Bobbi waved her optical laser, crossing and recrossing the curved surface, numbers blurring in her digital readout. "It's in spec! Leo, it's within spec! We did it!"

Leo's innards were melting wax. He breathed a long and very tired sigh of happiness. "All right, kids, let's take it Indoors. Back to the—the—darn it, we can't keep calling it the 'D-620-and Habitat-Reconfiguration'. "

"Ah sure can't," agreed Tony.

"So what are we going to name it?" An assortment of possibilities flitted through Leo's mind—the Ark—the Freedom Star—Graf's Folly. . . .

"Home," said Tony simply after a moment. "Let's go home, Leo."

"Home." Leo rolled the name in his mouth. It tasted good. It tasted very good. Pramod nodded, and one of Bobbi's upper hands touched her helmet in salute of the choice.

Leo blinked. Some irritating vapor in his suit's air was making his eyes water, no doubt, and tightening his chest. "Yeah. Let's take our vortex mirror home, gang."

*      *      *

Bruce Van Atta paused in the corridor outside Chalopin's office at Shuttleport Three, to catch his breath and control his trembling. He had a stitch in his side, too. He wouldn't be the least surprised if he was developing an ulcer out of all this. The fiasco out on the dry lake bed had been infuriating. To pave the way, and then have fumbling subordinates totally fail him—utterly infuriating.

Sheer chance, that having returned to his own downside quarters for a much-needed shower and some sleep, he'd awakened to take a piss and called Shuttleport Three to check progress. They might not even have told him about the shuttle landing otherwise! Anticipating Graf's next move, he had flung on his clothes and rushed to the hospital—if he'd been moments sooner, he might have trapped Minchenko within.

He had already chewed out the jetcopter pilot, reamed his ass for his cowardice in failing to force down the launching shuttle, for his dilatory failure to arrive at the lake bed faster. The red-faced pilot had clamped his jaw and his fists and said nothing, doubtless properly ashamed of himself. But the real failure lay higher up—on the other side of these very office doors. He jabbed the control, and they slid aside.

Chalopin, her security captain Bannerji, and Dr. Yei had their heads together around Chalopin's computer vid display. Captain Bannerji had his finger on it, and was saying to Yei, ". . . can get in here. But how much resistance, d'you think?"

"You'll surely frighten them very much," said Yei.

"Hm. I'm not crazy about asking my men to go up with stunners against desperate folk with much more lethal weapons. What is the real status of those so-called hostages?"

"Thanks to you," snarled Van Atta, "the hostage ratio is now five to zero. They got away with Tony, damn them. Why didn't you put a twenty-seven-hour guard on that quaddie like I told you? We should have put a guard on Madame Minchenko, too."