"What have your damned quaddies done to my Necklin rods?" sputtered Ti. "We go to all this trouble to catch this ship, bring it here, and practically the first thing you do is start smashing it up—I barely got it parked!" His voice faded "Please—tell me that little mutant"—he waved at Pramod—"got it wrong . . . ?"

Leo cleared his throat. "One of the pusher attitude jets apparently got stuck in an 'on' position, throwing the pusher into an uncontrollable spin. The term 'unpreventable accident' is not in my vocabulary, but it certainly wasn't the quaddie's fault."

"Huh," said Ti. "Well, at least you're not trying to pin it on the pilot . . . but what was the damage, really?"

"The rod itself wasn't hit—"

Ti let out a relieved breath.

"—but the portside titanium vortex mirror was smashed."

Ti's breath became a howl in a minor key. "That's just as bad!"

"Calm down! Maybe not quite as bad. I have one or two ideas yet. I wanted to talk to you anyway. When we took over the Habitat, there was a freight shuttle in dock."

Ti eyed him suspiciously. "Lucky you. So?"

"Planning, not luck. Something Silver doesn't know yet"—Leo caught her eye; she braced herself visibly, soberly intent upon his words—"we weren't able to get Tony back before we took over the Habitat. He's still in hospital downside on Rodeo."

"Oh, no," Silver whispered. "Is there any way—?"

Leo rubbed his aching forehead. "Maybe. I'm not sure it's good military thinking—the precedent had to do with sheep, I believe—but I don't think I could live with myself if we didn't at least try to get him back. Dr. Minchenko has also promised to go with us if we can somehow pick up Madame Minchenko. She's downside, too."

"Dr. Minchenko stayed?" Silver clapped her hands, clearly thrilled. "Oh, good."

"Only if we retrieve the Madame," Leo cautioned. "So that's two reasons to chance a downside foray. We have a shuttle, we have a pilot—"

"Oh, no," began Ti, "now, wait a minute—"

"—and we desperately need a spare part. If we can locate a vortex mirror in a Rodeo warehouse—"

"You won't," Ti cut in firmly. "Jumpship repairs are handled solely by the District orbital yards at Orient IV. Everything's warehoused on that end. I know 'cause we had a problem once and had to wait four days for a repair crew to arrive from there. Rodeo's got nothing to do with superjumpers, nothing." He crossed his arms.

"I was afraid of that," said Leo lowly. "Well, there's one other possibility. We could try to fabricate a new one, here on the spot."