Stephen Thomas turned quickly. Satoshi's image remained in the middle of the room. Satoshi gazed into thin air like a blind man.
"Are you still there? Are you all right? Where are you?"
"I'm all right."
"Will you project, dammit?"
"I don't have any clothes on."
Satoshi hesitated. "I don't care. I want to see you."
"What are you so mad about?" Stephen Thomas asked.
"Mad? Why should I be mad? You withdraw, you disappear-"
"You can find me if you want me!"
"I started to. But you acted like you wanted time alone. I can't read your mind, I-"
He stopped, upset and confused.
"I can't read yours, either, Satoshi," Stephen Thomas said quietly.
"No," Satoshi said. "I know you can't. Look, I'm sorry about- We have to talk. I'm afraid you-" He glanced away, to reply to Victoria, outside the area of his image. "Be right there," he said over his shoulder. "Will you meet us at the dock?" he asked Stephen Thomas.
Stephen Thomas had no idea how he would react when he saw J.D. again. One temper tantrum was plenty for any twenty-four hour stretch.
It's not her fault, he told himself. None of this is her fault. Or Victoria's,- or Satoshi's.
"Come on," Satoshi said, his tone uncharacteristically edgy. "The weather's not that bad."
"Okay," Stephen Thomas said quickly. "I'm on my way."
J.D. asked Arachne to notify the rest of the faculty and staff of Nemo's message, but she put no emergency flag on her communication. There was no point to rousing people out of their warm beds, just to sit around waiting till she reached the planetoid. In an hour or two they would wake up, admire the snow, drink their morning coffee, and watch whatever she was able to send back.
J.D. waded through the drifts. Zev leaped along beside her. She smiled. She loved to watch him. He scooped up a loose handful of snow and threw it, the way he had flung the oranges. It scattered into J.D.'s hair. She decided not to show him how to make a snowball. She was sure he would figure it out for himself soon enough.
"It snowed once when I was a kid," he said. "But not very much."
He was wearing his suit and his shoes. Divers enjoyed cold water, but Zev was neither acclimated nor adapted to arctic conditions. The snow caught in the cuffs of his pants, forming icy pellets.
J.D. looked up, hoping for a break in the clouds, a glimpse of the other side of Starfarer. All she could see was snow falling from the luminous grayness of the night sky.
Arachne guided J.D. to an access hatch. Knee-deep snow covered it, pressing it down so it could not open automatically. J.D. kicked the snow away. The hatch buzzed and groaned, trying to rise.
"Help me, Zev." She groped for the emergency handle, grasped it, and pulled. Zev hunkered down, grabbed the edge, and pushed.
The hatch popped open. Wet clumps of snow avalanched into the entrance. J.D. and Zev climbed into the warm service tunnels of the starship, the veins in its skin that led to its underground organs, and all the way to the outside. More snow fell in with them and around them and on top of them. J.D. brushed it from her shoulders and hair, and did the same for Zev. She stamped her feet, leaving a patch of slush on the rockfoam floor.
J.D. continued toward the docking end of campus. She squelched along in snow-soaked shoes that grew wetter, but no less cold, as the snow melted. She hurried, anxious to reach Nemo before the squidmoth emerged from the chrysalis.
We should have stayed, she thought. If we'd stayed, the whole alien contact department would be there. Not just me.
She and Zcv met no one. Hardly anyone ever had the need to come down here. Infinity did, J.D. knew, and Kolya, when they went out on the skin. Even if people did often use the access tunnels, anyone with any sense would be asleep. She hoped everyone would wake up in time to see the snow, because it was beautiful. She also hoped it would be melted by the time she returned.
"You can tell me what Starfarer looks like," she said to Zev, "when the clouds have snowed themselves out, but before the snow melts. It will be pretty, with everything covered in white."
"I'd rather come with you."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Squids never do what you tell them," Zev said.
"They don't?"
"No. They make terrible pets." He considered for a moment. "I guess it's because they're always afraid you'll eat them."
When J.D. and Zev floated into the waiting room at the Chi's dock,
Victoria and Satoshi had already arrived. There was no sign of Stephen Thomas. J.D. wondered if he was still trying to avoid her.
Victoria kicked off from the handhold, brushed against J.D., and hugged her. As they spun slowly across the waiting room, J.D. held Victoria, bending to rest her head on her shoulder. When she finally drew back from their embrace, she kissed Victoria's cheek, her lips. Victoria laid her hand along the side of JDA face and looked into her eyes.
"Good luck," she said. "I hope . . . I don't know. Just good luck."
"I want you all with me," J.D. said. "I don't understand . . ."
"I wouldn't want a lot of people hanging around staring at me if I were changing my shape," Satoshi said, just as Stephen Thomas arrowed in through the doorway.
"I don't know," Stephen Thomas said, his tone careful, brittle, and offhand, his sapphire eyes shocking and intense against the new bronze of his skin. "As a life experience, it's got its points."
"I didn't mean-" Satoshi said, flustered. "I was talking about Nemo." Stephen Thomas shrugged and touched the far wall, bringing himself to a stop. His thin damp clothes clung to his body. He ran his hands along the sides of his head, slicking the curling tendrils of his wet hair. He separated two thick strands from the temples and twisted them at the nape of his neck to hold back the rest of his hair.
"You must be freezing!" Victoria said.
Stephen Thomas glanced at Satoshi. "What do you mean, the weather isn't that bad? How bad does it have to get?"
"If you dressed in something more than underwear-"
"You used to like my clothes."
"J.D.," Nemo said in JDA mind.
Nerno's voice slid smoothly along JDA enhanced link, following the surface of a four-dimensional melody onto a fifth dimension.
"It is time."
"I have to go." Still caught in Nerno's melody, J.D. could barely whisper. "I'm sorry ......
"How long will you be gone?" Victoria asked.
"I have no idea."
"We're going into transition in a few hours! You've got to come back before then."
"But . . ." Her voice trailed off. She glanced around, from Victoria, to Satoshi, to Stephen Thomas and quickly away, finally to Zev. "I have to "
"Nemo must understand the problem," Stephen Thomas said. "Maybe it'll hurry up-"
J.D. glared at him angrily. "Hurry up and die?"
He shut up. J.D. wished she had overlooked his careless comment; surely he had not meant to sound so inconsiderate.
"I'm sorry-" J.D. said.
"Never mind." His voice was hard; he sounded the way he had yesterday, just before he stalked away from the AS repair. "You're right. Of course."
"I'm going," J.D. said. "I only wish you were all coming with me. You know that, I hope."
"Of course we do," Victoria said, worried. She kicked off gently toward her and embraced her again. They parted reluctantly. Satoshi's hug was friendly, Stephen Thomas's brief and cool. Zev hugged her and kissed her cheek, her lips, the base of her throat.
And then the hatch was closing behind her and she was alone in the Chi. J.D. hurried to the observation circle and strapped herself into her couch.
The hatch access retracted with a loud, mechanical clang. Arachne finished the launching check and gave over control to the onboard computer, an expert system that would ferry her to Nerno's ship, and back, without her intervention. She had not given it a second thought when she was on board the Chi with her colleagues; now, alone, she was worried.