Something came ticking quietly out of the shadows, on a level with her left shoulder. It paused, swayed its spherical body from side to side on high-arched spider legs, fired a microsecond burst of diffuse laser-light, and froze. It was a Braun microdrone, and Case had once owned the same model, a pointless accessory he’d obtained as part of a package deal with a Cleveland hardware fence. It looked like a stylized matte black daddy longlegs. A red LED began to pulse, at the sphere’s equator. Its body was no larger than a baseball. "Okay," she said, "I hear you." She stood up, favoring her left leg, and watched the little drone reverse. It picked its methodical way back across its girder and into darkness. She turned and looked back at the service area. The man in the orange jumpsuit was sealing the front of a white vacuum rig. She watched him ring and seal the helmet, pick up his console, and step back through the gap in the construction boat’s hull. There was a rising whine of motors and the thing slid smoothly out of sight on a ten-meter circle of flooring that sank away into a harsh glare of arc lamps. The red drone waited patiently at the edge of the hole left by the elevator panel.