“Elva,” whispered Golyev.

She stared at him, remembering fire and enslavements and a certain man dead on a barricade. But everything seemed distant, not quite real.

“There’s been too much suffering already,” she said.

She pondered a few seconds. “Just take him out and shoot him.”

The officer looked relieved. He led his men forth. Golyev started to speak, but was hustled away too fast.

Ivalo remained in the cabin. “My lady—” He began, slow and awkward.

“Yes?” As her weariness overwhelmed her, Elva sat down again on the bunk. She fumbled for a cigarette. There was no emotion in her, only a dull wish for sleep.

“I’ve wondered…Don’t answer this if you don’t want to. You’ve been through so much.”

“That’s all right,” she said mechanically. “The trouble is over now, isn’t it? I mean, we mustn’t let the past obsess us.”

“Of course. Uh, they tell me Vaynamo hasn’t changed much. The defense effort was bound to affect society somewhat, but they’ve tried to minimize that, and succeeded. Our culture has a built-in stability, you know, a negative feedback. To be sure, we must still take action about the home planet of those devils. Liberate their slave worlds and make certain they can’t ever try afresh. But that shouldn’t be difficult.

“As for you, I inquired very carefully on your behalf. Tervola remains in your family. The land and the people are as you remember.”

She closed her eyes, feeling the first thaw within herself. “Now I can sleep,” she told him.

Remembering, she looked up with a touch of startlement. “But you had a question for me, Ivalo?”

“Yes. All this time, I couldn’t help wondering. Why you stayed with the enemy. You could have escaped. Did you know all the time how great a service you were going to do?”

Her own smile was astonishing to her. “Well, I knew I couldn’t be much use on Vaynamo,” she said. “Could I? There was a chance I could help on Chertkoi. But I wasn’t being brave. The worst had already happened to me. Now I need only wait …a matter of months only, my time …and everything bad would be over. Whereas, well, if I’d escaped from the Second Expedition, I’d have lived most of my life in the shadow of the Third. Please don’t make a fuss about me. I was actually an awful coward.”

His jaw dropped. “You mean you knew we’d win? But you couldn’t have! Everything pointed the other way!”

The nightmare was fading more rapidly than she had dared hope. She shook her head, still smiling, not triumphant but glad to speak the knowledge which had kept her alive. “You’re being unfair to our people. As unfair as the Chertkoians were. They thought that because we preferred social stability and room to breathe, we must be stagnant. They forgot you can have bigger adventures in, well, in the spirit, than in all the physical universe. We really did have a very powerful science and technology. It was oriented toward life, toward beautifying and improving instead of exploiting nature. But it wasn’t less virile for that. Was it?”