"Well, you and Alfendi and maybe Clive, I guess you guys'd have the strongest chance of bein' connected," said Heiji, thinking it over. "Two relatives and a journalist acquaintance of theirs. Of course, if we were all taken from the same place -- or at least the first nine of us -- we woulda caused a pretty big stir. I don't know about the others, though. People disappear all the time, and some of 'em get written off as runaways." Of course, Hershel was a fine upstanding teenager, there was no way he'd ever run off to explore booby-trapped ruins or anything like that. Certainly not.

"Yeah. Which is ridiculous. Everyone makes mistakes, and I don't think anyone saw the Simon thing coming."