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Gw’oth are a most formidable species. We will need to work together.”
    â€œAnd yet you remain in your cabin.”
    Baedeker said nothing.
    Sigmund jammed his hands in his jumpsuit pockets. “At the least, share what you have concluded about the Gw’oth.”
    â€œYou already know. I expressed my views at the mission briefing.”
    Sigmund’s nostrils flared. “You’re not telling me something. Finagle, you’re not telling me
anything
.”
    Until they arrived, what more was there to tell? They could see nothing, learn nothing while in hyperspace.
    Meanwhile, he was far from home, alone among humans. “There is something I have been thinking about.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œA moon,” Baedeker said—and Sigmund jerked. Why? “Until a few years ago, when New Terra left the Fleet, it had tides. Ten every day. Now it has no tides, and the coastal ecology has been devastated.” The reek remained fresh in Baedeker’s imagination.
    Sigmund said, “Penny, my wife, is a biologist. She’s talked about theproblem. In fact, she wanted to talk to me about tidal zones, but we never got back to it.” The suspicion that was always lurking peeked out of Sigmund’s eyes. “But why talk now of a moon?”
    â€œBecause a moon is the answer,” Baedeker said. “Give New Terra its own moon and it regains some tides.”
    â€œGive New Terra its own moon. I should have thought of that. Doubtless the Outsiders are eager to give us a planetary drive.”
    The sarcasm was unmistakable—long after they were dead and forgotten, the Concordance would still be paying the Outsiders the price of the Fleet’s drives—but Baedeker saw something more. Sigmund truly was interested. And Sigmund’s government ministry must control a
lot
of resources.
    â€œI have been thinking,” Baedeker began cautiously. “Maybe I can build such drives.”
    Â 
    NOT EVEN A CITIZEN can wallow forever in fear.
    Citizens were social creatures. Humans were not of the herd, but Baedeker had lived among humans long enough for them to have become familiar. He could talk with them. And so, with
Don Quixote
still ten days from its destination, he left the sterile confines of his tiny cabin.
    Emerging during the night shift, he was typically faces to face with only one human at a time. Dealing with all at once could wait arrival at their destination. Most often he saw Kirsten. She seemed not to sleep much.
    â€œMothers learn to get by without much sleep,” she had explained more than once.
    Would he ever experience parenting? Perhaps, if he returned to Hearth. Nothing prevented him—except him. He had seen how power was wielded by those who led from behind. It was ugly and self-serving. No, it was better to take more time, to forget.
    Which begged the question: How much more would he need to forget after this mad adventure?
    Â 
    ONCE MORE , Baedeker circled the corridors of
Don Quixote
with Kirsten. She had a quick mind and a good heart, and she had taken it upon herself to look after the interests of the Gw’oth.
    The more she spoke of them, the more foolish her advocacy seemed.
    Few on Hearth knew anything of the Gw’oth, and for good reason.The sea creatures were too scary to reveal to the public. Baedeker was in the small minority, one of the technologists asked to assess the implausible findings of the
Explorer
expedition. Only everything Nessus had reported was true! The Gw’oth had, incredibly, advanced from fire to fission in two generations.
    No one ever told Baedeker the Fleet had veered to give the Gw’oth a wider berth. No one had had to. The nanotech process by which General Products built its hulls was sensitive to the slightest of perturbations. Soon after
Explorer
returned, transient gravitational ripples had disrupted production in the orbiting microgravity factory. Ripples such as a planetary