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He frowned. "Speaking of which, I'm getting a little worried about that, actually. We haven't heard anything from him in four, five days."



"Oh, stop fretting, Joe." Reynolds was looking over his shoulder at some of the readouts, even though he could have pulled them up just as well on his own personal data center. "You know how A.J. gets. He runs until he drops, wakes up, and then starts running again. I'll bet that if we just take a look out on the Net there's a ton of stuff on the Faeries now."



"Probably." To satisfy his curiosity, Joe opened a connection and sent out a general search. A few minutes later, Lee caught the deepening frown on Joe's face.



"Something wrong, Fearless Leader?"



"I'm not sure," he said slowly. "Anne, Lee, why don't you try pulling up something on A.J.'s progress with NASA."



A few minutes passed.



"That's . . . interesting," Anne said finally, with the tone of someone having discovered a nest of wasps just above them at a picnic.



"A.J. couldn't have dropped the whole ball that badly, could he?" Lee muttered. "I mean, he's an insufferable prick sometimes, but he's earned it, if you know what I mean."



"We helped him on those designs, guys. One, or even two, of the Faeries might have gone bad, but there's no way all of them did. We know the release went just fine, our own telemetry showed them separating and going their merry way."



Joe was frowning at the displayed information, or rather lack of information, as though it might suddenly change if he just glared at it enough. "But there's not a single pic here from later than, oh, I guess about six or seven hours after the Faeries were cut loose. And none of them are showing anything particularly close up."



"'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,'" Reynolds quoted.



"Marcellus to Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4." That came from Lee, as he continued a search for more Phobos data.



Ren looked startled. "I didn't take you for a scholar of Shakespeare, Lee."



"I'm not, really. But I did do some acting, years ago, and Marcellus was one of the roles I played." He shook his head. "Definitely rotten in the state of NASA, anyway. They've been giving out exactly diddly-squat since a few hours after the Faeries flew. No announcements, some vague talk about analyzing data, a few pics dribbled out that could have been taken a little earlier or later than the last official ones. But there's nothing giving us a real grip on what's happening."



"That makes no sense," Joe protested. "Even if somehow it all went wrong, there's no reason for them to clam up like this. They'd just try to slant it to make it look like we screwed it up."



He told his phone to dial A.J.



The phone screen lit with A.J.'s grinning face. "Hey, Joe, how's it going?"



"Fine, A.J., but we—"



"Ha, fooled ya! I'm not here or I'm too busy with my many fans to talk to you right now, but if you'll leave a message I'll—"



There was an audible click as a somewhat nettled Joe cut the connection. "I hate it when he sets his 'away' mode to that annoying little message. Fine, I'll ping him direct."



A few moments later he sat back, scratching his head. "He's not on-line."



Anne, Lee, and Reynolds all stared at him. "That's crazy talk, man. A.J. is off-line about as often as the Pope is Protestant. Okay, he's sometimes blocked or not answering, especially when he's sleeping, but off-line?"



"I'm not finding him."



Anne ran her own check along with Lee. "Looks like you're right. In fact . . . looks like he hasn't been on-line at all since about four in the morning the day after the Faeries flew."



Joe stood up. "That does it. This is all too weird. I'm going over to NASA to find out what's happening. What the hell, it's less than a two-hour drive."



"Well, okay, Fearless Leader," Lee said, after a moment. "But keep in touch. Or this might start to sound like those summer horror movies, you know?"



"Don't worry." Joe headed for the door. "I won't go into the basement, that's all."





"This way, sir," the guard said to Joe, opening the door to a stairway leading down.



Joe was a bit puzzled already. When he'd seen extra security at the entrance, he'd feared the worst. But instead they'd simply checked his ID and waved him through. And when he'd started to ask where to find A.J., they hadn't even waited for him to finish but had just said: "We'll escort you there, sir."



Come to think of it, he hadn't even gotten to A.J.'s name. Near as he could remember, he'd said: "Can you tell me how to find—"