The mood in the shuttle for the return trip to the Habitat was, to say the least, constrained. Claire, accompanied by one of the Habitat's infirmary nurses pulled off her downside leave three days early for the duty, huddled in the back clutching Andy. Leo and Van Atta sat as far from each other as the limited space allowed.

Van Atta spoke once to Leo. "I told you so."

"You were right," Leo replied woodenly. Van Atta nearly purred at the stroke, smug. Leo would rather have stroked him with a pipe wrench.

Could Van Atta be all right, as well? Was his disruptive pressure for instant results a sign of concern for the quaddies' welfare, even survival? No, Leo decided with a sigh. The only welfare that truly concerned Bruce was his own.

Leo let his head rest on the padded support and stared out his window as the acceleration of takeoff thrust him back in his seat. A shuttle ride was still a bit of a thrill to something deep in him, even after the countless trips he'd made. There were people—billions, the vast majority—who never set foot off their home planets in their lives. He was one of the lucky few.

Lucky to have his job. Lucky in the results he'd achieved, over the years. The vast Morita Deep Space Transfer Station had probably been the crown of his career, the largest project he was ever likely to work on. He'd first viewed the site when it was empty, icy vacuum, as nothing as nothing could possibly be. He'd passed through it again just last year, making a changeover from a ship from Ylla to a ship for Earth. Morita had looked good, really good; alive, even undergoing expansion of its facilities, several years sooner than anyone had expected. Smooth expansion; plans for it had been incorporated into the original designs. Overambitious, they'd called it then. Farsighted, they called it now.

And there had been other projects, too. Every day, from one end of the wormhole nexus to the other, countless accidents of structural failure did not occur because he, and people he'd trained, had done their jobs well. The work of a harried week, the early detection of the propagating microcracks in the reactor coolant lines at the great Beni Ra orbital factory alone had saved, perhaps, three thousand lives. How many surgeons could claim to save three thousand lives in ten years of their careers? On that memorable inspection tour, he'd done it once a month for a year. Invisibly, unsung; disasters that never happen don't normally make headlines. But he knew, and the men and women who worked alongside him knew, and that was enough.