"A moral obligation," Leo offered desperately. "Surely GalacTech must admit some moral obligation to them—we created them, after all." The ground was shifting under his feet, he could see it in her unsympathetic face, but he could not yet discern in what direction the tilt was going.

"Moral obligation indeed," agreed Apmad, her hands clenching. "And have you overlooked the fact that Dr. Cay created these creatures fertile? They are a new species, you know; he dubbed them Homo quadrimanus, not Homo sapiens race quadrimanus. He was the geneticist, we may presume he knew what he was talking about. What about GalacTech's moral obligation to society at large? How do you imagine it will react to having these creatures and all their problems just dumped into its systems? If you think they overreact to chemical pollution, just imagine the flap over genetic pollution!"

"Genetic pollution?" Leo muttered, trying to attach some rational meaning to the term. It sounded impressive.

"No. If the Cay Project is proved to be GalacTech's most expensive mistake, we will containerize it properly. The Cay workers will be sterilized and placed in some suitable institution, there to live out their lives otherwise unmolested. Not an ideal solution, but the best available compromise."

"St—st . . ." Leo stuttered. "What crime have they committed, to be sentenced to life in prison? And where, if Rodeo is to be closed down, will you find or build another suitable orbital habitat? If you're worried about expense, lady, that'll be expensive."

"They will be placed planetside, of course, at a fraction of the cost."

A vision of Silver creeping uncomfortably across the floor like a bird with both wings broken burst in Leo's brain. "That's obscene! They'll be no better than cripples."

"The obscenity," snapped Apmad, "was in creating them in the first place. Until Dr. Cay's death brought his department under mine, I had no idea that his 'R&D—Biologicals' was concealing such enormously invasive manipulations of human genes. My home world embraced the most painfully draconian measures to ensure our gene pool not be overrun with accidental mutations—to go out and deliberately introduce mutations seems the most vile . . ." She caught her breath, contained her emotions again, except what escaped her nervously drumming fingers. "The right thing to do is euthanasia. Terrible as it seems at first glance, it might actually be less cruel in the long run."

Gavin the accountant, squirming, twitched an uncertain smile at his boss. His eyebrows had gone up in surprise, down in dismay, and at last settled on up again—not taking her seriously, perhaps. Leo didn't think she'd been joking, but Gavin added in a facetiously detached professional tone, "It would be more cost effective. If it were done before the end of this fiscal year, we could indeed take them as a loss—total—against Orient taxes."

Leo felt suspended in glass. "You can't do that!" he whispered. "They're people—children—it would be murder—"