"No, no. I don't give a damn about Shelties."

"Ah. We have confirmed that there were four Shelties present on Tango Charlie at the time of the disaster. They were being shipped to the zoo at Clavius. There were no other dogs of any breed resident at the station. We haven't determined how it is that their survival was overlooked during the investigation of the tragedy."

"Somebody obviously missed them."

"Yes, sir."

Hoeffer jabbed at a holo with his pipe.

"What's this? Have you researched that yet?"

Bach ignored what she thought might be sarcasm. Hoeffer was pointing to the opening in the animal's side.

"The computer believes it to be a birth defect, sir. The skin is not fully formed. It left an opening into the gut."

"And what's this?"

"Intestines. The bitch would lick the puppy clean after birth. When she found this malformation, she would keep licking as long as she tasted blood. The intestines were pulled out, and the puppy died."

"It couldn't have lived anyway. Not with that hole."

"No, sir. If you'll notice, the forepaws are also malformed. The computer feels the puppy was stillborn."

Hoeffer studied the various holos in a blue cloud of pipe smoke, then sighed and leaned back in his chair.

"It's fascinating, Bach. After all these years, there are dogs alive on Tango Charlie. And breeding, too. Thank you for bringing it to my attention."

Now it was Bach's turn to sigh. She hated this part. Now it was her job to explain it to him.

"It's even more fascinating than that, sir. We knew Tango Charlie was largely pressurized. So it's understandable that a colony of dogs could breed there. But, barring an explosion, which would have spread a large amount of debris into the surrounding space, this dead puppy must have left the station through an airlock."

His face clouded, and he looked at her in gathering outrage.

"Are you saying... there are humans alive aboard Tango Charlie?"

"Sir, it has to be that... or some very intelligent dogs."

Dogs can't count.

Charlie kept telling herself that as she knelt on the edge of forever and watched little Albert dwindling, hurrying out to join the whirling stars. She wondered if he would become a star himself.

It seemed possible.

She dropped the rose after him and watched it dwindle, too. Maybe it would become a rosy star.

She cleared her throat. She had thought of things to say. but none of them sounded good. So she decided on a hymn, the only one she knew, taught her long ago by her mother, who used to sing it for her father, who was a spaceship pilot. Her voice was clear and true.

Lord guard and guide all those who fly Through Thy great void above the sky.

Be with them all on ev'ry flight, In radiant day or darkest night.

Oh, hear our prayer, extend Thy grace To those in peril deep in space.

She knelt silently for a while, wondering if God was listening, and if the hymn was good for dogs, too. Albert sure was flying through the void, so it seemed to Charlie he ought to be deserving of some grace.

Charlie was perched on a sheet of twisted metal on the bottom, or outermost layer of the wheel.

There was no gravity anywhere in the wheel, but since it was spinning, the farther down you went the heavier you felt. Just beyond the sheet of metal was a void, a hole ripped in the wheel's outer skin, fully twenty meters across. The metal had been twisted out and down by the force of some longago explosion, and this part of the wheel was a good place to walk carefully, if you had to walk here at all.

She picked her way back to the airlock, let herself in, and sealed the outer door behind her. She knew it was useless, knew there was nothing but vacuum on the other side, but it was something that had been impressed on her very strongly. When you go through a door, you lock it behind you. Lock it tight. If you don't, the breathsucker will get you in the middle of the night.

She shivered, and went to the next lock, which also led only to vacuum, as did the one beyond that.

Finally, at the fifth airlock, she stepped into a tiny room that had breathable atmosphere, if a little chilly. Then she went through yet another lock before daring to take off her helmet.

At her feet was a large plastic box, and inside it, resting shakily on a scrap of bloody blanket and not at all at peace with the world, were two puppies. She picked them up, one in each hand—which didn't make them any happier—and nodded in satisfaction.

She kissed them, and put them back in the box. Tucking it under her arm, she faced another door.

She could hear claws scratching at this one.

"Down, Fuchsia," she shouted. "Down, momma-dog." The scratching stopped, and she opened the last door and stepped through.

Fuchsia O'Charlie Station was sitting obediently, her ears pricked up, her head cocked and her eyes alert with that total, quivering concentration only a mother dog can achieve.

"I've got 'em, Foosh," Charlie said. She went down on one knee and allowed Fuchsia to put her paws up on the edge of the box. "See? There's Helga, and there's Conrad, and there's Albert, and there's Conrad, and Helga. One, two, three, four, eleventy-nine and six makes twenty-seven. See?"

Fuchsia looked at them doubtfully, then leaned in to pick one up, but Charlie pushed her away.

"I'll carry them," she said, and they set out along the darkened corridor. Fuchsia kept her eyes on the box, whimpering with the desire to get to her pups.

Charlie called this part of the wheel The Swamp. Things had gone wrong here a long time ago, and the more time went by, the worse it got. She figured it had been started by the explosion—which, in its turn, had been an indirect result of The Dying. The explosion had broken important pipes and wires. Water had started to pool in the corridor. Drainage pumps kept it from turning into an impossible situation. Charlie didn't come here very often.

Recently plants had started to grow in the swamp. They were ugly things, corpse-white or dentalplaque- yellow or mushroom gray. There was very little light for them, but they didn't seem to mind.

She sometimes wondered if they were plants at all. Once she thought she had seen a fish. It had been white and blind. Maybe it had been a toad. She didn't like to think of that.

Charlie sloshed through the water, the box of puppies under one arm and her helmet under the other.

Fuchsia bounced unhappily along with her.

At last they were out of it, and back into regions she knew better. She turned right and went three flights up a staircase—dogging the door behind her at every landing—then out into the Promenade Deck, which she called home.

About half the lights were out. The carpet was wrinkled and musty, and worn in the places Charlie frequently walked. Parts of the walls were streaked with water stains, or grew mildew in leprous patches. Charlie seldom noticed these things unless she was looking through her pictures from the old days, or was coming up from the maintenance levels, as she was now. Long ago, she had tried to keep things clean, but the place was just too big for a little girl. Now she limited her housekeeping to her own living quarters—and like any little girl, sometimes forgot about that, too.

She stripped off her suit and stowed it in the locker where she always kept it, then padded a short way down the gentle curve of the corridor to the Presidential Suite, which was hers. As she entered, with Fuchsia on her heels, a long-dormant television camera mounted high on the wall stuttered to life. Its flickering red eye came on, and it turned jerkily on its mount.

Anna-Louise Bach entered the darkened monitoring room, mounted the five stairs to her office at the back, sat down, and put her bare feet up on her desk. She tossed her uniform cap, caught it on one foot, and twirled it idly there. She laced her fingers together, leaned her chin on them, and thought about it.