The ice world shuddered. Gage felt as if a huge hand were pressing down on her chest and legs; suddenly Moro's head was heavy, his hair prickly, and the ice floor was hard and lumpy under her bare back. The crown of her igloo groaned, and for a moment she wondered if it would collapse in on them.

The bank of GUTdrive pods had opened up, raising Chiron's acceleration to a full gee, to match the missile.

If Mackenzie's analysis was correct, Chiron couldn't outrun the missile, and the missile couldn't overtake Chiron. It was a stalemate.

Gage stroked the muscles of Moro's chest. "It's actually a neat solution by the Squeem," she murmured. "The pursuit will take years to play out, but the missile must catch us in the end."

Moro pushed himself away from her, rolled onto his front, and cupped her chin in his hands. "You're too pessimistic. We're going to the stars."

"No. Just realistic. What happens when we get to Tau Ceti? We won't be able to decelerate, or the missile will catch us. Although we may survive for years, the Squeem have destroyed us."

Moro wriggled on the floor, rubbing elbows which already looked sore from supporting his weight in the new thrust regime. He pulled at his lip, troubled.

Gage let herself get pregnant by Moro. The zygote was frozen, placed with a small store of others.

It was only after the storage of her zygote that Gage questioned her own motives in conceiving. How long was she expecting to be here? What kind of future did she think any of them could hope for?

Six months later the missile increased its acceleration to two gee.

The Squeem had been smart, Gage decided; they'd given the missile the ability to redesign itself in flight.

The colonists held another meeting to decide what to do. This time they sat around on the bare floor of their darkened ice cave; their elegant zero-gee amphitheater was suspended, uselessly, high on one wall of the cave.

Some wanted to stand and fight. But they had nothing to fight with. And Chiron, with its cargo of humanity, must be much more fragile than the hardened missile.

A few wanted to give up. They were still only fifty light days from the Sun. Maybe they could surrender, and return to the occupied worlds.

But most couldn't stand the idea; it would be better to die. Anyway, a semisentient Squeem missile was unlikely to take prisoners.

They voted to run, at two gee.

They had to rebuild their colony again. Drone robots crawled over the battered surface of the ice world, hauling water-ice to the GUTdrive engines. Shields billowed wings of electromagnetic flux around the ice dwarf; they would soon be running at close to light-speed, and the thin stuff between the stars would hit Chiron like a wall.