On Fafnir, Feather’s investigations found a family of six: two men, two women, two children. The Graynors were ready to emigrate. Local law would cause them to leave most of their wealth behind; but then they’d lost most of it already backing some kind of recreational facilities on the continent.

“I’ve recorded them twice. The Graynors’ll find funding waiting for them at Wunderland. They won’t talk. The other Graynor family will emigrate to Home—”

“That’s us?”

Feather nodded. Carlos said, “But if you and the kids won’t come, Feather’ll have to find someone else.”

I said, “Carlos, you’ll be watched. I don’t suppose Feather can protect you from that.”

“No. Feather’s taken a much bigger risk—”

“They’ll never miss it.” She turned to me. “I got hold of a little stealth lander, Fourth War vintage, with a cold sleep box in back for you, Sharrol. We’ll take that down to Fafnir. I’ve got an inflatable boat to take us to the Shasht North spaceport, and we’ll get to Home on an Outbound Enterprises iceliner. Sharrol, you’ll board the liner already frozen; I know how to bypass that stage.” Feather was excited now. She gripped my arm and said, “We have to go get the lander, Beowulf. It’s on Mars.”

Sharrol said, “Tanya’s a flat phobe too.”

Feather’s fingers closed with bruising force. I sensed that the lady didn’t like seeing her plans altered.

“Wait one,” Carlos said. “We can fix that. We’re taking my ’doc, aren’t we? It wouldn’t be plausible, let alone intelligent, for Carlos Wu to go on vacation without his ’doc. Feather, how big is the lander’s freezebox?”

“Yeah. Right. It’ll hold Tanya…better yet, both children. Sharrol can ride in your ’doc.”

We talked it around. When we were satisfied, we went home.

Three days out, three days returning, and a week on Mars while the ARM team played with the spacecraft Boy George. It had to be Feather and me. I would familiarize myself with Boy George, Feather would supervise the ARM crews…and neither of us were flat phobes.

I bought a dime disk, a tourist’s guide to Fafnir system, and I studied it.

Kzinti and human planetologists call Fafnir a typical water world in a system older than Sol. The system didn’t actually retain much more water than Earth did; that isn’t the problem. But the core is low in radioactives. The lithosphere is thick: no continental drift here. Shallow oceans cover 93 percent of the planet. The oceans seethe with life, five billion years evolved, twice as old as Earth’s.