“Wait a minute—a lifeboat? An RLV?”
“One was missing from the first ship. Mileen thought a child had escaped. The people dead were a man and a woman—parents maybe—and the boy, but one more couch in the control room was empty. She believed the lifeboat must have taken a child. And she wanted us to search for it. But nobody cared. They only wanted the coordinates of the star beneath the Clip symbol. After we got back Mileen even came to me and asked me to pilot a ship to where the lifeboat had landed, she—”
“Wait! This was after you returned to Annulus?”
“The time we all quit our jobs, right after Henry came to you. She begged me, even tried to bribe me. I said she could have my own spaceship if she wanted it—I wasn’t going anywhere—but she just pleaded with me on and on. I threw her out.
