Outside interference, he said to himself. Something in the dust cloud screws up radio communications.

The cloud raced past him, swinging along the ring far faster than Gaeta’s leisurely pace.

“…off the scale!” Wunderly was shouting excitedly. “That proves the spokes are driven by electromagnetic interactions.”

“I can hear you again,” Gaeta said. “Whatever it was that blocked the radio is gone now.”

“It’s the spokes!” Wunderly said. “We’ve just proved that high-powered electromagnetic fields drive them!”

“And interfere with radio links,” Fritz added calmly.

“It didn’t mess up anything else in the suit,” Gaeta said.

“The suit is heavily shielded,” said Fritz.

“Yeah.” Gaeta saw that he was approaching the ring particles pretty fast now. Like diving into a field of diamonds, he thought, chuckling.

“What is funny?” Fritz demanded.

“I was thinking I shoulda brought a big bucket to haul back some of these diamonds.”

“They are not diamonds. They are dust particles covered with ice.”

“But the ones in the spokes don’t seem to have ice on ’em.”

“That is a mystery for Dr. Wunderly to ponder. For you, you should be adjusting your velocity vector to make it as close to that of the ring particles as possible. That will minimize impacts and abrasion problems.”

It was all in the automated nav program, Gaeta knew, but he checked his approach velocity against the ring particles’ and saw that he could notch down his approach a hair. That’ll give me more time in the ring itself, he thought. Good.

Then he saw a bigger chunk of ice tumbling slowly through the ring, glittering brilliantly.

“Hey, see that one? It’s big as a house.”

“Stay away from it,” Fritz commanded.

“Can you get close enough to measure its size precisely?” Wunderly asked.

Gaeta laughed again. “Right. Stay away and get close. No sweat, folks.”

CAPTURED

Crawling along the pipe on all fours, Holly’s right hand splashed into a shallow little puddle at precisely the same instant that her left hand felt a slight vibration along the pipe’s curved interior surface.

She froze for an instant, listening for the rush of water, then decided, By the time I hear it, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

She had passed a hatch about five minutes earlier. That meant the next hatch would be roughly five minutes ahead. Which way is the water coming? she asked herself. Doesn’t matter, came the answer. You’ve got to get your butt out of here. Now!

She scurried forward, feeling like a mouse in its burrow, scampering as fast as her hands and knees would carry her. She heard a rumble from somewhere behind her, thought it might be her imagination overreacting, then felt the unmistakable shudder of water rushing along the pipe. By the time she reached the hatch she could hear the flood roaring down toward her. With trembling fingers she opened the hatch, crawled out of the pipe, and slammed the hatch shut again. Water thundered past, some of it splashing through the hatch before she could seal it properly.

That was close!

Holly’s legs wouldn’t hold her up. She slid to the metal flooring of the tunnel and sat in the puddle beneath the hatch.

They knew I was in the pipe! she realized. They knew and they tried to drown me.

The tracker was loping along the tunnel, running easily alongside the pipeline. He could hear the water gushing through it but, careful man that he was, he jogged down the tunnel on the chance that his prey had gotten out in time. Take no chances, don’t give the prey a chance to get away.

He was an Ethiopian who had dreamed of winning Olympic gold medals for long-distance running until the Olympic Games were indefinitely postponed. He had supported himself, his parents, and his younger siblings on a policeman’s meager salary. Even that failed, however, when a relative of a politician from the capital was handed his position and salary. Faced with starvation, he accepted a position on the outbound Saturn habitat, on the condition that his salary be sent each month to his parents. Once aboard the habitat, he was befriended by Colonel Kananga and given a soft post with the Security Department.

This job of tracking was his first important duty for the colonel, after so many months of routine security patrols in a habitat where there were no real criminals, only spoiled, independent-minded sons and daughters of the wealthy who acted like children that didn’t have to grow up.

He had no intention of failing this assignment. He wanted to please Colonel Kananga.

“I’m getting pinged,” Gaeta said.

He was still a considerable distance above the ring, but particles of dust were already impinging on his suit, according to the sensors on its outer shell. No problem, Gaeta told himself. Not yet. It’ll get worse in a coupla minutes.

It was hard to estimate distances. He was looking down at a dazzling field of white, glaring light, like floating down in a balloon to the top of an enormous glacier. Yet the ring wasn’t solid; it was composed of millions upon millions of particles, like all the shiny bright marbles in the universe had gathered themselves together here. The house-sized chunk of ice had passed by, tumbling end over end, visibly banging into the smaller particles that swarmed around it.

Fritz’s voice, calm and assured, said, “Tour velocity vector is good. The impacts should be at minimal energy.”

“Yeah,” Gaeta agreed, drifting closer to the vast sea of glittering particles. “I don’t feel anything yet.”

“We’re getting size estimates for the particles,” said Wunderly. “There doesn’t seem to be anything above a few millimeters now.” She sounded disappointed.

“You want me to look for bigger stuff?”

“You just stick to the planned trajectory,” Fritz said stiffly. “No adventures, please.”

Gaeta laughed. No adventures. What the hell do you call this?

Wunderly came back on. “The new moon has settled into its permanent orbit.”

“Can’t see it from here.”

“No, it’s on the other side of Saturn. I’m getting video from the minisat in polar orbit.”

The particles were noticeably thicker now. Gaeta felt as if he were slowly sinking into a blizzard: whirling snowflakes glistening all around him, swirling, dancing on an invisible wind. They seemed to be moving away from him slightly, making room for him in their midst.

“I know this is crazy,” he said, “but these flakes are moving away from me, looks like.”

He could sense Fritz shaking his head. “It’s merely your perspective. They’re moving around Saturn in their own orbits, just as you are.”

“Maybe, but I could swear they’re keeping their distance from me.”

“Can you grab any of them?” Wunderly asked.

Gaeta worked his keyboard, then wriggled his arms back into the suit’s sleeves. “I’ve opened the collection box, but I don’t think any of ’em are getting caught in it.”

He heard Fritz chuckle dryly. “Do you think they’re avoiding you? Perhaps they don’t like your smell.”

“I don’t know what to think, pal. It’s as if—” Gaeta stopped as a red warning light suddenly flared on the inner surface of his faceplate. A shock of alarm raced through his nerves.

“Got a red light,” he said.

“Sensors down,” Fritz said, his voice abruptly brittle, tense. “No immediate problem.”

Scanning his helmet displays swiftly, Gaeta saw that four of the sensors on the suit’s skin had gone blank. Two on the backpack and two more on his left leg. He knew it was impossible to see his legs from inside the suit but he tried anyway. All he could see through the faceplate was the tips of his boots. They seemed to be rimed with ice.

He raised both arms and saw that they too were covered with a thin layer of ice. As he watched, he saw the ice moving along each arm.