“Why do you worry about that so much?” asked Corrie, as they docked their inspection ships at the main crew station and removed their suits. “Does it matter if they slow down or speed up a little?”

“It would be fatal.” Rob looked out along the great length of the cable. “Do you realize how much momentum that thing has? The mass is already over a billion tons, and it’s all moving steadily away from here at the same speed that the Spiders extrude the cable. If they try and slow down or speed up a bit, they have a billion tons of inertia that doesn’t want to go along with that idea. The force would pull the Spiders off the asteroid and separate them from the raw materials — and you can imagine what that would do to our schedules. Regulo would be breathing down my neck, instead of being out of the way in Atlantis.”

Corrie nodded. “Have you called him in the past couple of days? Last time we spoke he told me that he had some news for you.”

Rob was standing next to her in the fifth of a gee provided by the rotating station. Looking at her, he marvelled again how he could have been so blind. She was Senta’s daughter. The coloring was different, and Corrie’s figure was much slimmer — but look at the bone structure of those cheeks. Look at the line of her neck. It was Senta exactly.

What about the eyes, though, those clear, bright eyes? They, surely, had come from somewhere else. They matched the frosty blue of Darius Regulo, but Rob could go no farther than that. He had looked hard at Corrie after Senta’s assertion. Regulo’s ruined face made the comparison of their features an impossible task.

Most of the time, while Rob was busy night and day on beanstalk construction, Corrie had been away on Atlantis. At their infrequent meetings, he always intended to ask Corrie about her father. Each time, he had failed to go through with it.

Suppose Corrie didn’t want it known that Regulo was her father? There were good reasons for that. She did her job efficiently, but her life would become more complicated if anyone in Regulo Enterprises knew that she was the boss’s daughter. No matter what she did it would be discounted, credited to family rather than talent.

Rob dithered, something unknown to him in his technical work. And he had never managed to ask his question.

“Well, aren’t you interested in knowing what Regulo has for you?” asked Corrie. She was staring hard at Rob, with the crackling blue eyes that had started his train of thought.

“I’m sorry.” Rob pulled his attention back to present problems. “I was miles away. Of course I want to know what Regulo is doing. What did he tell you?”

Corrie laughed. “You were miles away — as usual. You’ve not been listening to me at all. I just told you he wouldn’t tell me what he wants, or what his news is. You’ll have to call him yourself. I’d like to sit in when you do, though. I think there’s something new in the air. I’ve learned to tell when Regulo is excited.”

“Will he talk, do you think, with both of us at this end?”

“I don’t think he’ll actually talk to either of us. Not on two-way. The delay times are getting longer, and he’s impatient. Last time there was a round-trip signal time of nearly forty seconds, and he hated that.” Corrie was leading the way through the crew station towards the communications room. “He’s still moving Atlantis farther out from the Sun. I think all we’ll get is a recorded message with your code I.D. on it.”

They entered the shielded booth, a tight squeeze for two people, and Rob keyed in his personal print. After a second or two the screen lit up and Regulo appeared on it.

“You’re right,” Rob said. “Time’s too short for a transmission to Atlantis and back. All we’ll get is a canned message.” He turned up the volume and leaned closer to the small screen.

“I’ve been watching your progress,” began Regulo without preamble. There was a metallic edge of impatience in his gruff voice. “You’re still ahead of schedule, and so far as I can tell there’s nothing for you in the next couple of days that can’t be delegated. Don’t say it, I know you’re busy as hell. But I’ve watched your crews work, and they are all first-rate. Before things get too close to completion, I want you to come to Atlantis.”

He grinned, easing the impression of hard command. “I promise you, it won’t be a waste of your time. We have the mining project to the point where I want to talk to you about it, and maybe show you a few things. I guarantee that they’ll interest you. There’ll be plenty of time when we are finished here for you to get back to L-4 and work on the fly-in and tether. You know that I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. But I want to get some other business out of the way before we move Atlantis out to the Belt.”

Regulo paused for a few seconds as though looking and listening to something just off-screen. He nodded and reached forward to press two keys on the desk control panel. “Don’t bother to call and try to discuss this,” he said, returning his attention to the screen. “Just let me know when you’ll be here, and tell me if you have any problem making it soon. I have our fastest ship on stand-by near L-4. Bring Cornelia with you if she wants to come.” He grinned. “Will you take a bet with me that she’s not sitting there right now, listening? See you soon.”

The screen went blank. Rob looked at Corrie and shrugged. “That’s Regulo. Short and sweet. He’s in a hurry, as usual. I think he suspects he’ll get me there a lot quicker if he arouses my curiosity and won’t tell me what he has in his back pocket. I want to send him a message anyhow. Would you tell him that I’ll be on my way in six hours? There are a few things to take care of here, and I have to talk to the tether crew back on Earth.”

“We’ll be on our way in six hours,” she corrected him. “You heard Regulo. He’s expecting both of us, and don’t think you can leave me here after hearing him dangle a bait like that. I’ll send your message, but I’ll have to move fast, too. I’ve been trying to clear another of Regulo’s permits through the Earth system. I’m feeling the same way about the Earth government and the United Space Federation as Regulo does — sick to death of them. He always says that ninety-nine percent of the people on Earth aren’t worth keeping alive, but evolution will take care of that. I finally think I know how it will go. Earth won’t choke on pollution, or starve for lack of resources. It will drown in its own bureaucracy.”

She left quickly, while Rob was still smiling at her brisk evaluation. Corrie wasn’t a woman with much time for incompetence, in organizations or in individuals. Rob had seen enough red tape in his construction projects to know how irritating the bureaucrats could be to anybody whose focus was on results rather than procedures. Corrie was even less tolerant. Sometimes he had the feeling that she regarded him as just another of the assets of Regulo Enterprises, to be managed as efficiently as possible. That could mean charming, or cajoling, or persuading through logic. Corrie had all the tools in her locker, and it seemed to be partly hereditary. Rob had seen Senta working the same combination on Howard Anson.

That last thought produced a twinge of conscience. A call from Rob to Anson was badly overdue. When the beanstalk demanded it, everything else in Rob’s life was pushed into the background. And the problems had been coming thick and fast in the past few weeks. But Rob had better make the call from here, rather than waiting until they were out on Atlantis. With Regulo and Joseph Morel in a position to tap all incoming and outgoing calls there, privacy of conversation couldn’t be guaranteed.

Pushing fatigue to the back of his mind, Rob reached again for the communicator.