k on her face as we both died
when she knew I could have gone. On the ship before we took off I stood
at a port and looked down at her. A small girl trying to smile at me.
She waved once before they led her away from the rocket. All hell was
shaking the planet already, had been for months, but all I saw was a
small girl waving once, just once. She's still here, somewhere down
there under the ice."

The cold was slowly creeping into us. It was hard to move my mouth, but
I said, "She loved you, she wanted you to live."

"Without her, without my home, I'm as dead as the planet. I feel frozen.
She's like that dead sun out there, and I'll circle around her until
someone gets me and ends it." Saltario seemed to be seeing something.
"I'm beginning to forget what she looked like. I don't want to forget! I
can't forget her on this planet. The way it was! It was a beautiful
place, perfect! I don't want to forget her!"

Colenso said, "You won't have long to remember."

* * * * *

But Colenso was wrong. My Third Battalion showed up when we had just
less than an hour to live. They took us off. The Earth mining outfit
haggled over the contract because the job had not been finished and I
had to settle for two-third contract price. Rajay-Ben did better when he
ransomed Arjay-Ben's two Sub-Commanders. It wasn't a bad deal and I
would have been satisfied, except that something had happened to Yuan
Saltario.

Maybe it made him realize that he did not want to die after all. Or
maybe it turned him space-happy and he began to dream. A dream of his
own born up there in the cold of his dead planet. A dream that nearly
cost me my Company.

I did not know what that dream was until Saltario came into my office a
year later. He had a job for the Company.

"How many men?" I asked.

"Our Company and Rajay-Ben's Patrol," Saltario said.

"Full strength?"

"Yes, sir."

"Price?"

"Standard, sir," Saltario said. "The party will pay."

"Just a trip to your old planet?"

"That's all," Saltario said. "A guard contract. The hiring party just
don't want any interference with their project."

"Two full Companies? Forty thousand men? They must expect to need a lot
of protecting."

"United Galaxies opposes the project. Or they will if they get wind of
it."

I said, "United opposes a lot of things, what's special about this
scheme?"

Saltario hesitated, then looked at me with those flat black eyes.
"Ionic