Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [4]
Van Atta grinned. "Welcome to Rodeo, the armpit of the universe."
"Thank you." Leo smiled back automatically.
"I'm head of the Cay Project now; I'll be your boss," Van Atta amplified. "I requested you personally, y'know. You're going to help me get this division moving at last, jack it up and light a fire under it. You're like me, I know, got no patience with deadheads. It was a hell of a job to have dumped on me, trying to make this division profitable—but if I succeed, I'll be the Golden Boy."
"Requested me?" Cheering, to think that his reputation preceded him, but why couldn't he ever be requested by somebody at a garden spot? Ah, well . . . "They told me at HQ that I was being sent out here to give an expanded version of my short course in non-destructive testing."
"Is that all they told you?" Van Atta asked in astonishment. At Leo's affirmative shrug, he threw back his head and laughed. "Security, I suppose," Van Atta went on when he'd stopped chuckling. "Are you in for a surprise. Well, well. I won't spoil it." Van Atta's sly grin was as irritating as a familiar poke in the ribs.
Too familiar—oh, hell, Leo thought, this guy knows me from somewhere. And he thinks I know him. . . . Leo's polite smile became fixed in mild panic. He had met thousands of GalacTech personnel in his eighteen-year career. Perhaps Van Atta would say something soon to narrow the possibilities.
"My instructions listed a Dr. Cay as titular head of the Cay Project," Leo probed. "Will I be meeting him?"
"Old data," said Van Atta. "Dr. Cay died last year—several years past the date he should have been forcibly retired, in my opinion, but he was a vice-president and major stockholder and thoroughly entrenched—but that's blood over the damned dam, eh? I replaced him." Van Atta shook his head. "But I can't wait to see the look on your face when you see—come along. I have a private shuttle waiting."
They had the six-man personnel shuttle to themselves, but for the pilot. The passenger seat molded itself to Leo's body during the brief periods of acceleration. Quite brief periods; clearly they were not braking for planetary re-entry. Rodeo turned beneath them, falling farther away.
"Where are we going?" Leo asked Van Atta, seated beside him.
"Ah," said Van Atta. "See that speck about thirty degrees above the horizon? Watch it. It's home base for the Cay Project."
The speck grew rapidly into a far-flung chaotic structure, all angles and projections, with confetti-colored lights spangling its sharp shadows. Leo's practiced eye picked out the clues to its function, the tanks, the ports, the greenhouse filters winking in the sunlight, the size of the solar panels versus the estimated volume of the structure.
"An orbital habitat?"
"You got it," said Van Atta.
"It's huge."
"Indeed. How many personnel would you guess it could handle?"
"Oh—fifteen hundred."
Van Atta's eyebrows rose, in slight disappointment, perhaps, at not being able to offer a correction. "Almost exactly. Four hundred ninety-four rotating GalacTech personnel and a thousand permanent inhabitants."
Leo's lips echoed the word, permanent . . . "Speaking of rotation—how are you handling null-gee deconditioning in your people? I don't—" his eyes inventoried the enormous structure, "I don't even see an exercise wheel. No spinning gym?"
"There's a null-gee gym. The rotating personnel get a month downside after every three-month shift."
"Expensive."
"But we put the Habitat up there for less than a quarter of the cost of the same volume of living quarters in one-gee spinners."
"But surely you'll lose what you've saved in construction costs over time in personnel transportation and medical expenses," argued Leo. "The extra shuttle trips, the long leaves—every retiree who breaks an arm or a leg until the day he dies will be suing GalacTech for the cost of it plus mental anguish, whether he had significant bone demineralization or not."
"We've solved that