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From the Confessions:
Of the original agglomeration of astrophysicists Kammholtz had
gathered, about a third (including my five comrades and myself) had
expertise and physical qualifications which made them candidates for
the mission. Only twelve could actually go. Over the next two years,
the most extraordinary set of "coincidences" pared down the
candidates. First, there were two major drug-smuggling scandals
which tainted the reputations of a great many qualified candidates. A
strain of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis infected a dozen others. One
group was seated around a conference table telling ethnic jokes at
Kammholtz's expense, unaware that a malfunction in the telephone
was broadcasting their rude comments over the public address system.
Another fifteen failed security screening for undisclosed reasons. At
the last minute, six of the few remaining candidates dropped out due
to family emergencies or unspecified personal reasons.
By the time the flight team was selected, there were barely
enough qualified candidates to select from. All six of us made the
cut.
Zeid was very nearly his old self again. It looked as if we would
once again share an epic adventure, this time to the stars. While it
was now almost a forgone conclusion among the team members that
our job would be to take the ship, Jamil had not yet informed us of
this. The possibility didn't seem to bother Zeid particularly, and I
gathered that such a symbolic act was something his conscience could
deal with.
Finally, the day came when Jamil took me into his full confidence
and presented me with my orders to assume the role of strike team
leader for the capture of The Starry-Eyed Dreamer. I was to inform
only Faysal, my second-in-command. Together, we were to study the
security of the ship and determine how to integrate the specially
prepared weapons we would need into our instruments.
The weapons included small, high-impulse, explosive projectiles
which could be fired from almost anything with a tube of the right
diameter, and a short-range but effective particle beam device that
was externally identical to the accelerator of our spectrometer. (The
accelerator was a calibration standard for the peaks we were
interested in, and, though I didn't design it, it must have attracted the
interest of my superiors.) The little rockets were our precision
weapons for use against individuals, while the accelerators would
serve, like sawed-off shotguns, to handle groups. In addition, we
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