Dani shifted his weight around. His eyes darted to Molly for a second. “There is also her Wadi to consider.”

Cole looked at Molly. “Hers?”

“Yes. The Wadi she brought back is alive, docile, and . . . Well, we believe she is a juvenile that has never taken a mate, never reproduced. This, and the fact that she’s much older than a baby, but not quite an adult, The Circle will take as a great sign. A momentous occasion. Especially since the discoverer is human.” He looked at Molly again, his eyes flashing. “And now a Drenard.”

Cole turned to stare at her as well. Perplexed. He furrowed his brow . . . hard. One of the bandages on his head tore free.

“What?” Molly asked.

“Your Wadi is alive,” he said, pressing the tape back in place. “I think that means something to them.”

“Alive? But I thought—” her voice trailed off into thought.

Cole wished he could listen in.

He turned back to Dani. “This is a good thing, though, right?”

“Possibly. In some ways. All of you are going to be considered Drenards, and what happened here will become a legend one day, I am certain of that. But . . . I can’t imagine they will let her off the planet now. She will mean too much to too many people.”

“Are you kidding?” It was a deep but powerful thought. Cole groaned aloud.

“What is it?” Molly asked.

“We might be stuck here, even after all that work.”

18

The Drenard officials cobbled together an impromptu ceremony in the rarely used shelter. Normally, such an occasion called for banners, custom tunics, and symbolic lances too long for practical use, but Dani had agreed to force the issue and try to get them off-planet before Molly became a cause célèbre.

They gave the four friends fresh tunics to wear, signifying their status as Drenards and their place within the culture. Each was unique, thrown together from borrowed layers of material from the officials.

Naturally, they had to take turns agreeing with Walter that his was by far the most important-looking in order to settle him down.

“Befitting a supply officer,” Molly managed to tell him with a straight face.

The four friends knelt in a line while lances were passed around and alien words were spoken. Not a moment of the ordeal made sense to Molly, but she didn’t mind. Her focus was on getting off that planet, and she wasn’t yet sure she should feel proud to be a Drenard.

After a round of deep bows from the officials, directed at the young foursome, a second ceremony began. They ushered Molly forward as a large red box was produced and placed on the carpet with great care. Pushed toward the box, blue hands on her back, Molly wondered what was expected of her. Dani held his palms together, then pantomimed a lid being opened, his hands hinging apart.

Molly knelt in front of the box, imagining a special tunic of some sort. Despite her anxiety to leave as quickly as possible, she found herself tingling in anticipation as she fumbled with the box’s small, unintuitive clasp.

Someone behind her shuffled nervously. The entire lobby had fallen deathly silent.

Finally, the clasp came free. Molly cracked the top—and then the lid exploded open. She stumbled back, yelping, as the Wadi inside leapt out and attached itself to her chest, its claws pricking her through the layers of tunics.

Walter hissed furiously from behind her. Edison roared.

Molly turned and raised a hand to calm them down. All eyes were on the creature scrambling up her torso. She could feel her cheeks cramping from smiling so hard, her body flushed with excitement.

She tried to wrap her arms around the thing, but the Wadi wiggled out and scampered up to her neck, its tail swishing contentedly. She patted its head while a tongue darted out, as if tasting the air.

She turned to face Dani, her vision blurred with tears of joy. “Can I keep her?” she asked.

Even without the bands, she felt like Dani understood. And the answer was even more clear as the officials removed the Wadi from her tunic, peeling away each claw as the thing clutched desperately to her.

“Why?” she asked, as they returned the Wadi to the box. The poor creature writhed in protest, its limbs pushing at the edge, its head twisting back to look at Molly.

They shoved it inside and the lid slammed shut, just as a desperate, croaking sound emanated from within.

The display horrified Molly, but the members of the Circle seemed extremely satisfied. They conferred in the gentle bubbling of their language while Dani presented a red band to Molly, both ceremonies clearly at an end.

“We need to go, Madam Fyde,” he thought, once she had it in place.

“It’s over? Can I—?”

“It is over. And no, you cannot keep the Wadi. It will go to the Royal Zoo and be kept on display. But let’s hurry—Bodi and his allies on the Circle are heading this way from the train depot. We need to avoid them if at all possible.”

Molly gave the red box another glance as it was shuffled out the door. Soft thumping noises resonated from within. She felt sick with the poor Wadi locked away like that, even sicker that it would be put on display rather than set free.

The look on Dani’s face told her it was no use arguing. She turned to her friends.

“We need to go,” she told them.

••••

The four of them boarded one of the shuttles. Dani and Walter’s Questioner joined them, as well as the three Circle members, one of whom cradled the red box in his lap. A guard settled into the driver’s seat and began fiddling with the controls. The large half-circle of a vehicle rocked slightly as everyone settled among the rows of benches.

Molly got comfortable and peered through her window, watching the guards load into the other shuttle. They looked like a small Marine contingent gearing up for war. Their shuttle would set off toward the train station to intercept Bodi’s group, which reportedly had refueled and turned around after hearing of Molly’s and Edison’s completion of the rite.

The shuttle with Molly and her friends, meanwhile, would head directly for the city, meeting another shuttle to transfer some fuel, before proceeding on to a defense spaceport. The Circle members, two of which were related to Anlyn, would log the new Drenards into the planetary system—and they supposedly would be cleared to leave.

Molly wondered how and where they would meet up with Anlyn and whether she was being protected from Bodi’s scheming. She also was having trouble believing they really would be allowed to fly away, not with so many people after them. Her trust of the Drenard people was on the wane.

The driver snapped the door shut, locking out the wind, and took them around the shelter. He headed straight for the glowing city over the horizon.

Molly had so many more questions for Dani, but the red bands had been taken, along with her ability to communicate. The frustration of not being able to speak, of having relied solely on human tongues and their wide adoption, fixed her resolve: she was going to learn some other languages. Maybe get her mother to teach her Drenard.

She wondered if her mom had had a similar experience years ago and if that was why she had taken up the alien language.

The shuttle lurched side to side in the oncoming breeze, the occupants swaying together. The sound of gusts roaring against the metal hull became deafening at times. Molly sat with Cole, their hands interlocked, her eyes fixed on the red box in the Circle member’s lap.

Cole asked Edison how he was feeling, and Molly heard something about “meeting expectations” and “being up to spec.” She smiled at Walter, who was bugging his Questioner for a red band and pantomiming a complaint. One of the first bumps had spilled red juice down his new tunic, and he kept inquiring about a fresh one.

After what felt like several hours, the tall buildings in the distance seemed no nearer than they had been. New, smaller buildings had come into view—so Molly knew they were approaching the horizon—it was just a testament to how far away the city lay. And how tall those buildings must be, stretching up since they couldn’t build out. The only structures out this far were tall towers with five blades—an ancient windmill farm. The rusting hulks hung against the black sky, monuments to an age before fusion power and fuel cells.

“Seems like a lot of prime real estate,” Molly mused aloud, her forehead pressed to the glass.

“They can’t build out here,” Cole told her.

“Why not? Seems shady enough.”

“You and Dani didn’t spend much time on planetary astronomy, did you?”

“Ha. No. I spent our time together trying to convince him the Drenard treatment of women belittled them rather than honored them.”

“Gods. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that one.”

“Why? You just would’ve seen us staring at each other in silence. Well, with my arms waving now and then.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, you would’ve been miserable. But you would’ve been taking my side, right?”

Cole sighed for effect. “I would’ve been saying whatever you wanted me to say, Madame Fyde.”

Molly slapped at Cole’s shoulder playfully. “See? You sound just like them!”

“See why you never learned about this planet? You can’t stay focused. Typical—”

“You say anything gender-related, and my jabs are gonna turn into haymakers, buddy.”

Cole held up his hands in mock surrender. “Can I tell you why they can’t build out here?”

“I guess,” she said, her arms crossing in mock anger.

“It’s because there are two Drenard stars. They have overlapping cones of light the planet swings through.”

“So they have seasons?”

Cole laughed at this. “Yeah, I guess. Summer and Summest.”

Molly rolled her eyes.

“It isn’t really seasons, not like we have. Dozens of our years go by before the two stars orbit each other and the planet lines up just right for the terminator to move. Then it’ll stay like that for dozens more years. There are probably Wadi shelters on the other side of the planet that you can’t get to right now ’cause they’re baking in the heat for another cycle.”

“Wow.” Molly turned and gazed through the window, thinking on these cycles. “How much you wanna bet,” she asked Cole, “that all the old species on this planet were migratory at some point?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“Any ideas about where that water came from in those caves you were in?”

“I haven’t had a chance to ask Dani about that. Probably condensation. If some of those tunnels go all the way to the cool side, you might get a convection current—”

“Look!” Molly interrupted.

It was the other shuttle, parked on a small rise and facing them, waiting. There was an armed Drenard male standing by the large vehicle, his tunics flapping in the breeze. He waved at their driver, who raised a hand in response. Their shuttle slowly pulled past the parked one and swerved to line up on the other side.

Molly watched the Circle Members lean together and converse in low tones. Edison had his head against his window, softly snoring, while Walter ran down the aisle toward the rear glass so he could get a better view of the recharging process. The guard outside waved their driver back until the flattened sterns of both vehicles were just a meter apart, lined up for the energy transfer.

“Should we step out and stretch our legs, see if we can help?” Cole asked.

“I’d rather stay inside,” Molly said. She watched Walter press his metallic face to the rear of the shuttle, peering down. Beyond him, through both sets of glass, she could see several shapes moving in the other vehicle.

“Besides,” she said, “something doesn’t feel—”

She was about to say right, just as things started to go very wrong.

Armed Drenard guards spilled out of the other shuttle and marched around toward theirs. One of the Circle members that had ridden with Molly’s bunch stood outside the door of their shuttle; he urged the soldiers forward, waving his blue arm frantically.

“Cole—”

“I see it.”

“Edison, wake up!”

Molly moved into the aisle and turned to the one armed guard they had on their side.

The guard raised his lance.

But not in the direction she’d hoped.

And Molly finally saw just how wrong things were about to get.

19

The world slowed down, coming to a halt like a Drenard day. Molly saw Dani yelling at the official with the red box in his lap. The third Circle Member stood in the aisle, facing Molly’s group with his hands wide, palms out. Their driver watched from the front of the shuttle, his lance parallel to the floor and pointed back their way.

Without bands, there was no way to ask anyone what was going on. Dani seemed furious about something. The other Questioner approached the front of the vehicle and the driver. Out of the corner of her eye, Molly could see the line of guards advancing up the side of their shuttle.

What a perfect plan, she thought. The Circle members had sent Dani’s contingent of guards in one direction while they led them, defenseless, into a trap in the middle of nowhere. Before she could fully admire the scheming involved, the world around her burst back into motion. A cacophony of soothing sounds—Drenards arguing in their cooing tongue—rang out. Behind her, Molly could hear a fierce and throaty roar.

“Easy, Edison,” she heard Cole say.

Spinning in the aisle, she saw Cole, bent over the back of his seat, trying to keep Edison restrained. Walter remained by the back glass, but he was looking forward, trying to hiss something.

He pointed, his arm quivering, at Molly.