“So?” Nadia said.

“So?” Kasei repeated, and laughed. “So Coyote says we should ask you what to do.”

Nadia snorted. “Why do I find that hard to believe.”

“Hey, no one here believes it either! But that’s what Coyote said, and we like to indulge the old bastard when we can.”

“So, well, give them safe passage to Burroughs. That’s a no-brainer if I’ve ever seen one. It won’t matter if Burroughs has an extra hundred cops, and the fewer reactor meltdowns the better, we’re still wading around in the radiation from last time.”

Sax came into the room while Kasei was thinking it over. “Okay!” Kasei said. “If you say so! Hey talk to you later, I have to go, ka.”

Nadia stared at her blank wrist screen, scowling.

Sax said, “What was that about?”

“You’ve got me,” Nadia said, and described the conversation while trying to call Coyote. She got no answer.

Sax said, “Well, you’re the coordinator.”

“Shit.” Nadia pulled her backpack over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”

• • •

They flew in a new 51B, very small and very fast. They took a great circle route, which headed northwest over the Vastitas ice sea, and avoided the metanat strongholds of Ascraeus, and Echus Overlook. Very soon after takeoff they could see the ice filling Chryse to the north, the shattered dirty bergs dotted with pink snow algae and amethyst melt ponds. The old transponder road to Chasma Borealis was of course long gone, that whole system of bringing water south forgotten, a technical footnote for the history books. Looking down at the ice chaos Nadia suddenly remembered what the land had looked like on that first trip, the endless hills and hollows, the funnel-like alases, the great black barchan dunes, the incredible laminated terrain in the last sands before the polar cap . . . all gone now, overwhelmed by ice. And the polar cap itself was a mess, nothing but a collection of great melt zones and ice streams, slush rivers, ice-covered liquid lakes— every manner of slurry, and all of it crashing downslope off the high round plateau that the polar cap rested on, down into the world-wrapping northern sea.

Landing was therefore out of the question for much of their flight. Nadia watched the instruments nervously, all too aware of the many things that could go wrong in a new machine during a crisis, when maintenance was down and human error up.

Then billows of white and black smoke appeared on the horizon to the southwest, pouring east in what was clearly a high wind. “What’s that?” Nadia asked, moving to the left side of the plane to look.

“Kasei Vallis,” Sax said from the pilot’s seat.

“What’s happened to it?”

“It’s burning.”

Nadia stared at him. “What do you mean?”