She sat quietly, trying to relax, to see through their eyes and feel and understand. Andrei blazed on, hitting his stride now, preaching about the Genuine Needs of the People, the social role of the Committed Technician. It was a mishmash: Food, and Liberty, and Meaningful Work. And the New Man and New Woman, with their hearts with the people, but their eyes on the stars.... Laura watched the crew. What must they be feeling? Young, most of them; the committed Movement elite, taken from those sleepy little island towns into a place like this. She imagined them running up and down the deck stairs of their strange steel world, hot and fervid, like hoppedup lab rats. Sealed in a bottle and drifting away from the Net’s laws and rules and standards.