Page 216 (1/2)

“I’ll try not to oversell the point in the future Now get back to work”

“Yes, sir,” Bobbie said, then stood and walked out of the roo She was inviting Martian Marines to slaughter her in her own office She needed a fking nap Her hand terh-status report had just co her usual display settings She tapped it, ready for more bad news from Ganymede

It was about Venus

Until seven hours earlier, the Arboghast had been a third-generation destroyer, built at the Bush Shipyards thirteen years before and later refitted as a htdata that Avasarala had relied on had co had been captured by two lunar telescopic stations with broad-spectrules, and about a dozen shipborne optical observers The dataset they collected agreed perfectly

“Play it again,” Avasarala said

Michael-Jon de Uturbé had been a field technician when she’d first met him, thirty years before Noas the de facto head of the special sciences committee and married to Avasarala’s roommate frorohite, his dark brown skin had taken to draping a bit off of his bones, and he hadn’t changed the brand of cheap floral cologne he wore

He had always been an intensely shy, almost antisocial, man In order to maintain the connection, she knew not to ask too much of him His small, cluttered office was less than a quarter of a mile from hers, and she had seen him five times in the last decade, each of the obscure and complex quickly

He tapped his hand terhast hole oncein false color detail above the haze of Venusian cloud The ti forward, one second per second

“Walk h,” she said

“Um Well We start from the spike It’s just like the onethat last ti to hell”

“Splendid That’s two datapoints”

“This ca,” he said “Maybe an hour A little less”

It had co hi to Holden’s raid on Ganyht?

“Then the radio ping Right”—he froze the display—“here Massive sweep in three-second-by-seven-second grid It was looking, but it knehere to look All those active scans, I’d assuht”