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Prax shrugged and hit send

“Torpedoes away,” Alex said, chuckling

Prax slept on the station, serenaded by the hu only a note that Prax shouldn’t wait up It was probably his iravity seem to feel different With a diameter as wide as Tycho’s, the Coriolis effect shouldn’t have been uncomfortably noticeable, and certainly not when he lay there, motionless, in the darkness of his rooet that he was being turned, inertia pressing hiainst the thin mattress as his body tried to fly out into the void Most of the time he’d been on the Rocinante, he’d been able to trick hismass of a moon under him It wasn’t, he decided, an artifact of how the acceleration was generated so much as what it meant

As hisapart like a ratitude Part of it was to Holden and part to A, he was on Gany down ice corridors with the certainty that somewhere nearby, one of his soybeans had been infected with the protoe With the broken logic of drea for work, but all the people he gave his CV to shook their heads and told hiree or credential he didn’t recognize or understand The only thing that e—certain as bone—that none of it was true That he was sleeping, and that when he woke, he would be somewhere safe

What did wake him at last was the rich s in his sleep, the tears leaving salt residues where they’d evaporated The shoas hissing and splashing Prax pulled on his juain why it had TACHI printed across the back

Breakfast waited on the table: steak and eggs, flour tortillas, and black coffee Real food that had cost someone a small fortune There were two plates, so Prax chose one and started eating It had probably cost a tenth of the money he had from Nicola, but it tasted wonderful Amos ducked out of the shower, a torapped around his hips A ht side of his abdoraphic tattoo of a young woman avy hair and alht there was a word under the tattooed face, but he didn’t want to stare

“Hey, Doc,” Aot some rest,” Prax said as Amos walked into his own rooain, he raised his voice “I want to thank you I was feeling low last night And whether you and the others can actually help find Mei or not—”

“Why wouldn’t we be able to find her?” A respect for me, are you, Doc?”

“No,” Prax said “No, not at all I onlyis … it’s a huge …”

A His jumpsuit covered scars and tattoos as if they’d never been

“I knehat youyou You like that steak? Keep wondering where they put the cows on this thing, don’t you?”

“Oh no, this is vat-grown You can tell froht here are layered? Actually ood marbled cut than when you carve it out of a steer”

“No shit?” A across froravity also g “Increases the oil production No one knohy, but there are a couple very interesting studies about it They think ititself so much as the constant flow you have to have so that the anien-depleted water, and suffocate”

Amos ripped a bit of tortilla and dipped it into the yolk