THE NEXT TWO DAYS REMINDED DINAH OF THE NEW CAIRD EXPEDITION , in that there was a lot to do but no way to affect the schedule. They were at the mercy of astronomical events. Part of her wanted to pull all-nighters until this thing was finished, but she knew she had to be well rested and fed when it counted, and so she forced herself to eat and sleep on the usual schedule. When awake, she worked on preparations for the arrival of the heptad, pre-positioning Grabbs near the docking port that it would use, connecting cables to suitable anchor points, tuning up the programs that the robots would execute when it came time to snap the other ends of those cables onto the heptad, rehearsing them to check for places where the cables might snag.