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would he outwit her? He smiled grimly at his chutzpah for even thinking he could. She'd committed herself all the wayand now, perhaps, she was feeling the power of her position. One lonely woman, holding the key to a world's existence. He wondered how it felt. Then he shivered, and the sweat in his suit felt very, very cold. If he would have a grave for someone to walk over For the first time, she realized they wouldn't accede to her demands. They were more traitorous than even she could have imagined. Orthe thought was too horrible to acceptshe'd misinterpreted the evidence, and they weren't at fault. Perhaps a madman in the Psyche crew had sought revenge and caused the whole mess. But that didn't fit the facts. It would have taken at least a dozen people to set all the psychotropic vials and release them at oncea concerted preplanned effort. She shook her head. Besides, she had the confidential reports a friend had accidentally plugged into while troubleshooting a Hexamon computer plex. There was no doubt about who was responsible, just uncertainty about the exact procedure. Her evidence for Farmer Kollert's guilt was circumstantial but not baseless. She sealed her suit and helmet and went outside the bubble again, just to watch the stars for a few minutes. The lead-grey rock under her feet was pitted by eons of micrometeoroids. Rills several kilometers across attested to the rolling impacts of other asteroids, any one of which would have caused a (21 of 197) major disaster on Earth. Earth had been hit before, not often by pieces as big as Psyche, but several times at least, and had survived. Earth would survive Psyche's impact, and life would start anew. Those plants and animalseven humansthat survived would eventually build back to the present level, and perhaps it would be a better world, more daunted by the power of past evil. She might be a force for positive regeneration. The string of bubbles across Psyche's surface was serenely lovely in the starlight. The illumination brightened slowly as Earth rose above the Vlasseg pole, larger now than the Moon. She had a few more hours to make the optimum correction. Just above the Earth was a tiny moving point of lightPorter in his cargo vessel. He was lining up with the smaller borehole to send signals, if he had to. Again she wanted to cry. She felt like a little child, full of hatred and frustration, but caught now in something so immense and inexorable that all passion was dwarfed. She couldn't believe she was the controlling factor, that she held so much power. Surely something was behind her, some impersonal, objective force. Alone she was nothing, and her crime would be unbelievablejust as Porter had said. But with a cosmic justification, the agreeing nod of some vast all-seeing God, she was just a tool, bereft of responsibility. She grasped the guide wires strung between the bubbles and pulled herself back to the airlock hatch. With one gloved hand she pressed the button. Under her palm she felt the metal vibrate for a second, then stop. The hatch was still closed. She pressed again and nothing happened. Porter listened carefully for a full minute, trying to pick up the weak signal. It had cut off abruptly a few minutes before, during his final lineup with the borehole through the Vlasseg pole. He called his director and asked if any signals had been received from Turco. Since he was out of line-of-sight now, the Moon had to act as a relay. "Nothing," Lunar Guidance said. "She's been silent for an hour." "That's not right. We've only got an hour and a half left. She should be playing the situation for all it's worth. Listen, LG, I received a weak signal from Psyche several minutes ago. It could have been a freak, but I don't think so. I'm going to move back to where I picked it up." "Negative, Porter. You'll need all your reaction mass in case Plan A doesn't go off properly." "I've got plenty to spare, LG. I have a bad feeling about this. Something's gone wrong on