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put me in that position— ”
    Walker cut the line. So much for professional ethics. So much for the fucking sisterhood. She stared around the room. A call came in, from Andrei, but she directed it to messages and, when his gentle civilized voice came through asking her to pick up and speak to him, she silenced it and deleted his message unheard.
    So this is what it feels like to be outside , she thought, dazed. Twenty-five years of effort, of hard work and dedicated service, and for what? All over, in the time it took to pop out for lunch.
    She lay back against the cushions and, half-consciously, half-instinctively, rested her hand against her stomach. What do we do now? But the little collection of cells multiplying within her didn’t have an answer either. Only demands. Think about your future , Latimer said. But outside of the Bureau, she didn’t know what that could be.
     
     
    T HE LITTLE SPACECRAFT had been waiting for them in the middle of the desert. Maria hadn’t asked how Kit knew it would be there. What mattered was that it was there, ramshackle and ancient, looking like it hadn’t flown in decades, and didn’t plan to ever again. But Kit was working it on it anyway, and Kit knew what he was doing when it came to getting battered old pieces of junk airborne.
    But would it matter? Maria thought to herself. Would we simply carry the danger off with us? She looked at the little ship, its tiny hull and smaller cockpit, and thought of the three of them huddled in there, with nowhere to go, no way of putting space between them and any infection they might have brought with them... What would it be like? What would happen? Would we know what was happening? Or would we all suddenly be gone?
    She reached out to the little girl, fast asleep on a rug on the bare red earth, and stroked her hair. Jenny stirred slightly, and muttered, but didn’t wake up. Maria twitched the shade so that the girl was safely out of the sun, and then stood up. Picking up the water bottle, she walked over to her husband and offered it to him. He stopped and drank gratefully, then turned back at once to his work.
    “Kit,” she said, softly.
    “Love, I have to get on with this. We don’t have much time.”
    “Kit, please. You have to tell me what’s going on.” Seeing his face, she amended that.
    “You have to tell me something of what’s going on.” He hesitated, so she pressed on. “I know we’re in trouble,” she said. “I’m thinking more kinds of trouble than I can even guess.”
    “Yes,” he said, sliding through the hatch back into the cockpit. She followed him down. Inside, it was hellishly hot and there was nowhere to go.
    “I think you’re AWOL,” she said. “I think you’re running now from the military police. And I think we don’t have long before we won’t be able to get away.”
    He stared down at the control panels in front of him, not answering.
    “Am I right? Kit, am I right?”
    “You’re right—as far as it goes.”
    “Somebody’s been helping us, haven’t they?”
    He shook his head. “Love, don’t ask. I can’t talk about that.”
    “All right.” She sighed in frustration.
    “Yes,” he said, unexpectedly. “Somebody has been helping us. They told me where to find this ship.” He held up a finger to stop her questions. “That’s all I can say. It’s not safe otherwise.”
    That frightened her. “Will they continue to help? Kit! Will they keep on helping us? If we get off Braun’s World?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She watched as, wearily, he rubbed his eyes. She touched the back of his hand. “I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we reach it,” she said. “What will we do when we get away? Where are we going?”
    He smiled. “You’ve got a lot of faith that I can get this bag of bolts flying.”
    “If you can’t, nobody can. And it seems a lot of risk on the part of our mysterious helper to send you to a ship that won’t fly. That, or some sort of baroque plan