"Yet she's quicker off the mark than the whole of the security division."

Victor smiled boyishly. His face seemed almost unaffected by free fall. "There is that."

The sick bay suddenly rang as if it'd been hit by a hammer. Greg winced, he knew that was something he'd never get used to. The thermal stabilisation went on for fifteen minutes every time the dormitory crossed the terminator, the can's metal skin expanding or contracting, protesting the adjustments with loud groans and shrieks.

"Shall I tell the pilot we're still OK for our original departure time?" Victor asked.

"Yes. We'll get the first flight off anyway, and make sure McNamara is included. He's not the type I want up here a moment longer than necessary. You and I will go down in the second flight."

"McNamara's that bad?"

"Total nutcase, no messing."

"Right, I'll assign all our hardliners to go down on that flight, five of them, five of us; Knowles can go down with them as well. We can borrow a couple of hardliners from Howarth to come with us."

"How long can we delay the second flight?"

"You're the boss; as long as you want. Physically the Sanger can stay up here for thirty-six hours, but it'd be cheaper to send it down and wait for another."

"Plan for that, then. If anyone objects, tell them to contact Walshaw. And if he wants to know what the deal is, tell him to call me."

"Do you think there are some more tekmerc plants up here?"

"Unlikely."

"Why are we staying, then?"

"To find out why the monolattice-filament output was being tampered with." Greg wasn't too keen on having to explain his instinct to Victor. The security lieutenant was a programmer, confined to the physical universe where everything was precisely arrayed and answers were logical, black and white. Perhaps he was being unfair. But empathy was the tangible half of his gland-enhanced psi ability. Intuition, on the other hand, was a track leading down the black-ice slope to the hinterlands of magic, witchery. The province of prophets and demons.

Julia Evans was young enough to be impressionable. Victor, he suspected, would be a mite sceptical.

"I thought the tekmercs were holding the filament extruders in reserve," Victor said. "Then after we pulled the furnace operators, they just bring them into line."

"No. The tekmercs would know we'd check the other microgee modules eventually. And you've toughened up the security monitors yourself; there won't be a recurrence. There's no way they could ever hope to pull the same stunt twice in a row. They're too professional for that."

"Right." Victor thumbed his communication set, and began talking to the Sanger pilot docked to the can.