Chip had been born here-grown here, rather-in one of the New Fabian Society's genetic production plants. Grown in a Company Vat, raised in a Company Nursery, and educated in a Company School. His "parents" were shreds of cryo-preserved tissue some long-dead dreamers had sent off on a slowship to this new "Utopia" among the stars.

Utopia-ha! Even the Shareholders, so far as Chip could tell, didn't believe that crap. At least, he'd heard them whine enough about Harmony And Reason in the haute cuisine restaurant where he'd worked before the war. Not that he'd had much opportunity to listen. He'd been an apprentice sous-chef after finishing Company school, and he hadn't had a lot to do with the clientele.

Still, he'd noticed that the Shareholders seemed to be especially grumpy about the sunlight. To Chip, the sunlight was not too blue, nor too hot. But the older Shareholders weren't local Vat-born clone kids like him. No, they'd been wealthy adults back on Old Earth-philanthropists, they called themselves-and had come along in cryo-suspension. The windows of Chez Henri-Pierre had been specially tinted to yellow the sunlight for them. According to them Earth light had been sweeter and better…

A rude voice interrupted his musing.

"Pull your finger out and move the damn stuff out of the way, Connolly."

Chip shook himself. He'd been falling asleep, he realized. Air.. .

"Dig us an air hole, Pistol."

"So that we can breath Maggot pong? And they can smell us?"

"We need oxygen, you…"

"Better make us some human oxygen out of your own air hole, you muddy rascal! I feel tired and I've got a headache. I don't feel like digging."

"Intercranial pressure because of vasodilation in the brain from oxygen deprivation," said Doc. "The lethargy is caused by raised CO2 levels."

For a moment, Chip was startled by the assurance in the bespectacled rat's voice. But then he reminded himself that Doc had proven, more than once, that he was an excellent medic. At least, when he wasn't droning on about epistemology and ontology and the whichness-of-what.