Clover rubbed his hands together. "I was hoping you'd talk me out of my spasm of righteousness. The Hump Pool was wrong. I'm defending the reputation of women everywhere by taking the cash."

"Absolutely," Fiorella said.

An hour later, she was live from the bridge: "While the crew, including myself, and the former crewmen of the Celestial Odyssey, will have to spend some time in a Level Four biocontainment facility, now being fabbed in the new Chinese Divine Wanderer, there's not much doubt the viral visitor can be eradicated from our bodies. There remains the question of what will happen to the Nixon. Eradicating every last organic particle from this ship would be a vast task, not made easier by the fact that we'd have to do it in space. Preliminary tests have shown that this particle may not be killed by exposure to a vacuum. . . ."

She went on for a while, but the thrust was clear: a solution would have to be found for eliminating the contamination of the Nixon. The world could not risk the introduction of a new alien organism . . . or any other organisms that hadn't yet been found.

Later that evening, after another performance, she said hoarsely, "Damn, my voice is shot."

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sore from bouncing that cot up and down. I'm thinking the real thing is a lot less work."

"Probably, and neither of us will likely get an Oscar for our performance . . ."

"Your moans were pretty convincing . . ."

". . . but you can't fault the pay scale."

"Amen, sister."

Clover was taking high fives in the Commons. He had a spaghetti pot under his arm, stuffed with currency.

- Fang-Castro glanced around her bare quarters.

Saturday, December 1, 2068. She'd remember this date, the day she gave up the command of the Nixon.

The Chinese had been prompt and efficient. They could, in fact, have launched and arrived a day earlier than projected. It was the personnel on the Nixon who'd held to the original schedule, transmitting every last bit of their work to Earth . . . in native English and math . . . through a Chinese relay.

Not a lot of trust there. Not a lot of trust, anywhere.

Three Americans and two Chinese had died in her ship, though Admiral Zhang was probably dead by the time he arrived. There were four bodies in cold storage, and one was still sailing, in a broken egg, toward the outer planets. The thought of Becca Johansson, on her lonely voyage, still made Fang-Castro tight in the throat.

They'd also lost one cat on the trip: Mr. Snuffles had died of a heart attack three weeks out. John Clover had been devastated, but had said, "He never would have made it back on Earth, anyway. The gravity would kill him the first day. Better this way."

The living Americans-and the former crew members of the Celestial Odyssey, as well-would be going through meticulous body scans before they'd even be allowed in the Chinese facility, and then they'd be confined to the Level 4 biocontainment area until the docs were absolutely, one hundred percent sure that they'd eliminated the last of the . . .

Measles.

A mild, attenuated, fast-developing form of measles genetically designed to produce the raw material for a measles vaccine, should that ever be needed; and though it was attenuated, it nevertheless produced the blotching pink rash of regular measles. The only place where the regular disease occasionally popped up was the wilds of Marin County, California. If a few hundred parents hadn't resisted, it would have been eradicated there decades earlier. This outbreak had been brought up by the first visitor to the Nixon, a cheerful, politically reliable doc from the CDC.

With both the Chinese and American propaganda machines denying that there was any real danger from the "alien" virus, at the same time they used various ignorance-bathed celebrities to spread fear and misinformation through the Internet, most of the world had become convinced that the Nixon was a death machine.

A long-forgotten film from a century earlier, The Andromeda Strain, resurfaced on the Internet. Medical personnel-so they claimed to be-called and texted late-night talk shows, citing research that had shown how microorganisms could survive under the most extraordinary conditions. They reminded listeners how diseases on Earth had jumped between species, given the right set of chance mutations. Organisms that might normally infect an alien host might, and they emphasized the word "might," be able to make the jump to human beings.

Probably not. But maybe.

Santeros said it most plainly, in a talk on public television: "Humans have encountered aliens. No one knows, for certain, what the Nixon might have brought back with it in the way of pathogens-germs. We are confident that we can eliminate any pathogens in the human body itself, but with the Nixon, that's a much different situation.

"We have consulted with the Chinese, European, Brazilian, African Union, and Indian governments. As much as it breaks my heart, the decision has been taken to destroy the Nixon in a way that will remove any doubt that rogue pathogens have been destroyed with it. . . .

"The only things to be brought back from the ship are eight alien machines, which will also be thoroughly decontaminated, and from which we hope and expect to derive much information about their computer technologies. As an act of goodwill between the U.S. and its many foreign allies, the machines will be distributed among the major states represented on the UN's Security Council. We hope, however, to develop a mutual research program."

But what to do with the Nixon?

De-orbiting the ship was unthinkable. It was far too large to entirely burn up; something might survive and contaminate the world. Crash it into the moon? It'd have to be monitored as a hazardous waste site indefinitely.

The only smart place to send the ship was to the ultimate incinerator. The sun. The Divine Wanderer, the Celestial Odyssey's successor, could do the job; a ship that was designed to carry over a thousand tonnes of cargo wouldn't have any problem pushing around the four-hundred-and-fifty-tonne Nixon. A little extra water reaction mass from some strap-on tanks, some newly fabricated attachment mounts, and the Martian transport became the world's biggest and fastest tugboat.

The operation took a week.

On its second, and final, trip to the Nixon, the Divine Wanderer brought along service eggs, graphene cable, and sensor-laden tie-downs, and a full complement of riggers and jockeys. They'd only be pushing the poor Nixon at a few percent of a gee, but that was still several times more acceleration than the ship had been subject to before. A little extra rigging, just to make sure nothing broke loose. It was cheap insurance.

At six o'clock in the morning, Beijing time, President Santeros and General Secretary Hong jointly issued the orders to proceed.

The Divine Wanderer, grappled to the Nixon's cold, dead VASIMR engines, began to push. Its nuclear thermal rockets thrummed at a comfortable one-third power for the next day, as the Divine Wanderer pushed the Nixon away from the earth and against its orbital motion about the sun. When it was done, twenty-seven kilometers per second of fresh delta-vee canceled out all but a few kilometers per second of residual orbital velocity about the sun.

The Nixon's new course was confirmed. The Divine Wanderer released its grapples, turned tail, and headed back to Earth. The Nixon continued on, in a tight elliptical track with a perihelion of less than half a million kilometers. It would never complete a full orbit; the sun's radius was seven hundred thousand kilometers.

In just over two months, the Nixon would hit the sun at over six hundred kilometers per second, at least those few refractory bits that hadn't vaporized millions of kilometers out.

- After six weeks of decontamination, the crew of the Nixon, and their Chinese guests, were released from biocontainment. The Americans were picked up, a few at a time, by Virgin-SpaceX shuttles, and returned to Earth.

John Clover was among the first to hit dirt: and feel the oppressive pull of Earth's gravity. He'd lost weight in his time in space and had worked out religiously. Still, gravity was a trial. On the other hand, he'd get used to it in a couple of months, and he'd have better than a half-million dollars, his share of the Hump Pool. Made him laugh to think about it.

In New Orleans, he stepped from the government autolimo and checked out his house. It was different. The steps were freshly painted. For that matter, so was the whole fuckin' house.

Crow had told him that the government would maintain it, but this . . .

"Aw, crap." He palmed the front-door lock and the door opened. The hinges didn't squeak. Crap-crap, he thought, if they've messed with my stuff . . .

Someone had straightened up the living room. Straightened up? They'd done a thorough cleaning, practically a remake. All his carefully tabbed and dog-eared papers and magazines, half-read books, the stacks of old journals by his chairs, all the stuff that had taken up eighty percent of the floor, it was all gone.

Assholes. It'll take years to undo what some brain-dead "organizer" had done to his filing system, he thought. Hell, it'd probably take him years just to find where they'd put all his stuff, assuming they hadn't thrown it out in some misguided fit of do-goodedness.

He needed a joint, he decided, hoping they hadn't thrown out his stash. He stepped on the loose floorboard to the left of the entryway to the living room. The floorboard flipped up and he reached for the rusty tackle box below it. He grunted as he pulled it up. Heavy. Inside there were fresh, wrapped kilo bricks. He peered at the label. They were from the government research farm in Kentucky.

An envelope was taped to one of the bricks, with a letter and a card inside. The letter said he was an authorized owner of the dope under federal law; the card identified him as a federal research subject, exempting him from Louisiana's antiquated prohibitions.

Both were signed by the surgeon general.

The card said: See what the nanny state can do for you? Welcome home, John. I'll call you. I need some jambalaya.-C.

Well, I will be blown, Clover thought, as he rolled a joint. He stepped outside to light it up: a calico cat sat on the neighbor's fence, a thin, feral feline. The cat narrowed his eyes and meowed, just once. Food?

"Back in a minute," Clover said to the cat. He'd always had a weakness for calicoes. He meowed once, and went back inside to look for the cat crunchies.

Good dope, even the possibility of a new cat.

Wonder if everybody gets this kind of welcome?

- No. They didn't.

Fiorella said good-bye to Sandy at the back of the shuttle. "This whole criminal thing is bullshit," she said. "I'll do everything I can. I think I can probably do a lot. Santeros owes me. We've already got a petition going, almost everybody in the crew signed it."

"Thank you. For everything," Sandy said. "You gonna give me a kiss good-bye?"

"If I do, are you gonna try to squeeze my ass?"

"Maybe. Okay, maybe not."

She gave him a peck on the cheek and said, "Everything will work out."

"I know it will. I'll be seeing you around."

The FBI was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

Whatever else had been said and done, Santeros still needed a scapegoat.

Sandy was arrested, placed in solitary confinement in Los Angeles, and the next day was flown to Washington, where he'd stand trial in federal court. Santeros had nixed a court-martial for the simple reason that nobody had actually taken the time to reactivate Sandy's commission in the army.

He had excellent attorneys. His father visited him every day and made it very clear that Santeros was going to get a half billion (or so) of adverse political advertising shoved down her throat at the next election cycle.

The trial itself was quite short, since the charges were designed to be undeniable. Sandy didn't bother to deny them, and pled nolo contendere. Most of the trial involved the pre-sentencing hearing, in which two dozen Nixon crew members defended Sandy's actions as necessary, sane, and probably the salvation of the ship; and former military colleagues represented him as an unsung hero.

Fiorella wasn't allowed to cover the case, because of the obvious conflict of interest, but she'd been interviewed on the top-rated CBSNN show Sweet Emotion and, in her Ultra-Star way, had dampened half the hankies in America.

The prosecutor, a civil servant but determined opponent of everything Santeros stood for, asked that Sandy be given forty years, as a way to embarrass her. The judge, a Santeros appointee, had been listening to the witnesses, too, and had a friendly conversation with an old college buddy currently working at the Justice Department; he cut the sentence as short as he possibly could.

Sandy got five years, in Leavenworth.

On the first day of winter, he was taken out of the Washington federal courthouse in handcuffs and leg chains. Onlookers and former cell mates thought he looked unreasonably cheerful for a man facing hard time at Leavenworth.

He was to be transported to National Airport, and from there, flown to Kansas City, for further transfer on to Leavenworth.

The first vehicle was an eight-person van, divided into four cells, cages within a cage. Seating was minimal, but not brutal: a city-bus-style plastic seat, with minor alterations to allow the leg chain to be passed through a steel loop welded into the floor. There was enough room that he could stand and stretch.

He was allowed a slate with one book on it for entertainment, no Internet connection. On this day, he was the only passenger. The trip to National would take a half hour, since the federal marshals driving the van were not allowed to exceed the speed limit.

They were moving at precisely eight o'clock in the morning, the time chosen to avoid reporters. The first stop took place four minutes later, outside the old Smithsonian building. The van pulled to the side of the street, and one of the marshals in the front got out, came around to the back, and popped the door. Crow was standing on the curb, and climbed into the cell next to Sandy's.

"I was wondering when you'd show up. I thought it'd be at National," Sandy said. Gave him the toothy grin.

"Man, with that smirk, you gotta be even dumber than you look," Crow said. "You're on your way to Leavenworth. You know what that means? You're gonna miss the best part of your life."

"I'm thinking not," Sandy said.

"Daddy can't buy you outa this one, pal. Not gonna happen. And all your shipmates who think you saved their lives? Santeros dropped their petition in the wastebasket. She didn't even bother to read it."

Sandy looked down at his slate and flipped a page. Crow couldn't quite see what he was reading. "Yeah, well. There's always France. I think they'll be willing to help out." Sandy held up the slate: French for Americans.

"You gotta be kidding me."

"Not at all. I need the refresher-it wasn't my best subject at Harvard. I've always been an admirer of French civilization," Sandy said. "The philosophy, the painting, the women, the food. The cheese, the mushrooms, the snails. You know. So I thought they'd really be the logical ones to lead the world into the next Renaissance."

After a moment, Crow said, "You backed up the database, didn't you? How'd you get it off the ship?"

"I'm gonna give it to the French. They'd ask me nicer."

"The French? You motherfucker," Crow said.

Sandy said, "You want to get out now? This is going to be a tiresome ride and I've got some serious reading to do."

A long silence. Crow didn't move. Then, "What do you want?"

"A pardon from the President," Sandy said. "I'll let her cover her ass. You know, 'We let the trial go on, because we wanted to make a point about discipline. But there are extenuating circumstances, he's very young and a little dumb, had a good service record' . . . blah blah blah."

"We can talk about that," Crow said.

"And I want an apology. I thought about requiring her resignation, because, you know, she's quite the serious asshole. But . . . I guess anyone else would be just as bad."

"No way she would quit," Crow said. "Or apologize."

"You could be wrong about that. If word got out about the stakes involved-the whole future of American technological leadership-I believe the House and Senate might be willing to listen. They don't like her much, anyway. I think she might resign rather than face impeachment."

"Word wouldn't get out," Crow said. "You'll be amazed at how secure our prison system can be, when it wants to be. When was the last time you heard a political statement from Ramon Roarty?" Roarty had conceived and planned the Houston Flash; he was now serving a life sentence at Leavenworth.

"I believe the French ambassador might be asking for permission to visit me in Leavenworth," Sandy said. "To check on rumors of inhumane treatment of prisoners."

"A request that would be denied."

"Amidst vast embarrassment. To say nothing of rather pointed inquiries from the Chinese." Sandy looked thoughtfully through the bars of his cage at the low ceiling of the van. "Maybe I should spread the wealth around. Let the French have the science stuff . . . they're no good with tech anyway . . . and give the alien technology stuff . . . to who? The Brazilians? They're really good with machinery."

For the first time in their entire acquaintance, Sandy saw a hint of surprise in Crow's eyes. "Now you are fucking with me. It's not the database? You've got a QSU?"

Sandy picked up the slate. "Hmmm, I need to work on my French for 'fuck.' That'll be important," he muttered. He read something on the slate. "And it's a little complicated. It'd be embarrassing to use the wrong version of the word. The French are so . . . intricate . . . in their sexual ways, don't you think?"

Another long silence, then, "I can get you the pardon."

"And the apology . . ."

"We'll work out something," Crow said.

"I have to insist on the apology," Sandy said. "A really abject one. Handwritten by herself. Signed. I'll promise to hold it privately until she's out of office. When she's out, though, I'm gonna use my grandpa's money to buy a mansion at Zuma Beach and I'll put the apology on the wall of the entrance hall. Gonna be so cool. But the pardon has to be public. Like right now."

"We'll work it out," Crow said again. "So. What did you do?"

"I won't give you the precise details until I'm walking around free," Sandy said.

"Just tell me. Or I'm getting out and the van can go on to Leavenworth. It's not the day camp you seem to imagine it is."