Kalico could well imagine. She could see it. The image of Turalon’s familiar decks. Dark. Cold. Rimed with ice crystals. Corpses, frozen for eternity, lay sprawled; or if the ship were totally dead, the bodies floated in free fall. And Turalon, hurtling through some dimensionless universe where the laws of time and space didn’t exist. And she’d do it forever.

“Supervisor?” Ghosh prompted.

“Sorry.” She shivered. “Take as long as you want. Do it right. Suddenly schedules aren’t quite as important as I thought they were.” Except for getting her butt out to the Maritime Unit. She should have been there a week ago, but for being up to her neck in cannibals, treetop terrors, and mayhem.

As she turned to walk away, the overhead rock gave off a loud crack, and another couple of angular pieces fell to clatter on the floor.

3

Kevina Schwantz let the wind blow through her long blond hair as she sent the motor launch skimming across the waves. Having just turned thirty-five, her tall body remained thin, still malnourished after all the long years on Ashanti. Too thin to her way of thinking, but she had always been body-conscious. During her undergrad years at University of St. Petersburg, and through her PhD work at Moscow Tech, she’d had to rely on her brains, but being drop-dead gorgeous had never hurt. They’d jokingly called her “the ice-blond goddess of the Arctic.” The latter referred to where she’d done most of her dissertation and postdoctoral research.

Flying across the water, Capella’s light warm on her face, the wind in her hair, this was what she lived for. She’d argued like a woman insane to get this chance, to get out under an open sky. It had been twelve years since she’d been at the controls of a boat. A seeming eternity since she’d been on the water. And this was a whole new world.

“We don’t know what you might run into out there,” Michaela had told her, expression worried.

“Nothing on this planet is as fast as the motor launch,” she’d replied in her most reasonable voice. “Director, if I encounter anything, I’ll peg the throttles and run. It’s a simple trip out and back. And the weather’s perfect.” She’d shrugged. “And I’ve got thousands of hours in motor launches. And that was in the Arctic.”

She shot a look over her shoulder to make sure that her son, eight-year-old Felix, was in his seat. Michaela hadn’t thought to ask if she was taking the boy. And if the Director said anything, forgiveness was always easier to attain than permission. Besides Kevina had promised him. Told him for years that she’d take him on his first boat ride. To have left him behind today? It would have broken the little guy’s heart.