In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford

things.”
    “I have a lot of travel credit built up. We can fly anywhere in the world on American.”
    “I’m surprised you want to give up a great deal of time, with these negotiations going on.”
    “They can spare me now and again.”
    As she said it the expression altered around her brown eyes, her mouth turned subtly downward and he saw suddenly into her, into a bleak and anxious center.
    It was late when they left the restaurant. Some of the more stylish stores were still open. Two police in riot jackets checked their faxcodes and then passed down the street. The two women stopped most of the people they met, taking them into the orange pools beneath the well-spaced street lamps and demanding identification. One woman stood at a safe distance with stun-club drawn while the other dialed through to Central, checking the ferrite verimatrix in the faxcodes. Nigel was not looking when, a short distance away, a woman suddenly bolted away from the police and dashed into a department store. The man with her tried to run, too, but a policewoman forced him to the ground. The other policewoman drew a pistol and ran into the store. The man yelled something, protesting. The woman rapped him with her stunclub and his face whitened. He slumped forward. Muffled shots came from inside the department store.
    Their bus arrived. Nigel climbed on.
    Alexandria stood still, hand raised halfway to her face. The man was trying to get to his knees. He rasped out a few words. Her lips curled back in distaste and she started to say something. Nigel called her name. She hesitated. “Alexandria!”
    He reached down toward her. She climbed the steps numbly, legs stiff. She sat down next to him as the bus doors wheezed shut. She breathed deeply.
    “Forget it,” Nigel said. “That’s the way it is.”
    The bus hummed into motion. They glided past the man on the sidewalk. The policewoman’s knee was in his back and he stared glassily at the broken paving. All the details were quite clear in the faintly orange light.
    Before Lubkin could finish his drawling sentence Nigel was out of his chair, pacing.
    “You’re damned right I object to it,” Nigel said. “It’s the most stupid bloody—”
    “Look, Nigel, I sympathize with you completely. You and I are scientists, after all.”
    Nigel thought sourly that he could quite easily marshal a good argument against that statement alone, at least in Lubkin’s case. But he let it ride.
    “We don’t like this secrecy business,” Lubkin went on. He chose his words carefully. “However. At the same time. I can understand the need for tight security in this matter.”
    “For how long?” Nigel said sharply.
    “Long?” Lubkin hesitated. Nigel guessed that the rhythm of his prepared speech was broken. “I really don’t know,” the other man said lamely. “Perhaps for the indefinite future, although”—he speeded up, to cut off Nigel’s reaction—“we may be speaking of a mere matter of days. You understand.”
    “Who says?”
    “What?”
    “Who has the say in this?”
    “Well, the Director, of course, he was the first. He thought we should go through military channels as well as civilian.”
    Nigel ceased pacing and sat down. Lubkin’s office was illuminated only around his desk, the corners gloomy. To Nigel’s mind’s eye the effect of the pooled light was to frame him and Lubkin as though in a prizefighter’s ring, two antagonists pitted across Lubkin’s oaken desk. Nigel hunched forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the other man’s puffy face.
    “Why in
hell
is the goddamned Air Force—”
    “They would find out about it
any
way, through channels.”
    “Why?”
    “We may need their deep space sensor network to track the, ah, Snark.”
    “Ridiculous. That’s a near-Earth net.”
    “Maybe that’s where the Snark is heading.” “A remote possibility.”
    “But a nonzero one. You have to admit that. This
could
be of importance in world security, too, you