“Three or four at least,” Nigel said. “The men need a break. We’ve been at it over ten hours.”

“Good. Gentlemen,” he said in a booming voice, “this area is not secure for further discussions. I suggest we retire upstairs.”

The group began moving off under Evers’s direction. Lubkin beckoned Nigel to follow.

“I’ll stay here for a bit. Set up the watch schedule. And I want to go home to rest. I’m not going to be needed in your deliberations.”

“Well, Nigel, we could use your knowledge of…” Lubkin hesitated. “Ah, maybe you’re right. See you later.” He hurried to catch up to the group.

Nigel smiled. Lubkin clearly didn’t relish the prospect of a cantankerous Nigel in the ExComm meeting. Feisty subordinates do not reflect well on their superiors.

He took a JPL scooter home. The tires howled on the corners as he banked and shifted down the hillside avenues, slicing through the dry evening air. Stars glimmered dimly behind a layer of industrial haze. He piloted without goggles or helmet, wanting to feel the rush of wind. He knew handling the Snark-Venus encounter would be tricky, particularly if Evers and Lubkin and their faceless committee designed some transmission. Nigel would then have to sandwich his own in somehow before the Committee caught on. He had been working for months on the code; he’d read all the old literature on radio contact with extra-terrestrial civilizations and adapted some of their ideas. The transmission had to be simple but clearly a deliberate signal to the Snark. Otherwise the Snark would probably assume it had picked up another conventional Earthside station, and ignore it.

Or would it? Why did Snark remain mute? Couldn’t it easily pick up Earth’s local stations?

Nigel gunned the scooter, swooping down the hills. He felt a rising zest. He’d check on Alexandria, who would be home from work soon, then wait for Shirley to arrive and keep Alexandria company while he was gone. Then back to JPL and Venus and the Snark—

He coasted into the driveway, kicked back the stand and bounded to the front door. The lock snapped over and he ran up the winding staircase. At the landing he stopped to fit his key into the apartment lock and was surprised to find his ears ringing. Too much excitement. Maybe he really would need to rest; the Venus encounter would last through until morning at least.

He let himself in. The living room lights glowed a soft white.

Now only one of his ears was ringing. He was more tired than he thought.

He walked through the living room and into the arched intersection of kitchen and dining nook. His steps rang on the brown Mexican tiles, the beamed arch echoing them. The ringing in his head pitched higher. He cupped his hand to an ear.

A woman’s shoe lay on the tiles.

One shoe. It was directly under the bedroom arch. Nigel stepped forward. The ringing pierced his skull. He walked unsteadily into the bedroom. Looked to the left.

Alexandria lay still. Face down. Hands reaching out, clenched, wrists a swollen red.

The ambulance wove through darkened streets, shrieking into the night mists. Nigel sat dumbly beside Alexandria and watched the attendant check her life functions, give injections, speak in a rapid clipped voice into his headset transmitter. Lights rippled by. After some minutes Nigel remembered his telltale. It was still keening at him. Alexandria’s unit was running down, the attendant said, using most of its power to transmit diagnostics into the ambulance cassette. He showed Nigel the spot behind Nigel’s right ear where a rhythmic pressure would shut it off. Nigel thumped at it and the wailing went away. A thin beeping remained; his telltale continued to monitor Alexandria’s diagnostic telemetry. He listened, numb, to this squeaky voice from the very center of her. Her face was slack with a gray pallor. Here, now, linked by bits of microelectronics, he and she spoke to each other. The indecipherable chatter was a slim chain but he clung to it. It would not stop even if she died; still, it was her only voice now.

They swerved, rocked down a ramp, jolted to a stop under red neons. The bubble surrounding him and Alexandria burst—the ambulance tail door popped open, she was wheeled out under a white blanket, people babbled. Nigel got out awkwardly, ignored by the attendants, and followed the trotting interns through a slideway.

A nurse stopped him. Questions. Forms. He gave Hufman’s name but they already knew that. She said bland, comforting things. She led him to a carpeted waiting room, indicated some magazine faxes, a 3D, smiled, was gone.

He sat for a long time.

They brought him coffee. He listened to a distant hum of traffic.

Very carefully he thought about nothing.

When he next looked up Hufman was standing nearby, peeling away transparent gloves.

“I’m sorry to say, Mr. Walmsley, it’s as I feared.” Nigel said nothing. His face felt caked with dense wax, stiff, as though nothing could crack through.

“An incipient brain stem hemorrhage. The lupus did equilibrate in her organs, as I thought. She would have been all right. But it then spread into the central nervous system. There has been a breakdown in the stem.”

“And?” Nigel said woodenly.

“We’re using coagulants now. That might possibly arrest the hemorrhage.”

“What then?” a female voice said.

Hufman turned. Shirley was standing in the doorway. “I said, what then?”

“If it stabilizes… she might live. There is probably no significant brain damage yet. A spasm, though, induced by the lupus or our treatment—”

“Would kill her,” Shirley said sharply.

“Yes,” Hufman said, tilting his head back to regard her. He plainly wondered who this woman was.

Nigel made a halting introduction. Shirley nodded at Hufman, arms folded under her breasts, standing hipshot with tense energy.

“Couldn’t you have seen the lupus was getting worse?” she said.

“This form is very subtle. The nervous system—” “So you had to wait until she collapsed.”

“Her next biopsy—”

“There might not be a next—”

“Shirley!” Nigel said sharply.

“I must go,” Hufman said stiffly. He walked out with rigid movements.

“Now you’ve fair well muddled it,” Nigel said. “Shaken up the man whose judgment determines whether Alexandria lives.”

“Fuck that. I wanted to know—”

“Then ask.”

“—because I just got here, I didn’t talk to anybody and—”

“How did you know Alexandria collapsed?”

Nigel had thought he could gradually deflect the conversation and calm her down. He was surprised when Shirley glared at him and fell silent, nervously stretching her arms to the side. Her face was ashen. Her chin trembled slightly until she noticed the fact and tightened her jaw muscles. In the distance he could hear the staccato laboring of some machine.

“Shirley …” he began, to break the pressing silence between them.

“I saw the ambulance leaving when I came back from my walk.”

“Walk?”

“I got to the apartment early. Alexandria and I had a talk. An argument, really. Over you, your working late. I, I got mad and Alexandria shouted at me. We were fighting, really fighting in a way we never had before. So before it got any worse I left.”

“Leaving her there. Wrought up. Alone. When Hufman had already said she couldn’t take stress in her condition.”

“You don’t have to…”

“Rub it in? I’m not. But I’d like to know why you harp away on my taking time for JPL. You work.”

“But you’re her, well, she leans on you more than me, and when I got to the apartment and she was so weak and pale and waiting for you and you were late I—”

“She could lean on you. That’s what we three are all about. Extended sharing, isn’t that the proper jargon?”

“Nigel—”

“You know what I think? You don’t want to face the fact that you’ll lose Alexandria and you’re blaming me in some buggered-up way.”