"The spaceport—?"
"If we stay on Ulna, sooner or later Sark or Xaymar or the coleoptera will hunt us down. We've got to blast off, somehow, and that quickly."
She looked at him for a long moment, and it suddenly came to him that he had never realized before that her eyes were blue.
Blue, and calm, and very steady.
She said quietly, "I'll never leave Ulna, Haral."
There were the words he'd feared, already spoken. They tied a knot of tension in him.
"Not even after all this? Not even with your life at stake?"
"No, Haral. Not even if it means death in Sark's arena."
He smiled again, wryly, because he knew that if he didn't smile, the dark thoughts that came with his tension would boil over. "It's up to you. But I've no taste for Sark's tender mercies, and even less for Xaymar's."
She said, "I'm sorry," and would have turned away. But now he would not, could not, let her. He lashed out: