Here she had learned to dream of faraway worlds, aliens and exotic men from High Space. When Jentry began to turn bad, she'd started coming here to launch herself into a universe of adventures and romance where he could never follow.

These rooms had been Rue's refuges. Jentry and the other station rats never visited them, preferring the telepresence locker where they operated mining robots and had them race or fight in off hours.

Finally she admitted to herself that she was procrastinating. It was a short run to the docks, there to steal a rendezvous shuttle and escape. Before she could go there, though, she had to rescue her heirloom.

She went back to the centrifuge and dawdled outside Jentry's apartment for a while. There was no traffic in the halls this late at night, nor any sound coming from inside his rooms. He always locked the door at night, but one of the first skills Rue had taught herself in idle hours was lock-picking. She had a small pad of shipfur on which she'd reproduced his thumbprint and after taking a deep breath she pressed this against the door plate and waited. The door slid aside without trouble.

Jentry's main room was dark; next to it were the head, his bedroom, and the kitchenette, all luxurious compared with her own single room with fold-down toilet. In theory Rue had never been here and would have no idea of the place's layout; in fact she had visited these rooms many times while Jentry was busy playing telepresence games or pursuing any women unfortunate enough to be visiting.

She walked quickly, sweeping her toes ahead of her to scan for unexpected obstacles. Here was the couch and here the dining table. Make a left turn, take four steps, reach out carefully… she felt the cool smoothness of the small display case where Jentry kept her inheritance. A pulse of anger burned in her as she pictured him impudently displaying what Grandma and Mom had declared to all was hers.

Lifting the glass cover off with both hands, she flipped it onto the palm of her left hand and lowered her right to the surface of the dais. The cool siltstone disk of the pendant was right where it should be. She scooped it up and turned back to the door in one motion.

"Whooz' ere?" — Jentry's voice, thick with sleep and in all likelihood drugs. Rue started involuntarily at the sound and dropped the glass cover.

It shattered. She cursed and ran to the door. Behind her Jentry swore too and she heard bedding being thrown aside. She was in the hall before he got the light on, but Rue knew he would know who had stolen the pendant. There was only one person in Allemagne who coveted it enough to risk his wrath.

"Come back here, you little beggar!" She made it to the elevator that led out of the centrifuge, but by the time Rue reached the weightless corridors outside Core, Jentry had roused the entire station and locked down the doors to the docks with the command codes he'd inherited from Father.

OF COURSE JENTRY had called: a little inscape diamond was hanging in the air above her when Rue awoke. She ignored it and went to freshen up. Her new quarters were sumptuous and she took full advantage of the water shower and sonic cleaners. She ordered a new fullerene EVA suit from the ship's assemblers and made herself eat a full and complete breakfast before she finally sat down to review his messages.

Never once in all his ranting did he ask her to come back. "You will come back, I'll make you," he said at first. Then, later, "I see you're trying to hook up with a cycler. Well, guess what? I've called them and told them you're a criminal— that you spaced a man here. The instant you board that cycler, you'll be arrested and they'll extradite you right back here. Enjoy your holiday while you can, you little shit. 'Cause the instant you get back you're dead."

She laughed at that— he'd given himself away. There was no way any legal body was going to believe his story over hers, once they reviewed the messages. It was quite possible, though, that his deal with the cycler was more pragmatic. He might just be buying her back from them.

Rue had heard stories— more and more of them in recent years. Anarchy and despair were leaking into the stations, year by year. One couldn't hang around the rough types who filled the labor force at Allemagne without listening to tales of cannibalism, neural-lock slavery and mass suicide from the far fringes of the cometary zone. Some of those stories had given her nightmares when she was younger. Some of them, she had later learned, were true.

Cometary cyclers were supposed to be above petty disputes. They made their slow rounds between places like Allemagne, gossamer magnetic sails turning them ever so gradually to a new heading every time they passed within ten billion kilometers of a station. Light cargo ships accelerated out from the stations, docked at the cycler and disembarked at later stops. The cyclers were supposed to be bastions of stability and civilization in the halos, like their cousins the great interstellar liners.

Well, when a cycler came within hailing distance of a major halo world such as Erythrion they sure acted civilized. But out here, beyond law and sanity, Rue knew they had begun to deal in slavery and vice— whatever their customers desired so long as they made the trades that kept the cyclers supplied.

Rue had been reviewing the messages in the galley, which might well become her favorite place in the shuttle. Now she gripped the table and stared into the starfield she'd called up in inscape. The stars shone in their indifferent millions and floating before them were hundreds of tiny strings of red numbers: all the stations, comets, and ice chunks within half a light year.

She still had plenty of fuel for the shuttle's fusion engine. Normally cyclers were the only practical way to ferry passengers the huge distances between the halo worlds, but that was partly because people tended to save their trips up and take them together. This shuttle had life support enough to keep a hundred people alive for a month. Rue used only a fraction of that and the life support system was designed to be scalable; only a little of it was switched on right now.

"Ship, how long can I stay alive without resupply?" she asked after a while. Her finger strayed from one little address to the next and mentally she put names and faces to some of them— considering, then rejecting each.

"I can keep you alive for two years, Rue," said the ship.

She took a deep breath. "How long would it take us to reach Erythrion?"

The ship's voice showed neither surprise nor concern. "Minimal or maximal-burn?"

"Maxi."

"Four months."

She started. "Is that all? Well, shiz, do it!"

The ship started a stomach-flipping turn. Four months. To someone else, sixteen weeks of solitary confinement might have seemed an awful prospect, but all Rue could think was, Peace and quiet for four months. It was perfect.

Exactly halfway into her journey, Rue received a hail from Erythrion. The shuttle had filed a flight plan unbeknownst to her and now the great halo world was replying. The reply was mostly numbers.

Navigation Fee40 dites

Docking Fees1500 dites/day

Oxy/Food Per Diem10 dites/day

Visitors' Card75 dites

Rue had no money on her at all.

The shuttle was worth a million dites easy, but selling it required both her and Jentry's thumbprint. She supposed she could sell some of its fittings and furniture, but when Rue totalled it all up her assets came to a meager two thousand dites, enough to let her dock for a day at one of Erythrion's colonies, but no more. She would have to set the shuttle on a slow-burn return flight to Allemagne and find work right away.

The prospect was depressing. She would have a few days at most before she was in debt and debt could mean deportation. Maybe Jentry would have the last laugh after all.