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He gazed at her efforts in that peculiar, careful way that males do when you call their attention to something you want them to admire. “It is quieter,” he agreed, peering between the divider and the wall, looking almost disappointed that he’d lost his full view of New Earth. From what he had just told her, he probably was.

With deference, he pulled out her chair. “Please, sit.” His formality was endearing, the way he acted like such a gentleman around her. Chivalry had become a dying art on Earth.

Then, holding his own floating chair in place, he sat, releasing a breath when he was finally settled. He was strong, athletic, but today he moved like an old man.

“What happened? Were you hurt?” she asked.

“I spent the day in medical. My ribs had to be broken and reset.”

Uh, yeah
. “Thanks to me.”

He read the translator. His expression didn’t change. But then, it rarely did. “A hazard of the job,” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was goading her or not. “No need to worry, however. It was a minor procedure. Just time-consuming.” He pointed to his abdomen. The gray-blue fabric stretched across his chest. It wasn’t hard to imagine the hard body he kept hidden beneath his uniform. “The medics forced me to lie prone for two full thirds of the shipboard day to make sure the bones fused to their liking.” He took a deep breath as if to prove he was fit for duty. He didn’t need to prove anything to her; the evidence was clear.

She swiped her Earth-made clipboard and pen off the table, trying to focus on the list she’d made. It was tough to decide what made her more uncomfortable, knowing that she was responsible for his injuries, or that she’d bothered to admire his male attributes in the depths of grief. “Okay. Next item on the list,” she said a little too sharply. “The people who are eating enough to care have complained about the food. It’s bland. Tasteless.” She put down the clipboard. “I understand if you’re worried about allergic reactions after what happened with the sedative gas, and I’m grateful, but this food—some of it tastes almost synthetic.” She remembered trying the white patties mixed with rubbery purple flecks that had stuck to the roof of her mouth like sunflower seeds mixed with peanut butter, only without the flavor—
any
flavor.

He sat back, not seeming to care that his chair bobbed like a duck on water. “Odd. We don’t switch over to synthetics until near the end of a voyage, and only if it’s a particularly long one.” He typed something into his computer. “I’ll look into it.”

Kào’s comm beeped. He exhaled impatiently and answered the call. Trist Pren, Jordan wagered. The woman
had perfect timing—ten, fifteen minutes into their appointments, she always interrupted Kào. Jordan hadn’t seen her in person since that first day, but found it interesting how she’d managed to disrupt all four of their meetings. On purpose, or not? To thwart Jordan’s efforts as leader, or coincidence? Either way, Jordan hoped to set things right between them eventually. She’d acted in self-defense the day when she’d injured Trist with the escape slide, not out of spite. She wanted Trist to know that, if the woman didn’t already.

Sure enough, the ensign appeared in the tiny, high-resolution, three-dimensional screen on Kào’s computer. If Jordan hadn’t recognized Trist by her pink skin, white hair, and unsettling red eyes, she would have by her bright lavender lips.

Jordan flipped over her translator to keep from eavesdropping on Kào’s conversation. His clipped tone said it all: Whatever he heard, he didn’t like.

Kào closed his comm and looked at her. “The rest will have to wait until tomorrow,” he said, standing with some effort. “I’ve been called away.”

He was even more reserved than usual as she walked with him to the exit, which was good—he didn’t notice the dozens of wary looks following him across Town Square.

At the doorway, he stopped and frowned down at her. “Have you informed your people of the risks of traversing the Perimeter?”

“So far only my crew. As a group we’ll brief the passengers.”

“Good,” he said sharply.

Her heart skipped a beat. “Why?”

“The vessel the commodore has been tracking reappeared. It may be independent merchants thinking they can operate without clearance—that is not uncommon. Or it may be Talagar.” He said the word with such revulsion that
it made the hairs stand up on the back of Jordan’s neck. “Likely it is a false alarm. Every ship we have encountered so far and cleared has been of Alliance registry. But I thought you should know of the development, nonetheless.” With a curt bow, he left.

She stared after him, again feeling as if she’d been dragged into someone else’s war.

It was springtime. Birdsong and the sound of laughter, Boo’s laughter, floated in the crisp, clean air. Jordan climbed down from her mount and raced her daughter across the meadow. Hands clasped, the two whirled around, making circles of trampled grass. It cushioned their fall. Above was a dome of perfect blue. The clouds floated past. Boo’s sun-warmed head was tucked between her mother’s breasts. Then there was a deep voice. Big gentle hands. This was Jordan’s lover . . . the love of her life. She threw open her arms and embraced him, too. A scratchy cheek and soft lips, warm against her neck, moving playfully lower
 . . .

A giggle woke Jordan. Her own giggle, she realized belatedly and with a good deal of private mortification. “Crap.” Her head fell back on the pillow, and she stared into the twilight of her quarters on the
Savior
. She was on a starship, untold miles from home. Yet she could still smell the flowers and green grass, and the clods of moist dirt the horses’ hooves kicked up. And the sounds—she could hear
them, too: Boo’s delighted shrieks of laughter, and another voice, a man’s voice, in a quiet, sexy, loving tone she knew instinctively he used only with her.

In her dreams, he was her lover. By day, he was Kào Vantaar-Moray, the grim mediator between her people and his.

He’d kissed her, Kào had. In the dream. And her pulse still raced from the fireworks he set off inside her.
Ay-yi-yi
. As for the psychological implications—well, she didn’t want to go there. The man was off-limits, she reminded herself. He was an officer on this ship, and she was a refugee on it.

Why, then, had he started showing up in her dreams?

She groaned, dropping her arm over her eyes. A muffled chorus seeped into her private quarters from the common area. Singing. The multidenominational prayer service had begun. Jews, Muslims, Christians, and members of a few smaller religions gathered together every morning now. Three weeks into their odyssey, they needed all the routine they could get. Pastor Earl said that routine led to ritual, and ritual comforted. Sooner or later, comfort would heal.

For her, healing still seemed a long way off.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. The handheld computer she’d stayed up too late studying slid off her stomach. She was determined to learn to read and speak Key without it. Maybe it was just her dogged sense of responsibility kicking in, driving her to stay up late cramming a new language into a mind scrambled with shock and grief. She’d soaked up Alliance history, too, until her head ached with it. But she didn’t see that she had a choice. She was in charge of this ragtag group; she had to be smart enough, aware enough, and fluent enough to communicate their needs to their rescuers, here and wherever they’d end up.

Her bare feet hit the climate-controlled floor. Warmth
worked its way up her legs. Automatically she reached for her little black date book and crossed off another day. Here on the
Savior
, there was a mind-boggling variety of technology available to tell time, but Jordan preferred the ritual of checking her Earth wristwatch and marking off the days in her pocket calendar with her ordinary Earth pen. And she’d keep doing so until one or the other failed. It was her own little ritual, using personal and familiar items from home. Somehow it had helped her to keep it together. Captains didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.

A fresh round of singing reminded her that she’d overslept. She never overslept. Hunched over, she rubbed her eyes. She was surprised that no one had come looking for her this morning.

Or likely someone had, like Natalie or Ben, and decided not to wake her. The past two weeks had been hell for her, and they knew it. Jordan had been inundated with questions, requests, demands, complaints, confessions, and hugs. Even dirty looks. The full spectrum of human need. What a change from the first week. During that horrible period, they’d asked little of her, and she’d passed on to Kào only a fraction of what information she had for him now. But in the past few days, the passengers’ veneer of shock had melted like ice cubes in hot tea. The minute Jordan stepped outside her quarters this morning she’d have to deal with it all over again. Today, tomorrow, and for as long as they were on this ship. And most likely beyond, when they settled in their new home, wherever that would be.

Her father would have told her:
Courage is accepting the challenge though it’s easier to give up
.

She got ready with the detached efficiency of a robot and stepped inside her tiny “cleansing booth.” A vaguely apple-scented wheeze signaled the start of the sterilization that passed for a shower. A waterless mist enveloped her. It was
safe to breathe, Kāo had assured her, but she tried not to. If sedative gas could cause spontaneous abortions, who knew what sanitizing mist might do?

As soon as the timed application of mist cut off, she picked through the contents of her suitcase, a small black Travelpro Rollaboard that held two days’ worth of clothing, a pair of shoes, a hair dryer that was useless now, a paperback, and a makeup bag—routinely packed items that had transformed suddenly into treasured heirlooms: Wear them out and they were gone forever. No Earth-made items would replace them. Ever. And that was still so freaking hard to imagine. . . .

Go numb
, she told herself. It worked. And it was getting easier all the time. Sometimes she wondered if forcing yourself not to feel was like crossing your eyes: You could become stuck that way. But who was to say that permanent numbness was a bad thing? Who said she had to
feel
to fulfill her responsibilities as leader?

She chose her usual outfit of jeans and a T-shirt, eternally clean from being run through a clothes sterilizer every evening. The aliens had provided all their guests with melon-colored jumpsuits, but no one wore them; they looked too much like prison outfits. Dry-brushing her hair turned it to frizz, but the vanity that caught her finger-combing gel through her blond curls seemed out of place, considering her circumstances—but she did it nonetheless. “You can’t stop treating yourself,” Natalie insisted. “Or you stop living.”

Wrestling her unruly mop into a ponytail, Jordan took a deep breath to ready herself for the onslaught of demands. She shoved her feet into white Nike slip-ons and walked from her sleeping area into the chaos of Town Square.

She found Ben sitting in the back row of floating seats at the prayer service. Her seat bounced gently as she sat, and she frowned, planting her feet on the ground. “I hate these
chairs,” she grumbled to herself. They weren’t anchored to the floor. It was an odd reason not to like a piece of furniture, but she was afraid of heights, too. Yeah. Her. Scared of heights. A pilot. She’d spent the greater part of her life explaining that one to people. She didn’t understand why everyone was so surprised to hear that. There was a difference between flying and falling. When you sat strapped into an airplane seat behind a closed window, it was nothing like peering over the edge of a tall building or climbing up, up, up the rungs of a high diving board. Her stomach turned to ice and her legs to rubber just thinking about it. Her older brother John, in his relentless teasing, told everyone that her desire to fly had been downloaded into her body by mistake, because it didn’t match anything else in her personality. He swore that somewhere there was a kindergarten teacher who looked like Chuck Yeager and hated airplanes.

John
. . . . Her heart turned over, and she stared harder at her clipboard. She had no doubt that her fire-chief brother had spent his last moments rescuing everyone he could. The thought conjured the familiar ache in her throat. Quickly she willed herself into numbness.

Awkwardly she adjusted her fanny on her chair and scooted closer to Ben. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.” He didn’t glance up from his meditation.

She closed her eyes, seeking her own. But her weak concentration was too-easily shattered by a clicking noise.

She opened an eye. Natalie was striding toward her on high-heel sandals, her multi-braided ponytail bouncing behind her. A sheaf of paper was wedged under one arm, and she’d stuck a pen behind one ear. She meant business. And there was nowhere for Jordan to run.

The flight attendant hopped onto an empty chair and glided over. In a gesture of futility, Jordan shut her eyes.

“It won’t work, hon,” Natalie said under her breath so as
not to interrupt either Father Sugimoto, the soft-spoken Hawaiian Catholic priest, or the effusive black minister they called Pastor Earl. “I saw you look at me.”

A Post-it note held delicately between two red-lacquered fingernails landed in Jordan’s lap. “I added more names,” Natalie said. “Karen Hoskins says she’s missing a gold chain. Let’s see—ah, Katherine Schlem, she wants the airplane searched for a lost earring. And Janice Bennett had a tote bag of paperbacks with her and can’t find it—says she needs to read to stay sane.”

“We all need something,” Jordan grumbled, fighting both inadequacy and irritation as she scanned the list of personal needs, all of them critical to the originators. Fifteen new requests. Yesterday’s list had thirty. And there’d be more as people came out of their shock to discover that they’d lost possessions onboard the airplane or couldn’t find items that should have been brought to New Earth when Kào’s helpers retrieved luggage from the cargo compartments.

Search airplane—PERSONALLY!
She scribbled the note into her date book. She hadn’t seen the 747 since that first day. She had no idea of its condition. Of course, an airliner was useless to them now, but she had a proprietary interest in the craft all the same. “Everything else is from yesterday, right, Nat?”