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that the agents be ready to deal with any surprises that were thrown at them. "Your logic's good," Hannah said. "Let's see if it holds up." She consulted the access codes she had jotted down in the lockmaster's office, flipped open a panel in the hatch, and twisted her body around to punch in the key combination for the Sholto --only to be rewarded with a flashing red BAD CODE warning on the display panel and a harsh, low, error tone. "All right," she said, "we'll try it your way." She entered the Adler 's access code. There was a confirming beep, and a series of smooth clunks and thuds, and the hatch swung up and open. They had to step back a bit to get out of its way. "Right you are, Jamie," she said. "Let's see what other surprises there might be inside."
    The two of them ducked to get under the hatch, and entered the air lock chamber. The chamber was a cylinder on its side, about two meters high and eighty centimeters wide--a fairly snug fit for two people in flight suits, each carrying a duffel bag. If they had been in pressure suits, they wouldn't have fit in at the same time. The chamber's steel-mesh floor was level with the deck of the station's Docking Complex, so that it was offset from the inside and outside air lock hatches by a full ninety degrees.
    "Why the heck did they put the air lock floor on its side?" Jamie asked.
    "They didn't," Hannah said. "At least, not permanently." There were waist-high railings welded to the two sides of the mesh flooring. The one to the left had a small control panel bolted to it. Hannah pushed a button to close the lock's outer door. As soon as it was shut, the steel-mesh floor--and the direction of "down"--began to rotate slowly clockwise.
    Jamie, startled, grabbed at the handrail and glared at Hannah, who was grinning ear to ear. "I take it that warning me wouldn't have been nearly as much fun, would it?" he growled.
    "Nowhere near," Hannah said as the floor's rotation slowed to a smooth halt, level with the interior lock door. "The floor grating itself isn't even powered or anything. It's on rollers, so it will just naturally adjust itself to roll to where 'down' is. The air lock has its own independent grav generator that can redirect itself so 'down' is in any direction. Its standard setting is keyed to using the lock's doors. The grav field shifts by one degree or so at a time, about ten degrees a second, so as to match up with the local direction of 'down' inside or outside the ship."
    "Cute," said Jamie, still plainly annoyed. "But if you've got any other clever pranks to play on me, save them for later, okay?"
    Hannah grinned. "Let's see what we've got inside." She pushed another button on the lock's panel and the inner lock unlatched--to the sound of muffled curses from inside that became clearer and more distinct as the door swung open.
    "What the--burning devils! Just when I was getting things squared away--oh, hello, ma'am. Sir." They saw a technician in blue, sweat-stained coveralls. He had obviously been crouching over, hooking something up, and been forced to scramble to get out of the way of the lock's swinging door.
    Hannah recognized the man. Gunther Hendricks--one of the senior ground crew techs. Hannah never felt quite comfortable with the way Gunther called her "ma'am." He was too experienced, too skilled, to be showing her so much deference. She could only imagine how awkward Jamie felt about hearing himself called "sir" by a man old enough to be his grandfather. But Gunther Hendricks did everything by the book--and the book said that was how techs were supposed to address Special Agents.
    "Sorry, Gunther," said Hannah. "We didn't know anyone was working in here. We didn't mean to barge in on you."
    "No, it's all right," said Gunther. "I just get a little on edge when I'm installing one of these." He gestured toward a blue cylinder with rounded ends, about fifty centimeters long and twenty wide, on an equipment rack next to the air lock.
    Hannah raised one