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He only shrugged. “So we try to stop them. We have a situation, we try to deal with it.”

“Deal with it,” she said, scowling. “Suck up and deal!”

He nodded, regarding her with a fond look. She felt ready to hit him again; but then she recalled that she had just been laughing at him; and also had broken her promise to him by talking to Pauline. That rash act, much as he might have disliked it, was perhaps in fact her own attempt to suck up and deal. Maybe she could use that as an excuse if he caught her. In any case it was a little bit too complicated just to hit him.

T hey had flipped the ETH Mobile to deceleration, and it would be only a few more days and they would pass Earth’s orbit and close on Venus. This ship’s life, with its park and its music and its French cuisine, would come to an end. No one ever does something consciously for the last time without feeling a little sad, Dr. Johnson had once remarked to Boswell, and it was certainly true for Swan. She often felt a nostalgia for the present, aware that her life was passing by faster than she could properly take it in. She lived it, she felt it; she had given nothing to age, she still wanted everything; but she could not make it whole or coherent. Here they were, eating dinner on the upper balcony of a restaurant that looked down onto the top of a forest, and she was feeling sad because later she would not be here. This world lost, a world that would be unremembered. And here she was with Wahram, they were a couple; but what about when they got off this spaceship and moved on through space and time? What about a year from now, what about through the many decades possibly left to come?

A few days later they were closing on Venus when Pauline spoke in her ear. “Swan, I’ve been in communication with Wang’s qube, and also this ship’s AI, and I need to tell you about something. You may want to be alone when you hear it.”

This was unusual enough for Swan to excuse herself and walk quickly to a bathroom down a floor. “What is it?”

Pauline said in her ear, “Wang’s qube and some other qubes working on security issues have set up a system to try to lower the detection limit for pebble mob attacks like the one that hit Terminator’s tracks.”

“How?”

“They’ve manufactured and distributed a network of micro-observatories throughout the plane of the ecliptic, from Saturn’s orbit in to the sun. Using the gravity and radar data from these, they have lowered the limits of detection to the size of the pebbles used against Terminator, and even a bit smaller. Wang’s qube now has a time-adjusted map of everything in the plane of the ecliptic bigger than a centimeter across.”

“Wow,” Swan said. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

“No one did, but until now no one had tried it. The need wasn’t perceived. In any case, the system has detected an attack already in progress.”

“Oh no!” Swan said. “At what?”

“At the Venus sunshield.”

“Oh no!”

The other people in the bathroom were beginning to look at her. She went out into the hall and almost took the elevator down to the park, just on instinct; but she had left Wahram at their restaurant table, and besides, she couldn’t run from this. “Damn,” she said. “I have to tell Wahram.”

“Yes.”

“How much time before it hits?”

“Approximately five hours.”

“Damnation.” She thought of Venus-the dry ice seas under their carpet of rock, the cities on the coasts and in the craters. She ran back up the stairs to the picture window restaurant and sat down across from Wahram. He looked at her curiously, alert to her distress.

“All right, I have to make a confession first,” Swan said. “I told Pauline about the strange qube problem because I wanted to hear what she thought of it, and I figured she was isolated in me and it would be all right.” She raised a hand to forestall whatever he was about to say; he was already pop-eyed with alarm. “I’m sorry, I should have asked you I suppose, but anyway it’s done, and now Pauline has been in touch with Wang’s qube, and it’s telling her there’s a new qube security system in place that has lowered the limit of detection, and they’re seeing a new pebble attack in the process of coalescing, an attack on the Venus sunshield.”

“Shit,” Wahram said. He gulped, stared at her more pop-eyed than ever. “Pauline, is this right?”

“Yes,” Pauline said.

“How long before these pebbles hit?”

Pauline said, “Just under five hours.”

“Five hours!” Wahram exclaimed. “Why such short notice!”

“The attack is coalescing in such a way that it will hit edge-on to the sunshield, and so most of the pebbles have been out of the plane of the ecliptic until just recently. There are no new detectors yet distributed out of the plane, so they’re just now showing up. Wang’s qube was just about to warn Wang about it.”