He was not smiling now. "Silver . . . ? You in here?"

For a wild moment Silver considered trying to hide among the grow tubes, but the foliage rustled as she turned, giving away her position. She peeked over the leaves. "Uh . . . hi, Leo."

"Have you seen Tony or Claire lately?" Trust Leo to be direct. Call me Leo, he'd told her the first time she'd 'Mr. Graf'd' him. It's shorter. He drifted over to the grow tubes; they regarded each other across a barrier of bush beans.

"I haven't seen anybody but my supervisor all shift," said Silver, momentarily relieved to be able to give a perfectly honest answer.

"When did you last see either one of them?"

"Oh—last shift, I guess." Silver tossed her head airily.

"Where?"

"Uh . . . around." She giggled vacuously. Mr. Van Atta might have flung up his hands in disgust at this point, and abandoned any attempt to wring sense from so empty a head as hers.

Leo frowned at her thoughtfully. "You know, one of the charms of you kids is the literal precision with which you answer any question."

The comment hung in air expectantly, as Leo did. The picture of Tony, Claire, and Andy scooting across the shuttle loading bay flashed in Silver's mind with hallucinatory clarity. She groped in memory for their prior meeting, where the final plans had been laid, to offer up as a half-truth. "We had the mid-shift meal together last shift at Nutrition Station Seven."

Leo's lips quirked. "I see." He tilted his head, studying her as if she were some puzzle, such as two metallurgically incompatible surfaces he had to figure out how to join. "You know, I just heard about Claire's new, ah, reproduction assignment. I'd wondered what was bothering Tony the last few weeks. He was pretty broken up about it, eh? Pretty . . . distraught."

"They'd had plans," Silver began, caught herself, shrugged casually. "I don't know. I'd be glad to get any reproduction assignment. There's no pleasing some people."

Leo's face grew stern. "Silver—just how distraught were they? Kids often mistake a temporary problem for the end of the world. They have no sense of the fullness of time. Makes 'em excitable. Think they might have been upset enough to do something . . . desperate?"

"Desperate?" Silver smiled rather desperately herself.

"Like a suicide pact or something?"

"Oh, no!" said Silver, shocked. "Oh, they'd never do anything like that."

Did relief flash for a moment in Leo's brown eyes? No, his face puckered in intensified concern.

"That's just what I'm afraid they might have done. Tony didn't show up for his work shift, and that's unheard of; Andy's gone too. They can't be found. If they felt so desperate—trapped—what could be easier than slipping out an airlock? A flash of cold, a moment's pain, and then—escape forever." His single pair of hands clasped earnestly. "And it's all my fault. I should have been more perceptive—said something . . ." He paused, looking at her hopefully.