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weakness, a distraction.
    Price kept yelling. “That food belongs to everyone!”
    “Right!” Sawyer was just as loud. “Bacchetti and me and these guys have been killing ourselves hauling supplies up this mountain. We deserve to eat heavy.”
    “Vote! Let’s vote!”
    “We’re eating heavy, Price.” Sawyer shifted his weight forward and Doug Silverstein bent his tall frame in response—
    Cam pushed between them with his hands out. Silverstein gave way but Sawyer was unyielding and Cam shoved him, frantic, swiping his fingertips down Sawyer’s chest. He could not feel the gun under Sawyer’s clothes.
    Price’s breath smelled of bitter stomach acids, but Cam leaned closer and said, “Come with us, Jim.”
    “Let ’em stay,” Sawyer growled again.
    “We can make it,” Cam insisted. “Hollywood’s already scouted out the easiest trail. It will take us less time than he needed. Okay? There are always a few rain showers up here in springtime. We’ll wait until then.”
    Low-pressure systems had pushed the nanos down almost a thousand feet by Sawyer’s estimation, and they’d always gone scavenging during the worst weather. The dangers of hurrying over ice and slick rock in darkness and cold, the possibility of avalanches, of getting lost—it was all worth reducing their exposure.
    “We have to do this,” Cam said. “Don’t you get it? If more than four or five people stay here, you’ll be eating each other by December.”

4
    Ruth spent her time at the window, day after day, hours at a stretch. Commander Ulinov had ordered her to stop, had pleaded and even joked with her, his attitudes shifting as smoothly as the cloud masses wrapped around the blue Earth below, but the International Space Station was a narrow, sterile world. Ruth needed more room to think.
    Besides, making each other crazy was about the only fun available to them.
    The lab module had a viewport only because its designers intended to conduct free-space fluids and materials tests, and Ruth had long since retracted the twin waldos bracketing the window to improve her view. No one was interested in pure science anymore.
    Prehistoric darkness blanketed the nightside of the planet. Ruth watched patiently, dreaming. Sunrise still enthralled her, although from low-Earth orbit it came every ninety minutes. Each new dawn reminded her of inspiration.
    “Dr. Goldman!”
    She flinched as Ulinov’s voice boomed through the lab. Lately he’d taken to surprising her—not difficult when he could float noiselessly through the neck connecting this module to the main station—the same way her step-dad had attempted to retrain his terrier after Curls began eating the couch. Shock treatment. Lord knew her reaction was irrational but Ruth found herself behaving exactly like that dumb dog, making a contest of it, and she no longer doubted that Ulinov was also playing this small game. The amount of time he spent tormenting her was too great. Their sparring had become the careful flirtation of commander and subordinate, skirting iron-fast rules against fraternization, and the attraction must have been more difficult for him because of his reluctance to undermine his own authority.
    They were hard on each other, strong for each other, and it was wonderful to have any chance to feel amused. Ruth kept her face turned toward the viewport, baiting him.
    “What can you be thinking?” Ulinov demanded. “What haven’t you seen through that hole a million times before?”
    The interior of the lab module would have been impassable in gravity. Her gear extended in bulky towers from three of the cube’s six surfaces, bolted down between the original equipment and computers. It was a monochromatic jumble— off-white walls, gray metal panels. He expertly threaded his way toward her and touched his foot against the ceiling to correct his spin.
    Commander Nikola Ulinov was large for a cosmonaut, his rib cage wide enough to hold two of Ruth, and his square face had