The problem was, she’d been unable to find Captain Jester-or Willard Phule, to give him the name he’d gone by before he’d joined the Legion. Immediately after her arrival, she’d spotted him sitting under a sort of awning with a pile of paperwork on a table in front of him while everyone else in the company acted as if an invasion was imminent. But Lieutenant Snipe had whisked her off to the command center before her old friend noticed her. When she returned, he’d disappeared, and nobody seemed able to tell her where he was. In fact, when she asked where his actual quarters were, nobody could tell her. They weren’t trying to hide it from her-she was too good a reporter to miss the signs of that. They just didn’t know.
The other area she’d been unable to learn anything useful about was their mission here on Zenobia. Oh, everybody agreed that the Zenobians had called the company in to advise them how to deal with some mysterious problem. But, while everybody had an opinion, nobody seemed to know for sure just what the problem was. Even the Zenobians themselves had apparently never seen the mysterious invaders who were causing all the fuss. And the only one on the base who might have some more detailed information on the subject was none other than Captain Jester: the one man she couldn’t find to talk to.
It had begun to gnaw at her. She’d racked her brain for reasons. Perhaps Phule was ill (she’d already heard the story of how he’d walked in from the desert, from far enough away that his hoverjeep hadn’t been found yet). Perhaps the new major’s arrival had been such a blow to his normally very healthy ego that he couldn’t bear to talk to her. Perhaps it was some kind of conspiracy by top Legion brass to keep him from talking to the press. Perhaps it was something she had unwittingly done.