There's nothing better to do out here, Edith thought. She looked at the bright crescent Earth, a scimitar-slim curve of bright blue with flecks of white.

And saw that there was a blue glow stretching beyond the points of the crescent. The Earth's air was gleaming, catching the Sun's light and warmth.

"Look on the dark side," Dough told her. "Focus your eyes a little to the left of the crescent's bulge."

She did, and saw nothing but darkness. The night side of Earth, she realized. Dark and-

There were lights glittering there! At first Edith wasn't certain she really saw them, but the harder she stared, the more she saw. Cities aglow with light. Thin twinkling threads of highways linking them.

"Holy cow!" she blurted.

"See the cities?"

"It's like a connect-the-dots map," Edith said excitedly. "I can see Florida… at least I think it's—no! That's Italy! And over there must be Paris! Wow!"

"And look at—" A sharp buzz interrupted Doug. "Hold it. Incoming message."

It was Anson again. "Gotta hand it to Kadar: his bird chirped right up when we interrogated it. It's at periluna over Alphonsus, of course, so it'll be zipping by at its fastest when it comes over us."

"How soon, Jinny?" Doug asked.

"Five minutes. No, four-fifty. I'll get the data wrung out and pipe it to you in half an hour, max."

"Good."

It took longer. Doug let Edith drive the tractor while he dug into the food box. There was no way to eat solid food in a spacesuit, but he pumped a quart of milk and three containers of juices through the feeding nipple in his helmet.

"Milk and orange juice?" Edith asked, grimacing. "Chugging them down one right after the other?"

"The last one was beet juice," Doug said. "Got to thank Lev for that: he likes to make borscht."

Anson called again. "Got him! He's 'way past the mass driver, out beyond the central peaks. Still heading north."

Doug thought a moment. "Jinny, if he's that far out he couldn't have stopped for long at the mass driver, could he?"

"Prob'ly not," she answered. "I doubt that he stopped at all. He's been truckin' right along, I betcha."

"Then he hasn't tried to sabotage the magnets."

Anson hesitated, then replied, "Unless he left a bomb there to go off later."

Doug started to ask where Gordette would get explosives, then realized that a man with his smarts could convert rocket propellants into a bomb easily enough.

"The satellite'll swing by this way again in sixty-three minutes," Anson said. I'll update you then."

"Okay. Thanks, Jinny."

"Just doin' my job, boss."

They drove past the mass driver. It seemed intact to Doug, but he made a mental note to send a team out to look for booby traps, just to be on the safe side.

Edith rode beside him in silence. She picked a container of fortified dietary supplement and sipped at it unhappily. It tasted somewhere between chalk and sweat socks.