It had taken Mariah quite a while to pick out the dress she was wearing. She had dug through the clothes she'd brought with her from Sihnon twice, Mona sitting on the bed and critiquing, until she found it at the bottom of a suitcase. It was a classical sari, a translucent swath of pink and gold wrapped around deep red silk. She hadn't worn it since her twenty-first birthday, the night her father had…well, in a long while. Mona had immediately approved of the dress, but it wasn't until Mariah had seen Dex's reaction as she walked into the dining room that she knew her time had been well spent.

Now, she had her hand around Dex's arm as the guard waved them through the entrance to the upper deck. He was dressed in his finest as well, although the mechanic's finest consisted of a slightly wrinkled dress shirt and a vest that looked as if it had been cut from a throw rug. He'd obviously been a little embarrassed when he saw how much more elegantly she was dressed, but she couldn't understand why. She thought he looked cute.

Dex nodded to the guard and they stepped off the bare steel floor onto the poshly carpeted parlor of Hobenson's private penthouse level. There were gaming tables set up throughout, about two dozen people milling about, or starting early games of mah jong, or congregating at the full bar that stood opposite the deck's massive star-filled windows. Smiling and offering casual greetings to the clusters of people they passed, Mariah and Dex, arms still clasped, moved toward the tables. That was their job, along with the doctor, to get into the games and do their best to make the job worthwhile. Mariah was good enough at cards herself, though she felt uneasy about trying to join the games on Artemis—neither Saul nor the captain seemed very enthusiastic about her attempts to integrate herself with the crew. Mona told her it would just take time, but it always seemed as if Captain Wu didn't trust her, thought she had an ulterior motive.

As Dex nodded sheepishly to her and broke off toward one of the ga