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In the head, Cortez washed his face and hands with the towelettes and then fed them into the recycler Clarissa uts of the ship She kneould work on the Cerisier or the Prince Here, she could only speculate

You’re trying to distract yourself, a sht came in words, just like that Not fro to the rest You’re trying to distract yourself

From what? she wondered

“Thank you,” Cortez said His smile looked more familiar now More like the man she saw on screens “I knew that there would be so here But I wasn’t ready for it Spiritually, I wasn’t ready for it Surprised me”

“It’ll do that,” Clarissa said

Cortez nodded He was about her father’s age She tried to i over a dead engineer She couldn’t She couldn’t iine him here at all, couldn’t picture what he looked like exactly All of her i importance The physical details were beside the point Cortez looked at himself in the ht He’s about to conde beyond help, here in the darkness, because he thinks it is the right and noble thing to do Was that what Ashford was doing too? She wished now that she’d talked to hiether Gotten to understand hi to die for this Andto kill Maybe it was altruis as he did what needed doing, it didn’t matter why, but she found she was curious She knehy she was here, at least To redeem herself To die for a reason, andto distract yourself

“—don’t you think?” Cortez said His sentle and rueful, and she didn’t have any idea what he’d been saying

“I guess,” she said and pushed back froive hi to keep his body oriented with head toward the ceiling and feet toward the floor, even though crawling along the walls was probably safer and ht did by instinct Clarissa only noticed it because she wasn’t doing it The roo a floor or a wall or a ceiling She expected a wave of vertigo that didn’t come

“You know it doesn’this head in a question

“If we’re all sacrifices, it doesn’t o,” Clarissa said “She went a little before us We’ll go a little later It doesn’t even ht? All thatso everyone on the other side is safe”

“Yes, that’s right,” Cortez said “Thank you for re me”

An alert sounded in the next room, and Clarissa turned toward it Ashford had undone his straps and was floating above his control panel, his face stony with rage

“What’s going on, Jojo?”