Snowbird didn’t complain, but her voice was unnaturally high and reedy. I doubt that they spoke much English on the way up.

I put my arm gently around her shoulders. “It’s very hard, isn’t it?”

“Hard for you, too, Carmen. You haven’t been to Earth in a long time.”

“I exercise in Earth gravity every day.”

“I should do that,” she said. “Become Earth-strong. By the time we return, the quarantine may be lifted.”

Fly-in-Amber, behind us, made a dismal noise. “I have a better idea. Let’s just go home. We can’t live this way.”

She gave him a long blast and high-pitched growl in consensus Martian, and he squawked and clattered back.

She turned back to me. “Perhaps we should rest in Mars territory for a while.” They plodded off, muttering.

“Before long, they’ll be in zero gravity,” Paul said. “He’ll complain about that, too.”

The last thing we would have to do before Paul cut us loose was to tape things down, mostly chairs. When we were flung away from the Space Elevator, we’d be in free fall, like someone jumping out of an airplane. But we would plummet for eleven days. Jostled every now and then by steering jets. That would be tomorrow.

The habitat didn’t have any independent propulsion, of course, but it was firmly attached to the ship that would eventually be our landing vessel, much smaller. It would fly away like an eagle clutching an elephant.

Before that, we had to water the plants. We’d spent six days following the directions the hydroponic engineers had left behind, making sure all the root structures could be kept moist without water surrounding them. There was a water-absorbent granular medium held inside a fine-mesh net for each plant or group of plants. There was no automation in this temporary arrangement, of course. Every morning we’d spend an hour giving each plant a measured shot of water from a portable hydrator, a water pump with a hose and syringe.

The first morning, still in gravity, I split the chore with Dustin. It was interesting to get him alone; he usually deferred to Namir or Elza.

I had to ask him about his weird family, growing up. “I never gave it much thought,” I said, “but isn’t it strange that a person who winds up in espionage should have grown up in a commune, with anarchist parents?”

He laughed. “Not so odd. Like a kid whose parents are lawyers or cops might want to escape and become a bohemian artist.

“I didn’t want to be a spy, anyhow. A philosophy degree doesn’t open many doors, though. The Space Force paid through my doctorate in exchange for four years’ service, which I thought was going to be in communications. You go where they send you, though. They needed engineers for communication.”

“And philosophers for spookery?”

“It’s a grab bag, intelligence. Not that they’d ever admit it, but it’s where you go if you have education but no useful skills. The personnel database says there are three other philosophy Ph.D.s in intelligence. We ought to get together. Form a cabal.”