"We'll give it a few more minutes." Damn that overweening fool Graf. What had he done? And where was he? In a breath mask somewhere, Van Atta trusted, or better yet a pressure suit—although if Graf had indeed caused this unholy mess, Van Atta wasn't sure he wished him a pressure suit. Let him have a breath mask, and a nasty case of the bends for just punishment. Idiot Graf.

So much for Graf's famous safety record. Blessings in disguise, at least the engineer wouldn't be able to jam that down his throat any more. A little humility would be good for him.

And yet—the situation was so damned anomalous. It shouldn't be possible to depressurize the whole Habitat at once. There were backups on the backups, interlocks, separated bays—any accident so system-wide would take foresight and planning.

A little hiss escaped his teeth, and Van Atta locked into himself in a sudden bubble of furious concentration, eyes widening. A planned accident—could it be, could it possibly be . . . ?

Genius Graf. An accident, an accident, a perfect accident, the very accident he'd most desired but had never dared wish for aloud. Was that it? That had to be it! Fatal disaster for the quaddies, now, at the last moment when they were all together and it could be accomplished at one stroke?

A dozen clues fell into place. Graf's insistence upon handling all the details of the salvage planning himself, his secretiveness, his anxiety for constant updates on the evacuation schedule—his withdrawal from social contacts that Yei had observed with disfavor, obsessive work schedule, general air of a man with a secret agenda driven to exhaustion—it was all culminating in this.

Of course it was secret. Now that he had penetrated the plot himself, Van Atta could only concur. The gratitude of the GalacTech hierarchy to Graf for relieving them of the quaddie problem must appear indirectly, in better assignments, quicker promotions—he would have to think up some suitably oblique way of transmitting it.

On the other hand—why share? Van Atta's lips drew back in a vulpine grin. This was hardly a situation where Graf could demand credit where it was due, after all. Graf had been subtle—but not subtle enough. There would have to be a sacrifice, for the sake of form, after the accident. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, and . . . Van Atta had to wrench his attention back to his present surroundings.

"I've got to check on my quaddies!" The young woman was growing wild-eyed. She gave up on the com unit and began to shove her way back toward the airseal doors.

"Yes," another man joined her, "and I've got to find Wyzak. He's still not here. He's bound to need help. I'll go with you—"