“Ow!” The dark-haired girl laughed, and spared a lower hand to pry the little fat fingers loose without missing a beat of her upper hands parting sealant in place around a stem. She finished with a quick squirt of fixative from a tube floating conveniently beside her, just out of the infant’s reach.

The girl was slim, and elvish, and wonderfully weird to Leo’s unaccustomed eyes. Her short, fine hair clung close to her head, framing her face, shaped to a point at the nape of her neck. It was so thick it reminded Leo of cat fur: one might stroke it, and be soothed.

The other girl was blonde, and babyless. She looked up first, and smiled. “Company, Claire.” The dark-haired girl’s face lit with pleasure. Leo flushed in the heat of it. “Tony!” she cried happily, and Leo realized he had merely received an accidental dose, as it were, of that beam of delight, as it swept over him to its true target.

The baby released three hands and waved them urgently. “Ah, ah!” The girl turned in air to face the visitors. “Ah, ah, ah!” the baby repeated.

“Oh, all right,” she laughed. “You want to fly to Daddy, hm?” She unhooked a short tether from a sort of soft harness on the baby’s torso to a belt around her own waist, and held the infant out. “Fly to Daddy, Andy? Fly to Daddy?”

The baby indicated enthusiasm for the proposal by waving all four hands vigorously about and squealing eagerly. She launched him toward Tony with considerably more velocity than Leo would have dared to impart. Tony, grinning cheerfully, caught him—handily, Leo thought in blitzed inanity.

“Fly to Mommy?” Tony inquired in turn. “Ah, ah,” the baby agreed, and Tony hung him in air, gently pulling his arms out—like straightening out a starfish, Leo thought—and imparting a spin rolled him through the air for all the world like a wheel. The baby pulled his hands in, clenching his face in sympathetic effort, and spun faster, and gurgled with laughter at the success of his effort. Conservation of angular momentum, thought Leo. Naturally…