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a gift of space to grandchildren yet unborn.
    Bobbi Kanagawa counted softly to herself as Geographic loomed on the screen, the onboard computer continually checking her approach pattern. "Almost home," she said without looking back at her passengers.
    Sylvia reached over and pinched Cadmann's arm. "Are you all right?"
    "I've never liked dockings," Cadmann muttered. Geographic was half the sky now; more, as the silver wall of the fuel balloon slid past and the conical cagework opened like a mouth. "And if you're a Freudian, I don't want to hear it."
    The shuttle's nose grated along the cagework and nuzzled into the lock at its base: click-thump. Cadmann sighed in relief and released his shoulder straps. Bobbi made her last-minute checks, then swung out of her seat with practiced ease. "All right, folks, this is a two-hour turnaround. Hope you don't need more time." Some of her straight black hair had escaped its binding, and drifted out at disconcerting angles when she moved.
    "Two should do it." Sylvia strapped on her backpack.
    The door at the rear of the shuttle hissed open, and Stu Ellington's voice chuckled at them from the control module. "It's about time. Swear to God that's just like a woman. Two-tenths of a second late again."
    Bobbi glared at the speaker, drumming her fingernails against the console. "Just keep talking, Stu," she said sweetly. "You need all the friends you can get-the last vote was dead even for leaving your worthless carcass up here another month."
    "Oops. Tell you what. Drop your friends in the lab, come on up to Command, and we'll discuss my carcass for an hour or so."
    Bobbi's pale cheeks reddened. She ran her hand over her hair, discovering the flyaway strands. "I... uh, well-" she looked at Sylvia, who winked sagely. "I'll see you in a month, huh?" She scurried to be the first through the hatch.
    She disappeared down a narrow connective hallway as Sylvia led Cadmann to the central corridor and back to the biolab section. Cadmann clucked in puritan disgust. "Sex. I remember sex. Highly overrated."
    "Great attitude for a biologist."
    "Just a Bachelor's, and it was marine biology," he sniffed. "Fish are damned civilized about it. She lays ‘em, and he swims over ‘em."
    "You're a romantic, that's what you are." Sylvia worked her way along the handrails gingerly and seemed ill at ease. "All this time," she said, so softly that he wondered if she had intended for him to hear.
    "What?"
    "After all this time, I still get a little claustrophobic in here."
    She laughed uneasily.
    "You're not the only one." He slammed the flat of his palm against one of the steel-and-plastic panels that lined Geographic. The vibration thrummed along the hexagonal corridor, damping out before it reached the first corner. "This place was home and prison to all of us for a long time. Some of the colonists won't come back up at all."
    "It doesn't make sense, really. Just forget it."
    He leaned up behind her and whispered in her ear. "It's return-to-the-tomb syndrome." A Karloffian leer lurked just behind his solemn expression. "All of us spent at least a hundred and five years asleep in a little coffin-shaped box, awakened from the dead by a trickle of electricity through our brains."
    "Lovely. We'll put you in charge of bedtime stories. I'll manage the sedative concession."
    The door to the biolab was sealed to protect both the life within and the crew without. Some of the substances and microscopic life forms were extremely vulnerable, and others extremely dangerous. Sylvia punched in her four-digit personal code, and the door opened inward. In case of a loss of atmosphere in the main section of the ship, air pressure alone would keep the door sealed. "We'll have this reprogrammed to admit you."
    The lights came up automatically as the door closed behind them. The room was the second-largest on Geographic. Its floor space was crowded with medical and analytical equipment, its walls completely lined with cryogenic vaults.