Between one breath and the next, the vision took him. It came not as a chain of reason, more words words words, but as a blinding image, all complete in its first moment, inherent, holistic, gestalt, inspired. Every hour of his life from now on would be but the linear exploration of its fullness.

A stellar system with an M or G or K star, gentle, steady, pouring out power for the catching. Circling it, a Jovian gas giant with a methane and water-ice ring, for water, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen. Most important of all, an asteroid belt.

And some equally important absences: no Earth-like planet orbiting there also to attract competition; not on a wormhole jump route of strategic importance to any potential conquistadors. Humanity had passed over hundreds of such systems, in its obsessive quest for new Earths. The charts were glutted with them.

A quaddie culture spreading out along the belt from their initial base, a society of the quaddies, by the quaddies, for the quaddies. Burrowing into the rocks for protection against radiation, and to seal in their precious air, expanding, leapfrogging from rock to rock, to drill and build new homes. Minerals all around, more than they could ever use. Whole hydroponics farms for Silver. A new world to build. A space world to make Morita Station look like a toy.

"Why"—Leo's eyes widened with delight—"it's an engineering problem after all!"

He hung limply in air, entranced; fortunately, the corridor was empty of passers-by at the moment, or they would surely have thought him mad or drugged.

The solution had been lying around him in pieces all this time, invisible until he'd changed. He grinned dementedly, possessed. He yielded himself up to it without reservation. All. All. There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.

Didn't hold back, didn't look back—for there would be no going back. Literally, medically, that was the heart of it. Men adapted to free fall, it was the going back that crippled them.

"I am a quaddie," Leo whispered in wonder. He regarded his hands, clenched and spread his fingers. "Just a quaddie with legs." He wasn't going back.

As for that initial base—he was floating in it right now. It merely required relocating. His cascading thought clicked over the connections too rapidly to analyze. He didn't need to hijack a spaceship; he was in one. All it needed was a bit of power.

And the power lay ready-to-hand in Rodeo orbit, being gratuitously wasted even at this moment to shove mere bulk petrochemicals out of orbit. What might a petrochemical pod-bundle mass, compared to a chunk of the Cay Habitat? Leo didn't know, but he knew he could find out. The numbers would be on his side, anyway, whatever their precise magnitudes.