February 28, 1997

I was giving Dr. Jensen a tour of the University, showing him the lecture halls, the student union, the food court, and my office. it was Friday, and only about a third of the student body had classes on Friday.

"Captain Beckett still has one more week of quarantine to go," said Jensen. "She'll have one week's leave after she leaves quarantine, and then we might send her on another sliding expedition."

"Has her family been able to visit her at the hospital?" I asked.

"She has no close family. Her only living immediate relative is her father, who is serving time in Leavenworth for stealing military weapons and selling them on the black market."

I nodded. I understood background checks well enough to wonder why the captain was chosen given her family background.

Then it occurred to me few enough people would miss her if she had not returned from the slide.

Or if she were exiled.

I recalled reading a protocol, back when the Oversight Commission was reviewing candidates for sliding. If the slider, during quarantine, was found with an unknown disease, she would be exiled to the dimension where she had caught the disease.