Father Abrams worked his way slowly through the cultured acres of landholder Mueller's demesne. Bright golden grain bowed and swayed in chorus to light winds that swept the field. The ground was soft and uneven, forcing him to watch his footing. The cultivated expanse of grain distorted his sense of distance, and mirage-like, the stockades of the compound seemed to grow no closer as he trudged on.

Over the course of many visitations such as this one, he had found it better to land outside the fields of the holdings. Each was unique, and some did not even have landing zones marked out. Crushing down part of a holder's crop made a poor calling card, so he walked. He didn't mind the effort. The wind felt good. The sun shone down on his brown tonsured head, and time passed easily. The pace of life here, and the clement weather, made the treks pleasant. Just to be here, doing the work of the church instead of pouring over manuscripts in the steel and stone of the church archives was vitalizing. His was considered an unenviable ministry but, he thought fiercely, It is my very own. My own mission to cultivate, and to serve.

Vega had only six or seven hundred homesteads widely separated, and all were run like independent city-states, which in a way, they were. The ministry of New Vatica was very low profile here. His part was to visit each holding separately, and try to convince each landholder to build a small vestry. If some area could be set aside for worship and eventually visitation, then the word of God and the peace of the Eucharist could be regularly brought to the residents of this provincial world. More priests would then be sent to service the developing communities.

The building of a central church structure was out of the question. The parishioners were too few as yet, and the individual estates were widely scattered. Colonists picked their sites to take advantage of the very choicest lands available for their purposes, proximity to neighbors was not the major consideration.

If he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, success would only provide him with a lifetime of unending travel, dependent on the charity of his charges for the daily and ever changing roof over his head. It would be a generation before the seeds he spread here grew enough to fruit self-supporting congregations.

He had been on this world for several months now, and had only visited sixty of the holdings. Only eight of the landholders had agreed to start work on chapels, and at many estates, he had not even managed to see the landholder personally.

Father Abrams spread his thick hands out to brush through the grain as he went. It was quite likely that he was given this 'opportunity' because it was unattractive to the other workers in the faith. To labor without practical hope of establishing a supporting congregation in his own lifetime made it an unattractive prospect to most. A light buzzing from one of his hassock's huge pockets alerted him that some transmissions had been received and waited in his lighter just outside the fields of this estate. It was, he remembered, nearing time for his monthly progress report to New Vatica.

He decided to tend to both the mail and his reports after visiting Herr Mueller. His feet were beginning to hurt as the soft tilled soil pulled at them, and he was hungry. Whatever mail he had wasn't going anywhere.

****

Diocullis tossed the last of the reports onto the growing pile on his desk and stood.

He clasped his hands behind his back and gazed out the window of the former office of Gregory St. Croix. No flight plans had been filed, and evidently, no one still available on this dust ball had any idea where the former owner had gone. Gregory owned interests in hundreds of properties scattered over dozens of systems. It was going to take a good deal of time to ferret him out. New Vatica had sent out a call to all the most likely missions or diocese to try to determine where he had gone to ground, but no responses had come back yet.

The hidden containment cage in the office had been damning. The research already completed by Joshua's group indicated the small fold in space it generated could indeed restrain a Wavie. It amounted to a small generator that formed a fold in space just big enough to pinch one in place, and selectively apply pressure to its resident. Suspecting the purpose, the device implied coercion, or torture, in its very design. A plasma barrier surrounded that to contain any stray radiation. It was empty now, of course. Gregory must have transferred his captive to a portable unit, killed it somehow, or released it.

A list of recent clients had been assembled from the available paperwork, and that had been turned over to Major Baine's forces. There was nothing left to do but pack up and dust off.

Meanwhile, Haviland continued to protest his innocence. The crowding in on Joshua's ship, he argued, was a simple error of judgment. He had seen the ship stop, and had taken the action as a sign that something was wrong, so maneuvered to approach and assess it. No, he hadn't any ulterior motives, certainly he was no pirate, and his only relationship to Gregory was that of contractor to client.

Alcomer would only be able to hold him for a short time, before Victor's appeals to the commerce board forced Dio to let him go. Dio decided it would attract too much attention to grill him directly about the Wavies. Neither Dio in his inquisitions, nor Haviland in his responses, had mentioned anything about the entities that flickered across the Christos sail array. Haviland wanted their existence to remain unnoticed just as much as the church did, at this point. So Dio's prosecution ability was slipping away.

Joshua had things in hand, research wise, and his premonitions, along with the cage and all else. He would just have to let Joshua find out what he could add first. Haviland certainly wasn't volunteering anything.