“Careful where you put your hands,” Molly told Walter, urging him back in his seat.

“It’ss ugly,” he groaned. “Jusst like all the lasst placses.”

His disapproval was quite a blow to Molly’s birth planet, seeing that his home planet of Palan was the sort of place you wouldn’t strand an enemy.

“It’s just different, that’s all,” said Molly, not able to summon up any-thing more positive. “Hopefully this’ll be our last stop.”

“The friend I sspoke to on the radio iss here?”

“Yeah,” Molly lied. The truth was: Walter had spoken with her mother, but Molly had kept her presence in the nav computer a secret for so long, revealing her now would be hard to explain—and harder the longer the ruse lasted. She felt like a kid probably does who keeps something from their parents until they can’t figure out why they started lying in the first place. And then they find themselves trapped into lying even more.

“What’ss her name again?”

“Are you kidding me? We’ve been looking for her for two weeks and you still can’t remember her name? It’s Catherine. With a cee.”

“That’ss right. A hard csee.” Walter turned and smiled at Molly. “I like that name.”

“Yeah, well try and remember it. This is already taking longer than I’d hoped. Now, the mechanic I met in the hardware store said we’ll probably find her in one of the pubs, so I want us to stick together, okay? The election stuff will probably be worse here than it was in the smaller towns, so we really need to be careful.”

“Okay.”

“Another thing: No looting.”

“Fine.”

“I really mean it, Walter.”

“I ssaid fine!”

Molly narrowed her eyes at him to hammer it home, then leaned forward to disengage the autopilot relays, taking over from her mom. She pulled back on the flightstick to gain a bit of altitude. There was enough traffic in the air around town to feel safe from the fleet above, almost like a solitary bird feeling emboldened by joining a large flock.

With a better view of the layout of town, she started picking out which of the many stables to land in. There were several to choose from on the near side of town, all of them a few kilometers from the city center to minimize thruster noise. Most looked extremely busy, whether due to the Bern fleet or the upcoming election, she couldn’t know. She picked one in the middle of style, with not too many fancy ships, but no derelicts propped up on wooden stilts, either. Something she could afford, but where Parsona wouldn’t get robbed.

“There’ss a better one over there,” Walter said as she peeled away for the stable she’d chosen. He pointed to one closer to town where fancy hulls gleamed in the growing light of dawn.

“A little out of our league, pal.”