"Hope?"

"Even in the most depressing dystopia, there's still the notion that the future is something we build. It doesn't just happen. You can't predict the future, but you can invent it. Build it. That is a hopeful idea, even when the building collapses."

Bob was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "Yeah. Nobody's building the future anymore, 'We live in an Age of Limited Choices.' " He quoted the government line without cracking a smile. "Hell, you don't take choices off a list. You make choices and add them to the list. Speaking of which have you made your choice?"

That electric tickle… "Are they even alive?"

"So far. I understand it was some kind of miracle that they landed at all. They're unconscious but not hurt bad. They're hooked up to some sort of magical medical widget and the Angels overhead are monitoring. But if we don't get them out soon, they'll freeze to death."

She bit her lip. "And you think we can reach them in time?"

Bob shrugged.

"You want me to risk my life on the Ice, defy the government and probably lose my job in a crazy, amateur effort to rescue two spacemen who might easily be dead by the time we reach them."

He scratched his beard. "Is that quixotic, or what?"

"Quixotic. Give me four minutes."

She found five more fen waiting outside by Bob's van. Three she knew from an earlier life. She smiled and waved and they nodded warily.

That griped her, but she could see their point of view. She had been out of Fandom for a long time and they weren't quite sure about her.

Bob's van had less than half a tank of alcohol, so they topped it with the fuel from her car. She rolled her eyes up watching them. Typical fanac, she thought. Six people trying to work a syphon at the same time. Finally Thor took over the whole thing and Sherrine retired gratefully to the van with the rest and shivered while she waited.

Thor was outside, but he wasn't shivering. Sherrine watched him through the window. He was built like the god whose name he used, and nothing about him had changed since she had known him except for the beard.

Even with the last drop of alkey sucked from the car's tank, the van had less than a full tank. Thor climbed into the van and slid the door closed. He still had the syphon. Sherrine poked her nose out of her coat.

"Keeping the syphon?"

His grin was lopsided and too wide. Siphoning alcohol… He held the rubber hose up like an Appalachian snake handler. "We can't make it to Mapleton and back on one tank. Might not be too smart to gas up at a public station. 'Specially after we collect Rafe and Cabe."

"Who?"

"The Angels."

"Oh. You know their names?"

"Those are code names." That was Mike Glider, grinning on her right. "Gotta have code names on a clandestine operation."

"Sure you do; there are standards to keep up."

She shook her head. Mike knew everything there was to know and had opinions on the rest. He'd been a county agricultural agent since quitting the IRS; but that was just cover for his true identity as Oral Historian of Fandom. He was "tall and round and three hundred pound," in his own words. If they froze on the Ice, he'd freeze last.

Bob started the van and Sherrine felt that electric thrill surging deep and strong. Real spacemen. Oh, God, to talk to them! Space stations. Moon base. Angels down; fans to the rescue!

She looked around at her companions. "Thor, you look like a Mormon patriarch."

"The beard's for warmth. I shave the mustache off so snot won't freeze in it. Ever wonder why Eskimos don't grow more hair? Evolution in action."

"Hunh. No." Fans were a wellspring of minutiae, a peculiar mix of the trivial and the practical. Try asking about Inuit tonsorial practices in a group of mundanes! She tried to banish snot-encrusted mustaches from her thoughts.

"Welcome back, Sherrine." Bruce Hyde was riding shotgun. He twisted around in his seat to look at her. "We heard you'd gafiated."

"Fafiated." She looked him straight in the eye, daring him to disagree. She hadn't gotten away from itall; she'd been forced away from it all. She resented Bruce's probing. "The jobs I wanted I couldn't get if I were a known fan. My thesis advisor kept dropping subtle hints about getting down to earth and being realistic. So Jake and I went mundane."

Bruce was overweight, but not in Mike's league; and his bulk was more muscle than fat. He was stronger than he looked. His black beard was wild and bushy, wildly unlike Thor's silken, Nordic god look. "How is Jake these days?" he asked.

She dropped her eyes. "I wouldn't know."

Bob put in his two cents. "Jake left her for a New Cookie five years ago."

Thanks, Bob. You could hand out flyers! "Jake really did gafiate," she explained. "I became a 'dane because I had to; but he really wanted to. He kept making digs about 'sci-fi' and 'Buck Rogers stuff.' Trying to yank my chain. So…" A shrug. "We drifted apart." And in the end they couldn't even talk about it. The teasing turned into arguments; the arguments into fights. Eventually she had to watch what she said around him because she couldn't be sure that he wouldn't denounce her for fannishness to the University. And wasn't that a hell of a basis for a marriage?

Besides, that was certainly a better explanation for why he left than the one she saw in the mirror every morning.

"That's okay," said Bruce. "We couldn't have used him anyway."

She pulled her parka hood tighter around her face. That was like Bruce, to evaluate everything, even her personal life, in terms of its utility to the current fanac. "You never did like Jake, did you?"

He shook his head. "That's not right. But he had his chance, and he went mundane."

"So did I."

Bruce wasn't embarrassed at all. "Like you said, it was different with him."

She let it drop and looked at the two strange faces. "Hi. I'm Sherrine Hartley."

"I know." The man sitting to her left was massively built and had a shaggy mane of white hair circling his face. He looked like an elderly lion, or an Old Testament patriarch. "Will Waxman, from L.A. Bob told us we were stopping to pick you up." He dropped his hand onto the shoulder of the man next to him. "And this is Steve Mews. He's a Mean Dude."

Steve was sitting lotus position on the floor of the van. He was five-nine, black, and about the most perfect physical specimen she had ever seen. A moment ago he d been perfectly still, completely relaxed; but his name turned him on like a switch.

He grinned up at her, a wide white grin in a dark face. "Will exaggerates, as usual. I haven't maimed anyone in years." He reached up a heavily mittened hand that engulfed hers. A strong grip, but not overpowering. She had the feeling that, had he wanted to, he could have crushed the bones in her hand.

The van walls were insulated with blankets and comforters. Sherrine settled back into one. She loved car heaters. They were like blowtorches for warming up. The alcohol they burned would have been burned anyway, to move the car. In ten minutes she was warm and could stop huddling.

"I've been fafiated for years," she said by way of conversation, "but I keep hearing about the conventions. Weird ways. Cryptic notes in electronic bulletin boards, things like that. I think you guys really love playing undercover."

Mike grinned. "The word do get around."

"How's Worldcon?"

"It's Minicon. That's a pun. Minne-sota; but also 'mini-' because there's only fifty-four in attendance."

"Forty-eight," she corrected him. "You guys are here."

Mike couldn't just be clever; he had to know that you knew he was clever. A grin and a raised forefinger: "Wrong! This is a special Con Committee meeting, so we are still officially in attendance. In fact, counting you, there are now fifty-five."