"I'm going up," Lee Arteria said.

Hudson shook his head emphatically. "We don't have time to repack. It's packed for four and we're only six hours from liftoff--"

"Your seat, Pins."

Needleton said, "Captain, I never said I wasn't going."

"I heard what you told me, coming here. You're staying to teach, you're staying to fight, you're giving up and leaving, you're not sure what you'll do up there, you'll be locked in a can with the woman who kicked you out and the man who took her. You're in a quantum state, Pins. Well, I'm flipping you over."

Arteria was moving forward; Bob Needleton was backing up. He didn't seem to be aware of it. His jaw thrust out mutinously. "If I give up my seat it'll be to something that's needed up there. What are you doing?"

Arteria was opening zippers. She was wearing lots of zippers. She said, "I've done too much to cover for you. I go up, or I go to Leavenworth. I caught you people! Fair and square, and then I covered for you."

"So you have to go underground. So do most of us. You can hide as easy as me. Easier. You know more about how to do it."

"Not good enough," she said. "You can't stop me."

"I can try. Maybe I can kill you before you summon help, maybe I can't."

"I don't have to summon anyone. If I don't report in, they'll know where to look."

"I don't believe you--"

Arteria laughed softly. She was moving toward him while dropping things: the submachine gun. Her leather jacket. A holdout gun from one boot, a knife from the other, then the boots. Handcuffs, the fancy pin in her hat. Bob Needleton watched in horror, retreating, and nobody else moved.

"Maybe it's a bluff. Maybe you, couldn't alert your squad because you waited too long." Bob's threat might have been more effective if he weren't backing up toward the Operations Planning Room.

"Every cop on Earth knows my face." Handcuffs, a mace delivery system, a horrifying armory. And her pants. Blouse. "They're all going to think … know I betrayed them."

She looked quite dangerous, Alex thought. She had muscles… smoother than Steve's, but powerfully differentiated. She looked to Alex like an alien life form, and more female every second.

Arteria was almost nose to nose with Bob Needleton. He'd backed up against a flat surface. She wasn't wearing anything at all now. She said, "What about a woman of childbearing age?"

"Okay," Bob said, "you're a woman."

"Open the door," she said.

"Door?" Needleton became aware of the flat surface behind him. He found a doorknob and turned it and backed through.

Lee Arteria said, "I'll be taking your seed with me."

"I don't, uh--"

"I didn't ask."

Slam.

Gordon was smiling broadly. "Wonderful! Just like `God's Little Acre.' "

"Shouldn't we be trying to rescue him?" Sherrine looked at the stunned faces around her.

Hudson climbed out of Phoenix and gathered the others around him at the ship's base.

"All right," he said. "It's set. We launch at oh-six-forty-four on the dot. Commander Hopkins has the rendezvous set. He'll go when we report success."

"Who do you need here for the launch?" Miller asked.

"Once we get the roof opened, no one. We'll open that in half an hour, then you people scatter, and I mean scatter. Get off the base and take off in all directions. Can anybody go straight north across the desert?"

"We can," Harry said. "But maybe Jenny and I ought to stay. Stand guard."

"And do what? Not that I need to ask," Hudson said, as Jenny reached toward her boot. "Look: just now I won't be wanted for anything but stealing my own spaceship. I can land in a foreign country and the lawyers can take care of it. Kill somebody and they'll have extradition warrants out everywhere we can land! Not to mention that a bunch of Air Force johnnies who right now sympathize will be gunning for me. I have to come back to Earth to get Annie! No, thanks, Harry."

"No last stand?" Jenny said.

"No."

"Imagine my relief," Harry said. "Look, we'll be going out last, right? I'll take a coil of that stainless steel wire and close off the gates. We can drop broken glass on the road up, too."

"Well, that's all right," Hudson said. "But nobody gets hurt!"

"Except maybe us," Jenny said.

"If that's what it takes to get this ship up--"

"Yeah, Harry," Jenny said. She put the pistol back in her boot. "Where's that wire?"

"Now. One more thing," Hudson asked. "Where's Arteria?"

Everyone looked at each other. "She's still--" "She's with Needleton--"

"It would help to know her weight," Hudson said. "Harry, go ask."

"Well, all right--" Harry walked across the square from the hangar to the engineering building, and stood on the porch outside the closed door to the Operations Planning Room.

He stood there a while, then came back. "Actually, you won't be very far off if you say a hundred and fifty pounds."

Gary Hudson activated the speaker system. It wouldn't matter now, voices wouldn't add to the noise of the turbo expander. "MINUS EIGHTY MINUTES AND COUNTING," the computer said. Damn, it feels good to hear that again!

The door to the Operations Planning Room opened, and Lee Arteria came out wearing the silk kimono that Hudson kept in the shower in his office suite. "Yours, Hudson? I like your taste," she said. "But someone seems to have moved my clothes."

"Next room. You won't need all the weapons, you know."

"I don't need any, do I?"

Hudson frowned. "Not by me. But I haven't told them upstairs about the change in the passenger list. Not too late to rethink it."

"Nothing to rethink. This career's over."

"So you run away. What do you think you'll do up there?"

She shook her head. "I'm not useless you know. I have an engineering degree. Air Force ROTC. I wanted to work in the space program. I got my commission, but they didn't need engineers, and they did need police investigators. I was good at that, but I can learn anything." She smiled slightly, a thin, wistful smile. "I can make babies. My biological clock is going tick, tick, brrinnggg!"

"OK, you convinced me. I gather you already convinced Dr. Needleton."

"Let's say he's no longer objecting."

"All right, the hour's up. Where is she?" Moorkith demanded.

Colonel Murphy looked embarrassed. "She ordered the helicopter to meet her at an area above Cajon Pass, but the place was empty when they got there. We're searching the area."

"Searching the area."

"Yes, Mr. Moorkith. She may be hurt, or taken prisoner."

"I don't believe one word of that," Moorkith said. "And neither do you. She's gone over. Helping them! That's what's happened. Now, Colonel, unless you want to explain all this to the Secretary of Defense, you will cooperate with me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to think! What could have persuaded her to help the Angels? She must know they'd be caught."

Lieutenant Billings had been listening quietly. Now he drew in his breath sharply.

Moorkith looked at him. "Well, Lieutenant?"

"Nothing, sir. Just a thought."

"Out with it," Moorkith said.

Billings shook his head. "Sir, it was nothing--"

"Tell us," Colonel Murphy said.

"Maybe they won't get caught, sir."

Murphy frowned. "Billings, there's no way! There's no place in this country, on this continent--oh.

"What in hell are you talking about, Colonel?" Moorkith demanded.

"Nothing, sir."

"God damn you people! You know something, you know something--" He stopped and looked thoughtful. "So. Not on this continent. Not on this planet, right? They have a way to get back to orbit, don't they? What is it? Where?"