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"I mean did you, personally, place the order. With your own little fingers."

"Yes. You asked me to, remember?"

"Well"—Leo took a breath, and handed him the report panel—"you made a typo."

The super glanced at the report panel and paled. "Oh, God."

"And they did it," Leo gibbered, running his hands through what was left of his hair. "They filled it—I can't believe they filled it. Loaded all this stuff onto the shuttle without once questioning it, sent a hundred tons of gasoline to a space station without once noticing that it was utterly absurd. . . ."

"I can believe it," sighed the super. "Oh, God. Oh, well. We'll just have to send it back, and reorder. It'll probably take about a week. It's not like our fuel rod stocks are really low, in spite of the rate you've been using them up for that 'special project' you're so hushy-hush about."

I don't have a week, thought Leo frantically. I have twenty-four hours, maybe.

"I don't have a week," Leo found himself raging. "I want them now. Put it on a rush order." He lowered his voice, realizing he was becoming conspicuous.

The super was offended enough to overcome his guilt. "There's no need to throw a fit, Graf. It was my mistake and I'll probably have to pay for it, but it's plain stupid to charge my department for a rush shuttle trip on top of this one when we can perfectly well wait. This is going to be bad enough as it is." He waved at the gasoline. "Hey, kids," he added, "stop unloading! This load's a mistake, it's all gotta go back downside."

The shuttle pilot was just exiting the personnel hatch in time to hear this. "What?" He floated over to them, and Leo gave him a brief explanation in very short words of the error.

"Well, you can't send it back this trip," said the shuttle pilot firmly. "I'm not fueled up to take a full load. It'll have to wait." He shoved off, to take his mandatory safety break in the cafeteria.

The quaddie cargo handlers looked quite reproachful, as the direction of their work was reversed for the second time. But they limited their implied criticism to a plaintive, "Are you sure now, sir?"

"Yes," sighed Leo. "But find some place to store this stuff in a detached module. You can't leave it in here."

"Yes, sir."

Leo turned again to the pusher crew supervisor. "I've still got to have those fuel rods."

"Well, you'll just have to wait. I won't do it. Van Atta's going to have enough of my blood for this already."

"You can charge it to my special project. I'll sign for it."

The super raised his eyebrows, slightly consoled. "Well . . . I'll try, all right, I'll try. But what about your blood?"

Already sold, thought Leo. "That's my look-out, isn't it?"

The super shrugged. "I guess." He exited, muttering. One of the pusher crew quaddies, trailing him, gave Leo a significant look; Leo returned a severe shake of his head, emphasized by a throat-cutting gesture with his index finger, indicating, Silence!

He turned and nearly rammed Pramod, waiting patiently at his shoulder. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" he yelped, then got better control of his fraying nerves. "Sorry, you startled me. What is it?"

"We've run into a problem, Leo."

"But of course. Who ever tracks me down to impart good news? Never mind. What is it?"

"Clamps."

"Clamps?"

"There're a lot of clamped connections Outside. We were going over the flow chart for the Habitat disassembly, for, um, tomorrow, you know—"

"I know, don't say it."

"We thought a little practice might speed things up."

"Yes, good . . ."

"Hardly any of the clamps will unclamp. Even with power tools."

"Uh . . ." Leo paused, taken aback, then realized what the problem was. "Metal clamps?"

"Mostly."

"Worse on the sun side?"

"Much worse. We couldn't get any of those to come at all. Some of them are visibly fused. Some idiot must have welded them."

"Welded, yes. But not by some idiot. By the sun."

"Leo, it doesn't get that hot—"

"Not directly. What you're seeing is spontaneous vacuum diffusion welding. Metal molecules