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hand. “Sure. I’m still learning.” She gestured at her equipment, then jaunted to the machining atomic force microscope, which had always reminded her of a stout dwarf standing at attention. Its smooth body terminated at what would be the shoulders, where low collars protected a working surface—the broad cone of its “hat” contained computer-enhanced optics and atomic point manipulators. They’d had to install the MAFM sideways across the lab, and Ruth had spent so many hours at the device that she oriented herself alongside it by habit, though doing so meant that she and Ulinov no longer shared a local vertical. Impolite. Ruth barely noticed, staring at the MAFM’s blank display grid.
    Lord knew it was wrong to admire the genius behind the nano. This invisible locust had laid waste to nearly 5 billion people and left thousands of animal species extinct.
    Plague Year. It wasn’t just human history that had crashed. The savage effects to the environment would be centuries or more finding balance again, if that was even possible. In many ways Earth had become a different planet and they were only beginning to see what would happen to the forests, the weather cycle, the atmosphere, the land itself.
    “If you are still learning,” Ulinov began, trying a new angle with her, but Ruth said, “The design technique is extremely innovative. I could putz around with my models for another five years if you want.”
    “This is a joke.”
    “No.” She tried to be gentle with the truth. “Colorado’s electron probe is barely strong enough to disassemble a nano of two billion AMU, much less reverse-engineer it, and the glitches in India’s programs make their schematics almost useless. This machine may be the best equipment left in the world.”
    “But yet you have stopped your work.”
    “Uli, I’ve done all I can here.” Ruth had never felt this way toward the same person, real warmth shot through with resentment. It made her nuts. The decision to stay in orbit was not his to make, but Ulinov had always been an outspoken proponent of keeping the ISS crew on-station as long as possible, when he could have added his voice to hers instead.
    She understood his position. She respected his commitment and his code of honor, and honestly believed these traits were her own best strengths. It was the basis of their attraction and at the same time it was probably what would keep them apart.
    * * * *
    Their little slugfest might have gone on longer except that they’d already been knocking heads for weeks now, ever since the snowpack across the Rockies began to fade.
    He left. She kicked back to her window. Watching the patchwork of Earth’s surface roll past engaged enough of her brain that she soon reentered a practiced state of meditation, allowing her subconscious to chew over the locust’s design. It almost felt as if she was outside on EVA, alone in the vacuum, sketching diagrams like constellations and pacing through those intricate shapes, pulling sections apart for closer examination.
    Ruth Ann Goldman hadn’t entered the field of nanotechnology because it promised to revolutionize manufacturing, cure all disease, eradicate pollution, and even scrub the sky clean of greenhouse gases, although she’d always dazzled interviewers with such possibilities before the recruiter from the Defense Department came along and she quit publishing. The truth was more basic. Ruth had an IQ of 190 and was easily bored, and developing functional machines on the nanometer scale proved challenging enough that she often forgot herself.
    At the turn of the millennium, top researchers had been thrilled merely to push, etch, chemically induce or otherwise manipulate atoms—individually or by the millions—into tubes, wires, sheets and other inanimate forms.
    While Ruth was still an undergraduate, sneaking into the lab at night to indent hey good lookin or elvis lives onto her colleagues’ test surfaces, those first crude tubes and