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"Uh, right. I better hustle along now, if I'm to catch the shuttle going down to 'Port Three. We'll have 'em back safe and sound by breakfast. Think of it this way; at least GalacTech can't dock their pay for the extra shuttle trip." This even won a brief smile from her.

"Leo . . ." Her voice sobered, and he paused on his way out the door. "What are we going to do if . . . if there's ever anyone worse than Mr. Van Atta?"

Cross that bridge when you come to it, he wanted to say, evading the question. But one more platitude and he'd gag. He smiled and shook his head, and fled.

The warehouse made Claire think of a crystal lattice. It was all right angles, stretching away at ninety degrees in each dimension, huge slotted shelves reaching to the ceilings, endless rows, cross corridors. Blocking vision, blocking flight.

But there was no flight here. She felt like a stray molecule caught in the interstices of a doped crystal wafer, out of place but trapped. In retrospect the cozy curves of the Habitat seemed like enclosing arms.

They huddled now in one empty cell of a shelf stack, one of the few they had not found occupied by supplies, measuring some two meters on a side. Tony had insisted on climbing to the third tier, to be above the eye level of any chance downsider walking along the corridor upright on his long legs. The ladders set at intervals along the shelves had actually proved easier to manage than creeping along the floor, but getting the pack up had been a dreadful struggle, as its cord was too short to climb up and draw it up after themselves.

Claire was secretly unnerved. Andy was already finding an ability to push and grunt and wriggle against the gravity, still only a few centimeters at a time, but she had a nasty vision of him falling over the edge. Claire was developing a distaste for edges.

A robotic forklift whirred past. Claire froze, cowering in the back of their recess, clutching Andy to her, grabbing one of Tony's hands. The whirring trailed off into the distance. She breathed again.

"Relax," Tony squeaked. "Relax . . ." He breathed deeply in an apparent effort to follow his own advice.

Claire peered doubtfully out of the cubicle at the forklift, which had stopped farther down the corridor and was engaged in retrieving a plastic carton from its coded cell.

"Can we eat now?" She had been nursing Andy on and off for the last three hours in an effort to keep him quiet, and was drained in every sense. Her stomach growled, and her throat was dry.

"I guess," said Tony, and dug a couple of ration bars out of their hoard in the pack. "And then we'd better try to work our way back to the hangar."

"Can't we rest here a little longer?"

Tony shook his head. "The longer we wait, the more chance they'll be looking for us. If we don't get on a shuttle for the transfer station soon, they may start searching the outbound jumpships, and there goes our chance of stowing away undiscovered until after they boost past the point of no return."

Andy squeaked and gurgled; a familiar aroma wafted from his vicinity.

"Oh, dear. Would you please get out a diaper?" Claire asked Tony.

"Again? That's the fourth time since we left the Habitat."

"I don't think I brought near enough diapers," Claire worried, smoothing out the laminated paper and plastic form Tony handed her.

"Half our pack is filled with diapers. Can't you—make it last a little longer?"

"I'm afraid he may be getting diarrhea. If you leave that stuff on his bottom too long, it eats right through his skin—gets all red—even bleeds—gets infected—and then he screams and cries every time you touch it to try to clean it. Real loud," she emphasized.

The fingers of Tony's lower right hand drummed on the shelf floor, and he sighed, biting back frustration. Claire wrapped the used diaper tightly in itself and prepared to stash it back in their pack.

"Do we have to cart those along?" Tony asked suddenly. "Everything in the pack is going to reek after a while. Besides,