She grinned to herself. I’ll lose those two clowns as soon as I pop down into the tunnels.

She never noticed the third security agent moving far ahead of her. But he tracked her quite clearly. Every item of Holly’s clothes had been sprayed with a monomolecular odorant that allowed the agent to track her like a bloodhound.

“You’re missin’ the inauguration,” Gaeta said.

Cardenas shrugged. “So I miss it.”

Gaeta’s massive armored suit stood like a grotesque statue in the middle of the workshop floor. The chamber hummed with the background buzz of electrical equipment and the quiet intensity of specialists going about their jobs. Fritz and two of his technicians were using the overhead crane to slowly lower the bulbous suit to a horizontal position and place it on its eight-wheeled transport dolly. It looked to Cardenas like lowering a statue. A third technician had crawled inside the suit: Cardenas could see his sandy-brown mop of hair through the open hatch in its back. Off at a console against the workshop wall, Nadia Wunderly was tracing the trajectory of the ice-covered asteroid that was making its last approach to the main ring before falling into orbit around Saturn. Berkowitz shuttled nervously from one to another, recording everything with his handcam.

Gaeta walked slowly to the diagnostic console and bent over it to study rows of steady green lights intently.

He’s really trying to get away from me, Cardenas said to herself. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be distracting him now. I should leave him to focus completely on his job.

Yet she stayed, shuffling uneasily, uncertainly, as the men around her went through their final tasks before wheeling the suit down to the airlock where they would stow it aboard the shuttle craft that would take Manny to the rings.

As Gaeta watched them gently lowering the suit, Cardenas realized that the contraption would be his home for the next two days. He’ll have to live inside it, work inside it… maybe die inside it.

Stop it! she commanded herself. No blubbering. He’s got enough to worry about without you crying all over him.

It took an enormous effort of will, but finally Cardenas heard herself say, “Manny, I’d better get back to my apartment. I—” She stopped, then touched his strong, muscular shoulder and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I’ll see you when you get back,” she said.

He nodded, his face deadly serious. “In two days.”

“Good luck,” she said, barely able to move her hand from his shoulder.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, making a smile for her. “This is gonna be a walk in the park.”

“Good luck,” she repeated, then abruptly turned away from him and started walking toward the workshop door. Her mind kept churning, He’ll be all right. He’s done more dangerous stunts than this. He knows what he’s doing. Fritz won’t let him take any unnecessary chances. He’ll be back in two days. In two days it’ll be all over and he’ll be safe.

Yes, said a voice in her mind. And then he’ll leave the habitat, go back to Earth, leave you for good.

“Therefore,” Professor Wilmot was saying, “in accordance with this community’s Principles of Organization, I declare the new constitution to be the deciding law of this habitat. I further declare that you, Malcolm Eberly, having been duly elected by free vote of the population, are now officially the chief administrator of this habitat.”

The few hundred people scattered among the chairs spread across the grass rose to their feet and applauded. The band broke into “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Wilmot gripped Eberly’s hand limply and mumbled, “Congratulations, I suppose.”

Eberly grasped the podium’s edges and looked out at the sparse audience. There sat Morgenthau, in the front row, eying him like an elementary school teacher waiting for her pupil to recite the speech she had forced him to write. Kananga and Vyborg sat behind her.

Eberly had composed an inauguration speech, liberally cribbed from the words of Churchill, Kennedy, both Roosevelts, and Shakespeare.

He looked down at the opening lines, in the podium’s display screen. With a shake of his head that was visible to everyone in the audience, he looked up again and said, “This is no time for fancy speeches. We have arrived safely at our destination. Let those who are Believers thank God. Let all of us understand that tomorrow our real work begins. I intend to file a petition with the world government, asking them to recognize us as a separate and independent nation, just as Selene and Ceres have been recognized.”

There was a moment of surprised silence, then everyone jumped to their feet and applauded lustily. Everyone except Morgenthau, Kananga, and Vyborg.

LAUNCH

Raoul Tavalera watched the orbital insertion and Eberly’s inauguration from his apartment, although he barely noticed what the images displayed. He was thinking about Holly. She was in trouble, and she needed help. But when he had offered to help her, she had turned him down flat.

The story of my life, he grumbled to himself. Nobody wants me. Nobody gives a friggin’ damn about me. Mr. Nobody, that’s me.

He was surprised at how much pain he felt. Holly had been kind to him, more than kind, since he had first come aboard the habitat. He remembered the dates they had had. Dinners at the Bistro and even Nemo’s, once. That picnic out at the endcap, where she told me about old Don Diego. She likes me, he told himself, I know she does. But now she doesn’t want me to be with her. Why?

He tried phoning her again, but the comm system said her phone had been deactivated. Deactivated? Why? Then it hit him. She’s on the run again. She’s trying to hide from Kananga and his apes. That’s why she deactivated her phone, so they can’t track her.

Slowly, Tavalera got up from the chair in which he’d been sitting most of the day. Holly’s in trouble and she needs help, whether she thinks so or not. My help. I’ve got to find her, help her, show her she’s not alone in this.

For the first time in his life, Raoul Tavalera decided he had to act, no matter what the consequences. It’s time for me to stop being Mr. Nobody, he told himself. I’ve gotta find Holly before Kananga’s baboons do.

Focus, Gaeta told himself. Blot out everything from your mind except the job at hand. Forget about Kris, forget about everything except getting this stunt done.

He stood at the inner hatch of the airlock, surrounded by Fritz, Berkowitz, and Timoshenko, who would pilot the shuttlecraft to the rings. The other technicians were behind him, checking out the suit for the final time.

Berkowitz had microcams mounted on the walls around the airlock enclosure, inside the airlock chamber, even clipped to a headband that matted down his stylishly curled and tinted brown hair.

“How does it feel to be undertaking the first human traverse through Saturn’s rings?” Berkowitz asked, almost breathless with eager intensity.

“Not now, Zeke,” said Gaeta. “Gotta concentrate on the work.”

Fritz stepped between them, a stern expression on his face. “He can’t do interviews now.”

“Okay, okay,” said Berkowitz amiably enough, although disappointment showed clearly in his eyes. “We’ll just record the preparations documentary-style and put in the interviews over it afterward.”

Gaeta turned to Timoshenko. “It’s going to be just you and me out there.”

“Not to worry,” Timoshenko said, totally serious. “I’ll get you to the B ring, then swing through the Cassini division and pick you up on the other side of the ring plane.”

Gaeta nodded. “Right.”

“Suit’s all primed and ready to go,” said one of the technicians.

“Any problems?” Gaeta asked.

“The pincer on your right arm is a little stiff. If we had a couple hours I’d break it down and rebuild it for ya.”