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shots might damage their central nervous systems. Enough shots, even with stun guns, could kill. She was suddenly afraid of the weapon at her waist. “Why risk it when we can go around the clearing?”
    “We’ll lose time,” Dmitri said.
    “We’ll lose more time if we stand here arguing about it.” Zoheret looked at the others, hoping for support.
    “She’s right,” Annie said. “Let’s go around the clearing.”
    “Do you know how much time we’ll lose?” Manuel said angrily.
    “I don’t care.”
    The larger bear looked up, sniffing the air. Manuel moved quickly, racing a few paces down the hill, then raised his gun. He fired.
    The bear roared as the beam of light shot past her. She lumbered toward them, moving faster than Zoheret had thought she could. Two more beams struck her in the chest and she fell at the foot of the hill. Dmitri hit the cub.
    The two animals were still. The team scampered down the hill and ran across the clearing. Jennifer stumbled as she ran; Manuel ran swiftly, head high in triumph. When they reached the trees on the other side, Zoheret rested for a moment, leaning against a trunk. The knapsack on her back felt heavy.
    “Come on,” Manuel said. He was standing next to her. “We should be far away when they wake up.”
    “You shouldn’t have done that.”
    “I had no choice. It worked, didn’t it?” He turned away.

    After lunch, they kept up a steady pace until the light permeating the Hollow began to grow dimmer. The hills around them now bore only a few trees and bushes; if nothing went wrong, they would reach the lake, and more forest, before dark.
    They had, Zoheret thought, been lucky so far. The trip had been uneventful, except for the bears. Ship had always kept its word; it had said it would shut down its sensors. But she still felt as though it were watching, making sure that they came through the Hollow safely.
    She rejected that notion. She was being childish, thinking that Ship was looking out for them, that it cared. Ship didn’t care. Ship was a mind core. She had thought of it as human, but it wasn’t. Ship had as many feelings as the library computer catalogue. Ship had held the children and sung to them and told them stories and comforted them because that was what it had been programmed to do. Ship was going to take them and dump them on a strange planet and orbit that world while they lived and struggled and died on the planet’s surface. Someday, their descendants would be able to journey to Ship again; they might even build ships of their own. It all seemed wasteful and pointless. They had been thrown into the sea of space as if they were the spawn of fish, to live, breed, and die.
    A few members of the team were singing softly, marching in time to the song. They marched as if they were devices set in motion by a hidden hand.

    It was dark when they came to the lake; a rippling black surface lay before them. Annie and Gervais began to gather wood for a fire, taking care not to get too far away from the rest of the group. The sandy shore was strewn with rocks; the air blowing in from the lake was damp and cool.
    When the fire was finally ablaze, they all huddled around the flames, warming their hands and eating their meager meal. The trees bordering the shore were silent sentries. Zoheret devoured her dried meat and fruit and finished her food still hungry.
    Manuel studied his map by the firelight for a few moments, then put it away. “We have to get moving at first light, or earlier. We still have to circle the lake and get up to where we can cross the river—we can crawl across that old tree that fell there. After that, we should make good time and get to the goal before dark. I think we have a good chance of winning.”
    Zoheret ached all over and was certain her muscles would be stiff by first light. Jennifer had twisted her ankle, but seemed to be all right now; they’d had no other injuries.
    Annie moved closer to Zoheret. “I was mad at