She felt a faint tremor through her boots and glanced nervously around. Nothing unusual, apparently. A few teams working at distant launchers. No shouts over comm, nothing awry. Good. I don’t want. to be up here when something goes ka-boom. Not my strong suit, crises, nossir. Not without waldo gloves, JonVon, and a hundred mechs at my beck and call.

The new, huge hydro domes loomed nearby, erected by Jeffers and his crews when the quakes had started. It was risky to keep farms and factories running beneath the ice near the launchers, in case a stress line opened under the relentless pounding of the flingers. Carl had ordered a lot of agro moved to the surface, set up near the shafts.

Amid all the work, there were the usual rumors. That the defeated Arcists had struck some kind of deal with the Ubers. That the Ubers were going to make trouble again over the choice of the Mars trajectory. That the P-Threes were building a space ship in secret. She thought it was idle talk, but you never knew.

Everything’s so rushed these days, so exciting. A million jobs, nearly the whole crew revived… so why am I depressed?

The answer was obvious. She really didn’t want to come up here and confront Carl.

She glide-walked for Dome 3, where she knew he was looking at some new agro results. As she came through the hissing lock she saw Carl studying some canisters, running his hands through rich kernels of wheat. He was wearing his spacesuit; these days he was in and out so often, checking the launchers, he seldom shed it. Agro workers floated above ripe fields of rye and wheat and spires of coiling vegetables. Gene-crafted to thrive here in low-G among the pervasive Halleyforms, they had odd, asymmetric forms.

“Great stuff, huh?” He grinned at her as she approached.

“You’re a thorough man. Checking the breakfast cereal, too?”

His face clouded. “I like to see good work praised, and these people have done—”

“Hey, I was just kidding.” She gave him a playful punch in the arm, and then immediately felt the gesture was forced, awkward. Calm down. This is going to be hard enough without trying to pretend it’s a Shriners’ convention.

Carl shrugged. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Virginia.” He turned back to a crewwoman standing nearby. “The new hybrid is excellent. Tastes great, too.”

Virginia watched as Carl and the agro tech discussed variants on the growing cycles. Halley’s gentle but drumming acceleration was affecting the mirrors that lit the greenhouses, and there were adjustments to be made.

She wandered down a lane, glad to delay. Stalks rose nearly a hundred meters, slender and white, yielding impossibly broad, meaty leaves. Spindly gardener mechs prowled down tight lanes. Circulation patterns spun streamers of wobbly droplets among the lofty spiral stems. Beneath these vertical protein farms lay cows of fat vegetables, lush and curling in the soft ultraviolet that filtered through shimmering banks of moisture above. Rich humus lapped at the feet of the giants, like a sea’s ever-grinding at the shore. A tracery of ponds used the gently falling debris from the spires, and modified fish darted among ropy roots. She recalled a poem she had never finished, and found fresh lines popping into her mind.

Virginia coughed in the heavy, musky air. She never seemed to finish poems anymore. Instead she took them out to examine, turning them to the light like pretty pebbles found on last summer’s vacation beach. Well, poems acquire a certain deadness when they’re done… not finishing them gives them indefinite life. She smiled to herself.

When she returned down a narrow lane, Carl was through talking to the hydro crew. She liked the way the silvered inner surface of the dome reflected a warped, surreal vision of Carl immersed in a riot of plantlife, as if it were an ocean in which he was afloat. When he turned toward her she held up a hand. “Conference?”

“Sure.” He stood waiting, the old caution still far back in his eyes. I’ve hurt him so many times…

“I… wanted to tell you…”

“Yes?”

“I know you felt that there was… some chance of Saul and me…”

He smiled wanly. “There’s always hope.”

“You’ve never given up:”

“No.”

“You might as well,” she said gently.

“It’s that certain between you?”

Virginia recalled her own thoughts about that, only minutes ago. “Out here, nothing is certain, you know that. No, it’s just that… you have such, well, such traditional goals.”

“Dreams, I’d say.” Carl smiled with a warm, rueful humor, as if aware of his own foibles. He would keep this polite and graceful, she saw. Time had given him a veneer, a sense of self. He had changed greatly in these years, almost without her noticing. I’ve been so wrapped up in Saul…

She struggled to find the right words, but before she could he said, “Admittedly, out here the idea of love and family, that whole snug picture, doesn’t work. We haven’t figured out how to protect the children from Halleyforms yet.”

“You’ll never have a family with me.”

“I’m resigned to that. Saul won’t either, of course.”

“No, but not because of his sterility. It’s me. I—I can’t have children.”

His lips parted but he said nothing. The veneer was gone in an instant and she saw again the old Carl, filled with longing and need.

“I… could never tell anyone. It was years before I could say anything, even to Saul.”

“God… I’m sorry.”

She blinked back tears. “I’ve come to terms with it.” Then why am I crying, idiot?

“All this time…” He shook his head, his face open and somehow fresher, younger. All these years he’s sheltered a dream, and now it’s gone.

“I knew about it well before we left Earth.”

“I… see,” he said numbly.

“Carl—”

“What about, uh, fixing whatever’s wrong? Saul’s done wonders—” He stopped.

She thought sharply, Was it me you wanted, or your dream of sweet little Percell children, genetic miracles among the stars? But the suggestion was wrong, unkind.

She blinked rapidly. “This is a… special case. Not even genetic surgery… He did try cloning. without my permission. It was a disaster.” She shrugged.

“You… knew… all along.”