“Sunrise in the swamp,” Pancho called out.

Dan felt another sideways surge of thrust, pushing from the opposite direction.

“Turnaround maneuver complete,” said Amanda.

“Flow to main thrusters,” Pancho said, working the touchscreens.

“Main thrusters, confirmed.”

Weight returned to the bridge. Dan settled back onto the deck.

Amanda smiled happily. “On course and on velocity vector.”

“Hot spit!” Pancho exclaimed. “Now let’s see how that leak is doin’.” Kris Cardenas almost made it back to her own apartment before two young men in dark business suits caught up with her.

“Dr. Cardenas?”

She turned. The man who had called her name was taller than his partner, slim and lithe, sallow complexion, his dark hair cropped into a buzz cut. The other was huskier, blond, pink-cheeked.

“Come with us, please,” said the dark one.

“Where? Why? Who are you?”

“Mr. Humphries wants to see you.”

“Now? At this hour? It’s—”

“Please,” said the blond, slipping a dead-black pistol from inside his jacket. “It fires tranquilizing darts,” said the dark one. “But you wake up with a bitching headache. Don’t make us use it on you.”

Cardenas looked up and down the corridor. The only other person in sight was a mousy little woman who immediately turned away and started walking in the opposite direction.

“Now,” said the blond, pointing his pistol at her.

With a resigned droop of her shoulders, Cardenas nodded her surrender. The blond put his gun away and they started along the corridor toward the escalators. “At least this one doesn’t have a snake,” the blond whispered hoarsely to his partner.

The other man did not laugh.

EVA

Pancho felt an old excitement bubbling up inside her as she wormed her arms through the spacesuit’s sleeves. After more than five days of being cooped up in the ship, she was going outside. It was like being a kid in school when the recess bell rang.

Standing by the inner airlock hatch where the spacesuits were stored, she popped her head up through her suit torso’s neck ring, grinning happily to herself. This is gonna be fun, she thought.

Dan looked uptight, though, as he held her helmet in his arms and watched her pull on the gloves and seal them to the suit’s cuffs. “Jealous?” she teased. “Worried,” he replied. “I don’t like the idea of you going out alone.”

“Piece of cake, boss,” Pancho said. “I ought to go with you. Or Amanda, maybe.”

With a shake of her head, Pancho countered, “Mandy’s gotta stay at the controls.

Shouldn’t have both pilots out at the same time, if you can help it.”

“Then I’ll suit up-”

“Whoa! I’ve seen your medical record, boss. No outside work for you.”

“The safety regs say EVAs should be performed by two astronauts—”

“Whenever possible,” Pancho finished for him. “And since when did you start quotin’ IAA regulations?”

“Safety is important,” Dan said.

Inside the spacesuit, with its hard-shell torso and servomotor-amplified gloves, Pancho felt like some superhero out of a kids’ video confronting a mere mortal. “I’ll be fine,” she said as she took the helmet from Dan’s hands. “Nothin’ to worry about.”

“But if you run into trouble…”

“Tell you what, boss. You suit up and hang out here at the airlock. If I run into trouble you can come on out and save my butt. How’s that?” He brightened. “Okay. Good idea.”

They called Amanda down from the bridge as Dan struggled into the lower half of his suit and tugged on the boots. By the time he was completely suited up, backpack and all, except for the helmet, Pancho was feeling antsy. “Okay,” she said as she pulled the bubble-helmet over her head and sealed it to the neck ring. “I’m ready to go outside.”

Amanda hurried back to the bridge while Dan stood there grinning lopsidedly at her, his head sticking out of the hard suit like some kid posing for a photograph from behind a cardboard cutout of an astronaut.

Pancho opened the inner hatch of the airlock and stepped through. The airlock was roomier than most, big enough to take two spacesuited people at a time. Through her helmet she heard the pump start to clatter, and saw the telltale on the control panel switch from green to amber. The sound dwindled to nothing more than a slight vibration she felt through her boots as the air was pumped out of the chamber. The light flicked to red.

“Ready to open outer hatch,” she said, unconsciously lapsing into the clipped argot of flight controllers and pilots.

Amanda’s voice came through the tiny speaker set into her neck ring, “Open outer hatch.”

The hatch slid up and Pancho stared out at an infinite black emptiness. The helmet’s glassteel was heavily tinted, but within a few seconds her eyes adjusted and she could see dozens of stars, then hundreds, thousands of them staring solemnly at her, spangling the heavens with their glory. Off to her left the bright haze of the zodiacal light stretched like a thin arm across the sky. She turned her back to the zodiacal light’s glow and attached her safety tether to one of the rungs just outside the hatch.

“Goin’ out,” she said.

“Proceed,” Amanda replied.

“Gimme the location of the leak,” Pancho said as she clambered out and made her way up the handgrips set into the crew module’s side.

“On your screen.”

She peered at the tiny video screen strapped to her left wrist. It showed a schematic of the module’s superconducting network of wires, with a pulsating red circle where the leak was.

“Got it.”

Although she knew the ship was under acceleration and not in zero-g, Pancho still felt surprised that she actually had to climb along the handgrips, like climbing up a ladder, toward the spot marked on the schematic. Deep in her guts she had expected to float along weightlessly.

“Okay, I’m there,” she said at last.

“Tether yourself,” Dan’s voice commanded sternly.

Pancho was still tethered to the rung next to the airlock hatch. Grinning at Dan’s fretfulness, she unreeled the auxiliary tether from her equipment belt and clipped it to the closest grip.

“I’m all tucked in, Daddy,” she quipped.

Now to find the leak, she thought. She bent close and played her helmet lamp on the module’s skin. The curving metal was threaded with thin wires running along the module’s long axis. There was no obvious sign of damage: no charred spot where a micrometeor might have hit, no mini-geyser of escaping nitrogen gas. It can’t be more than a pinhole leak, Pancho told herself.

“Am I at the right spot?” she asked.

No answer for a few moments. Then Amanda replied, “Put your beacon on the wire you’re looking at, please.”

The radio beacon was strapped to Pancho’s right wrist. She laid her right forearm on the wire.

“How’s that?”

“You’re at the proper spot.”

“Can’t see any damage.”

“Replace that section and bring it in for inspection, then.”

She nodded inside her helmet. “Will do.”

But she felt silly, cutting out what looked to be a perfectly good length of wire.

Something’s wonky here, Pancho thought. This ain’t what we think it is, I bet. Behind his unkempt beard, Big George was frowning with worry as he sat at one of the consoles in the spaceport’s control center. This little cluster of desks was occupied by Astro employees, monitoring Starpower 1’s flight. They sat apart from the regular Selene controllers, who handled the traffic to and from Earth. George wanted to send his message to Dan in complete privacy. The best the Astro controllers could do was to hand him a handset and tell him to keep his voice down.

Wishing they had worked out a code before Dan had impetuously sailed off, George pulled the pin-mike to his lips and said hurriedly, “Dan, it’s George. Dr. Cardenas has disappeared. She told me last night she was worried that Humphries wants to kill you. When I called her this morning she wasn’t in her office or in her quarters. I can’t find her anywhere. I haven’t told Selene security about it yet. What do you want me to do?”