He clambered out of bed, made his way to Torec’s bunk, and crawled in beside her. They lay nested together, his belly against her back.

“We said we wouldn’t do this,” she whispered. “We have to fit in.”

“I couldn’t stand it anymore,” he replied. “Don’t throw me out.”

After a time she turned over and kissed his forehead.

In many ways she was the stronger one. But he sensed that she was as glad he was there, as he was to be there. They clung to each other, innocent as children themselves, until they fell asleep.

The next morning Captain Seath led them to a flitter. The little ship slid out of port and threaded its cautious way through the crowded sky.

Seath asked coolly, “Sleep well?”

“No, sir,” Pirius said honestly.

Torec said, “Captain, I don’t understand. Why does everybody hate us?”

“I don’t imagine they hate you.”

Pirius said, “We’re just the same as we were before.”

Seath eyed him. “No,” she said, “you’re not. You’ve done extraordinary things. You’ve seen Earth, Ensign. Even I can’t begin to imagine it. And you’ve been close to power, closer than anybody here, closer than me, closer even than the base commanders. You have changed. And you can’t change back.”

“There’s no place for us on Earth,” Pirius said.

Seath laughed. “There’s no place for you here.”

“Where, then?” Torec asked.

“Why, nowhere.” She shrugged. “It’s not your fault. It’s just the way of things. The only people who understand you are each other—and each other is all you will ever have. You’ll just have to get on with it.”

As she said that, Pirius felt Torec moving subtly away from him. He sensed a return of her old resentment: they had come all the way back to Arches, and she still couldn’t get away from him.

The base for Nilis’s pet squadron was just another rock among the hurtling asteroids of Arches. Known only as Rock 492, it was a kilometer-wide lump of debris. On its battered surface was a cluster of buildings of bubble-blown rock, and a few broad pits that had once been landing pads and dry docks. But all this was long abandoned.

They had to climb out of the flitter in their skinsuits.

The buildings, long stripped of anything usable, were so old their surviving walls were pocked with micrometeorite craters, and a thin silt of dust had gathered around the bases of their walls. Some of their domes had cracked open altogether.