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instrument, and he had no more barriers to pass, just a panel to remove. Behind the panel was one of the main structural members of Odin , metal and carbonan composite combined. He attached the antenna connections to the metal portion, re-inserted the power line into the transceiver, and clamped all pieces down to make sure they stayed in place in the unlikely event that he made any maneuvers which put stress on them.
    Almost impossible, actually, he thought. The neo-NERVA drive was no longer operable, its damaged nozzle having blown off in the final maneuvers, and the few functional reaction thrusters were very low on fuel. With Jupiter’s magnetic field available, Odin ’s magnetorquers had been able to eliminate her unwanted rotation partially, with the field-parallel vector being dealt with by those few remaining reaction jets. Any maneuvers he could manage would be slow, ponderous, and unlikely to be felt by anything in the ship.
    The main engineering console verified the connection and began running the program to characterize and balance the jury-rigged antenna system as best as could be managed. While that was ongoing, Hohenheim made his way back, picking up the rescue tool along the way.
    The calibration run was nearly complete as he finished stripping off his suit and strapped back into the console seat. The computer had flagged a few anomalies for him to examine, and he sighed. I am hardly a radio engineer, and if this requires more than a bit of look-up and basic calculation…
    Most of them, fortunately, were simply areas of signal loss that he’d expected. Most of the radio noise being received was what he expected as well; Jupiter’s entire solar system was filled with it.
    But…
    He frowned at the last one. It was narrow in spectrum. And the cutoff bands were …
    “Gott in Himmel,” he heard himself whisper. It couldn’t be…
    But there had been distinct peaks, peaks that corresponded to the movement of Odin in her drift through the Jovian sky, and that meant direction , a triangulation that would tell him if the impossible was true.
    And when he had his answer, the amber warning of Odin ’s air supply was no longer irrelevant at all.

Chapter 5.
    Nicholas checked himself in the camera-eye view once more. Every stitch in place, every line correct. And my hair going mostly white, I have to admit, has added an extra soupçon of dignity to my appearance.
    He also checked the VRD display, making sure the “augmented reality” display of his announcement would allow him to focus on the attendees while still able to see the announcement notes. Good enough. Let’s get to it, then, as Maddie would say.
    He stepped out onto the tiny stage that was in place in Phobos Station’s conference room, and acknowledged the smattering of applause with a nod. “Please, all of you, sit down,” he said with a brilliant flash of his trademark smile; he noted that for once there really were enough people present that addressing them as a group actually made sense. There were no fewer than ten other people present in the conference room—one representative from each of the five acknowledged space powers (the E.U., the USA, China, India, and Japan), Glenn Friedet from Ares, and all four of the people who, in addition to regular jobs on Phobos Station or the IRI base below, acted as reporters for various news agencies.
    “I know everyone’s been waiting for a real announcement and some details, but I hope you understand it’s been a very trying time for us all and we didn’t want to make any announcements until we were absolutely positive of our findings.”
    That last bit was a deliberately ambiguous statement, and Nicholas thought he saw the slightest twitch of concern on the face of Giliam Maes, the E.U. representative from Belgium. He probably doesn’t know much, but there has to be some sense of worry pervading the E.U. space community right now. They’ve lost the most expensive ship every built, at least by