Birkerod smiled. "First place I looked."
"The lifeboat?"
"Yeah."
"What was he doing?"
"Nothing. I think I know how our little conjecture's going to turn out, though." He turned to Pappas, who had followed the exchange tensely. "You know, Nick, my father was a fellow-countryman of yours back on Earth."
"Countryman?"
"That's right. He lived just north of Winnipeg. My mother was a Canadian, too. Both of them were in the second batch of colonists that left for Callisto. But it doesn't mean much to call you a Canadian any more, does it? Garcia and you and I, we're all Callistans now."
"Sure," said Pappas, wondering.
Callisto: A cold world. A small new world, and a cold world, and incredibly distant from the planet that had evolved its settlers.