"Guaranteed, Mr. Iswander," Rlinda said. "You need to make an impressive showing to prove to the clans that you're a good businessman, an innovative manufacturer, and a true Roamer."

Iswander chuckled. "Sounds like a speech I should be giving."

"I could hire myself out as a speech writer," Rlinda said. "Reasonable rates. I'm a woman of many talents."

He clasped his hands in front of him. "It's no secret that I've thrown my name into the ring to become the next Speaker. With a cargo load of ultra-pure ingots, exotic metal foams, energy films, and alloy polymers, everyone on Newstation will be able to see what I have to offer."

"We're also sending hundreds of spectacular images," Pannebaker added. "You never know, it might even bring some tourists."

Rlinda walked around the office deck with her rolling gait. "For the next important question, what sort of food do you have around here? You must have a commissary."

"There's a cafeteria," Iswander said. "It's adequate, I suppose."

Rlinda let out a loud huff. "Adequate is never good enough. Let me see your kitchens, maybe make some helpful suggestions."

Tasia laughed. Rlinda never seemed to change.

Robb interrupted, "I've already set up a proposed schedule of cargo runs from here to Newstation, Ulio, and Earth-a regular flow of Kett Shipping vessels coming to deliver whatever materials you have to trade."

"We'll put the Verne in the loop as one of the first ships," Tasia suggested. "I doubt Xander and Terry have marked off Sheol on their lists yet." It was important to think of their own son when opportunities arose.

During the Elemental War, she and Robb had been separated from each other for so long that they'd made up for lost time as soon as the war was over. They went on a honeymoon to see nebulas, gas giants, the trees of Theroc, the ruins of the Prism Palace, and the recovering operations on Plumas, which technically belonged to Tasia and her brother Jess, but Jess had his Academ school with Cesca, and Tasia happily ceded the operations to a distant cousin.

She was a Roamer through and through, and she needed to be free to do what she wanted. As a teenager, she had run away from home to join the Earth Defense Forces as a gesture of rebellion, and then she'd been stuck in a military career. Only later had she seen the irony of trading the comparative freedom of her teen years for a life of training, service, rule-following, and "Yes, sirs" up and down the chain of command (and "chain" was the right word for it, because it certainly bound people to do unreasonable things). After the end of the war, she hadn't wanted any more of that.

Robb, raised in the military under his career-officer parents, had always thought his life would be centered on the EDF. He signed up, completed his training, did his duty, fought the enemy ... and ended up spending a relative eternity as a hydrogue prisoner. Afterward, he had plenty of doubts. He didn't think his core loyalty had changed, but the governments that claimed his loyalty were no longer the same.

Captain Rlinda Kett had offered the couple the Voracious Curiosity and asked if they wanted to be the first pilots in her new shipping company. They accepted, without mentioning that Tasia was pregnant. Their son Xander had been born on board ship, because Tasia incorrectly believed she could make one more run to the Rendezvous reconstruction site before her due date, and when her hard labor started, they couldn't get to a medical facility fast enough. On that chaotic day Robb frantically read medical databases about birthing, and Tasia told him to solve the problem as she went into heavy contractions. "Or do I have to deliver this baby myself?"

"You have to do most of it, but I'm right here with you." At that point, she wished she had gotten another compy after all, because Robb certainly needed the help. Medically speaking, the birth was not difficult (though Tasia took exception with the characterization). The baby was healthy.

They had agreed on Alexander for the boy's name; Robb wanted to call him Alex, Tasia wanted to call him Xander ... so they compromised and called him Xander. Not surprisingly, the young man was an instinctive pilot, since he'd spent his whole life aboard ships.

Now, in the Iswander Industries offices, Robb handled the inventory and paperwork for the new shipment, as well as the schedule for expanded commercial deliveries of Sheol metallurgy products. Rlinda planned to show off for the crew of magma harvesters by cooking them a meal unlike anything they'd ever had before.

Meanwhile, Tasia asked Deputy Pannebaker to show her how to suit up in the thermal armor, so she could go outside and supervise the loading of metals aboard the Curiosity. Pannebaker suggested again that they go lava sledding, but she turned him down. "Work to do. Maybe on our next visit."

She put down the glare shield on her helmet and exited, with Pannebaker following in his own armor suit. The storm of heat and fire around them seemed to be Sheol's natural state. Exposed, the Curiosity sat on the raised landing deck, connected by the safe access tube. Worker compies and suited crew used antigrav clamps to bring load after load of packaged metals into the hold.

As tons of product were loaded aboard, Pannebaker kept up a running commentary and explained the operations in the three towers.

Tasia realized that the deck felt uncertain beneath her boots. She stomped down, saw that her heel left a clear impression in the metal. "Is it supposed to be this soft?" Then as she watched in amazement, the Curiosity slid several inches. "Shizz, the landing deck is tilting!"

The startled workers stopped loading the Curiosity. "We're off-level, that's for sure." Pannebaker clicked his general-comm signal. "Must be closer to material tolerances than I thought."

Nearby, another lava geyser spurted-bright yellow with a core of white.

"You sure this is safe?" Tasia asked.

In his bulky thermal armor, Pannebaker lumbered to the shielded control shack, and she followed, tilting her helmet for a last glance at the half planet looming above like a boot about to smash them.

Once the shack door was sealed and coolant jets dropped the temperature down to acceptable levels, Pannebaker slipped open his face shield, disengaged his thick gloves. Curls of steam drifted around them. Pannebaker called up a summary on his screens. "There's a massive thermal plume upwelling from below-much hotter than we've seen before."

"The facility has heat shielding, doesn't it?"

"Shielding, yes-but these peak temperatures might compromise our bedrock support struts. The three towers were built with high tolerances, sure, but in a plume this hot they might soften and bend."

Workers outside scrambled for shelter on the raised landing deck while the compies retreated. The Curiosity slid another few inches.

Out on the molten sea, one of the enormous smelter barges began to founder. The crew boss yelled over the open comm so all employees could hear, "This is an emergency. Thermal breach in our lower hull!"

CHAPTER.

18.

ELISA REEVES.

She found Garrison's ship surrounded by the mysterious nodules drifting in empty space. The vessel's running lights were on, but Elisa didn't think he had detected her yet. Not surprisingly, he'd let his guard down. Why would anyone be watchful for a ship out here, so far from the nearest star system? He must have thought this was a perfect hiding place.

Noticing carbonization on the hull, burned-out station lights, and other indicators of damage, she wondered what sort of trouble Garrison had gotten into. It looked as if the ship had been in a fight. Elisa narrowed her eyes as she ran scans. He'd better not have let any harm come to Seth.

Not bothering to think through her words, she activated the comm. "Garrison, don't make this harder on yourself."

Seth's image appeared on the screen, surprised and confused. The boy seemed different, but she wasn't sure how. Elisa tried to remember the last time she had really looked at him. "Mother! You found the bloaters too."

Bloaters? What were they?

When Garrison came on the screen, he didn't look angry or frightened, just resolute. "I thought you might be following us. When I found your magnetic tracker, I couldn't believe it, but after all these years of knowing you, I don't know why I was surprised."

"I knew you well enough that I could guess what you'd do. If I'd been more prepared, I would have stopped you."

Garrison frowned. "I had to get Seth away from Sheol. You and Iswander kept ignoring the warnings."

"You stole my son!"

"Our son," he corrected in a calm voice. "I wish you had left with us. We could have stayed together as a family, but you made your choice-and I made mine."

Having studied the specs en route, she knew that the weapons on her ship were better than those on his stolen vessel. Elisa knew exactly how to cripple his ship. "I'm taking him back with me. You proved you're an unfit father by kidnapping him."

She tried to bait Garrison, make him lose his temper in front of Seth, but he wouldn't rise to it. "Provided Seth doesn't go back to that place, we can work out a resolution. My priority is keeping him safe."

"He's coming with me. That is nonnegotiable." She nudged her ship closer, trying to think of how she would strengthen her relationship with her son, make life better for him on Sheol, make him love her more. She might even let him have his own compy.

Garrison regarded her on the screen, and for a moment his features looked just like the image of Seth she kept on display. "He's not a trophy you can claim in order to prove you've won something." His stolen vessel drifted in among the bloated nodules, trying to hide. One of the nuclei flashed, and the sudden flare of light distracted her. "I'm not going to make him choose."

"I didn't ask him to choose-he's going home with me! I warn you, I can damage your engines with a single shot and then take him to safety."

Two small, defensive jazers would be sufficient to take his stardrive offline. Lee Iswander's ships had to be able to protect themselves against marauders; as a powerful and wealthy industrialist, he'd learned how to protect what he had, and Elisa had learned from him. Garrison wouldn't stand a chance.

"We could find a neutral place," he said. "Seth is old enough to go to Academ. It would do him good to be among other kids his age. We can send him there, work things out."

"You might want to shirk your responsibilities, but he's coming with me. I'm his mother."

He maneuvered his ship through the mysterious bloaters, dodging out of sight. He was trying to lose himself, and Elisa accelerated after him. She tried to lock in on his engines for a disabling strike.

He sounded disappointed on the comm. "I thought that's what you'd say, but I wanted to make sure I tried everything. We got rid of your tracker-you can't follow us." He powered up his engines and began to move, dodging the island-sized nodules as he gained speed.

"Damn you, Garrison!" She plunged after him, looking for a good shot to damage his engines. "I'm warning you!"

His parting message enraged her. "I've had plenty of warnings, and I know which ones to listen to."

He didn't take her seriously! He was forcing her to do this. She tracked ahead and fired a warning shot across his bow. The jazers lanced out like javelins, magnetically bound high-energy beams.

When the beam struck one of the bobbing globules, the sphere erupted like a supernova. The explosion was more than just an outpouring of fire and energy: the detonating bloater ignited an adjacent bloater, then another one, like firecrackers in a chain-reaction inferno.

The shock wave engulfed her ship.

CHAPTER.

19.

LEE ISWANDER.

Surging heat plumes turned Sheol's red magma into an angry yellow-white storm. Iswander stared at the horrific beauty from his tower windows while the harpy song of alarms shrieked from dozens of systems.

Rlinda Kett began heading for the door of the office deck. "I know shit hitting the fan when I see it. You have an evacuation protocol?"

Iswander hadn't been able to study the cautionary report Pannebaker prepared, and he needed more time to develop a modified emergency response plan. "The situation might be beyond the scenarios we modeled."

Rlinda looked at him in astonishment. "You live in ... this and you aren't ready to evacuate on a moment's notice?"

Iswander was scanning the reports on the screens, the stranded smelter barge with the breached hull. He forced down panic. "Let's not go overboard, Captain Kett. Everything here was built to withstand the heat."

The structure of Tower One began to groan. As the ceramic-metal pilings were heated beyond their tolerance levels, the deck shifted noticeably. Iswander grabbed his desk for balance and activated the comm. He broadcast over the full-facility loudspeakers. "This is Lee Iswander, activating emergency protocols. Team leaders, get your crews to safety. Take emergency shelter precautions. Go into your bolt-holes if necessary. I want structural integrity reports for Towers One, Two, and Three. We'll have evacuation ships on standby if this gets worse."

Iswander knew how to keep awkward information confidential, but he was going to have to rely on every possible option now. He turned to the trader woman. "We don't have enough ships for an immediate and total evacuation-not nearly enough." Didn't budget for it, didn't plan for it-but he wasn't going to say that. "We did not foresee any circumstance that would require us to abandon the facility completely."

But Garrison Reeves had warned of this. All of his employees knew that Iswander had received, and dismissed, the man's warning. Now he had to salvage the situation, or he was going to look terrible.

The material tolerances should hold, unless the heat grew significantly worse.

His five enormous smelter barges had the best hull shielding, and he hoped they could withstand the increased heat from the plume, even though one was already foundering, taking on magma in the lower compartments. Iswander contacted the other four barge pilots. "Do you have room for evacuees? We might need you to carry a few dozen people until this simmers down."

One of the barge pilots responded, "I don't like the readings from our hull, Mr. Iswander. We're well into the red zone and softening up here ourselves."

Iswander pounded on the transmit button. "And I don't like the readings from Tower Three! Get over there and rescue as many as you can."

A second barge pilot broke in. "Will do, sir, but just because these barges look big doesn't mean we have any spare room. Most of the vessel is for lava processing and metal storage. Only a few small chambers on the bridge level are shielded enough for habitation."

"Understood." He should have planned better, should have paid attention to worse-case scenarios no matter how problematic they might be. He'd been reluctant to listen to Garrison's paranoia, more intent on quieting the rumors and keeping the workers calm than on assessing the problem. Dammit! These structural materials should stand up to the thermal stresses! It was in the design. He was supposed to be able to rely on his people when they gave him assessments.

The Tower Three supervisor called in, "We're tilting at an alarming angle here. Our struts are buckling."

Through the window wall of the admin deck, Iswander saw cumbersome smelter barges lurch toward Tower Three. He had 450 people in that structure, and if each barge could take only a dozen or so refugees under the best circumstances ... Maybe it wouldn't collapse. Maybe the material strength and heat tolerance were higher than projected.

Maybe that was wishful thinking.

Tower One began to groan again. A keepsake beverage mug from Iswander's son slid off the smooth desktop and thumped on the floor.

"You've got one more ship." Rlinda activated her comm. "Tamblyn, we need the Curiosity. Dump whatever cargo you've loaded and hook up to the Tower One heat tube. It's going to be standing room only, but we'll get all the people aboard that we can."

Tasia responded, "Going to the cockpit right now to prep. Robb is over there-make sure he gets aboard."

Standing near the windowport, Iswander could see the rippling surface of the landing deck. Blistering heat radiated through the special insulated glass. Three empty company ships were in shielded structures on the landing platform, along with his own private cruiser. He switched his desk comm to a secure channel. If the disaster grew worse, he had to set priorities. "Mr. Pannebaker, get my wife and son to our cruiser and take off. Once I know that they're safe, I can better deal with the crisis here."

Rlinda added, "If you don't have enough lifeboats for everyone, you'd better cram your cruiser as full as you can. That's another twenty people? Thirty? We'll need every spot."

Iswander was more angry than panicked. This wasn't supposed to be happening. His engineers had guaranteed him that these structures were safe! Geologists had analyzed the tidal stresses, the magma temperatures; materials scientists had approved the tolerance levels of the ceramic-metal composites. This should not have been a problem!

Tower Three transmitted dozens of alarms, and the supervisor grew more panicked. The first smelter barge approached the distressed tower, positioning itself so it could link with the access hatch and take on a group of evacuees.

The Tower Two supervisor called out, "Save room for us! Our systems are already failing."

Robb Brindle rushed in from the records vault, breathless. "What's going on?" At the window wall, he watched the Voracious Curiosity lift off from the raised landing deck and circle around. "Where's Tasia going?"