So Themis is proving an interesting challenge for

"--that wonderful gang of idiots you all know so well by now, the crew of the DSV Ringmaster." Cirocco leaned back from the typer touchplate, stretched her arms over her head, and cracked her knuckles. "Tripe," she muttered. "Also bullshit."

The green letters glowed on the screen in front of her, still with no period at the bottom.

It was a part of her job she always delayed as long as possible, but the NASA flacks could no longer be ignored. Themis was an uninteresting chunk of rock, by all indications, but the publicity department was desperate for something to hang a story on. They also wanted human interest, "personality journalism," as they called it. Cirocco tried her best, but could not bring herself to go into the kind of detail the release writers wanted. Which hardly mattered anyway, since what she had just written would be edited, re-written, discussed in conference, and generally

jazzed up to "humanize" the astronauts.

Cirocco sympathized with their goal. Few people gave a damn about the space program. They felt the money could he better spent on Earth, on Luna, and at the LS colonies. Why pour money down the rat-hole of exploration when there was so much benefit to be derived from things that were established on a businesslike basis, like Earth-orbital manufacturing? Exploration was terribly expensive, and there was nothing at Saturn but a lot of rock and vacuum.

She was trying to think of some fresh, new way to justify her presence on the first exploratory mission in eleven years when a face appeared on her screen. It might have been April, and it might have been August.

"Captain, I'm sorry to disturb you."

"That's okay. I wasn't busy."

"We have something up here you should see."