“I’m sorry,” I said. “You obviously weren’t well-matched.”

“No.” He turned away, seeming to wilt. I wondered how much the QL links were draining him.

I needed to bring us back to our focus. “Where should Mars go?” I asked.

Charles straightened and linked his slate to the main display. “Aelita, these are rough coordinates and star numbers. Link and update with the astronomy library.”

Aelita graphically depicted a scatter of densely-packed stars.

“We can’t just move a few light-years away. With present tracking and measuring, Earth could find us anywhere within a few hundred light-years. If we move at all, it’s because Earth has proven it will do everything it can to destroy us… And will keep on trying.“

Bald expression of our dilemma still had power to chill me.

“So I’m suggesting we make a grand leap. I’ve looked at the new surveys, run them through Aelita for processing, and come up with a candidate. It’s the best of all possible places in the near galaxy. About ten thousand light-years away, five thousand light-years closer to galactic center. A narrow, restricted cloud separating from the leading edge of a galactic arm. A thick cluster of stars a few billion years younger than most of the stars near the sun, stable and rich with metals. Beautiful skies, bright nights.

“I searched the Galactic Survey Twenty-Two Catalog and found a yellow dwarf star about nine-tenths the size of the sun, with perturbations suggesting four large planets. Rocky worlds unknown, of course. And there are a dozen similar stars in the same region.

“I give them to you,” he concluded. “All the clouds and stars, a new garden of flowers.” He watched me closely. “Choose. Become mother to the new Mars.”

I remembered the ancient flowers Charles had given me near Trés Haut Médoc, cut from the Glass Sea beds. Now he offered me a bouquet of stars. After the weariness and grief, Charles could still take my breath away.

“I want to apologize,” I said. “I’ve been very rough on you. You’ve done magnificent work.”

“Thank you,” he said. His face brightened, and he watched me with gentle intensity. I still had such power to please Charles. I had never had such a hold on Ilya, and perhaps that was why I loved him.

I stared at the stars circled and blinking on the outskirts of the elongated blob. “Will we need reservations?” I asked.

I interrupted an argument the next day, as I walked with Dandy and Lieh to inspect the progress on the big tweakers.

The central laboratory had been finished the week before, the equipment had been consolidated in one chamber, and a few simple tests had been run converting small samples of oxygen to anti-oxygen. When we entered the lab, I heard Leander’s voice rise above shouting.

“Doesn’t anybody understand what we’re up against?”

Mitchell Maspero-Gambacorta and Tamara Kwang had squared off against Charles, Leander, and Royce. Kwang saw me enter the lab and fixed her face in a chilly mask. Maspero-Gambacorta shook his head, swearing beneath his breath, and walked to squat on the low bench supporting the larger force disorder pumps. Royce gathered up his slate and a few tools and seemed about ready to leave, but relented, standing awkwardly with his arms full. Leander’s face had flushed with emotion; Charles, sitting with hands wrapped on one crossed knee, appeared calm, even a little distanced from the row.

“Disagreements?” I asked.

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Leander said, a little too quickly.

“Tamara and Mitchell feel we should open our research to public scrutiny,” Charles said.

“It’s the sanest thing to do,” Kwang said.

“None of this is sane,” Maspero-Gambacorta murmured, folding his arms.

“Whom would we tell first?”

“Earth, obviously,” Kwang said. “I have friends on Earth, people who could help all of us sort these things through — the political problems, the misunderstandings — ”

“Misunderstandings?” I asked.

“I’m not a fool,” Kwang said defensively. “I know what our situation is, but if only we could talk, find common ground… It would make me feel so much better…” Her words faded and she shook her head.

“We’ve been over this time and again,” Leander said.

“It’s a feedback dilemma,” Charles said.

“I know!” Kwang shouted, raising her fists. “They might kill us if they think we know how to kill them… But they won’t kill us if they think we can get to them first. We can’t tell them what we know, because we know how to kill them. And if we tell them, they’ll know how to kill us. That is not sane!”

“I agree,” I said. “The best solution is to let things equalize, cool off.”

“By running away?” Maspero-Gambacorta asked. “Doesn’t seem very adult.”

“Can you think of a better idea?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “A dozen better ideas. None of them supported by Charles or Stephen.”

“Tell me,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see their value.”

He screwed up his face in frustration. “All right, they’re idealistic, screwball risks, not better ideas. But maybe if we tried one of them, we would sleep better nights!”

“The point is not for us to sleep better,” I said. “It’s for Mars to live, and live free.”

“We’re all working as hard as we can,” Kwang said. “Don’t think just because we disagree, we’re not doing our work.”

“I don’t think that,” I said. “If you come up with a better idea — idealistic or cynical or whatever — please let me know.”

Royce sat emphatically, arms still folded, and said, “All right. Over with? Can we get back to work now?”

“We’ve got about four more weeks before we have no secrets whatsoever,” Ti Sandra said at the beginning of our next daily conference call. Alone in my quarters, surrounded by hollow sounds of construction echoing through the soil into the tunnels, I watched Ti Sandra’s range of expressions as I might examine the face of an idol, hoping for clues. “It’s time to survey,” she said. “Take Phobos to our suggested destination. People will notice that a moon has been borrowed, so we’ll need to have the moon back before any alarm is raised. The trip must take less than five hours.”

“Charles and I have discussed the details. He thinks we can manage,” I said. “I want to go with them.”

“Why?” Ti Sandra said.

“I won’t even think about sending Mars someplace unless I’ve been there first.”

“Point One will have a fit.”

“Then we just won’t tell them,” I said.

Ti Sandra considered for a moment, weighing risks against advantages. “You’ll go with them. I want somebody I can trust implicitly. As far as I’m concerned, you’re flesh of my flesh.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’d like to put a tweaker team on Deimos as well. If you don’t come back, or come back too late, we’ll move Deimos into the Belt, hide it, and prepare for the worst.”

The prospect of using Deimos as a backup — no need to specify for what purpose — seemed almost normal, not in the least disturbing.

“Are we telling them that Phobos is moving?”

“We owe them that much,” she said. “Whether they’ll believe we’re not attacking, I can’t predict.”

I told her about Wachsler’s continuing objections, about the growing spirit of resistance among the Olympians and some of our closest advisors and aides.

“Just what I expected,” she said. “I’d join you if I could. Help you state our case a little more firmly. But you can do it. They’ll come around.”

I felt my sense of urgency might not be communicating over the vid display. “It may not be that easy. Think of what we’re suggesting.”

“It scares the hell out of me,” Ti Sandra said. “Maybe they’re so scared they’d rather trust Earth?”

“It’s a natural reaction.”

“Is everybody forgetting so quickly?”

“I hope not,” I said.

“Some folks didn’t lose much,” Ti Sandra said with a touch of bitterness. “Keep fighting and persuading, Cassie. Keep your believers enthused. Send them out as proselytizers, if you can spare them.“