“Not before I go to the head, Avril,” Sallah replied. She nodded at her hand. “And attend to this. You don’t want blood on the chips, do you.” She let herself scream with the pain of the jerk to her foot. She felt she had handled her submission well. Avril would have suspected a more immediate capitulation. “And another boot.”

Finally Sallah could spare a dispassionate look at her foot. Half her heel was missing, and a puddle of blood rocked slowly back and forth, moved by the agitation of Avril’s kicks.

“Wait!” Avril had also noticed the blood. She spun away to the lockers by the hatch and came back with a space suit and a dirty cloth. “There! Strip!”

Sallah tied up her finger with the least soiled strip of cloth and used the rest to bind her foot. It hurt badly, and she could feel that fragments of her work boot had been jammed into the flesh. She was allowed the use of the head, while Avril watched and made snide cracks about maternal changes in a woman’s body. Sallah pretended to be more humiliated than she actually felt. It made Avril feel so superior. The higher the summit, the harder the fall, Sallah thought grimly. She struggled into the space suit.

“She’s left the gig, Admiral,” Ezra said suddenly into the tense silence in the crowded interface chamber. Tarvi had been called in. Silent tears streamed down his face. “She’s passed the sensors at the docking area. No,” he corrected himself, “two bodies have passed the sensors.” Tarvi let out a ragged sob but said nothing.

Bit by bit, the pieces had been put together to solve the puzzle of Sallah’s disappearance and Avril Bitra’s reappearance.

A technician, working on a remount job on the sled nearest Sallah’s, remembered seeing her leave her task and wander toward the scrap pile at the edge of the grid. He had also noticed Kenjo and Ongola walking to the Mariposa. He had not seen anyone else in that vicinity. Shortly afterward he had seen the Mariposa lift off.

Once someone thought to look for it, the sled Avril had used was easily spotted. It carried none of the modifications that all other Pernese sleds bore; it had been left at the edge of the grid, among others that had been called in for servicing. Stev Kimmer was called in to identify it. She had removed every trace of her occupancy, although Stev pointed to scrape marks that were new to him. He also kept his personal comments about his erstwhile partner to himself, though his expression had been sufficiently grim for Paul and Emily to suspect that he had been double-crossed. For one moment he had hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he had answered every question they asked him.

“She won’t get anywhere,” Emily said, firmly striving for optimism.