Van Atta stared, then snorted. "No. What you do not call them out loud, however, is 'mutants,' genetic paranoia being what it is after that Nuovo Brasilian military cloning fiasco. This whole project could have been carried out much more conveniently in Earth orbit, but for the assorted legal hysterias about human gene manipulation. Anyway, the projects. One to assemble jumpships in orbit around Orient IV, and another building a deep space transfer facility at some nexus away the hell-and-gone beyond Tau Ceti called Kline Station—cold work, no habitable planets in the system and its sun is a cinder, but the local space harbors no less than six wormhole exits. Potentially very profitable. Lots of welding under the most difficult free-fall conditions—"

Leo's brief angst was swallowed in interest. It had always been the work itself, not the pay and perks, that held him in thrall. Screw executive privilege—didn't it mostly mean being stuck downside? He followed Van Atta out of the office back into the corridor where Tony still waited patiently with his luggage.

*      *      *

"I suppose it was the development of the uterine replicators that made it all possible," Van Atta opined while Leo stowed his gear in his new quarters. More than a mere sleep cubicle, the chamber included private sanitary facilities and a comconsole as well as comfortable-looking sleep restraints—no morning backache on this job, Leo thought with minor satisfaction. Headache was another problem.

"I'd heard something about those things," said Leo. "Another invention from Beta Colony, wasn't it?"

Van Atta nodded. "The outer worlds are getting too damn clever these days. Earth's going to lose its edge if it doesn't shape up."

Too true, Leo thought. Yet the history of innovation suggested this was an inevitable pattern. Management who had made huge capital investments in one system were naturally loath to scrap it, and so the latecomers forged ahead—to the frustration of loyal engineers. . . . "I'd thought the use of uterine replicators was limited to obstetrical emergencies."

"Actually, the only limitation on their use is the fact that they're hideously expensive," said Van Atta. "It's probably only a matter of time before rich women everywhere start ducking their biological duties and cooking up their kids in 'em. But for GalacTech, it meant that human bioengineering experiments could at last be carried out without involving a lot of flaky foster-mothers to carry the implanted embryos. A neat, clean, controlled engineering approach. Better still, these quaddies are total constructs—that is, their genes are taken from so many sources, it's impossible to identify their genetic parents either. Saves quantities of legal grief."

"I'll bet," said Leo faintly.

"This whole thing was Dr. Cay's obsession, I gather. I never met him, but he must have been one of those, you know, charismatic types, to push through a project with this enormous lead time before any possible payoff. The first batch is just turning twenty. The extra arms are the wildest part—"