depend on a propulsion system that's nearly experimental.'
'But you built them. You're the best.'
'Yes. Except once you get beyond a certain size, solar sails are all different. You cannot know for sure how they'll behave.' She tossed the module in the air and caught it.
'That's the only copy of those numbers,' Victoria said.
Iphigenie caught the module and lowered it carefully. The modules were abuse-resistant, but they had limits.
'I didn't have to Join this expedition, you know,' she said grumpily. 'I could have stayed home and spent my money.'
'I know. Why did you join?'
'Because just building the sails wasn't enough. Nor was spending money.' She put the module in her pocket and patted it. 'I make no promises.'
J.D. gave Feral access to her credit account so he could get in touch with his mysterious sources. J.D. herself made a call she wished she could put off.
She expected to have to leave a message for Lykos through
the web. Instead, she reached the diver quickly, voice and
screen both. Lykos looked strange with her pale hair dry,
standing out in loose ringlets instead of soaked with seawater,
slicked against her skull.
'You haven't heard from him, have you?'
J.D. waited through the annoying, awkward pause.
'No,' Lykos said. 'I would have let you know. I have
been searching.'
'Lykos, I think it's possible that he's been kidnapped.'
STARFARERS 2 01
When J.D.'s message reached Lykos, the expression on the diver's narrow, wild face changed from distraught to confused to angry.
'Only one entity would do such a thing, and 'kidnapped' is not the proper word for it. Let us speak plainly, J.D. Because of his family's actions, he has been taken into custody, arrested—he is under restraint.'
'It's possible—but if they offer to trade his freedom for your return, you've got to say no and you've got to make it public. You've got to make everything public.'
'At the risk of Zev's life?'
'The one thing they can't afford is to hurt him! If we can get any proof—even any evidence—that he's under arrest, they'll have to let him go. He hasn't done anything!'
'He has refused to spy for them.'
'He's got no obligation to spy for them, and they have no authority to make him. Oh, Lykos, don't let them use your loyalties against you.'
The diver spread her fingers and smoothed her springy hair with the translucent swimming webs. J.D. had seen divers on their return from weeks-long trips with the whales, and she had never seen anyone as drained with exhaustion as Lykos.
'We cannot abandon him, J.D.'
'I know it. I do know it. I can't either. I promise you—'
'No more promises! I am finished with humans' prom' ises.' Lykos cut the connection. Her image faded.
J.D. collected herself. She could not blame Lykos for her
* reaction, but it upset her nonetheless. She glanced over at ?-' Feral. He had only been working for a few minutes. Nevertheless, J.D. wanted to ask if he had found anything yet. She knew he would tell her when he did. If he did.
J.D. spent the afternoon running up a large debit against her account, trying to track Zev down. She was afraid to spend too much. If she went back to earth, she would have to pay for it herself.
After several hours' useless work, she canceled all the communications and cut herself off from Arachne. She looked over at Feral, who had barely moved in an hour. His eyelids flickered. He was lost in the web, lost in a fugue of communication.
2 02 vonda N. Mdntyre
Infinity sat cross-legged under a spindly aspen sapling. The light faded around him as the sun tubes changed from daytime orientation to night.
He felt discouraged. Maybe nothing would have been settled at the meeting tonight, or maybe everyone would have agreed that Starfarer should be given over to the military. But at least they would have come to some resolution if there had been a meeting.
He smelled smoke. Burning was dangerous on the starship, so he followed the smell- The scent was vaguely familiar, but not a grass fire.
Kolya Cherenkov sat on a boulder beneath the overhanging branch of a magnolia tree. He held a thin burning black stick cupped in his hand. As Infinity watched, Kolya tapped the cigarette on a projection of the boulder, adding a few feathery flakes to a small pile of ashes. Infinity watched, fascinated, as Kolya lifted the cigarette to his lips and drew smoke into his mouth, into his lungs.
Infinity had found other tiny scatterings of ashes and, now and then, smelled a wisp of smoke. But he had never actually seen anyone smoke a cigarette, not for real, only in very old, unedited movies. Back in Brazil, when he was a child, his adult relatives had passed around a pipe of tobacco on rare occasion. The smoke made them act as if they were mildly drunk. He wondered if Kolya would act drunk; he could hardly imagine it.
Kolya breathed curis of smoke from his mouth and nose.
The smell was unpleasant, much harsher and stronger than what Infinity recalled of the pipe smoke. He wondered why people in old movies blew smoke at each other. He would not like it if a lover blew this smell into his face. Suddenly he sneezed.
Startled, Kolya turned. He closed his cupped fingers around the cigarette. He let his hand hang idly down. He blushed.
'I didn't mean to scare you,' Infinity said- 'I just . . .'
It was all too obvious that Kolya preferred no one to know about his cigarette.
The cosmonaut brought the cigarette back into view.
STARFARERS 2 03
'I suppose I had to be discovered eventually, but I hope you won't say anything about my ... vice.'
'Everybody has vices.' Infinity believed in leaving people alone. Nevertheless, he was shocked to see Kolya doing something as dangerous as smoking. You could get cured of the damage nowadays, but the damage was unpleasant, as was the cure. So was the cause, as far as Infinity was concerned. Nobody had ever succeeded in removing all the factors that caused lung damage and still ending up with something anyone wanted to smoke.
Kolya drew in one last lungful of smoke, then stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out against the black lunar stone. He put the cigarette away.
'I only have a few of these left,' he said wistfully, 'and then I'll have to stop, for I won't be able to get any more. And I'm an old man. I doubt I'll come back from our trip.'
Not meaning to, not wanting to. Infinity felt a sudden anger at the cosmonaut. Kolya never participated in campus meetings, never made his preferences public, never criticized the attacks on Starfarer. He did nol care that tonight's meeting had been canceled, that meetings had been forbidden. He probably did not even know. He would not have come to the meeting if it had been held.
'Maybe there won't be any trip!' Infinity exclaimed.
'What? Why?'
'Don't you know? How can you not know they want to turn us into a warship? How can you spend all your time with that Griffith guy and not know he's trouble? Florrie took one look at him and knew he was after us!'
'Ah. I did wonder why he was here ... But all he seemed interested in was plunging me into nostalgia.' He rubbed his fingertips across a smooth place on the rock; he raised his head and gazed across the cylinder, past the dimming sun tubes. Far-overhead lakes, ruffled by a breeze, sparkled gray with the last light.
'If you want this expedition to happen,' Infinity said, 'you've got to help us. Only I don't know how you
