Susan hung weightless, strapped into the acceleration webbing on Photon's small bridge.
The pain in her head was far less than it had been as she'd lifted from Luna's surface; nearly eighteen hours of involuntary sleep had seen to that. The pain hadn't totally abated, but she knew it soon would.
Finally she was in deep space, out beyond Luna's orbit. She had won.
But, in a sense, it was a hollow victory. Never again would she see Earth or Luna. Even the asteroid colonies would be forever barred to her. She could never again set foot on a human world.
Not, that is, unless she wished to spend the remainder of her life in prison. It was bad enough that she had killed-at least, that is what those back on Luna thought-but she had stolen the Survey Service's prize ship as well. That they could never forgive.
And in doing so, she had again put Karl's life in jeopardy.
Was he all right? she wondered. Had he survived Photon's liftoff?
She had no way of knowing. The hard radiation produced by the ship's engine made all contact except through hyperspace radio impossible, and those frequencies were clear. She had not been able to receive transmissions from either Earth or Luna since lifting nearly twenty hours ago. Those who had been in the way of the ship's blast might have survived, or they might not have, and she would never know. Soon, she would make her jump, and be far beyond the Federation Fleet's reach.
She hoped they were all right, but she doubted it. She had not meant to hurt anyone. Not Clayton. And especially not Karl.
She took a deep breath, and plugged into a sensor scanning out ahead of the ship. There, the stars were slightly shifted to the blue. She was traveling toward the unknown stars at incredible speed.
Toward a meeting with an alien intelligence-the first such ever encountered.
Suddenly, inexplicably, she thought about the short man who had attacked her in her quarters less than a week ago-the dark man, the belter. His attack had started it all, his attack that had been the first indication of everything that was to happen to her. And yet, it was his attack that remained unexplained. She could account for all her attackers but him. Even Hyatt had denied he had sent that assassin.
She was sure the answer to that attack awaited her on a planet at the heart of the Crab Nebula.
Susan heard a noise behind her, the sound of someone breathing! Someone else was on Photon's bridge, someone who hadn't been here only an instant before. And she knew who it was.
After a few seconds, she turned around to meet herself.