Sherrine began to strip off her clothes, standing up. Awesome. Like a dancer, Alex thought, or a gymnast. He sat on one of the webwork recliners to get his shoes and pants off. Bare-assed fans were beginning to slide into the water. Two had kept their underwear on.

"The law speaks," Sherrine said, "as follows: you can wear anything you want in the spa after dark. Bob really did go in in the top part of a tuxedo once."

Barbara Dinsby was scratching Gordon's back in slow, luxurious circles, while Gordon twisted around to talk to her. Thurlow Helvetian was scratching Barbara's back. Tom Degler slid into the water behind Helvetian, and a short woman moved up behind him. A circle-scratch.

Sherrine, entirely naked and entirely lovely, slid into the water ahead of Gordon. Gordon's hands rose in the air; his fingers flexed like a pianist's. Sherrine waved imperiously to Alex, and Alex slid in ahead of her.

She spoke against his ear, a warm breath within the steam and roar of bubbles: "Scratch or massage?"

Decisions, decisions.

The huckster was a skinny gent with an unruly mop of salt-and-pepper hair; somewhat elderly, but with a twinkle in his eye. He wore a colorful, billowing shirt and stood behind a table stacked high with books from which he importuned passing fans. He wasn't getting much action. They were all wet from the spa, and the night was driving them in.

"Hi," he said to Alex, "I'm Thurlow Helvetian. May I shamelessly try to sell you a book?"

"You can try," Alex allowed as he paused at the table. He was bundled up now, and nearly dry, and still warm. "You'd have better luck with Gordon. I'm not much of a reader. Then again, Gordon's still in the spa."

Helvetian nodded to himself. "Start slow." He rummaged about on the table and emerged triumphantly with a cloth-bound volume. "Here. A Night on the Town. This is a fair sampler of my work. All short stories, so you get it in small doses."

Alex studied the book. The cover bore a stamp: Certified Elf-Free! "Fantasy."

"Rational fantasy," Helvetian assured him. "Fantasy with rivets. It means getting the details right, making sure it all hangs together logically."

"My matushka once said--" Alex turned and saw that Gordon had come up behind him. Gordon was surrounded by a group of five femmefans, including Barbara and Sherrine. "My matushka once said that the secret of realism was to describe the thumb so well that the reader thinks he has seen the entire hand."

Helvetian nodded. "That's right. It's got to be consistent and realistic or you lose the reader."

"What if it's a fantasy?" Alex asked.

"Especially in a fantasy," Helvetian replied.

"Yeah-da." Gordon's head bobbed vigorously. "A dragon you may believe in, or a time traveller, but a time-travelling dragon asks too much of the reader. H.G. Wells never used more than one-"

"Gordon? Save it," Barbara said. "It's time for your speech."

Gordon's mouth opened and closed, and he half-turned to run.

"Alex, isn't it? You're next. Or if Gordon freezes up, you're first. Work it out between you. Thurlow, you're not going to miss the GoH speeches, are you?"

"I didn't used to go to the program items…"

The Angels looked at each other. Neither had anything planned. Neither wanted to go first.

"Together," Gordon said.

"Mir was old. A tested, fully manned space station, more than the United States ever had, but old," Gordon said. "We had a Buryat shuttle up when everything stopped, but that was useless, not much more than a missile without guidance. We made it part of the habitat and rifled it for parts. There was not much on the moon, but we could work with what there was because of all that lovely working mass free for the taking--"

"And oxygen. There's infinite oxygen in lunar rock."

"So we had Moonbase. We even expanded a little. And in orbit, Mir and two shuttle tanks from which to make Freedom. One shuttle, ruined. And three NASPS."

The room was filled with rows of chairs. Behind them there was still standing room; the balcony doors were opened wide.

These thirty people were more than he could have gathered aboard Freedom, without leaving crucial functions untended. All these solemn eyes…

"Now, each of the NASPS is different," Alex said, "and neither of them could carry cargo, because each was an, experimental hypersonic ramjet airplane. Piranha couldn't even reach orbit without an auxiliary tank at takeoff!"

"And of course these were no longer available."

"You get a bubble for two and the rest is fuel tank and motors. So landing it and coming back to orbit--"

Gordon was really enjoying himself. Nobody in Mir or Freedom had ever looked at him like this. He said, "You would do only for the joy of it, and it would cost in hydrogen and wear. But we found we could convert all three to dive into the atmosphere and return without too much loss of delta-vee. Without that, we would not have nitrogen."

All these solemn eyes. Where was all this support when space was being abandoned like an unwelcome gift? Only thirty, though they seemed like more. But those who gathered on the desert to watch the shuttles land numbered up to a million. Where were they?

Running from the Ice.

Gordon was saying, "The scoopship's cabin was a sounding box for vibrations far below the ears' grasp; as, high over the northern hemisphere, her hull began to sing a bass dirge. My bones could feel…"

"I've lost track of my cup," Alex said.

"In the old days," Sherrine whispered in Alex's ear, "there would have been plastic or styrofoam cups."

"Nonbiodegradable plastic or styrofoam cups," said Degler, appearing out of nowhere.

"Bullshit," said Sherrine. "Plastics are recyclable. Shred it and melt it and make more. The fact that no one bothered gave plastic a bad rep."

"Well, not quite," Degler said, fingering his beard and grinning. "There are EPA rules that forbid the recycling of certain plastics. The styrofoam used by fast-food chains was chemically recyclable; but the EPA forbade it because"--he gave an exaggerated shudder--"because it had once touched food."

"Yeah, and they replaced the stuff with coated paper, that was also nonbiodegradable and nonrecyclable. So the rules had zero impact on the environment and the landfills… And why are you laughing, Tom?"

"What if it was on purpose?"

"What do you mean? "

Alex noticed that a small crowd had gathered around them, listening intently to what Degler had to say. He saw Bob Needleton and Barbara Dinsby and the huckster, Thurlow Helvetian; Gordon's head topping them all. We really do stand out in a crowd. Gordon had been letting his beard grow ever since St. Louis, but it was not much to speak of yet. Sherrine had called it a beatnik beard, whatever that meant.

Dealer glanced left and right, and leaned forward. Everyone else instinctively leaned toward him. "I meant, what if it was on purpose? There was a company in California that bought chemical wastes from other companies; processed the waste and broke it down; and sold the end products as feed stock. Closed loop recycling. The state EPA shut them down."

"Why?" asked Alex.

Degler eyed him, and again glanced conspiratorially around the room. "Because the EPA rules required that chemical wastes be put in fifty-five-gallon drams and stored."

"Why, that is pomyeshanniy," Gordon said. "If we did so on Freedom, would soon die. Cannot afford to waste waste. Is too valuable."

If the Downer Greens were serious about recycling and waste reduction, Alex mused, they should be clamoring to communicate with the stations. Who--on Earth or off--knew more about the subject than the Floaters. It isn't just ourquality of life,it's ourlives.