It seemed unreal. Perhaps it was all some game of Stef’s.

“I don’t want to go,” Michael said. But Stef ignored him.

He slept, trying not to think about it.

But the very next day they came for him.

A car pulled up outside the village. Big smiling women got out. Cars came to the village every day, stayed a few hours, left again. But this day, for the first time in his life, Michael would have to get into the car, and leave with it.

He took his clothes, and the flashlight Stef had given him. Stef had given him new batteries too, long-life batteries that would not run down so quickly. Michael didn’t want to go, but the big women, their smiles hard, made it clear there was no choice.

“I’m sorry,” Stef said to Michael. “We never finished our lessons. But you’ll be okay. You’ll keep learning.”

Michael knew that was true. He knew he couldn’t stop learning. Even when he was alone, even in the dark, he would just keep working, learning, figuring out.

Even so he was frightened.

“Take me with you,” he said.

But Stef said no. “They won’t even let me take Mindi,” he said. Mindi had been his favorite girl. Now, pregnant, she had gone back to her mother, because no man would have her. “They’ll look after you,” Stef said to Michael. “You’re a Blue”

That was the first time Michael had heard that word, the English word, used like that. He didn’t know what it meant.

He wondered if he would ever see Stef again.

He was taken through a series of bright buildings, a barrage of voices and signs, nothing of which he could understand. Even the smells were strange.

At one point he was in an airplane, looking down over parched land and blue sea.

Afterward he thought he must have slept a great deal, for his memories of the journey were jumbled and fragmented, and he could put them in no logical order.

So he came to the School.

Emma Stoney:

Thanks to the unauthorized launch, the spectacular sight of the golden spacecraft leaving Earth orbit, Malenfant had become a popular hero. This was his Elvis year for sure, the media advisers were telling them, and they were working hard on making

him even more mediagenic.

But he had made an awful lot of very powerful enemies. Opposition to Malenfant had erupted, as if orchestrated, right across the financial and political spectrum. Right now, it seemed to Emma, they were farther away than ever from being certificated to fly again, and farther still from being licensed to keep any money they made out of Cruithne, assuming Nautilus actually got there.

Emma called a council of war in the Bootstrap offices in Las Vegas: herself, Malenfant, Maura Della. She didn’t invite him, but Cornelius Taine came anyhow.

Malenfant stalked around the office. “I can’t believe this shit.” He glared at Emma. “I thought we figured out our prebuttals.”

“If you’re blaming me I’m out of here,” she said. “Remember, you never even warned me you were going to fire off your damn rocket.”

Maura said evenly, “I know what you tried to do, Malenfant. You thought that by simply launching, by proving that your system worked safely, you could cut through the bureaucratic mess, as well as prove your technical point.”

“Damn right. Just as I will prove my economic point when we start bringing the goodies home.”

Maura shook her head. “You’re so naive. You showed your hand. All you did was give your opponents something to shoot at.”

“But we launched. We’re going to Cruithne. That is a physical fact. All the staffers on the Hill, all the placeholders in the NASA centers, can’t do a damn thing about that.”

Cornelius Taine steepled his elegant fingers. “But they can stop you from launching again, Malenfant.”

“And they can throw you in jail,” Emma said softly. “We mustn’t argue among ourselves. Let’s go over it point by point.” She tapped the tabletop; it turned transparent, and an embedded softscreen brought up a bullet chart. “First, the NASA angle.”

Malenfant laughed bitterly. “Fucking NASA. I couldn’t believe the immediate one-eighty they pulled about the feasibility of my BDB design, after it flew.”

“Why are you surprised?” Cornelius Taine asked. “They hoped you would fail technically. Now that that is not possible, they intend to ensure you fail politically.”

“Yeah, that or take me over.”

It seemed to be true. With indecent haste — leading Emma to suspect they had been working on precisely this move in advance, and waiting for the moment to strike — NASA had come up with counterproposals for BDB designs, issuing formal Requests for Proposals to prospective industry partners. NASA claimed they could start flying BDBs of their own in five or ten years’ time — after ensuring that all the relevant technologies were “understood and in hand.”

Not only that, they were absorbing Malenfant’s long-term goals as well, with proposals for an international program to reach and exploit the asteroids.

“I’m not sure how we can win this one,” Maura said. “After all, NASA is supposed to be the agency that develops spacecraft.”

“But,” Cornelius said heavily, “this process of assimilation is precisely how NASA has killed off every new space technology initiative since the shuttle.”

“Yeah,” Malenfant growled. “By turning it into another aerospace industry cartel feeding frenzy.”

Maura held her hands up. “My point is NASA may well win. If they do, we need a way to live with that.”

We, Emma thought. Even in the depths of this tense meeting, she found time to wonder at the way Malenfant had, once again, turned a potential enemy into a friend.

“Next,” Emma said warily. “Congressional funding.”

“We’re not reliant on federal funds,” Malenfant snapped.

“That’s true,” Maura said dryly. “But you’ve been happy to accept whatever general-purpose funding you could lay your hands on. And that’s turning into a weakness. We’re being caught between authorization and appropriation. You need to understand this, Malenfant. These are two phases. Authorization is a wish list. Appropriation is the allocation of funds to the wish list. Not every authorized item gets funded.” She paused. “Let me put it simply. It isn’t wise to spend authorized money as if it were appropriated already. That’s what you did. It was a trap.”

“It was peanuts,” Malenfant growled. “And anyhow I don’t know why the hell you Congress critters can’t just make a simple decision.”

Maura sighed. “Federal government is a complex thing. If you don’t use the processes right—”

“And,” Emma said, “next year looks even worse. The bad guys all sources of federal funding we budgeted for and have put in place recision and reprogramming processes to—”

“Then we rebudget,” Malenfant said. “We cut, trim, rescope, find new funds.”

“But the investors are being frightened off,” Emma said. “That’s the next point. It started even before the launch, Malenfant. You knew that. Now they’re hemorrhaging. The problems we’ve had with the regulatory agencies have scared away even more of them.”

“But,” Cornelius Taine said evenly, “we must continue.”

Oh, Christ, Emma thought.

Cornelius looked from one to the other, his face blank. “Don’t any of you understand this? Who do you want to appropriate the Solar System? The Russians? The Chinese? Because if we fail now, that’s what will happen.”

Emma said sharply, “I’ll tell you the truth, Cornelius. From where I’m sitting you’re part of the problem, not the solution. No wonder the investors took flight. If any of your kook stuff has leaked out—”

Cornelius said, “The Carter catastrophe is coming no matter what you think of me.”

Maura frowned. “The what?”

Emma took a breath. “Malenfant, listen to me. Everything we’ve built up so far will be destroyed. Unless we start to take action.”