She and Mark had toured the British Isles for their honeymoon, a trip that had lasted almost a full month and led them from London to Edinburgh to the coastline of South Wales, with stops in a dozen villages and twice as many old castles along the way. It was at a small pub and guest house in the Scottish Highlands, where they had envisaged getting a good night's rest before heading on to the Orkneys, that they'd wound up tossing back far too much single-malt whisky and dancing to Celtic folk music with the riotous locals, kicking up sawdust until the caller had finally lost his voice around day-break. When they had left their room late the next afternoon after sleeping off murderous hangovers--and missing their ferry out of town--the innkeeper had handed them a sixty-second Polaroid some anonymous fellow reveler had taken of them doing their eightsome reel in tweed caps that they hadn't recalled putting on, and had never made it back to their room with them.

The combination of their goofy, plastered expressions and the cockeyed angles of the caps on their heads had made them chuckle every time they pored through their photo album, but somehow it had done more than capture a delightful memory, a rare uninhibited moment for two people who had built their lives around ceaseless discipline and hard work; it had exemplified the easy consonance between them, a lightness and looseness that neither ever had been able to share with anyone else, and was so much the essence of their marital union that she had felt the picture naturally belonged at the center of her little cut-and-paste.

Annie began tapping the desktop more rapidly, her eyes clouding up. Eight years, that was all they'd had together. Eight years before the cancer took Mark from her, making him suffer a thousand monstrous indignities as it consumed him.

But she could not allow herself to dwell on that, not now, and instead turned her thoughts to the meeting she'd had with Charles Dorset just a half hour ago. No sooner had she arrived that morning than he had summoned her to his office and, virtually without preamble, asked whether she would be interested in directing the Orion probe. The prospect had caught her completely off guard, and she had sat before his desk in silence for several moments, as if there was something about his question she wasn't quite getting.

"Mr. Dorset, there's a long list of people I'd supposed might be appointed to the position, and I really hadn't imagined myself being on it," she had said at length.

"Why is that?" He had watched her over a steaming coffee mug in his hands. "What would make anyone more eligible than you?"

Annie had shaken her head, still at a bit of a loss. "Seniority. Technical expertise. I'm not sure I would know how to begin managing such a huge responsibility."

His broad, florid face was very serious.