Adam Elvin
Names: Adam ElvinHuw NorthQuentin KelleherHuwElvinMr. NorthAdamSilas DuanroSeñor DuanroJohansson
First appears in Book 1: Pandora's Star, chapter 3 (TWO)
Appearances
What you know
Book 1: Pandora's Star
- Ch 3Adam is seventy-five and uses cellular reprofiling to change his appearance regularly; on Velaines he poses as an overweight, unremarkable man called Huw North.
- Ch 3Adam also holds a second identity, Quentin Kelleher, under which he rents a cheap room at an A+A hotel.
- Ch 3He carries an emergency pack including a disguised lethal ion stun pistol, kaos software on handheld arrays, cash and a return ticket.
- Ch 3Adam is a committed socialist who sees capitalist markets as monstrous injustice, and he came to Velaines to buy serious weapons hardware.
- Ch 3He was involved in the 2344 Abadan station attack, never had a memory edit, and dreams of it every night.
- Ch 3Adam is aware that a woman hunting him is clever and getting closer as the years pass.
- Ch 3Adam Elvin is the quartermaster for the Guardians of Selfhood, buying arms on Velaines to ship to Far Away.
- Ch 3Adam disguises weapons as components inside civil and agricultural machinery to hide the exports; the plan took eighteen months to organize.
- Ch 3After Abadan the Socialist Party disowned Adam and his resistance cell, and he joined Bradley Johansson.
- Ch 3Adam used the alias Huw with Rachael Lancier and negotiated a list of weapons costing 720,000 Earth dollars, paying cash.
- Ch 3Elvin is a committed radical Socialist and former member of Abadan, who has led Guardian arms-buying operations for forty years, never using the same planet twice.
- Ch 3Elvin uses evasive habits such as doubling back on walks and ordering a taxi through the city, and loaded infiltration software into the taxi's drive array.
- Ch 3Fat seventy-five-year-old who escaped the police by rolling out of a moving taxi under a rail bridge and switching to a second taxi.
- Ch 3Spent two weeks in Room 421 using cellular reprofiling and bone-shortening kits to change his body, weight, height and tattoos to evade criminal databases.
- Ch 3His mission cost another hundred thousand dollars; arms parts were shipped out in car trips to rented buildings, then repacked and sent to Far Away.
- Ch 3He regrets not seeing Paula Myo's face when she realized the extent of the deception.
- Ch 6Adam Elvin buys arms and smuggles them to Far Away in pieces over multiple routes across years.
- Ch 10Longtime socialist radical who has refused rejuvenation on principle, and is weary after fifty years of failing to change the Commonwealth.
- Ch 10Agrees to continue helping Bradley and lead the Guardians' direct confrontation, but refuses any more political-statement violence like Abadan station.
- Ch 10Has acquired components for Bradley and evaded the pursuer 'Myo' on Velaines; he is moving toward believing in the Starflyer.
- Ch 11Adam is a veteran who oversees the mission, watching from a Leithpool café and feigning awe; he had watched the Alamo Avengers being refurbished.
- Ch 11Adam suspects the complex has no serious heavy-caliber weapons.
- Ch 11Adam watches the attack in a café and feels no guilt this time, believing no innocents are on the platform; he is implicated in the attack.
- Ch 12Elvin assembles shipments for Johansson and has not personally been in violent acts since Abadan.
- Ch 20Adam has had cellular reprofiling giving him dark skin and a drawn face, but knows Paula Myo would recognise him anyway.
- Ch 20Adam sees Paula outside a café, aborts his approach by gondola, then attacks the Nystol Gallery, killing the receptionist, visitors, a guide and Roberto, and seizing its network.
- Ch 20Adam has weapons and defense systems wetwired into his body, including a microdart arm dispenser and ion bolt weapons.
- Ch 20Adam Elvin, a self-described socialist revolutionary with a new face, will take over Kazimir's training from Stig and supplies arms for Bradley.
- Ch 20Adam narrowly evaded Paula Myo on Venice Coast, closer than ever before, and was not warned by Bradley.
- Ch 20Is a wanted killer turned arms smuggler who organized an attack on Second Chance; he is doubtful he can get close to Kime.
- Ch 20Furiously refuses to contact someone in the Starflight Agency with access to Kime, citing a past break between them.
- Ch 20Is training Kazimir in smuggling and deception, and complains at length about corporate and Grand Family economic oppression.
- Ch 22Adam has formed and folded dozens of front companies at LA Galactic to track and disguise arms shipments to Far Away.
- Ch 22Adam privately fears Bradley Johansson may be right about the Starflyer and that a war is coming, with the Commonwealth's side uncertain.
- Ch 22Adam despises the parasitic handling and transport companies of capitalism yet runs a transit company better than real entrepreneurs.
- Ch 22Paula suspects Adam Elvin runs another active equipment smuggling operation and wants options for tracking it.
- Ch 24Adam is an old revolutionary, heavily reprofiled over decades to evade the law, who parted venomously from Oscar thirty-nine years ago.
- Ch 24Adam admits he carried out the terrorist attack on the Second Chance before its launch; the victims were re-lifed.
- Ch 24Adam works with Bradley Johansson under a mutually beneficial arrangement but denies joining the Guardians of Selfhood.
- Ch 24Adam presses Oscar to examine secret flight data, focusing on background activity rather than the main bridge and engineering events, to learn what really happened out there.
- Ch 24Adam says he will contact Oscar about every fortnight to check on his progress.
- Ch 24Adam was himself reluctant when Johansson told him to get in touch with Oscar.
Book 2: Judas Unchained
- Ch 2Adam has worked in LA Galactic for twenty-five years, knows its layout intimately, and secretly installed hidden landline sensors across the station.
- Ch 2Adam taught the Guardians their operational procedures and watches the operation as a reassuring father figure, which he dislikes.
- Ch 2Paula notes Adam Elvin does not make elementary mistakes, so the clinic that implanted Kazimir's inserts will probably be paid for untraceably.
- Ch 3Adam now accepts the Starflyer is real after watching Kieran McSobel's recording of Kazimir's death.
- Ch 3Adam and Bradley have outlined a crude blockade-busting run to get components past the navy inspections on Boongate.
- Ch 3Adam trained Stig and leads a team smuggling equipment for Bradley; he can spare nobody to investigate the Doi shotgun.
- Ch 4Adam Elvin is an old comrade who returned and made a demand of Oscar; Oscar thinks him self-deluding but honest.
- Ch 5Adam Elvin is a Guardians contact, pursued by Paula Myo, who exchanges information with Mellanie over a onetime address code supplied by Stig.
- Ch 5Adam, a Guardian leader, is paranoid and guarded by Kieran; he bought Foster Transport's first train, an old nuclear Ables ND47, despite hating fission.
- Ch 5Adam is wary of a woman, not a Guardian, claiming to believe in the Starflyer and connected to Paula Myo, who might locate Kazimir's missing data.
- Ch 8Adam Elvin warns Mellanie about Starflyer agents Isabella, Victor and Bernadette Halgarth.
- Ch 8Adam Elvin has lived a paranoid 'nonlife' for decades, lost his crusading zeal, and now waits for events to resolve, believing it will be soon.
- Ch 8Adam reports that Isabella helped build the shotgun claiming Doi was a Starflyer agent; she has dropped out of sight and teams watch her parents.
- Ch 10Adam uses the false identity Silas Duanro and has reprofiled his face so often that his skin and capillaries are deteriorating.
- Ch 10Adam is assembling a blockade-busting run for Johansson, expects it to be his swan song, and has built up muscle and treated diabetes to prepare.
- Ch 10Adam says he is not a Guardian but works as their agent from time to time.
- Ch 10Adam is shaken and nearly quits, remembering a train explosion at Abadan station, but agrees to continue and prepare the train to break through the blockade.
- Ch 10Adam leaves his hotel in Tridelta, orders a taxi to the CST station and books a ticket on the next train to Kyushu.
- Ch 10Adam is a Guardian leader who trained them; he will inform Bradley that Paula Myo is hunting a Starflyer agent.
- Ch 13Adam favors devolving power to local committees and dislikes centralist government, despite Bradley's teasing.
- Ch 13Adam worries that Starflyer agents captured the Agent's head, so analysis of his memorycell could breach Guardian security.
- Ch 14Adam repeatedly lectured Stig that there is never a 'usual' and that procedure must be followed.
- Ch 14Adam is preparing a heavily armored train to reach Half Way and worries Bradley's demand for Paula Myo wrecked the legitimacy deal.
- Ch 14Leads a Guardians combat team near Boongate and is suspicious of the maintenance carriage.
- Ch 14Adam drives the Guardians' train engine; he feels relief that the Starflyer is real, but Paula still unnerves him.
- Ch 14Adam drives the Guardians' Ables ND47 train through the Boongate gateway, reciting 'Charge of the Light Brigade' lines, and launches zone killers.
- Ch 14Adam planned and organized the earlier Second Chance assault, which he says would have worked if the SI had not sided with Paula's side.
- Ch 15Adam leads the Guardians' operation and decides to put all vehicles and forensic sensorbots in one Carbon Goose to check it for sabotage and get airborne fast.
- Ch 15Adam leads the group and insists on thorough decontamination and sabotage checks of the Carbon Goose before departure, though he ultimately orders loading to save time.
- Ch 15Adam arranges the Guardians' shipments to Far Away; his face shows eczema and hair loss from excessive reprofiling.
- Ch 15Adam leads the drop team; ten armored figures jump from the Carbon Goose onto Port Evergreen after the radar alert.
- Ch 15Adam warns the Volvos' cargo is vital and cannot be got through the wormhole in the ten minutes remaining.
- Ch 15Adam proposes hijacking the stormrider's guidance and thrusters to drive it into the plasma current and power the wormhole open.
- Ch 16Adam, thought lost, speaks to Stig by radio and arranges a meeting at rendezvous point four.
- Ch 16Adam leads the three Volvo trucks carrying cargo for the planet's revenge project south toward the Dessault Mountains.
- Ch 16Adam orders all team members to do everything in pairs or groups and has the crates resealed so the mission to the rendezvous continues.
- Ch 16Adam privately knows one small fact Paula doesn't and decides not to tell her, since he can't be sure she isn't the Starflyer agent.
- Ch 16Adam's Guardians Rosamund and Jamas lack aggressor armor suits, as do the navy trio, who have only protective suits.
- Ch 18Reports that four crates and a Volvo were sabotaged on the Carbon Goose flight, and believes a navy person with him is the Starflyer agent.
- Ch 18Suspects the Starflyer agent is among Oscar, Wilson, Anna and Paula Myo, with two of them from the Second Chance.
- Ch 18Adam suspects Myo, Anna and Wilson of being the Starflyer agent, and plans to wake Paula to help solve it.
- Ch 18Adam briefly considered suicide, having nowhere to go after the Guardians win, but tells Oscar he was not serious.
- Ch 18Adam, a lapsed socialist activist, secretly relies on Sheldon's promised starship to destroy the Starflyer from orbit.
- Ch 18Adam is disappointed by how backward the clans are, comparing them to pre-Commonwealth guerrilla bands.
- Ch 18Adam is the Guardians' top man in the Commonwealth and delivered the Martian data and equipment to Far Away.
- Ch 18Adam secretly suspects Wilson and Anna might be the saboteur and plans to ground them at Stonewave, letting only Oscar fly.
- Ch 18Adam and his group crossed the dangerous storm-hit slopes of Zeus and Herculaneum by Volvo to reach Stonewave hoping to use hypergliders.
- Ch 18Adam is leading the group preparing to hyperglide over a twister to Aphrodite's Seat, and he dislikes the idea of flying himself ('my age and weight').
- Ch 18Adam suspects one of the group is a Starflyer agent and claims the implanters are faulty to isolate Oscar for skill memory loading.
- Ch 18Adam is killed by a harmonic blade rammed into the base of his skull by an unseen attacker in the hangar.
- Ch 19Adam was found murdered in the hangar with a harmonic blade in the nape of his neck.
- Ch 19Adam told Kieran they would only need two gliders, which Jamas took to mean he suspected one of the group was the traitor.
- Ch 19Adam was murdered at Stonewave; he was Paula's main source of information on the three remaining Guardians.
- Ch 19Adam kept Oscar's Abadan past secret from Paula to protect him; Paula would have arrested Oscar. Adam may not survive.
- Ch 19Adam knew Oscar from student politics and the Abadan bombing, and contacted him for the Second Chance log review, hence his trust in Oscar.
- Ch 19Adam, known to people in the cave, was murdered and took some Guardians with him.
Connections
- enemy ofpolicewomanshe has hunted him for years
- ally ofBradley Johanssonworks with him on occasion
- member ofGuardians of Selfhood
- enemy ofPaula Myoshe is hunting his arms smuggling
- member ofBradley JohanssonElvin works for Johansson's Guardians of Selfhood
- ally ofRachael Lancierpaid to cooperate in the arms deception
- leadsAlamo Avengersdirects the mission using them
- related toValtare RiginRigin's shipments fit Adam Elvin's operation pattern
- ally ofKazimir McFoster
- leadsGuardians of Selfhood
- enemy ofOscar Monroeformer comrades who parted bitterly
- related toStig McSobeltrained Stig
- has memberStig McSobelworks under Adam's direction
- related toOscar Monroeformer comrades in the Party
- ally ofMellanie Rescorai
- ally ofKieran McSobelarmed bodyguard and aide
- createdFoster Transport
- related tothe Agentlong-term client and supplier of mercenaries
- related toGuardians of Selfhoodworks for them from time to time, not a member
- has memberJenny McNowakworks on Adam's team
- related toBradley JohanssonJohansson directs Adam's mission
- has memberMarisa McFosterreports to Adam within the Guardians
- ally ofRosamund McKratz
- ally ofWilson Kime
- ally ofOscar Monroethe old team
- friend ofOscar Monroe
Key moments
- Book 1 · Ch 3Adam arrives on Velaines
Disguised as Huw North, Adam passes CST station surveillance, checks into hotels and sets up a sentry array in a second hideout.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Meeting with Nigel Murphy
At the Party chapter bar Adam recounts Abadan, clashes with Sabbah, and asks Murphy to arrange a meeting with a weapons dealer.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Sabbah informs on Elvin
Sabbah, coerced for nine years, calls Paula Myo to report that Adam Elvin has arrived.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Adam negotiates weapons purchase
At the Scarred Suit club, Adam agrees with Rachael Lancier to buy a weapons list, paying cash upfront and requiring them to be hidden in machinery.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Johansson warns Adam
An encrypted message from Bradley Johansson warns Adam Elvin that Paula Myo is on Velaines; Paula's team detects the message but cannot decrypt it.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Meeting at the Scarred Suit
Elvin meets Lancier at the club and hands her a memory crystal supposedly with additions to the order. Police spy through a spindlefly; Paula suspects it holds instructions and that Elvin is onto them.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Weapons shipment readied
Elvin authorizes agricultural machinery to be sent to Lancier's dealership, and eight trucks arrive and enter a screened warehouse. Elvin checks out of his hotel.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Taxi chase and stage three
Elvin's taxi evades pursuit and goes to Lancier's warehouse, where Kavanagh takes his suitcase. Paula orders stage three, and pursuit cars blockade the taxi.
- Book 1 · Ch 3Adam's escape and reprofiling
Adam rolls out of a taxi under a rail bridge, escapes to the A+A, and spends two weeks altering his body, then leaves for the CST station and LA Galactic.
- Book 1 · Ch 6Paula's data hunt
In Paris, Paula searches cargo data for Elvin's arms smuggling to Far Away and clashes with Mel Rees over budget.
- Book 1 · Ch 10Adam commits to Bradley's crusade
In a Leithpool café, Bradley asks Adam to lead direct action against the Starflyer's interests. After wavering over rejuvenation and hope, Adam agrees, tasked with assembling a crew to destroy the Second Chance.
- Book 1 · Ch 11Second Chance escapes the platform
The Second Chance opens the platform shell and fires plasma rockets, fleeing as the gateway field ruptures. The spaceplanes then destroy the platform.
- Book 1 · Ch 20Adam spots Paula
Adam sees Paula Myo outside a café while approaching by gondola and retreats, shaken by how close he came to being caught.
- Book 1 · Ch 20Adam's assault on the Nystol Gallery
Adam enters by the front door, kills the receptionist, visitors and a guide, takes over the building's network, and fires through the door at Rigin's bodyguard Roberto.
- Book 1 · Ch 20Breakfast at The Georgian
Bradley and Adam discuss the gallery attack, blockade running, a courier for Mars data, and Bradley's plan to convert Wilson Kime.
- Book 1 · Ch 20Bradley asks Adam to contact someone close to Kime
Bradley wants Kime to review Second Chance's system logs and proposes Adam approach an old contact with access to Kime. Adam angrily refuses.
- Book 1 · Ch 22Guardians recover the software via sewer
Guardians send a cloned S&Ibot through the sewers to retrieve the flushed case, confirm the crystal is intact, and send Stig the discontinue-and-break order.
- Book 1 · Ch 24Adam Elvin confronts Oscar
Adam, Oscar's old comrade, appears in his hotel room, admits attacking the Second Chance, and asks Oscar to review its flight logs for evidence of Starflyer influence on behalf of Johansson.
- Book 1 · Ch 24Adam pressures Oscar to examine the flight data
Adam argues Oscar should search the flight data for background activity, such as who was on deck thirteen when the barrier came down. Oscar protests, but Adam reminds him of Abadan station and leaves, promising fortnightly check-ins.
- Book 2 · Ch 2Bruce McFoster attacks Kazimir at the Carralvo
Bruce, believed dead, shoots at Kazimir on the concourse. Navy pursuers chase him, he cripples the network with kaos, and he escapes into a freight container.
- Book 2 · Ch 3Adam and Bradley meet at Big Ben
Adam reports Kazimir's death and the Martian data loss to Bradley; they discuss the Starflyer, the planet's revenge, and planning a run to break the Boongate blockade.
- Book 2 · Ch 5Mellanie contacts the Guardians
Mellanie calls Adam Elvin, learns the LA Galactic killer was Bruce McFoster, and gets a new onetime address. She then visits Paul Cramley.
- Book 2 · Ch 5Adam buys the ND47
Adam and Kieran sign the contract with Baraki for refurbishing the nuclear train for Foster Transport and discuss arming it and the unreliable new contact.
- Book 2 · Ch 8Mellanie reports to Adam Elvin
On a beach near Santa Monica, Mellanie tells Adam she can't trace the lawyers and mentions Morton's contact with Bose's memories; Adam names more Starflyer agents.
- Book 2 · Ch 8Mellanie and Dudley discuss the habitat plan
After talking with Adam, Mellanie hears Dudley's plan to hire an inter-orbit tug to find Ozzie's habitat and its wormhole, and tentatively agrees to consider it.
- Book 2 · Ch 10Adam hires troops from the Agent
Adam visits the Agent in Tridelta, asks for mostly blunt-end troops within a week, wins his trust by giving his word, and is warned of mysterious wetwired strangers in the city.
- Book 2 · Ch 10Bernadette Halgarth travels to Tridelta
Jenny and Kaspar follow Bernadette from EdenBurg to Tridelta, where she checks into the Octavious unannounced; Adam sends reinforcements.
- Book 2 · Ch 10Bradley's grim assessment of the war
Bradley tells Adam the navy attack on Hell's Gateway seems to be in trouble and the war may continue regardless of exposing the Starflyer.
- Book 2 · Ch 10Johansson convinces Adam to continue
Adam, shaken, nearly refuses to go on. Johansson says Institute mercenaries are raiding Guardian villages and the Starflyer is returning to Far Away. Adam agrees to prepare the train to break the blockade, then leaves for the CST station.
- Book 2 · Ch 10Guardians follow the navy team
Bernadette's evasion forces the Guardians to switch tactics. They trail the navy team to the precinct, see Paula Myo arrive, and follow a convoy leaving at dusk.
- Book 2 · Ch 13Time-dilated wormhole evacuation announced
Doi and Nigel announce the New48 populations will walk through modified wormholes emerging on fresh planets years later, giving time to build cities.
- Book 2 · Ch 13Guardians react to Boongate and Starflyer pursuit
Bradley and Adam discuss the war, the nova bombs and Marisa's report that Victor Halgarth entered a Boongate warehouse. They plan to have Senator Burnelli block the Boongate wormhole, and Bradley joins Adam's team.
- Book 2 · Ch 14Bradley and Burnelli negotiate
Senator Burnelli proposes joining forces; Bradley demands Paula Myo deliver McFoster's data to prove trust.
- Book 2 · Ch 14Guardians and allies pursue
Nigel agrees to send Bradley's Guardians, Paula, Qatux, Tiger Pansy and others through to Boongate with Justine's data crystal, then Adam's train heads through.
- Book 2 · Ch 14Train breaks through to Far Away
Adam drives the Guardians' armored train through the Boongate gateway, then Nigel closes the wormhole behind them. They approach the Far Away station section.
- Book 2 · Ch 14Zone killer strike on escort vehicles
Paula warns Alic to take cover, and the train fires zone killers that destroy the Starflyer's escort vehicles outside the force field.
- Book 2 · Ch 14Teams advance to Half Way gateway
The train is halted by broken rails. Teams transfer to armored cars and trucks; Vic stays to hunt Tarlo while the others attack the Half Way gateway defenses.
- Book 2 · Ch 14Guardians pass through the gateway
The Guardians destroy the maser cannons and send a drone and their trucks through the gateway to Half Way, with suspiciously little opposition.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Wormhole lost and race to Port Evergreen
The Guardians find the Half Way wormhole gone, trapping them. Adam decides to fly Carbon Geese to Port Evergreen before the Starflyer blows the last wormhole.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Boarding the Carbon Goose
After sensorbot checks find no sabotage, Adam's group loads vehicles aboard the Carbon Goose, and Wilson pilots it out of the hangar toward the sea to chase the Starflyer.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Bradley explains the planet's revenge
On the Carbon Goose, Bradley tells Paula the smuggled force field equipment will steer a superstorm to smash the Marie Celeste on Far Away.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Drop onto Port Evergreen
After launching recon drones and seeing the Starflyer's group stalled, the Carbon Goose is detected when its radar switches on; ten armored figures jump anyway.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Deciding whether to pursue through the wormhole
With eleven minutes left, the team sends sneekbots through, finds enemies waiting, and debates whether to follow with armored cars given the Volvos' cargo.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Carbon Goose lands and plan to reopen wormhole
After landing at Port Evergreen, Adam proposes hijacking the stormrider to power the wormhole. Morton objects, Bradley insists on going, and Qatux offers to compute a new wormhole end location.
- Book 2 · Ch 16Guardians arrive on Far Away
Wilson sends the stormrider into the neutron star; Qatux opens a wormhole and Bradley's party crosses to Far Away near Armstrong City, then the wormhole is closed.
- Book 2 · Ch 16Stig contacted by Bradley
After a failed pursuit of the Starflyer's convoy, Stig is startled to hear Bradley and Adam on the radio and is told to meet at rendezvous point four.
- Book 2 · Ch 16Stig meets the allies
Stig reunites with Adam and Bradley, is stunned to find Paula Myo and others allied with them, and nearly shoots her. Teams are divided for the Starflyer chase and the revenge project delivery.
- Book 2 · Ch 16Truck breakdown and sabotage
A Volvo engine burns out on the Aldrin Plains. While transferring cargo, Adam finds four crates sabotaged by maser, raising suspicion of a saboteur within the group.
- Book 2 · Ch 16Sabotage investigated
Adam restores order after the crate discovery and Oscar reveals the gearbox failure looked like sabotage. The convoy sets off after an hour's delay.
- Book 2 · Ch 16Adam and Paula discuss suspects
Adam finds Paula collapsing in shock. She guides him through reasoning about suspects and opportunity for the Starflyer agent, then explains her condition arises from letting him go free. He sedates her.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Chase down Highway One and the sabotage warning
Stig's convoy races Cruisers south through Highway One's urban stretch while Bradley reassures him. Adam's garbled message reveals sabotage and a likely Starflyer agent in his group, prompting a debate over suspects.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Refuelling at Wolfstail
Adam's convoy stops at Wolfstail, where Adam and Oscar buy medical supplies for Paula. Adam tells Oscar he doubts he is the Starflyer agent and they weigh the remaining suspects.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Adam and Oscar weigh suspects
Buying medicine, Adam and Oscar discuss which of Wilson, Anna or Myo could be the Starflyer agent, without conclusion; Adam decides to rely on Paula.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Chase along Highway One
Adam's party follows radio news of Bradley's pursuit of the Starflyer; Guardians destroyed the bridges, ambushes occur, and Institute reinforcements slow Bradley.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Meeting Judson
Crossing a wide shallow river, the Volvos meet Judson McKratz, who verifies them via songs and sends them to Samantha in Reithstone Valley.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Equipment handover and unloading
Adam's team meets Samantha's Guardians on the mountain road, hands over the Martian data, and the equipment is unloaded for distribution to the manipulator stations.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Plan to glide onto Aphrodite's Seat
Because the observation team is delayed, Wilson proposes landing a hyperglider on Mount Herculaneum. Samantha agrees despite sabotage fears; Adam privately plans to ground Wilson and Anna and let only Oscar fly.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Arrival at Stonewave
Adam's Volvos reach the deserted hyperglider town Stonewave across the wet desert; Paula remains gravely ill and Wilson needs equipment for the comrelay.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Hangar preparations
The group breaks into the Grand Triad Adventures hangar, powers it up, and checks hypergliders, jeeps and files while planning the flight to Aphrodite's Seat.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Oscar's skill memory implant
Adam sets Oscar on a couch to receive hyperglider skill memory, suspecting a Starflyer agent among the group.
- Book 2 · Ch 18Adam is stabbed
While alone in the hangar, Adam is attacked from behind and stabbed in the brain with a harmonic blade.
- Book 2 · Ch 19Adam found murdered
Oscar wakes from a memory implant to find Adam dead in the hangar. The Guardians accuse the others, but Paula's questioning establishes no clear culprit; Wilson insists the mission continue.
- Book 2 · Ch 19Bradley deduces the observation trap
Realizing Paula's message concerns the hyperglider observation, Bradley sends a verification message over short-wave naming Oscar's link to Adam at Abadan.