Partially overcome, Manuel knew he had bare moments in which to act. Forcing his legs to remain steady underneath him, he turned in what he thought was the hedgehog's direction, clenched his eyes against its strobing lights, raised his FAMAS rifle, and pumped a 20mm HE round from its grenade launcher attachment. It was a crude, inaccurate use of an extraordinarily refined weapon, but it achieved its desired results. The shell struck the 'hog's carrier scant yards from where he stood, detonating with an explosive flash.

Manuel dove to the ground as the concussion swept over him, waited a second or two, then got back to his feet and dusted himself off. A quick look around revealed that one member of his band had been killed in the blast, his flesh and clothing shredded by flying shrapnel. He himself had an open gash above the elbow. But the robot was wreckage. It leaned sideways on the burning remains of a rubber track, smoke and flames spitting from its mangled carrier. He could smell the odor of its fused wiring.

Wreckage.

He saw his remaining teammates struggling to regain their equilibrium, allowed them a few moments to recover, then hurried to gather them to his side. There was no time to linger over their single casualty.

"Vaya aqui!" he hissed. "Come on, we still have work to do."

Much as Rollie Thibodeau loved his job at UpLink, much as he felt it was an important job, he hated how its hours screwed up his biological clock, turned his daily routine inside out, and cramped his lifestyle in more ways than he could have stated.

Take sex, or the lack of it, for one thing. Where would he find a woman who'd be in amorous sync with his schedule, falling into bed with the sunrise, emerging after sunset like a vampire? Take sleep for another. This was Brazil, land of bronzed bodies and the fio dental. How could he get any rest with the tropical daylight pressing against his window blinds, tantalizing him with its warmth, reminding him of the long, gorgeously romantic afternoons dancing past? Take, for a third example, something as important to a man as eating. Could cheerfulness truly be expected of him when his meals were fouled up beyond description? It was rotten enough being a hundred miles from the nearest city and having to subsist on the bland, unseasoned fare they served in the commissary. Rotten even when those tasteless dishes were hot out of the kitchen. But consuming them after they'd sat in a refrigerator for half a day, and then been warmed over in a microwave, was a gross indignity. And the hours at which one was forced to eat when working the night shift, calous ve, the hours were nothing short of unspeakable!

Thibodeau sat in his small but tidy office in a sublevel of the ISS compound's main headquarters building, staring down at the plate of overcooked beef and watery, reconstituted mashed potatoes on his desk with a kind of savage contempt. It was slightly past eight P.M., and a new kid on his shift by the name of McFarlane had just strolled in with the meal, holding a dish for himself as well, looking as if he could hardly wait to get back to his post and dig into it ... something that had so annoyed Thibodeau, he'd been unable to even feign appreciation as he dismissed the youngster, which left him feeling still worse for having rudely punished the messenger for the message.