"No!" cried Van Atta urgently, almost adding You'll spoil everything! "You're to wait for the all-clear. I won't have a panic. We'll all just sit tight and wait for instructions."

The woman subsided, but the man said skeptically, "Instructions from whom?"

"Graf," said Van Atta. Yes, it was not too early to start making it clear to witnesses where the hands-on responsibility lay. He controlled his excitement-spurred rapid breathing, trying for an aura of steady calm. Though not too calm—he must appear as surprised as any—no, more surprised than any—when the full extent of the disaster became apparent.

He settled down to wait. Minutes dragged past. One last panting group of refugees made it through the airseal doors; the Habitat-wide rate of depressurization must be slowing. One of the administrators from inventory control—old habits die hard—presented him with an unsolicited head-count of those present.

He silently cursed the census-taker's initiative, even as he accepted the results with thanks. The proof that all were not present might compel him to action he did not desire to take.

Only eleven downsider staff members had not made it. A necessary price to pay, Van Atta assured himself nervously. Some were doubtless holed up in other pressurized pockets, or so he could maintain he had believed, later. Their fatal mistakes could be pinned on Graf.

A group by the airseal doors was making ready to bolt. Van Atta inhaled, then paused, momentarily uncertain how to stop them without giving away everything. But a cry of dismay went up from one woman—"All the air is out of the corridor now! We can't get through without pressure suits!" Van Atta exhaled in relief.

He made his way to one of the module's viewports; it framed a dull vista of unwinking stars. The port on the other side gave an oblique view back toward the Habitat. Movement caught his eye, and he mashed his nose to the cold glass in an attempt to make out the details.

The silvery flash of work suits, bobbing over the outside surface of the Habitat. Refugees? Or a repair party? Could his first hypothesis of a real accident be correct after all? Not good, but in any case it was still Graf's baby.

But there were quaddies out there, dammit, quaddie survivors. He could see the arms. Graf had not made his stroke complete. Just two quaddie survivors, if one was male and the other female, would be as bad as a thousand, from Apmad's point of view. Perhaps the work party was all-male.

There was Graf himself, among the flitting figures! They carried an assortment of equipment. The wavering distortion of his transverse view through the port prevented him from making out just what. He twisted his neck, craning painfully. Then the work party was eclipsed by a curve of the Habitat. A pusher slid into, and out of, his view, arcing smoothly over the lecture module. More escapees? Quaddie or downsider?