“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 de-conditioning in your people? I don’t—” his eyes inventoried the enormous structure, “I don’t even see an exercise wheel. No spinning gym?”