Gazing into the gloom that stretched behind him, I saw several rows of seats occupied by rucksacks. Next to each was a shaven head, bowed in concentration.

I stopped so hard that my pack’s momentum nearly knocked me over. My mind said, boy, did you ever get on the wrong coach, idiot! and my legs tried to get me out of there before the driver could close the door and pull out.

Then I recalled that the driver had greeted me by name and told me to come aboard.

I glanced at Sammann, who adopted a sort of long-suffering expression that only an Ita could really pull off, and shrugged.

So I swung my pack down into an empty row and took a seat. Just before I sat down, I scanned the faces of the Valers. They were Fraa Osa, the FAE; Suur Vay, the one who’d sewn me back together with fishing line; Suur Esma, the one who had danced across the plaza in Mahsht, charging the sniper; and Fraa Gratho, the one who had placed his body between me and the Gheeth leader’s gun and later disarmed him.

I sat motionless for a while, wondering how to get ready for whatever was to come, wishing it would just start.

Next on the coach was Jesry. He saw what I had seen. In his face I thought I read some of the same emotions, but less so; he’d already been picked to go to space, he was probably expecting something like this. As he walked past me, he socked me on the shoulder. “Good to be with you,” he said, “there is no one I would rather be vaporized with, my fraa.”

“You’re getting your wish,” I said, recalling the talk we’d had at Apert.

“More of it than I wished for,” he returned, and banged down into the seat across the aisle from me.

A few minutes later we were joined by Fraa Jad, who sat alone behind the officers. He nodded to me, and I nodded back; but once he had made himself comfortable, the Valers came up the aisle one by one to introduce themselves to him and to pay their respects.

A young female Ita came in, followed by a very old male one. They stood around Sammann for a few minutes, reciting numbers to one another. I fancied that we were going to have three Ita in our cell, but then the two visitors walked off the coach and we did not see them again.

When Fraa Arsibalt arrived, he stood at the head of the aisle, next to the driver, and considered fleeing for a good half-minute. Finally he drew an enormous breath, as if trying to suck every last bit of air out of the coach, and marched stolidly up the aisle, taking a seat behind Jesry. “I had damned well better get my own stained-glass window for this.”

“Maybe you’ll get an Order—or a concent,” I proposed.

“Yes, maybe—if such things continue to exist by the time the Advent is finished.”

“Come off it, we are the Hylaean Theoric World of these people!” I said. “How can they possibly destroy us?”

“By getting us to destroy ourselves.”

“That’s it,” said Jesry. “You, Arsibalt, just appointed yourself the morale officer for Cell 317.”

Jesry didn’t understand some of the remarks that Arsibalt and I had exchanged, and so we set about explaining what had happened at messal. In the middle of this, Jules Verne Durand came aboard, hung all about with a motley kit of bags, bottles, and baskets. His presence in the cell must have been a last-minute improvisation; Ala couldn’t have planned on him. He looked slightly aghast for a minute, then—if I read his face right—cheered up. “My namesake would be unspeakably proud!” he announced, and walked the full length of the aisle, introducing himself as Jules to each member of Cell 317 in turn. “I shall be pleased to starve to death in such company!”

“That alien must have some namesake!” Jesry muttered after Jules had passed us.

“My friend, I’ll tell you all about him during the adventures that are to come!” said Jules, who had overheard; Laterran ears were pretty sharp, apparently.

“Ten down, one to go,” called the driver to someone who was evidently standing at the base of the steps.

“All right,” said a familiar voice, “let’s go!” Lio bounded up onto the coach. The door hissed shut behind him and we began to move. Lio, like Jules before him, worked his way down the aisle, somehow maintaining his balance even as the coach banked and jounced over rough ground. Those unknown to him got handshakes. Edharian clock-winders got spine-cracking hugs. Valers got bows—though I noticed that even Fraa Osa bowed more formally, more deeply, to Lio than Lio to him. This was my first clue that Lio was our cell leader.

We were at the aerodrome in twenty minutes. The escort of military police vehicles really helped speed up the trip. No hassles about tickets or security; we drove through a guarded gate right onto the taxiway and pulled up next to a fixed-wing military aerocraft, capable of carrying just about anything, but rigged for passengers tonight. The officers at the head of the coach were its flight crew. We filed out, crossed ten paces of open pavement, and clambered up a rolling stair onto the craft. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad. Most of all, I wasn’t surprised. I saw Ala’s logic perfectly: once she had accepted that she was making the “terrible decision,” the only way forward was really to make it—to take it all the way. To put all of her favorite people together. The risk was greater for her—the risk, that is, that we’d all be lost, and she’d spend the rest of her life knowing she’d been responsible for it. But the risk, for each of us individually, was less, because we could help one another through it. And if we died, we’d die in good company.

“Is there a way to send a message to Suur Ala?” I asked Sammann, after we’d all claimed seats, and the engines had revved up enough to mask my voice. “I want to tell her that she was right.”

“Consider it done,” said Sammann. “Is there anything else—as long as I have a channel open?”

I considered it. There was much I could—should—have said. “Is it a private channel?” I asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he pointed out.

“No,” I said, “nothing further.”

Sammann shrugged and turned to his jeejah. The craft lunged forward. I fell into a seat, groped in the dark for the cold buckles, and strapped myself in.

Red light woke me, or kept me from sleeping in the first place. It was not the clear, cold blood-red of warnings and emergencies, but pink/orange, warm, diffuse. It was coming in through the windows of the aerocraft, which were few and tiny. I unbuckled myself, staggered over to one—for I’d lain wrong, and my limbs were tingling and floppy—and squinted out at a spectacular dawn above the same ice-scape I’d recently traversed on a sledge.

For a confused minute I fancied we might, for some reason, be headed back to Ecba. But I had no success matching the mountain ranges and glaciers below against those I recollected. Out of habit I looked for Sammann, hoping he could conjure up a map. But he was huddled with Jules Verne Durand. Both were wearing headsets. Sammann just listened. Jules alternated between listening and speaking, but he did a lot more of the latter. Sometimes he’d sketch on Sammann’s jeejah, and Sammann would transmit the image.

I found myself irked. The Laterran’s presence in Cell 317 had seemed like a medal pinned on our chests. Through him we would know things, be capable of deeds, beyond all other cells. But I hadn’t bargained on the wireless link to the Reticulum that would make him fair game for any Panjandrum who was feeling curious about something. They were pumping him dry before he was rendered useless by inanition. I couldn’t hear a word because of the noise of the plane, but I could tell he’d been at it for a while, and that he was tired, groping for words, doubling back midsentence to repair conjugations. Orth was a murderously difficult language and I thought it a kind of miracle that Jules spoke it as well as he did, having practiced it for only a couple of years (which, we’d calculated, was about how long the Geometers had been in a position to receive signals from Arbre). Either Laterrans were smarter than we, or he was prodigiously gifted.