“We’ve got to find someplace to hide,” she said. “Someplace where we’ll be safe.”

“It’s too late for that,” said a new voice.

They turned and saw a tall, lanky young man whose skin was the color of smooth dark chocolate. In his hand was the small electronic sniffer.

“Colonel Kananga wants to see you, Miss Lane,” he said, his voice soft, nonthreatening.

“I don’t want to see Colonel Kananga,” said Holly.

“That’s unfortunate. I’m afraid I must insist that you come with me.”

Tavalera stepped in front of Holly. “Run, Holly,” he said. “I’ll hold him off while you get away.”

The black man smiled. Pointing out beyond the trees to a trio of black-clad people approaching them, he said, “There’s no need for violence. And there’s no place to run to.”

RING CREATURES

Wunderly could barely contain her excitement. She was bouncing up and down in her little chair as she watched the ring particles swarming over the new moonlet.

It’s food for them! she told herself as she switched from visual to infrared and then to the spectrographic display. She wished there had been room in the minisat for ultraviolet and gamma ray sensors. What we need is an active laser probe, she thought, then immediately countered, But that might kill the particles. Particles? No, they’re living creatures. Ice creatures, surviving at temperatures of minus two hundred Celsius and lower. Extremophiles that thrive in a low-temperature environment.

The mystery of Saturn’s rings is solved, she thought. The rings aren’t just passive collections of ice flakes. They’re made of active, living creatures! They grab anything that falls into their region and take it apart. Asteroids, little ice chunks, it’s all food for them. That’s how Saturn can maintain its ring system. It’s alive.

Let’s see, she thought. Saturn has forty-two moons that we know of. Every so often an asteroid or an ice chunk from the Kuiper Belt wanders into the ring system and these creatures chew it up. The rings are constantly losing particles, having them sucked down into Saturn’s clouds. But the rings keep renewing themselves by devouring the incoming moonlets that stray into their grip.

Suddenly she looked up from the displays. Manny! They’ll try to chew up Manny’s suit. They could kill him!

She yelled into her comm link, “Manny! Get out of there! Now! Before they chew through your suit!”

Fritz’s voice replied coldly, “I don’t know if he can hear us. I haven’t had any word from him for nearly half an hour. The ice must have built up too thickly over his antennas.”

Holly watched the three black-clad figures approaching, climbing the grassy rise toward the copse where she and Tavalera stood with the Ethiopian tracker. He had his comm unit to his ear, nodding unconsciously as he listened to his orders.

At last he said, “Colonel Kananga is on his way. He wants to meet you by the central airlock, here at the endcap.”

Tavalera suddenly lunged at the tracker, shouting wildly, “Run, Holly!” as he tackled the Ethiopian.

The two men went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Holly hesitated an instant, long enough to see that Raoul was no fighter. The Ethiopian quickly recovered from his surprise and threw Tavalera off his back, then scrambled to his feet. Before he could do anything, Holly launched herself in a flying kick that caught the tracker in the ribs and knocked him down again. Tavalera got up and grabbed for her hand.

The bolt of a laser beam knocked him down again. Tavalera grabbed his leg with both hands as he rolled on the ground in pain. “Shit! The same friggin’ leg!”

Holly froze into immobility. Raoul’s leg wasn’t bleeding much, but a pinprick of a black hole smoldered halfway up his thigh.

The Ethiopian got slowly to his feet as the three other security officers ran across the grassy rise toward them.

“How’d they get weapons into the habitat?” Holly asked, sinking to her knees beside the writhing, cursing Tavalera.

“Cutting tools,” Tavalera grunted, grimacing. “They must’ve adapted laser tools into sidearms.”

The leader of the three newcomers looked over the situation. “Good work,” he said to the Ethiopian. Gesturing to his two underlings, he said, “Haul this one to his feet and drag him along.”

They grabbed Tavalera, not gently at all.

“Come along,” the leader said to Holly. “Colonel Kananga wants to see you at the central airlock.”

The only thing that truly worried Gaeta was being cut off from communicating with Fritz. The suit was holding up all right, although the interior temperature had definitely dropped nearly three degrees.

Gaeta was thinking of his possible alternatives as he drifted, wrapped in ice, mummified cryogenically. Wunderly thinks the ice particles are alive. Maybe she’s right. They sure looked like they were crawling across my faceplate. So maybe they’re trying to eat me, eat the suit. Can they eat cermet or organometallics? Jezoo, I hope not!

Wait for another eleven hours, so they can get video of me? I could be dead by then.

But if I bug out now, there won’t be any video to show the nets.

Funny, he thought, how the mind works. Right here in the middle of this mierda what does my brain come up with? He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. These rings have existed for thousands of years, millions, more likely. They’re not going away. I can come back. With better preparation, better equipment. And better video coverage.

That decided him. Gaeta pulled his right arm out of its sleeve and set up the thruster program. I’ll be flying blind, he realized. He had lost all sense of where he was in relation to the habitat or to Timoshenko, waiting for him in the shuttlecraft. The suit’s navigation program was useless now. Better take it slow and easy. First priority is to get your butt out of this blizzard. But don’t go blasting off to Alpha Centauri.

He touched the keypad that fired the thruster jets. Nothing happened.

Eberly had taken over Professor Wilmot’s old office, now that he was officially the habitat’s chief administrator. His first official act was to send Wilmot’s stuffy old furniture to storage and replace it with sleek modernistic chrome and plastic bleached and stained to look like teak.

He had hardly sat at his gleaming desk when Morgenthau pushed open the door to his office and stepped in, unannounced. Dressed in a flamboyant rainbow-hued caftan, she looked around the office’s bare walls with a smug, self-satisfied smile that was close to being a smirk.

“You’ll need some pictures on these walls,” she said. “I’ll see that you get some holowindows that can be programmed—”

“I can decorate my own office,” Eberly snapped.

Her expression didn’t change at all. “Don’t be touchy. Now that you have the power you should surround yourself with the proper trappings of power. Symbols are important. Just ask Vyborg — he knows all about the importance of symbolism.”

“I have a lot of work to do,” Eberly said.

“You have to meet with Kananga.”

Eberly shook his head. “It’s not on my agenda.”

“He’s waiting for you at the central airlock, out at the endcap.”

“I’m not going—”

“He has Holly in custody. He wants you there for her trial. And execution.”