first two hours of the shift. The project chief would be starting to think about his coffee break by now, and reaching the degree of frustration that always attended the first attack on a new problem, in this case dismantling the Habitat. Leo could picture the entangled stage of his planning precisely; he’d gone through it himself about eight hours previously, locked in his own quarters, brainstorming on his computer console after a brief pause to render his programs inaccessible to snoops. The leftover military security clearance from the Argus cruiser project worked wonders. Leo was quite sure no one in the Habitat, not Van Atta and certainly not Yei, possessed a higher key.
Van Atta frowned at him from the clutter of printouts, his computer vid scintillating multi-screened and colorful with assorted Habitat schematics. “Now what, Leo? I’m busy. Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
And
“You would?” Van Atta’s brows rose in astonishment, lowered in suspicion. “Why?”
Van Atta would hardly believe it was out of the goodness of his heart. Leo was prepared. “Because as much as I hate to admit it, you were right again. I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to bring away from this assignment. Counting travel time, I’ve shot four months of my life—more, before this is done—and I’ve got nothing to show for it but some black marks on my record.”
“You did it to yourself.” Van Atta, reminded, rubbed his chin upon which the bruise was fading to a green shadow, and glowered.
“I lost my perspective for a little while, it’s true,” Leo admitted. “I’ve got it back.”
“A bit late,” sneered Van Atta.
“But I could do a good job,” argued Leo, wondering how one could achieve the effect of a hangdog shuffle in free fall. Better not overdo it. “I really need a commendation, something to counterweight those reprimands. I’ve had some ideas that could result in an unusually high salvage ratio, cut the losses. It would take all the scut work off your hands and leave you free to administer.”
“Hm,” said Van Atta, clearly enticed by a vision of his office returning to its former pristine serenity. He studied Leo, his eyes slitting. “Very well—take it. There’s my notes, they’re all yours. Ah, just send the plans and reports through my office, I’ll send ‘em on. That’s my real job, after all, administration.”
“Certainly.” Leo swept up the clutter.
“I’ll need a few other things,” Leo requested humbly. “I want all the quaddie pusher crews that can be spared from their regular duties, in addition to my own classes. These useless children are going to learn to work like they never worked before. Supplies, equipment, authorization to sign out pushers and fuel—gotta start some on-site surveying—and I need to be able to commandeer other quaddie spot labor as needed. All right?”
“Oh, are you volunteering for the hands-on part too?” A fleeting vindictive greediness crossed Van Atta’s face, followed by doubt. “What about keeping this under wraps till the last minute?”
“I can present the pre-planning as a theoretical class exercise, at first. Buy a week or two. They’ll have to be told eventually, you know.”
“Not too soon. I’ll hold you responsible for keeping the chimps under control, you copy?”
“I copy. Do I have my authorization? Oh—and I’ll need to get an extension against my downside gravity leave.”
“HQ doesn’t like that. Liability.”
“It’s either me or you, Bruce.”
“True…” Van Atta waved a hand, already sinking back gratefully from harried to languid mode. “All right. You got it.”
A blank check. Leo tamped a wolfish grin into a fawning smile. “You’ll remember this, won’t you Bruce— later?”
Van Atta’s lips too drew back. “I guarantee, Leo, I’ll remember
Leo bowed himself out, mumbling gratitude.
Silver poked her head through the door to the creche mother’s private sleep cubicle. “Mama Nilla?”
“Sh!” Mama Nilla held her finger to her lips and nodded toward Andy, asleep in a sack on the wall with his face peeping out. She whispered, “For heaven’s sake don’t wake the baby. He’s been so fussy—I think the formula disagrees with him. I wish Dr. Minchenko were back. Here, I’ll come out in the corridor.”
The airseal doors swished shut behind her. In preparation for sleep Mama Nilla had exchanged her pink working coveralls for a set of flowered pajamas cinched in around her ample waist. Silver suppressed an urge to clamp herself to that soft torso as she had in desperate moments when she was little—she was much too grown-up to be cuddled anymore, she told herself sternly. “How’s Andy doing?” she asked instead, with a nod toward the closed doors.
“Hm. All right,” said Mama Nilla. “Though I hope I can get this formula problem straightened out soon. And… well… I’m not sure you could call it depression, exactly, but his attention span seems shorter, and he fusses—don’t tell Claire that, though, poor dear, she has enough troubles. Tell her he’s all right.”
Silver nodded. “I understand.”
Mama Nilla frowned introspectively. “I wrote up a protest, but my supervisor blocked it. Ill-timed, she said. Ha. More like Mr. Van Atta has her spooked. I could just… ahem. Anyway, I’ve been turning in overtime chits like crazy, and I requested an extra assistant be assigned to my creche unit. Maybe when they realize that this foolishness is costing them money, they’ll give in. You can tell Claire that, I think.”
“Yes,” said Silver, “she could use a little hope.”
Mama Nilla sighed. “I feel so badly about this. Whatever possessed those children to try and run off, anyway? I could just shake Tony. And as for that stupid Security guard, I could just… well…” she shook her head.
“Have you heard any more about Tony, that I could pass on to Claire?”
“Ah. Yes.” Mama Nilla glanced up and down the corridor, to assure herself of their privacy. “Dr. Minchenko called me last night on the personal channel. He assures me Tony’s out of danger now, they got that infection under control. But he’s still very weak. Dr. Minchenko means to bring him back up to the Habitat when he finishes his own gravity leave. He thinks Tony will complete his recovery faster up here. So that’s a bit of good news you can pass on to Claire.”
Silver calculated, her lower fingers tapping out the days unobtrusively below Mama Nilla’s line of sight, and breathed relief. That was one massive problem she could report to Leo as solved. Tony would be back before their revolt broke into the open. His safe return might even become the signal for it. A smile lit her face. “Thanks, Mama Nilla. That is good news.”
The shell of floating quaddies hovering expectantly around him in the lecture module had been officially augmented by both the off-duty pusher crews, and loaded with all the off-shift older quaddies Silver had been able to contact covertly. Sixty or seventy altogether. The lecture module was jammed, causing Leo to jump ahead mentally and think about oxygen consumption and regeneration plans for the reconfigured Habitat. There was tension, as well as carbon dioxide, in the air. Rumors were afloat already, Leo realized, God knew in what mutant forms. It was time to replace rumors with facts.
Silver waved all clear from the airseal doors, turning all four thumbs up and grinning at Leo, as one last T- shirted quaddie scurried within. The airseal doors slid shut, eclipsing her as she turned to take up guard duty in the corridor.
Leo took up his lecture station in the center. The center, the hub of the wheel, where stresses are most concentrated. After some initial whispering, poking, and prodding, they hushed for him, to an almost frightening attentiveness. He could hear them breathing.
