“It is time,” he says. “We go save homeworlds now.”

“Yeah.”

“You face is leaking.”

I wipe my eyes. “Human thing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Understand.” He pushes himself along to his airlock door. He opens it and pauses there. “Goodbye, friend Grace.”

I wave meekly. “Goodbye, friend Rocky.”

He disappears into his ship and closes the airlock door behind him. I return to the Hail Mary. After a few minutes, the Blip-A’s hull robot detaches the tunnel.

We fly our ships nearly parallel but with a few degrees’ difference in course. This ensures neither of us vaporizes the other with the back blast from our Astrophage engines. Once we have a few thousand kilometers of separation, we can aim in any direction we want.

Hours later, I sit in the cockpit with my spin drives offline. I just want one last look. I watch the point of IR light with the Petrovascope. That’s Rocky, headed back to Erid.

“Godspeed, buddy,” I say.

I set course for Earth and fire up the spin drives.

I’m going home.

Chapter 26

I sat in my cell, staring at the wall.

It wasn’t a dingy jail cell or anything. If anything, it looked kind of like a college dorm room. Painted brick walls, desk, chair, bed, en-suite bathroom, et cetera. But the door was steel and the windows were barred. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Why did the Baikonur launch facility have a jail cell handy? I don’t know. Ask the Russians.

That launch would be today. Soon, some muscular guards would come through that door along with a doctor. He’d inject me with something and that’d be the last time I’d see Earth.

Almost on cue, I heard the clink of the door being unlocked. A braver person might have seen that as an opportunity. Charge the door and maybe get past the guards. But I’d given up hope of escape long ago. What would I do? Run into the Kazakhstani desert and take my chances?

The door opened and Stratt walked in. The guards closed the door behind her.

“Hey,” she said.

I glared at her from my bunk.

“The launch is on schedule,” she said. “You’ll be on your way soon.”

“Whoopee.”

She sat in the chair. “I know you won’t believe this, but it wasn’t easy for me to do this to you.”

“Yeah, you’re really sentimental.”

She ignored the barb. “Do you know what I studied in college? What my undergraduate degree was in?”

I shrugged.

“History. I was a history major.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “Most people assume I had a science major or business management. Communications, maybe. But no. It was history.”

“Doesn’t seem like you.” I sat up on my bunk. “You don’t spend a lot of time looking backward.”