“Which they did. And it wasn’t.”

“Beth reported some flulike symptoms, dysentery, too—but, yes, nothing fatal.”

“They caught a break, maybe.”

She shook her head. “What interests me is that these ideas of Cliff’s, and mine, they were quite plausible. Yet you ignored them.”

“Not exactly. I said be careful but keep going. We had to go down there, had to take our chances.”

“Yes, and that is what I find admirable. You made the decision, despite our worries.”

He wondered briefly if she was just sucking up to him. But no—she wasn’t that kind of woman, a brownnose climber. “That’s my job.”

She beamed. “And I am glad it is not mine.”

“You’re going to have to make decisions, too, as this whole thing plays out. Here’s a tip: The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.”

They both laughed together and it felt good.

*   *   *

That evening he lay in his bunk thinking about the day and what Ayaan had said.

All the media back Earthside had played the whole ocean/space analogy to the hilt, making Redwing’s job sound like that of Captain Cook or Magellan. But those sailors had plenty of experience, had worked their way up the naval ladder by sailing to nearby ports, learning command, getting navigation right, and gradually making longer voyages. The first generation starship commanders had to make a huge leap, from piloting craft around the solar system, then the Kuiper belt and fringes of the Oort cloud, then to interstellar distances. That was a giant jump of 100,000—like sailing around the world after a trial jaunt of about three football fields.

He had piloted a ramscoop on one of the first runs into the Oort cloud, and done well. But in all the trials, SunSeeker hadn’t topped a tenth of light speed more than once, and they had run at that for only a week. Five ships had gone out before SunSeeker. In the first decade, none reported ramscoop troubles like theirs. That didn’t mean much now, though. Communications from Earth had stopped more than a century back, for reasons unexplained. Silence says nothing.

They were sailing uncharted waters here, Redwing thought, to use a nautical phrase. Magellan, he now recalled, had gone ashore and gotten tangled up in conflicts in the Philippine Islands, and died in a battle he chose to start. He had been convinced that the angel of Virgin Mary was on his side, so he couldn’t lose, even though he was outnumbered by a thousand to thirty. Later generations named a small galaxy after him, but he had made plenty of dumb decisions, especially that fatal one, out of emotion.

So maybe analogies could be useful, after all.

PART VI

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

—M ARK T WAIN

THIRTY-TWO

Even Tananareve was keeping up, moving steadily with grim, sweaty determination, but Mayra wasn’t. She hadn’t been making good time since their last sleep. Her forehead wrinkled with grave, deep lines and her lips moved in an interior dialogue. Beth could feel what it was doing to her, the loss of her husband eating into her morale.

That was how she had to think of it, Beth realized. Morale. Keep the unit together and deal with what happened. Leadership, they had called it in crew training. Every crew member had to be able to assume leadership if the circumstances demanded it. Which meant if the actual leader got killed or disabled or broke down in the face of things nobody had imagined before. Leadership.

She slowed her own pace, then watched as Lau Pin burrowed into the thick, leafy undergrowth and was gone in seconds.

Beth bit her lip. She would not yell after him. They were fugitives, best to stay quiet. She followed the torn foliage, thinking how easily a Serf-One tracker could do the same, or just follow his nose. The smell of smashed vegetation was rank.

But Mayra wailed and threw herself down among the springy leaves.

Beth glanced after Lau Pin, then touched her shoulder. “Mayra—”

“He’s dead, and what’s it for? We’re just running. We’re all dying of bone loss anyway in this low g!” She spat the words out, pressure released.

“Oh, Mayra, I’m so sorry.” Best to just let this run for the moment, get the words out and be done with it. The emotion was the point here, not the health issue. There was plenty of experience in low gravs, and this region seemed to be about 0.3 g. Maybe not too bad—if they didn’t spend months in it.

“And, and—where are we going that it was worth so much?”

Beth said softly, “We had to get out. We all agreed. He was a fine man, and he dealt with that spidow brilliantly. Bravely.” Beth patted her arm, feeling useless in the face of such sorrow.

Mayra nodded, tears running down her face unnoticed. “He was just so, so—”

“I know.” That was all there was to say, really. Sympathy seemed useless, but it was essential all the same. If the bereaved felt isolated, they got even worse. “I’m so sorry.”

In a flash, she recalled her own feelings, looking at Abduss. A thick smell rose up from the body like fumes, stinging the nose. The spidow had flattened Abduss, and the bladder and bowels had let go. Already blood had crusted into reddish brown rivers and the face was squashed beyond even parody of the man who had once enjoyed sharp, symmetric features.

She had worked up spit and swallowed, taking deep breaths, and managed not to vomit. Then she walked away, expelling her lungs and getting rid of the dregs of the smell. Every encounter with death stayed with her, but this one would go to the head of the line.

Even the memory made Beth wonder if Cliff had survived in this strange place. She made herself stop thinking about it and sat beside Mayra, putting an arm around the woman who was sobbing softly.

Fred spoke, slow and even. “So am I, Mayra.” A pause. His head jerked toward the horizon. “Either way we decide to go, we should stick to the ridge.”

This startled Beth; Fred could go for a day without talking. The other women blinked, glanced at one another, and decided to let the moment move on. They tended to look around when Fred spoke. He did it so seldom, so gravely.

Lau Pin was back in time to catch it. “Fred? We can’t. It’ll make us conspicuous.”

“Not on the ridge,” Fred said witheringly. “Keep it in reach. It orients us. Look—” His hands sketched a tented line. “When they brought us here, do you remember passing that line of bubble buildings? Then the ridge just went on, dead straight for thirty or forty klicks, under the wall and into the Garden. Under the dirt and rock, it’s a, a structural member, don’t you see it? How shallow the dirt is? If you’re building here, you anchor the important stuff to the load-bearing…” He trailed off, hands waving.

Beth was nodding, hoping this would move them away from Mayra’s grief. There was no solution for that but time. “Along the ridge, right. Stay off to one side and don’t go near the spidows. Keep close watch, and we can see the spidow corridors.”

Fred nodded, too, so she went on. “We already know some of what we can eat. Cook it with the guns so they can’t follow the smoke. There’s no dry wood here, so it’ll smoke for sure. Folks, we need to think about not getting caught. No more ripping through undergrowth. We move along the tops of the trees. Tricky, but we can do it.”

Lau Pin frowned. “Dangerous, and that’ll slow us down.”

“Safer, though,” Mayra said, coming out of her mood. “How much spidow rope have we got? Lau Pin—?”

“I took Abduss’s share of the rope,” Lau Pin said, pointing to the loops of it around his waist. Beth realized that the way to keep Mayra involved was to present decisions to be made. Draw her into the group.