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He drifted slowly through the corridors, back toward his own quarters, cooling. And whatever had he hoped to get from Yei anyway? Relief from responsibility? Was he to dump his conscience on her desk, a la Bruce, and say, "Take care of it . . ."

And yet, and yet, and yet . . . there was a solution in here somewhere. He could feel it, a palpable dim shape, like a tightness in the gut, a mounting, screaming frustration. The problem that refused to fall into the right pieces, the elusive solution—he'd solved engineering problems that presented themselves at first as such solid, unscalable walls. He did not know where the leaps beyond logic that ultimately topped them came from, except that it was not a conscious process, however elegantly he might diagram it post facto. He could not solve it and he could not leave it alone, but picked uselessly at it, counterproductive like picking a scab, in a rising compulsive frenzy. The wheels spun, imparting no motion.

"It's in here," he whispered, touching his head. "I can feel it. I just . . . can't . . . see it . . ."

They had to get out of Rodeo local space somehow, that much was certain. All the quaddies. There was no future here. It was the damn peculiar legal set-up. What was he to do—hijack a jumpship? But the personnel jumpships carried no more than three hundred passengers. He could, just barely, picture himself holding a—a what? what weapon? he had no gun, his pocket knife featured mainly screwdrivers—right, hold a screwdriver to the pilot's head and cry, "Jump us to Orient IV!"—where he would promptly be arrested and jailed for the next twenty years for piracy, leaving the quaddies to do . . . what? In any case, he could not possibly hijack three ships at the same time, and that was the minimum number needed.

Leo shook his head. "Chance favors," he muttered, "chance favors, chance favors . . ."

Orient IV would not want the quaddies. Nobody was going to want the quaddies. What, indeed, could their future be even if freed from GalacTech? Gypsy orphans, alternately ignored, exploited, or abused, in their dependency on the narrow environment of humanity's chain of space facilities. Talk about technology traps. He pictured Silver—he had little doubt just what sort of exploitation would be her lot, with that elegant face and body of hers. No place for her out there . . .

No! Leo denied silently. The universe was so damned big. There had to be a place. A place of their own, far, far from the trappings and traps of human so-called civilization. The histories of previous utopian social experiments in isolation were not encouraging, but the quaddies were exceptional in every way.

Between one breath and the next, the vision took him. It came not as a chain of reason, more words words words, but as a blinding image, all complete in its first moment, inherent, holistic, gestalt, inspired. Every hour of his life from now on would be but the linear exploration of its fullness.

A stellar system with an M or G or K star, gentle, steady, pouring out power for the catching. Circling it, a Jovian gas giant with a methane and water-ice ring, for water, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen. Most important of all, an asteroid belt.

And some equally important absences: no Earth-like planet orbiting there also to attract competition; not on a wormhole jump route of strategic importance to any potential conquistadors. Humanity had passed over hundreds of such systems, in its obsessive quest for new Earths. The charts were glutted with them.

A quaddie culture spreading out along the belt from their initial base, a society of the quaddies, by the quaddies, for the quaddies. Burrowing into the rocks for protection against radiation, and to seal in their precious air, expanding, leapfrogging from rock to rock, to drill and build new homes. Minerals all around, more than they could ever use. Whole hydroponics farms for Silver. A new world to build. A space world to make Morita Station look like a toy.

"Why"—Leo's eyes widened with delight—"it's an engineering problem after all!"

He hung limply in air,