"Eat shit and die, boy-lover."

"We have this sweep going between us, you see. A flyer each, so you can understand we're anxious to know. With a lot it's sex. Drugs are quite popular. Then there's the gee-gees. Some are just cracking apart, can't take the stress. But I think you're a straight money man, McNamara. Greed, that's your bang, isn't it? Pure greed." Greg could smell breath heavy with herb seasoning. "Did they tell you why?"

"What?" McNamara was clenching his muscles rigid, trembling, his face hot.

"Why they only wanted that three per cent taken out? Why not go for the jackpot like the memox furnaces?"

There was nothing in his mind, no indication that he knew an answer, even the reference to the memox furnaces had surprised him. The tekmerc team had been good, Greg acknowledged, textbook. The furnace operators didn't know who'd circumvented the security monitors, McNamara hadn't known about the furnace operators. Tight thinking all the way down the line.

He stopped his gland secretion, and turned wearily to Bruce Parwez. "OK, I'm through with him. Stash him in the suit cabin."

"Right." He began to truss McNamara with nylon restrainer bands, arms, ankles, knees. The seething man was eventually hauled out of the sick bay by Isabel Curtis and Lewis Pelham.

"It must be getting crowded in that cabin, five furnace operators, now two from the filament modules," Greg said to Victor Tyo.

"Tough."

"Yeah. How many more?"

"McNamara was the last. Unless you want to work through the other microgee products."

"Christ, don't. Morgan Walshaw or Julia Evans would've been in contact if any other products were involved with the spoil."

"Yes, the last word I got from Walshaw was that he'd got up a team to analyse the output of every module." Victor fought against a smile. "I don't think he was too happy that Julia Evans had found another security breach."

Greg wedged his foot under one of the beds. His first impulse was to sit down, but the position made his stomach muscles ache. Everything about free fall was unnatural. There was a fish bowl on the wall beside the bed, a sealed metre-wide globe with a complicated-looking water filter grafted on to one side. Ten guppies were swimming slowly round. Even they were all keeping their bellies towards the wall, though the angle made it look as if they were standing on their broad rainbow tails.

"What was bothering him?" Greg asked. "That it was another breach, or that Julia Evans found it?"

"Both, I think."

"What's wrong with Julia?"

"Nothing. I met her once, nice kid." Victor popped a mint out of a tube with his thumb, snagging the spinning white disk in midair with his tongue. "Except we're all a bit worried about her grandfather. She's sort of young to be taking over a company like this. There are eighty thousand of us, you know. Most have dependants. That's a lot of responsibility for a teenage girl."