Strike made a passing effort to look stern and failed. "You mean Captain Hendricks, don't you, Mister Whitley? Captain Hendricks of Project Warp?"

Cob made a sour face. "Project Warp, yet! Sounds like a dog barking!" He growled deep in his throat and barked once or twice experimentally. The officer's club was silent, and a silver-braided Commodore sitting nearby scowled at Whitley. The Lieutenant subsided with a final small, "Warp!"

An imported Venusian quartet began to play softly. Strike ordered another round of drinks from the red-skinned Martian tending bar and turned on his stool to survey the small dance floor. The music and the subdued lights made him think of Ivy Hendricks. He really wanted to see her again. It had been a long time since that memorable flight when they had worked together to pull Admiral Gorman's flagship Atropos out of a tight spot on a perihelion run. Ivy was good to work with ... good to be around.

But there was apparently more to this transfer than just Ivy pulling wires to see him again. Things were tense in the System since Probe Fleet skeeterboats had discovered a race of group-minded, non-human intelligences on the planets of 40 Eridani C. They lived in frozen worlds that were untenable for humans. And they were apparently all parts of a single entity that never left the home globe ... a thing no human had seen. The group-mind. They were rabidly isolationist and they had refused any commerce with the Solar Combine.

Only CSN Intelligence knew that the Eridans were warlike ... and that they were strongly suspected of having interstellar flight....

So, reflected Strike, the transfer of the Cleopatra to Tethys for work under the Bureau of Research and Development meant innovations and tests. And Commander Strykalski was concerned. The beloved Old Aphrodisiac didn't take kindly to innovations. At least she never had before, and Strike could see no reason to suppose the cantankerous monitor would have changed her disposition.

"There's Celia!" Cob Whitley was waving toward the dance floor.

Celia Graham, trim in her Ensign's greys, was making her way through the crowd of dancers. Celia was the Cleopatra's Radar Officer, and like all the rest, bound with chains of affection to the cranky old warship. The Cleopatra's crew was a unit ... a team in the true sense of the word. They served in her because they wanted to ... would serve in no other. That's the way Strike ran his crew, and that's the 

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