“Your… flu, or whatever it is.” Virginia felt an irrational irritation at this. “That doesn’t mean you’re really sick.”

Saul grinned sardonically. “To them it does. You know, it is like the plays of Elizabethan times, including Shakespeare. If a character coughs in the first act, you may be sure he has the pox and will die by the third.”

“They’re crazy!”

“Merely because they would not take me?” He laughed. “I must commend their taste, really. Despite my profession, I’ve never truly loved ill people, not in their gritty reality. All their crankiness, their tsuris. I preferred them as abstractions, as problems in genetic art.”

Virginia had to answer his smile. He was incredible—joking in his mild, self-rebuking, almost elfin way, in the middle of a crisis.

Ould-Harrad finished his checking with the tunnel and surface teams. “I doubt it will matter overly, but Carl is coming.”

“Good,” Virginia said. She felt soothed by Saul’s calm, ironic manner.

Well, at least this means he isn’t going to risk his neck going after the Newburn, she thought. Then she felt immediate shame. It also probably means the Newburn crew will drift on and die.

She struggled to think. “I… I still believe my simulation shows it can be done.”

“Can, perhaps,” Ould-Harrad said. “Should—that is another matter.”

“We must do something,” Saul said sharply. “Forget the Newburn for a moment, or that we’ll need the Edmund seventy years from now. Our immediate problem is that nearly all the hydroponics.”

“Yes, yes.” Ould-Harrad raised a hand tiredly. “But one wonders if perhaps giving fourteen people a chance at returning might be worth it.”

Saul rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “We can’t assume the diseases will win! Look.”

Virginia watched him launch into the same explanation he had given her last night, about promising approaches to curing the plagues.

He’s wonderful, and I really shouldn’t carp, she thought. But Saul can be pretty tedious when he switches over to pedant mode.

Feeling the warmth of the big room seep into her muscles, she let herself relax. The wall weather was impressive here, with so much area to use. It was a windswept beach, mid-morning. Beyond the scrolling data screens she watched a blast of wind sweep in from the north, whipping pennants on a distant bathhouse straight out from their staffs. The sky grew dense, purple. Cumulus clouds, moments ago mere puffballs, thickened and boiled, filmy edges haloing dark centers.

Purely by accident, the running program was providing a pathetic fallacy. A simulated storm in the midst of a real crisis. If this were an entertainment—such as they had had daily until the troubles started—there would be sound, even smell and pressure modulations. The choppy ocean rippled and rose, sweeping cloud shadows raced across it. Great icy drops battered the beach, as big as hailstones. A cliff of somber air rolled in, unraveling skeins like yarn, spitting yellow lightning. As if waiting for this signal, tiny speckled sand crabs scuttled from their holes and scurried toward the frothing sea. Lightning flashed again and again—as if God were taking photographs, she thought, bemused, transfixed by the silent rage that curled and spat and sped across the walls. She wished she could hear the mutter of departing thunder, the hiss of rain on dunes.

From the distance a large dog came running, gouging the sand, snapping at the crabs. Mist gathered in wispy pale knots. She yearned to feel the cleansing rain plaster her clothes to her skin, drench her, shape her hair into a tight slick cap. Even in my best sense-sim with JonVon, I can’t completely escape. I’d trade it all for a ticket home right now.

She recognized the longing: to be away from here. To breathe salty air, feel gritty sand, smell the lashing wind. And once she had felt it, she knew how to put it away, turn back to the present. If she had not been able to do that, she would never have made crew. But these Ortho fools are risking the mission for their fantasy of escape.

Carl arrived, red-brown stubble at his chin but showing no fatigue. He drifted to a webbing that served as furniture in low gravity. “I had a mech retrieve Kearns. He’s a frozen statue.”

Virginia said, “Is there any… ?”

“No chance. His cells are ruptured.” Carl sighed, his hand brushing at his face as if to dispel all this as a bad dream. He visibly took control of himself and said with a deliberately calm flatness, “I clamped down security on the surface locks, in case anybody tries to join them.”

“Ah. good,” Ould-Harrad said.

Carl said, “I put Jeffers and some mechs out of sight of the Edmund, armed with lasers.”

“For what purpose?” Ould-Harrad asked coolly.

“Insurance. In case they try something else.” Carl studied Ould-Harrad expectantly. “What’re you going to do?”

“I wish a quick check of Virginia’s simulation,” Ould-Harrad said.

Carl nodded and swung over to a work console. He tapped into the sequence and time-stepped through it, oblivious to their nervous attention. They waited expectantly until he unhooked, replacing the helmet.

“Won’t work,” Carl said.

“Why not?” Virginia demanded. “I spent—”

“Mechs aren’t fast enough in close-up work:”

“JonVon got them to do it!”

“JonVon is swell for minimizing moves, sure. But it doesn’t allow for safety factors or slips. There’re always some in close-quarter work.”

“I could correct, introduce stochastic—”

“Not with the clock ticking,” Saul agreed reluctantly. “If a mech finds some leftover box in the way, it’ll consult JonVon and there’ll be a pause. There simply isn’t enough time.”

Virginia blinked, feeling hurt that Saul so quickly took Carl’s side. “I still—”

“That settles matters,” Ould-Harrad said. “God and Fate act together. We must let them go.”

“We can’t,” Saul said. “The hydroponics, the Newburn, the—”

“I know. There is much equipment we would miss,” Ould-Harrad said. “Perhaps, indeed, the lack will speed our doom. But we have no choice. I will not condone any attack on the Edmund.”

“That’s… crazy!” Virginia blurted.

Ould-Harrad’s face was impassive, distant. “When one faces death, what matters is honor. I will not harm others.”

Saul and Carl shared a look of disbelief and frustration. Virginia thought Ould-Harrad won’t oppose an Ortho rebellion, but if Percells tried it…

“How about if we disable her?” Carl asked casually, leaning back with his hands behind his head, stretching.

He’s given up the Newburn. And deliberately showing nothing about how he feels.

“You heard Linbarger,” Ould-Harrad explained patiently. “If we show any signs of bringing devices out, anything that can be used as a weapon.”

“Yeah, they’ll use the big lasers on it. Sure. But they can’t shoot you if you’re already inside the ship.”

Ould-Harrad said, “As I said, any approach.”

Saul broke in, “I think I see… send them a Trojan horse, correct?”

Carl grinned. “Right. Inside the sleep slots they’re demanding.”

Ould-Harrad’s eyes widened, showing red veins. “A bomb? It could damage anything, hurt people, there would be no control—”

“No bomb.” Carl grimaced. “A real Trojan horse—put men inside.”

There was a long silence as they studied each other. Virginia could read Ould-Harrad’s puzzled reluctance—plainly, the man had decided to accept Linbarger’s demands and simply let the expedition make do for the next seventy years. His pan-equatorial stoicism had won out.

Carl, though, was almost jaunty, certain his plan would work. Saul pensively ran over the many possibilities for error and disaster—but he licked his lips in unconscious anticipation, tempted, almost amused at this sudden hope.