Carl had hoped that, with the diseases checked, people would become more reasonable. Looks like it’s just given some of them the energy to be real sons of bitches again.

He opened in a reasonable tone. “That has to be decided in the Council. Look, Rostok, I’m coming out. I want to talk face to face.”

Carl stood and walked around the edge of the cylinder. Was there some movement around a jumble of crates on the horizon? He squinted, then thumbed up the telescopics. Yes—figures working at something, looking this way.

He heard mumbles on a side channel, then the clear voice of Joao Quiverian. —We warned you, Osborn.—

A sudden brilliance cut the dim sunlight. It was invisible in the vacuum but cast stark shadows where it lanced into a hummock nearby. Steam exploded, stones rattled on Carl’s helmet. A geyser burst nearby as a second laser bolt splashed the ice. Carl dived back behind the cylinder.

—That enough for you?—

Carl blinked, blinded by the glare.

Jeffers sent, —They’re usin’ those big industrial lasers—the spot welders. Cut the big girders with ’em. Can’t aim ’em much but Jeezus do they burn.

“Shit!”

—Don’t show yourself around here again.—

Another blazing burst streaked into nearby ice. Blue-white gas billowed into a swelling sphere.

“Damn,” Carl said grimly. “We can’t even use mechs against that—we’d lose too many. We need every one we’ve got for the Nudge.”

Jeffers grimaced and swore steadily. —Prob’ly smash up the flingers if we tried.—

“What the hell can we do?”

—That’s what I thought you’d know,—Jeffers said.

“Shit!”

Meetings. Carl fidgeted with his pen, shifted restlessly in his web-chair. Youcan judge the importance of a problem by how many endless meetings it generates.

He watched the wall weather as much as he could— luscious hills rising from Lake Como in northern Italy, with water-skiers cutting white Vs in waters of ancient blue— but he had to appear to be intent, giving every faction its due attention. They were grouped in loose knots around the meeting room in Central. The Arcist insurrection had reopened the issue of Nudge targeting.

A Pandora’s box, Carl thought moodily. And all this had to happen just now, before I could speak privately to the important people, gather support for what I’ve got to announce. He bit at the end of his pen, a nervous gesture he had picked up sometime in the last year. With over two hundred revived crew, there are plenty of members for each faction. And I have to let them all have their say, exhaust the energy Quiverian’s stirred up. Worst possible timing… as usual.

They had been going nearly two hours now and the groups had lined up exactly as he could have predicted.

The most popular idea was the mission’s original flight plan: a Jupiter flyby on the return to the inner solar system, but before the comet approached too close to the sun. They could swoop deep into the giant planet’s gravity well like a race car in a steep turn, stealing vital momentum.

Using the south-pole flingers, they could aim the Jovian flyby to turn Halley into a short-period comet. That would make rescue from Earthspace easier and harvesting of Halley Core possible. The Plateau Three people favored the original plan, as did the solid majority of nonaligned crew.

The Ubers— the radical Percells led by Sergeov— wanted a different variant of the Jupiter flyby. Their final goal, though, was genuinely bizarre— to abandon the inner solar system entirely, and return to the spaces out here. Fire the Nudge at a low impulse, they said, and during the flyby pass over Jupiter, rather than ahead of it. That would loop them outward again to rendezvous with Neptune. Use the Nudge again to slow Halley and get captured. Become a moon. Spread out, colonize the rock and ice of Triton. A colony of supermen, perfecting themselves beneath a sky filled with a dm green ball of methane-streaked clouds.

Two vastly different plans, but both calling for rendezvous with Jupiter in 2135. Astronomy allowed many different destinations from that one gargantuan world.

The Plateau Three spacers and Sergeov’s Ubers wereunited in their need for a Jovian flyby, but they made uneasy allies. They differed about many other things, and gave each other guarded glances.

Carl had checked the mission requirements himself, not trusting anybody’s calculations. It would take a delta-V, a change in Halley’s current velocity, of 284 meters per second in the Nudge— aimed at 72 degrees north declination from the ecliptic. Not so easy. Possible, though, using thrusters located at the south pole.

Medieval societies squabbled over rarefied points of theology… and now we argue vector targeting. Equally pointless, maybe…

The irony of the Uber-Plateau Three alliance was that now the Arcists had virtually destroyed both options.

To bring off a good Jupiter flyby on the inward-falling leg, they had to use the south-pole flingers. And the Arcists wanted above all costs to keep Earth pristine and safe from Halley contamination. If the Jupiter encounter came off badly in the crucial hours of encounter, Halley could be flung deep into the inner solar system. The Arcists would never go for a maneuver that brought Halley near the home world. To avoid that possibility, they would refuse use of the south pole unless they were in control. Quiverian and his fanatics would rather die in deep space than let anyone else handle the maneuver.

He read the signs, and knew that the situation was close to war. If something wasn’t done, soon, there would be killing. So Carl had sent a squirt Earthside as soon as he returned… and gotten confirmation. He had to offer a good option to the Council, now, before factionalism made compromise impossible.

Even if I have to fudge the truth…

He waited for a natural break in the talk. The wall weather now showed a sloop tacking in high seas, her stately turn unhindered by glistening steel-blue waves that hammered her without pity or effect. Her sails billowed triumphantly, shimmering white beneath a hard cold sky. She’ll make port, he thought. You can see it in the way she moves.

He let the talk run on for while. When the silence of confusion and doubt came, s he knew it would, he rose and began to speak. He caught and held the eyes of each faction leader in turn—Otis Sergeov hanging legless in air, arms folded adamantly; Joao Quiverian here under a truce, as solid as ever, eyes smoldering; Jeffers, who represented the Martian Way group, lean and sardonic; and the others, who had no particular politics, but did want a chance to live.

Carl spoke slowly, conveying by gesture and expression more than through words the hope he had, the plea for confidence, for solidarity before this new threat.

“This mission was planned around a planetary carom past Jupiter. That’s why we put launchers at the south pole— which are now unusable.”

That put Quiverian on the spot. The others glared at the sallow Brazilian. Of course, Carl wasn’t quoting the man precisely. He hurried on before Quiverian could interrupt.

“But the south pole Nudge isn’t our only option.” He flicked a tab on his sleeve and a chart appeared on Central’s main screen. “It would take a relatively simple Nudge to reach Earth itself. A change in velocity of only sixty-three meters per second, aimed about forty degrees south and nearly ninety degrees away from the sun would bring us home.”

The men and women stirred, varying emotions flickering across their faces. Home.

“But to do it accurately demands that we despin Halley first. We’d arc in near Earth, good for a quick jumpoff and rescue… but only after perihelion passage. We’d have to weather that terrible storm. It’s anyone’s guess how many of us would survive high summer on a comet.”