“Should I come back later, then?”

“We’ll see. I’ll call you.”

As Olaf left, Chan began, “If I had known that you had a regular partner these days, I wouldn’t—”

“Stuff it, Chan Dalton. You’ll have to lie better than that to fool me.”

“Was I lying?”

“You certainly were. Partner!” She spat the word at Chan like a curse. “I don’t have partners any more. How well do you think Olaf knows me, if he doesn’t realize I’m a weapons master who can look after herself better than anyone on Europa? He’s not my partner, he’s a pick-up — and a lot better lover than you ever were. So cut the crap. Tell me what you want.” She was reaching down to lift a white robe from the floor, and she saw Chan’s look. “And you can stop staring at my ass. You had your chance, and you blew it.”

“I was just marveling at how little you’ve changed. Your body doesn’t look a day older.”

“That’s nice. What am I supposed to do, curtsey and say thank you, sir? I’ll tell you one thing, I’m a thousand years older inside. So get on with it. What’s so important that you have to track me down and stick your nose into my life?”

Chan sat down on the bed. “It’s a long story.”

“You said you needed ten minutes.”

“If I had said I needed an hour, would you have agreed to listen to me?”

“Of course not.” Deb tucked her robe around her legs and sank easily to the floor. “You have ten minutes to prove I should waste an hour with you, and if you can’t you’ll be out on your ass. Nine minutes now — you’ve wasted one. Better get started.”

“We have a chance to put the old team together and take a ship to the stars.”

“Bullshit.” She glared up at him with angry brown eyes. “The Link network hasn’t worked for twenty years and it doesn’t work now. Are you trying to tell me that the Stellar Group is lifting the quarantine on us?”

“No. I’m telling you that they are allowing one ship with a human crew to use the network with their blessing. You can be on that ship, Deb.”

“I’d love to. Provided that you aren’t.”

“Sorry. It doesn’t work like that. The Stellar Group insists that I be there, because I worked with them before and they trust me.”

“More fool them.”

“They didn’t insist on anybody else. It was my idea to put the old team together. You, me, Dan Casement, Tully, the Bun, Tarb, Chrissie Winger … the way we planned it. Remember, Deb? The perfect team, with just the mix we needed. The idea wasn’t wrong, it’s as good now as it was then. It was the quarantine that stopped us.”

“The quarantine had nothing to do with what you did, you son of a bitch.”

“Maybe it did, Deb. Maybe it had a lot to do with it. But you said you didn’t want to talk about you and me, and I respect that. The new expedition isn’t about you and me. It’s about a chance to do what we once wanted to do, all of us, and never had the opportunity. It’s about a chance to end the quarantine and open the road to the stars. Forget that I’ll be on the ship. You won’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Think of working with the others again. You and Tully the Rhymer always got on great with each other — the Tarbush, too.”

The angry twist to her mouth was less tight. She stood up, came across to where Chan was sitting on the bed, and stared down at him.

“You’re a wily bastard, Chan Dalton. You’re still trying to push my buttons. Do you really have the others lined up — all of them, Danny and the Tarbush and the Bun and everyone?”

Chan cursed his decision to visit Deb first. He could see the look in her eyes. It was the old star-lust, the way it had been twenty years ago. She was turning his way. If he could have just told her that Dan Casement and Tully were already definite, and Danny was even now on the Vulcan Nexus, chasing down the Bun …

“I don’t have everyone, Deb. I wish I did.”

“Who do you have?”

“Well, there’s me. And Danny Casement. And, I hope, you.”

“And that’s it ? You absolute asshole , you don’t have any team. You haven’t changed, not one little bit. You make promises, and when it’s time to deliver you just slip out from under. Get out of my sight.”

She crouched slightly and stood with her arms bent. Chan came to his feet in an eye-blink. You didn’t mess with Deb Bisson when she looked like that.

“Deb, I’m leaving. But if I could—”

“Out this minute, or I throw you out.”

Chan said rapidly, “Just ten seconds, for one more thing.”

“Nothing you can say will make any difference.”

“Maybe not, but let me say it. I’ll be going on this expedition with or without any others from the old team. I have to. But it won’t be the same, and it won’t be as safe. I came to you first, because if you come on board, I know for sure that Tully will, and the Tarbush will, and Chrissie will. They may not think much of me, but they worship you.”

“That is the worst crap I ever heard. I haven’t seen any of them for years. I don’t know where they are, what they’re doing, if they’re alive.”

“Now who’s the one who’s lying? Tully O’Toole lives right here on Europa, in the Mount Ararat settlement. You have to know that, Deb, this place isn’t big enough to hide somebody like Tully the Rhymer.”

“So what?”

“So come with me to see him. See how he reacts. If he says yes, it will be that much easier to talk to Chrissie and Tarbush.”

“Why should I make things easier for you?”

“It will only take one hour of your time.”

“One hour like your ten minutes?”

“If he says no, I’ll accept that I can’t get the old team together. I’ll be out of here.”

She stripped off the robe, turned, and walked across to a drawer set in the wall. “Do you know where Tully lives?” She was pulling out black pants and a tank top.

“I have a locator output.”

“And that’s all? I can do better than that. Tully’s on the northern knoll, and I know exactly where.”

“Are you proposing that we go there now? It’s the middle of the night.”

“That didn’t worry you when you broke in on me. Of course I want to go now. What’s the option? Sit here and listen to you talk about the old times, and why you did what you did? No thanks.” She pulled a black hooded cloak over her skintight clothes and walked toward the door, smiling as if at some bitter joke. “You surprised me, it’s time you had a surprise yourself. We’ll go and see Tully. Then I think you’ll agree that the `old team’ idea is a load of garbage. You’ll be out of here. And I can forget that you ever came.”

11: THE ARRIVAL OF THE BUBBLE PEOPLE

Bony wanted to hurry without seeming to. The strange triple-winged craft had not reappeared, but it might at any moment and they were very visible out on the open rock. He didn’t want to frighten Liddy by telling her of possible danger that might never materialize, and the only other reason for haste that he could offer was the blue sun, sinking fast toward the horizon as they came within sight of the sea.

He pointed ahead. “See the way it seems to be dropping straight down toward the water? Dusk won’t last long here. We must have landed close to the equator of Limbo. Better hurry.”

He did not mention the other thing that puzzled him. The surface gravity of Limbo was low. That should mean that the planet was small, about the size of Earth’s Moon. But then the horizon should be close, as the planet curved away from them.

It wasn’t. His guess was that the horizon was as far away here as on Earth. What did it mean, if you had a planet the size of Earth with a gravity like that of the Moon? The obvious answer was that the density was small. How small? Bony couldn’t do the calculation in his head, but he vowed to pass it on to the ship’s computer when they got back on board.

His attention was on the setting sun, the sky which had turned from violet-blue to green, and the far-off horizon. It was Liddy, hurrying down the pebbled shore, who stopped abruptly and said, “What’s that ?”