat on the wall.

"Where's your ship?" Face demanded. "And where's your base? The exact co-ordinates will earn you the bonus prize of not getting your legs broken."

Kyle laughed. "Oh yeah, I'll just tell you, will I?"

"If you want to live." Face shoved his pistol harder into Kyle's side. "Yeah, you'll just tell me."

"I'm shaking," Kyle said calmly.

Face growled, and wondered if he spent too long with BA, had started picking up his habits. On the other hand, maybe Kyle just brought out the growl in him. He took cuffs from his pocket and pulled down Kyle's left arm, then his right, locked them into the cuffs behind his back. After double-checking the cuffs, he pulled Kyle around, shoving his back against the wall again.

He looked for recognition from Kyle, some sign that he remembered a young lieutenant he had shot and left for dead. But Face saw nothing.

"Make any trouble and you're dead, Kyle. The army has you in a shoot on sight category, and you know I'm still technically in the army. I wouldn't mind shooting you. In fact I'd love it."

Kyle frowned. "Am I supposed to know who you are? Have we met someplace?"

"Let's just say I'm a future witness at your trial." Face lifted his communicator to speak but Kyle interrupted him.

"Drop your gun and the radio or you're dead."

Face snorted and scoffed at him. "Going to kill me with your hands cuffed behind your back?

"True, two of my hands are cuffed. Two of them."

He glanced down and Face instinctively followed his gaze, to see movement under Kyle's shirt. Then from under the hem a small pistol poked out, held by a small, pale hand, attached to a stubby and hairless arm.

Face gasped in shock and disgust and looked up into Kyle's eyes. Kyle grinned as he poked the gun he held in his third hand into Face's midriff.

"Clever little bastards those nanites, weren't they?"