"Ready, Leo," the quaddie pilot responded from her pusher, now attached to the gutted module's stern.

"Now remember, slow and gentle does it. But firm. Pretend your pusher is a scalpel, and you're just about to operate on one of your friends or something."

"Right, Leo." There was a grin in her voice. Don't swagger, girl, Leo prayed inwardly.

"Go when you're ready."

"Going. Hang on up there!"

There was at first no perceivable change. Then Leo's harness straps began to tug gently at him. It was the Habitat module, not the molten ball of titanium, that was moving, Leo reminded himself. The metal did not drift; it was the back wall that moved forward and engulfed it.

It was working, by God it was working! The metal bubble touched the back wall, spread out, and settled into its shallow bowl mold.

"Increase acceleration by the first increment," Leo called into his com. The pusher powered up, and the molten titanium circle spread, its edges growing toward the desired diameter some three meters wide, already losing its bright glow. Creating a titanium blank of controlled thickness, ready (after cooling) for explosive molding into its final subtle form.

"Steady on. That does it!"

Splat-cooling? Well, not exactly. Leo was uncomfortably aware that they were probably not going to achieve a perfect internal single-crystal freeze. But it would be good, good enough—as long as it was good enough that they didn't have to melt it down and start all over again, that was the most Leo dared pray for. They might, barely, have time to make one of these suckers. Not two. And when was the threatened response from Rodeo arriving? Soon, surely.

He wondered briefly what the new gravity technology was going to do to fabrication problems in space like this. Revolutionize seemed too mild a term, certainly. Too bad we didn't have some now, he thought. Still—he grinned, concealed within his helmet—they were doing all right.

He pointed his temperature gauge at the back wall. The piece was cooling almost as rapidly as he had hoped. They were still due for a couple of hours of driving around until it had dumped enough heat to remove from the wall and handle without danger of deformation.

"All right, Bobbi, I'm leaving you and Zara in charge here," Leo said. "It's looking good. When the temperature drops to about five hundred degrees centigrade, bring it on back. We'll try to be ready for the final cooling and the second phase of the shaping."

Carefully, trying not to add excess vibration to the walls, Leo loosed his harness and climbed to the exit hole. From this distance he had a fine view of the D-620, now more than half loaded, and Rodeo beyond. Better go now, before the view became more distant than his suit jets could close.