“And we’ve already spent a big chunk of it.” Fritz shrugged.

“They’ll take it outta my hide,” Gaeta said, frowning with worry. “Plus, nobody’ll ever back me for another stunt. I’ll be finished.”

“Or perhaps dead.” Fritz said it without the faintest flicker of a smile.

“You’re a big help, amigo.”

“I am a technician. I am not your financial advisor or your bodyguard.”

“You’re un fregado, a cold-blooded machine, that’s what you are.”

“Insulting me will not solve your problem.”

“So what? You’re not solving my problem. Nobody’s solving my problem!”

Fritz pursed his lips momentarily, a sign that he was thinking. “Perhaps … no, that probably would not work.”

“Perhaps what?” Gaeta demanded.

Reaching up to pat the bulky suit on its armored upper arm, Fritz mused, “The problem is to insert you into the suit after it has been sterilized without contaminating it.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Perhaps we could wrap you in a sterile envelope of some sort. A plastic shroud that has been decontaminated.”

“You think?”

Cocking his head to one side, Fritz added, “The problem then becomes to get you sealed into the shroud without contaminating it.”

“Same problem as getting into the maldito suit in the first place.” Gaeta broke into a string of Spanish expletives.

“But if we did it outside the habitat, in space,” Fritz said slowly, as if piecing his ideas together as he spoke, “then perhaps between the ambient ultraviolet flux out there and the hard vacuum the contamination requirements could be satisfied.”

Gaeta’s dark brows shot up. “You think?”

Fritz shrugged again. “Let me run some numbers through the computer. Then I will talk with Urbain’s planetary protection team.”

Gaeta broke into a grin and thumped Fritz on the shoulder hard enough to make the smaller man totter. “I knew you could do it, amigo! I knew it all along.”

DEPARTURE PLUS 142 DAYS

Eberly had sat for more than two hours, utterly bored, as each of the habitat’s sixteen department heads gave their long, dull weekly reports. Wilmot insisted on these weekly meetings; Eberly thought them pointless and foolish. Nothing more than Wilmot’s way of making himself feel important, he told himself.

There was no need to spend two or three hours in this stuffy conference room. Each department chairman could send in his or her report to Wilmot electronically. But no, the old man has to sit up at the head of the table and pretend that he’s actually doing something.

For a community of ten thousand alleged troublemakers, the habitat was sailing on its way to Saturn smoothly enough. Most of the population were relatively young and energetic. Eberly, with Holly’s unstinting help, had weeded out the real troublemakers among those who applied for a berth. Those whom he accepted had run afoul of the strictures of the highly-organized societies back on Earth one way or another: unhappy with their employment placement, displeased when the local government refused to allow them to move from one city to another, unwilling to accept a genetic screening board’s verdict on a childbearing application. A few had even tried political action to change their governments, to no avail. So here they were, in habitat Goddard, in a man-made world that had plenty of room for growth. They turned their backs on Earth, willing to trek out to Saturn in their ridiculous quest for personal freedom.

The trick is, Eberly thought as the chief of maintenance droned on about trivial problems, to give them the illusion of personal freedom without allowing them to be free. To make them look to me for their freedom and their hopes for the future. To get them to accept me as their indispensable leader.

It’s time to begin that process, he decided as the maintenance chief finally sat down. Now.

Yet he had to wait for the security director’s report. Leo Kananga was an imposing figure: a tall, deeply black Rwandan who insisted on being addressed as “Colonel,” his rank in the Rwandan police force before he volunteered for the Saturn mission. His head shaved bald, he dressed all in black, which accented his height. Despite his impressive appearance, he had nothing new to report, no great problems. A few scrapes here and there in the cafeteria, usually young men making testosterone displays for young women. An out-and-out brawl at a pickup football game in one of the parks.

“Sports hooligans,” Kananga grumbled. “We get fights after vids of major sporting events from Earth, too.”

“Maybe we should stop showing them,” suggested one of the women.

The security chief gave her a pitying smile. “Try that and you’ll have a major disturbance on your hands.”

Great God, Eberly thought, they’re going to argue the point for the next half hour. Sure enough, others around the table joined the discussion. Wilmot sat in silence at the head of the table, watching, listening, occasionally fingering his moustache.

Which of these dolts will be loyal to me? Eberly asked himself as they wrangled on. Which will I have to replace? His eyes immediately focused on Berkowitz, the overweight chairman of the communications department. I’ve promised his job to Vyborg, Eberly thought. Besides, Berkowitz would never be loyal to me; I couldn’t trust a Jew who’s spent all his life in the news media.

At last the teapot-tempest over sports hooligans ended. Without a resolution, of course. That type of discussion never produces results, Eberly believed, only hot air. Still, I should remember sports hooligans. They might become useful, at the proper moment.

Wilmot stroked his moustache again, then said, “That completes the departmental reports. Have we any old business to take up?”

No one stirred, except that several people seemed to eye the door that led out of the conference room.

“Any new business? If not—”

“I have a piece of new business, sir,” said Eberly, raising his hand.

All eyes turned toward him.

“Go ahead,” Wilmot said, looking slightly surprised.

“I think we should consider the matter of standardizing our clothing.”

“Standardizing?”

“You mean you want everyone to wear uniforms?”

Eberly smiled patiently for them. “No, not uniforms. Of course not. But I’ve noticed that great differences in clothing styles cause a certain amount of… well, friction. We’re all supposed to be equals here, yet some of the people flaunt very expensive clothing. And jewelry.”

“That’s a personal decision,” said Andrea Maronella. She was wearing an auburn blouse and dark green skirt, Eberly noticed, touched off with several bracelets, earrings, and a pearl necklace.

“It does cause some friction,” Eberly repeated. “Those sports enthusiasts, for example. They wear the colors of the teams they favor, don’t they?”

Colonel Kananga nodded.

Berkowitz, of all people, piped up. “Y’know, some people show up at the office dressed like they were going to work on Wall Street or Saville Row, while the technicians come in looking like they’ve been dragged on a rope from lower Bulgaria or someplace.”

Everyone laughed.

“But isn’t that their right?” Maronella countered. “To dress as they choose? As long as it doesn’t interfere with their work.”

“But it does interfere with their work,” Eberly pounced, “when it causes jealousy and rancor.”

“Those hooligans wear their team colors just to annoy the buffs who root for other teams,” Kananga said.

“I think that if we offered guidelines about dress codes,” Eberly said, calm and reasonable, “it would help considerably. Not mandatory codes, but guidelines for what is appropriate and expected.”

“We could offer counseling,” said the chief of medical services, a psychologist.

“And advice about style.”