"Or," Leo raised his voice, "you can take your lives into your own hands. Come with me and put all your risks up front. The big gamble for the big payoff. Let me tell you"—he gulped for courage, mustered megalomania—for surely only a maniac could drive this through to success—"let me tell you about the Promised Land. . . ."

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Leo stretched for a look out the viewport of the cargo pusher at the rapidly-enlarging transfer station. Damn. The weekly passenger ship from Orient IV was already docked at the hub of the wheel. Newly arrived, it was doubtless still in the off-loading phase, but nothing seemed more likely to Leo than for a pilot—or ex-pilot—like Ti to invite himself aboard early, to kibitz.

The jumpship was blocked from view as they spiraled around the station to their own assigned shuttle hatch. The quaddie piloting the pusher, a dark-haired, copper-skinned girl named Zara in the purple T-shirt and shorts of the pusher crews, brought her ship smartly into alignment and clicked it delicately into the clamps on the landing spoke. Leo was encouraged toward belief in her top rating among the pusher pilots after all, despite his qualms about her age, barely fifteen.

The mild acceleration vector of the station's spin at this radius tugged at Leo, and his padded chair swung in its gimbals to the newly-defined 'upright' position. Zara grinned over her shoulder at Leo, clearly exhilarated by the sensation. Silver, in the quaddie-formfit acceleration couch beside Zara, looked more dubious.

Zara completed the formal litany of cross-checks with transfer station traffic control and shut down her systems. Leo sighed illogical relief that traffic control hadn't questioned the vaguely-worded purpose of their filed flight plan—"Pick up material for the Cay Habitat." There was no reason they should have. Leo wasn't even close to exceeding his powers of authorization. Yet.

"Watch, Silver," said Zara, and let a light-pen fall from her fingers. It fell slowly to the padded strip on the wall-now-floor and bounced in a graceful arc. Zara's lower hand scooped it back out of the air.

Leo waited resignedly while Silver tried it once, too, then said, "Come on. We've got to catch Ti."

"Right." Silver pulled herself up by her upper hands on her headrest, swung her lowers free, and hesitated. Leo shook out his pair of gray sweat pants he'd brought for the purpose, and gingerly helped her pull them over her lower arms and up to her waist. She waved her hands and the ends of the pant legs flopped and flapped over them. She grimaced at the unaccustomed constraint of the bundled cloth upon her dexterity.

"All right, Silver," said Leo, "now the shoes you borrowed from that girl running Hydroponics."

"I gave them to Zara to stow."

"Oh," said Zara. One of her upper hands flew to her lips.

"What?"

"I left them in the docking bay."

"Zara!"

"Sorry . . ."