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It didn’t look like a hospital to Mei It looked like one of the abandoned tubes that Daddy talked about sometimes Leftover spaces from when Ganymede had first been built that no one used anye This one had a kind of airlock at the end, though, and when they passed through it, things looked a little more like a hospital They were cleaner, anyway, and there was the smell of ozone, like in the deconta boys Sandro He was almost five Mei waved at hi the big boys were here too If they were, then it was probably okay, even if the wo with Doctor Strickland wasn’t herto go see Mommy in just a few minutes,” Doctor Strickland said “We just have a couple s we need to do first”

“No,” Mei said “I don’t want that”

He carried her into a room that looked a little like an examination room, only there weren’t any cartoon lions on the walls, and the tables weren’t shaped like grinning hippos Doctor Strickland put her onto a steel examination table and rubbed her head Mei crossed her arms and scowled

“I want Morunt that Daddy would

“Well, you just wait right here, and I’ll see what I can do about that,” Doctor Strickland said with a so Check with ops, load up, and let’s release it”

“I’ll go let them know You stay here”

The woman nodded, and Doctor Strickland walked back out the door The wo at all Mei didn’t like her

“I want ,” Mei said “That’s not for you That’s for Mo in her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there She unrolled it

“It’s Mommy’s space monster,” Mei said This ti, and Mei snatched it away She made some wrinkles in the paper when she did, but she didn’t care She crossed her arrunted

“You like space monsters, kid?” the woman asked

“I want my mommy”

The woers were skinny She lifted Mei down to the floor

“C’”

The woman walked away and for a moment Mei hesitated She didn’t like the wo alone even less She followed The wo h when the door swung open Mei followed her The new room was cold Mei didn’t like it There wasn’t an exalass box like they kept fish in at the aquariu there wasn’t a fish The woman motioned Mei closer and, when Mei ca inside looked up at the sound It was a man, but he was naked and his skin didn’t look like skin His eyes glowed blue like there was a fire in his head And solass, and Mei started screaain,” Private Hillman said “I think his CO eant Roberta Draper of the Martian Marine Corps upped the nification on her armor’s heads-up display and looked in the direction Hill Twenty-five hundred meters away, a squad of four United Nations Marines were troreenhouse doreenhouse dome identical in nearly all respects to the do

One of the four UN Marines had black sle ears

“Yep, that’s Snoopy,” Bobbie said “Been on every patrol detail so far today Wonder what he did”

Guard duty around the greenhouses on Gany what you could to keep youron the lives of the Marines on the other side

The other side Eighteen months before, there hadn’t been sides The inner planets had all been one big, happy, slightly dysfunctional fa up the solar systeive up was Ganymede, breadbasket of the Jovian systenetosphere, it was the only place where dorown crops stood a chance in Jupiter’s harsh radiation belt, and even then the domes and habitats still had to be shielded to protect civilians fro off Jupiter and onto the ned to let a soldier walk through a nuclear bomb craterJupiter fro Martian Marines

Behind the Earth soldiers on patrol, their doht captured by enormous orbital mirrors Even with the mirrors, ht Only the heavily modified versions the Ganymede scientists cranked out could hope to survive in the trickle of light the mirrors fed the the Earth Marines outside their little guard hut, knowing they atching her too In addition to Snoopy, she spotted the one they called Stumpy because he or she couldn’t be much over a meter and a quarter tall She wondered what their nickna Red Her are on it She hadn’t been on Ganyray and white

One by one over the course of five minutes, the orbital mirrors winked out as Ganylow froed to actinic blue as the artificial lights cao down e and subtle ways Above, the sun—not even a disk frohtest star—flashed as it passed behind Jupiter’s li syste back in,” Corporal Travis said “Snoop’s bringing up the rear Poor guy Can we bail too?”