"Or they've got another trap set."

"That's what I think. But… I'm about to make the same mistake Martin did. I'm going to spring their trap and see what they can do to us. We survived the first one. Maybe we can survive the second. And if not, well…"He rubbed his palms together, as if scrubbing away dirt. "Our grief is shorter, hm?"

Martin shivered. Here was something he had never felt as Pan: fatalism. Hakim sensed it too, and looked away, swallowing. It was a reaction the others might embrace; a Wagnerian dedication to duty, a mighty blow against the enemy, valiant but useless, ending in death.

"Too strong, huh?" Hans asked, as if Martin had said something. "All right. I'll tone it down, but I still want two rifles out there. Kill it." He looked to Harpal. "Go to it, CR."

Harpal left the nose. Hans concentrated on the cylinder for a moment, frowning. "I can't imagine what purpose they serve, except… Hakim, could they work as mass detectors? Very sensitive to orbital changes caused by anything large entering the system?"

Hakim considered this. "I cannot say for sure, but I think there would be better ways to do that…"

"You could ask Jennifer," Martin suggested.

"She gives me the shivers," Hans said briskly. "But you're right. What other purpose? They accelerated hours before our assault… Psychological weapons. I can't buy that. These things don't give a damn about our psychology. They just want us dead."

"I have an idea," Thomas Orchard said. The other members of the search team had been keeping a low profile, taking Hans' measure now that he was Pan.

"Give it to me," Hans said.

"I think they're remote signaling stations. Something goes wrong in the trap, they survive a little while longer… They don't attract much attention because they are small, because they seem to have primitive drives."

"And…" Hans said, tapping his little finger again, "they accelerate just before an attack to be ready to zip out of here, if everything goes to hell…" He smiled and ran his hand through his stiff blond hair. "God damn. I like that. It makes sense."

"But we can't be sure," Thomas said, proud to have Hans' approval.

Born leader, Martin thought with a twinge.

"We can be sure of nothing in this miserable place," Hans said. "I say we try to take one out, and if they're vulnerable, we'll take them all out. Meanwhile, one planet down… maybe. I'll be interested to see how Ramses responds." He lifted his fist and grimaced. "Slick 'em all!"

Away from the nose, going with Harpal to choose two rifle pilots for the job, Martin broke into a sweat. He lingered a few meters behind Harpal and wiped his face on his sleeve.

Ten years. Theresa and William had been dead ten years—and the others. Yet he had seen Theresa just a few days ago. She was fresh in his mind, her words were fresh.

A private and selfish bitterness came over him. He stood on the edge of a mental gulf filled with emptiness. He closed his eyes and actually saw this gulf, melodramatic imagery nonetheless real and painful. Guilt at this private bitterness could not drive it away. Others grieved; why should his grief be any the worse?

Martin told himself to catch up with Harpal, now almost one third of the neck ahead. His body refused to move.

"What are you doing?"

He turned and saw Ariel. The despair on his face must have been obvious. She backed away as if he were contagious. "What's wrong?"

Martin shook his head.

"Tired?" she asked tentatively.

"I don't know. Bleak."

"Be glad you're not Pan," she said, not forgiving but not accusing.

"Hans will do a good job," Martin said automatically.

"Something's wrong," Ariel pursued. "What is it?"

"Nothing for you to worry about."

"You're having a reaction, aren't you?" she said. "You were strong and stalwart, and now you're paying for it."

He grimaced. "You were always so full of bullshit," he said before he could think to keep quiet.

"That's me, bullshit babe," Ariel said softly. "At least I don't get trussed up like a lamb for my own slaughter."

"I'm okay," he said.

"Where are you going?"

"With Harpal. To pick rifle pilots."

"Then let's go," Ariel said. "We have to keep moving."

She treated his pain as something trivial. His hatred for her burned like fire. But he followed her along the neck to the aft homeball, still bleak, but at least moving, doing.

Paola Birdsong and Liam Oryx volunteered to take the rifles out. Their journey would last a day, as planned by Hans and Harpal.

Hans and Ariel accompanied the chosen pilots to the new weapons store. There were only thirty craft in the smaller space, all newly made after the destruction of William's bombship. The designs were familiar, however. Martin and Ariel watched the two volunteers enter the slender craft, checked out their systems through the wands, stood behind ladder fields as the ships pushed through the hatch on pylons.

The rifles began their journey of hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

"I feel guilty about keeping my room temperature above freezing now," Ariel said. "We have so little fuel. I hope this is really worthwhile."

Martin shrugged and left the weapons store for the schoolroom.

"Where are you going?" Ariel asked. He told her. "Can I come with you?"

Martin was surprised into a long, even a rude, silence. "You can go wherever you want," he said. "We're gathering to see if anything happens to Nebuchadnezzar."

"You need company. I don't want to see you bleak again."

He closed one eye, squinted at her, and again, without thinking, said what was on his mind: "I can't figure you. You were such a bitch when I was Pan. Now it's sweetness and light. Are you crazierthan I am?"

She backed away, stung, then said, "Probably. What's it matter now?"

To that, he had no answer.

The crew gathered around the star sphere in the schoolroom, all but Hakim and Luis Estevez Saguaro, who stayed in the nose to keep working. "What we learned in training makes us think this planet's really sick with our doers," Thomas Orchard explained, pointing out large brown and red patches on Nebuchadnezzar. "Whatever turned our people into and em may have been failing to start with—it didn't stop some pods from dropping doers. And it didn't convert all our ships. Now we think the machinery, the defenses, are completely gone."

"How long until it blows up?" David Aurora asked.

"It won't blow up," Harpal said. "It's just set to cook."

"That's what I mean," David said, smirking. Martin watched the crew closely, uneasy, still bleak despite Ariel's company.

"Any minute now," Thomas said.

"Then we got a win," David continued, raising his fist in a victory salute.

"Fat lot of good it does us," Ariel said. "Two more planets to go, and so little fuel we can't escape."

"It's something," Harpal said.

"I don't think it's much," Erin Eire said at the rear. Martin had not even seen her since the awakening, not closely enough to pull her apart from the crowd. "I think we all know this place isn't the real target."

"What makes you think that?" Thomas asked.

A mom entered the schoolroom. The crew fell silent as it floated to the center, but when it said and did nothing more, they resumed.