"STEVE, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING YET ON THE BOLIDE?" IVY ASKED. They were about five minutes into the alert, which had obliged them to move down into the Banana. As much as Ivy wanted to know what was happening with J.B.F., and what Tekla had characterized as a "surprise attack," her responsibility in a case like this one was clear: all of her attentions had to be focused on the evasive maneuvers being carried out by the Cloud Ark and their possible consequences. Those might include collisions between arklets or the separation of one or more arklets from the swarm. In dire cases it might be necessary to send out rescue teams, which was why her first act had been to get Tekla and the others into their Flivver. For the normal role of that makeshift police service was not to serve warrants on hoarders; it was to respond to emergencies. As keenly as the space geek in Ivy’s soul wanted to pay attention to the scientific phenomenon of the incoming rock, it was a task she had to delegate; and she’d delegated it to Steve Lake as soon as the alert had sounded.