"Yeah," she agrees. "And there's no saying how credible they are. Even if they aren't deliberately misleading us, there's no way they're telling us the whole story right out of the gate, and we only have their side of it. Not that I don't strenuously object to the thought of getting turned into a pod person."

She gives him another brief flicker of a smile. "Between that and the claim that our only way home is behind enemy lines, it's one hell of a carrot-and-stick they have here."