I didn’t know how long the sedative would keep him out. It wasn’t hard to find the designated airlock for Level 10 evacuation, but because of the acceleration, I was sweating and breathless by the time I had dragged him that far. It was another struggle to get him into an evac suit. My thoughts were scattered, my motions hurried, and the effort of remaining upright grew harder with every passing minute.

The evacuation suit was considerably more advanced than those we’d donned aboard the shuttle. Those had been passive suits, nothing more, designed only to keep their wearers alive until rescue. This evac suit was equipped with thrusters that noted the speed and trajectory of the ship and fired to propel itself away; the goal was to counter the motion of the ship so that the evacuated person would be quickly jettisoned to safety.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen. I had no idea if I was doing it right. It was another item for the list of things I should have known. We had never seriously discussed evacuation, because we had never allowed ourselves to contemplate the possibility of failure. Adam had not allowed it. We had been so stupid to trust in his certainty to the point of burying our own doubts and fears.

I positioned Jas, still unconscious, in the airlock launch frame. I closed the hatch and depressurized the airlock. I launched the evac suit. From my point of view it happened so quickly: he was there, he was outside, he was gone. The system reported a successful launch and an active rescue beacon. It would have to be enough. They would bring him back to his aunt and his friends, to his research about quasars, to his twenty-six hours of telescope time, to his future. I had never meant to take a future away from any of our hostages, least of all from the one who had already suffered so much, but it didn’t matter what I had intended. There is no nobility in regretting the violence you have done when it is too late.

I trudged back to the bridge slowly, slowly, every step an agony.

Alone on the bridge, I sat at the terminal to wait. The ship had already surpassed 5 g. Amita Bhattacharya’s engines were a marvel. With every second House of Wisdom swung closer to its target.

The computer calculated time to impact as forty-two minutes. Not long enough for either ship to make a course correction wide enough to save them.