“Then,” said Derek, “take them to Utopia or whatever. Let them make the call whether it’s suitable. Yes. That sounds good.” But he frowned. “Maybe we shouldn’t do anything. Once we’re home, it’s highly probable that the WSA won’t allow us to leave the planet again. What happens if we go in and tell Arin about the black hole and then we go back to Earth and they shut everything down? I mean, they have fifty or sixty years left. Maybe not that long. If we go back and let them know what’s coming, we’ll in effect take that away from them. The shadow of this thing will hang over their heads the rest of their lives. We don’t have a fleet, and as of right now, we don’t have any support.”

“Maybe,” said Hutch, “if we’re just going to stand by and let it happen, we should have decided that before we went looking for Utopia. Or talked to the Tarkans.” She kept her voice level. “There is no good option here, Derek. We can just leave them to die. Or we can at least try to do something. Look: They’re adults. What do you think they’d want us to do? What would we want in their position? I say we go back, tell them the truth, and make sure they’ll accept an evacuation. If they won’t, it’s over.”

“Then what?”

“Then we go home and find a way to get the world on board.”

Derek’s features were twisted by frustration. “I hate this, Hutch.”

In fact, she had an idea how they might pull it off. “All right. Before we waste any more time, we know how to find Zyra and Shalon when we come back here, right?”

“Yes. If we come back here. That’s a long shot.”

The life-support status light came on. “Time to get moving.”

•  •  •

It was a four-day flight back to Volaria. Derek and Ken spent much of their time practicing the local language with Barry. “It’s going to be difficult enough,” Ken said. “We don’t want to have to tell them about the black hole by waving our arms and making faces.”

When they arrived, Hutch put them in orbit and asked Barry to find the island. Then she went back into the passenger cabin, where Utopia seemed to have taken hold as the name of the new world. She thought they should leave naming it to the Volarians, but she wasn’t going to make a fuss over a trivial issue. In the end, she thought, they’d call it whatever they wanted. “You should also,” she said, “ask Arin whether he’s willing to go back to Earth with us. We’ll need him to help make our case.”