He’d expected her to; after so long, few surprises were left between crew members. It had to be a lot like being married, he thought.

That brought Athena, always in the back of his mind, up to the front. The Americans had tried to solve the problem of sexual tension by putting three married couples aboard. They hailed it as a triumph of equality. Tolmasov could not see that-he doubted any combination of couples would get the Americans’ best people to Minerva. And Minerva was too important for anything less than the best.

The Soviet selection boards had thought as he did. If that meant life aboard Tsiolkovsky sometimes got complicated, too bad. Fortunately, Katerina was as fine a woman-as fine a person-as she was a physician. He wondered if the boards had chosen her for that, too. Probably not, he decided. Otherwise they would never have come up with Igor Lopatin.

He grimaced. Had Katerina been as crabbed and dour as the engineer, life aboard Tsiolkovsky would have been a lot worse than complicated. It would have been intolerable, and maybe dangerous. He ran a grateful hand down the smooth skin of her back, glad she favored him at the moment.

She stirred and detached herself from him. “Now,” she said, “back to work.” She retrieved her underpants and coverall from the little bag where she had stowed them. Tolmasov used a tissue to mop liquid out of the air. Katerina chuckled. “To the head first, then back to work,” she amended with a doctor’s practicality. As soon as she was dressed, she slipped out of the cubicle and away.

Tolmasov put his clothes back on more slowly. It was not animal lassitude; he was too disciplined to let that affect him. Calculation played a much bigger part in it. Someone besides Oleg Lopatin, he was sure, had KGB connections. That was the way things were. Katerina made the most obvious choice: if anyone on the ship could find out everything that was going on, she was the one.