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The flickers of fighting ships looked like glitches on a cheap screen, colors and n that so He licked his lips There had to be a way There had to be soo Now”

The cutting edge of low-resource agricultural botany, the Glycine kenon, a type of soybean so heavily modified it was an entirely new species, represented the last eight years of his life They were the reason his parents still hadn’t seen their only granddaughter in the flesh They, and a few other things, had ended his ht subtly different strains of engineered chloroplasts in the fields, each one trying to spin out the oing to vomit

“We have maybe five more minutes to impact,” Doris said “We have to evacuate”

“I don’t see it,” Prax said

“It’s coh, by the tione We’re the last ones Now get in the lift”

The great orbitaldown on his fields like a hundred pale suns He couldn’t believe that they’d betray hi toward the surface of Ganyreenhouse, his soybeans, his life’s work—hadn’t chosen anything It was a victi else

“I’m about to leave,” Doris said “If you’re here in four minutes, you’ll die”

“Wait,” Prax said He ran out into the doe of the nearest field, he fell to his knees and dug into the rich black soil The sers in as deep as he could, cupping a root ball The sile plant came up in his hands

Doris was in the industrial lift, ready to descend into the caves and tunnels of the station Prax sprinted for her With the plant to save, the doh the door and Doris pressed the control display The wide an its descent Normally, it would have carried heavy equipment: the tiller, the tractor, the tons of hu processors Noas only the three of theed on the floor, the soybean seedling nodding in his lap, Doris chewing her lower lip and watching her hand ter

“The mirror could miss,” Prax said

“It could But it’s thirteen hundred tons of glass and ht hold”

“No,” she said, and Prax stopped talking to her

The cart hu deeper under the surface ice, sliding into the network of tunnels thatelements and industrial lubricant Even now, he couldn’t believe they’d done it He couldn’t believe theeach other No one, anywhere, could really be that shortsighted Except that it seemed they could