I nodded numbly. Zahra pressed her gun into the center of my chest. From that close I could see the greenish shards in her brown eyes, the faintest sheen of sweat on her brow, the way her jaw tensed when she swallowed. She parted her lips to say something—another warning, another threat—but the pilot was answering the comm.

“Orbital Control, this is Pilgrim 3.”

A woman’s voice came over the radio. “Pilgrim 3, this is Barcelona. We have a priority location query from Armstrong Port Control. Their trackers cannot verify your position. Have you ventured off your flight path?”

The hope I’d felt withered. Orbital Control wasn’t monitoring the no-fly zone around House of Wisdom. They were only trying to find a wayward shuttle that was supposed to be approaching the Moon.

“Negative, Barcelona,” Boudicca said calmly, without a trace of nerves. I had no doubt that she had been a SPEC pilot in the past. “Flight path maintained.”

“Please confirm your position and velocity, Pilgrim 3.”

“Understood, Barcelona. Passenger shuttle Pilgrim 3 currently located at azimuth 75.5, polar 183.7, radius 367,000 plus 140 kilometers, static velocity 20.45 kilometers per second. We’ve got Armstrong in our sights and are about to begin deceleration.”

There was, of course, no Moon growing ever larger outside the shuttle. We were two hundred thousand kilometers off course, in a strict no-fly zone. If SPEC was scrambling to find us, it would be a while before they looked in the right place.

Say something, I told myself. Zahra’s gun was a soft pressure in the center of my chest, but the urge to call out for help was a bitterness at the back of my throat. Say something. Shout when the pilot is speaking. Hope Barcelona hears. But it could be hours before SPEC found us, would definitely be hours before they arrived. They would kill me, kill Baqir, kill all the others. They had gotten what they wanted from me. We would be dead before the nearest ship arrived. I could not make a sound. Fear had stitched my lips together, dried my throat, squeezed my lungs so tightly every breath was a struggle.

“Negative, Pilgrim 3,” said Orbital Control. “Armstrong cannot confirm position. Repeat: Armstrong Port cannot confirm your position.”

“I don’t understand, Barcelona. I’ve flown this route a hundred times. Our coordinates are accurate.”

“Understood, Pilgrim 3, but we can’t bring you into Armstrong until they’ve got a fix on your position. There’s a lot of traffic today because of the foul-up at Valle de México. Please advance to standard holding in lunar orbital radius of fifteen thousand kilometers and stand by.”

“Standing by, Barcelona.” Boudicca turned off the radio. She looked at me over her shoulder. “There is no help coming for you. The only way you and your friends get out of this is if you do what we say and don’t cause any trouble. Is that clear?”

I nodded.

“Get him out of here,” she said.