The freezer drifted back to its alcove, describing a neat detour around a patch of empty air at the back of the room. Kin made a mental note to get a tech to look at it.

They sat gingerly on the float chairs. Colony worlds didn't have them, Kin recalled. She glanced at the file, gave them an introductory glare, and switched on the recorder.

'You know why you're here,' she said. 'You've read the regulations, if you've got any sense. I'm bound to remind you that you can either choose to accept my judgement as senior executive of the sector, or go before a committee at Company HQ. If you elect for me to deal with it, there's no appeal. What do you say?'

'You,' said the girl.

'Can he speak?'

'We elect to be tried by you, Mizz,' said the boy in a thick Creed accent.

Kin shook her head. 'It's not a trial. If you don't like my decision you can always quit -- unless of course I fire you.' She let that sink in. Behind every Company trainee was a parsec-long queue of disappointed applicants. Nobody quit.

'Right, it's on record. Just for the record, then, you two were on strata machine BVN67 on Julius fourth last, working a line on Y-continent? You've got the detailed charge on the notice of censure you were given at the time.'

' 'Tis all correct,' said Hendry. Kin thumbed a switch.

One wall of the office became a screen. They got an aerial view of grey datum rock, broken off sharply by a kilometre-high wall of strata like God's own mad sandwich. The strata machine had been severed from its cliff and moved to one side. Unless a really skilled jockey lined it up next time, this world's geologists were going to find an unexplained fault.

The camera zoomed in to an area halfway up the cliff, where some rock had been melted out. There was a gantry and a few yellow-hatted workmen who shuffled out of camera field, except for one who stood holding a measuring rod against Exhibit A and grinning. Hi there, all you folks out there in Company Censure Tribunal Land.