Frakes nodded. 'Just like Bekman.'
'Then the people on Clarion know how to get back to the occupied stream.'
'I know what you're thinking,' Frakes said. 'If they know how to get out, they could tell us how to get to Clarion. They haven't, which means they don't want to be found. Callifer wouldn't give us the Clarion coordinates even though he knew he was dying.'
'Did he say why he had come out?' Frakes looked down at the pavement, scuffed at it with the toe of his boot, then returned his eyes to Paul. 'He was looking for somebody. At the time we didn't know who.'
'You think he was looking for Dorland?'
'Doesn't take much to figure that out, not after what happened today. We knew Mr. Avery spent a few years on Giant Forest. Callifer obviously knew it, too.'
Clarion. Cut off from civilization for two hundred years. Except for two men who had come out to look for Dorland Avery. Three, Paul realized. Selmer Ogram, too. Dorland himself had come from the planet, if Parke Sabre was right—and Paul had a feeling he was.
'Two hundred years,' he said. 'You can't help but wonder what's been happening on Clarion all that time.'
Frakes made a noncommittal sound.
'I'm sure SoSec would be interested in finding a planet that's been isolated that long. But why is Security so interested? This late in the game, there wouldn't be anybody left to prosecute for kidnapping. It's obvious the people who live there don't want to be found. Why not leave them alone?'
'Because they won't leave us alone. After all, one of them attacked Mr. Avery—'
'That won't fly, Captain. Doriand's safety is a concern to me and Jeffrey Hanes, but it's hardly a Security matter. He's a psi-player, not a political leader. You and Sabre are interested in Clarion, not in Dorland Avery.'
'Yeah, well—' Frakes rubbed the side of his nose again, cleared his throat. 'I could get in a lot of trouble for telling you this.'
Paul waited.
'Security has a couple of reasons for wanting to find the place. For one thing, it's a ninety-nine. People can breathe the air, drink the water. UNSA pumped a few billion udits into it already. They don't want to give it up. Habitable worlds aren't that easy to find.'
'Ninety-nines are still being landed—'
'Yeah, about once a year.'
'Still, we aren't starved for space,' Paul insisted.
'I've seen colonized planets where the entire population still lives in two or three towns. We have plenty of room to expand. Why would UNSA go to all this trouble for another planet?'
Frakes pursed his lips. 'I said there were a couple of reasons. The other one's more complicated.' Paul gave him time to make up his mind. Frakes looked around, cleared his throat again.
'The sector ship Vanguard carried the usual research group. Even then, that was standard for new-landed planets. The group included an archaeology team.' He paused again to glance toward the hotel entrance. 'The arkies got a report out before the stream channel went dead. Said they found signs ofintelligents.'
It took Paul a moment to absorb the significance of that. Alien remnants had been found on only three of the hundreds of habitable worlds that had been explored by UNSA.
'Everyone assumed the gents on Clarion were dead,' Frakes went on. 'The arkies reported ruins, 44 William Greenleaf
and they didn't mention seeing live gents. Their report was very preliminary, but you'd think they would have noticed gents running around.' Paul suddenly had a feeling he knew what Frakes was leading up to.
'Before he died, this man Callifer started babbling about somebody called Lord Tern,' Frakes said. 'Took us a while to realize he was talking about a gent. A Tal Tahir, he said. We think that's what they called the gents. This Lord Tern—seems they'd made him into a god.'
Lord Tern. Selmer Ogram had mentioned that
