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Holden tore his eyes way fro sphere that was his destination and spun around to look for the Rocinante behind hi thruster and a gossalow His suit told him that the Roci was over thirty thousand kilometers away—more than twice as far as any two people on Earth could ever be fro And here he was, in a suit of vacuu a disposable EVA pack that had about fivetoward the sphere He’d burn another slowing dohen he got there That left enough to fly back to the Roci when he was done

Optimism expressed as conservation of delta V

Ships froate even before he’d started his trip The Roci was now protected from them only by the absolute speed li off at just under that limit to put as much space between her and the fleets as possible They had a sphere a oing beyond the area ates had close to fifty thousand kilo out of the slow zone and into that starless void beyond reed it would be aas no one could fire a ballistic weapon, the Roci should be plenty safe with five hundred quadrillion square kilo two quarter-second blasts fro to the sphere He was still hours away Theburst he’d fired from the pack to start his journey had accelerated hi, and the Roci had co hih juice in the EVA pack to stop hi him out at the slow zone’s maximum speed

Ahead in the middle of all that starless black, the blue sphere waited

It had waited for two billion years for soate, if the researchers were right about how long ago Phoebe had been captured by Saturn But lately the strangeness surrounding the proto that ins and purpose rong

Protogen had named the protomolecule and decided it was a tool that could redefine what it meant to be human Jules-Pierre Mao had treated it like a weapon It killed humans, therefore it was a weapon But radiation killed humans, and a medical X-rayto feel like they were all ht coht Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it’s a weapon Learn to open and close the door, it’s a place to hide things Never grasping what it actually did, and ure it out No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito

So here the uesses about what it did Holden could tell hi to be poked, but even that wasa lot of assumptions Miller looked human, had been hu human motivations Miller wanted to co But it was just as likely— soer

He i, James Holden, you and only you in the universe have the correct chemical co hi okay?” Nao about how incredibly stupid this is Why didn’t I let you talk me out of it?”

“It looks like you did, but it took a couple of hours for it to process Want us to coet you?”

“No If I bail out now, I’ll never have the balls to try it again,” Holden said “How’s it look out there?”

“The fleets cah with about two dozen ships,short torpedo burns to get one up to the speed limit but not over WhichSo far no one has fired at us”