Jeff snorted in derision, and Olivia glared at him.
‘So he offered to help,’ said Mitchell, ‘but what exactly did he do?’
‘He went up to Montana to find Jeff, but he missed him by a couple of days. When he took a look around, he found the files Jeff told me he’d brought back from Tau Ceti. He didn’t know how to break the encryption on them, so I told him he should talk to a man called Farad Maalouf.’
Mitchell nodded. ‘I know Farad.’
‘He went to Newton to look for Farad, but that was the last I heard from him. I’ve tried to get in touch, but no luck. I don’t know if that means he’s gone the same way as Dan Rush and the others, or not.’
Mitchell drummed his fingers on the table top. Olivia guessed they were both thinking the same thing. She tried to pretend to herself that she wasn’t responsible for what might have happened to Saul, but the sense of guilt insinuated itself even more tightly around her, regardless.
She decided to change the subject, more to avoid thinking about Saul than anything else. ‘I have a question for you: how do you know the ASI won’t target your ship before it can land? A rocket landing on the Moon won’t exactly be inconspicuous.’
‘Lester and Amy Rose have been running sub-orbital fights for nearly half a century,’ replied Mitchell. ‘And lunar flights for nearly as long. There’s no reason for them to be targeted. And, since Jeff used to work for them and still knows them both well, he’s been able to swing us a berth.’
‘People get hurt,’ remarked Olivia. ‘There’ve been accidents.’
Mitchell shook his head and laughed. ‘Like we’d be safer staying here?’
She felt her face redden.
‘Look,’ said Mitchell, pushing his plate aside and leaning towards her, ‘the VASIMRs are a proven safe technology. Even the Apollo Saturn replicas they fly are a hundred times safer than e originals. It’s not just that this is our best chance of getting away – it’s our only chance.’
‘And what about the people here? What about the billions we’re leaving behind?’
Mitchell shook his head. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them.’
Olivia felt her muscles tense in horror. ‘That’s a pretty callous statement, isn’t it?’
‘Jeff’s told you what happened to me, right?’ asked Mitchell. ‘About how they found me, and how they brought me back here.’
‘He said that . . . that there are two of you, and you’re the one they brought back from the near future.’
‘If you look at it from my perspective,’ he said, ‘all this happened a long time ago. The fact is, you can’t mourn what you can’t change.’
Olivia fought to control her anger. She glanced at Jeff and saw the warning look on his face, and realized she was obviously close to blowing up.
‘Tell him now,’ she said to Jeff. ‘Tell him what we decided last night.’
Mitchell frowned. ‘Tell me what?’
Jeff hesitated, clearly caught off guard, then he reached out and put one hand over hers. She wondered if that meant he’d finally decided to forgive her for getting in touch with Saul.
‘I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you,’ he said to Mitchell. ‘We’re not going to the Moon.’
Mitchell sat back and glanced between them. ‘Seriously?’
‘Just think about it,’ Jeff continued. ‘Say all three of us went up there together, that only puts us on the surface of the Moon, not even inside Copernicus City or the Lunar Array itself. That means a further trek across the Moon’s surface from our landing site to either one or the other, which means we’d still have to figure out some way to get inside. And you’ve already failed once yourself, which is why you wound up in the cryogenics lab in the first place.’
Mitchell nodded, and Olivia had the uncanny sense he was relieved. She found herself wondering if it was just the strangeness of what had happened to him that made her so uneasy, or if it was something else – something she couldn’t put a name to.
‘So that’s it?’ said Mitchell. ‘You’re going to stay here on Earth, and just wait until the end?’
‘No.’ Jeff shook his head emphatically. ‘You’re forgetting about the outer-system research colonies. The older ones have their own dedicated arrays up north, including the Jupiter platform.’/p>
‘And that’s where you want to go? Back to Jupiter?’
‘Even if we managed to get past all the heavy security, all the way through the Lunar Array to the colonies,’ said Olivia, ‘we’ve no idea how bad things there are going to be, or how much turmoil there’ll be or how long it’s all going to last. Especially if the same people who’ve been trying to kill us here end up in charge there. But we can be safe on the Jupiter platform as long as we sever the wormhole link with Earth.’ She shrugged. ‘Besides, we don’t know what things might be like on Earth, or on the Moon, in fifty years or a hundred, or however long it takes for things to get better again – if they ever do. After all, who’s to say the Earth won’t become habitable again? But, even if it doesn’t, we still have a fighting chance at building something new out there.’
‘Those platforms aren’t set up to be self-sustaining,’ Mitchell pointed out. ‘They constantly depend on supplies from Earth.’
Jeff shook his head. ‘Maybe that was the case when you were still running security there, but things have changed a lot. The station’s grown enormously. I’m not pretending it’s going to be easy, or anywhere near it, but we learned a lot from building large-scale, self-enclosed habitats on Newton as well as the other colonies. We can do the same not just around Jupiter but out at Saturn as well. We have seed banks available, and the means to gene-alter anything we need to. That means we can farm oxygen and water from the Jovian moons and asteroids.’
Mitchell sat back. ‘What about the people already there – the station staff? Have you been in touch with them?’
‘I already talked to Jacob Morello this morning,’ said Jeff. ‘He was working in groundside admin when I was stationed on the platform, but he spends most of his time out there now, and he says they can use both of us. Besides, both me and Olivia know the station inside out, so we know what it’s capable of.’
‘And don’t forget the Inuvik–Jupiter gate is a lot more isolated than the one in Florida,’ said Olivia. ‘They won’t be dealing with the kind of mobs Florida’s been getting – not all the way up in Alaska.’
Mitchell gazed at Olivia, his pupils deep and blue and seemingly infinite. ‘What about me?’ he asked. ‘Are the Roses still going to take me on board, without you there to back me up?’
‘Of course they are,’ said Jeff. ‘We’ll all go to the space-port first, and help arrange everything. Besides, they’re expecting us. They confirmed they had room for three, so they’ll definitely have room for just one.’
‘And you’re both absolutely set on this?’ asked Mitchell, looking back and forth between the two of them.
‘More so than anything else for a long time,’ Olivia replied, clutching Jeff’s hand more tightly.
Mitchell sighed and stood up. ‘Then you’ll have to figure out how to get north. Remember, most of the flights to Inuvik are run by the ASI.’
‘Already thought of that,’ said Jeff. ‘Bob Esquivaz runs mission control for the Roses, and they have a sub-orb that can fly us out there.’
Mitchell looked impressed. ‘Sounds like you’ve really thought this through.’
Jeff stood up as well and nodded towards the door. ‘But, for the moment, we’re all still heading for the space-port. I’ll go pack our stuff in the car. Olivia?’
‘In a minute,’ she said. ‘There’s one other thing I want to ask you first, Mitchell. Jeff told me two of you were caught in those pits. What happened to . . .’ She waved one hand, momentarily unable to recall the other man’s name.