Fong grunted, remembering what they'd been discussing before she blew up. But surprisingly, she said, "Ah, forget the numbers. The short answer is, we can handle more people. Hell, if we could control our automation properly we could house three thousand in this balloon. As for the people themselves?" She shrugged, but without any great anger. "They're typical Chumps. The sort I've seen in a lot of tyrannies. They call themselves ‘managers,' but they're peons. The fact is, behind some bluster they're kind of nervous aboutus. " A sneaky smile spread across her heavy features. "We got people who know how to handle Customers like these. Some of us are making friends. There's lots they're not supposed to talk about—like how bad this ‘mindrot' crap really is. But I'll tell you, if their big bosses don't come clean soon, we'll find out for ourselves."

Ezr didn't smile back.Are you listening, Podmaster Nau? Whateveryour desires, soon we will know the truth. And what they discovered, Jimmy Diem could use. Coming in to this meeting, Ezr had been totally wrapped up in one item, the last on the agenda. Now he was beginning to see that everything fit together. And maybe he wasn't doing such a bad job after all.

That last agenda item was the upcoming explosion of the sun. And Jimmy had a fool—surely an unknowing fool—to front for them on this: Pham Trinli. The armsman made a big show of moving to the front of the table. "Yes, yes," he said. "I've got the pictures here. Just a second." A dozen engineering graphics appeared on the windows around the room. Trinli launched himself to the podium, and lectured them on Lagrange stability points. Funny, the man actually had a voice and style that bespoke command, but the ideas that came out were tendentious commonplaces.

Vinh let him ramble for a hundred seconds. Then, "I believe your agenda item is ‘Preparations for Relight,' Mr. Trinli. What is it the Emergents are asking us to do?"

The old man fixed Ezr with a stare as intimidating as any crewleader's: "That'sArmsman Trinli, if you please, Fleet Manager." The stare continued a second longer. "Very well, to the heart of the matter. Here we have some five billion tonnes of diamond." A red pointer lit on the window behind him, pointing at the slowly turning pile of rocks, all the loose material that Captain Park had found in this solar system. The ice and ore that had been lifted from Arachna were smaller mountains wedged in the corners and creases of the asteroidal blocks. "The rocks are in a classic contact jumble. At the present time, our fleets are moored to this jumble or in orbit around it. Now, as I was trying to explain a few seconds ago, the Emergents want us to emplace and manage a system of electric jets on the core blocks of the jumble."

Diem: "Before the Relight?"

"Indeed."

"They want to maintain contact stability during the Relight?"

"That's exactly right."

Uneasy looks passed around the table. Stationkeeping was a common and ancient practice. If done properly, an orbit about L1 cost very little fuel. They would be less than a million and a half kilometers from Arachna, and almost directly between the planet and its sun. In the coming bright years, they would be effectively hidden in its glare. But the Emergents didn't think small; they already had built various structures, including their "Hammerfest," down on the rockpile. So now they wanted the stationkeeping jets in place before Relight. OnOff would shine at fifty to one hundred sols before it settled down. The Chumps wanted to use the stationkeeping jets to keep the big rocks from shifting around during that time. It was dangerous foolishness, but the Emergents were boss.And this will giveJimmy access to the out-of-doors.

"Actually, I don't think there will be serious problems." Qiwi Lisolet rose from her seat. She coasted over to Pham Trinli's maps, preempting whatever more Trinli had to say. "I did a number of exercises like this while we were in transit. My mother wants me to be an engineer and she thought stationkeeping might be an important part of this mission." Qiwi sounded more adultly serious than usual. This was also the first time he'd seen her dressed in Lisolet-greens. She floated in front of the windows for a moment, reading the details. Her ladylike dignity faltered. "Lord, they are asking a lot! That rockpile is so loose. Even if we get the math right, there's no way we can know all the stresses inside the pile. And if the volatiles get into sunlight, there'll be a whole new problem." She whistled, and her smile was one of childlike relish. "We may have to move the jets during the Relight. I—"

Pham Trinli glowered at the girl. No doubt she had just trashed a thousand seconds of his presentation. "Yes, it will be quite a job. We have only a hundred electric jets for the whole thing. We'll need crews down on the jumble the whole time."

"No, no, that's not true. About the jets, I mean. We have lots more ejets over on theBrisgo Gap. This job isn't more than a hundred times bigger than ones I practiced—" Qiwi was wholely caught up in her enthusiasm, and for once it wasn't Ezr Vinh who was on the other side of her arguing.

Not everyone accepted the situation quietly. The junior officers, including Diem, demanded that the rockpile be dispersed during the Relight, the volatiles piled on the shadowside of the biggest diamond. Nau be damned, this was just too risky. Trinli bristled, shouted back that he had already made these points to the Emergents.

Ezr slapped the table, then again, louder. "Order please. This is the job we've been assigned. The best way we can help our people is by behaving responsibly with what we've got. I think we can get added help from the Emergents on this, but we have to approach them properly."

The argument rolled on around him.How many of them are in on theconspiracy, he wondered. Surely not Qiwi? After some seconds of further argument, they were left where they began: with no choice but to truckle. Jimmy Diem shifted back, and sighed. "All right, we do as we're told. But at least we know they need us. Let's put the squeeze on Nau, get him to release some senior specialists."

There was mumbled agreement. Vinh's gaze locked with Jimmy's, and then he looked away. Maybe they could get some hostages released for this; more likely not. But suddenly Ezr knew when the conspiracy would strike.

ELEVEN

The OnOff star might better have been called "old faithful." Its catastrophic variability had first been noticed by the Dawn Age astronomers of Old Earth. In less than eight hundred seconds, a star catalogued as "singleton brown dwarf [peculiar]" had gone from magnitude 26 to magnitude 4. Over a span of thirty-five years the object had faded back to virtual invisibility—and generated dozens of graduate research degrees in the process. Since then the star had been watched carefully, and the mystery had become grander. The initial spike varied by as much as thirty percent, but as a whole the light curve was incredibly regular. On, off, on, off...a cycle some 250 years long, with onset predictable to within one second.

In the millennia since the Dawn, human civilizations had spread steadily outward from Earth's solar system. The observations of OnOff became ever more accurate, and from smaller and smaller distances.

And finally, humans stood within the OnOff system, and watched the seconds tick down toward a new Relighting.

Tomas Nau gave a little speech, ending with: "It will be an interesting show." They were using the temp's largest meeting room to watch the Relight. Just now it was crowded, sagging in the microgravity at the rockpile's surface. Over in Hammerfest, Emergent specialists were overseeing the operation. There were also skeleton crews aboard the starships. But Ezr knew that most of the Qeng Ho and all of the off-duty Emergents were here. The two sides were almost sociable, almost friendly. It was forty days since the ambush. Rumors were that Emergent security would ease up significantly after the Relight.