He banged against something as he came in. The sound rang out in the hangar's quiet, that achingly pure quiet you get only in rooms facing vacuum. I closed my eyes against the whirling stars. I knew who it had to be, even as I turned to look. This thing was going to end no better than it had begun. I'd known as much since I'd seen his name on the Tycho shuttle manifest this morning, but hope dies hard.

With an expert grab at an anchor line, he halted himself beneath the door of a Coelus GTV. His suit was open, his helmet under one arm with the gloves stuffed inside. Setting them within easy reach, he started buttoning up. He didn't see me. I was floating in plain sight in front of the port and difficult to miss, but he wasn't expecting me either. He was clearly preoccupied, his eyes never shifting from the tiles at his feet.

I kicked off from the window. Halfway across the hangar, I called out: "Hey, Doug."

His head shot up. With narrow eyes he took in my approach, not quite startled and even less pleased. At last he allowed himself a smile. "Gid."

I pulled up ten feet or so away. He resumed closing the suit. The years hadn't changed him much; he was still the blond, blue-eyed Plains kid walked out of the pages of a Cather novel. A few lines around the eyes, a touch more firmness to his features, no more than that. The Filipino princess and the All-American boy. I'd forgotten who had called them that. It had been a while.

"So how's Luna?"

"Luna?" He sounded as if he'd scarcely heard of the place. "It's okay. It's fine. They keep you busy. It's …" He looked around him, his face a mask. I wondered how the place appeared to him. His last glimpse of it had been filled with panic, and cries, and acrid yellow-brown fumes. I swallowed against a bad taste at the back of my throat, as if those fumes had never quite fully dispersed.

"… it's all new up there, Gid." He shrugged. He'd never been what you'd call eloquent. A blue tag on the GTV's door handle told me it had been prepped. He'd know the current operations codes too. He still had friends at this station. "That your ride?"

His expression went cold. "You know what I'm here for."

"Could only be one thing."

He paused with the helmet at chest level. "You won't pull regs on me, Gid."

"Why don't we—"

"You won't pull regs on me." Slipping the helmet over his head, he started dogging it down.

"You notify, uh … night ops?"

"Night ops?" His face reddened beneath the shadow of his visor. "That what you call her now? No name. Just 'night ops'. Can't say I blame you."

His hands touched the helmet ring, then dropped back. "Yeah. I notified her. You're damn right. No answer, so I e-mailed her." He half-swung toward the entrance, left hand instinctively gripping the line. "And she'd better damn well show, or I will track her down and drag her here as soon as I … when I …"

He fell silent. Flicking shut the final helmet catch, he lifted his right arm to begin the suit diagnostic. "When I get back."

"You want help with—"

"No!" He glared a moment before going on in a calmer voice. "No, Gid. I'll run the checks myself."

"Fine." I drew my legs up into what some people call my "orbital swami" pose. "Tell me somethin'—"

"Later, Gid."

I raised my hands in surrender, then glanced at the operations board under the control room window. The light glowed amber, showing that a vessel was out. Doug hadn't noticed that either. The mission clock beside it clicked over to twenty-six as I watched. Twenty-thirty minutes to rendezvous, same duration back … We didn't have long to wait, actually.

Keys clicked as Doug started his check. I quirked my lips. He hadn't even asked what I was doing there.

My eyes dropped to the port, to the bright stars turning in their slow, unending circles. It had started right here, in this very space, under the light of those stars. I had been thinking about it when he came in. There was really no way I couldn't.

"It's so different." She'd seen the hangar when she'd arrived two days ago, but being chased through with twenty queasy tourists is a less-than-complete experience. "It looks … empty."

I supposed it did, with the shuttle gone back to dirt. I was about to mention as much when her hair caught my attention. Most women who spend any time up cut their hair short. Not Miriam, not yet. I found myself hoping the thought would never occur to her. I gestured at the billowing halo, which was moving as if with a life of its own. "Best you see to all that."

"Oh yes." She began searching her bag. I took her elbow—a standard microgravity courtesy that she didn't flinch from the way many do—and steered her toward the port. We passed a couple GTV's, a satellite undergoing repair, and the Flashlight, surrounded by assorted no-account techs. I gestured a warning at them behind her back. Their leader, Doug Hearn, winked and set a tool twirling in midair. She ignored him. "Right here, Mimi, you'll see a GTV. General Transfer Vehicle, the Gooney Bird of LEO. Go anywhere, do anything—"

"What's a Gooney Bird?" Miriam asked, hair on its way to tidy bowhood.

By the time I got that explained, we'd reached the port. Five by twenty, set in the center of the hangar door. She let out a little sigh, exactly as I thought she would. There really aren't many places on the Rock where you can see outside—the restaurant, the observatory, Irwin's penthouse—fewer where the view is as good as here, with pure night only two inches away. She didn't notice when I let go her arm.

She whispered something that sounded like, "… to the red limit." One finger reached out to touch the pane, exactly as she might have done as a child, as if, were she to push hard enough, she could break through and take one of those big bright stars for her very own. She tilted her head and smiled at me, as if aware that it had been a lot of work throwing it all together and that she appreciated it. "But you can't see Earth?"

"In a little bit." The Rock is tilted the way it is for good reasons, though it does precess enough to bring the Blue Marble into sight at regular intervals. I looked at my watch. "But first, check this out."

A second or two passed before an object drifted into view from the window's bottom left-hand corner. A shapeless blob, strangely hazy against the sharpness of the stars. Several bright spots within changed configuration as it moved diagonally across the window, and sudden glows and shafts of light appeared and vanished at different points. "What is it?"

"That's 243 Ida. Third and final Apollo-Amor asteroid inserted into Earth orbit." After what happened to this one, they'd be parked at L2 from here on in. We were looking at a salvage job—Ida had not weathered insertion at all well. Asteroids are not solid objects; they're collections of debris ripped apart time and again by collisions and close planetary approaches over the epochs, held together by forces little stronger than sentiment. The Rock is no exception.

Though Lennie Irwin had selected it due to its relatively solid core, quite a few pieces had been allowed to go their solitary ways while it was being wrestled into Earth orbit. (It was funny—when Miriam had asked me about Lennie, it had been in breathless terms—Lennie, lassoer of asteroids, the man who had grabbed an Apollo-Amor body using Russian boosters and a polyglot crew. It had been a long time since I'd thought of Lennie that way—to me he was the dumpy, middle-aged guy with the Bronx accent constantly whining about his "power requirements." Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.)

This bunch—a Japanese-Canadian group with rumored Mideast backing—was greedier, and was paying the price. The crews out there were working overtime to avoid a bank-busting series of UN fines. It would take a hell of a lot in the way of iron, platinum, and water ice to pay those.

"You think they'll make it?"

I had my doubts, but couldn't come up with a diplomatic way of putting it. "What's this red limit here, now?"

"Edge of the universe," she said impatiently, as if to a child. She turned back to the glass and smiled. "All the way out."

"Where'd you come across—"

Miriam's bag let out a beep. She slipped out a pocket transcriber.

"You're recordin' this?"

"I'm interviewing you."

"Me? Why?"

"You're the manager of a space station."

"Assistant director. Don't get me in trouble with the boss, now."

"The only boss here is—"

Behind me someone whistled. I shot a glare over my shoulder, held my tongue when I saw Doug Hearn standing alone. He smiled. "Theah's a spacecraft a-comin' in right this-here minute, Hound Dog. Best you-all cleah the hanguh space."

The light beneath the control room window went red. "Okay, Doug. We-uns hears."

Miriam looked at me wide-eyed. "A ship's docking? Right now?"

"You heard the man."

"Can we watch?"

"Not from here. You don't want to be near that door when it opens." Ida 243 slid from view, the Rock's rotation making it appear to be scooting back the way it had come. Thank God it wasn't my problem.

I started us across the hangar, surprised and pleased to find Doug nowhere in sight—I'd been convinced he had plans. My judgment must be slipping.

We passed through the main lock. It's difficult to shepherd a novice through microgravity while avoiding the swing-that-bale effect. I was concentrating on that chore and complimenting Miriam on her efforts at assistance when Lorne Mills emerged from the control room. She took one look at Miriam and shot off.

"See, I'm getting good at this," Miriam said.

"Sure. Day or two more …" I gazed after Lorne. Miriam's looks provoked more than one reaction. There was admiration, and there was envy, and there was this: a product of the unpleasant recent history they brought to mind. Miriam was in fact a Desterrada. She shouldn't have been … Oh, I know, the Expulsions shouldn't have happened to anybody. But Miriam's people were Filipinos, not quite the Latino "ethnic parasites" the Diamondback mobs were after. A kind of overelaborate politeness was the rule. Open rudeness—that was a whole 'nother piece of nevermind, as my granny would have put it. The kind you'd expect from Lorne.

I halted outside the control room door. A touch overconfident, Miriam kept going. I was kicking off after her when an arm reached from beyond the frame and grabbed her. Doug Hearn floated into view, smiling as wide as you please. So he did have plans. Burt Zogby was at the board, with Marc Lurey, resident expert on orbital debris, keeping him company. By the time I finished introductions, the hangar door was swinging open.

Zogby gestured at the craft waiting outside. "That's a GTV—"

"Uh-huh," Miriam said. "Gooney Bird of space."

The conversation turned gladiatorial, each male present trying to outspeak all others for the right to explain things to Miriam. All but me. I sat back and enjoyed the spectacle. Age has its privileges.

"It's spinning to match our rotation. See how the stars are moving—"

"That's automatic. A program handles that during approach—"

"Like on the shuttle."

"—now Mimi, watch while we move it in—"

"—no closer than ten yards in free flight. Regulations—"

"We shoot out the boom … Why don't you show Mimi how that works, Burt?"

The boom telescoped to the GTV's anchor, and the clamps shut tight. Zogby checked the readouts then drew the ship inside.

"Can't they just fly in?" Miriam asked.

"They could, but during design phase—"

"They'd dirty up our nice clean tiles," Doug said. I liked Doug. He was the kind of guy you wanted out in the dark with you. Smart, sharp, good-looking. A lot like me at that age. Second man down on his particular totem pole, the guy who got the work done.

Miriam bent toward the window. "Nobody's in there?"

"See—" Zogby began. Lurey had already dropped out, as was perfectly correct, he being close to my age, and as an astrophysicist shy around girls by divine fiat.

"She's empty," Doug spoke with the firmness of a man certain of victory. "No sense wasting anybody's time on a routine mission. That one was shipping … what, Burt? Right—superconductor cable to the new rock."

"The asteroid. We just saw it. In fifty pieces."

"More than—"

A sudden noise overbore all talk. No familiar sound, nothing at all you'd hear on Earth. A cross between a clang and a thud that seemed to hang in the air, reverberating for long seconds on some level at the edge of hearing. We all remained silent a moment before Zogby breathed, "Whoo—"

"Second one this week."

"Third," I said.

Mimi looked between us, her expression all surmise. "Third what?"

"We just got gonged, Mimi." Doug's tone was proprietary. "What we call 'orbital debris.'"

"A meteor?"

"Coulda been …"

Or a satellite component, a dropped tool, asteroid spill, or any other piece of junk lost in LEO in the seventy-odd years since Sputnik I separated from the R-7 booster. Orbital debris was one of a class of problems that might be called "do-it-tomorrows": the tooth that twinges now and then, the squeak in the suspension that comes and goes, the ethnic minority who are better off as they are. Letting them slide works for a while, and, the universe being what it is, that's often the best you can do. But it doesn't work forever, and eventually the makeshifts have to be pushed aside for drastic action.

Tomorrow had come for orbital debris. Decades of neglect had turned Low Earth Orbit into a four-dimensional, ever-shifting minefield. We'd endured no deaths as yet, but it was only a matter of time. In the past six months, Slattery had lost an arm to an unidentifiable metallic scrap, and a Russian whose name I could never recall had been splattered with shrapnel. The toll on equipment was far worse: nineteen satellites destroyed, and three times that number hit. Crews were taking bets on which manned flights got dinged. A year ago it was which day the Rock would suffer, but nobody was interested in covering the present odds. Ida's breakup was the last shovelful. We were being shotgunned out of orbit by our own trash.

Doug snapped a finger at me. "Don't look so grumpy, Gideon. We'll fix it."

"Sooner the better, Doug."

He gestured in the general direction of Earth. "Wasn't me postponed the launch, Stonewall."

Miriam frowned. "Launch what?"

Lurey nodded at Doug. "This man's in charge of the Flashlight, Mimi."

"The laser thing?" Her face lit up. "I'm supposed to talk to you!"

A dozen vague daydreams evaporated with those words. All just as well—I had no time for daydreams, no matter how sweet. I turned to Zogby. "Check the surface crews, will you?"

Doug was pointing out the window. "That's the laser thing, there in the corner."

"Doesn't look like much."

"You haven't seen it up close."

Mimi bit her lip as if considering it. "Show me."

"Everything cool topside," Zogby told me. "They didn't even notice it."

"Good." I'd been there when Slattery was brought in, his arm swinging loose, his face masked with blood from the blowback. I didn't want to see that again. I gestured at Mimi. "You two go ahead. Doug, she wants to see Little Europe."

"Sure thing." Doug ushered her out. "Gid can't go there. They got a warrant out for him."

The GTV was down, the boom detached and retracting into the ceiling. Zogby closed out the flight report. As I signed, I noticed the damage frame blinking red. It figured.

I was dropping to hangar level, my mind on something Doug had said, when Lorne popped out quickly enough to startle me. "Who the hell is she?"

The first thing to be said about Lorne is: She's the only person I've ever met with violet eyes. The second is that she's the type who cultivates an entourage, with everything implied. I had a run-in with her three days after I arrived, at a welcome dinner thrown by the staff. I was watching my alcohol intake, the way you do in a low-gee environment, and she made some remark about Southern men who couldn't hold their liquor. I don't even remember what I told her, something about the fluid sure running to somebody's head. It fixed her well enough. Since then we'd maintained a truce. I'd even, somewhat against my better judgment, signed off on her promotion to safety director. But we understood each other.

Lorne (somebody's wide shot at "Lauren," I would guess) swung her eyes toward the hangar. "Her," she said, as if there were any question about whom.

"Miriam's the name." I considered asking how she figured it to be her business, but that might be considered enemy action. "She's a reporter."

Lorne absorbed that and with a snort kicked away. I looked after her, reflecting that some women could sway even in microgravity. I was glad I'd never been tempted.

I heard laughter as I passed the hangar entrance. I would have paused had I not been in midflight. But I was twice her age, and Doug was better than most, and I had work to do.

Proof of that axiom was winking at me from my message system as I stepped into my office. A half-dozen calls, each claiming priority A status: Dino Ferrante, two congressional staffers, the East Wing protocol office, some agency I'd never heard of, and the code I'd learned to recognize as Roy Laxton's.

I knew what they were about: Potus was coming. Potus (that's what they insisted on calling him, all but Laxton, who referred to him as "the Principal") had looked up one day to behold the Rock crossing the southern horizon and decided it was time to set foot there. We'd had visits from film stars, diet gurus, retired Latin generalissimos, Nobel Laureates, rock singers (walking nightmares, both of 'em), mobsters (they'd behaved better), and even royalty. But for some reason it had never crossed my mind that I'd ever play host to the President of the United States, which is what Potus stands for.

I didn't mind. I'd voted for him, and it could be argued that he owned the place. What I did mind was the tidal wave of imbecile makework that preceded him. For a trip that was supposed to be secret—so secret that only I of all personnel aboard the Rock was allowed to know about it—the news seemed widespread along the Potomac. Dino, the official majordomo of this floating palace, based himself in Washington and was in a position to intercept most of the nonsense. But Dino was also a veteran of that agency whose name cannot be spoken aloud and was conditioned to cringe. As a result, enough in the way of clerks, bureaucrats, politicians, junior officers, and assistants to secretaries slipped past to bedevil my days and bring my plans to naught. As far as I could gather, the calls from the unknown agency, the protocol office, and the staffers were of this pest category—the staffers in particular: They'd been warned against such presumption.

Which left Dino, who could wait, and Laxton. As Secret Service agent in charge of Presidential security, Laxton was a special case. He and I had got off on the wrong foot last week when I put a block on his calls along with those of the interns and secretaries. Matters had not improved in the interim. We'd been playing phone tag the past two days, Laxton being inexplicably absent from his office. Another hour or two wouldn't hurt him either.

It had occurred to me to wonder why Potus had chosen this particular time for his visit, with only ten days' warning to boot. I suspected that Doug had provided the answer without even being aware of it, a surmise I wanted to get straight in my mind before speaking to anybody. Switching on my monitor, I retrieved his last memo concerning the Flashlight.

There is one sure way of dealing with orbital debris. Oh, I've seen all the proposals: the magnetic scoops of cunning design, the smart nets, the solar-powered lobster traps. My favorite took advantage of the GODS effect, the variation of the upper atmosphere under the impact of solar activity. Somebody at SRI suggested a bank of mirrors to create a "dramatically enhanced, though localized, atmospheric expansion." Only the fantastic engineering requirements (those mirrors would have been a kilometer-plus in diameter) halted the destruction of every man-made object in LEO.

The sole practical solution remained the Flashlight, formally known as the strategic orbital laser. Lasers aren't news. I doubt anyone will forget the day the first pair, snuck into orbit as "surveillance satellites," shut down the Third Kashmir War as it was about to go nuclear. They've been fired more often than many might guess since then. Now, after fifteen years, the original SHEL-1s were being replaced. Fitted with new engines and refueling capability, they'd be let loose to wander between LEO and GSO and back, vaporizing small pieces of litter and sending larger ones into the atmosphere through thermal shock.

Doug Hearn had been working on the project three months, about double the allotted time due to inevitable delays. But this last snag hadn't been a program rewrite or a missing part. Not trusting memory, I wanted another look.

Naturally, the phone readout, flashing the bright red signifying none other than Roy Laxton, started ringing the minute the memo appeared. Envying my descendants of ages to come, when relativistic effects will put an end to offhand calls from Washington, I picked up. "Cummins."

"Your answering machine down?"

Laxton didn't sound angry. He never sounded anything. His voice never changed. Always that smooth, efficient, thinking-cog tone. It got spooky after a while. You spent your time trying to second-guess him, to figure out what he was really saying. As a result, conversations tended to go his way. "I've been running my station."

"God made beepers."

"He also made messages. I got yours."

"Same here. And that's what we're going to cover now. Namely, what is your problem with the security program?"

"Hold one," I told him. I hit the keys. The screen flickered, then displayed the seal of the U.S. Secret Service and the title DRAFT SECURITY PROGRAM—POTUS VISIT IOS. Laxton would flip if he saw how casually I was handling the file, supposedly a 128-bit cypher document. I scrolled down a page or two. "Here we are. 'Track all pedestrian traffic along facility's passageways, noting number of passersby, direction of travel, and average composition. Establish a detailed log for every hour of each twenty-four, seven-day period—'"

"Wait—"

Wait, hell. I jumped a page. "'Catalog by type, cross-indexed with make and usage, all power and lighting equipment, electronic devices, kitchen utensils and equipment, and related items. Include model number, manufacturer's name and address, year of manufacture …' Somebody wrote in 'lab equipment' and 'entertainment devices' too. I admire completeness, Laxton."

"Director—"

"I could go on. The photos, for instance. Current shots of everybody, staff, tourists, what have you? I'm supposed to do that, evidently. Take their pictures."

"Director—"

"You know what you get, you give me a camera? Picture of my thumb. Your people will be after my thumb."

"Cummins, can you give me access?"

"My pleasure."

Almost immediately, he made something like a grunt of pain. "You've got the draft version."

"That's what it says."

About five seconds passed. "I'm sending you the working—"

"Hold one, mister." I wasn't thinking that some staffer's mistake had handed me the initiative over Laxton. I really wasn't. I don't play those kind of games. But there was a point or two I wanted clarified, and this was the first opportunity to come my way. "Before you do that, tell me something. I can't remember you ever explaining why you think the Principal … the President of the United States, is in danger of attack on my station."

"Because it's possible."

I shook my head. Laxton had a way with unexpected, unanswerable statements. But at the moment, I was simply not in the mood. "Good answer, Laxton. I thought I'd heard 'em all the past week, but—"

"Because it's possible. You have a UN office."

"You're not scared of the UN." It had been three years since a handful of UN officials had been discovered instigating coups in favor of Unimondism. Our half-dozen UN people were uniformly polite and well behaved.

"No, Cummins. You're right. I'm scared of this …"

The text on screen vanished, replaced by a week-old news photo of an explosion at a Tonga tracking station. The damage was so complete I couldn't have identified it without the caption.

"And this …"

A wrecked car of an unfamiliar make. It took me a moment to recognize the dead driver's name, another for the twinge of sadness that followed. I'd known him: a Chilean satellite technician I'd met at the Cape.

"And this …"

The State Department seal, a WARNING heading. A terrorism alert against attacks on "… space-related installations, facilities, and companies, not necessarily owned or connected to the U.S."

"You read that alert, Director. I know you did. You're a serious man. You read it, you thought about it, and you blew it off. Because the Terror Conflicts have been over a dozen years. Because the troglodytes are tamed. Because we're all civilized now, and civilized people never act that way. Am I correct?"

It seemed to me that graciousness was the only route open. "Point taken, Agent Laxton."

"You have eighty-odd Europeans on your station. Who are displeased with the Yankee Millennium. Who think the universe is not big enough. Who would like to see us knocked back to their level, and who are going to lose it when the Principal's trip is announced. They make it possible. And because it can happen, it will. That's how I have to play it. An engineer can go by probabilities. I don't have that luxury."

"Understood."

"Good. Now, I am sending you the working program. I would like you to go over it carefully. I would like you to isolate anything you believe superfluous, and inform me. I would like the remainder undertaken as soon as possible."

"Fine." An impulse seized me. "Superfluous. The Flashlight stuff, for instance."

"Beg pardon?"

"Flashlight. The laser."

He was silent so long I thought I'd said too much. "They actually call it that?"

"Engineers."

"Cute. Well, that … may be necessary."

I switched screens to Doug's memo. Damn well right it was.

"I'll be at the Cape. We finished training ahead of schedule—I spent the past two days banging around the back of a KC-10. We'll be up Thursday."

"See you then."

I sat staring into space for a minute. Laxton had that effect on you. I couldn't disagree with him. Yes, the President's trip was important. Yes, there were dangers. Yes, we all had to pull our weight. But there was something about the way Laxton handled it … Hard to pin down, difficult to put into words, but …

I just couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if his job was being done by somebody who said what he meant.

At last I turned back to the screen. Like most engineers, Doug was no writer. His memos were contradictory, subgrammatical, never to the point. But this one was clear enough: "Houston says hold on launch 1 week. Dunno why. New date is the 24th."

In other words, Monday, the second day of the President's visit.

President Carl Vecker was making the trip to give his imprimatur to the Flashlight system. Lend it some of his considerable clout. Perhaps even see it off. What better climax to the first presidential trip into space than overseeing the launch of the system that would keep us there? It was clear even to me, politically naive as I was, that a lot could be done with it. A fine gesture, clever and bold, very much in Vecker's style.

It also shed new light on Laxton's concerns. Europe was worth being scared of. The sick man of the millennium, with its internal passports and surveillance, the system it called "socialism," though better described by a more Italianate term, the swordpoint relations among its own members and the world at large. The Europeans had effectively sat out the terror campaigns only to be cheated (as they saw it) of the bounties that had followed with the opening up of the liberated Southern Hemisphere states. Sullen and fearful, the Europeans hated the idea of lasers firing at will in orbit, if only at would-be meteors. That was the reason for decommissioning the weapons and replacing their stealth armor with bright civilian casings. A related attempt at conciliation by giving the EU subcontractor status ended with Spatiale dropping the project due to "ministerial changes." Several nasty statements from Bruxelles had been recently overtaken by silence. Laxton was no fool. The President, lasers, and Europe were a bad combination.

So maybe I should have worried. Maybe my good spirits represented a failure of seriousness. But they weren't all glee at discovering something I shouldn't. It simply felt better knowing. Knowledge brought certainty, and with certainty came confidence. The Flashlight put a period on events. All I had to do was see it launched, and I couldn't picture anything stopping that.

The news report had popped on screen again, as lousy software will. That vista of wreckage, those figures expressing puzzlement and frustration by their very stances. You can never defeat terror completely. Terror is a weed. You stamp it out one place, it pops up another. For the very simple reason that, properly applied, it works.

I pressed exit once, then again for the memo. The standard palm-to-screen security ritual opened the new document. I was pleased to find it much shorter. Halfway through, it occurred to me that Mimi had a nice little story coming.