hereabouts was hacked and gouged, dirt and boulders shoved  into careless heaps and hills, the occasional tool station or Oxytank Emergency Storage Platform chopped into a nearby bluff.  A sign floated by:  TOILET FLUSHING FACILITIES 1/2 KILOMETER.  He made a face.  Then he remembered that his radio was still off and slipped the loop of wire from it.  Time to rejoin the real world.  Immediately his dispatcher's voice, harsh and staticky, was relayed to his trance chip.

"--ofabitch! Weil!  Where the fuck are you?"

"I'm right here, Beth.  A little late, but right where I'm supposed to be."

"Sonofa--"  The recording shut off, and Hamilton's voice came on, live and mean.  "You'd better have a real good explanation for this one, honey."

"Oh, you know how it is."  Gunther looked away from the road, off into the dusty jade highlands.  He'd like to climb up into them and never come back.  Perhaps he would find caves.  Perhaps there were monsters:  vacuum trolls and moondragons with metabolisms slow and patient, taking centuries to move one body's-length, hyperdense beings that could swim through stone as if it were water.  He pictured them diving, following lines of magnetic force deep, deep into veins of diamond and plutonium, heads back and singing.  "I picked up a hitchhiker, and we kind of got involved."

"Try telling that to E. Izmailova.  She's mad as hornets at you."

"Who?"

"Izmailova.  She's the new demolitions jock, shipped up here on a multicorporate contract.  Took a hopper in almost four hours ago, and she's been waiting for you and Siegfried ever since.  I take it you've never met her?"

"No."

"Well, I have, and you'd better watch your step with her.  She's exactly the kind of tough broad who won't be amused by your antics."

"Aw, come on, she's just another tech on a retainer, right?  Not in my line of command.  It's not like she can do anything to me."

"Dream on, babe.  It wouldn't take much pull to get a fuckup like you sent down to Earth."