Lvov encountered Cobh at the crash scar, recharging her suit's systems from the life-support packs. Cobh seemed quiet. She kept her face, hooded by her face plate, turned from Lvov.

Lvov watched her for a while. "You're being evasive," she said eventually. "Something's changed -- something you're not telling me about."

Cobh made to turn away, but Lvov grabbed her arm. "I think you've found a third option. Haven't you? You've found some other way to resolve this situation, without destroying either us or the flakes."

Cobh shook off her hand. "Yes. Yes, I think I know a way. But--"

"But what?"

"It's dangerous, damn it. Maybe unworkable. Lethal." Cobh's hands pulled at each other.

She's scared, Lvov saw. She stepped back from Cobh. Without giving herself time to think about it, she said, "Our deal's off. I'm going to tell the inner System about the flakes. Right now. So we're going to have to go with your new idea, dangerous or not."

Cobh studied her face; Cobh seemed to be weighing up Lvov's determination, perhaps even her physical strength. Lvov felt as if she were a data desk being downloaded. The moment stretched, and Lvov felt her breath tighten in her chest. Would she be able to defend herself, physically, if it came to that? And -- was her own will really so strong?

I have changed, she thought. Pluto has changed me.

At last Cobh looked away. "Send your damn message," she said.

Before Cobh -- or Lvov herself -- had a chance to waver, Lvov picked up her desk and sent a message to the inner worlds. She downloaded all the data she had on the flakes: text, images, analyses, her own observations and hypotheses.

"It's done," she said at last.

"And the GUTship?"

"I'm sure they'll cancel it." Lvov smiled. "I'm also sure they won't tell us they've done so."

"So we're left with no choice," Cobh said angrily. "Look: I know it's the right thing to do. To preserve the flakes. I just don't want to die, that's all. I hope you're right, Lvov."

"You haven't told me how we're going to get home."

Cobh grinned through her face plate. "Surfing."

"All right. You're doing fine. Now let go of the scooter."

Lvov took a deep breath, and kicked the scooter away with both legs; the little device tumbled away, catching the deep light of Sol, and Lvov rolled in reaction.

Cobh reached out and steadied her. "You can't fall," Cobh said. "You're in orbit. You understand that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Lvov grumbled.

The two of them drifted in space, close to the defunct Poole wormhole Interface. The Interface itself was a tetrahedron of electric blue struts, enclosing darkness, its size overwhelming; Lvov felt as if she was floating beside the carcass of some huge, wrecked building.

Pluto and Charon hovered before her like balloons, their surfaces mottled and complex, their forms visibly distorted from the spherical. Their separation was only fourteen Pluto-diameters. The worlds were strikingly different in hue, with Pluto a blood red, Charon ice blue. That's the difference in surface composition, Lvov thought absently. All that water-ice on Charon's surface.