"Happy? Detour for an empty moon. Now go on out and enjoy.

"I will. You've reminded me how magically haunting moons can be. Moons brought me unwanted truths, betrayal, capture, murder, but also my first love, even my first kiss. . . ."

Three months later. . . .

The pale young woman in pale robes drifts down the marble floors of the long crystal hallway in the orbiting Council headquarters. She stops just outside closed doors at its end. Inside--

"Ridiculous!" Onar shakes with anger and all of his two hundred years.

"But truce?"

"There's more to it than. . . ."

She walks in, pours water for Onar, all the while glaring at Tyran. He changes his point.

"The Council will have power."

"We must be the power! Or else what was the use of it all?"

"Trust me father."

"Can I? You're supposed to be more than my son. You're supposed to be me. But you're not! The Problem, our plans, saving our race?! You and I are the only ones who can!" At this the young woman leaves abruptly. "You must do as I would if I were still a hundred percent. You must be me!"

Tyran enters the Tomorrow room. It scares him, focuses him. He shivers in the cold before hundreds of giant, frozen, silver wombs, each holding genetic material for a hundred generations of his father, of himself.

She's behind him. In her whispering voice,

"He's ranting. Pay no mind."

Tyran wonders, Will I end up like him? He looks at the second silver barrel. The first has, of course, already been opened. Will I treat you the same? "Thing is Shi. . . ." Am I him? "I don't disagree. I would've fought to the last."

"Why?"

He had no answer.

"I see." She touches his shoulder. "The war has already caused more than enough destruction for our plans. The Lows are builders, mechanics, engineers, hands. We need them. You agreed. It's the best way."

In two days peace talks begin on the old lunar base founded with pride, soon abandoned. The moon, space stations, a few mining colonies, yes, but the next frontier was too hard and far for the caprice of comfortable minds. Useless to them, until now. Forty-eight hours to the talks, to his sabotage.

"I hope I was right." I want it to end. But I can not fail. "Goodnight, sister."

Shi smiles, "Sleep well, Tyran." In two days, talks, sabotage, not just his but hers as well. Shi looks down at the moon.

She looks up at the moon. Huge, close, splashed dark and bright.

"Top of the world huh?"

"Incredible."

Myles had brought Rayn here. To the top of the world.

He had flown them to one of the last stable bubbles of the highest dome in this area over the oceans that had seen the least damage and into which they had been evacuated. She sees everything- stars, moon, fractured towers and broken honeycombed domes rising like twisted shards of glass, sparkling, coated with glistening ice like trees after a winter storm. Breath-takingly horrible.

Myles stretches close, "We haven't spoken much since Hitt's service."

She shivers in her suit. Hitt died saving Meena during that last attack. Meena and Rayn had promised to take him back to his family for service. And to always look after his descendants. "I meant to tell you then. Thanks. For that night, the cave-in. Not firing. Believing in me."

He grins. "I gather Meena and your former barkeep Noma have been helping you look into your past."

"Where did you hear?"

"Kindra."

"Course." He waits. Slowly, she opens, "Father was a minor politician. Mother was a bio-geneticist. But we couldn't find what she was working on. All her files had been destroyed."

"By the war."

"No, before."

He looks into her dark, evasive eyes. "I thought you were just trying to find out who you were? Not delve into another obsession."

"What would you know about--?"

"Look out there! Above. Below. Our yesterdays are gone! We have to live in tomorrow. All of us. You."

Rayn tries not to speak. But the words come like tears. "I . . . just don't know where I fit now! It was all about survival. Then revenge. Now . . . I don't know!"

"What your purpose is? Where you belong?"

Why I'm alive! She wipes her eyes, forces calm. "Did you bring them?"

He hands her his multi-dimensional pictures from the square the day she was orphaned. Rayn looks. No new answers, just old pain. Myles watches. Her soft jaw and full lips set hard to corral emotions throbbing within. Her heartbeat so loud he can feel it. Her fierce energy vibrating next to him. How had he lived without her for three months?

"There's a reason you know. That you survived."

She doesn't respond. He turns closer.

"Come with me."

"What?"

"I have to fly people up for the talks, but then . . .we can get away from all this. You've done all you can. You've proven yourself. Now it's time to live. With me."

"What are you talking abou--?"

In one quick motion, he darts in and presses his lips briefly to hers. She blushes, gasps. She has nothing to say.

Rayn returns to the Observational she's been evacuated to. The crystal floors and walls are right over the ocean, as if she's walking on the waves of the storm beyond. A noise. Fighting stance, she turns. . . .

"You!"

"Last person you expected?"

Rozar.

"Why?"

"Two things. One, a chat."

"I don't chat."

"Granted we didn't part well. My attack. Your friend. Things said. . . . But I haven't known what to do with myself since the truce. I thought you might feel the same." She still can't read those electric eyes. "After the talks, Peacemakers'll be charged. Half purples, half greens. Won't be easy. Lots of tension, resistance cells, suicide troops, militants, left on both sides."

"I thought maybe you--"

"Why does everyone think they know what's right for me today?" I don't even know. "Second thing?"

"Thanks."

"For?"

"That night, the cave. For understanding, for believing me."

"I just wanted it to be true."

He hands her a lunar-shuttle pass. Her second in one day.

"And in case I never see you again--" He reaches quick and pulls her in. Their lips brush for just a second . . . before she kicks him into the door. With Myles she had felt shock. With Rozar, confusion. She didn't know him. She didn't trust him. He smiles, shrugs.

"Okay. Come. Listen. Two days of your life. What harm could it do?"

He leaves.

She stands alone in the storm.

Go with Myles and start a real life, escape thought and feeling with Rozar in another sea of peril, or stay and figure out who she really is, alone. Maybe the most important decision of her life. Face together, flee, or face alone.

"I didn't think you'd come."

Rayn answers, "Neither did I."

Next week - Episode 7: On the Dark Side of the Moon