I'm hacking this out now while I'm still thinking straight. Then I'll get Hypatia to com it to my terrestrial mail. I trust you'll have the sense to look it up, though there's little you can do about it now and fairly soon neither me nor Grizwald will care much anyway.

As you already know, the Hypatia came down at 1 a.m. Central European time, on Monday October 10th. That was only couple of days ago but it already seems like years to me. What you don't know yet is that I woke some hours after Hypatia's arrival to find Grizwald leaning over me, ordering me out of bed in that dreadful military manner she has. I hadn't seen her in over a year but she was the Ministry's usual emissary at such times so I thought nothing of it.

It was no surprise she'd broken into my flat either. Her regular job was the clandestine dispatching of terrorists, a grim and somewhat futile business, very much on the fringes of legality and one that has rendered her insensitive to the niceties most of us take for granted. I have never complained to her about such behaviour of course, because to be perfectly frank, she's capable of snapping me clean in two or even, I'm sure, rendering me unconscious with no more than a carefully aimed look.

I caught the familiar odour of her sweaty fatigues as my eyes focused upon her. She was dressed for business it seemed and my heart sank at once. Not twelve months had passed since Bolivia where we'd spent two years deconstructing the Alexander, a Class 1 floater. In all that time we had worked without respite in a terrain thick with carnivorous insects and all manner of sickness - not that you care much for the mundane details of the tasks you so casually set us. Not for you the grim cost in men's lives, and nerves broken, only the handsome profits gained from the precious materials we recover, and from the priceless fittings sent to the