“I never said—”

Quiverian stepped menacingly toward Malenkov. “Tell me, Doctor. How long before the target is not Mars, or Venus, but Earth?”

His arms chopped for emphasis, unwise in the weak pseudo-gravity. Quiverian flailed for balance and the long tube smashed onto the tabletop, splitting with a loud report. Dark brown ice, laced with black and white veins, spilled out onto the lab bench.

“Idiot! Goyishe kopf!” Saul caught the Brazilian before his head struck the big core microscope. He swiveled quickly and pointed at the people standing by the door.

“All of you, out! Shut that hatch and trigger the air seal. Nick, Joao, go get masks!”

Saul pushed Quiverian off toward the emergency cupboard. Moving quickly he grabbed up a plastic recycling container and dumped its wad of crumpled printouts onto the floor. By the time Malenkov returned, fastening a small mask over his face and holding out another, Saul was sweeping slivers of swiftly melting ice into the tub.

The Russian’s voice was muffled. “Your mask, Saul! Put it on.”

Saul shook his head and kept working. He had complete faith in his little bloodstream symbionts—in their ability to keep him safe from cyanide and other cometary poisons. They had better, or the colony wouldn’t last long inside Halley. Right now he was more concerned about preventing contamination of the other samples than danger to himself.

The spilled slivers seemed to give off a faintly pleasant aroma…reminding him of the almond groves of Lake Kinneret, in the Galilee at springtime.

“My core!” Quiverian cried out as he returned, fumbling with his face mask. “What are you doing, you meddlesome Jew`’ That was the deepest core we had taken!”

Saul swept up the last slivers, threw the sponge into the tub, and sealed its lid. There were more than a trillion tons of ice out there under Halley, ready to be studied. This loss was no scientific tragedy.

“Oh, but that’s not true, Joao,” Malenkov said reassuringly. The stocky. Russian sifted through the self-cooling tubes on the counter. “Why, only an hour ago my countryman, Otis Sergeov, returned with a new core, taken from a kilometer within Halley! Let me see if I can find it here.”

“Sergeov!” Quiverian cursed. “That fanatical Percell mutant? Oh, fates! There were so many fine planetologists who might have come along! Why, oh why have I been saddled such assistants—a huge Russian fool, a legless Percell, and a genetic w itch doctor!”

Malenkov shrugged and answered amiably, as if it were the most reasonable question in the world, “I guess you’re stuck with us because those other guys didn’t come along, Joao.”

Saul closed his eyes, and put his hands over them.

“Yaah!” Quiverian threw himself at the door, ignoring the yellow air-alert light, and burst out through the crowd outside.

“What is eating him?” Malenkov asked Saul after the door hissed shut again. He frowned. “Saul? What’s the matter? Are you in pain?”

Saul uncovered his eyes at last. They were filled with tears.

“Saul? My friend, I…”

Saul slapped the console next to him and laughed out loud, unable to contain it any longer.

“Joao is right,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Comet Halley definitely deserves better than this. But it’s stuck with us.”

Saul wasn’t surprised, a while later, when an officer came around to investigate the spillage incident. But he did blink when Lieutenant Colonel Suleiman Ould-Harrad entered, a clipboard in one hand and a trace-gas detector in the other. The dark-skinned Mauritanian was the last man Saul expected.

Ould-Harrad’s specialty was large, massive life-support systems, the kind they were installing on Halley right now. But he must have been the only one available at the moment to investigate the accident.

Everyone knew why Ould-Harrad was on this mission. The young officer had had friends in the Temple Mount Conspiracy, and only ties with the Mid-African royal family had won him exile instead of imprisonment for the crime of unwise associations.

The Mauritanian had spoken no more than ten words to Saul over the last three years. The regard had been returned.

Earth is far behind you, Saul reminded himself. And nothing can change the past. He stepped aside. “Come in, Colonel. I’ve already dictated an accident report. Go ahead and look around while I fast-fax a copy for you.”

Ould-Harrad seemed ill at ease as he followed Saul into the lab, his broad nostrils flaring at the faint aroma of escaped cometary gases. His eyes kept flicking to the gauges of the instrument. His dour expression seemed little cheered by Saul’s obvious good health.

“Dr. Lintz, you should not have remained here after the leakage alert was thrown.”

Saul tapped the face of a sense-screen display. “Yes, yes. I know. But somebody had to stay and clean up the mess. Anyway, I might as well be the first guinea pig. It’s appropriate, that I should give the blood cyanutes their first field test, no?”

The console spat out a small data pellet. Saul marked it with his namechop. He smiled up at Ould-Harrad. “If I drop dead, we all might as well climb into sleep slots and wait a few centuries to be picked up, ’cause this expedition is over.”

The spacer officer nodded curtly, accepting the logic. “There are rules, nevertheless. Procedures designed for collective safety and order.”

Saul tossed the data pellet to the other man and laughed somewhat bitterly.

“Safety and order, yes. How well I remember those words. Didn’t General Lynchon use that very phrase when his U.N. troops moved into the Judean hills?”

Ould-Harrad shook his head. “It was a consensus operation, Dr. Lintz. The coalition government of Israel-Inshallah invited them in.”

Saul nodded. “After the Levites and Salawites assassinated enough opposing legislators to get a majority.”

The African’s voice was low, as if he dreaded this topic but was drawn to it like a moth toward a flame. “The world was tired of centuries of strife in a region that had never known peace.”

“And is it better now.” The High Priest in Jerusalem reigns over a balkanized realm, with sect sniping at sect as never before.

“And did it help the planet? From the Nile to the Euphrates, Israel-Inshallah had planted more trees than existed before in all of Africa north of the equator. Last I heard, a third of the forests were gone—chopped down to make barricades.”

Ould-Harrad’s skin deepened darker than its already rich shade. Saul thought about pulling back. He has already been punished.

Yes, but enough?

“Dr. Lintz, I…”

“Yes?”

Ould-Harrad shook his head. “I had nothing to do with the attempt to blow up the Great Temple. It’s true, I had friends in the Conspiracy—and in penance for that association I am on this I’ll-stared cruise—but I never wanted to bring harm to the holiest shrine of three faiths. I assure you, I would rather have torn out my…”

“Oh, you poor bastard,” Saul interrupted, half-pitying the fellow and laughing to crush his own painful memories. “For ten years you’ve heard but not listened, been punished but never understood. When, oh when will people like you ever come to understand that real Jews never wanted that blasted temple built in the first place?”

Ould-Harrad’s gas sensor hung from one hand, forgotten. He stared. “A few kibbutzim, some secular humanists fought it, I know. But—”

“But nothing!” Saul leaned forward. “The vast majority of Jews, in Israel and abroad, voted against it, argued against it, fought it every step of the way. It was compelled on us, by murderous fanatics and by an ignorant world all too eager for peace.”

Saul almost spat the word. “Peace! It wasn’t enough to destroy my nation and my family, Colonel Ould-Harrad. They installed priests that actually had the effrontery to tell me how to be a Jew! Even Hitler did not try to do that!”