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if you have to act in Alex’s place—she would have liked that.”
    “Maybe.” Swan was not so sure.
    “Alex will have had a plan. She always did.”
    Swan sighed, lanced again by the thought of Alex’s absence. These ghostly messages were not even close to an adequate replacement for her. “All right, then. I’ll go out to see this Wang.”
    “Good. And be ready to act.”
    S wan found out where the offworld diplomats still in town were staying, went to the terrace where the Saturnian delegation had been housed. When she entered the courtyard of the place, she immediately came on Wahram, head down as he conferred with the little police inspector, Jean Genette. The sight of the two of them together gave her a shock, and something in their body language said they were well acquainted. Co-conspirators, by the look of them.
    Cheeks burning, Swan approached them. “What’s this?” she demanded. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
    Neither of them at first replied.
    Finally the small waved a hand. “Fitz Wahram and I often work together on various system issues. We were just now deciding to visit a mutual acquaintance.”
    “Wang?” Swan said. “Wang of Io?”
    “Why… yes,” the inspector said, looking up at her curiously. “Wang is an associate of ours, as he was of Alex. We were working together.”
    “As I mentioned to you,” Wahram said in his low croak. “When we were coming back from Tintoretto.”
    “Yes, yes,” Swan said sharply. “You asked me to join you on that trip, without really explaining why.”
    “Well…” The toad man’s broad face was looking a little discomfited. “It’s true, but you see, there are reasons to be discreet….” He looked down at Genette as if hoping for help.
    “I’m going,” Swan said, interrupting their glance. “I want to go.”
    “Ah,” Wahram said with another quick glance at Genette. “Good.”

 
Extracts (1)
    Take an asteroid at least thirty kilometers on its long axis. Any type will do—solid rock, rock and ice, metallic, even ice balls, although each presents different problems.
    Attach a self-replicating excavator assembly to one end of the asteroid, and with it, hollow out your asteroid along its long axis. Leave the wall at least two kilometers thick at all points except for your entry hole. Assure the interior integrity of the wall by coating it with a dura of suitable strength.
    As your assembly hollows the interior, be aware that ejection of the excavated material (best aimed toward a Lagrange salvage point, to collect the salvage fee) will represent your best chance to reposition your terrarium, if you want it in a different orbit. Store excess ejecta on the surface for later use.
    When the interior is hollowed out, leaving an empty cylinder at least five kilometers in diameter and ten kilometers long (but bigger is better!), your excavator assembly will return to the access hole and there reconfigure itself into your terrarium’s propulsion unit. Depending on the mass of your new world, you may want to install a mass driver, an antimatter “lightning push” engine, or an Orion pusher plate.
    Beyond the forward end of the cylinder, on the bow of your new terrarium, attach a forward unit at the point of the long axis. Eventually your terrarium will be spinning at a rotational rate calculated to create the effect of gravity on the inner surface ofthe interior cylinder so that when you are inside, you will be pulled to the floor as if in a gravity field. This is the g equivalent, or gequivalent. The forward unit will then be connected to the bow of the terrarium by a geared axle, to allow the forward unit not to spin but instead to stay fixed. It will be nearly weightless in this bowsprit chamber, but many functions of the terrarium will go better without the spinning, including docking, viewing, navigating, etc.
    It is possible to build an interior cylinder that spins freely inside an asteroid that does not spin—the