the almost visible penumbra of it as she leaned on the horn of her saddle to laugh at him in Wyoming, was like a twisting knife.

Practical Dio passed over a towel. Ticker was still in shocking condition, chesty and unable to sit up. He lay in a sleeping bag to one side of the tent, and stopped coughing long enough to say, "It was worst for her, because she was the doc. Somewhere in all that data is the medical reports. The death certificates."

"I should have done something," Shell sobbed. "There must have been something."

Titus felt something nudge his knee. Beside him Dio held out his palmtop. On the screen was a message from Captain Agadja up in the Sun. 'Titus, say something!' it read.

He gave Dio ainvitation to kiss her. He hastened to close on the offer. Her mouth tasted achingly familiar and yet strange, of tears and vanilla and very distantly of Gin's medications, and after the months of hardship her skin had lost the creamy richness of old. An exploratory overture, but so tingling that the tent seemed to teeter around him. He had been starving for her, and all the substitutes he had tried to stay the tigerish hunger with had been woefully insufficient. He broke off gasping. "Shell. How old are you now?"

"Huh? I don't know. Over forty, at least — it depends on how you calculate the time-travel."

"I've totted it up that I'm about 42, if you count in the coldsleep. Proof positive, that I've moved Heaven and earth