Any second now miners would come out of the dark at her, claws out, carapaces shielding the nested purple curves of the camera eyes through which Jentry would be watching. She would fail and be dragged back— or he would just kill her on the spot. It didn't matter. She had made her bid and, for Rue, that was the first and last unshakable fact that declared who she was.

She grinned tightly when she found herself touching the hull of the cycler shuttle— safe and unsuspected. Maybe the miners were still rattling around in the ringways, thwarted. She would pretend they were, anyway, until rude reality stopped her.

The miners didn't arrive in time to stop her from locating the airlock to the cycler shuttle. They didn't reach to stop her from turning the emergency handle and nothing was waiting for her in the red-lit airlock that opened for her.

Rue entered the ship with a sense almost of disappointment; certainly of anticlimax. She had been afraid of Father and Jentry all her life; nothing that she'd done in defiance of them had ever gone unpunished, except for the tiny actions, like making her own safe refuges in the outer ringways, that were symbolic to her and utterly unimportant to the world at large.

She undogged the suit's helmet and said, "Ship, awake."

Light bloomed around her, inside a ship that was as much hers as Jentry's (according to the inheritance) but where she had been only a few times in her life. She quickly stripped off her gloves and reached to touch a tapestry on the wall. The walls and floors were done in complex, quilted fabrics in dark earth tones and crimson, lit by unobtrusive spotlamps. This airlock opened near the galley, which glowed with suspended holos; a central well with a ladder led up and down to sleeping quarters and games rooms. There was no control room; everything was voice and inscape-controlled. The shuttle was designed to keep its occupants comfortable— and amused— for the weeks that it might take to rendezvous with a passing cycler.

It was the most luxurious place Rue had ever been. No wonder Jentry had forbidden her to visit it. She remembered there were fish tanks and a tiny arboretum with green plants in it. There were lots of places she had never been, as well. She wanted to explore right now, but first she had to finish her escape. She dove down the central well of the ship.

As she entered the main cargo hold she shouted, "Ship, cast off. Set a course to rendezvous with the next cycler."

"Nice try, Sis."

She caught herself on a cargo net and looked around. Jentry hung in the open airlock that connected to the docking tube. "I thought you might try something like this," he said. "So while you were pulling maneuvers in deep space, I sailed up here. After all, the others could find you if you went anywhere else. This was your only option— too bad you're so predictable." He grinned insolently and launched himself at her.

Jentry had hit her so many times that Rue's instinct was to raise her hands when he came for her. This time, though, she found one of her gloves still held the reaction pistol.

The look on his face when he saw it was priceless; Jentry was in midflight and couldn't stop himself or turn away. She levelled the pistol and shot him in the face.

He vanished behind a puff of white vapor; the pistol kicked back, nearly tangling Rue in the cargo net. Jentry shrieked, limbs flailing as he tumbled past her and hit the wall.

His face red and blistered, Jentry groaned as he drifted back into the center of the hold. For a second Rue felt a deep pang of remorse, because she had never wanted to hate Jentry. He had driven her to it.

"I'm sorry, Jentry," she said and she meant it. She jumped, rolled in midair and planted her feet in his midriff. Kicking off, she ended up back at the cargo net while Jentry sailed precisely through the middle of the airlock door. She watched him recede down the docking tube for a moment, then dove to the doorway and pressed the close button.

"Ship! Cast off!"

"I recognize you, Meadow-Rue Rosebud Cassels," said the ship in its liquid voice. "Jentry Terrence Cassels has issued an order that I should remain in port."

Rue felt a shock run through her, like the premonition of a blow. "I have authority over you. Mom gave you to both of us."

"Yes, Meadow-Rue."

"So… what's it to be?"

"According to law, when equal ownership applies to a ship, authority is held first by the one who is physically aboard the ship. Your order takes precedence over his."

"Then go! Go, damn you!"

Then suddenly she was moving, drifting toward the floor— no, the floor was drifting up as the ship left dock. She alighted on the soft surface and gradually over the next few minutes her weight increased to full.

It took Rue a full hour to convince herself she was really on her way. When she finally believed it, she curled up in a corner and cried. Then she slept and didn't wake for almost a full day.

BEFORE CREEPING INTO Jentry's quarters to retrieve her heirloom, Rue had visited the few places in Allemagne that had meant something to her. She needed to say good-bye, but with Mom gone there were no people she wanted to say it to. But all her memories were here— her whole past— so she went to the gardens and sat for a while sniffing under the coal-black leaves of her favorite air tree. It was very bright here— as bright, Grandma had told her once, as a full-moon night on Earth. The black trees and black grasses were much more efficient light-gatherers than the green wildflowers Mom kept in her blinding hot terrarium. As a child Rue had lain back in the grass, feeling the faint heat of the ceiling lamps a dozen meters overhead, seeing a slight glow through her eyelids. She imagined she was on Earth or some exotic alien planet in High Space, baking in sunlight.

The gardens took up nearly a third of Allemagne's two hundred meter centrifuge; the rest of the circle was taken up with fish tanks and other recycling equipment and sleeping quarters for the hundred or so residents and transient workers who struggled to keep Allemagne livable. They were roughnecks— rejects of the cometary halo worlds, criminals, misfits, and failed profiteers. These men were Rue's «uncles» as she was growing up and a few had been kind. The rest had trained her to a caution and cunning that ran as deep as her marrow.

From the gardens she had gone to the observatory. Things here were shut down. Father had declared last year that every mineable object within half a light-year had been spotted and claimed, mostly by other stations with better telescopes. No scrap of ice bigger than a fist had escaped the prospectors' attention. Hence there was no reason to look outside anymore.

The observatory enchanted Rue, as it had when she first discovered the place. Although it was deep inside the station, outside the centrifuge and near the fusion generator at Core, a mirrored screen twenty meters across brought in the glow of the stars via light pipes. Rue loved to hang weightless in the center of the observatory, with her entire field of vision taken up by sky. The Milky Way was a ghostly band that twisted diagonally across the black. Everywhere were stars. She knew many of them by name. She could order the computer to rotate the view and look anywhere and by the time she was twelve Rue had learned to orient herself by merely glancing at those stars. Quite an accomplishment, she thought, since at that age she had never been outside the station.

After visiting the observatory she had rapelled her way to the newsroom. Information feeds too complex for inscape were presented here. Mom had shown Rue programs from many halo worlds in this place and even broadcasts from Earth. The big octagonal chamber flickered with multicolored holos, even now with no one present to see them.