I groaned as the truth came to me. Of course they couldn't have killed us. That would have violated the one unshakeable law of space travel: no lethal weapons on a starship. The League of Peoples never let such weapons through, no matter how well concealed. "The implants weren't made to kill," I said aloud. "Just to knock us out for a while."

"You didn't have time to think that through," Chee said sharply. "You responded to an emergency, that's all."

"I didn't respond to an emergency-I killed my partner!" My face felt hot. "And you were trying to hide the evidence, weren't you? Stuff him into a tree so I wouldn't find him. What were you going to tell me? That he'd been dragged off by predators?"

Silence.

"I don't know," Chee finally answered. "I just thought it would be better if you didn't have to confront… if you didn't have to wake up with him right there."

"Right there," I repeated. "Lying in the grass. Where I killed him."

And I began to cry.

Hell

Hell is weeping inside a tightsuit.

I wanted to cover my face with my hands. The helmet was in the way.

My nose ran. I could not wipe it. Dribbling and hot, untouchable tears poured down my cheeks.

I hugged my arms across my chest. The suit's surface was like iron; no matter how hard I tightened my grip, I couldn't feel my own touch. My arms squeezed against unyielding fabric, never making contact with the me inside.

Alone, alone, crying alone. I could not even reach myself.

My Helmet

In time, the sobs wore themselves out. The misery didn't. The taste of my running nose was salty on my lips.

Chee had his arms around me, trying to give comfort. I couldn't feel him through the suit either.

He was saying things, meaningless things. "You didn't know, how could you possibly think clearly, don't blame yourself…"

Stupid things. I shoved him away. "Leave me alone."

He was looking at me. I wanted so badly to turn away from him that I stared him straight in the eye.

"Ramos," he said, "take off your helmet and wipe your nose before you drown."

"I can't take off my helmet," I sniffled. "There are germs."

"How much air do you have left?" Chee asked. "An hour? Two hours? We're going to be here longer than that."

"I'm going to be here forever!" The words came out before I even knew what I was saying. "I'm a murderer now. A dangerous non-sentient. I'm no different from that Greenstrider you talked about — it doesn't matter what was going through my mind, I should have known."

"Look, in the heat of the moment…"

"No!" I almost screamed the word. "I should have figured it out. I should have. I don't deserve to be called sentient if I can kill my partner so stupidly."

"Ramos…"

"I can never go into space again," I said. "Even if a rescue ship arrived this minute, they couldn't take me away. The League would never let me leave Melaquin. They'll call me non-sentient, and they're right."

"Take off your helmet," the admiral ordered. "I refuse to argue with a person who has snot all over her face."

In another time and place, I might have been obstinate. I might have played the steely Explorer, sternly adhering to Fleet policies no matter how runny her nose was. But just this once, I didn't have the energy for willpower. With two sullen taps of my finger, I hit the helmet release button and the safety catch. It took five more seconds for the interlocks to disengage and for the pressure regulator to equalize with external atmosphere. My ears popped just as the helmet swung back on its hinges and exposed me to extraterrestrial air for the first time in my life.

Without a second's hesitation, I wiped my nose on my sleeve.

"Good," said Chee, "you aren't an utter idiot after all."

A Tomb

We interred Yarrun in the log Chee had chosen — there was no better place for him to go. The miniature shovel in my pack was only adequate for skimming soil samples, not for burying bodies; it would have taken hours to dig a hole deep enough to hold my partner, hours of staring at his throat. I couldn't bear that.

The admiral couldn't do the work either. Whatever strength let him carry Yarrun into the woods had dissolved the moment I arrived. Now his face looked like brown chalk; his breathing sounded too deliberate, as if he was forcing himself to keep control. I gave him some excuse about wanting to deal with Yarrun myself and he didn't object. He simply sat against a tree and watched with weary eyes as I did what had to be done.

Pushing Yarrun into the log.

Forcing his helpless body inside, among the ants and beetles and fungus.

Smelling the odor of punky wood strong in my nostrils, the scent mixed with the tang of Yarrun's blood and my own stink.

Toward the end, it occurred to me to lock my own helmet onto Yarrun's tightsuit, encasing him completely so that carrion-eaters would not sniff him out. Then I finished cramming the corpse into the shadows, stuffing the end of the log with dead leaves until I could no longer see him.

When it was all over-when I had done what I had to, and what I could — I turned away and threw up.

"That's what fucking 'expendable' means," I said as I wiped my mouth. "That's what it really means."

Impeccable Timing

Chee took my arm as we walked back to the landing site. I thought he was going to try to comfort me again; but he simply needed the support.

"You shouldn't have carried him all that way," I said.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. "The kindest thing."

"But it took too much out of you."

He shrugged. "It gave me something to do. I woke up hours before you did."

"You got knocked out too? How? You don't have a throat mike."

"They must have planted something on me earlier," he answered. "Maybe they slipped it into my food back on the Golden Cedar. A little radio-controlled capsule no bigger than a grain of salt — the High Council loves to develop crap like that. Those bastards desperately need toys; and if the League of Peoples won't let them build guns, they build nonlethal junk instead. Same time they triggered your throat-set, they put me to sleep too."

"Mm." Of course, the Admiralty would have to silence all of us at the same time; otherwise, there would be calls for help… demands for rescue. The Jacaranda would not be able to refuse a direct mayday, but if we all went off the air at once, Fleet policy was clear and precise. Don't send more people into unknown danger. Report the situation and let your superiors decide what to do. Our wonderful, benevolent superiors. Chee's grip around my neck tightened. "Ramos? I've been thinking of a lot of things since I got here. Old times." He shuddered. "Maybe the council was right to dump me. My memory comes and goes — a lot of the time, when I'm making a spectacle of myself, it's because I suddenly can't remember who I am. It's not like I forget my name, but I forget… important things in the past. You know? Things I sure as hell should have told you. But sometimes the memories just weren't inside my head; and sometimes the memories were there, but the courage wasn't."

"Courage?" I thought he was rambling.

"It's hard admitting past… failures. Ignoble surrenders. The times you should have been smarter, or braver…"

He stumbled over a stick hidden by leaves. I kept him from falling, but it took all my strength — he hadn't made any effort to save himself. "Are you all right?" I asked. He didn't reply.

A thought struck me. "When was your last YouthBoost?"

"Two weeks, Ramos. One thing you can say for the council, they have impeccable timing."