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secret? Scientists don't behave that way, Grant told himself. Somebody in the New Morality is paranoid, and I've got to spend four years of my life paying for his stupid suspicions.
    With growing despair, he realized that the scientists would probably set him to running an ice-drilling rig on the surface of a Jovian moon. Or worse, he'd be sent down under the ice into the frigid ocean below. That thought frightened him: sent under the ice, into an alien ocean, a world of darkness with no air to breathe except what the tanks on his back carried. Scary. Terrifying.
    'Rendezvous maneuver begins in three minutes,' the captain's voice said from the speaker grille set into the bulkhead, sounding slightly scratchy and flat. 'All non-essential personnel will confine themselves to their quarters or the galley.'
    'Non-essential personnel,' Grant muttered, hauling himself up from the padded chair. 'That means me.' And Tavalera, he added silently. His body felt heavy, sluggish, in the full Earthly gravity.
    For a long moment he stood in the cramped little blister of the observation bubble, ignoring the ache in his legs, still staring at Jupiter. It was hard to pull his eyes away from its splendor. The research station was still nowhere in sight; or, if it was, it was too small against Jupiter's massive bulk for Grant to notice it. With enormous reluctance, he turned and ducked through the low hatch and stepped out into the passageway that led to the galley.
    Tavalera was in the galley, sure enough, sitting at the table with a steaming mug in front of him and an embarrassed expression on his horsy face. He was wiping his chin with a recyclable napkin. Grant saw that the front of his coveralls was stained and wet.
    'Be careful drinking,' Tavalera warned. 'Liquid pours a lot faster now we're in a full gee.'
    Grant thought he didn't need the warning. His aching legs told him all he needed to know about the gravity. He thumped heavily into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Tavalera.
    'Guess this is our last day together,' the young engineer said.
    Grant nodded silently.
    'Got my assignment this morning,' Tavalera said, looking somewhere between worried and hopeful. 'It's a scoopship, all right: the
Glen P. Wilson
.'
    Grant still said nothing. There had been no assignment for him in the morning's communications bulletin. As far as he knew, he was to report aboard the research station and get his assignment there.
    'She's an old ship, cranky and creaky, from what I hear. But a good ship. Reliable. High performance rating.'
    He sounded to Grant as if he were trying to convince himself of something he didn't actually believe.
    'Two years,' Tavalera went on, 'and then I go home, free and clear.'
    'That's good.'
    'You'll be out here four years, won'tcha?'
    'That's right.'
    Tavalera shook his head like a man possessed of superior wisdom. 'They really suckered you in, didn't they? Four years.'
    'I won't have to do another two when I'm fifty,' Grant pointed out. Then he added, with just a little malice, 'But you will.'
    If Tavalera caught Grant's irritation, he gave no notice of it. He merely waggled one long-fingered hand in the air and said, 'Maybe I will and maybe I won't. By the time I'm fifty, I could be too flickin' important for the New Morality to screw with me.'
    Again Grant found himself wondering if Tavalera was probing his loyalty. Is this conversation being monitored? he asked himself.
    Raising his voice a notch, he replied, 'I've always felt that Public Service is something you should be glad to do.
    Give something back to the community. It's important, don't you think?'
    Tavalera leaned back in his chair and gave Grant a crafty look. 'Yeah, sure. But there's important and really important. Know what I mean?'
    The ship quivered. Just a slight tremor, but it was so out of place that both Grant and Tavalera immediately looked up. Grant felt a sharp pang in his gut. Tavalera's eyes flicked wide for an instant.
    'Rendezvous