He grimaced. “We have team standards here. You were in charge of your group, plus your alien, the bird. I in charge of running the descent. You—”

“Isn’t this just quibbling?”

He paused, as if to reassess her.

Rachel thought back to how she had broken open the two large elephant-ear fronds. The sturdy fronds had looked like two massive, cupped hands pressed together at the center—big, three meters across. Around them plumes of water roared down from spouts near the ceiling. The luminant dark streams flecked with blue algae had gushed away, carrying people with them. Rachel had pulled out a tube, holding her breath—then sprayed waste oxy on the leathery valves, which made them turn gray and unclasp. Maybe she had killed them.

Zuminski blinked, taken aback. “All about teamwork here.”

“Not if it’s just a suicide pact.”

“You abandoned your team to attack the Marsmat valve.”

“Is there a rule against that?”

He scowled, all business. “Damaging the Mat, yes. Could be you killed part of Mat.”

“We had to get out. No telling what would have happened, or where all that water would’ve carried us.”

“Your team comes first. You lost control of them. With bird alien. He looked confused.” He threw back the last of his tequila shot. “I was in charge of descent.”

She could handle this with negotiation, but her instinct told her to enlarge the game. She leaned over and threw open the sliding screen on the booth. As she expected, by now there were a dozen people in the mess, seated around tables, buzzing with conversation. The screen had masked all the noise. People yammering. Fraq—leaning forward, wing-arms spread but feathers folded into a ruddy display, talking slowly to a full table audience. And there was Xiaoling, looking bruised and bedraggled beneath her bandages.

Rachel called her over.

Xiaoling said she could not sleep, had come here for simple company. In short order, she admitted in halting sentences that she hadn’t wanted the Marsmat team’s help down there, she’d wanted to be saved. She jutted her jaw at the man. “And that is what she did!”

Rachel turned back to Zuminski. “Well?”

He looked vexed, scrunched his lips together, hesitated. “Was not so bad, okay? You acted right way, good.” Then, moving on: “Mat has never done that before. We must think about.”

Xiaoling ventured, “It was Fraq’s message that set off the Mat, I’ll bet.”

Zuminski gave them both a skeptical twist of his lips. He glanced at the tequila bottle and shook his head, quite clearly reluctantly deciding against having some more. His vowels were slurring already. “Could be. But what to do next, then?”

“That’s up to all of us,” Rachel said.

“Aii,” Xiaoling said.

“There will be meeting, your team and mine. We must provide report. Most important is one guy above us, named Hassan. Not bad guy. He has two faces, one the scientist, other bureaucrat. They war with each other. We need to play to the scientist.”