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keep a pretty low profile. They don't want to get nabbed by the Core Governance any more than we do."
    I tap my fingers against the railing. "So what are they doing?"
    Nola shrugs. "Gathering strength. Trying to stay in one piece. Same thing as we are, but without the sequins and popcorn. The Core may not like either of us, but it doesn't stop the officials from appropriating any Tinker or Mandate tech they can grab. They'd love to get their hands on the Big Top, if they could find a way around the Ringmaster's lawyer."
    "So if there are only a few of these space-bending ships, what does everyone else do? Hitchhike?"
    "They use the pipelines. The Mandate set them up eons ago, using some sort of wormhole technology. Regular ships pop in one end and out the other. Most systems have at least one, except where the fighting was really bad during the War." Nola frowns. "You look confused. Is the translator going wonky? Sometimes it takes a while to come back to speed after a jump."
    "No, I got it. It's just ... mind-blowing. I mean, interstellar plumbing!" I wave at the star field. "Which one's yours?"
    "Oh." Nola coughs. "It's that one." She zooms in on one of the oblong galaxies in the midsection of the cluster, then points to a star along the edge. "Yamri. Pretty humdrum. The only thing we're famous for is agricultural machinery."
    "How long since you left?"
    "Five hundred and twenty-three days." She sighs. "I don't even remember what it smells like in the spring. That's when all the fields start blooming up, all green and gold. It was my favorite time of year."
    She has a look on her face like Dad used to get whenever I begged him to tell me stories about growing up in Taiwan. He'd tell me about lanterns that asked riddles and filled the night with color, about hiking through misty green mountains, and the sweet crispness of sugarcane juice on a hot day. It was like this magical fairyland that he'd never get back to, not really. "Sorry," I say. "I guess you miss it?"
    She shrugs it off. "Oh, it's not that bad. I love the Big Top. I've seen things a colony girl from Yamri would never even imagine. This is where I mean something. This is where I belong." She taps her sparky wrench badge proudly. "Speaking of which, we ought to get you some things. Come on."

CHAPTER 5
The Arena

    NOLA LEADS ME THROUGH a maze of wheezy lifts, twisty corridors, and slithery ladders. I don't know how she keeps track of where we are. At one point I'm sure we're about to head back onto the bridge, but instead we end up in an oval room lined with giant iridescent kites.
    "Spacewings," says Nola, pausing. She tucks back her wavy crop of brown hair. For the first time I notice the black gadgetry thing looped over her right ear. She fiddles with it. A slip of something dark and flexible slides out to cover her eye, like an odd black eye patch. As I watch, Nola waves her hands in the air, says "Dispensary," then waves some more. She nods and the eyepatch snaps back.
    "Okay, we should be able to go this way." She pushes aside a pile of the spacewings, revealing a doorway. "Sorry for the roundabout route, but we're still decompacting after the performance and the jump. Lots of rooms are still smashed flat."
    "Decompacting?"
    "To make room for the inside of the tent and the jump burst."
    "You mean every time you perform, you have to squash down half the ship?"
    Nola nods. "And even more when we need to jump. I helped fix some of the compactors after I came on board. We're up to sixty-eight percent now," she says proudly, leading me down yet another tunnel-like corridor. "If only the Ringmaster weren't such a pack rat, we could do much better." She wrinkles her nose. "Plus, there are parts of the ship even the Ringmaster can't get into. Who knows what's in there, gumming up the works? Poor Big Top." She pats the nearest wall.
    The wall hums back.
    I stop walking. "What was that?"
    "Oh, you know, the Big Top likes being appreciated."
    "Are you telling me