On their way, Rachel glimpsed Fraq’s pale-green suit coming out of the lock slightly behind them. The long sheds of the greenhouse covered hundreds of square meters in long fingers of transparent glassite, made from the topsoil with a physical printer. The thick walls were fogged, making it nearly impossible in the morning to see very much through them. They would clear as the day warmed and the internal water cycle heaters from the power reactor kicked in their cycle.

She and Zuminski entered the sprawling greenhouse and trotted down the many narrow paths between the moist, steaming hydro vats. Where did I see the bud? Rachel wondered. Maybe she hadn’t slurped up enough caffeine.

They reached the right aisle—she thought—and swung around a supporting pylon in long, loping strides, emerging from fog clouds—and collided with Hassan. Rachel ricocheted off him. She plowed into a vat table and sprayed water and tendril plants in all directions, then twisted and slammed down in a tangle of hoses and plunging streams.

Coming behind her, Zuminski hit Hassan on the left shoulder. Hassan was holding in both hands a backpack, one of the big, long ones for a several-day expedition from the habitat. It bulged. Hassan staggered on the slat floor, swerved, tried to dodge by Zuminski—and stumbled in his heavy boots on the slatted platform, above the sliding sheets of warm water. He went down hard. In a last panic he tossed the backpack up. It tumbled in the slow gravity.

Rachel came up out of the tangle and leaped—and caught it with one hand, up near the ceiling of big watery panels.

Zuminski yanked Hassan up in a strong grip. “What you carry?”

Hassan gaped, his darting pupils hard and black in the white eyes. Zuminski snorted and slammed him against a wall.

Rachel pulled on a big zipper, ripping open the backpack. She turned the pack and exposed the tiny head of the bud, greasy and slick with fluids.

“You stole this?” she shouted.

Hassan scrambled up. “I decided it was best if this, you might say, trump card, was in the possession of—” That was as far as he got.

Fraq came in from nowhere and hit Hassan in a full lunge, taking the man down on the hard walkway. Into a thrashing tangle.

Zuminski tried to separate them, but the alien grunted and heaved and threw Zuminski off as if he were a mere passing thought. Or a snowflake.

Rachel stepped back. Watched. Fraq pulled Hassan up and hit him in the face. Fraq grunted with each slamming fist, using the heel of the wing-hand to carry the arm momentum into the face bones.

He’s not snapping out his talons, at least, Rachel thought.

Hassan survived the pounding he got, but his reputation didn’t.

Zuminski said, “Hassan wanted that bud child as bargaining chip.” He smiled, a thin, sly one, as he finished his report. “I believe.”

Fraq sat between Zuminski and Rachel, the three of them facing a review panel, some of them piping in from Earthside. Fraq said nothing, but nodded.