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quietly.
    "Inside? Why?"
    Urbain replied, "Because when you get into your suit you will be leaving a veritable jungle of microbial flora and fauna on every part of its exterior that you touch: human sweat, body oils, who knows what else? One fingerprint, one breath could leave enough terrestrial microbes to utterly devastate Titan's entire ecology."
    "I'd have to stay in the suit while you fry it with gamma rays?"
    Wilmot nodded.
    Urbain said flatly, "That is the only way we will allow you to go to Titan's surface."

DEPARTURE Minus 38 Days

    He's really handsome when he smiles, Holly noted silently. But he's always so serious!
    Malcolm Eberly was peering intently at the three-dimensional display floating in midair above his desktop. To Susan he looked like a clean-cut California surfer type, but only from the neck up. His blond hair was chopped short, in the latest style. He had good cheekbones and a strong, firm jaw. Chiseled nose and startling blue eyes, the color of an Alpine sky. A killer smile, too, but he smiled all too rarely.
    She had bent over backwards to please him: dressed in the plain tunics and slacks that he preferred, let her hair go natural and cut those stubborn curls short, took off the decal she had worn on her forehead and wore no adornments at all except for the tiny asteroidal diamond studs in her ears. He hadn't noticed any of it.
    "We've got to be more selective in our screening processes," he said, without looking up from the display. His voice was low, richly vibrant; he spoke American English, but with an overlay of a glass-smooth cultured British accent.
    "Look." Eberly thumbed his remote controller and the display rotated above the desktop so that Susan could see the three-dimensional chart. The office was small and austere: nothing in it but Eberly's gray metal desk and the stiff little plastic chair Susan was sitting in. No decorations on the walls. Eberly's desktop was antiseptically bare.
    She leaned forward in the uncomfortable squeaking chair to inspect the series of jagged colored lines climbing steadily across the chart floating before her eyes. Just as she had remembered it from last night, before she'd gone home for the evening.
    "In the two weeks since you've started working in the human resources office," Eberly said, "successful recruitments have climbed al m ost thirty percent. You've accomplished more work than the rest of the staff combined, it seems."
    That's because I want to please you, she said to herself. She didn't have the nerve to say it aloud; didn't have the nerve to do anything more but smile at him.
    Unsmilingly, he continued, "But too many of the new recruits are convicted political dissidents, troublemakers. If they caused unrest on Earth, they'll probably cause unrest here."
    Her smile crumpled. She asked, "But isn't that the purpose of this mission? The reason we're going to Saturn? To give people a new chance? A new life?"
    "Within reason, Holly. Within reason. We don't want chronic protesters here, out-and-out rebels. The next thing you know, we'll be inviting terrorists to the habitat."
    "Have I done that bad a job?"
    She waited for him to reassure her, to tell her she was doing her job properly. Instead, Eberly got to his feet and came around the desk.
    "Come on, let's go outside for a bit of a stroll."
    She shot to her feet. She was just a tad taller than he. From the shoulders down Eberly was slight, skinny really. Thin arms, narrow chest, even the beginnings of a pot belly, she thought. He needs exercise, she told herself. He works too hard in the office. I've got to get him outside more, get him to the fitness center, build him up.
    Yet she followed him in silence down the hallway that led past the habitat's other administrative offices and out the door at its end.
    Bright sunshine was streaming through the long windows. Colorful butterflies flitted among the hyacinths, multihued tulips, and bloodred poppies that bloomed along the path. They walked in