Nau's technician shook his head. "We've got too much on the ground here. Besides, we're running on empty; we'd have to use a lot of our volatiles to go flying around the system." The tech, Jau Xin, looked almost as young as Ezr. Xin was pleasant enough, but did not have quite the edge of competence that Ezr was used to in senior Qeng Ho. "I've been very impressed by your engineers." Xin nodded at the other windows. "They're much better than we would be at handling the rockpile. It's hard to see how they could be this sharp without zip..." His voice trailed off. There were still secrets; that might change sooner than the Emergents expected.
Nau smoothly filled the pause in Xin's speech. "Your people are good, Ezr. Really, I think that's why they complained about this plan so much; they aim for perfection." He looked out the window on the OnOff star. "Think of all the history that comes together here."
Around and below them, the crowd was clustered into groups of Emergents and Qeng Ho, but discussion was going on in all directions. The window on the far wall looked out onto the exposed surface of the rockpile. Jimmy Diem's work crew was spreading a silvery canopy over the tops of icy boulders. Nau frowned.
"That's to cover the water ice and airsnow, sir," said Vinh. "The tops are in line of sight of OnOff. The curtains should cut down on boil-off."
"Ah." Nau nodded.
There were more than a dozen figures out there on the surface. Some were tethered, others maneuvered free. Surface gravity was virtually non-existent. They sailed the ties over the tops of the icy mountains with the ease of a lifetime of outside operations—and millennia of Qeng Ho experience beyond that. He watched the figures, trying to guess who was who. But they wore thermal jackets over their coveralls, and all Vinh could see were identical forms dancing above the dark landscape. Ezr didn't know the details of what the conspiracy planned, but Jimmy had set him certain errands and Ezr had his guesses. They might never have an opportunity this good again: They had access to the ejets aboard theBrisgo Gap. They had almost unlimited access to the outside, in places free of Emergent observers. In the seconds following the Relighting, some chaos was to be expected—and with Qeng Ho in charge of the stationkeeping operation, they could fine-tune that chaos to support the conspiracy.But all I can dois stand here with Tomas Nau...and be a good actor.
Ezr smiled at the Podmaster.
Qiwi Lisolet flounced out of the airlock in a rage. "Damn! Damn and fuck damn and—" She swore up and down as she ripped off her thermal jacket and pants. Somewhere in the back of her mind she made a note to spend more time with Gonle Fong. Surely there must be more offensive things she could say when things got this messed up. She threw the thermals into a locker and dived down the axis tunnel without taking off her coveralls and hood.
Lord of Trade, how could they do this to her? She'd been kicked indoors to stand around with her finger up her nose, while the workshe should be doing was taken over by Jimmy Diem!
Pham Trinli floated thirty meters above the insulation canopy they were tying across the iceberg. Trinli was official head of stationkeeping operations, though he made sure that any orders he gave were blustery generalities. It was Jimmy Diem who made most things happen. And surprisingly, it was little Qiwi Lisolet who had the best ideas about where to place the electric thrusters and how to run the stationkeeping programs. If they had followed all her recommendations, the Relight might go without a hitch.
And that would not be a good thing at all.
Pham Trinli was a member of the "great conspiracy." A very minor member, and not to be trusted with any critical part of the plan. All that was fine with Pham Trinli. He tipped around so that now his back was to the moonlike glow of the OnOff star, and the rockpile hung almost over his head. In the deep shadows of the rockpile, there was a further jumble: the lashed-down ships and temps and volatiles refineries, hiding against the light that would soon storm out of the sky. One of the habitats, Hammerfest, was a rooted design; it would have had a certain bizarre grace if not for all the gear around it. The Trader temp just looked like a big balloon tied to the surface. Inside it were all the waking Qeng Ho and a big hunk of the Emergent population.
