When they were almost done eating Sax leaned over and said, “You mentioned discussing plans.”

“What,” Nadia said, her fork stalled halfway to her face.

“Well, this incoming shuttle, with the security task force on board?”

“What about it?” After the flight over Kasei Vallis, she did not trust Sax to be rational; the fork in her hand began to tremble visibly.

He said, “Well, I have a plan. My group in Da Vinci thought of it, actually.”

Nadia tried to steady the fork. “Tell me.”

• • •

The rest of that day was a blur to Nadia, as she abandoned any attempt to rest, and tried to reach Red groups, and worked with Art drafting messages to Earth, and told Maya and Nirgal and the rest in Burroughs about Sax’s latest. It seemed that the pace of events, already accelerated, had caught gears with something spinning madly, and had now accelerated out of anyone’s control, leaving no time to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom. But all those things had to be done, and so she staggered down to the women’s room and took a long shower, then ate a spartan lunch of bread and cheese, and then stretched out on a couch and caught some sleep; but it was the kind of restless shallow sleep in which her mind continued to tick over, thinking fuzzy distorted thoughts about the events of the day, incorporating the voices there in the room with her. Nirgal and Jackie were not getting along; was this a problem for the rest of them?

Then she was up again, as exhausted as before. The people in the room were still talking about Jackie and Nirgal. Nadia went off to the bathroom, and then hunted for coffee.

Zeyk and Nazik and a large Arab contingent had arrived at Du Martheray while she was sleeping, and now Zeyk stuck his head into the kitchen: “Sax says the shuttle is about to arrive.”

Du Martheray was only six degrees north of the equator, and so they were well situated to see this particular aerobraking, which was going to happen just after sunset. The weather cooperated, and the sky was cloudless and very clear. The sun dropped, the eastern sky darkened, and the arch of colors above Syrtis to the west was a spectrum array, shading through yellow, orange, a narrow pale streak of green, teal blue, and indigo. Then the sun disappeared over the black hills, and the sky colors deepened and turned transparent, as if the dome of the sky had suddenly grown a hundred times larger.