“Is a bad idea,” Avery said. “Every time we land, we take a risk. If we land at an airport, the host nation will probably take the plane and throw us in a cordon zone. That’s best case.”

Avery motioned toward Peyton. “Want me to wake Sleeping Beauty?”

“No,” Desmond said quickly. “And don’t call her that. She’s tougher than you think.”

Avery seemed annoyed. “It’s not her toughness I have a problem with.”

“She was just protecting her people on the ship, same as you would have done.”

Avery ignored him. “What do you want to do?”

“Who’s the most likely to shoot us down?”

“What? I have no idea.”

“Who has the biggest air force?”

“I don’t know. The UK. Germany. France. Italy.”

“What about Spain?”

Avery thought a moment. “They’ve got the planes but not enough money to repair them and keep them flight-ready. Their economy has been in crisis for years.” She nodded. “So we fly over Spain, roll the dice, try to get to Shetland.”

“Speaking of which, what happens then? Surely they’ll shoot us down.”

“I’m working on that.”

Before he could ask, she stood and made her way back to the cockpit.

Desmond adjusted the rolled-up blanket under Peyton’s head and watched her sleep for a moment.

He closed his eyes, trying to remember his past.

The SciNet IPO was a turning point in Desmond’s life, in ways he never anticipated. The stock soared. On paper, his stake, a little less than one percent of the company, was worth 3.29 million dollars. In reality, all of his options were subject to an employee lockup provision that prevented him from selling shares or exercising options for six months after the IPO. They were the longest six months of his life, and everyone else’s at SciNet.

Going public changed the company. The management team now constantly obsessed over the stock price and investor relations. Quarterly earnings became the only events that really mattered. They issued press releases all the time, hoping to garner more media attention.

Where they had thought strategically before, taken risks, and tried to build the business for the long term, now they played it safe, trying to hit their growth and revenue numbers (there were still no profits to report). It was the beginning of the end, and Desmond knew it. When the lockup period expired in August, the stock had drifted higher. A rising tide in 1999 had lifted all boats, most of all shares of hot dot-com companies. His shares were worth $7,840,000. He sold every one of them and resigned. Including the proceeds from his stock options in two other companies that had gone public, and one that had been acquired, he had netted just over nine million dollars in the last year.