“And they’re under suspicion. Not that finding a guilty person would do much good. Except that if we chucked him out the airlock he wouldn’t be able to do any more damage.”

“Whoever did it probably isn’t aboard,” Tania Seven said. “I’d look for someone who was involved in designing the cyberspace and then decided not to come along.

“But as you say, it’s not really important. What’s important is that pretty soon we’re going to call for a referendum on whether to go ahead or turn back.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “And first we have to decide what the results will be.” A few people looked startled to hear her say that in public, though by this time everyone in the Cabinet knew the referenda were rigged.

“Start out with extreme opinions,” Eliot said. “I think it would be crazy to turn back. Who thinks it would be crazy to go on?”

“I don’t know about crazy, Eliot,” Marius Viejo said. “But you gotta admit there’s a whiff of Russian roulette about it.” Viejo was in charge of Life Support Systems.

“I’m listening.”

“Every aspect of Life Support has got components with projected-times-to-failure less than ninety-seven years. The probability of something not going wrong before we get to Epsilon is so small you don’t even have to think about it. Let me have the board. I’m E92.”

Smith tapped three keys on his keyboard, and Viejo unfolded his and typed in a command. The wall screen became a page of gibberish, headed HEíØ EîCJAN&E ËYSTôMW—THPA£R PRJTBCOLí.

“Okay. This says ‘HEAT EXCHANGE SYSTEMS—REPAIR PROTOCOLS.’ You’ve all seen similar things. Since we do have a pretty good notion of what’s in it, sooner or later we’ll be able to decipher it with some confidence. The words, anyhow; numbers will have to be recalculated. Some of them are from measurements that can’t be made while the ship is under way.

“So supposing we could eventually restore this manual to its original status … that ‘eventually’ is a killer. A real killer. If the heat exchange systems shut down right now, we would all fry in about eight hours.”

“Lot of repairs you could make without the manual,” Eliot said. “You are engineers.”

“Yeah, well, this one is a good case in point. I’ve got two women in the heat exchanger subgroup who’ve been pulling heat exchange maintenance all their adult lives. If something went wrong with the heat exchange system in New New, they could fix it with a bucket over their head and somebody beatin’ Ajimbo on the bucket.