Sybil gaped at him in disbelief and outrage. “He couldn’t… spit without having it analyzed! You know damned well I never passed any information, harmful or not! And what the hell was the treaty about if not to bind us as friends and allies?”

    Meachum came to his feet, leaning across the desk threateningly. “What I know, Lieutenant, is that they are the biggest threat this country has ever faced! What I know is that they have technology that makes ours look like a kid’s science experiment! What I know is that they plucked a moon out of orbit around Jupiter and dropped in orbit around Venus as if they were picking up a fucking… ball and tossing it at a net! What I know is that we have no clue of what their actual intentions are toward us or what they’re capable of, but we can guess and it scares the pure piss out of me! It ought to scare you, too!”

    “What I know,” Sybil screamed at him, “is that they sell medications for paranoia and you ought to take advantage of it! If they had any evil intentions, they could’ve cut us down before we even knew they were there. Or do you suspect they have the same sort of sick, twisted mind that you do and they’re playing some sort of cat and mouse game with us? Does logical thought never cross your mind? Why would they wait if they had malicious intent? Why agree to a treaty with us? What possible motive could they have?”

    “What I know besides that is that I will give you one chance and one only to redeem yourself and prove your loyalty to your country and your species or you can rot in jail for the rest of your natural life! You can bank on it!

    “We made a treaty to prevent being annihilated by a potentially aggressive and far more advanced civilization. You have a week to pack your belongings up and be on the cargo ship carrying the first load of supplies to Venus.”

    “What cargo ship?” Sybil asked blankly.

    “The Mars vessel. It’ll be loading the food stores that were intended to go out with the next batch of settlers.”

    Sybil was too frightened to think when she left. If she hadn’t been moving on autopilot she didn’t think she could’ve made her way back to her quarters. As it happened, she found herself staring at the door without any recollection of having made the decision to head to her quarters or how she’d gotten there.

    There was never any question that she would go. She had absolute faith that Meachum would make good on his ‘promise’. She was going to Venus or she was going to prison. It didn’t matter that she knew she was innocent. Despite everything, maybe because of her military training, she’d always been careful to avoid discussing anything potentially sensitive. Anka hadn’t probed her for information. He hadn’t given her any about them, if it came to that. They’d focused on love talk and flirtation.

    She had every confidence that Meachum could and would manipulate the avalanche of data he’d collected on her, though.

    Anka would know when they sent her why they’d sent her. He was no fool, regardless of what they seemed to think.

    It made her sick to her stomach to realize that he would instantly figure it out and think she’d agreed to it and sicker to accept that she wouldn’t be able to even try to convince him it wasn’t true. They weren’t going to simply turn her lose now that they had her on a leash. She would be watched, constantly monitored.

    After a few days it dawned on her that her period hadn’t presented and she had another problem. Tell them? Or let them find out when and if the baby reached a point in development where it was unmistakable?

    They wouldn’t consider aborting it, she realized, even if they knew something was wrong with it. They’d be hopeful the baby would give them an even stronger hold on her, possibility even make it easier to manipulate Anka.

    As if!

    Most of the time they judged everybody by themselves, a mistake since politicians were like a different species. The rest of the time they ‘fantasized’. She sure as hell couldn’t picture that bastard Meachum getting all starry eyed about having a baby on the way by his lover!

    It occurred to her, though, that it was the baby’s best chance and the sooner she left the better. No one knew what the effects of micro-gravity might be on a fetus, even if it was off-set by fake gravity, because no one had wanted to find out. In any case, breeding was quickly becoming socially unacceptable given the problems they were already facing. Instead of congratulating expectant parents, people had begun to glare at them at the very least and often heckle or lecture them about their lack of consideration.

    If the baby had been completely human it wouldn’t have gotten a warm welcome on planet Earth. Being only half, assuming it made it to term, would make it and her a pariah.

    So she didn’t really have a choice on two counts.

    She felt a brief spurt of rebelliousness, but it died a quick death. She had nowhere to escape to. Still trying to figure out what she was going to do once she got to Venus, Sybil packed her belongings. She almost hoped Anka would ignore her. As crushing as that was bound to be, it would make her life easier. She couldn’t spy on him if he didn’t come near her.

* * * *

    The sheer terror slowly faded as Anka watched the moon glide smoothly into the orbit they’d calculated for it. The cold sweat that had broke from his pores while he watched the mass of rock and ice rocket toward the planet they had already invested so much in dried.

    A ragged cheer went up from the crew members at the consoles monitoring the orbital insertion.

    Anka allowed them a few moments to expel some of their own anxieties in a burst of celebration before he called them order. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We managed to insert it. We’ll need a careful watch to make sure it stays put. I want minute by minute. Any sign that it’s beginning to stray and I want to know it immediately.”

    Everyone sobered and focused on the readouts from their instruments. Anka watched the progress of their new moon for a while and finally moved to the other side of the room where the other half of the group was monitoring the planet. “What’s it looking like?”

    “We’re picking up an increase in spin. So far no new volcanic activity. No sign of stress quakes on the surface.”

    Anka nodded, relieved, allowing himself a modicum of hope. “Let’s keep a close watch. If the calculations were correct we should see a steady increase over the next twenty to thirty six hours in rotation and then stabilization.”

    He moved to a chair and settled in it. The weakness in the wake of the adrenaline rush left him feeling shaky, but as he watched the monitor and listened to the crew quoting readouts a sense of triumph slowly began to take hold.

    They’d done it! They’d feared the feat was beyond their capabilities, but he’d known they really had no choice but to try if they were ever to have a truly livable planet. The atmospheric plants could only do so much, particularly given the fact that there were still a good many active volcanoes on the planet that continued to spew gases that they had to expel.

    The sluggish rotation of the planet, though, was part of the root of the problem, creating far too much stress from the sun’s gravitational pull. If their calculations were right, the moon would give them the balance they needed to bring Venus’ nights and days to a space of time more conducive to plant and animal life.

    If they were wrong they would still have to build underground and figure out how to grow food. He didn’t particularly care for the fact that they would have to try to develop domestic animals for a protein source, but no one had yet been able to figure out the process of culturing it. Either they’d lost some of their data or it was simply beyond the skills of the scientists they had.