'I know.' Kin thought for a while. 'Send him over. And her. It's going to be a busy day, Joel. It's always like this at the end of a job, people start to play around.'

'It's youth. We've all done it. With me it was a pair of boots in a coal measure. Not so imaginative, I admit.'

'You mean I should excuse him?'

Of course he did. Everyone was allowed just one unscripted touch, weren't they? Checkers always spotted them, didn't they? And even if one went unnoticed, couldn't we rely on future palaeontologists to hush it up? Huh?

Trouble was, they might not...

'He's good, and later on he'll be great,' said Joel. 'Just gnaw one ball off, eh?'

A few minutes later Kin heard the machine's roar stutter and stop. Soon one of the outer office robots came in, leading--

--a squat fair-haired youth, tanned lobster pink, and a skinny bald girl hardly out of her teens. They stood staring at Kin with a mixture of fear and defiance, dripping coral dust onto the carpet.

'All right, sit down. Want a drink? You both look dehydrated. I thought they had air conditioning in those things.'

The pair exchanged glances. Then the girl said, 'Frane likes to get the feel of his work.'

'Well, OK. The freezer's that round thing hovering right behind you. Help yourself.'

They jerked away as the freezer bumped into their shoulders, then grinned nervously and sat down.

They were in awe of Kin, which she found slightly embarrassing. According to the files they were both from colony planets so new the bedrock had hardly dried, while she was manifestly from Earth. Not Whole, New, Old, Real or Best Earth. Just Earth, cradle of humanity, just like it said in their history books. And the double-century mark on her forehead was probably something they'd only heard of before joining John Company. And she was their boss. And she could fire them.