I shook my head, wanting to deny it. But it was all too easy to see Adam’s plan. He would have sent the shuttle away. He would have invited SPEC to fetch their students. He would have smiled when the rescue ship was close enough, and he would have smiled when the explosion consumed both vessels. He would have called it a lesson more merciful than what they deserved.

“But the woman who killed Henke,” I said desperately. “How could she do that? She’s supposed to be a student, but she—she could be . . .”

“I think Bhattacharya was telling the truth. I think she was infected somehow, when she tore her suit and scraped herself. It made her delusional, made her lash out. She got lucky with Henke. He was careless.”

Henke had been confident, grinning, looking for a fight. He had been twice her size. He had not thought she was a threat.

“Zahra,” Malachi said, “we can’t stay here. We have to keep moving.”

He sounded as tired as I felt. I wanted to close my eyes and rest, the two of us alone in the darkness, sleep until the cold drained away and the ache in my head was gone and the sour taste of fear had faded from my throat. I couldn’t remember the last time I had tried to choose right and wrong for myself. I felt cold and hollow, as papery as the savaged corpses. Nadra and Anwar were on their way. I had promised them safety. I had promised them peace. We were supposed to be together here, and happy.

But our dream of a new life, of freedom and beauty unshackled in the stars, it had been dead before we left the ground. I understood now the fear I had seen on Bhattacharya’s face aboard the shuttle, and the horror in his voice when Ariana began to panic. He had known what we were too arrogant to see. House of Wisdom was not a sanctuary. It was an abyss. It had taken nearly five hundred lives already. If we brought the family here, it would swallow three hundred more.

•   •   •

On the door was a sign: SATELLITE INTERFEROMETRY. Malachi chose that laboratory because, he said, it would have a dedicated data transmission link. I didn’t ask how he knew. The room was clean and empty, as though the scientists had simply gone home for the night.

While Malachi got the radio working, I fumbled through the storage lockers until I found a bulky knit sweater and a jacket with the House of Wisdom patch on the sleeve. The jacket fit Malachi; the sweater was too big on me. Neither provided much insulation.

“I’ve got the comms,” Malachi said. “And it looks like—shit.”

“What?”

“Incoming transmissions. Listen.”

A woman’s voice crackled from the speakers. “This is SPEC Orbital Control vessel Pangong, addressing the persons who have illegally entered the vessel House of Wisdom.”