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So struck the metal door and Anna flinched back Then another blow And another Theto the vent slits Her fists, Anna thought She’s doing this with her hands

The screa ild now, obscene where it wasn’t wordless, and inhuman as a hurricane The thickto shudder and bend with each new assault Anna closed her eyes

The top hinge gave way, shattering

And then, without warning, silence fell Anna waited, sure she was being lulled into a trap No sound cale She could s acid stench of fresh vonets and pushed the warped and abused door open

Melba floated curled against the wall, her hands pressed to her belly and her body shuddering

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bull

T

he truth was, distance was alwaysBull usually thought about, but his enforced physical stillness was doing strange things with his awareness Even in the middle of the constant press of events, the calls and coordination, the scolding fro loose And strange ideas kept floating in, like the way that distance got measured in time

Centuries before, a trip across the Atlantic Ocean could take months There was a town near New Mexico named Wheeless where the story was soon break down and decided that it was easier to put down roots than go on Technologies had co on the ones before, and ravity well, where ravity, the effect was even ht, the journey from Luna to Mars could take as little as twelve days The trek from Saturn to Ceres, a few months And because they were out there with their primate brains, evolved on the plains of prehistoric Africa, everyone had a sense of how far it was Saturn to Ceres was a few months Luna to Mars was a few days Distance was tiet overwhel at a readout, the ships froether like a handful of dried peas thrown in the sa apart, taking their places in the captured ring around the eerie station Co-bordered sphere, they see was time, and time meant death

From the farthest of the ships to the Behe that the ain The closest, he could have jumped to The hu htened voice he heard in the long, frantic hours, Bull grew more convinced that his plan could work The vastness and strangeness and unreasonable danger of the universe had trauo hoe The instinct was the opposite of war, and as long as he could see it cultivated, as long as the response to the tragedies of the lockdoere to get one another’s backs and see that everyone who needed care got it, the grief and fear reen, then blue, and then Monica Stuart was s professionally into the camera She looked tired, sober, but hunize and feel coentlemen,” she said “Welco to you from our temporary offices here on board the OPA battleship Behemoth I am a citizen of Earth and a civilian, but it’s ram can be of some use to all of us in this ti whatever unclassified news and infor intervieith the command crews of the ships, civilian leaders on the Thomas Prince, and live musical performances