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reached, the White Star, for very real reasons, the same reasons that had killed the miners. But at the atevi world there was no such excuse: they were only interested in keeping the colonists so busy with their dangerous work that they had no time to foment revolution: it had been that bad, in the old days, and there was no Mospheiran to this day but regarded the Guild with extreme suspicion and misgivings.
    Now it sounded as if the station, recently recovered, after centuries in mothballs, had gone back into full-scale mining operations, by robot, the way they should have done. The station must be needing the grosser supplies in their ship-building now—a project which would need far more supplies than they could lift from the planet’s surface. Electronics, rarer metals, some ceramics: those would still come up the long, expensive climb out of atmosphere, but apparently they’d reached the stage where they needed to haul in iron and nickel from the floating junk that was so abundant up here. That meant they’d gotten the refining process out of mothballs and gotten it working.
    Well. Good. Counting a kyo visitation was not beyond probability, that progress toward a second starship was very good, and they’d happily contribute the mining bots they had stowed in Phoenix’s forward hold. It was a good thing to look as powerful and prosperous as they could. Ogun had put them ahead of schedule.
    “Clear under caution,” the announcement went out, generally, and Kaplan listened to the unit in his ear for a second. “You’re clear to move now, sir, but get to seats fast and don’t get up.”
    “We may sit,” Bren translated that, “and should move quickly to reach our seats and belt in.” The dowager and Cajeiri were nearest the seats in question, those along a section of freestanding wall—actually an acceleration buffer—at the rear of the bridge. The dowager moved with fair dispatch, taking Cajeiri with her, Cenedi and his man in close company with them and seeing them settled. “Go,” Bren said to Gin, after the dowager was in, and Gin and Jerry moved out.
    He came last with Banichi and Jago, and slipped quickly into a seat. In front of them, row on row of consoles and operators tracked surrounding space, the condition of the ship, the location of various items like the stray mining bots—and, one presumed, established communication with the station.
    Above it all, a wide screen showed a disk-shaped light, which was—God, was it really home? Was that beautiful star in center screen their own planet shining in the sun?
    There, it must be. That dimmer light was the moon. And a bright oblong light that might not be a star. It might be the station itself. He wondered how great a magnification that was.
    Bren found himself shivering. He suddenly wanted to be there faster, faster, as fast as at all possible, to see and do all he’d been waiting so long for. And to find out that things were all right, and that all the people he wanted to find were waiting for him.
    Jase and Sabin, at the far side of the bridge, were close to another bulkhead and another shelter like the one they had left, but once they began moving about in some confidence, Bren stood up judiciously, hand on a recessed takehold on the curtain wall, and caught Jase’s eye.
    Jase worked his way down the aisle in their direction.
    “Sorry about that little surprise,” Jase said. “Is everyone all right?”
    “We seem to be,” Bren said, finding himself a little shaky in this resumption of normalcy. “Was that just one of those things that sometimes happens?”
    “I have no idea,” Jase said. “We’ve never been where traffic was an issue, not since this ship left old Earth, far as I know. Sabin doesn’t say a thing, but we’ve counted quite an amazing lot of these little craft. Sabin’s called the station, and if the chronometer’s right, it’s Ogun’s offshift. They’re going to have to get him out of bed.”
    “I don’t think