During the span of time from about A+0.144 to 250, the watchword was "consolidation," inevitably trimmed to "consol." It basically meant the retrofitting of new trusswork around the hamster tubes and other sprawling constructs that had been added to the truss during the frantic first couple of months. Other problems were addressed at the same time, most notably the building of more radiators for dumping waste heat into space. These didn’t work if they were too closely spaced—they just shone heat on one another. So the heat rejection complex waxed enormous and ended up growing generally aftward, like an empennage—the feathers on the butt of an arrow. It was no mere figure of speech. In the same way that an arrow’s heavy head and spreading feathers kept it pointed straight forward, the combination of massive Amalthea at the forward end and the heat radiators trailing away aft helped keep Izzy pointed in the right direction and somewhat reduced the demand for thruster firings. It also protected the radiators from micrometeoroids. Rocks could theoretically come from any direction and strike the space station, but they were most likely to hit its forward end, and so forward-facing surfaces of the space station’s modules had generally been equipped with shields. Amalthea, of course, was the biggest and best shield of all.