At last he said, “I’ve asked you here because I need your help.” Pointing down the table to Holly, he said, “Miss Lane has been falsely accused. Colonel Kananga is the one who should be arrested.”

“Kananga?”

“But he’s the chief of security!”

“That’s why I need you,” Eberly said. “I want you to form a committee, a posse. We will go to Kananga’s office and arrest him.”

“Me?”

“Us?”

“Arrest the chief of security?”

“This has gotta be some kind of joke, right?”

“What about the rest of the security staff? You think those goons are gonna stand by and let us arrest their boss?”

Eberly said, “The fifty of you should be enough to discourage the guards from interfering. After all, they aren’t armed with anything more dangerous than their batons.”

“I heard they’re all martial arts specialists.”

“I don’t see why I have to get involved in this. You’re the chief administrator now. You do it.”

“As chief administrator, I am drafting you to serve—”

“The hell with that! I’m not going to get my face punched in just because you’ve got a gripe with the security chief. Get some other suckers to do your dirty work!”

One of the women said, “Anyway, you’re not really the chief administrator yet, not officially. Not until Professor Wilmot swears you in.”

“But I need you to arrest Kananga,” Eberly pleaded. “It’s your duty as citizens!”

“Duty my ass! You wanted to be head of this community. You do your duty. Leave me out of it.”

“Do it yourself,” a bellicose red-faced man thundered. “We didn’t ride all the way out here to Saturn to help you set up a dictatorship.”

“But—”

They turned away from Eberly and began filing past Holly through the door, grumbling and muttering.

“Wait,” Eberly called uselessly.

Hardly any of them even hesitated. They hurried by, leaving the conference room, most of them avoiding Holly’s eyes as they left.

Eberly stood at the head of the table, watching them leave. Morgenthau has all the offices bugged, he realized. Kananga will know about this failure before the last of them leaves the room.

SATURN ORBIT INSERTION

Unheeding of politics, uncaring of human aspirations and activities, oblivious to the hopes and fears of the ten thousand people aboard the habitat, Goddard fell toward the ringed planet, gripped in Saturn’s massive gravity well, sliding down into its preordained orbit just outside the ring system.

Half a million kilometers away, a jagged chunk of ice-covered rock half the size of the habitat was also falling into an orbit that would bring it squarely into Saturn’s brightest, widest ring.

In the tidy, efficient command center, Timoshenko scowled at the data his console screen showed him.

“We’re picking up more dust than predicted,” he said.

Captain Nicholson nodded, her eyes fixed on her own screens. “Not to worry.”

“It’s causing abrasion of the hull.”

“Within acceptable limits. Once we’re in orbit we’ll be moving with the dust and the abrasion level will go down.”

Timoshenko saw that the navigator and first mate both looked more than a little worried, despite the captain’s calm assurance.

“If the abrasion causes a break in one of the superconducting wires,” the first mate said, “it could cause our radiation shielding to fail.”

The captain swiveled her chair toward him. She was a small woman, but when her square jaw stuck out like that she could be dangerous.

“And what do you want me to do about it, Mr. Perkins? We’re in free fall now. Do you expect me to put her in reverse and back out of Saturn’s gravity well?”

“Uh, no ma’am. I was just—”

“You just attend to your duties and stop being such an old maid.

We calculated the abrasion rate before we left lunar orbit, didn’t we? It’s not going to damage our shielding.”

The first mate bent his head to stare at his console screens as if his life depended on it.

“And you,” she turned on the navigator, “keep close track of that incoming iceball. If there’s any danger here, that’s where it is.”

“It’s following the predicted trajectory to within five nines,” said the navigator.

“You watch it anyway,” snapped Captain Nicholson. “Astronomers can make all the predictions they want; if that thing hits us we’re dead meat.”

Timoshenko grinned sourly. She’s a tough old bitch, all right. I’ll miss her when she leaves.

And then he realized, When she and the other two leave I’ll be the senior man of the crew. Senior and only.

Vyborg hissed, “He’s sold us out. The traitor has sold us out.”

Kananga, watching the real-time display of Eberly’s failed meeting with his unwilling posse, laughed aloud. “No,” the Rwandan said. “He tried to sell us out. And failed.”

They were in Morgenthau’s office. From behind her desk she turned off the spy camera’s display, then hunched forward in her creaking chair. “So what do we do about him?” she asked.

“He’s a traitor,” Vyborg insisted. “An opportunistic turncoat who’d sell his mother’s milk if he thought he could make a penny out of it.”

“I agree,” said Morgenthau, her expression grim. “But what do we do about him?”

Still smiling, Kananga said, “That’s what airlocks are for. Him and the girl, as well.”

“And Cardenas?” Morgenthau asked. “And the stuntman? And Wilmot and anyone else who opposes us?”

Kananga started to nod, then realized what she was saying. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Vyborg said, “We can’t execute everyone who disagrees with us. Unfortunately.”

“Yes,” said Kananga. “Even my best people would draw the line somewhere.”

“So we have to control them, rather than execute them,” Morgenthau said.

“Can we control Eberly now? In a few hours he’ll be installed as leader of this community.”

“It means nothing,” Morgenthau assured him. “You saw how those people reacted to his plea for their help. These malcontents and freethinkers won’t raise a finger to support him against us.”

“They elected him.”

“Yes, and now they expect him to run things without bothering them. They don’t want to get involved in the messy work of being active citizens.”

“Ahh,” said Kananga. “I understand.”

“As long as we don’t bother the people, they’ll let us have a free hand to run things as we see fit.”

“So Eberly has the title, but we make certain he has no power?”

“Exactly. He’ll have to jump to our tune, or else.”

“And Wilmot?”

“He’s already out of the way.”

“Cardenas? The stuntman?” Vyborg asked.

“The stuntman will be leaving after his performance. He’ll go out on the ship that’s bringing the scientists from Earth.”

“Cardenas,” Vyborg repeated. “I don’t like having her here. Her and her nanomachines.”

“And the Lane girl,” said Kananga, touching his once-swollen cheek. “She has got to be put away. Permanently.”

“She should be executed for Romero’s murder,” Morgenthau said.

“Better that she kills herself trying to escape,” said Kananga.

“Yes, probably so.”

“What about Cardenas?” Vyborg insisted.

Morgenthau took a deep, sighing breath. “I don’t like her, either. She could become a troublemaker.”

Then her face lit up. “Nanotechnology! Suppose we find that Dr. Cardenas is cooking up dangerous nanobugs in her lab?”

“She’s not.”

“But the people will believe she is. Especially if we find that Romero was murdered by nanomachines.”

Despite her reliance on Newtonian mechanics, despite her assurances to Timoshenko and the other two men of her minuscule crew, Captain Nicholson felt her insides tensing as the countdown clock ticked off the final seconds.

The screens were all boringly normal. Nothing seemed wrong with their trajectory. The dust abrasion was a worry, but it was only slightly above predicted limits. The approaching iceball was following its predicted path, a safe two hundred thousand kilometers away from the habitat.