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as he shook his head. "The safest thing she could have done was go back to her own home and wait for the peacekeepers to take her head."
    Farrow took her arm and said, "Come on. Let me show you around." He led her away from the table and down another corridor.
    "I don't understand. Am I not a prisoner anymore?"
    "You put us in an awkward position," Farrow confided. "You were wandering around up there for all the Empire to see, dangerously close to our base. At first you seemed like an obvious spy--they've sent them before, or at least tried--but then you seemed too obvious for it to be true. But I couldn't just leave you up there to wander the desert and die. Their scout cruisers would see your body from the air. Maybe stop and look around. So I had to bring you down. And now that you're here..." He shrugged. "We can't very well let you go, not before we... well. Shit. Consider yourself a sort of guest. It's better than what Spider wanted. You can thank Kari for that; she was there at the Station when you begged passage for you and your girls."
    So we are in the middle of the desert , Mira thought. At least that explained the thick, ever-present heat. "What are you doing out here?" she asked. "Are you rebels? Fighting the Melisao?"
    "Something like that."
    Farrow paused in a tall doorway and gestured with his hand. "This here's the engineer bay." The cavernous room held piles of metal and electronics taller than Mira, like some sort of garbage dump. The ceiling was split down the middle as if it could open horizontally, and small piles of sand littered the floor. A variety of hangars lined one wall, each filled with an aircraft.
    "All our parts come in here and we pick through them, sort them, repair them. We do the best with what we have, because what we have is shit."
    They returned to the hall. "I want to leave," Mira blurted out.
    Farrow ducked low to pass through a metal bulwark before saying, "And I want a cruiser made of gold. Can't allow that. Sorry, but it's for the best, because--"
    She put a hand on his arm. "No. I want to get off Praetar. That man, Akonai, is leaving in three days. I want to go with him."
    "You do not want to go with Akonai. You have my full sincerity on that." They turned down a corridor crammed tight with electronic screens and buttons and dials. A low vibration filled the air. "This here's the control room for the power plant. Not a lot of room. More of a control hallway , I guess. Anyways, it's the old method used for power before the Melisao came. Deep under the surface the sand moves horizontally like a river, pushed and pulled by all the weight above. That turns three turbines. One's broken, but two still gets the job done. We don't need a lot of power down here, just enough to run the lights and equipment."
    That explained the noisy vibration. Mira still had her mind elsewhere, though. "You don't understand," she said. "I need to get to my daughters. They went on to the Oasis station without me. They're by themselves, they have no one. They've already been gone too long!"
    Farrow glanced sideways at her as they walked. "And they went on one of Bruno's freighters?"
    Mira kicked a pile of sand on the floor. "Yes. Ami is brave, but Kaela won't be used to being in charge. She won't know what to do. You need to let me go."
    Farrow walked in silence for a while. She must have made a convincing argument, because occasionally he glanced at her with a look on his face that said he was trying to make a big decision. "The block--" he began, then shook his head. "There are services on Oasis to help children," he said carefully. "They would be fine there without you for a time. But look. You cannot go now. There's just no way. Akonai isn't even going toward Oasis--I heard Spider say he's heading to the outer system. The gas giant Ouranos, I think."
    "What about the ship I saw when I arrived?" Mira insisted. "The one that rose out of the sand. Or the ships you have in the engineering bay."
    "Those are