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behind the scenes, mustering crew loyalty, smoothing out Vitrovic’s orders, jollying everyone along. Leadership among the Rom was a high-wire act of cajoling, inspiring, and bluffing. Amidst all this, personal style and masculine elan bestowed subtle but powerful authority. Throw in a crisis or two, and a captain might find himself dancing in midair.
    Friends led the bereaved woman away, and Anatolly was surrounded by the clucking geese again.
    “Ship Mother asks to speak to you, sir.”
    He glared at Sandor and continued his march to hospital. He would, by God, look in on Tereza, attempted suicide or not. A failure to visit a sick crew member was just the sort of thing people would remember and hold against him—especially someone like Tereza Bertak, who was fiercely popular amongthe women for reasons that mystified him. That she was liked by the men as well was easier to understand, but rankled Janos.
    Sandor persisted, “Ship Mother wants…”
    “Yes,” the captain interrupted, “I’m sure she does.”
    They had planned their shuttle landing near a concentration of radio transmissions for the express purpose of dealing with the—natives—and now, they had met two, with disastrous results. Janos had overreacted, using too much force; though it was true one of the natives was… demented. The story of cannibalism spread instantly through Ship, further demoralizing an already traumatized crew.
    Now it was a face-off between Zoya and Janos. Each wished to be the one to travel to the nearest settlement. Janos was the obvious candidate. He was strong, with experience in command and negotiation. But Anatolly hesitated. He listened to Zoya. And Zoya said Janos must not go.
    A voice intruded: “The general meeting of the crew, Captain?” Lieutenant Andropolous was relentless.
    “No, no, and no,” Anatolly said. That shut him up, but the lieutenant acted hurt.
    Anatolly must decide, and soon, whether for Zoya or for Janos. This fellow the shuttle had encountered, the fellow on the sled who called himself Wolf: He’d been willing to talk eventually, and now they knew 100 percent more than before.
But a 100 percent of nothing is still nothing.
    Zoya’s language program had made a breakthrough, but it still took nine hours of groping before the story came together, of the so-called Ice Nuns and the underground cities, the
preserves.
As to the Ice Nuns, it was reassuring that a religious community endured—if the term denoted holy orders. On this most Catholic of ships, it came as welcome news.
    Wolf had asserted that if they wished to speak to those withauthority, that would be the Ice Nuns. And they were far away except for a few who would be present at the preserve where he was headed with the body of the snow witch that had attacked the crew As to this marauder, apparently cannibalism was common among certain outlaws—a shocking, but perhaps understandable, accommodation of ostracized individuals to the wilderness of earth. Of course, the logic of it did nothing to calm people’s alarm over this event.
    Wolf was eager to be off, and would carry a passenger. He had haggled over what he would take in payment, at first demanding pieces of the shuttle hull—the damn fool—and finally settling for a good jacket and two pairs of size thirteen boots. And while they bickered with him over price, Zoya and Janos squared off against each other over who would go, Zoya arguing for her linguistics, Janos for his leadership.
    Anatolly tugged at his jacket to straighten it before entering hospital.
    Mercifully, the flock of officers and hangers-on stayed outside, all but Sandor, his personal adjutant, without whom the captain could apparently do nothing.
    Tereza lay on the bunk, her red hair gloriously disarrayed, her face pinched. When she saw Anatolly, she began wailing.
    He turned to Kristof. “I thought you medicated her.”
    “She
is
medicated.”
    “Tereza,” Anatolly began, “Tereza my dear…”
    “You mewling