Beside her, Chandra felt Goode go limp with released tension. "Still with me?" the radio asked.

"Sure are," Chandra said, wiping the sweat off her palms. "I don't know how to thank you, Mr.—?"

"Dr. Louis Du Bellay," the voice identified himself. "And don't thank me yet. If what you did out there didn't work, there's a worse death coming for all of us."

Chandra had almost forgotten about that. The thought sobered her rising spirits considerably. "You're right. Can you get us into contact with Peacekeeper HQ? We need to report in."

"I can maybe do better than that. Come aboard and we'll find out."

—

They were given special priority to land, and a car was standing by for them at the field.

General Carey was waiting outside the Situation Room. "I ought to pull your pilot's license for going out there against specific Peacekeeper orders," he told Du Bellay half-seriously, even as he gave his daughter a bear hug. "If Mahendra hadn't confessed to helping you get hold of that tachship I probably would. But he's too good a man to lose to a court-martial. Let's get inside; the Chasers have been reporting in for nearly twenty minutes."

Mahendra looked up as the group approached. "Captain Carey and Officer Goode? Congratulations; it looks like you've done it."

Chandra felt a lump the thickness of ion shielding in her throat. "We slowed him?"

"No, but you deflected him a couple hundredths of a second in the right direction."

"Confirmed?" General Carey asked sharply, as if not daring to believe it.

"Confirmed, sir," Mahendra nodded. "He'll be passing through the upper solar chromosphere instead of deep into the photosphere. We'll get some good flares and a significant radiation increase for a few weeks, but nothing much worse than that."

"And the Intruder hasn't tried to correct his course?" Du Bellay asked quietly.

Mahendra's expression was both sad and grim. "No, Doctor."

Puzzled, Chandra glanced between her father, Mahendra, and Du Bellay, all of whom wore the same look. Even Goode's face was starting to change... and suddenly she understood. "You mean... the impact killed all of them?"

Carey put his arm around her shoulders. "We had no choice, Chandra. It was a matter of survival. You understand, don't you?"

She sighed and, reluctantly, nodded. Goode took her arm and led her to a nearby chair. Sitting there, holding tightly to his hand, she watched with the rest of the Situation Room as the computer plot of the Intruder's position skimmed the sun's surface and shot out once more toward deep space. What had they been like, she wondered numbly... and how many of them had she killed so that Earth could live?

She knew she would never know.

—

Behind the Dawnsent, the star receded toward negative infinity, its light red-shifted to invisibility. With mixed feelings Orofan watched its shrinking image on the screen. Beside him, Pliij looked up from the helmboard. "We're all set, Shipmaster. The deviation's been calculated; we can correct course anytime in the next hundred aarns." He paused, and in a more personal tone said, "You did what was necessary, Orofan. Your honor is unblemished."

Orofan signed agreement, but it was an automatic gesture. The assault gun, he noticed, was still in his tentacle, and he slipped it back into its sheath.

A tentacle touched his. "Pliij is right," Lassarr said gently. "Whatever craft that was, its inhabitants had almost certainly been killed by our scoop before we detected it. You could have done nothing to help them. Refusing to accept the ship's mass at that point would have been dishonorable. You did well; your decisions and judgments have been proved correct."

"I know," Orofan sighed. It was true; fate had combined with his decisions to save the system from destruction without adding appreciable time to the Dawnsent's own journey. He should be satisfied.

And yet... the analyzers reported significant numbers of silicon, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms among the metals of the spacecraft the Dawnsent had unintentionally run down. Which of those atoms had once belonged to living creatures?... And how many of those beings had died so that the Sk'cee might reach their new home?

He knew he would never know.

"Ladies and gentlemen, shuttles one and two for United Flight 1103 are now ready for general boarding: Skyport service from Houston to Dallas-Ft. Worth, Los Angeles, and San Francisco."

Peter Whitney was ready; he'd been standing at the proper end of the waiting lounge for the past several minutes, as a matter of fact, eagerly awaiting the announcement. Picking up his carry-on bag, he stepped to the opening door, flashed his boarding pass for the attendant's inspection, and walked down the short tunnel to where the shuttle waited. The excitement within him seemed to increase with every step, a fact that embarrassed him a little—a twenty-eight-year-old computer specialist shouldn't be feeling like a kid on his first trip to Disney World, after all. But he refused to worry too much about it. Professional solemnity was still, for him, a recent acquisition, easily tucked out of the way.

The shuttle itself was unimpressive, of course: little more than a Boeing 727 with a heavily modified interior. Following the flight attendant's instructions he sat down in the front row, choosing the left-hand window seat. Pushing his bag into the compartment under his chair, he fastened his lap/shoulder belt and spent the next few minutes examining the ski lift-style bars connecting his pair of seats to the conveyors behind the grooves in floor and ceiling. He'd seen specs and models for the system back in St. Louis, but had never given up being amazed that it worked as well as it did in actual practice.

His seatmate turned out to be a smartly-suited businesswoman type who promptly pulled out her Wall Street Journal and buried herself in it. A bored executive who flew in Skyports every week, obviously, and her indifference helped dispel Whitney's last twinges of guilt at having taken the window seat.

Within a very few minutes the shuttle was loaded and ready. The door was closed, the tunnel withdrawn, and soon they were at the edge of the runway, awaiting permission to take off. Whitney kept an eye on his watch with some interest—Skyport logistics being what they were, a shuttle couldn't afford to be very late in getting off the ground. Even knowing that, he was impressed when the plane roared down the runway and into the sky only twelve seconds behind schedule.

They turned east, heading into the early-morning sun to meet the Skyport as it headed toward them from its New Orleans pickup. Whitney watched the city disappear behind them, and then shifted his gaze forward, wondering how far away something the size of a Skyport could be seen. Docking, he knew, would take place seventy to eighty miles out from Houston; assuming the shuttle was flying its normal four-ninety knots—five-sixty-odd miles an hour—meant an eight to nine minute trip. They'd covered seven of that already; surely they must be coming up on it by now. Unless...

With smooth abruptness, the horizon dropped below the level of his window, and Whitney knew he'd goofed. The Skyport was somewhere off to the shuttle's right, and the smaller craft was now circling around to get into docking position. Belatedly he realized he should have asked the flight attendant which was the scenic side when he boarded.

The passengers on the other side of the aisle were beginning to take an interest in the view out their windows, and Whitney craned his neck in an effort to see. Nothing but ground and sky were visible from where he sat; but even as he settled back in mild disappointment the shuttle leveled out and began to climb... and suddenly, ahead and above them, the Skyport loomed into view.