"Waiting's that way," Illuyank said. "Think how long you live if you're always waiting."

It was an insightful comment, deeper than anything Lewis had ever expected from Illuyank. And it meant that Illuyank would have to be shifted to a tour of duty Colony side. He saw too much, deduced too much. That could not be permitted. First, though, they had to get out of here. But there was no way out except into the Runner-contaminated open areas of the Redoubt. The chlorine would make that possibl.... in time.

"Can we get a message to Murdoch?" Lewis asked.

"Emergency transmitter only," Illuyank said.

"Send him the emergency shut-down signal. No one comes in here until we've cleaned up. It wouldn't do to have anyone see what's happened an...." Lewis directed a loaded look at Illuyank.

Illuyank nodded, and provided Lewis with the perfect opening for what had to be done. "Someone should go Colonyside, though, and see that they understand."

"That had better be you," Lewis said. "Make sure they don't try to explain anything to The Boss shipside. That's my job."

"Right."

"Don't tell them any more than you have to. An.... while you're there, try to circulate in the Colony - everything normal, routine. Accept the usual assignment...."

"And try to find out if word of thi...." Illuyank glanced at the sensor screens. ". . .has leaked out."

"Good man."

And Lewis thought: too good.

LEGATA HAMILL knew groundside was to be their permanent home eventually, but she did not like these courier jobs on which Oakes sent her. There was a sense of power in them, though; no denying it. Her pass (often just an identifying look at her by a guard) admitted her anywhere. She was an arm of Morgan Oakes. She knew what they saw when they looked at her: a small woman with pale skin and ebon hair, a figure almost lush in its femininity. They saw a woman The Boss wanted and who, because of that, was powerful and dangerous.

Every inspection trip she took for Oakes created tension.

This time she was to inspect Lab One at Colony. And all of it would be on holo to make a full record for Oakes to review.

"Penetrate it," Oakes had said.

The way he said "penetrate" had distinctly sexual overtones.

She had never been into the Lab One depths before and that alone piqued her curiosity. Lewis had a trusted minion here, Sy Murdoch. She was to meet Murdoch. Usually, Lewis was to be found in the shiny plasteel environs of the lab which was entered via a triple-lock system at the end of a long tunnel. Not today. Lewis was out of communication. A strange way of putting it; and there was no doubt that Oakes was disturbed by this development.

"Find out where the hell he is, what he's doing!"

Both suns had been in the sky when the shuttle brought her down. Maximum flare security had been in force. She had been hustled out of the landing complex and into a servo which deposited her at the tunnel. The Colony personnel were quick and harried today - rumors of perimeter difficulties with Pandora's many demons.

Legata shuddered. Any thought of the predatory creatures which roamed the landscape beyond Colony's barriers filled her with apprehension.

Murdoch himself met her in the brightly lighted and bustling area where the last lock sealed off the entrance within the lab. He was a blocky man, light complexion and blue eyes, with cropped brown hair. His fingers were short and stubby, the nails well trimmed. He always appeared recently scrubbed.

"What is it this time?" he demanded.

She liked the energy focus in his question. It said: We're busy here. What does Oakes want now?

Very well, she could match that mood. "Where's Lewis?"

Murdoch glanced around to see who might overhear them. Seeing no workers nearby, he said: "Redoubt."

"Why doesn't he answer our calls?"

"Don't know."

"What was his last message?"

"Emergency code. Hold all transports. No craft permitted to land at Redoubt. Wait for clearance signal."

Legata absorbed this. Emergency. What was happening across the waters at the Redoubt?

"Why wasn't Doctor Oakes informed?"

"The code signal called for complete security."

She understood this. No transmissions from Colony to Ship could carry a message involving that restriction. But that was two full Pandoran diurns ago. She sensed another restriction in the last message from the Redoubt, a private Lewis restriction to his own minions. It would be pointless to explore such a conjecture, but she felt its presence.

"Have you sent an overflight?"

"No."

So that was restricted, too. Ba.... very bad. Well, then, she had to get on to the rest of her assignment.

"I'm here to inspect the lab."

"I know."

Murdoch had been studying this woman while they talked. The orders transmitted from The Boss were clear. She was to go into everything except the Scream Room. That would come later for he.... as it came for everyone here. She was a pretty thing: a pocket Venus with a doll face and green eyes. She had a good brain, too, by all accounts.

"If you know, let's get going," she said.

"This way."

He led her down a passage between banked vats of primary clonewombs into the Micro-micro Processing section.

At first, Legata's interest was intellectual - she knew this and it comforted her. Murdoch even took her hand at one point, leading her past rows of special-application clonewombs. He was so intent in his rhapsody on equipment and techniques that she did not mind his touch. It was, after all, clinical. Or unintentional. Whichever, Murdoch's touch was not born out of affection; this she knew.

But he knew Lab One as few others could, even perhaps as well as Lewis, and she had never been told to go deep into it before.

"...but I've accepted that as true," Murdoch was saying, and she had missed the point, being more intent on an incomplete fetus of odd proportions floating behind a screen of transparent plaz.

She looked at Murdoch. "Accepted what? I'm sorry, I wa.... I mean, there's so much to see."

"Plasteel by the kilometer, tanks and fluids, pseudo-bodies, pseudo-mind...." He waved his hand in frustration.

She realized that Murdoch was in a particularly manic mood and this bothered her. She felt the need to suppress unspoken questions about that odd fetus floating behind the screen of plasma glass.

"So you've accepted all this," she said. "So what?"

"We birth here. We conceive people here, nurture them fetally, extract them, send some shipside for trainin.... Doesn't it strike you as odd that we can't bring natural births groundside, too?"

"What Ship decides is for good reason, for the good o...."

"...of Shipmen everywhere. I know. I've heard it as often as you have. But Ship did not decide. Nowhere in the records can anyone - even you, the best Search Technician we have, so I'm told - find where Ship has demanded that all births take place shipside. Nowhere."

Without knowing how she knew it, Legata realized he was repeating Lewis' words verbatim. This was not Murdoch's manner of speaking. Why was she supposed to hear this? Was it part of Oakes' scheme to do away with the shipside obstetrics force, the Natali?

"But we are required to WorShip," she said. "And what greater WorShip can we have than to entrust Ship with our children? It makes sense, to...."

"It makes sense, it has logic," he agreed. "But it is not a direct command. And it makes a good deal of our work here in Lab One unnecessarily limited. Why, we coul...."