Chapter Seventeen

A MATTER OF CHOICE

Truth be told, Oskar DeSilvo did not know whether to be grateful to, or angry at, the two adventurers. Even on the morning after their return, he was not sure. On the plus side, of course, their disappearance had provided an ironclad excuse for him to delay his speech a little bit longer. And, unquestionably, Yuri Sparten had played right into his hands. Now Sparten would want, desperately want, to support the plan DeSilvo had in mind.

On the minus side, their little jaunt had demonstrated that he did not have the base anywhere near as organized or controlled as he had allowed them to believe.

Their departure had been discovered almost at once, of course, and Koffield and the others had all demanded that DeSilvo tell where they were—assuming, perhaps understandably, that he would know.

DeSilvo, however, didnot know. But, once queried, his ArtInts’ reports were enough, more than enough, to tell DeSilvo where the two had gone. Overcoming his own instinct for secrecy in all things, DeSilvo had even passed the information on to Koffield—via intercom. For DeSilvo had elected to keep himself in seclusion as much as possible for as long as possible. He was not used to people. Not yet. Dealing with their moods, their emotions, their reactions—dealing with theirhatred of him, hatred he knew he had done much to earn—it was all more than he could handle.

But today, now, at last, he wouldhave to handle it, confront it, force his way past it. Today was the day that he would have to tell them. Today was the day he would reveal his plans. Today, the schemes he had started to shape more than a hundred years before would be accepted—or laughed out of existence.

But there was one last arrangement to make. There were two players in the game who might well listen more sympathetically if they knew certain things ahead of time. A bit of theater, a bit of drama, and perhaps two enemies could be pushed along, if not into friendship, at least toward friendly neutrality.

 

At first Captain Marquez was tempted to tell DeSilvo what he could do with his request for a private conference in the cargo center, especially as he was also requested to drag Sparten along. On reflection, however, he concluded that there were already enough feuds and arguments and mortal insults going back and forth to keep them all busy enough for quite some time to come.

And both his pride and his curiosity were piqued by the invitation. Not one but two of them had been asked. That confused Marquez. If it was some bit of punishment DeSilvo wanted to inflict, or if he wanted to lecture the malefactors in the presence of their captain, why hadn’t DeSilvo asked for Norla Chandray as well? She was the senior officer of the two miscreants. If it was a question of discipline, then she ought to bemore involved than Sparten, not less. And if itwasn’t a question of discipline, then why ask for Sparten and himself? But DeSilvo offered no explanation for why he wanted a conference with them, particularly. The location DeSilvo had chosen was likewise intriguing. Why the cargo transfer center? He decided to go.

At 1000 hours the next morning, Marquez escorted the prisoner down to the cargo center with as much bad grace as he could muster. While there wouldn’t be much point in his aggravating DeSilvo, he had no such view concerning Sparten. The kid—and Marquez had come to think of Yuri as just a kid—had caused nothing but trouble for everyone. Always for good and noble reasons, always high-minded, never for his own benefit—and always trouble. Marquez didn’t literally pull Sparten along by his earlobe, but he more or less imagined himself doing so.

In reality, both men walked to the lift and rode down in dignified silence, but Marquez entertained himself by thinking up all the hard-edged, biting comments he could have made to Sparten. Sparten, meantime, was scowling straight ahead at the lift door. At a guess, he was thinking of all the acid remarks he didn’t dare make to Marquez.

The lift doors opened, dissipating the angry silence, and the two men stepped out into the cold darkness of the massive chamber. The aircar Sparten and Chandray had used was still parked just inside the airlock entrance.

But it was the sight of the world outside, visible through the viewport by the airlock, that drew their attention. DeSilvo was standing by the viewport, watching the show. His earthmoving robots were hard at work, burying the outer wall of the cargo center. “Good morning to you both,” DeSilvo said, glancing at them over his shoulder before returning his attention to the bustling activity outside. “I wanted you both to see that this—you especially, Mr. Sparten.”

“I see it,” Sparten said. “I understand. You don’t want us to get out again. You’re burying us all alive to make sure we know this is supposed to be a prison.”

“On the contrary,” DeSilvo replied, turning his back on the window and looking straight at Sparten. “It was never my intention to hold anyone here against his or her will. I wanted you to come here and see that that is still true.”

Marquez was watching DeSilvo’s face carefully as the man spoke. DeSilvo was solemn, sincere, respectful—but Marquez had not the slightest doubt the man was lying. And yet, at the same time, Marquez felt quite sure thatSparten believed DeSilvo—for the show of sincerity was only intended for the younger man, aimed at him; it was alsotuned for him. DeSilvo was so focused on Sparten that it almost seemed he wasn’t even aware that Marquez was there. “Come,” said DeSilvo, taking the young man by the arm. “Look. I very much want you to see this.”

It wasn’t just the words, but the way DeSilvo said them, the tone of his voice, the gentle way he touched Sparten and guided him along. Sparten, plainly baffled, allowed himself to be led toward the viewport. All his anger suddenly seemed to have nowhere to go. Marquez could almost see that cloud of rage evaporating, fading away to nothing.

Marquez followed along behind, watching the interplay between the other two as much as he was looking at the scene outside. It seemed plain to Marquez that DeSilvo must have begun to remember some of his old politicking skills.

“Yes, Mr. Sparten, we are burying ourselves alive. We can, after all, expect that, sooner or later, someone from the Solar System will follow you. That was inevitable from the first. So we must hide—but that does not mean that we must imprison ourselves. Look out there. See for yourself.”

Marquez saw it too. A huge reinforced concrete pipe, about three meters high and thirty meters long, jutted out from the side of the station, just to the left of the viewport.

“That tunnel section was just installed this morning. It butts up against the exterior door of the cargo lock,” said DeSilvo. “The earthmover robots will bury it at the same time they cover this part of the station—but the far end of the tunnel will remain open. You’ll always have a way out. We will of course cover over and camouflage the tunnel exit, but we’ll be able to come and go at will.”

“Good,” said Sparten, plainly wanting to be convinced but not quite there yet. “That’s something, I admit.” He stood up close to the viewport and watched the robots working. “But you know where I want to go,” he said, still looking straight ahead.

“Oh, yes, of course,” DeSilvo said with a smile. “I was very interested to see your pictures of it. Would you like to see mine?”

Sparten turned suddenly and looked at DeSilvo in surprise. “What?When did—what do you mean?”

“Come this way,” DeSilvo said. “We’ll need a lot of space to see these properly. That was another reason I wanted to meet with you down here.”

Sparten, plainly intrigued, followed. Marquez trailed along behind, having the distinct impression that he had been forgotten.

There was a highly sophisticated holographic projector sitting in the exact center of a large open space, right in the middle of the cargo center. Judging by how much hardware was shoved up along the walls of the compartment, and the fresh-looking tracks and scratches on the floor, a lot of gear had been cleared away quite recently in order to make room.

DeSilvo went to the projector’s controls and set to work. “This is what you brought to show me,” he said. A view panel appeared over their heads, a holographic projection of two-dee images—a virtual viewscreen, floating in midair.

DeSilvo brought up playback of a few moments of the images Sparten had recorded—jerky, sometimes blurry two-dimensional video images of the windmills, the solar arrays, and the three figures pointing up into the sky toward the camera, moving toward it. The video ended, looped back to the beginning, and started again.

The quality shifted back and forth between marginally acceptable and dreadful. The best that could be said of the images was that they existed. But they did the job; they proved that Last Chance was there and that people still lived there. It was plain to see on Sparten’s face that he was pleased and proud of what he had accomplished.

“And here,” DeSilvo said, “is what I can show you—part of it, at any event.” Sparten’s video froze on a blurred two-dimensional image of the solar power array, the central structure behind it, and the three figures pointing toward the camera.

Then the virtual view panel started to grow translucent. A three-dimensional projection of the same spot, adjusted to match the perspective of Sparten’s video, bloomed up all around it. The two images remained there for a moment, overlaid with each other, and then Sparten’s images faded away, quite literally a pale shadow of what appeared in their place.

A full three-dimensional schematic of the underground facilities appeared, the point of view pulling back to expose the vast expanse of the place. Level upon level of underground tunnels, chambers, compartments, and workshops came into view. Plumbing, wiring, ventilation diagrams appeared, overlaying themselves on the displays. Statistics popped up: current population: 567. Trend line: declining approx 2 percent per decade. Average age: 34.2 standard years. Life expectancy: 58.3, trend line flat. Power grid output: 42.3 percent rated capacity, trend line projecting down average 1 percent per Solacian year, rate accelerating. Food production per capita: marginal-sustainable, trend line down. Life support: air/heat/light/water: good; trend line flat.

DeSilvo smiled, and gestured upward. “The people of Last Chance Canyon—Canyon City, as they usually call it. If you had merely waited a day or two longer, you would have learned all about them, in greater detail, and at far less risk, than was the case.”

A list of names, along with images of faces, appeared off to one side, and started to scroll past. James Ruthan Verlant IV, age 47 and looking fifteen years older. James Ruthan Verlant V, age 24, a thick scar across the right cheek marring his youthful appearance. James Ruthan Verlant VI (deceased, age 4), with a picture of a smiling boy who would smile no more. And, heartbreakingly, James Ruthan Verlant VII, brother to the dead child, age 2, health reported as frail. Other names trailed past, over and over again—Helen Gahan Derglas V, VI, VII, and VIII, a run of Yuri Tamarovs, a sequence of Boland Xavier Sheltes.

“They stick with it, whatever it is,” DeSilvo said quietly. “Look at the records. The names tell you that. If a child dies, the next child of that gender takes the same name, and if that one dies, the next, and the next, until one survives. They do that with everything—fighting on and on until they succeed, no matter what.”

“How the hell did you get all this?” Marquez demanded. “You must have tapped in to all their records.”

“Yes, obviously. You did one flyover,” DeSilvo said. “I sent in a whole fleet of nanoscouts, the same day you landed on Glister.” He reached into his cloak and pulled out an object. It was the size and shape of a large egg. He tossed it into the air. It promptly sprouted a levitator and hovered in midair. “That’s the delivery system. It gets inside and drops a hundred nanoscouts. They do visual recon, scan the data systems, and transmit back. The units I sent to Canyon City have all stopped sending. Probably our friends found a few of them, realized outsiders were taking an interest, then tracked down and destroyed the rest. In other words, they were warned. That’s why they were ready to take a potshot at you. That I didn’t anticipate, of course, or I would have warned you off. But no harm done, fortunately, and otherwise all to the good.”

“Why is their shooting at us good?” Sparten asked.

“It’s not the shooting,” DeSilvo said. “It’s the knowing that we’re there to be shot at.We want them to know we’re around.”

“Why?” Marquez asked, in as pointed a tone of voice as he could manage. “Why do we want to scare these people? Whatever they do about it is going to use up resources and effort they just plain can’t afford.”

“They will gain a great deal more than they lose, I promise you,” said DeSilvo. “We will gain as well.”

“How?” Marquez asked.

“That is what I brought you both here to explain,” DeSilvo said. “We need them almost as much they need us. I was most glad to find them.”

“You wentlooking for them?”

DeSilvo nodded. “As soon as theDom Pedro IV arrived and I emerged from temporal confinement.”

“But that’s seven hundred kilometers from here!” Marquez protested. “How the hell did you find them?”

“Before I entered temporal confinement over a hundred years ago, I searched the terrain and identified about twenty good potential sites for diehard colonies. My probes checked them all again when I emerged from temporal confinement—and there was Last Chance.”

“Hold it,” Marquez objected. “Why doyou needthem ?”

DeSilvo gestured back toward the viewport and the earthmoving machinery at work beyond. “My machines are burying this base. Other robots are at work on a concealment plan that goes much further than burying the station. There is also a deception operation, and, Mr. Sparten, your friends at Last Chance Canyon are very much a part of it—as is theDom Pedro IV . That is why you are here, Captain.”

Marquez struggled to hold on to his temper. “Please stop talking in riddles and just tell us what’s going on.”

“I was about to. It goes back to the fact that I had to draw you all here. To do so required that I leave clues that pointed this way. It seemed almost inevitable that, somewhere along the line, your group’s activities would draw the attention of the authorities, or that the authorities would find some way to monitor you.”

Marquez just barely resisted the temptation to glare at Sparten.For example, by planting a spy on your ship . But best to leave that be for the time being. “Go on,” he said.

“It seemed—and seems—very likely to me that the authorities, in one form or another, would be able to follow the same clues as you did and come here as well.”

Marquez nodded. “Yeah. The admiral even wondered if they’d get here first.”

“Fortunately, they did not. I had contingency plans for that circumstance as well, but I must confess that even I had little confidence in them. Based on what you all have told me about your adventures, and what I know of how the Chronologic Patrol works, I would venture a guess that we have a few weeks, possibly longer—but there is no point taking chances. Burying this station, concealing it, is only part of the plan. The main idea is to let them find what they are looking for—somewhere else. They will find the Last Chancers picking through the rubble of this station—or what appears to be this station—about a thousand kilometers from here, well to the south of Last Chance Canyon.

“The Last Chancers will tell them they detected a large explosion, investigated, and found a large facility full of odd equipment, much of which was wrecked or buried by the explosion. The Last Chancers will also find a large store of supplies that survived the explosion. In the process of salvaging them, the Last Chancers will so muddle the evidence of the explosion that it will be all but impossible to do a full forensic examination of the site—if and when the Last Chancers allow the investigators to get near their treasure trove.

“That is what they will find on the surface. In space, Captain Marquez, I regret to say they will find the shattered wreckage of theDom Pedro IV .”

“What!” Marquez was standing three or four meters in front of DeSilvo, still looking up and ahead at the simulation. He spun around and took a step or two toward DeSilvo, reached out to grab him. “You wrecked my ship! You miserable—”

DeSilvo held up his hand for silence. “That is whatthey will find,” he said. “Whatyou will find, Captain Marquez, is that the newly refurbishedDom Pedro IV has become the fastest ship in Settled Space.” He pressed a key on his control panel, and the view of Last Chance Canyon vanished. Marquez looked up and saw—his ship reborn. The image of theDom Pedro took up half the interior of the cargo center, ten meters long at least. The image was brilliant, gleaming, razor-sharp, real enough that it took an act of conscious will to know that the ship itself wasn’t there, floating a few hundred meters away in the darkness.

He swore under his breath. TheDom Pedro IV had undergone a full refit before departing Solace—but that was no more than a new paint job compared to the transformation DeSilvo’s robots had wrought.

“It is the used, worn, and obsolete parts stripped from theDom Pedro IV, complete with identifiable serial numbers and so on, that will provide the wreckage for them to find. So, as you can see, if—or I should saywhen —your pursuers show up, Last Chance Canyon and theDom Pedro IV will play a big part in convincing them that they have found what they were looking for, without any need for their disturbing us.

“Unless we are very unlucky indeed, your pursuers will see that ship wreckage in orbit, find the destroyed base on the planet, and hear the probably vague, unclear, and contradictory testimony of the Last Chancers. They will conclude that an aircar from theDom Pedro IV overflew Last Chance while looking for my base of operations. Shortly thereafter, the ship found my base, and blew it up, but I managed to revenge myself on theDom Pedro IV, destroying it with a missile launched just before the explosion. I will of course launch that missile from my decoy site, on a trajectory that overflies Last Chance, and there will of course be a suitable explosion in space that will in fact leave blast damage on the old bits of theDom Pedro IV we will leave behind.”

“‘Leave behind?’ ”Marquez echoed. “We’re going somewhere?” But his mind was not on the question. He was too busy staring at the ship,his ship, seeing what had been done to her, for her.

DeSilvo answered the questions that his eyes were asking and not the one he spoke out loud. Each system lit up as he mentioned it, portions of the ship’s hull fading to translucency to reveal each subsystem in turn.

“Virtually all of the outer hull was replaced with a lighter and stronger composite. Two new auxiliary craft replace the pair destroyed as you departed Mars. The aux ships are three or four design generations ahead of what you had. Improved navigation system, better power management, a rebuilt temporal confinement system that will draw less power, various improvements to the life-support systems. And the cryogenic canisters, and all the plumbing for them—gone. Completely removed.”

“But the cryocans were the backup in case the temporal confinement system failed.”

“Ah, but it’s the temporal confinement that’s the backup now,” DeSilvo replied. “There just in case you do need to make a timeshaft run—just in case the main system fails. The FTL system.”

Marquez nodded absently, scarcely aware of anything but the ship that hung in the gleaming darkness. “The toroids?” he asked. TheDom Pedro was a long, lean cylinder—but now three rings encircled the hull, perpendicular to her long axis. There was one ring at each end and one amidships. A dozen slender spokes held each ring in place. TheDom Pedro IV was the axle, and the three rings were three wheels centered on that axle.

“Exactly. The toroids are the external foci for the FTL field generators. In fact, the FTL generators are in the same deck space that once held the cryocans.”

“They’d never make it through a timeshaft,” Marquez objected. “Tidal stresses would tear them to shreds.”

“True. You’d have to jettison them before making a run through a timeshaft. I’d suggest doing it well before the run, or else the Chrono Patrol ships on station might be tempted to ask some questions. But I doubt that will ever come up. Barring disaster, theDom Pedro IV will never traverse another timeshaft. She won’t need to. Why should she, when now she can make the crossing from Glister to Solace in eight days? From Solace to Earth in something between a month and five weeks. That’s direct, no timeshafts, no eighty years in temporal confinement for the hull. Just a few weeks of straight-line travel, at an aggregate power cost per light-year of about a tenth what it would be via timeshaft.”

To Marquez, who had spent uncounted decades in cold storage or temporal confinement, the offer was downright irresistible. He would have paid any price for such a gift, and here it was not merely being offered to him, butforced upon him.

So what’s the catch?some cynical, subterranean bit of his mind wanted to know.Whatever it is, who cares? I’ll take it. I’ll do it. But even as he was being used, led, manipulated—even as heknew he was being manipulated—Marquez could see, even admire, how carefully DeSilvo had planned the thing, down to the tiniest detail, even down to DeSilvo’s aiming the holoprojections so that the viewer’s natural inclination would be to stand in front of DeSilvo and look up—putting Marquez’s back to DeSilvo and the control panel between Marquez and DeSilvo. That right there had been enough to slow Marquez down, just long enough for DeSilvo to do some fast talking and keep Marquez from tearing his head off.

And then there was the bait itself—the fastest ship in Settled Space! Hell’s bells, the fastest ship in the galaxy! “But I’ll never get to fly it,” he objected. “The first port of call I come to, the Chrono Patrol will seize the ship, lock me up, and throw away the key.”

“They’d have to catch you first,” said DeSilvo. “And the Chronologic Patrol is a cat who has spent so long watching mouseholes that she’s forgotten how to hunt. They stand guard over the timeshafts—the one place you’ll never have to go. Arrive in a system, keep theDom Pedro IV out of sight, send in the aux craft to ferry cargo and supplies back and forth, and then be on your way. That is, if you’re still a freighter captain. Are you?Can you go back to such a quiet life after all you’ve seen and done?”

Marquez stared up at the wondrous ship and did not answer for a moment. DeSilvo had a point, damn him. Things had changed for him, had changedhim . He was moving on a larger stage, dealing in far larger questions than how much cargo he could haul. And yet—and yet—if his power costs werethat much lower, and he was movingthat much faster—there was no telling the profits he could make! He could be rich.If you have the sense to quit before you get caught, he reminded himself. He, Marquez, could tell at a glance that theDP-IV could no longer traverse a timeshaft. So too could others. It would take little thought to realize that a ship that could not use the timeshafts, and yet still arrived after only a few days or weeks of transit, must have some fairly interesting means of propulsion.

He would have to keep her out of sight, far away from inhabited worlds and stations. The need for security would make arranging for maintenance tricky as well. He would have to trust his crew absolutely—and carrying passengers would be right out.

He would be forced to take on every high-risk, no-questions-asked deal that came his way. And sooner or later, either he would have to quit while his luck still held, or else he would get caught. And Marquez knew enough about his own character, about what would tempt him and what would not, to know that the odds were against his quitting while he was ahead.

No, he could not go back to being a trader, a freighter captain. Not if he was piloting the only FTL starship in Settled Space. But if he knew that, DeSilvo must know it too, must know that his offer was impossible. And besides, there was another thing. When—not if, when—Marquez did get caught, the authorities would examine the ship, the ship’s log, the ship’s crew—and the ship’s captain. They were not likely to be gentle about it. One way or another—probably a very unpleasant way—they would learn what they wanted to know. It was highly likely, close to a certainty, that they would be able to trace the ship back to its source, to Glister—to DeSilvo. If DeSilvo set theDom Pedro IV loose on the trade lanes, he would be pointing an arrow back at himself, back to his hidden base. DeSilvo wasn’t likely to do that—and therefore his offer wasn’t realistic.

But theship . Fastest in the galaxy. Faster than light. Marquez stood looking up at the image of theDP-IV, and longed to get his hands on the controls, to see how they worked, to see what it could do, to spend days and weeks studying the manuals, learning all about it.

With a sudden flash of insight, he saw why Norla Chandray was not with them. DeSilvo had no bribe for her, nothing that she would want as much as he wanted that ship, or Sparten wanted help for Last Chance. Or did DeSilvo have temptations for them all? Was he meeting with each of them, in groups of two or three, or one-on-one when he thought that would best suit his purposes?

But still, none of that mattered. He still wanted thatship. His ship. He wanted her back, and he wanted to see what she could do. He almost—almost—didn’t care what jobs she would be doing.

All right then. DeSilvo had him. There wasn’t any point in pretending otherwise. The only question left was: How high the price?

“Okay,” he said. “You know we want what you’re offering. So what’s the deal? What do you want in return?”

DeSilvo, to give the man credit, did not play any of the games Marquez had expected. He didn’t turn coy, or pretend not to understand.

Instead, DeSilvo nodded and shut down the holographic projector. The shining image of the rebornDom Pedro IV faded away to nothing. “In a sense—but only in a sense—I want nothing at all from either of you. If I am allowed to do precisely what I want to do, I will, as a direct result, give you both what you very much want. I brought you here to warn you that youwon’t get what you want if I am thwarted.” DeSilvo held up his hand to stop their protests before they could begin. “That is not a threat, or a demand. But it is a fact. You have seen my resources—they are vast. But they are limited, and they are vulnerable to detection and attack. I will use both the Last Chancers and the removed sections of theDom Pedro IV as part of the deception plan I have described—once my larger plan goes into operation. I will need theDom Pedro IV, or a ship with her new capabilities, to make that larger plan happen. I might add that equipping a ship the size of theDom Pedro IV for FTL required the use of nearly every FTL generator I have available. I had to strip gear from just about every other FTL-equipped craft I had. I have no regrets on that score. TheDom Pedro IV is by far the best choice from the available spacecraft, for many reasons. She will need a captain, and a crew—and I of course turn to you.

“But I cannot afford to expend my resources, or risk them, unless I advance my own plans by so doing. If I aid the Last Chancers, there is a chance they will track me back and take everything I have—and wreck plans that will save far more lives than we could save by aiding them. Their law is—and for their sake, must be—survival first and above all. If their leader judged the best way to keep his people alive was to kill us all and take over this base, rest assured, Mr. Sparten, he would do it. They are a noble people, a courageous people—and a desperate people. They are wolves, hungry wolves—and there is great danger in throwing meat to starving predators. I will not take that risk unless it advances my cause.

“Nor can I afford to give away the ship that would best serve my purposes. And, forgive me, Captain Marquez, but I think you saw through my rather insincere suggestion that you return to your former work as commander of a freighter. I think you can see why it could not work—and why I could not permit it.”

“I do see,” Marquez said. “But it’s all right. I don’t think I’d be suited for that line of work anymore anyway.”

“No. No, you would not be suited. Your horizons have been widened too far. You wouldn’t do much of a job buying or selling—your mind would be on much larger matters.”

“I agree,” said Marquez. “But where does that leave us?”

“Right where we were, with the facts in front of us,” DeSilvo said. “That is all I had to say. I offer no deal, suggest no quid pro quo, and ask nothing of you. If my plan is accepted, you will get what you want, as part and parcel of my plan. If it is rejected, if your people will not help, then I cannot afford, cannot risk, to do any of it. I will have to husband my resources, conserve everything, and search harder for a way forward, a way that I can act without help—though I frankly admit that right now I can’t imagine how.”

“What—what will happen to us?” Yuri Sparten asked, speaking for the first time in a long while. “If we don’t do what you ask, if we don’t help with, with whatever it is—what happens to us? You just said you wouldn’t, couldn’t, let Captain Marquez take theDom Pedro IV back. And you couldn’t afford the risk of our talking, voluntarily—or ah, otherwise.”

Marquez frowned. That angle he had not considered.

“All true,” said DeSilvo. “I won’t kill you. I promise that. Perhaps the simplest answer, for those who would be willing, would be to put you in temporal confinement here until such time as it wouldn’t really matter if you talked. Or perhaps put you aboard a slowboat bound for Earth on a long enough trajectory that it wouldn’t matter. It would have to be Earth, of course. By the time it would be safe for you to emerge, I doubt many other worlds would be worth visiting. Or, of course, you could stay here.”

“Here in DeSilvo City?” Sparten asked.

“So long as you did not interfere with the work you refused to assist. Certainly. Why not? I would appreciate the human contact, even without the help. But if you did not wish to stay, or it became clear you could not be trusted to stay—I don’t know. But, if it came to that . . .”

DeSilvo pointed to the airlock, and the frozen hell beyond, and the big machines out in that hell, working to shovel dirt and gravel up over the station. “If it comes to that, Mr. Sparten, it’s as I said before. You’ll always have a way out.”