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"Do I have a what?" said Van Atta.

"A work order. It occurs to me that, technically, this could be considered an act of hazardous waste disposal. It takes a work order signed by the originator of the request—that's you—my supervisor—that's Administrator Chalopin—and the company Hazardous Waste Management Officer."

"Chalopin has turned you over to me. That makes it official, mister!"

"But not complete. The Hazardous Waste Management Officer is Laurie Gompf, and she's back on Rodeo. You don't have her authorization. The work order is incomplete. Sorry, sir." Bannerji vacated the weapons console and plunked himself down in the empty engineer's seat, crossing his arms. "It's as much as my job is worth to complete an act of hazardous waste disposal without a proper order. The Environmental Impact Assessment has to be attached, too."

"This is mutiny!" yelled Van Atta.

"No, it isn't," Bannerji disagreed cordially. "This isn't the military."

Van Atta glared red-faced at Bannerji, who studied his fingernails. With an oath, Van Atta flung himself into the weapons console seat and reset the aim. He might have known—anything you wanted done right you had to do yourself—he hesitated, the engineering parameters of the D-class superjumpers racing through his mind. Where on that complex structure might a hit not merely disable the rods, but cause the main thrusters to blow entirely?

Cremation, indeed. And the deaths of the four or five downsiders aboard could, at need, be blamed on Bannerji—I did my best, ma'am—if he'd done his job as I'd first requested . . .

The schematic spun in the vid display. There must be a point in the structure—yes. There and there. If he could knock out both that control nexus and those coolant lines, he could start an uncontrolled reaction that would result in—promotion, probably, after the dust had settled. Apmad would kiss him. Just like a heroic doctor, single-handedly stopping a plague of genetic abomination from spreading across the galaxy . . .

The target schematic pulled toward alignment again. Van Atta's sweating palm closed around the firing switch. In a moment—just a moment—

"What are you doing with that, Dr. Yei?" asked Bannerji's voice, startled.

"Applying psychology."

The back of Van Atta's head seemed to explode with a sickening crack. He pitched forward, cutting his chin on the console, bumping the keypads, turning his firing program to confetti-colored hash in the vid. He saw stars inside the shuttle, blurring purple and green spots—gasping, he straightened back up.

"Dr. Yei," Bannerji objected, "if you're trying to knock a man out you've got to hit him a lot harder than that."

Yei recoiled fearfully as Van Atta surged up out of his seat. "I didn't want to risk killing him. . . ."

"Why not?" muttered Bannerji under his breath.

Furiously, Van Atta's hands closed around Yei's wrist. He yanked the metal wrench from her grasp. "You can't do anything right, can you?" he snarled.

She was gasping and weeping. Fors, space-suited but still minus his helmet, stuck his head through again from the rear compartment. "What the hell is going on up here?"

Van Atta shoved Yei toward him. Bannerji, squirming uncomfortably in his seat, was clearly not to be trusted. "Hold onto this crazy bitch. She just tried to kill me with a wrench."

"Oh? She told me she needed it to adjust a seat attitude," remarked Fors. "Or—did she say 'seat'?" But he held Yei's arms. Her struggle, as ever, was weak and futile.

With a hiss, Van Atta heaved himself back into the weapons console seat and called up the targeting program again. He reset it, and switched on the view from the exterior scanners. The D-620–Habitat configuration stood out vividly in the vid, the cold and distant sunlight silver-gilding its structure. The schematics converged, caging it.

The D-620 wavered, rotated, and vanished.

The lasers fired, lances of light striking into empty space.

Van Atta howled, beating his fists on the console, blood