"Izmailova humiliated Sakai?"

Hamilton stared at him.  "Weil, you're oblivious, you know that?"

Then he remembered Izmailova's rant on nuclear energy.  "Right, okay.  I got it now."

"So here's your choice.  I can write up a reprimand, and it goes into your permanent file, along with Izmailova's complaint.  Or you can take a lateral Earthside, and I'll see to it that these little things aren't logged into the corporate system."

It wasn't much of a choice.  But he put a good face on it.  "In that  case it looks like you're stuck with me."

"For the moment, Weil.  For the moment."

He was back on the surface the next two days running.  The first day he was once again hauling fuel rods to Chatterjee C.  This time he kept to the road, and the reactor was refueled exactly on schedule.  The second day he went all the way out to Triesnecker to pick up some old rods that had been in temporary storage for six months while the Kerr-McGee people argued over whether they should be reprocessed or dumped.  Not a bad deal for him, because although the sunspot cycle was on the wane, there was a surface advisory in effect and he was drawing hazardous duty pay.

When he got there, a tech rep telepresenced in from somewhere in France to tell him to forget it.  There'd been another meeting, and the decision had once again been delayed.  He started back to Bootstrap with the new a capella version of the Threepenny Opera playing in his head.  It sounded awfully sweet and reedy for his tastes, but that was what they were listening to up home.