As her mother's hand came away, Heather spied something in it, catching a good look at it just before it swiftly disappeared into her mother's pocket....A second before or after and Heather might have missed it.Did he just give her money? Heather thought in bewilderment.The car horn sounded again. "Move your fat butt, Heather," rang Melinda's voice."Melinda, I heard that," her mother said reproachfully as she hurried down the steps. "Don't be disrespectful to your older sister." At least I have a. This had been such a terrible day, she just knew Mr Francis was going to fire her mere hours after hiring her. Not only had she destroyed one of his new statues, there was a growing bulge in the ceiling directly above his desk, with water from the upstairs bathroom swelling the plaster and dribbling all over his important papers and the framed photograph of his wife. She only had her suit jacket left after losing all her other clothes, and now that was stuck, impaled on a metal spike in the. Deliberately, Greg raised a hand and toyed with the necklace, watching Jan carefully. She made no reaction. This time, Greg did laugh. She didn't remember! Oh, that was great! He'd stolen from her the one thing in all the world she wanted the most, to be Marcia, and now he had it. And she was just plain old Jan again. She'd changed back when she took the charm off to shower and put it in the drawer, where he'd found it. Well, Greg thought, carefully tucking the charm back between the deep. The view was split between a camera that must have been on the Dalriada and another that must have been on board one of the other Broadswords, within the Earth's atmosphere. They could see the flare as each of the smaller transport ships entered the atmosphere, the friction heating the hulls to a fiery glow. The Dalriada was firing steadily at the ships, picking some of them off.The small transports were darting about, trying to avoid the incoming fire. The USS Fife and Fortrenn had sown a.