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of Sen's vision. Of course she was not alone. On the big ice, to be alone was to die. She glanced to her right as the second hedgehopper slipped in beside her. The pilot raised a thickly mittened hand from the steering bar and made a “pull-back” gesture. Sen replied with a palm-up “what?” gesture. Again, the mitten made a “slow down, draw back” movement. Slow down. Preserve battery life. Mchynlyth had been a little vague about how the hedgehopper batteries would perform in the extreme conditions on the ice.
    “The numbers go everywhere,” he had complained. “Anything from five hours to five minutes. Now, if you could lend me a real mathematician…”
    “Everett is otherwise engaged,” Captain Anastasia said.
    “Could you even give me a wee loan?”
    Captain Anastasia had widened her eyes in that way that every crew member quickly learned to recognize: I am the captain. The power situation was critical. Even guyed down Everness was burning charge to keep her head turned into the endless wind. And how much Everett would need to open the Heisenberg Gate when he finally figured out how to get the jumpgun and his dally comptator to talk to each other, well, that was anyone's guess. She had kept a close eye on the power meters as Mchynlyth charged the hedgehopper batteries.
    Out over the ice, a plug crackled in Sen's ear.
    “Slow down.”
    “Aw, Ma.” Sometimes Annie could be no fun at all. The earphone went dead. Even communications consumed power. Use too much now and there wouldn't be any for when you really needed to talk. Sen eased back on the throttle cable and dropped back into formation with Captain Anastasia. The ice reached out beneath her feet and merged with the sky.
    Somewhere out there was the thing. Sharkey's radar had revealed no shape or structure, only that the thing that had come through the gate to hunt them was big, and fast, and would be on top of them in a very few hours.
    “Do we have Einst…Heisenberg Gates that big?” Captain Anastasia had asked as the entire crew huddled around Sharkey's radar monitor. The glow shining up through the magnifier lens lit their faces green.
    “You don't,” Everett had said. “I mean…we don't.”
    “The Thing from Another Universe,” Mchynlyth had said, and at that moment an ice tremor had shaken Everness like a Novemberleaf on a tree, drawing a great moan, like a whale dying, from the lines and cables.
    The monster , Sen had mouthed silently.
    “Nonsense,” Captain Anastasia had snapped, breaking the spell. “Mr. Mchynlyth, get those little flibbertigibbits airship-shape. I want a varda at what's out there. Ignorance kills. Sen, with me. Mr. Sharkey, keep an eye on that thing. Mr. Singh, crunch numbers.”
    At last, Captain Anastasia had something to captain. Crunching numbers, building machinery, scanning for threats, these were not things that needed her. Sen had seen her become bored and edgy and fidgety. She didn't like to depend on other people. Other people depended on her. Sen had grown fidgety with her.
    Now they were zipping low over the ice in rickety harnesses slung beneath pirated air drones, just the two of them, her and Ma, doing the thing that no one else could do. Sen glanced over at Anastasia flying along beside her. Anastasia caught the glance, returned it with a nod of the head. Sometimes, Sen thought, they were more like sisters than mother and daughter.
    Memory by memory, Sen was losing her mother—her birth mother, her real mother. The voice had been first. She could remember words but not the voice that spoke them. Then things like hands, and how tall her Ma had been, and the exact color of her hair. Now her face was vanishing. All Sen could remember was her mother's smile, her eyes, the tiny diamond stud in her nose. Details. Little by little, memory by memory, her real mother was disappearing. Someday she would vanish completely, blow away into ash like the Fairchild , burning up in the sky.
    Tears froze painfully