He scowled. "No. I've been assigned to help Professor Zimmerman, for the sake of St Ignatius."

"Zimmerman?"

"I think Doug Stavenger wants me to be the old man's bodyguard."

"Is the professor getting a suit?" Rossi asked as she tugged on the boots.

"There isn't one in the base that'd fit him."

"Oh dear."

As he knelt at her feet and helped her zip the boots and leggings together, O'Malley said, "After just half a day with the old bugger, I almost wish somebody would knock him off."

"That's no way to talk, Nick."

"He's impossible."

"He's a genius and geniuses have their quirks."

O'Malley made a sour face. "You know what I've been doing for him all morning? Collecting dust!"

"What?"

"I've been teleoperating a tractor all damned morning, scooping up dust off the regolith for him to experiment with."

"That sounds crazy."

"Tell me about it. He wants to build nanomachines that behave like dust particles, so he tells me he needs samples of dust to work with."

Rossi wormed her arms into the suit's torso, then popped her head through the neck ring.

"Why does he want to make nanomachines that behave like dust particles?" she asked.

"Because he's 'way beyond quirky, that's why. He's outright daft."

SAVANNAH

"It's easy duty," said the security chief. "Four men outside, two inside. Pretty soft, really."

Jack Killifer sat in the stiff little plastic chair in front of the chief's metal desk, trying hard to keep his face from showing what he was feeling inside. I'm in Joanna Brudnoy's house! he exulted. Okay, it's just the servants' wing of the house, but still—here I am.

The security chief wore a tan summerweight uniform with epaulets and shoulder patches and even a couple of medals pinned above his left breast pocket. Tin soldiers, Killifer thought.

He himself was in a baggy shirt and Levis, the 'uniform of the day," as instructed.

The security chief kept glancing at the array of display screens that made up one whole wall of the bare little office. They showed security camera views of the grounds around the house, the garage, the pool area, and every room inside except the master bedroom.

"The only thing you've got to remember," the chief said, swivelling his attention back and forth between the screens and Killifer, "is that she doesn't like to see uniformed guards around the place."

"So we dress like gardeners," Killifer said, putting just a hint of disdain in it.

"Yeah. Both chauffeurs are on the team, of course, and the butler's supposed to be a black belt. He carries a nine-millimeter, too. All the time."

They had issued Killifer a brand-new Browning machine pistol: fifty rounds, either semi- or full-automatic. It still smelled of packing grease.

"But the butler only works the day shift, doesn't he?" Killifer asked.

The chief hiked an eyebrow. "The butler works until they both go to bed. He don't sleep until they do."

"Uh-huh."