She and Tom had from the beginning been sitting by the monitors listening to the conversations between the landing party and the command people on Wendy. When Clairveau had contacted them to let them know that a rescue vessel was on the way, she'd demanded to know how such a thing could be allowed to happen in the first place. He'd apologized, but explained that they simply could not provide for all contingencies. How could anyone have foreseen that both landers would be destroyed?

She might have replied that the second lander, the vehicle from the Evening Star, should not even have been there. It hadn't been part of what passed for Academy planning. There'd been only one lander really available, so the risk had been considerable right from the start.

Circumstances. It all came down to circumstances. After her conversation with the captain of the Wendy Jay, Tom had argued that it just wasn't always possible to eliminate the element of danger. It didn't matter, he said, what someone had done or not done twenty years earlier. The only thing that mattered was the present situation. Hutchins had been given a directive, she'd decided the payoff was worth whatever risk might be involved, and she'd consequently chosen to accept the assignment. You couldn't fault her for that.

But people had died, and more people might follow. It was hard for Embry to accept the position that nobody was responsible. When things went wrong, in her view, someone was always responsible.

But something positive was coming out of the wreckage. She and Scolari, left alone and forgotten on Wildside, save when somebody needed medical advice, had taken comfort in each other's arms.

They listened to Canyon's periodic reports on the news link, she with contempt, Tom with his usual tolerance. "He probably feels it just as much as we do," he told her. "It's just that for public consumption he has to let his feelings show. That's what's distasteful."

She didn't believe it. Canyon was exploiting the disaster, profiting by it, and was probably thanking his lucky stars he'd been sent out here.

She was sitting with Tom, talking about future plans, how they would handle things when they got home. They lived on opposite sides of the North American continent, and would be forced to conduct a virtual relationship for a while. Neither was quite ready yet to make a permanent commitment. But that was not necessarily a major detriment. In an age of sophisticated technology, there was little even of an intimate nature that could not be carried out at long range.

Tom was describing how they should get together during their vacations when the monitor buzzed. Incoming.

"Put it up, Bill," he told the AI.

Clairveau's image blinked on. He looked tired, she thought. Worn-out. "Tom," he said, "I understand you have some lasers on board? Portables?"

"Yes. They have some back there somewhere."

"Good. I need you to break them out. I'll send a shuttle for them."

"What are you going to do?" asked Embry. "Why do you need lasers?"

"To rescue your captain."

"Really?" asked Tom. "How?" "Later. I'm on the run at the moment." "Do you need help?"

"By all means," said Clairveau. "We need all the help we can get." When he'd signed off, she could feel the tension in the compartment. "Tom," she said finally, "you don't know anything about welding." "I know," he said. "But how hard can it be?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Nicholson. As you're aware, the original schedule called for us to leave our present position in two days, on Monday, and to withdraw approximately seventy million kilometers in order to be well out of the way when the collision occurs Saturday evening.

"We have, however, offered to assist in the rescue effort. That means we'll be staying in the immediate area somewhat longer. I want to stress that the Evening Star will at no time be at hazard. Let me repeat that, there will be absolutely no danger to this ship. We'll be away long before anyone need be concerned.

"You may wonder what part the Evening Star will play in rescuing the stranded scientists. We're making a detailed explanation available on the ship's net. Simply go to the Rescue site. A specially produced and embossed copy of the plan, which you may wish to keep as a souvenir of the occasion, will be distributed later today.

"We also intend to present everyone on board with a skyhook pin as a special memento.

"Ship's meals this evening will be served compliments of Inter-Galactic Lines. Happy hour will begin, as usual, at five. If you have any questions, my officers will be available throughout the ship.

"Thank you very much for your patience during a difficult period. Be assured we will keep you informed as matters develop."

Within minutes after the captain's address, Marcel arrived with several people in tow. They were the team of mathematicians and physicists who were planning the backup mission. They were escorted to the temporary command center Nicholson had set up.

Nicholson sat quietly while they talked of releasing the asteroid, detaching a shaft and the net from the rest of the assembly, rotating it almost 360 degrees, and putting it on a trajectory for Deepsix. They traced the anticipated changes in stress on the shaft when the rest of

the assembly was removed. They calculated how they could use four superluminals to rotate the shaft without breaking it.

The ideal length.for the shaft, they determined, would be 420 kilometers. The shaft would be removed from the asteroid end, said a tall, athletic-looking man introduced as John Something-or-Other, smiling at his feeble attempt to make a joke.

When they'd finished, there were several questions. Nicholson himself asked one: "Are we sure that a weld between the shaft, which must be made of a substance none of us has ever heard of, and the hull of a starship, will take?"

"It'll work," said a small, waspish young man. "We've already tried it."

The conversation became sufficiently technical that Nicholson couldn't follow it any longer, and after a while he slipped out. They all seemed to know what they were doing. Maybe there'd be a reasonably happy ending at that. Maybe he could even emerge as a hero.

They sent a shuttle for Tom, and he hadn't been gone twenty minutes before Embry discovered she did not like being alone on Wild-side. The ship was full of echoes and vokes. Of systems clicking on and shutting off. Of the sound of warm air flowing through blowers and ducts. Of the onboard electronic systems talking incessantly to themselves. Bill the AI inquired whether she was okay, and she had to say yes or he'd want to diagnose her problem. She couldn't even ignore him because he would simply repeat the query, and he had endless patience.

It had endless patience. Best to keep the details straight.

She was not among those people who could entertain herself carrying on a conversation with an AI. Bill was, after all, only a simulation, not a real person. A lot of people tended to lose sight of that fact, and she'd had to refer several of them to the shrinks.

She was up front on the flight deck, seated in the pilot's chair. Deepsix lay below her, a mass of oceans and glaciers save for the narrow green-brown belt along the equator. A huge snowstorm blanketed the continent they called Northern Tempus.

None of the other three ships was in the sky. She felt utterly alone. They'd invited her to move over to Wendy, but she'd declined. Packing was inconvenient, and anyhow she'd have to come back here if the rescue was successful. After all, it would only be a matter of a few days.

If things went badly, on the other hand, God knew when she could expect to get home. She didn't want to seem indifferent, or cold-hearted, but she also didn't want to spend the winter out here. If Hutch and the others were lost, another long delay would be likely, lasting probably several more weeks, while a new pilot came to Maleiva to recover Wildside.