Cardenas glanced at Holly, then started laughing. “You certainly are enthusiastic, Mr. Tavalera!”

His long, horsy face broke into an awkward grin. “That’s me, all right: Mr. Enthusiasm.”

“Seriously,” Holly said to him, “do you want to work with Dr. Cardenas or not?”

“I’ll do it. Why not? What have I got to lose?”

Turning to Cardenas, Holly asked, “Are you satisfied with him?”

Still smiling at her new assistant, Cardenas said, “Not yet, but I think we can work it out.”

She got to her feet and Tavalera stood up beside her, smiling shyly. Holly thought, He looks so much better when he smiles.

Cardenas put out her right hand. “Welcome to the nanolab, Mr. Tavalera.”

His long-fingered hand engulfed hers. “Raoul,” he said. “My name’s Raoul.”

“I’ll see you at the nanolab at eighta.m. sharp,” Cardenas said.

“Eight hundred. Right. I’ll be there.”

Cardenas left. Tavalera stood uncertainly before Holly’s desk for a moment, then said, “Thanks.”

“De nada,”said Holly.

“You meant it, about keeping this out of my dossier?”

“Certainly.”

He fidgeted for a few heartbeats more, then said, “Uh … would you like to have dinner with me tonight? I mean, I ’predate what you did for me—”

Holly cut him off before he spoiled it. “I’d be happy to have dinner with you, Raoul.”

Two weeks later, Cardenas invited Edouard Urbain to her laboratory, to show him what progress she had achieved in decontaminating Gaeta’s suit. Tavalera sat at the master console, set against the wall opposite the door to the corridor.

“Remember, Raoul,” Cardenas said, “we want to be completely honest with Dr. Urbain. We have nothing to hide.”

He nodded, and a small grin played across his face. “I got nothing to hide because I don’t know anything.”

Cardenas smiled back at him. “You’re learning fast, Raoul. I’m very impressed with you.” To herself, Cardenas thought, He’s been a lot brighter than I thought he’d be. Maybe having a couple of dates with Holly has helped him to cheer up about being stuck here.

When the chief scientist stepped through the door, more than ten minutes late, he looked as tense and guarded as a man walking into a minefield. Cardenas tried to put him at his ease by showing him through her small, immaculately neat laboratory.

“This is the assembly area,” she said, pointing to a pair of stainless steel boxlike structures resting atop a lab bench. Gauges and control knobs ran across the face of each. “The nanomachine prototypes are assembled in this one,” she patted one of the breadbox-sized enclosures, “and then the prototype reproduces itself in here.”

Urbain kept a conspicuous arm’s length from the apparatus. When Cardenas lifted the lid on one of the devices, he actually flinched.

Cardenas tried not to frown at the man. “Dr. Urbain, there is nothing here that can harm you or anyone else.”

Urbain was clearly not reassured. “I understand, in my head. Still… I am nervous. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.”

She smiled patiently. “I understand. Here, come over to the main console.”

For more than an hour Cardenas showed Urbain how the nanomachines were designed and built. How they reproduced strictly according to preset instructions.

“They’re machines,” she stressed, over and over. “They do not mutate. They do not grow wildly. And they are deactivated by a dose of soft ultraviolet light. They’re really quite fragile.”

With Tavalera running the scanning microscope from the main console, Cardenas showed how the nanomachines she had designed broke up the contaminating molecules on the exterior of Gaeta’s suit into harmless carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen oxides.

“The suit is perfectly clean within five minutes,” she said, pointing to the image from the console. “The residues outgas and waft away.”

Urbain appeared to be intrigued as he leaned over Tavalera’s shoulder and peered intently at the data and imagery. “All the organics are removed?”

Nodding, Cardenas said, “Down to the molecular level there’s not a trace of them remaining.”

“And the nanobugs themselves?”

“We deactivate them with a shot of UV.”

“But they are still on the surface of the suit? Can they reactivate themselves?”

“No,” said Cardenas. “Once they’re deactivated they’re finished. They physically break down.”

Urbain straightened up slowly.

“As you can see, we can decontaminate the suit,” Cardenas said.

“Not merely the suit,” Urbain said, his eyes looking past her. “This process could be used to decontaminate every piece of equipment we send to Titan’s surface.”

“Yes it could,” Cardenas agreed.

For the first time since entering the nanotechnology laboratory, Urbain smiled.

SATURN ARRIVAL MINUS 273 DAYS

“This man Berkowitz has got to go!” Eberly insisted.

Wilmot sank back in his comfortable desk chair, surprised at the vehemence of his human resources director’s demand.

Softly, he asked, “And what gives you the right to interfere with the working of the Communications Department?”

Eberly had stoked himself up to a fever pitch. For weeks Vyborg had been pressuring him, threatening to act on his own if Eberly could not or would not get rid of Berkowitz. Vyborg wanted to be head of communications, and his scant patience had reached its end. “Either you get him removed or I will remove him myself,” the grim little man said. “In a few months we’ll be entering Saturn orbit. I want Berkowitz out of the way before then. Long before then!”

Eberly knew this was a test of his power. Vyborg would never challenge him so unless he felt that Eberly was deliberately procrastinating. Now, Eberly knew, if I don’t deliver Berkowitz’s head, Vyborg will stop believing in me, stop obeying me. So, like it or not, he had to confront Wilmot.

Morgenthau hadn’t come up with a thing that he could use against Wilmot. Although she swore that she spent every night faithfully plowing through his phone conversations and his computer files, she had found nothing useful, so far.

I can do it without her help, Eberly told himself as he arranged to meet the chief administrator. A man can do anything, if he has the unbreakable will to succeed.

Yet now, as he sat before Wilmot’s desk and saw the professor’s steel-gray eyes assessing him coolly, Eberly wondered which of them had the stronger will.

“After all,” Wilmot said, “your position as head of Human Resources doesn’t give you the right to meddle in other departments, does it.”

“This is not meddling,” Eberly snapped. “It’s a matter of some urgency.”

Wilmot thought, He had a big success with the naming contest and the voting connected with it. That rally he held out in the park was a rather rousing event. It’s gone to his head. He thinks he’s already in charge of every department. He thinks he’s going to replace me as chief of the entire habitat. Well, my lad, you have another think coming.

“Urgency?” he asked, deliberately calm and methodical. “How so?”

“Berkowitz is incompetent. We both know that.”

“Do we? I thought the Communications Department was running rather smoothly.”

“Because Dr. Vyborg is doing all the work,” Eberly said.

“Vyborg. That little reptilian fellow.”

Eberly stifled an angry reply. He’s deliberately trying to goad me, he realized. This old man is trying to make me angry enough to make a mistake.

He took in a breath, then said more calmly, “Vyborg is a very capable man. He is actually running the Communications Department while Berkowitz sits on his laurels and does nothing.”

“Much as Ms. Morgenthau is running your office, I should imagine,” said Wilmot, with the trace of a smile.

Eberly smiled back at the older man. You’re not going to make me lose my temper, he said silently. I’m not going to fall into your trap.