Her opinion of him rose a bit. "Jason, we need to know more about whatever the other people on your ship want to do with anything they learn about Mages."

Jason frowned at her. "Why? Just don't tell them anything."

"Because we've received warnings," Kira explained. "A lot of Mages have had foresight warning that your ship was a danger to this world, but now they're also seeing warnings that it is a danger to Urth as well."

"Foresight? You believe in that?"

"It's real," Kira said. "Mechanics didn't used to believe in it either. But it's some way of visualizing or feeling future probabilities, and even though it's often hard to interpret, it does work."

"Probabilities? So…okay." Jason looked at her, puzzled. "How could anything we learn here be a danger to Earth?"

"We don't know."

"You really are worried about that," Jason said, looking at her as trying to see inside her head. "You don't know any of them, but you're worried about people on Earth being hurt. Your mother and father, why'd they talk to me like that?"

"Like what?" Kira asked.

"Like I was worth listening to, like they weren't better than me. They're the most important people on your whole planet!"

"Jason, they treat everybody that way."

Jason didn't look at her, didn't say anything for a long moment, then began speaking quickly. "There is something going on. I don't know what. I can tell they're excited. The techs and the engineers and the life-systems specialists on the ship. All I've heard is fragments like if this works and if we can do this. And one of the things I heard was we could leave, which would mean whatever this is would be more valuable than the genetic material from you and your mom. Maybe it has something to do with that Mage thing. I've been getting a real unpleasant vibe from hearing it."

"Vibe?"

"I guess that's like your foresight." Jason took a deep breath. "I'll find out what it is. And I'll let you know if it's something dangerous."

"You're scared," Kira said.

"Yeah, I'm scared. I'll have to run some risks to find out exactly what's going on," Jason said. "If I get caught, I'll really get hammered. But if this thing is really dangerous…"" He finally looked at her again, his expression a mixture of upset and pleading for understanding. "I've never done anything. I've played games and learned things and watched ugly people do ugly things to other people. It's about time I did something, isn't it?"

"Jason," Kira said, "it's not a competition. Don't go looking for trouble because…because you don't like who you think you are."

"That's easy for you to say! You've got these incredible parents who've done incredible things!"

"You think that's easy?" Kira demanded. "Living with that?"

"Try living with my mom. I'm going to do this."

"Jason—"