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"Thrown out," he whispered. "Thrown—out?"

The robot reached the end of a column and attached its burden thereto. Teki's attention was all on the working device; he moved off to monitor it as it cycled back through the airlock. Ethan reached back, grabbed Cee by the arm, bundled him forward, and pointed silently out the window.

Cee looked annoyed, then looked again. He stiffened, his lips parting. He stared as if his eyes might devour the distance, and the barrier. The telepath began to swear under his breath, so softly that Ethan could hardly make out the words; his hands clenched, unclenched, and splayed against the transparency.

Ethan gripped Cee's arm harder. "Is it them?" he whispered. "Could it be?"

"I can make out the Bharaputra House logo on the labels," breathed Cee. "I saw them packed."

"She must have put them out here herself," muttered Ethan. "Left no record in the computer—I bet a search would list that bin as empty. She threw them out. She really literally did throw them out. Out there."

"Could they still be all right?" asked Cee.

"Stone frozen—why not . . . ?"

They stared at each other, wild in surmise.

"We've got to tell Quinn," Ethan began.

Cee's hands clamped down over Ethan's wrists. "No!" he hissed. "She has hers. Janine—those are mine."

"Or Athos's."

"No." Cee was trembling white, his eyes blazing like blue pinwheels. "Mine."

"The two," said Ethan carefully, "need not be mutually exclusive."

In the loaded silence that followed, Cee's face flared in an exaltation of hope.

Chapter Fifteen

Home. Ethan's eye teased him as he stared eagerly through the shuttle window. Could he make out the patchwork farmlands, name cities, rivers, roads yet? Cumulus clouds were scattered over the bays and islands off the South Province coast, dappling the bright morning with shade, obscuring his certainty. But yes, there was an island the shape of a crescent moon, there the silver thread of a small river where the coastline looped.

"My father's fish farm is in that bay there," he pointed out to Terrence Cee in the seat beside him. "Just behind that crescent-shaped outer island."

Cee's blond head craned. "Yes, I see."

"Sevarin is north, and inland. The shuttleport where we'll be landing is at the capital, north one district from that. You can't see it yet."

Cee settled back in his seat, looking reflective. The first whispers of the upper atmosphere carried a hum from the shuttle's engines. A hymn, to Ethan's ears.

"Will you be getting a hero's welcome?" Cee asked Ethan.

"Oh, I doubt it. My mission was secret, after all. Not strictly, in the military sense you're familiar with, but done quietly, on account of not wanting to start a public panic or cause a crisis of confidence in the Rep Centers. Although I imagine some of the Population Council will be there. I'd like you to meet Dr. Desroches. And some of my family—I called my father from the space station, so I know he'll be waiting. I told him I was bringing a friend," Ethan added, hoping to ease Cee's obvious nervousness. "He seemed quite pleased to hear it."

He was nervous himself. How was he going to explain Cee to Janos? He had run through several hundred practice introductions in his mind, during the two-month leg of their journey from Kline Station, until he had wearied of worrying. If Janos was going to be jealous, or hard-nosed about it, let him get down to work and earn his designated alternate status. It might be just the stimulus needed to kick him into action at last; given Janos's own personal proclivities, he was unlikely to believe that Cee had shown every sign of being a prime candidate for one of the Chaste Brotherhoods. Ethan sighed.

Cee regarded his hands meditatively, and glanced up at Ethan. "And will they view you as a hero, or a traitor, in the end?"

Ethan surveyed the shuttle. His precious cargo, nine big white freezer cartons, was not consigned to the chances of the cargo hold, but strapped to the seats all around them. The only other passengers, the census statistician and his assistant and three members