The dark-eyed man looked up, came to some kind of decision, and leaned forward and picked up the delicate china cup. He sniffed, slurped, and held the brew for a moment in his mouth. Fang-Castro almost believed there was a momentary look of pleasure on his thin face.

"Very good," he said. "Yes, very, very good. Thank you." He returned his attention to his slate, cradling the cup in one hand.

They worked in an almost comfortable silence for an hour. The encrypted signal from the Oval Office was picked up by the ship, routed to Crow's slate, decrypted, and sent to Fang-Castro's office screen, and only to her office screen. Vintner was in the foreground of the vid image, with Santeros and DARPA director Lossness in the background.

"Good morning, Captain Fang-Castro, Mr. Crow," said the President's science adviser. "Not good news, I'm afraid. The Chinese did another midcourse correction burn, but this one was considerably longer than we expected or even knew that they were capable of. They've picked up three kilometers per second. JPL says it's advanced their Saturn ETA by over three weeks. They're now expected to arrive at Saturn near the first of April."

Lossness loomed on the screen. "The deep space network indicates that they also jettisoned some material or sections of their ship both before and after the burn. We don't know if this was planned from the beginning or is some sort of contingency plan, or if it's an act of desperation. If they had that much additional reaction mass in their original burn budget, we'd have expected them to use it on launch. It would've bought them a lot more time."

Vintner took over again. "We believe it's probably some combination of all those motives. Likely they jettisoned as much mass as they could before the burn to lighten the ship and take best advantage of the thrust, and then they threw away some extra tankage afterwards. Our guess is that they've burned into the reaction mass they need to decelerate. They need to drastically reduce their dead weight if they're going to have enough delta-vee to achieve Saturn rendezvous.

"We've developed several possible scenarios. The first is simply as described. In that case, they're going to be hampered on their return to Earth. They'll have less dry weight, but probably considerably less reaction mass, what with the jettisoned tankage. In that contingency, they've decided the crew can live with a several-year return trip, or they're planning a rescue mission to meet the returning spacecraft.

"The second possibility is that the Celestial Odyssey is an intentionally staged vehicle, and the return spacecraft was always planned to be much smaller than the outbound one. That seems unlikely, given the advanced state of construction on their ship when they decided to convert it from a Mars transport to a Saturn mission, but it's possible.

"A third possibility is that this was planned as a one-way mission from the beginning, that the Chinese didn't think they had enough time to prepare a round-trip ship. The Chinese are now well along on construction of their second Mars transport. Maybe it was also repurposed, as a follow-up mission to bring back whatever the first ship found."

Santeros barely moved a hand, but all attention turned to her. "There is an additional possibility that most concerns me and should concern both of you. The Chinese may have no contingency return plan, and they are now on what amounts to a one-way run. In that case, they may be planning on the kindness and generosity of the U.S. for a lift home." Santeros smiled without humor. "Or they may attempt to commandeer the Nixon. You obviously need to keep all of this in mind. I would like your reaction to all of the possibilities that we've mentioned, in the next day or two, and any other possibilities that occur to you. We won't need a back-and-forth discussion like this one-just send your reactions along, and we'll look at them when they get here."

Vintner closed. "Even with all that's happened, you're still scheduled to beat the Chinese to Saturn by over two months. Short of getting Reactor 2 back online"-the science adviser looked questioningly hopeful-"we don't think this affects your outbound mission plans. We thought it important that you know as soon as possible. We'll keep this channel live for the next two hours, in case you need to get back to us with any questions or observations. Over to you."

The view of the Oval Office was replaced by the presidential seal and the word "Suspended."

Fang-Castro turned in her chair and said, "Stay, Mr. Crow, while I get Dr. Johansson." Fang-Castro called the engineer and said, "Becca, I'd appreciate it if you could come to my office at your earliest possible convenience."

Becca and Sandy were having lunch in the Commons. The past month got to the Awkward-Couple-Having-Frank-Conversations phase. Becca saw an opening and went for it. "Sandy, why did you hit on me? No BS."

Sandy looked embarrassed. "Well, honestly? Because you're cute . . ."

"That can't be the only reason."

"And because I liked you and you seemed to like me, and because I was pretty sure you'd say yes. And . . . you talked to me like I was a real person and not a wad of money."

"That I'd say yes?" Becca rolled her eyes. "Boy, do you have any idea what comes out of your mouth? Really?"

"I knew you'd jump on that, which isn't fair-"

"What?" Her implant pinged her. The message from the captain on her subcutaneous earplug saved Sandy from hearing exactly what Becca's reply would have been. She swallowed her words, along with the last of a sandwich. "That's the captain. Gotta go."

"Think about being fair," Sandy said.

"Fair? Oh, later."

- On her way to Fang-Castro's office, Becca thought about the pros and cons of their relationship.

Plus points: the sex was fabulous and shipboard duties were actually giving her time to address the urge. The boy was easy to talk to. He respected what she did, and didn't think he was more important than her job. And he was interested in repeat performances. Big, big plus.

Minus points: he can be an amazing ass, when he tries. Even when he doesn't try.

Which, she sighed, was pretty much what she'd been told in advance, so it wasn't like she could feign surprise to herself.

And back to the plus point: so many repeat performances!

Conclusion? What the hell, she didn't really have any more reason to kick him out of bed now than she'd had to not get in bed with him in the first place. So far, the sex and company were definitely worth the aggravation.

But what was that thing about being fair?

Was he suggesting that she was unfair?

He'd plainly said . . .

- Fang-Castro's door pinged. "Come in."

Becca stepped through, where she found Fang-Castro and Crow sitting together.

"What's wrong?" She scowled. "The ship's fine."

Fang-Castro held up a placating hand. "Easy, Becca. Mr. Crow and I just received some unfortunate news from Jacob Vintner. It seems the Chinese ship did an unexpected midcourse burn that's advanced their arrival time at Saturn by more than three weeks. That still gives us a two-month lead over them, but it's making the President a little nervous. We're wondering how your investigations are going . . . about squeezing more performance out of the engines?"

"Huh." Fang-Castro caught a mutter, something about "armchair, backseat-driving politicians." Becca took a chair, and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, ran through the possibilities. "We've got more simulations to run. We've already decided that we don't want to kick up our acceleration burn. This late in the trip, it wouldn't buy us much time, anyway. But we're thinking we might be able to squeeze out more deceleration after turnaround. If we can stay at maximum velocity longer, that'll shave off some time. I'll tell the guys we're gonna do it and run the numbers tonight."

When Becca had gone, Crow said, "Were you aware that Johansson is involved in a sexual relationship with Darlington?"

"Yes. They seem to be conducting themselves with some discretion, so it's fine with me. I understand it's had a pretty powerful negative effect on the Hump Pool."

"So you're also aware of the Hump Pool."

"Part of the job description, Mr. Crow. I have not bet on it, of course. People believe that I have . . . mmm . . . monitoring sources which they might not have."

"They think I do, too. I've been informally approached to monitor the situation, vis-a-vis Fiorella. I refused."

"If that pool hits a half million . . ."

"It'll take off. I gotta say, if that goddamn Darlington's taken an interest in Fiorella, as well as Johansson . . . it'd be a shame if that blew up, if our movie star beat the shit out of our chief engineer."

"I think I might bet on the engineer, in that case," Fang-Castro said.

"You'd lose," Crow said. "Check Fiorella's in-depth dossier sometime. She was running a street gang in Bakersfield when she was twelve. But I'm not too worried. I don't think anybody's going to attack anybody, not over Darlington. As for the Hump Pool, there might be some trouble there, if it gets big enough. I'll keep an eye on it."

"Do that-and keep me informed."

With the asteroid belt coming up, Joe Martinez began running a plaster-and-paint school. The trainees included both Sandy and Becca, since both were adept with the eggs-Sandy from his journalistic and documentary excursions, and Becca from her occasional trips out to the radiators, which she insisted on inspecting in person.

Plaster-and-paint involved repair of collision damage, an ongoing issue for the Nixon. Most of the repair work was done by his own maintenance crews, but he trained extras in case there should be a substantial, but non-fatal, hit, which would require large crews both inside and outside.

The Nixon was traveling a hundred times faster than a high-speed bullet. A millimeter grain of interplanetary sand packed the same wallop as a rifle slug when it hit the ship at a hundred and forty kilometers per second.

The ship was covered with microseismometer sensors. They dutifully picked up the small but sharp impulses of sand strikes and relayed the information to the maintenance computers, which pinpointed the spot on the ship where the hit had taken place. The Nixon averaged about one hit a week, which wasn't a lot, considering the distance they covered in that time. Each hit was shortly followed by a visit from a service egg. The divot got filled with structural composite putty and epoxy overcoat. The entire EVA took less than an hour.

"The thing about interplanetary space, as you all should know by now, is that it's astonishingly empty," Martinez told the crew. "The asteroid belt is only a little less astonishingly empty-I'm thinking we might get one hit a day out there, maybe two dozen total for the transit. None of them, I hope, will be larger than the ones we've already seen. The odds of a hit inconveniencing the power plant or heat radiating system are really, really small."

Becca jumped in: "The odds are small, but just in case, we need to go through the protocols for dealing with the strike in those areas. I've got a lot of stuff to tell you, but mostly it boils down to this: if we take a critical hit on the engine or the radiators, you call Engineering and you wait for specific instructions. You don't go off on your own or I honest-to-God will murder you. Is that clear to everybody?"

Everybody nodded.

"What happens, er, if the hit's bigger than a grain of sand?" asked one of the trainees who hadn't read the handout.

"That's why we're training you extras," Martinez said, "because if that happens, it's gonna be a major clusterfuck. How major, depends on where it hits. The real problem of the asteroid belt is not only are the sand-sized hits more common-we can handle those-but we've also got some bigger rocks out there. There are a hundred times fewer one-centimeter rocks out there than millimeter ones, so there's a better than even chance we'll never encounter one, on the whole trip. Even in the asteroid belt. That's a good thing, because an impact with a centimeter-sized rock would have the explosive force of several kilos of high explosive. Containing something like that would be a struggle-that's why we have the nose and tail cones."

"What about ten-centimeter rocks?" asked the same trainee.

"That could be a total disaster, again, depending on where it hit."

"We couldn't dodge it?"

"No. We cover more than a hundred thousand kilometers every fifteen minutes-a third of the distance from the earth to the moon. We simply can't track rocks that size, that far out. The good news is, the chances of hitting something that big are far less than one percent. Far less."

"Be like losing the lottery," Sandy said.

Martinez scratched his chin: "Interesting concept-losing a lottery. I've never heard of such a thing."

After they finished the inside class, they went outside in the eggs, to practice the plaster-and-paint on simulated hits. They were being monitored by Crow, who monitored all EVAs. The entire interior of the ship was covered by vid monitors, and the vid was cached for later viewing, if necessary. The exterior was of more immediate concern; Crow worried that if somebody were to sabotage the ship again, the attack well might come there and so real-time surveillance was in order.

He listened to the eggs going out, watched them by tapping into Martinez's vid feed, then tapped into the private comm channel between Darlington and Johansson, and listened for a while.

One of his surveillance computers automatically monitored all shipboard communications, and a relational app alerted him to problematical talk and provided a written transcript-but those were just the words. They didn't catch tone and the unvoiced emotions that directed it; there was no substitute for the occasional direct audio surveillance.

Crow was a bit surprised those two had fallen into bed. Not that he hadn't expected Darlington to make a move at some point; really, the only question was how soon. Johansson, on the other hand . . . he'd have guessed she was too wrapped up with her work-obsessed might be more accurate-to consider any distracting personal involvements. The boredom of interplanetary flight was a bigger factor than he'd realized.

He would have to remember that if he ever found himself in this kind of insane situation again. Not that he was planning to.

Their conversation was work-related discussion interspersed with personal chat. It had taken nearly three weeks for the honeymoon period to wear off, and since then they'd slipped into mismatched couple behavior.

He was sure they'd deny the couple part. The mismatch, no one could deny. They squabbled. It was none of that "opposites attract" nonsense; they were just different. Johansson's single-minded, utterly dedicated work focus didn't stay at work; it carried over to her approach to her entire life. She behaved as if everything in her existence was a chore, and she liked the chores.

Right now the squabble was essentially territorial, although Darlington didn't seem to realize that. Playing in Johansson's quarters meant they were playing by her rules. She'd defined the scope of the relationship from the very beginning. Keeping physical matters on her turf reinforced that authority. Served Darlington right. He so took it for granted that he called the shots in these sexual liaisons that he couldn't wrap his head around why this one was discomforting him so. He'd made the first pass, but then she'd grabbed the ball and called the plays after that.

But . . . something else came through the squabbling, something the computers and transcripts wouldn't flag. After listening for ten minutes, he thought, Damnit. They're falling in love.

That could be bad both ways.

He considered Darlington to be one of his troops. Troops were always better when unencumbered by attachments, especially attachments to critical personnel. There might even be more complicated sexual arrangements, he worried, that could turn into bitterness and strife. For example, what was going on between Darlington and Fiorella? Did Johansson know about it? Was there anything to know?

Darlington was his ace in the hole, but he wasn't a very stable ace. So far the relationship seemed to be working for Johansson and Darlington, but if, or more likely when, it went south . . .

He figured Johansson was far less likely to fall apart. She had fuckin' balls. Except . . . she counted for a lot more.

It was a classic risk vs. threat. More likely that Darlington would melt down, but all they'd lose would be a card he might never have to play and a cameraman. More likely Johansson would keep it together, but if she didn't, there went the ship's most important crew member.

"I got a fuckin' soap opera," he said aloud. "We got three hundred contingency plans, and not a single one for a fuckin' soap opera."

The Nixon was ninety-three days out, eight hundred and ten million kilometers from Earth, six hundred and twenty million from Saturn, and on the far side of the asteroid belt. Becca rode a transport cart down the axle to the service egg bay, sucking on the morning's third bulb of coffee as she went. The day before, the Nixon had reached the point where it would stop accelerating outward from the sun, turn tail-forward, and begin the three-month process of decelerating into Saturn.

Becca had spent the day supervising the first controlled shutdown of the Nixon's propulsion system since they'd left Earth's orbit. Shutting down was less dangerous than start-up, but not a whole lot less tricky. Strictly speaking, it was unnecessary. The thrust of the four VASIMRs was low enough that firing broadside for a few hours would hardly affect their trajectory. But the techies running the simulations were antsy about those sail ribbons running at full velocity. The sims said they'd be fine in a rotating reference frame, but better to err on the side of caution and slow that molten metal down as much as they could.

Engineering had to ramp down the output of the reactor, turbines, and generators while shutting down the VASIMR engines and slowly winding down the radiator system. Not too fast or the system would overheat; not too slowly or the heat exchangers would freeze up.

The shutdown wasn't complete. Becca didn't want to restart the radiator system from scratch; cold starts were always rough. Happily, there was no need to. The reactors could churn out power indefinitely, and she'd had them wound down to the point where they'd be supporting the radiators at minimum output. She could bypass the main turbines and generators entirely, run the auxiliary power system-more than enough to maintain ship's power and the heater and control systems for the heat exchangers and radiators-and toss in a bit extra to give the molten metal ribbons something to do as they cycled from nozzle to collection boom and back down into the heat exchangers.

The process wasn't all that difficult and they'd practiced it in Earth orbit. This wasn't for practice, though, and there were no rescue ships if something went wrong.

It all went smoothly, though, and the Nixon went into free fall.

At that point, the attitude thrusters went to work, a complex and delicate orchestration of impulses that slowly rotated the entire structure-booms, struts, axles, and modules-a hundred and eighty degrees, so the engines were pointing away from the sun, and what had been the forward part of the ship was now facing back the way they came.

The crew wasn't overly worried about impacts on the engines. Their cross-section was small, and they were now well clear of the asteroid belt; in fact they were approaching Jupiter's orbit. Jupiter, fortunately, was far away. Becca didn't have to be concerned with the Jovian gravity well or the massive radiation belts. Even Jupiter's leading and trailing Trojan asteroids were far off: their orbit simply made for a mental benchmark.

The next one would be the rendezvous with Saturn.

On this day, she and her crew would bring the engines back online, essentially, shutdown in reverse. Again, as they'd practiced so many times in Earth orbit, it would be a slow and coordinated ramping up of reactors, turbines, generators, engines, while bringing the radiator system up to full speed.

If everything went as planned, they'd be at Saturn in a little over three months. Things had been going smoothly since the shutdown of Reactor 2. Both the flyby of the sun and the transit of the asteroid belt had been as uneventful as statistics had predicted, given good engineering.

The shutdown of Reactor 2 still nagged at her. If she'd been able to keep both reactors up and running, they'd be looking at a Saturn arrival in a little over a month and a half, instead of three months away. They weren't in any danger of losing the race to the Chinese-they'd already made up for the nine-month launch lead the Celestial Odyssey had, which was now only a little farther from the sun than the Nixon. The Chinese ship was coasting along at less than twenty kilometers per second, even after its unexpected midcourse boost. The Nixon was speeding away from the sun at more than a hundred and seventy kilometers per second. They'd get to Saturn with months to spare.

But still . . . Reactor 2 nagged.

As the cart approached the service egg bay, her mind turned back to the day's itinerary. This was perhaps the most critical point in the ship's journey; now they had to start decelerating or they were all on a one-way trip to some not-very-nearby star. Ironically, the loss of Reactor 2 actually made her job easier. They only had half as much power to manage and they still had close to full capacity on the radiators, so nothing there was being pushed to its limits.

Doing it right required paying attention to detail, but it was the kind of power plant operations work that made her the most comfortable-the boring kind. Take it up five percent. Check all the settings. Double-check the settings. Take it up another five percent. Check the settings. Double-check the settings. Rinse and repeat until done.

She didn't even need to be in the engine room for this one, so she was going to be keeping an eye on the performance of the radiators from outside. Sometimes you picked up on stuff just watching the equipment run that you didn't get from the instrument readings. Sandy would accompany her so she could get a hard copy record of whatever she saw and take advantage of his multispectral cameras and extensive range of optics. Whatever she found worth recording he'd capture six ways to Sunday, and she'd review it at her leisure.

- When she arrived at the service bay, Sandy had finished loading his camera gear into his egg and was chatting with Joe Martinez. Martinez had his slate plugged into Sandy's egg, checking out all the relevant preflight specs.

"Morning, Joe," she said, as the transport stopped and she pushed herself off, got her feet stuck to the floor.

"Becca . . . already checked you out, you're good." He touched his slate and said to Sandy, "And you're good, too."

"I already knew that, having done exactly what you just did," Sandy said.

Martinez shut down his slate and said, "Two heads are better than one, especially . . . I say, especially . . . when one of them is yours. That problem doesn't come up with Becca, of course."

Becca yawned: "I gotta pee before I go out."

Sandy: "You haven't already?"

"Yeah, but I had two more bulbs of coffee since then and I could really use another." She handed Sandy a sack: "Peanut butter sandwiches and a bag of cookies. We might be out for a while."