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Strickland licked his lips, his eyes shifting froain

“I don’t need to kill you,” Prax said “I have e isn’t important to me”

Strickland took a deep breath and let it out slowly Prax could see theline of relief and pleasure appeared at the corners of his un fired, but she lay back down against Prax’s shoulder without crying or looking around Strickland’s body drifted slowly to the ground, the arouted bright arterial blood against the walls, each pulse sed

“Or that,” Prax said

“So you got any ideas hoe—”

The hatch behind them opened and a man ran in

“What happened? I heard—”

Aun The newfrom him as he retreated Amos cleared his throat

“Any idea hoe get these kids out of here?”

Putting Mei back in the transport cart was one of the hardest things Prax had ever done He wanted to carry her against hiainst hers It was a pri for the reassurance of physical contact But his suit wouldn’t protect her from the radiation or near vacuum of Io’s sulfuric atainst two other children while Amos put the other four in a second cart The smallest of them was still in newborn diapers Prax wondered if she had coainst the station flooring, only rattling when they crossed the built-in tracks

“You reet back to the surface?” Amos asked

“I think so,” Prax said

“Uh, Doc? You really want to put your helht Thank you”

At the T intersection, half a dozento defend the lab against attack Because Arenades from the rear, the cover was less effective than the locals had anticipated, but it still took a few minutes to clear the bodies and the reh

There was a time, Prax knew, that the violence would have bothered hih ti dissections and even autonomous-li from any particular sense of visceral horror But that it was soer, that the men and women he’d just seen blown apart hadn’t donated their bodies or tissues, would have affected him once The universe had taken that from him, and he couldn’t say now exactly when it had happened Part of hi of loss in that, but it was intellectual The only e relief that Mei was here and alive and a vicious animal protectiveness that ht, possibly until she left for university