Overhead, the docking hatch swings shut. From behind it a postcoital tattoo, metal on metal, heralds the shuttle's escape to the surface. They wait there for a few moments: Rifters, newcomer, five new gadgets to dilute their humanity a little further. Finally, Clarke reaches out to touch one. "What do they do?" she says, her voice neutral.

Acton snaps his fingers shut, stares about the lounge with eyeless intensity. "Why, Ms. Clarke," he replies, "They tell us when we're dead."

* * *

In Communications, Acton spills his trinkets onto a control console. Clarke stands behind him, filling the cubby. Caraco and Brander look in through the hatchway.

Lubin has disappeared.

"The program's only four months old," Acton says, "and it's lost two people at Piccard, one each at Cousteau and Link, and Fischer makes five. Not the kind of record you want to trumpet to the world, eh?"

Nobody says anything. Clarke and Brander stand impassive; Caraco shifts on her feet. Acton sweeps his blank shiny eyes over them all. "Christ but you're a lively lot. You sure Fischer's the only one down here who cashed in?"

"These things are supposed to save our lives?" Clarke asks.

"Nah. They don't care that much about us. These just help you find the bodies."

He turns to the console, plays it with practiced fingers. The topographic display flashes to life on the main screen. "Mmmm." Acton traces along the luminous contours with one finger. "So this is Beebe here in the center, and this must be the rift proper—Jesus, there's a lot of geography out here." He points at a cluster of hard green rectangles halfway to the edge of the screen. "These are the generators?"

Clarke nods.

Acton picks up one of the little cylinders. "They say they've already sent down the software for these things." Silence. "Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?" He fingers the object in his hand, presses one end of it.

Beebe Station screams aloud.

Clarke jerks back at the sound; her head cracks painfully against an overhead pipe. The station continues to howl, wordless and despairing.

Acton touches a control; the scream stops as if guillotined.

Clarke glances at the others, shaken. They appear unmoved. Of course. For the first time she wonders what their eyes would show, naked.

"Well," Acton says, "we know the audio alarm works. But you get a visual signal too." He points at the screen: dead center, within the phosphor icon that is Beebe, a crimson dot pulses like a heart under glass.

"It keys on myoelectricity in the chest," he explains. "Goes off automatically if your heart stops."

Behind her, Clarke feels Brander turning for the hatchway.

"Maybe my etiquette is out of date—" Acton says.

His voice is suddenly very quiet. Nobody else seems to notice.

"—but I've always thought it was—rude—to walk away when someone's talking to you."

There's no obvious threat in the words. Acton's tone seems pleasant enough. It doesn't matter. In an instant Clarke sees all the signs again; the reasoned words, the deadened voice, the sudden slight tension of a body rising to critical mass. Something familiar is growing behind Acton's eyecaps.