She cut the music and took a break after an hour and a half.

Despite Carrolson's protestations that she wasn't Vasquez's nursemaid, to Patricia that described her role exactly. She had no immediate duties in the seventh chamber, and her expertise wasn't complementary to Patricia's. Still, there was a certain comfort in having the older woman around. She was relaxed, self-confident and easy to get along with. A good person to ask questions of, if only to bounce thoughts around.

The intricacies of Stone protocol and organization were not easy to master. A chart in the memory block Lanier had left with her showed it all clearly. Under the supervision of the ISCCOM regulatory committee, NATO–Eurospace—more directly, NASA and the European Space Agency—were in charge of the Stone's exploration.

The Joint Space Command had a very large say in how the studies were conducted. Despite the civilian overgarments, this was largely a military operation. Judith Hoffman, nominally coordinating the civilian and military agencies from her offices in Sunnyvale and Pasadena, tempered this reality a little.

The Stone security team consisted of some 300 Americans (about half), 150 British and 100 Germans; the remaining 50 were from Canada, Australia and Japan. France was not a member of NATO–Eurospace and had declined an invitation to send its nationals to the Stone, no doubt partly in protest of NATO pressure to join in the major rearmament of the first two years of the twenty-first century.

Through their respective commanders, the Stone security team took orders from U.S. Navy Captain Bertram D. Kirchner—commander of external security—and Army Brigadier General Oliver Gerhardt, in charge of internal security.

The six hundred team members worked throughout the Stone to defend the civilians in case of attack. Who might attack was unspecified, but in the beginning, obviously, attack was expected from the seventh chamber, or from hidden elements in the unexplored second and third chamber cities.

Lanier acted as Hoffman's direct voice on the Stone. He coordinated science, engineering and communication. Carrolson was the senior science supervisor; Heineman was in charge of civilian engineering; and a woman named Roberta Pickney, civilian communication.

The structural breakdown of the science team was informative. There were mathematicians, archaeologists, physicists, social scientists (including historians), computer and information specialists, and medical/biology experts. There were also four lawyers.

Engineering consisted of support—with a military adjunct—and mechanics. Communication also had a military adjunct, in charge of coded transmission. Pickney, assisted by Sylvia Link, was responsible for internal Stone communications and Earth-space-station-lunar settlement networks.

Patricia thought she would never be able to remember even the most important names. Names had never been her strong suit—faces and personalities she did better with.

Besides the United States and Eurospace civilian personnel, representatives from Russia, India, China, Brazil, Japan and Mexico had been invited to serve on the science team. Some Australians and one Laotian were to arrive soon. Carrolson intimated there had been trouble with the Russians. They had only been on the Stone for a year, after finally agreeing to certain restrictions. Despite their agreement, they had been demanding (reasonably enough, Patricia thought) access to all information on the Stone, including the libraries. The libraries, Carrolson explained, were a purely American preserve, by direct order of Hoffman and the President.