This novella backfills in the married life of Miles and Ekaterin with the spotlight on her for a change. She and Enrique [of butterbug fame] have come up with a new bug that should help clean the radiation zone in Miles’ home district. These new bugs eat the plants and emit the radioactive bits in piles of waste to be cleaned up. The downside is the bugs glow cutely and quickly go missing. When the thief is found Ekaterin must deal with it and the problems around the thief. A really lovely Vorkosigan story proving that not every problem is on a planet wide scale in these books.

