Apollo and Diana #4

“The children sir. They’re gone.”
The General paused. Thinking, but mostly to get himself under control.
“I told you to keep a watch on them. We want to make sure the... cargo... gets to the right destination.”
“We have been, sir. They disappeared. That’s what the sphere does.”
The only sign of the General’s anger was an increasingly red face. “A toy, a smokescreen for the real payload. Red herring for stupidly naive spacer children. It’s just a simple light refraction grating, the principle’s really very old –you studied physics. That sphere can’t hide their ship.
Find those children, Gray.”