"You must stay by me at all times," Munasinghe reminded her.

"You bet I will," Edith promised. No smile. No glamour now, inside the spacesuit. She was entirely serious.

His two lieutenants stood at the head of the aisle and saluted. "The troops are ready for debarkation, sir," said the senior of them, the Norwegian. The other was a short, squat, dour-faced mestizo woman from Peru.

"Visors down," Munasinghe said, "Check the suits for leaks."

"What're they doing in there?" Jinny Anson demanded.

A small cluster of people had gathered around Doug and the chief controller: Anson, Lev Brudnoy, Professor Cardenas, even Zimmerman had come out of his lair and found his way to the control center. Doug also saw Gordette hanging on the fringe of the little crowd, watching everything the way an eagle glares out at the world from its aerie.

The controller's central screen showed a telescopic view of the Clippership standing out on the crater floor. The other screens showed interior views of the base: corridors, labs, workshops, the rocket port's underground chambers, the garage—all empty, silent, still.

Brudnoy answered, "I doubt that many of those Peacekeepers have been in space before. They must be checking out their suits very carefully."

They don't seem very scared of us," Doug muttered.

"Yeah," Anson agreed. "They're not worried we're going to zap their ship."

"Is anything happening?"

They all turned to see Joanna striding into the control center, looking radiant in a clinging metallic gold dress and silk scarf decorated with colorful butterflies.

Zimmerman grunted. He was wearing his usual baggy gray suit; the others were in coveralls or jeans and pullovers.

"You look as if you are going to a party," Zimmerman grumbled.

Joanna gave him a frosty look. "If I'm going to be taken prisoner by Faure's troops, I at least want to look presentable."

Doug almost laughed.

"Hey!" Anson snapped. "Lookit! Both hatches are opening!"

Edith had covered enough military operations to know that all armies operated in the same way: hurry up and wait. Munasinghe's platoon was in the hurry-up mode now.

"Go! Go!" she heard a sergeant's grating yell in her helmet earphones.

The troopers were clumping into the twin airlocks down at the end of the passenger cabin. They could go through the airlocks only one at a time, no matter how loudly their sergeants screamed at them. They moved awkwardly in the spacesuits, and once through the outer airlock hatch they had to negotiate their way down the ladders that led to the ground. Not easy to do, encased in the cumbersome suits and carrying rifle, grenades and ammunition belts.

She and Munasinghe were at the end of the line, the last to go outside. Edith's nose twitched at the metallic tang of the air she was now breathing. It was supposed to be the same mix of oxygen and nitrogen that the ship had been using for the past five days, but somehow it felt drier and colder. It made her nostrils feel raw.