Starblood

and it can't bear distractions. Sorry."
    Ti nodded; he waited until Lambertson grasped the SAM, and then left the room with his servos trailing behind. He shut the door and continued into the living room, where he made himself a stiff drink and sat down to wait.
    He realized, halfway through the drink, that the hatred which had dissipated in him had begun to flower again. It was not a hatred for the men of the Brethren so much as hatred for their attitudes, their outlooks and visions. Why couldn't men just leave each other alone? Why was it necessary to. fight and kill and always resort to violence before thought?
    When he finished the drink, hatred alive and well now, another grav-car came in over the trees and settled onto the patio beside Lambertson's vehicle. For a moment he tensed, wondering if this were the Brethren follow-up team checking on the success of the SAM. Then he saw Creel's face as the man walked into the patio lights, and he relaxed.
    "I tried to get to sleep," Creel said as Ti met him at the door. "But I couldn't manage it, knowing what was happening over here. Where is he?"
    Ti motioned toward the library and explained that Lambertson required privacy for the operation. Briefly he recounted the events of the night to Creel. As he was finishing, Lambertson opened the library door and called to them. He had cracked the nut and dissected the meat of the machine in a little under two hours.
    In the library, the floor was littered with parts of machinery, all quite small and intricately formed. Lambertson had laid things out in rows,, each row representing a weapons system. "
What
was in it?" Ti asked.
    "This was the dart system," Lambertson said, pointing to a line of parts. "I was very careful not to touch the tips of the pins. They were discolored an odd green-blue—tipped with something worse than narcotics. This," he continued, pointing to a second conglomeration of pieces, "was a flame gun complete with a bulb of napalm. It would never last very long; only good for short bursts. But that's all that is necessary with something as nasty as that."
    "This?" Timothy asked.
    "Laser," Lambertson said. "A cell containing energy enough for approximately five three-second blasts."
    "And this?"
    "Projectile weapon. Shoots twenty-two-caliber slugs with explosive tips. Fourteen rounds contained in this barrel mechanism which revolved to spit each slug into the firing nozzle." Even Lambertson's rugged features were creased with distaste as he catalogued the killing devices.
    "And here," he went on, now professionally enthusiastic over what he had found, "we have a gas grenade launcher with two grenades: these. Each no larger than a grape, but enough gas, poisonous or not, to blanket a room in seconds."
    "So they built five weapons systems, all to get me," Timothy said.
    "Six," Lambertson corrected. He picked up a blocky part with a number of wires issuing from it. "This is a pack of highly compressed black powder. All it needed was an electric shock. If you hadn't shut down the SAM when you did, it might very well have used this last resort and destroyed the house." Lambertson waited for the news to sink in. Then: "Who do you know who would go to this expense and trouble to get you?" He cocked his head like a huge, quizzical Saint Bernard.
    "I don't know," Ti said. "I had thought the Brethren. But I can't come up with a believable, sensible motive."
    "I know a motive," Creel said. "It was something I was going to tell you tomorrow and didn't get to tell you on the comscreen earlier. Just found out about it today. The Brethren did this—I'll guarantee it. The motive was revenge. The spot you made available in the Brethren hierarchy by killing Klaus Margle was filled by his brother, Jon."
    "I see," Timothy said, looking at the dismantled SAM again. "I see what you mean."

CHAPTER 6
    In the foyer of the apartment complex, Timothy found her name, POLLY LONDON, embossed in heavy gold lettering against a black velvet nameplate. He pressed the call button beneath her comscreen and drifted back a foot or two to give the person who answered a full view of him and not just a picture of his nose. The screen lighted with an abstract black and moss-green pattern that shifted and changed in a hundred ways to delight the eyes, sensuous and rhythmic as the colors kept time to soft semiclassical music in the background. Over all of this came a well-modulated voice which had the sound of exceedingly fine breeding; of course,