“Gunshot wound,” reported the medtech shortly. “Left lower abdomen and… and, um, not femur—left lower limb. That’s just a flesh wound, but the abdominal one is serious.”

“Gunshot!” Leo stared aghast at the guard, who reddened. “Did you—I thought you guys carried stunners—why in the name of God—”

“When that damned hysteric called down from the Habitat, yammering about his escaped monsters, I thought—I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” The guard glowered at his boots.

“Didn’t you look before you fired?”

“I damn near shot the girl with the baby.” The guard shuddered. “I hit this kid by accident, jerking my aim away.”

Van Atta panted up. “Holy shit, what a mess!” His eye fell on the security guard. “I thought I told you to keep this quiet, Bannerji. What did you do, set off a bomb?”

“He shot Tony,” said Leo through his teeth.

“You idiot, I told you to capture them, not murder them! How the hell am I supposed to sweep this—” he waved his arm down Aisle 29, “under the rug? And what the hell were you doing with a pistol anyway?”

“You said—I thought—” the guard began.

“I swear I’ll have you canned for this. Of all the ass-backwards—did you think this was some kind of feelie-dream drama? I don’t know whose judgment is worse, yours or the jerk’s who hired you—”

The guard’s face had gone from red to white. “Why you stupid son-of-a-bitch, you set me up for this—”

Somebody had better keep a level head, Leo thought wretchedly. Bannerji had retrieved and bolstered his unauthorized weapon, a fact Van Atta seemed to be unconscious of—the temptation to shoot the project chief shouldn’t be allowed to get too overwhelming—Leo intervened. “Gentlemen, may I suggest that charges and defenses would be better saved for a formal investigation, where everyone will be cooler and, er, more reasoned. Meantime we have some hurt and frightened kids to take care of.” Bannerji fell silent, simmering with injustice. Van Atta growled assent, contenting himself with a black look toward Bannerji that boded ill for the guard’s future career. The two medtechs snapped down the wheels of Tony’s stretcher and began rolling him down the aisle toward their waiting truck. One of Claire’s hands reached out after him, fell back hopelessly.

The gesture caught Van Atta’s attention. Full of suppressed rage, he discovered he had an object on which to vent it after all. “You—1” he turned on Claire.

She flinched into a tighter huddle. “Do you have any idea what this escapade of yours is going to cost the Cay Project, first to last? Of all the irresponsible—did you con Tony into this?” She shook her head, eyes widening. “Of course you did, isn’t it always the way. The male sticks his neck out, the female gets it chopped off for him…”

“Oh, no.…”

“And the timing—were you deliberately trying to smear me? How did you find out about the Ops VP—did you figure I’d cover up for you just because she was here? Clever, clever—but not clever enough.…”

Leo’s head, eyes, ears throbbed with the beating of his blood. “Lay off, Bruce. She’s had enough for one day.”

“The little bitch nearly gets your best student killed, and you want to stand up for her? Get serious, Leo.”

“She’s already scared out of her wits. Lay off.”

“She damn well better be. When I get her back to the Habitat…” Van Atta strode past Leo, grabbed Claire by an upper arm, yanked her cruelly and painfully up. She cried out, nearly dropping Andy; Van Atta overrode her. “You wanted to come downside, you can bloody well just try walking—back to the shuttle, then.”

Leo could not, afterwards, recall running forward or swinging Van Atta around to face him, but only Van Atta’s surprised, open-mouthed expression. “Bruce,” he sang through a red haze, “you smarmy creep—lay off.”

The uppercut to Van Atta’s jaw that punctuated this command was surprisingly effective, considering it was the first time Leo had struck a man in anger in his life. Van Atta sprawled backwards on the concrete.

Leo surged forward in a kind of dizzy joy. He would rearrange Van Atta’s anatomy in ways that even Dr. Cay had never dreamed of—

“Uh, Mr. Graf,” the security guard began, touching him hesitantly on the shoulder.

“It’s all right, I’ve been waiting to do this for weeks,” Leo assured him, going for a grip on Van Atta’s collar.

“It’s not that, sir…”

A cold new voice cut in. “Fascinating executive technique. I must take notes.”

Vice President Apmad, flanked by her flying wedge of accountants and assistants, stood behind Leo in Aisle 29.

“Well, it wasn’t my fault,” snapped Shuttleport Administrator Chalopin. “I wasn’t even told this was going on.” She glowered pointedly at Van Atta. “How am I supposed to control my jursidiction when other administrators hopscotch my properly established channels of command, blithely hand out orders to my people without even informing me, violate protocol…”

“The situation was extraordinary. Time was of the essence,” muttered Van Atta truculently.

Leo secretly sympathized with Chalopin’s testiness. Her smooth routine disrupted, her office abruptly appropriated for the Ops VP’s inquest—Apmad did not believe in wasting time. The official company investigation of the incident had commenced, by her fiat, a bare hour ago in Aisle 29; he’d be surprised if it took her more than another hour to finish sifting the case.

The windows of Shuttleport Three’s adminstrative offices, sealed against the internal pressure of the building, framed a panorama of the complex—the runways, loading zones, warehouses, offices, hangars, workers’ dormitories, the monorail running off to the refinery glittering on the horizon and the eerily rugged mountains beyond. And the vital power plant; Rodeo’s atmosphere had oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, but in the wrong proportions and at too low a pressure to suit human metabolism. The air conditioning labored constantly to adjust the gas mix and filter out the contaminants. A human might live for fifteen minutes outside without a breath mask; Leo was uncertain whether to think of it as a safety margin or just a slow death. Definitely not a garden spot.

Bannerji had sidled around behind the shuttleport administrator. Hiding behind her, Leo thought. It might be the best strategy for the security guard at that. From her smart shoes through her trim Galac-Tech uniform to her swept-back coiffure, not a hair out of place, and her set, clean jawline, Chalopin radiated both the will and the ability to defend her turf.

Apmad, refereeing the scrimmage, was another type altogether. Dumpy, on the high end of middle age, frizzy grey hair cut short, she might have been somebody’s grandmother, but for her eyes. She made no attempt to dress for success. As if she already possessed so much power, she was beyond that game. So far from regulating tempers, her laconic comments had served to stir the pot, as if she was curious what might float to the top. Definitely not a grandmother’s eyes…

Leo was still close to a boil himself. “The project is twenty-five years old. Time can’t be that much of the essence.”

“God almighty,” cried Van Atta, “am I the only man here conscious of what the bottom line means?”

“Bottom line?” said Leo. “GalacTech is closer to its payoff from the Cay Project than ever before. To screw things up now with an impatient, premature attempt to wring profits is practically criminal. You’re on the verge of the first real results.”

“Not really,” observed Apmad coolly. “Your first group of fifty workers is merely a token. It will take another ten years to bring the whole thousand online.” Cool, yes; but Leo read a fierce concealed tension in her the source of which he could not yet identify.