"There's no time!" he shouted, fists clenching again.

"Are you thinking clearly?"

He paused, shook his head, squeezed his palms against his temples. "Not very."

"I'm here."

He closed the entrance, reached for her, put the wand into quiet mode, kicked the books and slate aside as they moved against each other. "I don't want to be away from you for a second, not an instant," he said. "That's the bad part. I want to be someplace else with you."

She looked at him intently, face showing none of the insinuation of her undulating body, lower lip under her teeth; hips moving with graceful need. He felt the motion of her stomach against his, the press of her curly hair, the flexing wet warmth startling, her small breasts hard against his chest; sought her neck behind her ear, knew she had closed her eyes, face still blank but for the bitten lip.

The experience was more effort, less ethereal, with up and down reestablished. It was also more familiar to his inner mind, flesh and bones; somehow more real.

They rolled from the ledge with half-purpose, falling into a glowing ladder, and were lowered gently to tumble down a slope into a pile of Martin's clothes.

"I want to live with you always," Martin said.

"I didn't mean to make you think I…" Tears came to her eyes. "I'm so clumsy sometimes. I trust you. It's pretty amazing how theytrust you. The past Pans—Harpal, Stephanie, Sig, Cham…Joe—They're right behind you." She smiled. "Hans is just doing his job, I think. I can't read Hans all the time. He seems to hide everything important. Ariel seems either angry or sad all the time."

"Is that why you're with me, because I'm trusted?" he asked quietly. That's a stupid, stupid thing to ask.

"Not at all," she said. "I don't slick for status."

"I know you don't," he said. "I'm sorry." He stroked her face. "I wouldn't call this slicking."

"Oh, it is," she said. "The very best. Don't be afraid of it."

"Of course not," Martin whispered, edging closer, careful not to let the slight weight of his body oppress her. "I want you to live with me."

"Dyad?" she asked.

"I want more than that," he said. "I want to eat you up."

"Ah ha."

"I want you so much it hurts not to have you near me."

"Oh." She looked away, pretending embarrassment even as they moved against each other.

"I want to marry you."

She stopped their rolling and lay quiet beside him, breasts moving up and down, eyes flicking over his features. "We don't marry," she said.

"Nothing stops us."

"We're Lost Boys and Wendys. Pans don't get married."

"We could get married in a new way. No priests or churches or licenses."

"Married is something different. It's for Earth, or back on the Ark. People got married on the Ark."

"I doubt we'll ever go back," Martin said.

"I know," she said softly.

"We're our own Ark. We have all the information here. All the living things in memory. They'll make every living thing we need, once we do our Job. We'll be like war dogs."

"War dogs?"

"Too vicious to be taken back. Because of what we do. We have to rely on ourselves alone. That means we can get married, whatever being married means out here."

"We've only been lovers for a few tendays."

"That's enough for me," Martin said.

Theresa drew back to him. "Slicking is so much simpler."

"We make love," Martin insisted.

Theresa suddenly put on an innocent look. "Do you remember," she said, pushing tongue behind her lower lip, pushing it out, gazing at him intently, "how serious this would be on Earth? How fraughtwith meaning, making love or slicking?"

"It isn't serious here?"

She put fingers to her lips, holding something: a cigarette, he remembered. Lowered her lashes, looked at him seductively, deep sensual meaning, smiling, drew back, flung back her hair. "I could be a temptress," she said.

"Harlot," he said.

"We would spend ever so much time worrying, once we were married, on Earth, about whether we were doing it right, whether we were in style."

"We have styles here," Martin said.

She made a bitter face, tossed the ghost cigarette away. "I read about it. In some places, we could have been arrested for…" She touched his limp tip with a finger, brought a drop of wheyish moisture to her mouth. "We could have been arrested for…" She reached into his mouth with the finger, and he obligingly tongued it. She moved the finger up her thigh, touched herself, moved without effort into a melodramatic vamping posture. "How can we be married without thousands knowing and approving or disapproving? Looking at us in our little home, approving or disapproving." She whispered the words again, but there was a strain in her face. "All those people. But it's okay." She looked at him directly, struggling to hold back more tears. "And we know we can make children. That's serious."

Martin smiled. His eyes focused not on her now, but on far dead Earth. He had never thought or imagined such adult concerns on Earth. He had been a child when Earth died. So had she.

"Knowing you can make children if you want. That's reallymaking love," she concluded, words catching in her throat. She closed her eyes and like a dark-headed bird laid her cheek and palm on his chest.

"We make love," he persisted. "The moms will let us have children after we've done the Job."

She wept in shaking silence in his arms.

If the children decided Wormwood was a source of killer probes, the Ship of the Law would break in two. Stephanie Wing Feather suggested the separate ships should be called Hareand Tortoise.

The two ships would decelerate at different rates. Tortoise, the smaller, would begin super deceleration—one thousand g's—days before reaching the system, and would enter at maneuvering speed. The larger, Hare, would shoot through the system at three quarters c, conduct reconnaissance while passing between the two inner rocky planets, relay the information to Tortoise, then escape the system and wait for results. It would decelerate more gradually, reaching maneuvering speed some hundreds of billions of kilometers on the other side of Wormwood.

If Tortoisewas severely damaged or destroyed, Harecould continue, hunting for fuel around the other stars in the group.

Before then, the Ship of the Law would pass through a section of Wormwood's outlying haloes of pre-birth material: what around the Sun had been called the Oort and Kuiper clouds. It was possible that Wormwood's inhabitants had mined even these outer reaches of the pre-birth material, probably in the youth of their civilization, when comets were used by "hitch-hikers" to ride far beyond the orbits of the outer planets. It was also possible that the clouds had never been rich with volatiles; even the rocky pickings were slim by comparison to the Sun's cloud.

The Dawn Treaderwould release makers and doers into these diffuse haloes to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. If the judgment was guilty, the makers and doers would push these weapons inward toward the planets. The weapons would take time to accomplish their backup mission of destruction, should Hareand Tortoisefail, and at a net energy loss.