Ould-Harrad pursed his lips. “You people have been continuing work even though Bethany vetoed it?”

“Well, Yes,” Saul admitted with a small smile. “The refining uses big surface mechs which weren’t doing anything else.”

“Ah. So be it. Then the hydroponics pods must be arranged, the majority brought into Halley.”

“I’ll do that,” Linbarger said. “Some of my buddies will pitch in, too.”

Anything to get away from Percells, Saul thought. He’ll have plenty of Ortho volunteers.

“Very good,” Ould-Harrad said warmly. “As for the rescue crew, I will decide after careful—”

“I’ll go,” Linbarger said. “if Osborn isn’t in charge.”

Virginia smiled dryly. “You want an all-Ortho crew?”

“Why not?”

“You’re more likely to have sick people going, then,” she said.

Saul frowned. Soon he would have to break it to her that he was going as ship’s doctor.

Ould-Harrad said soothingly, “We all are taking risks.”

“You have no idea if Lintz and van Zoon and the others will find cures,” Linbarger’s mouth knotted up into a sour, disgusted sketch of impatience. “If they don’t, and I get sick, they’ll never bring me out of the slots.”

Ould-Harrad spread his hands, open and uplifted, showing his good will. “Then you will finally wake up on Earth.”

“Nobody intended us to sleep seventy years sick! Metabolism is slow in the slots, but it’s not zero. All the experience has been with people who’re well, right? We could all die.”

Linbarger had a point, but Saul was damned if he would admit it. “There is ample reason to expect that.”

“Ha! ‘Ample reason.’ That’s not enough for me and my friends.”

“Which friends?” Virginia asked. “More dumb Arcists?”

Linbarger bristled. His voice came out thin and reedy, as if from a tight place inside him. “Yeah, some of us. Got kicked out of Indonesia for being against land rape and poisons and experimental animals like you.”

Virginia muttered, “And made up for it by shooting people in Pan-Africa.”

Saul tried to cut in. “Just a.”

“No, let him babble,” Virginia said evenly, her arms held ready, a concentrated energy in her stance. “I’ve heard it before. His kind took over Hawaii. Governor Ikeda’s dead, Keoki Anuenue’s uncle is in prison. I want to see what kind of creature does things like that.”

Linbarger did not seem to notice her rigid restraint.

“I’m an Arcist, sure, but I’m talking for all the normal people. We aren’t going to take orders from Percell pigs.”

Saul said, “You watch your.”

“Sure, we’re herding you Percells into camps in Hawaii—and we’d be better off doing the same thing here!” He shook a fist in her face.

Virginia caught him full in the stomach with a quick, savage kick. Linbarger flew backward with a heavy grunt and smacked into the wall. Ould-Harrad moved to block Virginia but she compensated neatly for the low gravity and slipped past him. She clipped Linbarger neatly on the chin with the heel of her hand, putting the full force of her shoulder behind her chop. Linbarger made a gurgling noise and spun away, still conscious but limp.

“Stop!” Ould-Harrad cried severely and unnecessarily—Virginia had already come back to an automatic zero-G defensive stance, floating, eyes gleaming like ice.

“Sorry,” she said. “It was a reflex.” Obviously she regretted nothing.

Ould-Harrad and Saul checked Linbarger, who waved them away feebly.

Virginia said, “I’ve been hearing Arcist bullshit for days now, holding my tongue. No more. He’s endangering the whole expedition.”

“Do not overstate your case, Dr. Herbert. Dr. Linbarger has a right to his opinions,” Ould-Harrad said judiciously.

What does it take to stir him up? Saul thought. Or has he witnessed scenes this bad already? An unsettling suspicion. Saul hadn’t been socializing himself for a week.

“In any case,” Ould-Harrad said, shaking his head gravely, “nothing excuses such conduct as yours. If we were not desperate, I would confine you to quarters.”

“Oh, please do,” she said sarcastically. “I need the sleep.”

Linbarger opened his mouth to say something, but then the prep-room door opened to admit Bethany Oakes. They all fell silent as the official commander slowly entered with her escorts.

Said was shocked at the sudden change—at her red-rimmed eyes, bone-white face, and shambling walk. Her palsied hands trembled and her mouth sagged vacantly.

“Betty, you shouldn’t be walking,” Saul said.

Then he saw Akio Matsudo and Marguerite von Zoon following respectfully, their eyes beseeching him not to interfere. She way making a brave show, the commanding officer committing herself gallantly. Even Linbarger saw it, and though his face was still compressed with anger and resentment, he kept quiet.

Matsudo did not look very well, either. His eyes were glazed and his face had a hard, sweaty sheen. If he goes, that will leave only Marguerite and myself to run the hospital. That’ll keep me off the Newborn rescue for sure.

Bethany Oakes met his eyes briefly. “Saul…” Her smile was wan, sad. “Persevere…”

She passed slowly into the chilly inner chamber and the waiting techs.

Damn. Saul was uncomfortably aware that Oakes might well never revive from the slot-sleep process. If the disease could continue to do its dreadful work as she floated through the dreamy years, she might well be going to her grave. The accompanying party had probably guessed this, and there came upon them a reverential silence as Oakes insisted on struggling up onto the slab herself. She gave a fluttering wave of farewell and then sank down into the pink nutrient web. It was a release for her, Saul saw, amid the chill promise of salvation, to lie down gratefully into the embrace of fog-shrouded, gleaming steel and glass.

Saul looked up at Ould-Harrad. It was easy to read the African’s silently moving lips, shaping words in Arabic. Saul knew that the prayers were only partly for Oakes, but also for the new, reluctant commander, Suleiman Ould-Harrad himself.

“Damn! I wouldn’t put it past him to have done this on purpose!”

Virginia paced back and forth in her tiny laboratory. It was difficult to do in less than a milligee, but she managed by holding on to a nearby console. Her velcro soles scritched softly as she walked from one end of the room to the other, tossing her hair and muttering to herself.

“Carl planned this. I know it!”

The main holo screen rippled. A face appeared, but the “man” was no member of the Halley Expedition… nor indeed any man at all. The visage was long-cheeked, with reddish locks and a curling, salty mustache.

“Sure an’ ’tis a churlish deed, liken to the way Queen Maeve was deprived of her beloved,” the figure agreed.

Virginia sniffed. “Oh, cram it, Ossian. I don’t need sympathy from literary simulacrums, I need Saul! And I don’t want him blasting off in a stripped-down, overaged spaceship that needs fifty years of overhaul before it’ supposed to fly again!”

The display flickered. Another face formed… a graying eminence in scarlet robes. The woman on the screen held up a sign of beneficence. “It is a mission of mercy, my dear child. Forty souls are at stake…”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Virginia’s feet left the floor as she smacked the tabletop. “Cardinal Teresa, off! I don’t need logic or appeals to my better nature. I need a reason why…”

A last image appeared, drawn from deep within—an early simulation, seldom called up for the pain it brought. A smiling man with a small gray beard and eyes that crinkled as they smiled warn-fly down at her.

“Anuenue, little rainbow. Reasons do not help at a time like this, daughter. Feelings have a logic all their own.”